Not sure what to title this post...read and you'll see why

Madison was supposed to be changing into her pj's and instead I saw her running through the hallway wearing only a pair of undies down around her ankles! "Madison!" I yelled "For goodness sake pull up your undies and put on your pajamas!!" "Moooomm, I will in a minute, I just don't want to fart in my underwear..."

Oh Christmas tree, Oh Christmas tree!

We have many traditions in our family that we look forward to and our annual trip to Whispering Pines Christmas tree farm is one of them. This afternoon we bundled up and drove there to pick out the perfect tree.

Maddy and Mal with our tree

Mal adding decorations

and serenading us with a few Christmas songs... I'm totally loving the pink wig!

The tooth

Maddy's front tooth has been really loose for weeks now. All she can think about is pulling this darn tooth out. She actually wiggled and messed with it so much that the tooth turned blue. (maybe from lack of blood flow...I have no idea) So 2 nights ago we tried tying dental floss to her tooth and attaching it to the doorknob.
Here she is is with the tooth attached to the floss and tied to the door...when we went to slam the door the floss slipped off the tooth! We tried several more times with the same outcome so we gave up.
Well about 30 minutes after we tucked her in tonight (2 days since our dental floss and doorknob attempt) Dan and I hear her footsteps running down the stairs. While laying in bed wiggling her tooth with her tongue it fell out! YAY a little peace about that darn tooth. Then we hear, "Look mom the tooth next to it is really loose too!"
Great...

Staples?

Mallory loves to sing and is always making up songs. Yesterday in the car her song went something like this:

Ohhhhh Je-sus howwwww I lovvve youuuuuu!!!!! Thank youuuuu for being stapled to the croossss for meeeeeeeeee!

Stapled huh? Maybe I need to go back and review that story! :) Hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving. :)

Maddy

I'm FINALLY getting around to posting a few pics from Maddy's b-day. It was pretty basic this year. We took her to her favorite restaurant and then came home for presents, cake and ice cream...

Happy 8th Birthday Madison!!!

Today is Maddy's 8th B-day. My how time flies! This blond haired, brown eyed beauty has rocked our world from the day she was born. She came out screaming and did so for what seemed like forever. (those of you who had a colicky baby know what I'm talking about) She has more energy than 10 kids put together. Most mornings she's up and "crafting" by 7:00 am. Maddy loves to draw, color, write notes and letters to EVERYONE. We haven't found a sport that she's can't play. While all these are great qualities her Dad and I appreciate her heart for God and her kindness towards others. She's worked hard to memorize Bible verses and (on her own) has learned the Books of the Old and New Testament. :) We are so proud of her and can't wait to see what God has in store for her life as she gets older!
This year we (Dan) made Madison a homemade balance beam. Once completed we realized it would be to long to get it up the stairs and into the playroom. So a 10:00 last night we were pulling it through the 2nd story window! Wonder what the neighbors thought?

Here's the Birthday girl! More pictures to come...

Sick! Sick! Sick!

Mallory turned 5 on Sunday and she had her first "friend party". We did a craft and played a few games. Nothing elaborate, but it was fun. We almost didn't have the party b/c Mallory was sick all week, but thankfully was fever free the 48 hrs before the party! About 15 minutes before our guests were to arrive I started feeling feverish and light-headed so I took my temp. and sure enough it was about 100. I wasn't about to tell all the kids knocking at my door they had to go home so I just tried to keep my distance... Sunday night Maddy started behaving really wildly and out of control. Although, not the typical symptom someone may have when they are getting sick with Maddy it's always a warning sign. Sure enough Monday morning she had a full blown fever and an extremely sore throat. Tuesday I took her to the Dr. mostly b/c I was afraid she might have strep. No strep, but yes to the flu. :( By 7:00 last night her fever was 104 and she was sicker than she's ever been!!! Dan and I started putting cool wash cloths all over her to cool her down and in an hour her fever was thankfully down to 102.5. Today it's only 99.5 or so and she's just about back to her old self. Unfortunately, she's devastated about missing her last 2 soccer games of the season. Poor thing.
So I'm feeling good about finally seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, so to speak. with this flu thing and..............Mallory now has a fever. Seriously, Ugh!!!!! What really peevs me off about her having a fever is that I took her to get a flu shot 2 weeks ago and the next day I got a call saying "Hi Mrs. Laughlin. We are so sorry, but the flu mist we gave Mallory was expired and she's going to have to come back in 2 weeks to get it done again." Two weeks to the day was Monday when Maddy was really, really sick. So if Mallory gets what Maddy had it was totally preventable!!!!!! ANNOYING!!!!

So here it is a perfect 75 degree autumn day and we are stuck inside, sick. (I'm still have my fever too btw) AHHHHHH!!!!!!! Well, as soon as we get better I want to put up the pics from Mallory's 5th birthday. I can't believe she's 5!!!!

Stay healthy and get your flu shots everyone. Oh, and make sure they haven't expired.

Blog catch-up

Life is crazy right now at the Laughlin house! We are busy carting the girls back and forth to and from soccer practice and games. Then home to take baths and do homework. Once the girls finally get to sleep I'm ready to just pass out on the couch and watch a little boob tube. :) So I'll catch you all up with some pics of our last 2 weeks.

Mallory started Pre-K and is really enjoying it. I'm loving my 4 hours of peace and quiet twice a week!!! Here she is on her 1st day...

We took the girls to do one of our favorite family fall activities... apple pickin' at Anderson Apple Orchard

Last Sunday was Children's Day at church and the kids sang a few songs for the congregation. Maddy was also part of the worship team, but the pics I took of her didn't turn out.

Also adding to the chaos is that fact that I signed up for another race on October 10th. It's an adventure race for women done in teams of 3 or 4. It involves mountain biking, trail running, canoeing and orienteering. Also they add in a few mystery things throughout the race like zip-lines. I've never done anything like it but it sounds really fun!!! I can't wait!!!! www.nsaar.org

Happy 38th Birthday, Michael!!! (can't believe you're that old!)

Today is Dan's brother, Mike's birthday. Happy Birthday Mike!!!! He's really only 33 by the way. :) Mike, Kasey and Evan drove up for the weekend and we had lots of fun. Maddy and Mal really enjoyed playing with baby Evan...he's soooo cute!!! Kasey and I wanted to get a few shots of the cousins together. As you can see my first attempt didn't turn out so well considering Mallory's finger is seriously half-way up her nose!!!

(can anyone tell me why everything is underlined??? Below it went back to normal...wierd)

Ahhh this is much better

Saturday morning Madison had a soccer game and I did another triathlon. I'll spare you all the boring details and times, but I did much better on the swim (2 minutes faster) and improved my overall time by about 5 minutes! It was tons of fun. Here's a pic of me and my Dad...he's my biggest fan!

My first triathlon

Yesterday I completed my 1st ever triathlon! It was terrifying and exciting both. Actually the swim was the terrifying part for me. I trained for it, but swimming in a reservoir with hundreds of other people vs. swimming in a clear pool by myself are completely different! Not long into the swim I had a guy literally swim onto my back which of course forced me under right as I was taking a breath. I inhaled quite a bit of water into my lungs. It was definitely a mind over matter thing. I kept saying I can do this, I can do this, I can do this over and over! It's just freaky having people kicking and grabbing you as you are trying to swim. I finished the 500 m swim in 14:00 minutes, not great, but I survived! Oh and did I mention it was 60 degrees out???? After the swim I ran into the transition area to where my bike was. Your time doesn't stop during this so I tried to keep that in mind as I was drying off and putting on my socks, shoes, shirt and helmet. Then you have to run your bike to the beginning of the bike course. I felt like I went as fast as I could, but my transition time was around 3:00 minutes. (not great)

The bike course was 10 miles and I probably should have trained a bit more on a hilly course b/c there were quite a few during the race. Also to make things a little more challenging was that the road was wet and slippery. They kept announcing to take the turns SLOWLY b/c of the road conditions. The bike portion took me 37:00 minutes. Again I headed into the transition area (about 2 minutes) where I took off my helmet and put the bike on its rack and ran out (it seemed like a long way) to the start of the last leg of the race, the 3 mile run.

The run wasn't bad except that the first 1.5 miles were at an incline! Hello, I just swam and biked and now I have to run 1.5 miles uphill?????? Once I made the turn and I knew the next 1.5 miles were downhill I was able to pick up my pace quite a bit. In the picture above I'm just heading out to run and I'm giving Maddy and Mallory high-fives. I was still smiling b/c I couldn't see the hill I was about to run up... The run took me 28:50. The entire race for me took 1 hour and 25 minutes.
Woo-hoo I did it! Maddy and Mallory were my little cheerleaders. It was sweet to hear them screaming "GO MOM,GO!!!!" throughout the race. My parents were there and so was Dan and his parents. It was nice to have a cheering section!
It was actually a lot of fun (minus the swim) and I'm thinking of doing an all girl tri next Saturday with my cousin. It's like giving birth...you forget the pain over time and consider another one. Ha!

Little Laughlin

The time has finally come for little Mallory to finally play soccer! The poor thing has sat on the sidelines of way too many soccer games and practices and now she's finally out on the field. Tonight was the first practice and of course Daddy's coaching. Our weeks look something like this: Mon. = Maddy's practice Tues.= Mallory's practice Wed.= Maddy's practice Thurs.= Mallory's practice Both have games on Saturday's. (Dan's coaching both girls)Could she be any cuter?????

In other news (and probably the reason I've been a non blogger recently) is that my triathlon is this Saturday morning. It's a 5oo m swim (the part I'm the most nervous about), 10 mile bike ride and 3 mile run. I'm excited for it, but also excited for it to be over. ;) Life has kinda revolved around my training and I feel like all I do is swim, bike, run or just swim and sometimes bike and run, occasionally swim and bike....Ugh! Anyhoo, I'll post some pics of the race on Saturday or Sunday.

A day of firsts...

Today was Maddy's first day of 2nd grade. She loved it and after school told me she gives her teacher a 14 out of 14! Ha! I asked her what she liked best about her teacher and Maddy said, "her voice." Hmmmm...well ok. Poor Mal was very sad to see her sister go to school and be gone all day she cried for quite a while after we dropped Maddy off. Madison took me aside before school and whispered that I should do something special with Mal since she was so upset. I thought that was sweet. Isn't she getting big? :(So Mal has asked me repeatedly for about a month now to take her training wheels off her bike. I've been putting it off, but decided to give it a try today, hoping it would distract her from missing Maddy so much. No joke...I took them off, gave her a long speech about not getting discouraged, it taking lots of practice, not riding by herself for at least few days, yadda, yadda, yadda... She gets on the bike and takes off down the road totally on her own!!!!!! It was so funny! She kept yelling to anyone who was in their front yard, "Hi! Look at me. I'm riding my bike without my training wheels!!!!!!" Here she is proudly sitting on her bike w/out training wheels. I should have taken one of her actually riding it, but we were late to pick Maddy up for school. :) WAY TO GO MALLORY PAIGE!

Camping at Whitewater State Park

So I'm finally blogging about our camping trip last weekend. We had a great time despite our wet start! When we arrived at our campsite it was raining so hard we didn't even want to get out of the cars. Dan came up with the idea of backing out vehicles up against each other, opening the trunks and hanging our tarps over them creating a "tent" for us to sit under and allowing us and the girls to at least get out of the car!!!Are we having fun wet...I mean yet?

Hanging out under the tarps, snacking and praying we can set our tents up so we don't have to sleep in our cars all night. The rain did eventually let up allowing us to set the tents up before another torrential downpour that lasted until about 4-5am!!! The girls slept great despite the rain, but when we woke up in the morning to several inches of rain in the bottom of the tent and ALL our bedding was wet. :(

After the flood: we awoke to a beautiful sun-shiny day and hung everything out to dry on our makeshift clothes line.

Drying our out tents

This was a beautiful overlook where we had a picnic lunch

Lynne and I reading our Twilight books

Mud pies...need I say more?

Mallory with bed-head

Lynne making chocolate chip pancakes. Mmmm they were good!

Scrambled eggs anyone?

We had a ton of fun canoeing. The water was pretty fast from all the rain, but we are pretty experienced canoers (is that a word?) and cracked up at everyone else crashing and flipping out of their canoes.

Mal with Grandma and Grandpa L.

This was our last hoorah before school starts on Wednesday. :( So glad we went!!! (despite the rain)

Can't. Keep. Up.

Last Saturday we had a young family church picnic hosted at my parents house. Unfortunately, we had terrible storm go through the night before and it knocked down a 75 ft. Hickory tree in their backyard so we went with plan B and had the picnic at a park. Many of the families go to our church although we had several that are now attending elsewhere, come to see good (missionary) friends who are here for the summer visiting from Taiwan. Here's our group pic...In other news: that storm that went through the night before the picnic... our next door neighbors house took a direct hit from lightning!!! It was so loud it practically threw us all out of our beds!!!! They were ok, but the 6 firetrucks in our cul-de-sac at 6:00am was a little much! Also, during the same storm we found out that friends from church (thankfully were out of town) but also had their house hit by lightning. The bolt went down their chimney, blowing it off their house and came into their house. It blew out their windows and embedded glass in the walls and floor! It's difficult to explain, but it looks like a bomb went off in their house!!!! Makes me a little more nervous during lightning storms! I've always felt safe in the house. :(

We took the kids to the county fair. Mallory has really gotten brave and actually wanted to ride some big rids! Here we are on the Scrambler. I'll save you from watching the video Dan took of us. You might end up feeling as sick as I did when the ride finally stopped!

Maddy and Mal on the mini-coaster. Maddy's having a blast...Mal is trying to.

All last week Maddy and Mallory were at gymnastics camp. They had so much fun! Mallory was awarded a Great Attitude Award and Maddy the Most Daring Award. That couldn't fit their personalities any better!!!!!

Maddy finally has her round-0ff back handspring!!! I didn't get many good shots of them. They didn't want to stop long enough for me to get a decent picture.

Well, we're leaving today for our annual camping/canoe trip with Dan's parents so more pics to come hopefully by Monday. I'm going to start my no-rain dance this afternoon. Its rained every weekend her 4 weeks in a row!!!!!