Five things making me happy tonight and 5 random pictures . 

+the relationship these girls have with their dad. Love it. Cody came home for lunch today and gave both girls a cone filled with chocolate ice cream. He gave me a kiss goodbye and threw in a "oh by the way both girls have ice cream." Our kitchen floor is covered in chocolate lot Kate prints. These girls can get their dad to do just about anything. 

+ the fact that Cody has been working in Burley lately and comes have for lunch quite often. Especially when the girls are asleep and we are able to have an adult conversation.👌

+ having two kids is awesome because they play together. And don't whine to me as much, a definite bonus.

+ Ellie being potty trained for 3 weeks now. It's amazing how awesome only changing one kids diaper is. Is 14 months too young to potty train?! 

+ living in the country. I can run and not even be passed on the roa by a car. And we can get rid of birds and not have neighbors complain about gun shots. 

And a whole bunch. But definitely number one thing making me happy at the moment is snugly phased with these girls. They both love to snuggle at night and watch a show before bed and there isn't any better way to spend the evening than snuggling the two sweetest girls ever. 

Miss Kate has been teething lately and that mixed with weening from nursing makes for extremely long nights. But she is at least happy during the day and will take decent naps still. 

She loves cold things on her teeth. Popsicles and ice packs have been her favorites. We ran to the store to get ice cream the other night because I bribed Cody to get some for having me mow the lawn. We picked out two containers because you'd be dumb to pass up a good deal on ice cream! On the lid was a picture of a spoon with ice cream on it. I put one container of ice cream by Kate in the cart and she immediately picked it up and started licking the lid trying to get some. She would lick it and pull it away to give it a good inspection and then lick it again. She was very determined to get some ice cream out of it!!! 

We had family pictures taken last week at a lake and Ellie begged to go fishing so we loaded up on Saturday and went back to that same lake. We took our niece and nephew with us and had a blast! Both of our girls have a soft spot for their cousin Colton and the entire time Ellie wanted Colton to throw rocks with her and she had to go everywhere he went. It was sweet. And miss Hallye and Cody fished a lot. Once she learned how to cast out she was practically a pro and could just about do it better than me! 

Growing up in Alaska has definitely made a difference in my adult years, I can't handle a lot of heat! I am pretty pathetic in the summer. 

 But we've been trying to stay busy and keep our mind off the heat. A lot of time indoors but also playing with the water table, swimming, and playing at the splash pad with friends.

 

It wouldn't be summer without Popsicles and a lot of afternoons spend in the nude. Only the kids of course!

We've been getting the girls to sleep in the same room again and it was going well until I decided to completely ween Kate from nursing. We have all gotten little sleep over the past few nights and she is learning how to take naps in the living room when her schedule gets messed up and Ellie is already asleep in their room.

Ellie constantly begs to go to the park. She used to love going down the slide but now she wont go near them. She climb to the top of a tall slide at the park a few weeks ago but didn't want to go down. A kid behind her tried pushing her and I think it scared her. We are going to have to work on it.

Not running the past few weeks means I've had to find a new outlet and unfortunately it has been through baking. Cody hasn't complained but my waistline sure has. The girls devoured brownies like they were air!

Last Saturday was the Spudman Triathlon and the biking portion goes right by our house! We put up a sign that said "Smile if your peed on the swim course" and cheered people on as they rode by. We got a few funny looks but mostly people just smiling and laughing. A few people told us that they either had or wished they had gone to the bathroom in the river. 

I took the girls swimming with some friends a few weeks ago. It was Kate's first time and she didn't seem to mind it at all. Ellie loved that the pool was so empty that she could swim around all over with her friends. I love the pool because they have a part roped off that is 1 1/2 feet deep for little kids. Perfect!

One other thing we have been doing a lot of this summer is reading! The library had a summer reading program that if you went in every week you could be entered into a drawing to win a bike and everyweek they gave away free coupons to places like Little Caesars and McDonalds. We got a call from the library this morning saying Ellie won the bike!!!!

July has always been one of my favorite months. There is always a lot going on and birthdays that make it seem to really fly by fast.

We celebrated Kate's first birthday on the 9th. I'm not much of a party planner and one year old's are pretty easily entertained. I blew up a bunch of balloons for the girls to wake up to and it was perfect, they both had a blast with them.

We had a few errands to run while we were in town so I decided to stop and try on clothes for fun. I found a pair of pants that actually fit and were super flattering but didn't really need new pants, mine fit with a belt. We grabbed one of Kate's favorite foods, chicken nuggest, and went to eat lunch with Cody. He must have been listening really intently because he surprised me with those jeans on my birthday a few days later. 

I honestly don't remember what we made for Kate's first birthday dinner, probably wingers minus the sauce for the kiddos. But we did have cup cakes. Ellie really liked the frosting and nothing else but Kate didn't like the frosting at all and kept rubbing it between her fingers.

We got Kate a little peoples snow white house and a block train for her birthday (thank you huggies for rewards codes and free toys!). They surprisingly played really well that night but the next morning they started fighting over the train and it hasn't stopped yet.

On Thursday I went for my run and about half way through my foot started to really hurt. I had Cody come and get me but I was very dissappointed because all I wanted to do for my birthday the next day was go for a hike. It was feeling better the next morning so we still went but just on a short hike. The girls loved it and laughed and sang the entire time.

That night instead of going out to dinner we grabbed food to eat at home with the girls (thanks Jess!). They are all saying hooray for churros!!!

I loved the Fourth of July growing up not only because of the fireworks and parades but because it was also both of my parents birthdays. We'd go watch the parade and go play in grandma and grandpas back yard (our hard had a lot of trees and dirt) so it was nice to play on grass and run through the sprinklers or play bad mitten, a lot of bad mitten. This year was a lot different, having two small kiddos makes things a lot different. 

When I started running my ultimate goal at the time was to run a 5k in under 30 minutes. The last 5k I ran was on thanksgiving and I missed that goal by about 2 minutes. I was determined to have an official time that was better than that so I decided to run a small local race on the fourth. It was so small on fact that I was the first woman finisher but only because all the really fast ladies in the community ran the 10k. The 10k racers started 5 minutes before us so the time on the clock was off and I think we finished later but I was still able to get under 30 minutes and my new goal is to keep getting faster. 

We didn't take the girls to watch the parade because it was definitely nap time. But we did have a BBQ with Cody's and then went and watched the fireworks. Kate finally fell asleep during the fireworks and Ellie was a little unsure of what to think.