silver dollar city

We made our first trip to SDC this year last Wednesday!  For the cold-weather loving Mama, it was the PERFECT day!  There was a chance for rain so the park wasn't very busy and we all had to wear jackets!!!  Ivan was pretty stoked about the whole day too.

Amos and I got in line for our first ride and were shocked to look up and see some of our favorite friends, the Edens!!  Great minds think alike!  If you look really closely you can spy Scout and Amos riding together on this one!

Amos was so brave this time!  Here he is holding his hands up and riding without any of us.  He's passed the height requirement that allows him on some rides by himself and gave him access to Powder Keg! I didn't get a picture of him riding it, but he was so brave.  I thought he might need a little coaxing once we actually got to it, but he didn't.  He waited through the line and just got on the ride.  There was a moment where the ride was building to it's next drop that he got a little worried, but he toughed it out.  Then he was ready to ride it again later with Jason.  In line, he told Jason, "Dad, I like it, but I don't like it too."  Jason said that pretty much sums up how he feels about roller coasters.

Ivan is about an inch shy of getting to ride the bigger, little kid rides, so he had to be super patient most of the day.  He did a great job and always had a HUGE smile on his face while riding the ones he could.  We road the several at fireman's landing and he kept telling me how it tickled his tummy!

The two older boys didn't mind doing these rides because they got to ride all by themselves!

Conrad spent most his time here.  He doesn't look too happy, but he was drifting off to sleep!  He continues to do a great job just roaming around with us.

 At the end of the day, we all spent time on the carousel and even got Conrad on it.

Then Silas decided he was ready to try Thunderation.  We had tried to get him on it at the beginning of the day, but he wasn't quite sure about it then.  He needed some time to warm up to it.   We walked down to watch him wait for his ride.

And we ended our time with the butterflies and jumping frogs.  The place was pretty much cleared out by now so we just kept jumping on the rides.  Conrad was serious the whole time, but inside he had a blast!

Of course, we can't wait for our next trip!

cops and robbers birthday

Happy Birthday to our Con-Man!  He turned one a week before this, but with all our family coming to town for the race, it worked out perfect to celebrate last Satruday.

We had lots of fun with fake mustaches, handcuffs and robber masks.

We all filled our bellies with "hamburglars", "mac-n-freeze", and "tossed in jail salad."

And then we tried the smash cake once again!  

 Once again, we were disappointed.

 But, the ice cream cake was a much bigger hit with this one.

He had lots of help opening up his presents!

But, I think, the ride on horse was the favorite for both the new one year olds!

joplin memorial run

So back in February, my dad invited Jason and I to run the Joplin Memorial's Marathon Relay race.  We thought it sounded like a fun idea!  The marathon were broken up into 5 legs.  We decided that Dad would run two of the legs, and Amelia, Jason and I would run the other four.  When given the choice, Jason chose to run the 10k length because he couldn't let me run further than him.  I was the lucky one running a 5k!

I had great plans of getting down to a 7:30 pace, but that didn't quite happen.  It ended up being a good thing that I only ran the 5k, because I hurt my neck the week before the race and didn't get to run for a week!

However, race day was nice and cool, a little too cool while standing and waiting, but perfect for running!  We met up with Dad and Amelia at 6:00 am to get set and watch Dad take off and run the first two legs (a 10k and 5k).

 They had shuttles that took us to our points on the course.  Dad reached Amelia at 7:48 am and Amelia took off for her hilly 12K run headed west out of town.  She blasted through all the hills and rocked her leg with a 8:00 pace!!  Jason took over from there with his 10K leg of the race.  I was so proud seeing him run over that last hill and as I got to take the chip from him to finish off the race.  I had lots of stored up energy watching all those runners pass and my adrenaline must have kicked in.  I was able to finish my leg in just over 24 minutes with a 7:45 pace!  We took 5th overall and 4th in our co-ed division!

And we had the greatest cheering section!

first haircut

All the boys got haircuts this past week, but it was Conrad's FIRST haircut!  I just wanted to shape everything up a little bit and luckily the curls have stuck around!