The Overflow of Hearts

I am so amazed. I asked the Stroller Striders to donate childrens books. It was a simple request but you never know when you ask someone for donations if they are going to care about what you care about or not. And as confident as I can be in some areas of my life, asking others to help me is not one of them. Well, I am wowed! The Stroller Striders poured out a true overflow of support. We collected over 50 books yesterday with more coming! I am so blessed to know such wonderful women and mothers. THANK YOU ALL!

A little background - My Stroller Strides group tries to do some sort of community outreach each quarter. Even though as moms we all understand life is not all about "me" anymore, we can still fall into that trap that life is all about "us". So taking some time to care about our neighbors is so important to help make this a better world and to teach our children to love others as well.

Since we are all mostly full-time mothers, we dont have the time - or babysitters - to help build a Habitat for Humanity house. But I absolutely love what they do at Habitat and wanted to support them. So what we did was adopt a new Habitat family with preschool-aged children like us! We collected books for the 3-year old boy and 2-year old girl as well as handpainted them personalized bookshelves! Habitat for Humanity is helping them break out of poverty housing and build a new, safe home for them to raise their family. With a solid home foundation, our books will help the children now be raised on a strong eductional foundation as well. I couldn't be happier for them and thankful for the wonderful and generous Stroller Strides families who supported this project!

Amazing Personality

JT has the most amazing, adorable personality! He goes as fast, fast, fast as possible all day without rest. Then bam! When he is asleep, he is asleep. I joke he has two speeds - on and off!

This month he is putting on other peoples shoes, wanting to sit on the potty (mostly so he can flush without being reprimanded), opening doors (even the ones with child locks on them), making animal noises and pointing out his favorite things in books (animals and cookies) and wakes up begging to go to the "poo-poo" aka the pool! He has learned some colors - his favorite is blue! And he still just chats up a storm. He will run in, tell you a huge, long gibberish story. Wait for your response and then toddle away satisfied. I am loving this stage! Can you believe he is almost 2?

A new PR.....

Each month, Stroller Strides picks a run of the month to do as a group. Some months we have a ton of moms - the Cooper River Bridge Run - and some months noone is interested in spending their Saturday up early running a 5K.

This month our race was the Sullivan's Island 5K. It is a flat route through residential streets on the island, but it was hot. Southern humidity hot. Dead of August hot. In June. But my Stroller Striding mom, Amy, wanted to run and I was happy to join her.

We stretched out and were ready to go! I let Amy set the pace and we clocked 9:17 for the first mile. We ran steady and confident. It was a nice race. But what was even better was that Amy slammed her previous personal record by almost 5 minutes! She finished this 5K in 30:22! Setting a new PR is awesome. Helping a Stroller Stride mom set one is just as awesome as setting one myself. I was so thrilled!

Summertime Movies

Ahhhh, the relaxing summertime movie. Claire LOVES all things Barbie - so we have watched a ton of Barbie and the Magic of the Rainbow, Barbie Swan Lake, Barbie and the Magic of Pegasus, etc. JT just hangs out for popcorn time!

Victory!!!!!

Ben and I went on our first major vacation since JT was born and it was awesome! We cruised on the Carnival Victory and left out of the Port of Charleston. No airplanes needed! Each grandmother kept one child, so the kids were in capable hands. We had nothing to worry about and nothing to do for an entire week but lounge and eat and drink! It was amazing.

Ben and I played a lot of blackjack and I am proud to say, that I made it to the final table of a blackjack tournament. I was in third place in chips going into the final hand but I did not pull out the win. All I won was a size XXL t-shirt, but I am was so proud! It was awesome.

People either love or hate cruising. We thought it was great. We booked a balcony room and that was certainly the way to go. Sometimes you just need a private space to relax in. The buffet food was plentiful but, well, buffet food. But the dinners at night were wonderful.

We tried to gym it up to not gain too much weight.....running on a treadmill on a moving boat is a bit challenging. So we did exercise some....but gained weight more! Ready to get back to Stroller Striding!