Orange Slices - Orange Belts

This post will cover a bunch of things we've been up to over the past week. Things have been going pretty well, and we are grateful for it!

On Sunday, I ran my first half marathon. I finished in just over 2 hrs. 11 min, which put me in the bottom 30% for my age bracket. I've got some work to do! I like the half marathon a lot better than the full. I think at this stage in my life, this is a better race for me to work on as the training does not take up as much time as the full marathon did. Although it was a perfect day, I was still recovering from illness, and I wasn't able to give it my best effort. I'm confident that I can beat 2 hrs when I run another one in February. When I finished, I remembered how good orange slices taste when you are getting dehydrated and are exhausted from exercise. What a yummy reward at the end!

Also this weekend, Joy and Jenetta took the girls to an event at the Barnes and Noble store in Carmel Mountain where they got dressed up and had stories read to them. The girls love dressing up in their pretty dresses and they love spending time with Grandma Joy even more!


On Monday, we spent some time with Cris and Alana. It is a good thing to have more family nearby, and the girls love playing with them! It will be great when they have another "cousin" to play with after their firstborn comes along. This video is not very interesting, I'll admit, but it demonstrates the girls favorite thing to do at a lake - toss rocks in the water.

Later that day I got more information about my job. Apparently, I will be hired back on Dec. 1. There is a list of tasks that need to be accomplished prior to re-launching the product early next year, so that at least is some job security for me. I'll be SO happy to get an income again!

The last thing I wanted to post was a progress report on the girls behavior. We were blessed with an 8-day stretch of really great listening and obedience and helpfulness with the girls. We have a rewards/punishment system involving smiley faces, and the best O had ever done with keeping all her smiley faces for an entire day was a stretch of 3 or 4 days. (I'm pretty sure she was sick for half of those, anyway). A typical day involved her losing at least one of the three smileys before breakfast! Losing all three smileys before the end of the day results in consequences they really don't like - and it's no fun for us, either!

Well, both girls had been keeping all three smiley faces all day long for a stretch of 8 days! There has been the usual sibling bickering and some minor incidents, but nothing worthwhile of any serious consequences. O has talked a lot about being calm and doing her best to keep her smileys. It really has been wonderful - so much so that even when they made some unfortunate choices yesterday, losing one smiley face didn't seem like that big of a deal to us (although it was huge for them - and they are determined to do better today!)

Anyway, with their karate class, they earn their first belt - the orange "Tiger" belt for listening at home, being obedient, and a number of other things. We felt strongly that we weren't going to just check them off and let them just get their belts. We wanted them to mean something - for them to earn them. Their behavior has been so good that we felt it was time for them to get their belts. They were so excited!

This past stretch has been really fun for us. It makes us enjoy parenting! We leave on Monday for a week's long vacation with family in Redding, so I'll post more fun stuff when we are up there.