Marathon Mama shirts

We leave in one hour for Texas. The Marathon Mamas are running the Heels and Hills Half Marathon in Irving, Texas on Sunday morning! We are so excited for a weekend to be carefree girls on Saturday and then run our hearts out on Sunday! We have been training for this weekend since December! They are calling for a significant chance of rain, but hopefully it will hold off. If not, this week has given us a lot of practice running in the rain!

This is the back of our shirts. It is hard to read in the picture, but it says "working off..." and lists all of our children. Between the four of us we have ten children and they are all boys except for Reese! At the bottom it says "13.1 miles of peace and quiet!" The heart on the bottom corner is to remember Chris, Stacy's husband. I will be back in a couple of days to give a full recap of the weekend! Wish us luck!

Northwest AR Children's Shelter Grand Opening

Today we went to the Northwest Arkansas Children's Shelter Grand Opening of their NEW shelter building. There was a great turn out and the building is fantastic! This was made possible by a 13.5 million dollar grant by the Donald W. Reynolds Foundation. There was fantastic speakers there such as Scott Tassani (from General Mills and president of the Board of Directors for the shelter), Mike Duke (CEO of Walmart), U.S. Representative Steve Womack, Steven Anderson (President of the Reynolds Foundation), and two former shelter residents that have graduated out of the foster care system. It was a lovely ceremony.

This building, where the children live and go to school, along with the recreation center is nearly 60,000 square feet.

The two former residents, Shaden and Stormy, speaking at the ceremony.

The Spiderman mural in the boys wing.

I loved this mural!

Jake's 3rd-6th grade classroom.

Jake's desk where he emails me! The new shelter is so far out in the boonies that there is no cell phone reception!

Beautiful fireplace in the dining room. Aren't those old ladies the sweetest?!

The media room. Can you imagine the Wii tournaments in there?!

The boys letting out some energy in the gym after being forced to hold our hands through the entire tour!

Cow Paddy 5K

See the storms???!

Last week we heard about the Cow Paddy 5K at a local park here. I read the website and was pretty excited, except for one thing-the reports of thunderstorms, hail, and tornadoes. NW Arkansas has received a ridiculous amount of storms and rain this week so I believed the reports! I was talking to a fellow runner at the hospital and told him that I had not signed up yet because of the weather reports. He had the audacity to call ME a fair weather runner. I admit, I used to be, but with all of the weather (record breaking snowfalls, flooding, etc) I have had to run through training for this half marathon, I have become rather tough! That was that and we signed up to run the Cow Paddy 5K-rain, hail, or tornado! We also convinced our friend Sarah to run with us. Sarah has been training for weeks to run her first 5K next weekend. We thought this could be a good trial run! You can read all about Sarah's version of the evening here. We held our breath the entire time and it actually did not storm on us! (We later heard about tornadoes in Bentonville while we were running).

My Cow Paddy trophy! I have it proudly displayed in the kitchen!

Easter celebrations

Our silly boys on Easter Sunday.

The worship team singing their hearts out!

The preschoolers presenting their song they had been practicing for weeks!

LOVE the closed eyes during the song!

Jake was distracting the kids with old camp songs while the relay course was set up. He does such an amazing job at that!

Receiving their relay race instructions.

Zachary knew what kind of shoes to wear on the rainiest Easter that he could ever remember!

Matching colors during the relay with a big kid helper!

Egg toss

Standing behind the line and preparing to egg the pastor!

The egged pastor!

The choice for the pinata was between an egg and a chick...we thought it better to whack the egg rather than the chick!

We had a wonderful rainy fun Easter this year.

Easter monsters

We decorated Easter eggs last night. I found a cheapo monster egg kit that I thought the boys would love. It was pretty cute.

They were all very serious about when to turn the egg for even dyeing!

Of course, monster eggs cause you to make monster noises!

The Big Top

Aidan has been practicing with his Pre-K class for months for The Circus. It all came down to Tuesday night and it was just about the cutest thing I have ever seen. Aidan has been telling me about it at home, but I had no idea it would be so precious. Aidan and his friend, Luke, were the Animal Tamers. They cracked a whip on the stage while their classmates sang a song about animal tamers! Aidan was so excited about his mustache (I have a sneaky suspicion it is because Mario and Luigi have mustaches).

Cracking their whips!

These costumes have been around for years. The teachers have handmade most of them. My favorite is the strongman (on the left). The teachers said they purposefully pick the smallest kids to play that role. So stinkin' funny.

The Big Top with Ms. Kathy and Ms. Lucy's classes.

Zachary's 3rd birthday

Zachary turned THREE years old last Friday. We got him his own "big kid bike." We loved the joy on his face when he saw it!

Now, we are working on pedaling!

Titans soccer

The Titans have started their spring season. They are bigger and stronger this year! Some of the younger brothers, Zachary included, are having a hard time understanding that they are not, in fact, a part of the Titans. It has been challenging to come up with distractions, yet still see the games!

The warm up and stretching time is one of the cutest things to see!

Ethan got two goals in the first game! Way to go!