Beautiful Burke

This is one of our favorite parks. It comes complete with two playgrounds, a lake with a nature trail, and geese to feed. If only we could earn frequent flier miles with park attendance.

The Monkey:

The Conquerer:

Seminary Did It!

Once a week blog updates were a really good idea. And then I got a little call from church. I was asked to be the early morning seminary teacher. So now, every morning at 6am I greet the high school age kids from our church to turn them to the scriptures and help them put on the armor of God before braving the cold cruel world that is high school. It is a marvelous experience. . . and a tiring one. It takes preparation and robs sleep, but I feel the Lord blessing me and my family in various, unexpected ways. But, any extra time I had before has gone on hiatus until June, which hopefully explains why my aspirations as a weekly blogger have shriveled a bit.
So, I'm signing off for a bit. Another impetus for my blog break is observing the joy my kids get from our family picture albums and their memory books. They are not remotely artistic in the higher realms of scrapbooking society, but they have pictures and stories and my kids adore looking at them. They just don't get that same kind of peaceful pleasure scrolling down a blog page-and neither do I. So, I plan to go back to paper and glue for a bit, and work on creating some bulky, time-consuming, photo albums that I'll have to lug around for the rest of my life and risk losing in a fire. But, when I come out of my room in the morning and see Isaac and Lucy cuddling up together flipping through family memories. . . it will all be worth it.
Still, I value the keeping in touch benefits that come from blogging and so I do aim to post thrilling updates from time to time, if I can keep myself awake past 9pm. I've never been so excited for Spring Break in my life.

What a Way to See the City!

Conversation overheard at Church:
Alex: Hey, Morgen, I'm registered for a half marathon this Saturday, but I'm not ready for it--wanna run it for me?
Morgen: Really?. . . Sure!!
(flash to internal dialogue: "Of course I haven't run more than 2-3 miles in about six months. This could be a major mistake and destroy my knees. But, on the other hand, I'd feel really cool and I'm curious to know if I could just up and run 13 miles with one week of training)




So, this was my test: If I could run six miles pushing Lucy and Emma up and down the hills of my neighborhood, I could run 13 miles of a flat course. It wasn't easy, but I did it, and with a run/walk approach, I wasn't even in pain. So, with one week of training I went for it! It was a really fun course, and I plan on doing it again next year. It was so cool to run by the Capitol building and the White House, really an ideal way to see the city. I stuck to my plan, choosing to ignore it when I got passed by a pregnant woman. Even though my pride surged a bit sometimes when I stopped to walk, I often remembered the scripture "Run with patience the race set before you," and knew that I was going to run this race my way and only I knew where I was coming from. If I tried to ignore the fact that I only trained for a week and tried to run it like I'd been building up mileage for months, I was going to destroy myself. So, I stuck with my plan, finished in a decent time and felt like the queen of the world.

Plus there were lots of fun activities for the kids. Isaac got to run the last leg of a marathon that kids had been running bits at a time over the last six months. Plus there were lots of different obstacle courses and fun activities for the kids!

What a day. What a family.

Happy St. Patty's Day!!

We love green. We love oatmeal. So. . .