Monday, April 23, 2012

Cravin' Caving!

The "before" picture all clean
400 feet below ground...loving the mud, darkness, and a group of 10 boys in their element: My favorite one!!
A beautiful underground world:
Tucking it in after a full day...sleeping with the bats...
Owen and I went caving in Chattanooga at Raccoon Mtn this past weekend with his troop. About 20 parents and kids were in our group, and we had a blast. As Owen said at about 200 ft below, "I was born for this!" :-) After 3 hours of army crawling, jumping, climbing, splashing, and looking for bats and salamanders, we climbed out, kind of got cleaned up and set up camp. We got to sleep in the cave and that was really thrilling, but I ain't gonna lie, I was sore the next morning. But memories were made and fun was created...good times!!

Tuesday, April 10, 2012

B and Phia

B waiting to cheer on Owen
This was B's "little snack" - made Jen and I both laugh:-)
Silly Phia
The best egg hunt...Tate brings me the eggs!

A Day in Stones River with the Girls

Poppy and Sophia
O-Man
Tate and Isabella = "B"
Jenna, Laurie, Chad and the kiddos
Griffin and Owen
After the races, we had some chill time together and decided to land at the park, which for my boys, leads to the river:-). Thankfully I was somewhat prepared and brought towels, but just not enough.ha Our cousins, "Phia" and "B" loved playing in the river, finding shells, looking for fish, giggling, and swimming. What a great memory with our "girls."

We have a RUNNER!

Watch the red shorts!
And he's off....
There he goes....
2nd PLACE!!!!
Owen ran a 7:43 for his first run ever!!! We are super proud of him and the best part is...he was just doing it for fun! FOr each of the boys we want them to enjoy themselves with their passions - and to work as unto the LORD. So to see this budding runner was super exciting! Not to mention, his Poppy, who is a runner, and Chad got to witness it and encourage him along the run. Generational FUN RUN :-)

1st 5K - Team Tate

On March 31, I ran my first 5K in honor of Tate! Over the last few months, Tate has been receiving services at a local not-for-profit, Special Kids. They held their first annual 1 mile fun run, 5K and 15K to raise funds for all the children they serve. Our family has been personally touched by the care and compassion Special Kids has for their children. Our family LOVED the racing environment (minus leaving the house at 6) and I definitely see more of these in our future. We had so much fun cheering everyone one, and running for such an amazing cause. At one point on the course they had pictures of the children and I just started crying. It was breathtaking to see their pictures and know that many of these kids would never run or walk, and we were running for THEM!