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 :)

The Lincoln Zoo

 

Since our trip to the Omaha Zoo, McKinley always asks to see the "amals". She also loves watching the Barney episode where they go to the zoo and always asks to watch it by saying, "amals". So when my friend Holly invited us on a trip to the Lincoln Zoo, we had to go!

 

McKinley of course loved seeing all the animals and making noises at them. She loved waving and saying, "hi" to them all! 

We got to see a peacock with its' feathers in full plumage. That was a pretty neat site!

We had fun taking pictures with the fun photo opps!

She loved this metal sea otter statue and kept hugging it! It was pretty cute. She liked the metal statue way more than the real sea otters right in front of her, go figure :)

Kansas City Temple

In the middle of April, we were able to drive out to Kansas City to visit and walk through the new temple that was recently built there. It is a beautiful temple! It was especially neat to be able to take McKinley inside, even though I don't think she'll quite remember the experience like we will :) We were able to meet up with Travis's parents, Travis's sister Rachael and her family, and Brad and Emily and their girls in Kansas City. It was fun to be able to go through the temple with everyone and spend the weekend together as a family!

McKinley was pretty tired and overdue for a nap, so she was actually pretty calm and snuggly during the tour, which made it so much easier for me to enjoy! Even though she was tired, she still enjoyed spending time with her cousins, and of course the cookies and punch they serve at the end of the tour!

After visiting the temple and dinner at Joe's Crab Shack, we headed back to our hotel The Great Wolf Lodge. It is a neat hotel with an indoor water park inside of it. We got to play at the water park for a little bit before we headed to the temple, which McKinley loved! She kept saying, "wawa" and "swimming". We even took her down one of the big tube slides on a three-person tube, with me and Travis. She liked it except for the part where it went pitch black! She had a great time, especially with her cousins there to play with her! It makes me excited for the summer time and getting to take her swimming even more!

We spent the morning on Saturday at the water park. McKinley was cutting four new teeth that morning so didn't get the enjoy the water park as much as the day before! Here's how she spent most of the time at the water park on Saturday :)

 After the water park, we went shopping at the mall right next to our hotel which is always a good time in my book! The mall was next to a Nascar track, that happened to be having a race the next day. So there were Nascar fans and Nascar events going on all around. Travis, his Dad and Brad all got Nascar t-shirts to get in the spirit! It was hilarious to see them walking around in their Nascar shirts! That night before everyone took off, we all had dinner at a Kansas City BBQ restaurant called Aurthur Miller's. Being from Texas I'm a BBQ connoisseur, but I have to admit it was pretty good BBQ!

 

 Here's a funny picture of McKinley just hanging out on the drive home. She is of course watching Barney to pass the time!