Pulling Out My Hair

Isn't that just the cutest face you ever saw?


And no, in case you are wondering, I do not beat my child. I do however spend a lot of time watching him fall down. On the tile. On his face. Hence, the large purple bruise on his chin.

Anyway, it is a good thing the kid is cute because his face is all I get to look at for 4 days this weekend. Thats right, Wes will be out of town from Thursday to Sunday and I get nothing but Noah all day/night for just over 72 hours. I. am. scared. (Just kidding - kind of!)


At least Wes and I have had a few adult nights out in the past week so I can draw on those fun memories when I want to pull my hair out this weekend. Here is a picture of us before we went out the other night. (Wow, we are not wearing our usual uniforms of camo and workout gear!)





We went with people from his work to dinner and then a comedy club for Wes' going away party. The comedy club was fun - the main comic for the evening was pretty good. He made a few jokes about albino midgets so he had my vote! It was a fun night and the added bonus was that we went out again, just the two of us, only 2 nights later! Wes and I had to make a farewell visit to our favorite restaurant, JoTo's. We ate way too much (read, Wes ate all of it) and felt awful afterwards but didn't regret a single bite! We would be sad about not getting to have it anymore but it is the only good restaurant here and we will be moving to Charleston for crying out loud - where good restaurants pop up on every corner. Its a fair trade I think.


So anyway, be thinking of me this weekend. And enjoy these cute pics of the kid cause I may not feel like posting any (or taking any) after I pull out all my hair - and maybe all his - this weekend!













Okay, maybe we will have some fun together!

Three More Weeks!

Wes and I can't believe it but we only have 3 weeks left here in Tampa! Time is flying! It hasn't really sunk in how soon we will be moving - we are acting shockingly cavalier about all the things we need to do. (Well, I am, Wes is starting to panic in classic Shealy fashion!) For example, we spent this past weekend just hanging out playing with our new camera. We just got it because our old one has been acting up for a long time. Plus, this one is the kind that takes the pictures really fast - I don't remember the technical term - which is perfect for capturing photos of our hyperactive child. Here is a sampling of some of our recent pictures. Wes has taken hundreds in the last few days - Noah and I feel like celebrities hiding from the paparazzi. I think Wes really likes his new toy! Below you will find some pictures that we thought were particularly funny. Some are Noah and I dancing to his High School Musical 2 CD. He is a way better dancer than his father - and he can really strike a pose! Also, there are some cute ones of us in bed on Sunday morning. He sat and watched the Women's Olympic Marathon trials with me on the computer. He really enjoyed watching the "runnin". He kept yelling, "Go Deena! Go runnin!" (He was referring to American recordholder Deena Kastor who ended up winning. How nice of him to cheer for Mom's favorite!)


Kelly wrote the above several days ago, but with my technical ability I couldn't figure out how to upload the pictures from our new camera to the blog. After several attempts, I have a solution and below you will see lots of pictures we took last weekend. We (or just me) have taken lots more during the week, but I haven't uploaded them to the computer yet. So, keep your eyes out for even more pictures in the next few days. -Wes

A Day in the Life of Noah

I have a ton of really cute pictures of Noah that aren't tied to a particular event and I was wondering how to post them on this blog. I realized that when you put them all together they basically give you a "day in the life" experience. So here goes...enjoy!

Noah watching morning cartoons on Disney. I love this picture because he actually turned to the camera and gave me a big cheesy grin.

This is Noah playing on the equipment at his Gymboree class. He loves go down the slides and crawl through the tunnels.

Noah hanging out with Mommy - as we do everyday! He likes to put his arm around my neck when we talk. Its so sweet!

In the afternoons we like to play with all our toys. In this pictures he had his toy screwdriver and was pretending to be Handy Manny. He says, "I'm Manny!" - and apparently the faceplate on our light switch needed unscrewing!

Every afternoon we wait at the door for Daddy to come home. Once he changes his clothes we are out the door to either play on the playground or blow bubbles. Noah says, "Bubbles go to sky, sky is blue!"

At the end of everyday we run excitedly to the bathroom to brush our teeth and take a bath. He loves to brush with his Cars toothbrush. (We don't usually sit in the sink - this was a particularly goofy day!)

Race for Sight

This past Saturday Wes, and the people in his clinic, had all signed up to run the Lions Eye Foundation Race for Sight 5K. Since my Mom was in town, and could come to the race and sit with Noah, I signed up to run too! We all woke up early and headed over to the race before the sun came up. It was a really small 5K - which was kind of fun considering the last race we did had thousands of people. Wes and I did not run this one together. We each wanted to see how fast we could go and Wes is definitely faster than me so we decided to run separately. It was interesting to run a 3 mile race after all the training for 13 miles that we have been doing. It was a shock to my system to have to start out so fast, but I really wanted to beat my previous time so I picked a guy in front of me who had a good pace and stuck with him the whole way. I'm sure he was wondering who the heavy breather was behind him! I saw Wes a couple of times during the race (the course kept doubling back on itself so you would occasionally catch glimpses of the leaders). He was doing really well. With the exception of few long, lanky, obvious runners, Wes was right in front! He ended up running it in 23:15 and got a trophy for second in his age group! I finished in 27:50 and actually got a plaque for third in my age group. (A small disclaimer: in tiny races like this it is not hard to place in your age group. In fact, there may only have been 3 girls total in my age group - so don't be too impressed!) Despite the disclaimer, it was fun to get an award and even more fun for both of us to get a PR. Noah enjoyed watching. My Mom said he got really excited when he saw Wes come around the corner to the finish line and then really mad when he couldn't run with him. But a post race cookie solved any crankiness! He also really enjoys carrying Wes' trophy around the house!



Me at the beginning of the race - sticking with the guy in the red shirt!



Noah watches Daddy down the final stretch.



Wes sprints to the finish. He says the picture is blurry because he is so fast!



Noah trying to steal Wes' trophy.

Bebe Visits Florida

This past week was my Mom's spring break, so she drove down to sunny Florida to see us. Well, to see Noah! Noah was very excited that his Bebe was in town - he always gets the royal treatment from any grandparent. We did all sorts of fun things during Bebe's visit. She went to Gymboree with us, we took Noah to the park, and most fun of all - we took some trips to the beach. Noah has not spent much time at the beach (despite what you would think,all the beaches are pretty far from us). He was very unsure of it at first. He hates to be dirty so the sand really bugged him and he was very upset about getting any part of himself wet. He kept running back to our towels and grabbing his stuff and saying, "go car, go car?" It wasn't until Bebe taught him to throw the sand that he decided the beach might be cool. Pretty soon he was scooping up big handfuls of sand and running down to the water and throwing it in. He even ventured in to the water up to his knees and ended up having a great time! He also enjoyed chasing the birds (an activity he did not learn from his mother!) and was very upset when we had to leave. All in all, Noah had a great time playing with Bebe, and Wes and I enjoyed a few outings just the two of us. So, we all had a great week!



Noah trying to decide is he should follow Mommy into the water.



Noah and Daddy watch the boats.



Noah throwing sand into the water.



By the end of our second day a confident Noah leads Bebe out into the water!

Our New House

We just got these pictures of our house from our realtor. They have painted the outside - very exciting! - put in the cabinets, and are working on counters and flooring. We are all set to close on May 21st and we are very excited to move in to our new house. We can't wait to have a yard for Noah to play in and a kitchen bigger than a closet!

Here is the view from the backyard. Also, here's a fun tidbit: We are smack dab in between the two loudest colored houses in the neighborhood - the bright blue you can see and on the other side is bright red!

We Did It!

Are we the stupidest people in the world? Those were the words I asked myself as Wes and I stood in line for the port -a -potty in the 43 degree weather at 6:50 am this past Sunday. I decided the answer was quite possibly yes, but at least we were in good company - there were 14,998 other crazy people out there with us!

That's right, we headed to the starting line of the ING Georgia Marathon/Half Marathon on Sunday in the coldest weather we have experienced in 3 years (hey, we live in South Florida!), and the huge possibility that it might start raining at any moment. I wore 4 shirts and my teeth were still chattering at an alarming rate. A funny thing happened though. The gun went off, we started running (well, technically we walked for 18 minutes until we reached the starting line), and pretty soon I forgot to be miserable. We were starting the beginning of a 13.1 mile journey through downtown Atlanta and it felt good! It is so cool to be running through city streets usually filled with noise and chaos and hear nothing but the sound of thousands of running shoes hitting the pavement simultaneously. Wes and I had a blast doing this run. We saw parts of Atlanta that were beautiful and we had great conversation and before we knew it we were seeing signs that said 1 mile to go. Now, I'm not saying it wasn't hard (it was), but the satisfaction of completing something we had been working so hard for was really cool. We finished in exactly the time we estimated when we signed up: 2:30:02. We would have been under 2:30 easily, but the hills threw us for a loop. I had ended up walking a good bit around mile 11 as my calves were screaming for mercy. Next time, with a little less walking, we will be faster!

The cool thing about this race was that I finally realized what it was that made me decide to like running so much. For those of you who don't know, I used to detest running. I only started doing it after Noah was born to lose weight. It wasn't until I entered a race that I began liking the sport. This Sunday I realized that it is the sense of community that running offers that I have fallen in love with. It is amazing to wake up and go join thousands of strangers in the pursuit of a common goal. It doesn't seem to matter who you are or where you come from - as long as you have pinned on your bib number and rubbed on your body glide you're in the club, no questions asked. People you would ordinarily never speak to suddenly become like brothers and sisters on your journey. People help each other, and cheer for each other, and celebrate together at the end. Because of the one commonality, all the other glaring differences cease to matter. It is what I imagine eternity will be like with other believers, and something I wish that I saw more of on a day to day basis here on earth.

Besides, if that doesn't convince you running is great, this might: I burned 1300 calories on Sunday morning and ate pizza, ice cream, doughnuts, and fries guilt free! How's that for a good reason to run!

PS - A big shout out to my friend Priscilla (the one who got me hooked on running last year). She was running the Knoxville Marathon (26.2 miles!) the same time that Wes and I were running our race, and she did an amazing job! I can't wait to get together and run a race Priscilla!

Here are the runners at the starting line. Because there were so many people, and we were near the back, it took us 18 minutes after the gun went off just to get to the starting line.

Here are the leaders of the marathon. They passed us - we were on mile 9, they were on mile 22- like we were standing still!