In an animal-cracker induced madness last night I signed myself up for a 5K. One that includes “a mother of a hill!” Eek! Positive self-motivation doesn’t seem to work for me, so I thought I’d try negative self-motivation. :) That worked well last time. It sucks showing up for a race when you KNOW you can’t run it! What’s a girl to do? Practice! Today I went out for my first run of the season (my treadmill runs at the gym don’t count because they are boring and totally uninspiring!) I can barely call today’s outing a run, more like a slow jog with extended periods of walking, but it’s a start!

I even managed to talk Alan and Rosy into running with me!! Anyone want to babysit on May 5th? I’ll treat you to free (virgin) margaritas!

PS. This 5K is for Good Beginnings, but not MINE. It is a franchise type thing and they serve different counties and have different services. Still a good cause though!

We have a playdate going on here, right now. One of Eve’s friends and one of Lex’s friends. I thought they would all play nicely together, or perhaps apart, and I would get some work done. Turns out we’ve hit the classic boy/girl playdate age. Eve and her friend are upstairs playing with blocks and Lex and his friend are supposed to be playing in the office. Instead, on the whim of his friend, they keep running upstairs and busting open the door. The girls scream and shriek appropriately, then the boys laugh and run away. Classic.

I just had to bust up the game because Eve’s friend did not seem to be enjoying the game. In fact, she looked like she was about ready to leave.

I like playdates here because I love seeing how the kids all interact and who has what ideas. I stay out of their way, for the most part, but I love to quietly overhear. :)

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Here are a few pictures from the playdate…

We hung up Eve's birthday chain today. I wanted a nice picture of Eve standing by it, but this is the best they gave me! See the chain hanging from the ceiling by her friend?

Pure happiness.

The girls...

... and the boys.

Look who’s paying for the fuel oil this month!!  :)

As a Dartmouth grad Dr. Seuss is taken quite seriously around here. He is often the theme of Dartmouth’s winter carnival, many locals have stories to tell (Eve’s teacher met him), and each year to celebrate his birthday they hold a Seusstival! Actually, I don’t really know how long they’ve been doing that since this is the first year we attended. Expecting a carnival-like atmosphere we headed to the local Seusstival yesterday. It was fun, though not quite what I was expecting. We got there just as a local production of The Lorax was ending. We missed the show but we got to see lots of kids running around in great Seuss-ish costumes. The festival had face painting, books for sale, a bake sale, a silent auction, and a near-continuous reading of Dr. Seuss stories, all read by local important people, none of whom I knew. The first story we made it for was read by Hannah Kearney, local resident and Olympic Gold Medalist! I recognized the name but couldn’t, until yesterday, pick her face from a crowd. She did an excellent job reading One Fish, Two Fish. :)

Eve always goes for the face painting, and always requests a cat face :)

Hannah Kearney reading One Fish, Two Fish by Dr. Seuss.

One of the many Dr. Seuss themed cakes in the silent auction. Eve begged me to buy her a cake. Like we need THAT in the house! When we left the auction was up to $150 for this one! (it was the most expensive there)

Back home Eve felt the urge to create. She told us yesterday that she wants to be an illustrator when she grows up.