Horton Wedding 2013

This weekend we had the opportunity to attend my brother Daniels wedding in Allenspark Colorado at the Wild Basin Lodge. All of the Horton children and spouses were able to reunite to see my brother marry his soul mate. We had so much fun, even if it was for only two short days being with each other. It has been a few years since we were all together at the same time, and I miss those days of laughter. I have such an amazing family, they amaze me. I learn, I laugh and I feel so much happiness being with them. We definitely need to get together once a year.

The night before the wedding, we had the grooms dinner, my mom made an amazing meal and we had the chance to get to know Kari's family as well as their friends. We sang karaoke, which some people were pro's and others preferred to watch. I did sing, but it took a duet with Andrew in order to sing by myself. Lily was the evenings dancer and was mesmerized by the various performances. That girl is so crazy.

 

Seriously, she was amazed.

'Afternoon Delight'

Dad even sang!

 

 

 

 

 

Daniel and Kari were married 10/19/2013. It was such a beautiful wedding! Not just because of the gorgeous scenery, but because of the beautiful couple. Their love is so honest, and you can tell they really care for each other. They truly are soul mates and I welcome Kari with open arms into our family because I can see how happy she makes my brother. And she will be a wonderful mother to my brothers two girls. I am excited to see what the future holds for them.

 



He is such a cute daddy

She looked so beautiful. Love her dress!

My beautiful nieces, Joylynn and Avery.

We partied hard at the reception, especially Lily. She danced like a crazy woman, and stole the show. However, she became the party pooper by the end of the night...literally. We had only brought two diapers to the lodge, and happened to use all of them. So what does she do? Poop in the last 15 min of the reception. Since I did not want to miss saying goodbye to my brother, I let her roam the dance floor with a poopy diaper. Those who thought she was so cute, now just saw her as stinky. People started laughing because it smelled like poop...and that was a good way to separate the crowd off the dance floor to end the night. It was pretty funny.

 

Beautiful wedding and loads of fun. Love my family and can't wait to see them again!

 

And some random photos...of course a family photo

Lily and Charlie are twins

I love Isaac

Lily LOVED her cousin Brianna, such a sweetie!

 

My Brain is Overflowing, need relief

This is more or less a post of updates for myself to reflect on in years to come, nothing important...but my mind is overflowing and I need to make space.

So lately, I've been a little on edge. Reasons? Work drives me crazy and we are in need of a second vehicle and it is becoming impossible to decide on a car.

First, work. I should preface my comments by first saying that I DO like my job. I am very grateful to have a job which I can provide for my family, has a flexible schedule and I have great co-workers. I even got an 'exceeds expectations' on my performance review (go me).
Now, why I'm on edge. I've been assisting with filling multiple job positions, covering for people while they are on vacation and dealing with people who remind me of an episode of Seinfeld. Do you happen to know who MR. Pipp is? Well, he is Elaine's boss. He is an older, wealthy gentleman who gives Elaine strange job tasks which make her ask, why can't you do this yourself? One episode in particular: Mr. Pipp asks Elaine to buy him a pair of socks. He gives her a general description of what type of socks he would like, which seemed to be a pretty simple task to complete. She brings him back the socks, he tries them on and hates them. He sends her to go get more socks. Towards the end of the episode, Elaine has purchased hundreds of socks, and Mr. Pipp still is not satisfied. She asks out of frustration 'WHAT DO YOU WANT!', MR. Pipp responds 'I WANT A DECENT PAIR OF SOCKS'. (It is a really funny episode...and I love Seinfeld). Reason for the episode example...I work for many Mr. Pipps. A task which seems so simple, is actually very complicated. They all have an idea of what they want, and can easily complete the task themselves, however they rely on me (or others) to complete the work for them. When we do not give them what they want, they get frustrated and we have to start over again. I'm tired of working for Mr. Pipp...can I retire now?

Second, we need a vehicle. At the beginning of our marriage, Mark and I were fortunate enough to be provided with a second vehicle by Marks wonderful parents. It provided for our transportation needs for three great years. Now it is dead. Living in Tucson makes it impossible to live without two vehicles, everything is about 30 minutes away. So, we qualified for a loan and we're ready to find a car. Almost a month later, we still have not found a vehicle! We have only taken one car to see a mechanic and it failed to meet expectations. The other five cars...have strange owners with unreasonable requests...I'm over this car finding thing. It takes time to find a car, which time is not on our side. We are both way to busy. Are the car gods out there?! Can you hear me?! I'd like you to hand us a car please. Oye.

So that is the end of my stress vent...it's obvious I'm being overly dramatic and I should be smacked for acting like my life is so stressful...but I feel better.

We are going Organic...or at least Lily is. I'm trying really hard to only feed Lily organic, healthy food, not the processed crap that will give her cancer or make her diabetic. However, I admit I sin and take the easy route and give her chips, fries and candy. I figure, if she has those things every now and then, no big deal. But if I can promote clean eating, I will feel better as a parent. Organic food is way to expensive! Why does eating healthy have to cost so much?! I guess it will be worth it when we don't have to pay for medical bills.

I'm not doing so well with my weight loss goal for October. Fifteen pounds has now turned to twenty. oops. I'll be honest, I love food. It makes me happy. I try to repent the start of every week...but then DQ calls my name and I cave. Oh how being human sucks.

Lily is now 18 months! She went to nursery for the first time on sunday. She loved it, I hated it. Took me at least 5 minutes to walk away. I got the hint I needed to leave when one of the nursery leaders said, 'if you leave now she won't even notice'. Maybe it is selfishness, but I just ache when I have to leave her during the week, and now I have to leave her for two hours on sunday too?! Yeah, I know, I'm being dramatic...I'm just tired of leaving her. When I went to pick her up from nursery to go home, she did not want to leave. It's a good thing she is such a happy and easy going child, makes it a little bit easier for me...very little.

Overall, things are great. My family rocks and I love them so much! Now, there is more room in my brain for more important concerns. Thank you blog.

Randomness

We visited Utah for the fourth of July week. We had lots of fun visiting with family and friends and eating like Piggy's. I gained at least 5lbs...oops.

 My sister lives in Salt Lake, and we were missing the kids, plus Mark's Aunt/Uncle and kids had never met Lily, so it seemed like a good idea to go.

We got to go to a few favorite restaurants (Thai Ruby, The Roof, Crown burger) as well as visit a few fun parks and seven peaks. Mark got to play all the golf he wanted, I made a promise before we left. We had lots of fun! Mark and I have decided to have Utah be one of our 'future home' options. I'm in love with the parks and family oriented fun centers and mark is in love with the courses. We can get over the culture stigma :)

Here are some photos:

Ben was pretty excited that Lily was able to eat solid foods. He enjoyed feeding her LOTS of candy.
 (she is eating both a piece of taffy and a licorice stick)

While waiting for our flight. She loved running up and down these things!

Playing at Discovery Park with her cousins

At the Roof. Such a beautiful view and a great reminder of our eternal family.

 

 So, some random things, hence the title...

I had a dream last night that left me really frustrated, but is pretty funny now that I'm fully awake. I dreamt that I had woken up to get ready to head to the gym. I was putting in my contacts, but they were actually breast pads and were to large to fit into my eyes. Frustrated, I run to the other bathroom to look for contacts and all I had were right eye contacts, NO LEFT! I then looked at the clock and realized I had missed the women's class at my gym. And then I woke up. Dreams are so weird! I've been having a few weird dreams. The night before I had gotten a sleeve tattoo of Wiley Coyote and it was hideous...were the heck does my brain come up with these things?!

Mark and I will be running another 5k in September, it is the run or dye 5k which sounds pretty sweet. I've decided that I need to have a race or competition to work towards to keep up my exercise motivation.

Lily has her first pair of Nike's. They are awesome and she runs faster then ever. We took her to Costco, and she ran all over the place laughing like a crazy women. At times she would stop, lay on the floor and rest. She is realizing running takes a lot of energy.

Well, that's pretty much it for now. Work is work, school is school but we enjoy the random things that make our lives funny.

 

 



Mi Linda Lily

I was reading an article the other night regarding the importance of teaching your daughter the  intelligence over beauty. Instead of telling a girl how beautiful or pretty she is, you should say how smart she is or ask her questions regarding her intelligence. Though I agree with the importance of promoting intelligence and independence in young women, I also believe beauty needs to be re-defined. My daughter is beautiful. She will always be beautiful to me. Beauty is held both inside and out, not just based on the physical, but ones personality as well. Lily is beautiful because she is kind, intelligent, happy and physically a very pretty little girl (I'm biased). I want her to always know what it means to be beautiful and never doubt who she is. With that being said, I took some pictures of her this afternoon. She brings happiness to everyone around her and kindest and sweetest little girl. If you doubt me? Then you've obviously never met mi Linda Lily :)

Eating grapes from the grape vine.

The light of my life, the sunshine in my sould

Loves her daddy!

She is truly beautiful

Total Lily pose!

My happy girl

2013 GTX Crossfit Competition

Saturday, June 15th I competed in the 2013 GTX Crossfit Competition. GTX is a crossfit gym which Mark and I attend, and we have really grown to love this gym.

I was very nervous to compete in this competition for many reasons. A) I have never competed in an athletic event with less then 100 people and was not a group competition. B) I did not think that I was capable of completing a total of three crossfit workouts in one day. And C) It was going to be freakin' hot!

You can revert to previous posts for the details on the work outs.

We competed and we killed it :) We did not win our events, but placed in the top three.

Mark placed first in the Mens scaled Helen event, Second in the mens prowler event and Second Overall in Mens Scaled. He did such a good job and I'm so proud of him!

I placed third in womens weight lift and third in the womens overall scaled.

We had tons of fun meeting new people, cheering each other on and kickin' bootie! We will most definitely do this again, but next year...we are placing first :)

Here are some pictures from the event:

 



What  a hottie

 

To cap the event, the prowler event. Killer on your legs! I almost got second...almost!

First place Helen event. woot woot!

Second place prowler

Second place mens overall scaled

Third Place in Womens Overall Scaled

Third place weight lift

This is not the heavist weight, but I lifted 100lbs and got third place

 

Little sweetie lasted all day! 8am till 4pm, and was our #1 fan.

Our GTX family

 

TMC Meet Me Down Town 5K 2013

WE DID IT!

Finally, I can cross off 'Running a 5K' from my bucket list. I have had this goal on my new years resolutions for about 10 years now and finally got the courage to do it. Kind of strange, it's only 3 miles which I have ran many times, but I have always been afraid to run in an actual timed race with others.

Mark, Lily and I ran the TMC Meet Me Down Town 5K race on Saturday night at 7pm. Mark ran with the jogging stroller and Lily enjoyed the ride.

It was 104 degrees at the time the race started, so the run felt A LOT harder then my usual practice runs.

There were a total of 2,035 people who actually ran the 5K, not including the children which made it a total of 2,500. So we were packed into the streets like sardines! It was kind of difficult at the beginning to get a good start because we didn't want to run anyone over with the stroller.

I had told Mark to run his normal pace and not wait for me, because he runs at a pace of 9 minutes, where as I run at a pace of 11 minutes (I'm a bit slow). So once the race started, Mark bolted...he is so fast! It was a strange felling to run with all of these people, surprisingly it was not as motivating as I'd hoped. I was actually getting annoyed every time someone passed me, but my goal was to not get discouraged and NOT STOP RUNNING! No matter how hot I was, or how tired my legs felt, I was not going to stop. I could run slow, but not stop. At one point, an older gentlemen who looked like he was running in slow motion passed me. I thought 'if he is running that slow, how slow am I running!' It was kind of funny. But no matter, I kept running. People from their homes were spraying us with hoses, it was so refreshing!

It was pretty encouraging after the second mile to see people who had been passing me in the first mile start to walk. Helped me to keep on running. Once I turned the corner to view the finish line and the last 10 meters, Mark and Lily were there waiting for me to finish together. I was hoping that Mark would finish by himself so he could be proud of his time, but I was also very touched that he would wait for me, it meant alot to me.

We finished together, not at the time I was hoping for, but we finished!

My best time running a 5k, by myself, in cooler temperature was 34:21. My worst time was at the race, 36:31. I placed 91 out 158 for my age group, 581 out of 1256 women and 1126 out of 2035 runners overall.

We are definitely going to run this race again next year, hopefully my time will be a lot better, but I am proud of myself for not stopping, that was my goal for this race and I achieved it.

The best part of the race? The end!

End of the race!

Beginning of the race

Lily didn't get a bib, so we made her one. 1328 1/2

Team Daddy and Lily

Marks mother and grandmother made us these cool signs, so supportive.

Crossing the finish line

Us with our support group at the end of the race. So grateful for family!