Utah State Fair

My mom and Roger invited us to go to the Utah State Fair with them. My kids love fairs, and we love the opportunity to hang out with oma and opa Roger.

Captain Arrr gave a great show for the kids, and Winter's even got to be first Mate.

We saw the 4-H animals

 This is the same type of cow that Old Betsy was in Texas - a Brown Swiss

 As long as Miles can chew on something, he's happy

 And probably the kids' favorite part; the rides. We don't go to carnivals often (the last time was at the Texas State Fair in like 2009) so this was a real treat for them. They have no fear when it comes to crazy rides.

Running

After 8 weeks of my running training, I'm somewhat starting to feel like a runner. That's saying a lot! Running has never come naturally to me, and used to just hurt my entire body to even run 5 minutes.

My first Half Marathon is just 4 weeks away. It's the Best Dam Half Marathon, which starts at the Deer Creek Dam in Wallsburg. The route goes along the lake and then through Midway and into Heber. The biggest advantage of living nearby, is that I actually get to train on the marathon route.

This morning I had Joe drop me off at the dam. While I started running, he drove to the top, parked the car, and rode his bike down to meet me. By the time we met up, I was at 3.5 miles. I was able to keep running most of the hills, and even outran some guy that was behind me from the beginning. The run felt great most of the time, with just a little energy slump around 5 miles.

I'm definitely not the fastest runner, but am happy with my current 11 minute mile. At that pace, I'll be able to run the half marathon in 2 hours and 23 minutes. 

Signing potty

With Ginger I did some baby sign language, which helped a lot to prevent tantrums. With Miles I'm starting him at an even younger age of just 6 months. He's not signing anything back yet, but I can tell he understands what I'm saying. When I sign "milk" for example, he starts smiling and laughing (or freaking out if he's really hungry) Apparantly babies will start signing back as young as 6-9 months, so hopefully he and I can communicate soon.

And then there's this

Yep, I bought Miles a toilet seat. Of course we've all seen the babies with that silly "poop grin" on their faces. They have to work extra hard to get their business into a diaper that's smashed up against their bum. So when he smiled like that the other day, I decided to just sit him on the toilet and see what happened. He wasn't a big fan of the hard toilet seat, so the next time I was at wally world I grabbed him a contoured cushioned toilet seat. Since we've had it in the house, he's already peed in the toilet 4 times, and pooped twice. It's so silly and yet also super exciting. Maybe he'll soon learn to sign "potty" to me, and we won't even need to do diaper laundry anymore. Can you imagine? I can't!