Weekend Highlights & a Race

We had a great weekend.  Friday afternoon Carly and I went and got our hair cut together, ran a few errands, and got a special treat.  Saturday we took the kids shopping – Katie and Jason got new shoes, Abigail and Carly scored some cute new clothes on double clearance.  A new yogurt shop opened in the neighborhood that we just had to check out – expensive even with a 20% opening weekend discount, but yummy.  Justin and I went out to dinner on Saturday night and afterward attended our stake adult conference.  The kids did awesome during the two hour stake conference on Sunday and even paid attention to the speakers.  Sunday afternoon was perfect.  We were home by 12:30pm – Justin made yummy Kung Pao Spaghetti for lunch, the girls helped me make Cadbury egg cookies for dessert.  We delivered cookies to some new (and not so new) neighbors on our street.  We had plenty of time to play games, read books, and talk to my Mom on the phone (who is finally back in the country!).  Our home teacher came by with an awesome message for our family.  Really just a wonderful weekend.

I think the highlight for me though was watching my little man run in his first race.

I’ve mentioned before that Jason likes to run around the house.  He and Katie will race back and forth from the front door into the family room multiple times a day.  A few weeks ago he came up to me and exclaimed, “I want to run in a race!”  I don’t remember what my initial response was, probably something like, “yea, buddy that would fun, you would be a great racer!”  Later that same day he asked me when his race was, and then again the next day he wanted to know how many days until his race.  So I decided I needed to find the boy a race.  As luck would turn out there was a  St. Patty’s Day race coming up right in our own neighborhood so we signed him up to run in the children’s 1K.

He was super excited about it and so was I.  Keep in mind his only running experience is racing from the front door to the couch so I knew that the race could be a complete bomb when he got a taste of how much longer a 1k was.  But I loved his enthusiasm.  I guess it’s like a little boy thinking he can conquer the world with his super powers.  His excitement was genuine and innocent and I wanted so much for him to feel like he could do anything and know that he is an amazing little boy.

Here he is as we were leaving the house Saturday morning:

 

His race started promptly at 9am and we were all there to cheer him on.  Thankfully Justin agreed to run along side him because we probably would have lost him among the slew of kids running.  Because of all the people I wasn’t able to get any awesome pictures of him running down the street or crossing the finish line.  In fact as the race started and he ran by me I was so emotional I couldn’t even cheer for him.  Maybe my emotion has something to do with being pregnant, but I was so proud of him for doing something totally out of our norm and I did feel that he was my little superman.

Can you see Jason and Justin rounding the corner by the stop sign?

 He crossed the finish line pink cheeked, but happy.  And proud to wear his finishing medal.

Today he told me he’d like to run in another race, but one with less people.