Friday, March 23, 2012

Happy Birthday Grandma!

Happy Birthday Grandma Ida! We hope you have a great birthday! -Love, Becca, Dave and Dylan

Wednesday, March 21, 2012

Publix Georgia Marathon

My Atlanta marathon post is a little late...

I did upload pictures the other night, but for some reason I haven't had time to write the re-cap until now.

We headed down to Atlanta late on Saturday. Dave had to work, so Dylan and I met him at the club. Since Dylan didn't nap Saturday afternoon he fell asleep in the car, which was great, we had an uneventful drive to Atlanta! We were lucky to be able to stay with Nina's mom just outside of Atlanta and not have to get a hotel room.We were going to stop at Outback once we got to Atlanta, but there was a 45 minute wait and we decided that would not work for our starving stomachs. So we headed to Subway. I don't know if that was Dave's best pre-race meal, but it could have been worse!

 Andrew had picked up Dave's race packet earlier that day and had a terrible time getting to the packet pick up and back. Why is getting around Atlanta such a pain?! It was nice for us to not have to deal with picking up the packet though! We were able to watch the Iowa State vs. UK game Saturday night. Even though ISU didn't win, they still did alright considering they were playing the #1 team in the country.

Sunday morning came early for Dave at 4:30am. The race started at 7am, but Dave and Andrew had to pick up another runner, drive downtown and park and be ready to go ontime. Nina, the kids and I had it a little better. We had decided to just go to the finish line and not try and see Dave and Andrew at another spot along the course. With Atlanta's traffic and 4 kids with us it was definately the right decision. We left for the finish about 9am and were ready and watching by 10:30am. We would have been there earlier if the directions we'd gotten from the race website were correct...so annoying.

Andrew finished first and told us that the hills were terrible in the race. Considering they train in Knoxville, where it is very hilly this was a surprise. Andrew said it best later when describing the hills, "You know when your parents talked about walking up hill to school both ways? That's how the course felt, you would get to the top of a hill and instead of going back down a hill, you would go up another one!"

Dave finished about 30 minutes after Andrew. The heat was the hardest part of the race for him. When they started the race it was in the upper 50's and when they finished it was in the upper 70's. They tell runners to dress for 20 degrees warmer than what the temperature is, because that is what it will feel like to you. I can't imagine finishing a marathon feeling like it's 90 degrees outside!

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Dave at the finish! Way to go Dave!
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3 down, 9 to go! :)
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There are always some characters running the races...
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Andrew at the finish.
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Dylan and Brandon stayed busy playing with the beach ball.
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Publix Georgia Marathon Medal.

Friday, March 9, 2012

Busy, busy, busy

I feel like for the most part we aren't really ever very busy. Sure, we've got the day to day stuff like every family. Usually if we are invited somewhere or want to have people over it's not too hard to get planned. But I have been looking at our schedule for the next few months and just realized we are going to be super busy, like every weekend busy.

Here's what the rest of the month looks like for us:
Tomorrow we have a birthday party to go to, that I still have to buy the present for...
We are also having friends over for dinner tomorrow night after we get back from the birthday party.
Next week we are going to see Henry Rollins speak, which should be awesome, we saw him a few years ago when he came to Knoxville and he spoke for over 3 hours. We are also going to dinner before the show. Which will be awesome because while Dylan is getting better about not being such a pill when we go out to eat, it will still be nice to have a grown up night out!
March 18th is the Atlanta marathon. We will be heading down the night before, luckily it's only a 3 hour drive.
Guess what? The weekend of March 24th we are open!! While I would really like to sit around that weekend and recover, I am hoping it will be nice out and we can go up to the Smokies and do some hiking.
I am heading to Charleston to meet up with my mom and sister to celebrate (late) my mom's 60th birthday the last weekend in March. We didn't realize when we planned the trip that the Knoxville marathon is April 1st. I don't think we made the whole March/April same weekend connection, so Grandma Carolyn is coming down to visit that weekend to help Dave out with Dylan. She will get to see a race too. I'm bummed out that I am going to miss the marathon, the Knoxville one would be fun since it's in our hometown. Maybe next year! I am very excited to go to Charleston though, we have reservations at Husk and Lana and countless other restaurants we want to try. At least we should be doing a lot of walking to burn off the calories from all the food we are going to be eating. :)

I don't even want to start talking about April, our co-ed league volleyball starts (which I am so incredibly excited about!), Dylan's swimming lessons start, Dave will still have his Tuesday night running group and that's just during the week!

I am pretty sure that we are just going to keep getting busier as Dylan gets older and we will find ways to manage it. I wanted to sign him up for tee-ball too, but I think we are going to wait a year for that and soccer. Or at least until the Fall when hopefully we won't have so much going on.

I'll have marathon updates coming up, hopefully a restaurant review from wherever we go before Henry Rollins and Charleston re-cap so stay tuned! Oh, and Spring photos! The Spring flowers and trees are blooming, so I will try and capture some of the gorgeousness of East Tennessee and share it with you!

Tuesday, March 6, 2012

Top 10

We have loved our daycare since the first time I stopped by to see if that was the place we were going to take Dylan when he was 9 weeks old. The staff are always super friendly, asking about your day and what you are up to. They sincerely care about the children, host fun holiday parties for parents and students and keep parents informed on what is going on at the daycare. It always amazes me how much Dylan has learned, from pat-a-cake when he was 6 months old to counting in Spanish to learning his ABC's and so much more.

The State of Tennessee has a voluntary STARS program for rating daycares, most throughout the state participate. I can't imagine parents picking a daycare that doesn't participate, how would you know if they are any good?  Daycare's recieve a 1, 2 or 3 star rating, with 3 stars being the best. When I was looking for a daycare, I, of course, looked for one that had 3 stars. Knoxville has a TON of daycares, and the rating system did help me narrow down the options. But after visiting a few I finally found our daycare.

Since Dylan has been enrolled at Knoxville Center for Early Education they have consistently recieved the three start rating. This year, they again received a three star rating, but also their evaluation score was in the top 10 for the state of Tennessee and the top 100 nationally! We are so proud of the teachers, assistant director and director for working so hard to make our daycare one of the best in the state and country.