still catching up!

so now i'm about up to date on my weekends. this past weekend was an absolutely beautiful weekend in stl! it really seemed like the beginning of spring...everything is just popping open and blooming. on saturday morning we woke up bright and early (6am) because the kids participated in their first marathon. it is called the read, write, and run. this was a new thing that their p.e. teacher and a 5th grade teacher introduced to their school this year and it was optional....but my kids definitely wanted to participate. over the course of the last few months they were required to read 26 books, do 26 good deeds/acts of kindness and run 25 miles (with their 26th mile being completed in the marathon). they kept a journal of all of their completed requirements and chris and i and their teachers signed off in it. this was all in conjunction with the go! st louis family fitness marathon weekend. i was all excited that they wanted to participate and very excited about everything they had been completing in their journals up until a few weeks ago when i found out that there were 3000 children throughout the st louis area participating in the final mile run and parents were not aloud to run with their kiddos. talk about anxiety....how were chris and i going to find our 3 children in forest park amongst the 3000 participants and their families? i prayed for rain/sleet/snow any excuse to not go...i even tried to bribe my children with their own family marathon through tilles park, followed up by lamars donuts to reward them, but no, my children wanted the metal you recieve when you cross the finish line. needless to say i think god wanted to teach me a lesson and answered my prayers with beautiful weather (exactly the opposite of what i prayed). when i realized that we were undoubtably participating, i came up with a plan to tie big red helium balloons to my 3 children so i could find them in the crowds....bradley and tristan did not like the idea at all-so not cool mom- but lainie did. on race day we were divided up on cricket field by schools and our school had 5 volunteers (parents) who took our children to the starting gate and then collected them at the finish line....it was very well organized, i watched as my 3 kids ran as fast as they could out of the gate (no red balloons attached) and then went to watch them cross the finish line...i have to admit i shed a few tears...and not just because of their wonderful accomplishments, but i was overcome with emotion when i realized no one had gotten lost). god knew exactly what i needed to experience and let my kids experience and now i cannot wait until next year! our school had 30 participants from kindergarten-5th grade

tristan-in the orange-running as fast as he could!

michelle, rachel and i - we were a bundle of nerves and excitement!

lainie and alec - so excited to get running.

bradley, skylar, hadley and wesley get ready to run

bradley and tristan show off their medals

after the excitement of the mile marathon on saturday morning, we went to our friend parker's birthday party. it was so much fun..he had a carnival party...so there was a bounce house, cake walk, face painter, etc...the kids had a blast. then it was off to baseball...it is already that time of year again. bradley had a game on saturday evening and then another on sunday evening...he is so excited to get out on the field and play.

these were just practice games but his official season kicks off april 18th. lainie is starting softball this week, her first practice is this sunday and she is a little nervous. this is her first time playing, so bradley has been taking her out in the backyard and pitching and catching with her to get her used to it. tristan also starts baseball this week but he thinks he's a pro because he already has one season under his belt-last spring when he played pre-k ball!

the windy city!

lainie is ready for shopping!

so i am a little behind in keeping my blog current-to-date...i'm going to work on that this week, but just in are the pictures from our trip to chicago to visit nichole on the tail-end of our spring break. lainie, my mom and i flew up on thursday after easter and stayed through the weekend! we had lots of fun and ate very well-one thing nichole takes very seriously is eating in chicago...we are not allowed to go to any chain restaurants nor too many touristy places!-it also drives her crazy when i wanted to stop and take pictures along michigan ave.....it may make her look like a tourist! hahahaha! thursday was quite an adventure...we arrived at about 9:30 in the morning and were ready for brunch...so we parked in a loading zone outside of nichole's apartment (she now lives in the gold coast neighborhood...very nice!) and ran our bags upstairs-we came back down in 5-10 minutes to find that her car had been towed. we took a cab to brunch at this fabulous restaurant called the bongo room then ventured under the city to find nichole's car at an impound lot (who knew you could go under chicago...and apparantely that is where many homeless people camp out....lainie was really learning some life lessons!) it started snowing so we just drove around to different shops in different neighborhoods that day(i told my mom we should've stayed on our plane....it was heading to miami!)

friday we woke up and had breakfast and headed to the american girl store...lainie wouldn't let us miss this tourist attraction...we picked up a new friend her name is ivy ling...she is the historic asian doll...friends to julie albright(70's girl) that we picked up on our last visit to chicago! this made lainie's day and onto the hershey store...i forgot to tell you that on monday before we went to chicago lainie had a visit to the orthodontist to have an appliance put in her mouth (an expander) to fix her cross-bite, so she was kind of on a soft food diet and hadn't really eaten much since monday...she got a hankerin' for mcdonalds(let me tell you how thrilled my organic vegetarian sister who refuses chain restaurants was when i told her we were making a stop at the golden arches!)

laine was thrilled ! nichole obliged, she would rather have lainie indulge than hear her whine-remember she's not around kiddos much these days! we then walked for miles and shopped up and down michigan ave. in the early evening we got a hold of casey and met her for snacks and drinks at ditka's. lainie was too excited that we got to take a minivan cab there!

(above) ...lainie and the lego kids in the new lego store! (below)...pop quiz....can you name the sitcom in which this was a regular hang out?

Easter!

I completely forgot about saying a little something about easter! when we woke up at the ranch connie had an easter egg hunt all ready for the kids...what a nice surprise seeing how the easter bunny forgot we were going to the ranch and left their filled baskets at our house...afetr a delicious breakfast we headed home and showered and headed to bob and mona's for the annual eater lunch and egg hunt!

i think each of the kids found about $12.00 in the egg hunt this year (if you are not familiar in the becker family it is a tradition to hunt for money-filled eggs!) after counting their loot, we had a wonderful lunch with way too much food-lainie was very disappointed in kathy and david because they did not bring the pickles!

and then it started snowing!..........and tristan crashed after all of the sugar!