Award Winning Student

Now that a new school year is about to begin I am finally getting around to blogging about Madelyn's 5th grade promotion.

Madelyn ended her 5th grade year with an award for meeting the advanced reading goal, but most importantly she earned the President's award. She was pretty excited to receive a certificate signed by the president and a pin. But I think she was most excited that PawPaw and Nana Sill surprised her by showing up at the awards ceremony.

 Receiving her a/r award

 Her Kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Olson, retired after many years. She was a wonderful teacher and pulled many of Madelyn's loose teeth. 

Madelyn receiving the President's award from her teacher, Mrs. Lowery (I worked with Diane at Bluestem Farm & Ranch during college..small world), and her principal Mr. Dosser. 

So happy to see Nana & PawPaw. 

Class of 2021. WOW! 

I cannot believe my baby will be starting middle school in a couple weeks. :( Time is going too quickly.

Tough Mudder

Like many people I have a bucket list. One of the many items on that list was completing a Tough Mudder obstacle race. I've completed half marathons, a full marathon and several 5K obstacle course races, but needed a new challenge to help me stay motivated to work out. I received the push I needed when a guy from high school sent me a message on fb inviting me to join his Tough Mudder team. I threw all my rational thinking aside and signed up.
I trained by running a few times a week, completing other cardio and strength training classes such muscle pump and circuit training at the Y. I definitely could have put more effort into training but I did enough in which I felt confident I could complete the obstacle course. It may not have been pretty but I would finish.
A couple months out from the race I convinced Conley and my co-worker, Kim to join the team. Suckers!
The Tough Mudder is 25 obstacles and 11-13 miles, most obstacles require a good bit of upper body strength, which is my weakness and obstacles that are high off the ground, which is my fear. I had been told that it takes 4-6 hours for an average person to complete the course. I wasn't sure if I was average or below average and I was about to find out......

Before .... 

Me & Kim (she is 55 and rocked it)!

 Me & Conley

 crawling through the electric eel

 Getting ready to climb Mt. Everest - this one took a lot of team work

Terry, me, Conley & Kim

 I may have dove belly first down a mud hill before this pic. So.much.fun.

Flying down a water slide over fire, scared me the most because I was launched in the air and had no idea where I would land. 

4 1/2 hours later Tough Mudder finishers! 

 Wearing our head bands proudly. 

Partially clean, but mud in places mud should never be. 

Terry's wife, Rosa, took many pictures of us through out the course. She captured many, fun action shots. All of those pictures are on my FB page though.
Oh, and the electric shock at the last obstacle was the real deal. It brought me, and everyone else that went through to their knees.
The Tough Mudder was the biggest physical challenge, aside from child birth, that I have ever completed. I couldn't have done it without the help from my team and other competitors.
 Would I do it again? Absolutely.

Chicken Farming

Several weeks Conley, the girls and I decided we wanted to try our hand at chicken farming. Conley already had the set up at his house with a brooder, and fenced in coop area. All we needed were the chickens. A friend of ours has quite the chicken collection so we went to visit him and get the scoop on chicken raising and we ended the visit with the most handsome rooster and a few weeks later we inherited another one. He had enough roosters for a rather large cock fight so he needed to get rid of few.

 

Introducing Phyllis. He obviously has hair like Phyllis Diller. I actually had no idea who she was until Conley showed me an on-line pic. We just hope he doesn't have a gender complex.

 

Introducing Beaker. Like the Muppet.

 

The babies, Stormageddon, George, and Gaylord, the other five remain nameless or I just can't remember. The girls each picked out two and they had a 50/50 chance of being hens, then we made sure to pick out four hens. I have a strong suspicion that there is at least one rooster.

We bought them at 4 days old ....

and have managed not to kill any of them a month later.....

 

 

 The roosters are my favorite but they aren't big fans of me, although with time and plenty of hugs they will surely love me. I've already told Conley they will never be dinner because they are my babies and obviously roosters taste terrible. He isn't convinced.  I'm also trying to convince him that the hens will only be egg layers, but I'm guessing at some point they will be dinner so I'm trying not to get too attached.

 

 

 

I dig the chicken farming gig, but maybe that is because they are at Conley's house and not mine. It has been fun watching the chicks grow and the girls have gotten into it too. I usually text Conley every morning and evening to get a chicken report and give my advice. I'm not sure how he would ever do this chicken farming thing without me. Although he has raised chickens in the past, I'm quite sure he has lost all that skill.

 



Wordless Wednesday

Spring Break 2014

I decided that I would take the entire week of spring break off work and spend some quality Madelyn and me time. I knew this could be a potential disaster if I did not have something planned because she nor I do well with idle time. We tend to annoy the crap out of  each other with too much time on our hands. So, I planned a mini vacay to Oklahoma. We had a small list of things we hoped to accomplish while we were there but also didn't want to be on a tight schedule. We set out on our adventure Monday morning traveling south out of Augusta. Our first stop was several hours later at the aquarium in Tulsa, OK. After spending a couple hours there we got back on the road and headed towards OKC. Unfortunately we arrived right at 5 o'clock rush hour and I ended up taking a wrong turn which may or may have not resulted in a few cuss words. We eventually found our hotel, or is it motel where you exit and enter your hotel room from the outside? It wasn't the classiest of places but fitting for us and Madelyn loved it! After we got settled we headed to Dave & Busters for dinner and game playing. Madelyn hit it big at one game raking in 1000 tickets. She had over 1900 overall and ended up "purchasing" $30 worth of prizes which likely would have cost me $10 at the dollar store. Oh well, on vacation there is no budget. Right? A couple hours later we were heading back to the hotel in the dark, which always makes me a bit nervous in a new place.
The next day we got up, enjoyed a continental breakfast and discussed the days activities. The options were zoo, Discovery Center or the outlet mall. It was the nicest day of the week so zoo would be a nice option, but she picked outlet mall. What??? This cannot be my child!!!! Well she new exactly what she was doing because she made out like a bandit with all the new spring clothes and shoes and even got another ear piercing. We enjoyed the day and I also bought some new clothes too so no complaints here. That afternoon we relaxed in the hotel/motel room and watched the newly purchased Frozen DVD. That ranks right up there with my all time favorite, Fox and the Hound, by the way. That evening we went to Bricktown, which is downtown OKC for dinner. We had a little snafu with not having cash for parking and my debit card not working in the atm machine which may have caused a few more cuss words but after that all was good. We decided to eat at Toby Keith's Bar & Grill, amazing food and cool environment. I had been doing well with counting calories up to that point but I could not resist the bull balls and loaded baked potato for dinner. I had my days worth of calories in one meal. Oops!  We then walked around Bricktown and took in the sites. It is a very cool place. Definitely would be fun for an adult night out too. We later headed back to our room and got settled in for the night.
Wednesday we got up, enjoyed another free breakfast and decided that would be the day we would head home but before we did we wanted to make a stop at the Discovery Center. At that point we were both tired and ready to be home and I was thinking that three hour drive wasn't going to be a real blast. The Discovery Center was very cool and hands on which is good for a kid that HAS to touch everything. It was spring break and there were a bazillion kids and as a general rule I'm not a fan of kids, but I persevered and we had a good time. A couple hours later we had had enough and were on the road to home. One pit stop at a swanky truck stop for gas and a souvenir magnet and the rest of the trip home was smooth sailing.
It was a really great trip for some quality mom and Madelyn time and fun memories were made. I hope to make a mini vacay with just her and I an annual tradition.
Upon returning home we took the evening to relax and the next day we spent spring cleaning. When Madelyn is in the mood to clean watch out because nothing is safe. She apparently got the good cleaning gene from her dad, because I sure don't have it.





Here are just a few pictures of our trip: