Wicked fun weekend

We had a busy fun weekend! 

This was supposed to be posted weeks ago, I thought it was posted... Apparently it wasn't. (August 21st-23rd was the weekend) 

It all started off with our friend Ann's Birthday. We planned it months ago and invited a ton of friends, turned out were we the only ones that could make it. We were fine with that. We left the kids home and went to dinner before hand. Some Chinese place near the theater. It was good. We chatted about super inappropriate dinner stuff like poo flavored ice cream and Pap smears... Par for the course with Aaron, he's a doctor and things like this just need to be discussed. 

We ate quickly then walked back over to the theater for the show. We saw Wicked. It was so fantastic. 

We had a nice stranger take our pictur, how husbands look great but Ann and I are practically glowing! 

Really though, the show knocked our socks off. It was so funny and the cast was really talented, might even say the Elpheba we saw was better than the original. (gasp I know! But she was better!) 

After a late night we turned in for a early wake up call. We left for Medford at 5:30 am to get there for my cousin Tiarra's wedding. You see months ago Tiarra was looking for a wedding venue. She lives in Portland now, but her whole family lives in Silicon Valley area California. Medford was a great half way point. 

We loaded the kids up in their pajamas and we had the pleasure of seeing a hot air balloon festival on the drive down! I counted 27 at one point. The kids loved it.

 Also, there was no traffic, it was so fantastic that we made it from door step to door step in 3 hours 59 minutes. 

We bolted in to share the amazing news! It fell a bit on deaf ears, because the wedding prep was in full swing. 

I helped with the bride while Matt took care of the children. 

It was a little hectic, but they did in fact, get married. Andrew and Tiarra were a happy couple. 

After the wedding it was getting pretty dog gone toasty, so we all hopped in the pool. 

By the end of our swimming, Ty was swimming across the entire pool, with out help or floaties. (Go swim teacher Mimi and Dad!) Maylee and I just swam around. Gracie woke up and I put her in with Matt. She loves the water. Emma swam for a little bit then totally crashed for a nap. 

Sunday we went to church, my mom is the new RS president. She invited people over for right after church to eat the rest of the food that wasn't eaten at the wedding (a ton of food) then quickly after that we left for back home. It was a busy and quick weekend, but it was a blast. 

I AM A SPARTAN!

No No, Not me.... Matt! Okay, not even him. But he did do a Spartan Sprint last Saturday and he loved every minute. Okay, maybe not EVERY minute like when is left quad started spazzing out after the bucket carry that he couldn't walk for a minute there... or that part when he climbed up the ropes and ripped up his hands... or that time where the (eh hem) older gals in front of him at the barbed wire were rolling under it instead of army crawling and driving him crazy... Other than THAT he had a great time.

Last time he did the race I didn't go watch him, he did it allll alone (said like Goofy from The Goofy Movie, I know you probably said it in your head like that, but in case you didn't I thought I would point it out...) This time he made sure to buy the Groupon with the added spectator pass so I could tag along.

We got a sitter and went (AHHHHH WE STILL HAVENT PAID HER!!! I COMPLETELY FORGOT!!!! ALAINA!!!! SO SORRRRRYYY!!!!) to the Motocross park in Washougal where they have it.

We parked and got all checked in. Matt told me a ton of times how happy he was that I came. He said in a big crowd of people like that it's easy to feel alone. Anyhow I was able to take a bazillion pictures. He told me which one's he liked to use for this post though. So count this Spartan picture dump as Matt approved...

(Unlike the movie 300, Matt's physique is 100% real. I know I know, I am so lucky. He works out a lot and really hard, he says he only has a few more years before his muscles just look old... i'm not sure what he is talking about, but i'm not too worried about old muscles.)

I think I did okay with the photos, shooting in full manual mode is tricky! I took a million in between pictures to make sure I had my settings right. So, some are off and maybe one or two are on, but I am still learning.

 At the start they did a ton of the running, with the obstacles more spread out, then where the spectators could be, it was a ton more obstacles. So I missed about 2 miles of the race and caught him on the last mile.

 Look at his face haha a regular Gerard Butler I'd say... (Also, he thinks he knows the fella to the left there, but he can't remember his name.)

 Poor guy in the background that fell, 30 Burpees for him!

 This is the one that ripped up his hands.

His finishing time was 1h23min. Before he even knew his time he was telling me how he could have shaved about 15-20 minutes off his time if he was taking it more seriously. He was disappointed in that time however and does indeed to take the next race more seriously. 

After we got home and I posted some pictures on FB a friend from Utah said her husband was there and did the race just a few heats before Matt, and he did it all alone too. Ugh! Wish I would have known, I could have taken his pictures too! Well now Matt wants to do another one, but instead of the Sprint, (3-4 miles) the Beast (12-14 miles) Yikes! We'll see if he ends up doing it. He keeps telling me he only has so many years left before his body just cant take that sort of beating. I just say, Okay. 

I was pretty proud of him. I thought about doing it myself then realized that getting that dirty, muddy and sweaty with a bunch of strangers wasn't something i'd enjoy. However i'll gladly watch my guy do something that he loves to do. 

The many injuries of Emma Marie

Our Emma bug is injury prone. She walks on flat ground and ends up with bruises. 

This one she bruised her ear, she fell sitting next to me at a picnic table and smacked the side of her head on the table. I had no idea one could bruise an ear so badly. 

Not only is she injury prone, but she is fearless. She doesn't look before she leaps so to speak. 

This time Ty was spinning her on the desk chair up stairs, she flew off and hit her forehead on the desk. All that blood was from a tiny little forehead nic. Poor girl, I made her stand there so I could take a picture and send it to her Dad at work. Usually this is a Dad job, but since he was gone, I had to "cowgirl up" and clean her up myself. 

Her shins are always bruised and scraped. Always. This is her right now. I walked in and snapped this picture. She didn't even wake up. This is actually a better day for her. 

So her latest mishap came however when she decided that she knew how to swim on her own during Ty's swim lesson down in Medford. She hopped in. There were 5 grown ups and about 12 kids in the pool, 6 for Ty's lesson. My mom noticed her first about 1 inch under the water. Trying to swim a little but 90% drowning. I started yelling EMMA EMMA EMMA and ran near her. Swim teacher Mimi pushed her up to me. I wrapped her up in a towel a friend was ready to share and I took her far away in the backyard to talk to her. She was a little shaken (not as shaken as I was) and kept burping up more water. I talked to her about what is okay and not okay around the pool and she was fine after a few minutes. It is one of my BIGGEST fears to be there and have a child drown. Ahhh. I am glad my mom saw her, I was so focused on Ty. The rest of the lessons were okay because I made sure she stayed away from the edge. Even during HER lesson I had to keep an eye on her. She's so daring she'd push away from the wall herself and try to swim back. Ahhh! 

Just today she was sitting on the bar stool only for me to turn around momentarily and hear a loud thud... yep, she fell off the stool. I pick her up wipe her tears and she goes right back on the stool. 

I just had to include this picture because it cracks me up. Emma is actually smiling so big that Mimi squishing her squishable cheeks make her face so funny! 

Any how, I know it's a phase of toddlerhood. I went through the same phase. But boy does the girl go through a beating just trying to get through one day! 

Hideout Bug Bands

So, guess what.... I started my own company! In May I signed up for an on-line class, teaching me how to sell on Amazon. It was a spendy course but hopefully it's worth it. Every week they released a new series of videos and action steps to take. The course is called Amazing Selling Machine. Anyhow, I went through every step, chose a product and found a supplier, designed my actual product and Colton helped me out big time with the designs for logos and product pictures. It was a TON of hard work, full time job getting up and started. The course enables one to sign up under a mentor. A friend Adam, who told me about the course, encouraged me to sign up under Eric and his wife Karyn. They have been a HUGE help. They answer a lot of questions and are always around to give encouragement. Sometimes it's hard to keep going given the amount of work, but now that I have a lot of it done (hence the no blogging) it's a lot easier to work. 

Anyhow, more about my product. It's called Hideout Bug Bands. They are All Natural insect repellent bracelets safe for the whole family. They have citronella and geranium oil soaked in to microfiber band. We took them to the cabin over the fourth of July and they seemed to work pretty well. I have had quite a few orders this summer, but not enough to make all my money back from my inventory costs. That is okay, the product is seasonal so hopefully I can rank higher and continue working on my product to be a best seller next summer. 

Matt has been really supportive of me spending all our money and working so hard that he decided to give it a try too. He has started creating his own supplement brand and made his first inventory product purchase. It's a supplement called Forskolin. He has been working on everything when he gets home from work and hopefully he can get his live soon too. 

My website that I designed myself is hideoutbugbands.com and here are some of the product photos. 

Go ahead a like my FB page and check out my listing on Amazon!