Pajamas

Last night Tucker was having a hard time winding down and falling asleep. At one point he was crying so I went in to see what his problem was. He was sitting on the floor trying to unzip his pajamas so that he could wear his Thomas the Train pajamas. I guess he has an opinion on what to wear to bed. Funny little boy!

God Be With You Til We Meet Again

Our beloved prophet, seer and revelator, President Gordon B. Hinckley passed away in his home last night at the age of 97. What an amazing man and prophet he was. He will be deeply missed. I know that my testimony has been strengthened by his teachings and words of wisdom. For more on his death visit here. For an inspiring book about his life, check out his biography, Go Forward With Faith. I'm about half way through it right now. President Hinckley was so Christ like. His example of following the Savior truly makes me want to be a better person.

Polar Bear Plunge

Today I participated in the Polar Bear Plunge held in the Chesapeake Bay. It is an annual fundraiser held where the proceeds go to Special Olympics. A couple guys in our ward, Clark Hartley and Haloti Ngata (NFL player) were our team captains, and as a team we raised over $8,000. Can you believe people pay to watch crazy people like us jump into freezing cold water? Insane. Oh well though, it was for a good cause.

Well, Bryce Carter and I drove down together this morning and nearly froze to death waiting to get in the water. The atmosphere surrounding the event was exciting. There were tens of thousands of people there. Tons of tailgaiters, barbeques and onlookers. Even the crazy drunk people were there, including the psycho duo of guys running around in nothing but a speedo and beer helmet. The air temperature was a frosty 31 degrees, and the water was a stinging 36 degrees today. You can see some video on the local news network if you like. Check out the link on the right for- Sky Team 11: Saturday's Noon Big Plunge (you can see our group running in with our white t-shirts. I'm one of the first ones to go running in).

Here is a picture of some of the ward members on our team about 5 minutes before plunge time. For all of you who wussed out, shame on you. For the rest of the courageous and valiant men who stuck it out, congrats! Remember, it's only 31 degrees and we are standing around in t-shirts and swimming suits right now.

Here is a view of the Bay with the Bay Bridge in the background. Check out all the police boats and divers that they had on hand in case of an accident.
This photo was taken immediately after the plunge, and I think we were all officially numb at this point. Getting out of the water was so hard because the muscles were no longer working, so Jeremy Skinner and I were falling all over each other just trying to escape the frigid clutches of the Chesapeake. Man, it was painfully cold.

Flex those muscles Bryce!

This is what a frozen skeleton looks like, in case anybody was wondering.

The Chosen One

I went and picked out Tucker's new booster seat today. The lucky winner was the Evenflo Chase Comfort Touch. It had good safety reviews and was super easy to put together and adjust. Tucker liked sitting in it and didn't mind while I buckled him in, but then I had this crazy idea to get the camera and he did not like that!
Too bad for him. He was locked down and what can I say, I'm the mom!

What we did on our vacation

We had a pretty nice weekend. Cody and I went to a restaurant in Baltimore Friday night called Lemongrass. It's a Thai restaurant that has amazing food! I highly recommend it to anyone! The lettuce wraps were delicious (even Cody agrees) and the atmosphere is fun. Not really kid friendly, but get a babysitter and enjoy a great night out.
We hung out at home and with friends Saturday and Sunday. On Monday we cleaned our carpet. The below picture is what our floor looked like before. The pictures aren't the greatest, but our floor looked TERRIBLE! For any of you that have ever been to my place, you know that I usually vacuum before you get there and it still looks like crap. This is how our floor looked after. Much much better. There are still a few spots that will have to be hand scrubbed, but overall we feel as though a gray film has been lifted from our carpet. Much more livable and hopefully it will make less work for us when we move in May.

Brownies, Bath, Bubbles, Bed

Like most kids, Tucker loves to lick the beaters from the mixer and get all the chocolate out of the bowl. We made brownies last night and Tucker taught Aubrey the art of chocolate licking. Then we tossed them in the tub (not literally).
This was Aubrey's first bath out of her baby bath seat and she loved it. She'd go from sitting on her bum to being on her belly to her knees. She loves freedom!
I had to show off their bath towels. A friend of ours made Tucker's when he was a baby and since then I've learned how to make them on my own.
I cannot even tell you how hard it is to get both kids to look at the camera at the same time. It doesn't matter how goofy I am trying to be, I usually only get one set of eyes in my direction. I guess it didn't help that Finding Nemo was playing in the background behind me.

For those of you that don't know me well, I absolutely LOVE a good deal. The Disney store in our mall is closing it's doors Sunday and although that is very sad, especially for our ghetto mall, the deals that were found yesterday are awesome. Everything in the store was marked down and then you received 50% off everything at checkout. We went a bit overboard with the clothes, toys, and accessories, but I just couldn't pass up the bargains. We've got plenty of time to space the presents out and I just love the fact that it was all so cheap. (FYI-For you Old Navy shoppers, they are having their 75% off clearance sale right now. I bought cute socks for a quarter each this morning.)

Freak

Sorry for all the posts at once. I guess we were kind of boring last week and decided that all the exciting things happened in the past couple days. Anyway, on to the title of this post. I'm training to run a half marathon the end of March. I got rid of my elliptical with intentions of finding a treadmill on craigslist or the pennysaver. I had told myself that there is no way I would run out in the cold. Well, last week proved to be nice and I decided I would give it a try outside. I reconfirmed to myself that I love running outside. Treadmill running is boring and monotonous. I told myself that I would run in the mornings as long as the temps are above 32 F. This morning I think it was 34. As I was running along I passed 3 junior high students. After I passed them I heard them talking and the word "freak" being repeated in my direction. I didn't have to turn around to know they were talking about me. I'm going to assume I'm a "freak" because I was running in the cold. It's moments like these, that are going to make me REALLY miss good ole Baltimore!