Out With The Old, In With The New

I feel like a kid at Christmas with all the great gifts I've received in the last week!
When I was down at the Eugene Half, I arrived to find this on the guest bed from my mom...

She found it at the Eugene Expo. I haven't run in it yet, but I've worn it to the gym and it's like I'm wearing nothing, it's so comfy.

...and then at the bloggy meetup, I was treated with candy from Kim, but it's long gone. The chocolate from Raina has also been eaten, but this little guy...

...sits on my tub, just waiting for me to take ice baths with him.

When I returned from Eugene, this...

...was packed away in my stuff. Mom strikes again!

Of course, Sunday was Mothers Day, but since I would be out swimming in the rain in the lake, the kids gave me my presents on Saturday night. Jack drew an eerily accurate picture of me..

...and requested it be on the mantel with all the other family pictures.

Mai got me flowers....

and although it arrived a day late and made the man a bit perturbed, when it did arrive on Monday, Mama was happy indeed....

a new iPhone! My old Palm Treo was falling apart and I lost my iPod a couple of weeks ago - it was also falling apart. The kids couldn't hold it in any longer on Saturday when the package didn't arrive in the mail and very conspiratorially told me that they were waiting for my "gourmet chocolates" to arrive. I see someone (very rightly so) did not trust them to keep a secret.

My Mothers Day swim went...well, it went swimmingly. Well...more so than in previous years. I did a 6 mile run out at the lake prior to the swim, thinking it would calm me down - take off some nervous energy - and help wear me out a bit so I wouldn't try to swim too fast and freak myself out when I couldn't breathe. We were swimming in a triangle that totaled about 700 meters. The first half of the first triangle side, I felt pretty good and thought I wasn't going to freak out, but then in the 2nd half of that side, I did freak out...but kept my head down and kept on swimming through the freak. I never did have to flip over and sing lullabies to myself. After the first lap, though, I stopped. I shouldn't have because then I really started to feel freaky and I almost talked myself out of a second lap, but Erica got me back out there and the second lap went pretty good. I was swimming great, just freaking out on the inside. When I got out and was changing into my clothes, I got pretty emotional and cried a bit. I'm not sure why the first swim of the year does this to me, but I'm glad it is over for the year. And...I'm glad I've learned to swim through it and I guess next year will be even better!

After the run and swim and Saturday's big workout, I was ready for a nap, but instead we went out to Steve's sister's house and had an awesome meal of freshly caught salmon and strawberry shortcake and LOTS of other stuff... and then the men built a fire in the pit so we could roast marshmallows and make s'mores...in the rain. It was fun, but I'm dreaming about when the rain will stop and summer will arrive!

Why doesn't her mother put a coat on the poor child?

Perfectly burned.

Grandpa helping Carly get that flame out.

Jack didn't care for marshmallows, he was into frying bugs and spiders.

Check out the fence they had to tear down to make roasting sticks!

So we stood around the campfire, watching Jack burn spiders, listening to Uncle Dan tell farting stories, watching Katie try to lick marshmallow off her elbow and laughing A. LOT.

Now, it's time to get "out with the old". I'm having my fund raiser garage sale this Fri/Sat and I'm trying to get more donations of stuff to sell and trying to wash all the mounds of clothes we'll be selling and gathering up cardboard boxes to make signs out of. My mom and aunt will be here on Thursday to help out, but between now and then we are going through this house room by room, trying to find what we can live without. It's nice to "clean house" every once in a while, right?