5 Years Old!

Samantha is five!! My sister called on Samantha's birthday and I started telling her all about how weird it was that Samantha was so old (I know 5 isn't really old, but it seems strange) and how she's going to school and I'll miss her, etc. She claimed I was waxing nostalgic. I guess I was. I sure love that little girl. Here is the rundown of birthday activities:

Her actual birthday was a little bit lame. March has been chock-full of activities and Wednesday night I was in charge of the combined YW activity. I was stressed about it and focused on getting things done for that. I had already made cupcakes for her preschool class the previous week and I was making a cake for her birthday so I redeemed a coupon for a free Basha's cake and called it good. It was cuter than anything I could have done anyway.

We had spaghetti for dinner as was her choice (her first choice was actually pizza-but again, I was planning on that for her party)


And she got some fun things from Grandparents and us. Our big present was a Leapfrog Leapster. She was more excited about other things because she didn't know what a leapster was. But she played it nonstop the next day so it was a success.

Then on Saturday it was her party. I made a cake from you know where. I was up until 4:00 in the morning Friday night finishing it. And it is NOT even that cute. The problem was that I had to bake 4 8X8 layers and only had one 8X8 pan. I wanted to start during their nap time on Friday but I had no eggs-ahhh! So by the time we had dinner, got the eggs at the grocery store, and put the kids to bed I didn't start the cakes until 8:30 at night....and then the first one I baked was ruined. It was a nightmare. Again, not even that cute (but Samantha was really happy with it-and that's what matters).

Princess themed-here is the table and centerpiece

We had 6 girls come plus my own kids. It was a "drop-off" party which might seem more stressful but it was infinitely less so because I wasn't worried about adults and 5 year olds aren't that hard to impress.

Samantha's bestest friend Emma in our ward-or Cinderella and Christmas Belle

Could my two girls look less happy?

All the princesses together. I just thought this picture was SO cute. And funniest quote of the party was Tommy-I want to sit by the pretty princesses!!! At least we know he's a red-blooded male.

We had musical "thrones" and pin the princess on the castle. I painted all the girls nails and then read them some princess stories. Add some pizza, cake, and presents and it was a really fun party. Samantha was a happy little girl.

I can run a 5K...and so can my dog

I ran my second 5k on Saturday. Unlike last year I did run the entire thing. I cut my time by 9 minutes-down to 35 minutes and 7 seconds for the whole thing. So a 12 minute mile. Not quite my 9th grade 9 minute mile (the best I ever did) but I was happy with myself.

As for my post title-I trained again with the couch to 5k program and I ran every step except the actual race with my dog. She is a good deal more fit than me.

Me finishing-I look like a nerd because I'm waving to my kids. Eliza was clapping for me-very cute!

Here they are waiting for me-it was quite cold that day-shocker for Arizona.

With the race I got "free" admission into the zoo (my fee was equal to the cost of the rest of the family's admission). We decided to make it a family day and spend the morning:

Samantha, and then Tommy on the bounce house/slide that was part of the after-party for the race participants.

You probably know how it is at the zoo-there is so much protection between the people and the animals it's almost impossible to get a good shot. This baboon (?) was right up against the glass so it was pretty much one of only two good pictures I got.

And here's the other. There were some teenage girls that told Samantha to pose like this. I was obliging and thought it was cute until I realized how foul that glass probably was. Too bad there's not hand sanitizer for your mouth.

The zoo wasn't really poor Eliza's cup of tea, she's still kind of young. Here's her in a tree house thing they had, she at least enjoyed that.

The kids on the carousel

We had a lot of fun, I love doing these kind of things as a family. And guess what-we figured out that Tom had never been to the zoo with us. All those times in VA I went with friends-so it was especially fun for him.