She's 5!!!!

It keeps happening!  My kids keep growing up!

For some reason, 5 is a hard one for me.  It means they are not my baby anymore.  That they will be leaving me soon for school and that is just too much for me.  But I have one more year with Lily before she heads off to school and I am going to make the most of it!

Lily is still my magical girl, and she knows it.  She is everyones best friend.   She loves her family and we all love her back ten fold.  She loves her big brothers and would love to play with them more that anyone else.  However, she and Greta are starting to play together and that makes me so happy.  In fact just the other day she asked me to move her booster seat by Greta's carseat so she could sit by her "best friend."

She is the perfect blend of girlie and tomboy.  I love it!  She loves super heroes (still Captain America,) and Princesses almost equally.  In fact she has started to love girl super heroes like Wonder Woman, (that makes me giddy!)  She loves Frozen, just like every other girl in the world, but it's funny, she kind of gets that it is too popular and so she claims that Belle and Merida are her favorite princesses, and her new favorite movie is "The Princess and the Frog."  But she does love Elsa because of her hair and her magical powers.  And hearing he sing "Let it go"  Still makes me so happy.

Her favorite things in the whole world are

Wearwolves 

&

Art

I think I need to make sure to highlight those two points because that pretty much sums it all up.  I still cannot explain the werwolf thing, and I may never be able to, but it's who she is and we love it.   She uses the werewolf thing to get out of stuff, for example; "werewolf's don't have to say 'excuse me,' so when I just burped, I didn't have to say 'excuse me' because I am a werewolf."  That was her most recent.  Poor girl can't understand why the other little girls don't want to play "werewolves" with her.  

As for the art; she is consumed  She will draw, all day everyday.  She wakes up and proclaims with a sigh; "I've got a lot of art to do today."  She is very prolific and I don't know what we are going to do with all of her masterpieces.  She is so proud of each piece she produces, that I am reluctant to throw anything away.  

Other favorites are; horses.  She still dreams of owning a horse one day and is trying to figure out where we can keep in.  One day we passed a horse trailer and she proclaimed with much excitement, "It that my horsey, are they going to my house?"  She was truly devastated when I told her those horses were not coming to our house.  She also loves her dog "Lily" (she named it Lily because it is her favorite name.)  Dancing, singing, playing outside where she makes rabbit traps, and feeds our rabbit tacos that she makes from leaves and grass.  She loves playing with our dog Hazel. She is so rough with her and sometimes I am afraid for poor Hazel, but they seem very well matched.  She makes up the cutest stories and plays out very elaborate scenarios when she plays.  I really want to film her playing sometime to try and figure out what images she has in her mind.

We have managed to get blankie away from her, but not her thumb.  She is more obsessed with sucking her thumb than ever, and I really don't think there is anything we can do about that.  I am just hoping she loses interest or decides on her own that she wants to quit.  

My favorite thing about Lily right now, (I guess I don't really have a favorite but,)  She loves to give "lovings"  or talk about "lovings," or give lessons on "lovings."  She is such a loving, sweet little girl!  I love her so much.  I want her to stay my little girl forever and I think she knows it because she was so sad the night before she turned 5 because she wouldn't be my 4 year old girl anymore.  I reassured her I would love her every bit as much as my 5 year old girl!

She loves hearing her birth story where I start all the way back with "we wanted you so much, and we prayed for you everyday, all the time!"  Up until I tell her about the first time I saw my Magical Princess.  On her birthday I showed her the picture of the ultrasound where she was covering her "lady parts" so we couldn't tell if she was a boy or a girl.  Now she loves to talk about that picture. "Remember that picture when I was inside your belly and I wouldn't let you see my lady parts?"

I am realizing as I try to write this that there just aren't words to express my love for my Lily Bean.  Just like there aren't enough words to capture who she is.  She is so much, but I will throw out a few adjectives in an effort to try to describe Lily.  She is, sweet, smart, loving, kind, brave, bold, crazy, happy,  joyful, artistic, creative, affectionate, funny, magical and just overall Incredible!  

That's my Girl!

photos by: Angie Monson of Simplicity Photography

The Tough Mudder; Wendy's turn

This past weekend me and a group of super awesome women competed in the Seattle Tough Mudder. It is a 13 mile obstacle race and it was a blast.  Our team was called the Neon Dreams, thus all the bright colors.  I am kind of proud to say that I designed the logo on our headbands.

We stared training in July, using a new method called SwichWork.  No other training could have possibly prepared us for this course.  Except for knowing Mitch almost my whole life, and following him up and down mountains and swimming in arcitc rivers and lakes, that helped a lot too!   It was so fun working together and getting to know these amazing women.  These women are the best!

Before:

signing the waiver; literally signing our life away

Look how clean and cute we are!  It didn't last long.

Pole Dancer; Parallel bars over a mud bog that incline then decline.

Arctic Enema; A large pool of ice water with a wall in the center that forces you to fully submerge your whole body in the ice water.  It was the worst ice cream headache I've ever had!

 The Mud Mile. 

The Funky Monkey bars; I was unsuccessful, but Stephanie rocked it so I'm sharing her pictures.

 Electric Shock Therapy; run through an obstacle with live wires hanging everywhere.  You will get shocked!  There is nothing you can do about it.

My team mates; Stephanie

 Mary

 Emilia

 Everest; A warped wall you have to run up.  This is me on the top helping people get to the top.

 And this is Casey trying to get to the top

 Emilia

Walk the Plank; obviously this isn't us, but I wanted to have a picture of the obsitcal.  Our team mate Casey, can't swim at all and she did this one.  We were all really proud, and a little scared for her.  She just jumped in and didn't know how to swim up.  The lifeguards were prepared and pulled her out.  This is also one of the only times I have ever jumped off anything high.  I am not sure what my issue was before, it was actually fun.  (this picture doesn't make it look as high as it was)

 This is one of the mud obstacles, called Sewage Outlet.  You crawl under the wire, through the tube and then jump out of the tube down a ten foot drop into a pool of water on the other side.

Repelling down a hillside of mud.  It was a lot steeper than this looks, and super slippery 

Pyramid scheme; 

 After the race:

We were pretty amped up!  It was so fun.  We would have signed up to do it again right then and there.

And then the adrenaline wore off;  these two collapsed in the drive way.

Can you guess which feet are mine?

 All of our shoes.  mine are the bottom right.

Of course the team mom, (that would be me,) got to do the clean up.

Asher age 8!

Love this boy!  I love the person he is becoming and I can't wait to see all the amazing things he will do in his life