Mother's Day

I had a wonderful Mother's Day this year! My 2nd official Mother's Day! We were still in Kansas City with my Mom and Natalie. So it was the perfect opportunity to spend the day with my mom, and of course my little McKinley who made me a Mommy!

I'm grateful for my Mommy and all the efforts she makes to visit us and spend time with us even though we live in different parts of the country! I'm grateful that she is such a great Grandma to McKinley and that McKinley knows her and loves her so much! She gets so excited when she sees her and sad when she leaves! She's a wonderful Mom and Grandma!

I'm also so grateful to be a Mommy to my little McKinley! She is such a sweet, snuggly, funny, cute, silly, goofy girl! She makes me so happy and I love her so much, tantrums and all :) I'm so glad she made me a Mommy almost 2 years ago. It's been the most challenging, but most fulfilling thing that I've done in my life! I look forward to being her Mommy forever and being a Mommy to other kiddos to come!

I'm also grateful for my husband and the support he gives me as a Mommy! He is supportive of my decision to stay home everyday with McKinley and works so hard to provide for our family so that I can do that! He is so helpful with McKinley when he is home and gives me much needed breaks after long days. He is a great Daddy to McKinley, which helps me to be a better Momma! He lets me know that my efforts are appreciated and surprises me with beautiful flowers :)

I'm grateful for my Mom and grateful to be a Mommy myself!!

Kansas City round 2

After the race, we got to relax and enjoy some fun time together as a family and some of the fun attractions Kansas City has to offer. McKinley enjoyed spending time with Meme and her Aunt Natty.

After waking up from one of her naps, McKinley found Meme's glasses and put them in her mouth like she was thinking. I thought it was pretty funny!

When my Mom and my sisters and I get together, we have to go shopping! So we went to nice part of Kansas City, called Country Club, with a lot of neat shops! Natalie and I were excited to shop at an H&M! So was McKinley as you can tell by this picture!
 

We worked up an appetite shopping, and went to Cheesecake Factory for dinner! One of my all time faves!

Having fun in the car on the way back to the hotel!

We also went to the Crown Center, in downtown Kansas City. They had a lot of neat shops there! McKinley's favorite was the one with the candy. She even got so excited her Dad had got her some M&M's that she peed on him :) She also enjoyed the fountains outside! She kept a healthy distance from the water, but enjoyed watching the fountains and watching the kids running through them!

 

Another fun site we were able to enjoy was the Overland Park Arboretum.  It had beautiful scenery and some very pretty flowers. We enjoyed walking around and taking some pretty pictures!

McKinley even found a fox statue that she enjoyed "riding" on :)

We had a great time and loved exploring a fun city with fun family! McKinley was happy to know that Meme was coming back to Lincoln with us to visit for a few more days!

I did it!

 

I finished my first half marathon! All 13.1 miles of it! It was an amazing feeling to cross the finish line and achieve a goal that I've had for myself for a while and that I've been training for over the past 3 months!

 

My sister Natalie, came to Kansas City to run it with me! We started the morning nice and early and headed out of the hotel, and off to our race.

 

We unfortunately were greeted by traffic and were still in the traffic the time the race was slated to start. I got a little nervous and was hoping to have enough time to finish the race, as I know that I am quite a slow runner! But, we arrived at the starting line just as the race was starting, whew that was a close one! At least I didn't have to deal with too much of the pre-race jitters standing there waiting for it to start!
 

My sweet husband, with the help of his talented sister Natalie, surprised us and made us shirts for the us to wear during the run! As well as for our fan club waiting for us at the finish line :) We were team "Natmeg" and on the back it said, "I'm only half nuts! 13.1". It was so nice to have support with me during the run!

 

Overall, the race went well. I started to get a little run down by mile 8, but stuck with the pacers and used my music to get me through it.  Once I got to mile 12, I knew I could do it and kept myself going knowing that I had my husband, my sweet little McKinley, my Mom and my sister Natalie (who finished a bit before me) waiting for me at the finish line!

The name of the race was called, Running with the Cows, as the race was out in rural Kansas (about 10 miles south of Kansas City in a town called Bucyrus, KS). We literally did "run with the cows" and enjoyed the beautiful rural scenery throughout the run! The site of the race was decked out in cow decor all around! And even had a cow mascot to take pictures with after the race.

 

We were a little delusional after running 13 miles, and took these funny pictures! They crack us up every time we look at them! 

After we got back to the hotel, and took the "best shower ever" and got ready, we took some more pictures of us in our race shirts and sporting our newly acquired medals! 

It was a great experience, and I'm so glad that I was able to achieve this goal I'd set for myself. I'm so grateful for all the support I had in my husband, putting up with me and all my crazy long training runs on Saturdays! I'm also grateful that my sister Natalie came to run it with me, it was so nice to have a running buddy to share it with! I'm also grateful that my mom came out to Kansas City to watch us run and be there at the finish line for us! It was so nice to have so much support, I couldn't have done it on my own!

20 months

At 20 months, McKinley is talking a ton! It seems like a light bulb just clicked this last month and she is now trying to talk all the time and say everything! She can pretty much say anything she wants to say! She is even putting ideas together and using small sentences. The other day we went out for ice cream and McKinley looked at the empty bowl and said, "ice cream, all gone!" She's starting to put words and ideas together more and more! Whenever we tell her that we're going to see Mya, she goes through all the names of everyone in their family. She says, "Ma (Madison), My My (Mya), Bra (Brad), and Emmy (Emily)." She usually is doing a dance and squealing while she goes through all their names because she is so excited to go and see them! Here she having Mya put some makeup on her :)

Her new development is climbing stairs. She loves to climb up and down stairs all by herself! She mastered walking up them a few months ago and now she's on to walking down them. Every time we leave our apartment she has to walk down the stairs on her own. Holding on to the rail with one hand and my hand with the other. It's really sweet and fun to watch her learn and grow! She also loves to throw things down the stairs! Every time we go over to Brad and Emily's she throws Mya's toy vacuum cleaner down the stairs, making a huge crashing noise the whole way down. She just laughs and thinks it's the funniest thing ever! The things she thinks are the funniest are when something drops or breaks or when someone falls! Travis says she gets this from my family... I guess I can't deny that!

She is still my little diva and loves to carry her purse, full of her little people around with her.

 She likes to dance around to music in the kitchen! When we're cleaning or cooking in the kitchen we always turn on music and she comes in and dances all around the kitchen with us! We have fun family dance parties in the kitchen!

She loves stickers, or "dicters" as she calls them. Her favorite thing to do with stickers is put them all over me and Travis! She also knows that when we go to Target, if she asks the checker for a "dicter" they'll give her one! So every time we're checking out at Target she remember that she gets a sticker there and asks for one! She's got a good memory!

She loves to sing! She can sing most of her ABC's! She learned it from a game on the iPad, I know she's a little obsessed with that thing. I was so shocked when I heard her singing it for the first time! She also loves the songs, "Twinkle Twinkle," "If You're Happy and You Know It," "Popcorn Popping," and "The Itsy Bitsy Spider" and knows all of the actions to them! I love to hear her sing! Even if she doesn't know the words to a song she's still pretty good at humming the tune to it, so I can recognize what song she is singing.

 

She loves bubbles and had a great time at the Children's Museum when they brought out some bubbles and some huge wands that made bubbles almost the same size as her! She had a great time playing with these bubbles, so much so that I may need to invest in one of these wands of our own for her this summer!

Another thing that McKinley has really been into lately is coloring! Anytime she sees crayons she gets excited and starting saying, "color, color, color!" Here she is lounging around coloring a picture :)

 

She is such a sweet girl! She is also quite a goofball too, which I love! She can always make me smile and laugh! I love seeing her grow and develop and watching her personality blossom! It is so wonderful to be a Mom! I'm so grateful to be a Mom to such a sweet, smart, funny, cute, amazing little girl :)