Beach pics!

Stopped by Asilomar and the beach was perfect today~!! Just wanted to show a few.

Backyard Project Completed!!

(Look at post below first!)

Here is the sod that was to be delivered between 7am and 9am. It got here at 6:56am! What service ever is on time? And early? Of course the one that is at 7am on a Saturday! So no sleeping in, but at least the grass got here!!

Tyler laying it all down! So nice to have friends in this business that can help!

Akoni got home from work and helped finish it all out!

And it's done!! We have a nice backard! Well half is nice, so just don't look behind you! Just kidding, that will get done some other time. For now, we have some good grass and a place to play that isn't dirt. The kids already ran thru the hose in their swimsuits! Summer is gonna be fun, I can't wait!

Backyard progress.....

So our backyard was on hold for about a week because when we went to test the irrigation, we found out that a pipe had been broken when we put in the fire pit and so there was no water running to the hoses that we had put in.

So the guys that put in the fire pit came out and rerouted the hose and now it works! Akoni was out of town and when he got back he and his friend Tyler Finally got the huge pile of sand off our driveway and filled in the ground.

Some of the sand that sat here for a week. And the kids were told to NOT play on it. Yeah right!

Finally the pile was gone!

Pounding down the sand after the fertilizer had been put down. It smelled so disgusting!

Akoni and Tyler hard at work!

Proof that the drip lines work! See all the dark spots?

Fun at the park

We stopped at the park today after dropping Adriann off at school. Here's just a few pics.

Kenyon was drying off the slide for Kamden!

Kamden was so excited that he didn't need any help going down the slide.

They were laughing so hard here! It was so cute.

5K Fun Run

Our Relief Society organized a 5K fun run for today. We have actually been training for it for a few months. We did the Couch to 5K program, and today was the big day! It was perfect weather and everything went off without any problems!

Here I am right before the run. I was #17! It's on my hand, but you can't see it. That's my birthday, so I was hoping it would be lucky!

This is me crossing the finish line 40min 02seconds later! I ended up coming in 20th place. There were 42 women that had signed up, so that's not bad!!

Me, Heather and Audra after.

Here is the whole group that ran! It was such a blast! Can't wait for the next one!

More backyard

This is what we accomplished the other night. And yes that is a lantern on the tree. We worked until 11pm. and there is no light on that end of the yard. But we almost got the whole irrigation system put in. Those lines are drip lines and so they will "weep" water under the grass that we will roll out on top. Today we are getting sand to level everything out. It's so fun to see it all coming together. I can't wait till I can go out and just lay on the grass and play with the kids!

The best trip to the dump yet!

Our dump has a store next to it called "Last Chance Mercantile". It is an awesome store, but is also a hit and miss store. Sometimes you get great things, like my boys dresser for $3! That was a deal. My friend just got a treadmill for $7, of course it's not very pretty, but it works and I'm jealous. Anyway, we were there a few weeks ago, and there were two pairs of rollerblades. NICE, BARELY USED Rollerblades! Only one side of the wheels were worn down, and not very far. We asked how much they were, and the lady gave them to us for $5 a piece! The best $10 we have spent in a long time.

They have been the best purchase for our kids. I am not even kidding that the minute Adriann walks in the house she has those blades on. It's really funny because they will just skate around circles in our garage! Of course they are not very good at skating yet, but they are getting better and having a ton of fun!

Backyard progress

This is what Akoni did on Monday. I did help a little. Whenever he had to push the wheelbarrow up the ramp to the dump truck, I was there to help him because it was so heavy. So I did help, but with 3 kids to watch and laundry to do, that was about all I could do that day.

The sod will go to the edge where the trees are.

Proof of Akoni doing the work. Here he is fixing the sprinklers! It's so great to have a husband that knows how to do all this stuff!

Our Saturday.....

We are really wanting to have a nice backyard, but just don't know what to do with it. We keep pulling the weeds and then don't do anything and so then they all grow back with a vengeance! So yesterday Akoni brought home a dump truck, a weedwacker, some shovels, rakes, a wheelbarrow, blower and a big pick ax thing. We made some real progress and it's actually starting to look like we can make it look good!

Here are some before pictures of the yard.

And this is after! Akoni weedwacked all this and then we had to hand pull everything out, so not fun.

This part of the yard still looks like this. It got weekwacked, but nothing else. We are going to put some big planter boxes on this side of the house, and the trampoline goes over here, so it's gonna stay like this for a while.

Just another angle of this side of the yard. The trampoline will be moved back over around the side of the house.

This was the worst part of the yard. We are going to put grass on this part and so we had to use shovels and scrape up the top layer of weeds. Watching Akoni do it it looked so easy, but then when I was doing it......it was HARD! I had to use the pickax and break up the ground so that I could even get my shovel under any of it. We still have to finish the rest of that grass. So guess what we're doing for family night?

So it is finally coming along, but it's actually fun to be doing it ourselves. The kids had fun filling buckets and going and dumping them in the dump truck. Hopefully they will still think it's fun tomorrow!!

Artichoke Festival, been there done that! Check!

So I have always wanted to go to the Artichoke Festival that they have in Castroville. But I always forget and then have to wait another year and then forget again. It's a Viscous cycle. Well this year, the mechanic at Akoni's work got us tickets because his car was in the car show there. Thank goodness because later we found

that tickets were $10! So after we were tired from digging out our backyard, (see the next post), we headed out to the Festival.

Well it was not all that I thought it would be. It was basically a huge sidewalk market, some WAY overpriced food, and live music. The music was actually kind of cool, but that was about it. We did find it interesting that at the front there was a sign that said: "No gang colors", and that Gang Task Force officers were everywhere was a little daunting. But we made it thru safely with only spending $5 on ice cream, and went home with a nice Free Home Depot project! Now I know it was an Artichoke Festival and I would have loved to have tried the Fried Artichokes, but they were $8! So we passed on that.

Now that we have gone I can check that off the list of things to do.

Fire Power

Kenyon loves to do this pose from Night at the Museum. He always goes around the house going "Fire Power". When I downloaded the pictures I found this one that I am guessing Adriann took of him.

Cloth Diapers? Let's try 'em out! (beware I use the word poop a lot)

So a friend of mine at church is totally an advocate for Cloth Diapers. She even works at a store where they sell them and has had me thinking that maybe I should try them. I know that in the long run they will save money, because Kamden will be in diapers for probably at least 2 years, maybe longer. So if I calculate that I spend about $40 a month on a box of diapers from costco which I think lasts a month? And these cute Fuzzybunz are $18, then yeah it totally makes sense to use them. So I bought one because it was bright Beaver orange and on sale, and am trying it out. It's actually not bad. You can even buy poop liners that you put in the diaper so when they poop you throw it out and hopefully there isn't any on the diaper! I have yet to have him poop in it. So far it's pretty easy, but I want to see how hard it is when he does have a poopy one. So I might change my mind. But aren't they cute? And these are the one size kind, so you just adjust the snaps and can use the same ones until they are potty trained. I thought that was better than having to buy all different sizes. Anyway, we'll see how it goes.And Amber, I won't make you change him if we're ever at your house and still using them!

I did it!!

So today for our Friday run, my "trainer" Heather and I went to Carmel to run where our 5K will be in a few weeks. I was so nervous! I figured that I could lag behind with someone else and she would be powering ahead with the faster girls. Well it didn't turn out like that. It was only me and Heather! And I did it! I ran the whole thing! I didn't think I could do it, but honestly I knew I would have to because I was with Heather, and there was no way I was going to walk with her around. It's great having her there to motivate me. I am doing something that I never thought in a million years I would be doing. We ran 3.57 miles on my watch, but I think it needs to be callibrated, and when we clocked it on her car it was actually like 3.2 miles. But still, I did it and I didn't die, or walk, or barf or pass out, so I'm pretty proud of myself!

So anyone out there, if I can do it, you can!

Running and Running and Running.....

So I am not a runner and I will be the first to tell anyone that. I have always hated running, and always blamed it on a muscle in my back that hurts whenever I tried to run. Well I learned a new way to run, thanks Heather, and I am now running about 4 days a week! It's been a very very slow process, but today I ran 2.15 miles!! That's the farthest I have ever run!

Our Relief Society is training for a 5K on May 22. We started a few months ago with a program called Couch to 5K. I was literally at the "Couch" point. The first day you ran 1 min. walked 1 min. for 20 minutes. I remember struggling to run that 1 minute! Today my run was 23 minutes! I can actually run for 30 minutes now, but I didn't have time this morning. I had to get my run in before Akoni left for work. And no I didn't run at 5am, it was 6am, he had a meeting and didn't have to leave till 6:30.

Anyway, I am actually loving running. It's still a slow process for me, but it's fun and it's so nice to run by myself and not have to worry about anyone else but me.

I am also trying to get ready for the Big Sur 10K! It's in November, so that gives me plenty of time to get ready for it. And now that I've written it down, you all better hold me to it to get ready!! The run is actually here in Monterey, but it's the same weekend at the Big Sur 1/2 marathon, they just do it on the Saturday before the marathon. They also have a 5K and a kids 3K that we are going to try and get the kids to do. I think it will be fun.

So wish me luck on May 22!

On another note, below is what I got for my birthday! It's the Nike+ band. It's awesome. It comes with a chip that you put in your shoe and it records your mileage, pace, time and calories burned during your runs! It makes running so much more fun because then I know how far I've gone and I don't have to drive around and map out my mileage anymore!