Fourth of July 2012

The Fourth of July was one to remember this year. We had a great day. With Mike just beginning his fellowship and now being on the bottom of the totem pole when it comes to having any say in anything, I wasn't planning on him being around for the holiday. But we had a tender mercy occur and Mike didn't have to go into the hospital at all that day! Hooray! 

Woke up and went for a run. It feels so good to start my day that way. I still haven't found anyone to run with and still don't see any runners while I'm out but I'm feeling more and more comfortable in my neighborhood. Plus I always feel better after I go, I never get back from a run and regret going. :)

We headed over to our church Fourth Of July breakfast celebration. We had a great time mingling and getting to know more and more people we go to church with. I couldn't feel more loved and welcome in our new ward. Everyone is very friendly and outgoing. It's been so comforting and has made our adjustment a lot easier. 

That evening we had been invited by some neighbors to attend another neighbor's street party. It was a blast. We had a barbecue with lots of people from the neighborhood who we go to church with. Again, everyone was so friendly. It was easy to talk to people. I've never felt this comfortable in a ward from the get go. People really go out of their way to get to know you and make you feel welcome. 

Once everyone had eaten. We headed out to the street where everyone was out on their lawns hanging out. It was quite the street party.

Charlotte loved playing with the other kids but I think the highlight for her was playing in the gutter. Yes, I'm a great mom, I let my child play in the gutter. 

Judge me all you want. 

Other highlights included yard games, a parade of kids riding their decorated bikes down the street, and a water balloon fight between the kids. It really was so fun.  

Some of our new neighbors and friends we go to church with. 

The entire street was closed for the night for various games and activities. It was such a good time. 

The night ended with a firework show put on some guy in the neighborhood. We had heard it was a pretty good show and worth watching. Let me tell you his show did not disappoint. This guy takes his fireworks very seriously. Here he is with some of his firework load getting ready. 

Part of the firework show we got to enjoy. Pictures don't do justice, it really was an impressive show. He put Mike's, Walker Firework Extravaganza show to shame. If we ever host a firework show again, Mike will have to put more than $50 bucks into fireworks to keep up with this guy. I'm not kidding he probably spent at least $1000 bucks. 

But really the highlight of the Fourth of July was having my MOM COME INTO TOWN!!!! Hooray! She fit right in and mingled and got to know everyone with us. In fact, I'm pretty sure there were plenty of people who enjoyed talking to my mom more than Mike and I. Not surprised, she's pretty freakin awesome. 

We had so much fun having Grandma Kris in town. That's a whole other post to come! 

Happy birthday America! 

22 weeks

                                         22 weeks with baby Walker #2            22 weeks with Charlotte


Looking about the same size. 
I'm feeling great besides just being tired ALL THE TIME.
Still running in the morning, but I'm starting to feel it more in my legs. My legs feel so heavy by the end of my runs but still worth it to get up and go and I'm lucky I've felt good enough to run my entire pregnancy so far. 
Baby is a mover and I love it! 
Heartburn is out of control. Tums just aren't doing their job. But perhaps eating pizza for dinner last night wasn't the best choice either. ;) 
I finally go see a doctor this week and I can't wait. Please cross your fingers and say a little prayer the doctor will schedule an ultrasound ASAP. I'm dying to know whether this babus is a boy or a girl. 
Glad to be feeling so good, it's crazy I'm already more than half way done with this pregnancy. 
Time is flying! 

33

Happy birthday to.....

A man who is always up for fun and adventure!

A man who will stop anything to play with his little girl and make her smile. 

A man who treats his wife like gold and makes her the happiest lady on the block! 

Happy birthday to...

A man who is good at everything he does.

A man who works hard and enjoys a challenge.

A man who has the best bed head in the morning.

A man who enjoys working in the yard.

A man who makes up songs and sings them shamelessly.

Happy birthday to MY MAN! 

You make 33 look soooooo good! 

18 weeks

Like I mentioned in the previous post, I can't believe I'm 18 weeks (officially today!) along in my pregnancy. This pregnancy has been pretty similar to my pregnancy with Charlotte. Luckily with both pregnancy I've felt pretty good overall. I kept running up until about 3/4 weeks before delivering Charlotte. I've continued to run throughout this pregnancy without any problems and plan to keep running until the end of this pregnancy as well. I've been soooo tired, just like I was when I was pregnant with Charlotte. The first trimester of this pregnancy I had a couple of weeks where nothing, NOTHING sounded good and forcing myself to eat was rough, however I only threw up once and didn't feel nauseous 24/7, just had a harder time finding food that sounded good. But it didn't last long and my appetite came back pretty quickly. So it was never really that bad. However, I never felt that way with Charlotte, I remember feeling super hungry the first trimester but eating was no big deal and if anything I probably ate too much because I was so hungry. With Charlotte I remember feeling so worried because I didn't start showing for a long time. I wore my normal clothes late into pregnancy and didn't really have a real, round, obvious bump until about 28 weeks. This pregnancy my clothes are already tight and I just feel uncomfortable in my skin. I may have to buy maternity shorts sooner than I had hoped! People were right when they say you start to shower, sooner and sooner with each pregnancy! Here are some comparison photos. 

The first picture, where I'm wearing the coral cardigan was taken today (with my iphone, poor quality) at 18 weeks. The second picture in the blue dress was taken when I was 19 weeks pregnant with Charlotte. I feel like I look bigger in my 18 week picture with this pregnancy, than I did at 19 weeks with Charlotte. 

 Again the 18 week picture and this second one was taken when I was 22 weeks pregnant with Charlotte.  I'm not that big yet, but I don't feel like it will be too long before I will be. Definitely before I hit 22 weeks with this pregnancy! 

I'm just so grateful to be feeling good and to have had a healthy, safe, pregnancy thus far. Plus I've started to feel the baby move and it's the best feeling in the world! Even Mike has been able to feel the baby move on occasion. Love this babus already. 

Boy or girl? 

Any guesses? 

PS thank you to the lovely Liz and Katie for your sweet thoughts on the last post. I know both of you completely understand my emotions right now and I found your comments very comforting and uplifting! Let's all meet up somewhere in the middle and do a race together? Perhaps after this babus arrives so I stand a chance of running with either of you for a minute or two before I eat your dust! Love you both! 

We made it!

We made it to Cincinnati! We've been here a little over a week and so far so good. There is still a lot of work and unpacking to be done but it will come. We are working on repainting most of the house so I feel like I can't quite unpack and move everything in it's proper place until the painting is done. Soon enough it will all be put together and I'll post pictures.


Things I love so far...
-Hearing the frogs and birds chirp at night.
-Our neighbor up the street has a full on pig for a pet. Cutest little pig I've ever seen. Charlotte was in heaven petting it and I tried desperately to convince Mike to get one. No luck.
-Everyone here has been so friendly. People at the grocery store, home depot, on the road,  and people in the neighborhood. Our next door neighbords introduced themselves to us a couple of times and have already invited us to the swim in their pool. (It's one of those awesome, above ground pools. You know I'm going to take them up on that offer.)
-The big playset in our backyard. Charlotte could swing and go on the slide all day. She is in heaven playing in our backyard.
-How happy Charlotte has been here. There have been a few times she has asked about her grandparents, my grandma's dog Ginger, Emmy, Grace and Will or her friend Fisher, but I think she has adjusted well. 
-How easily Charlotte has adjusted to the time change. I was stressing about this, and thought she would be up all night and luckily with the three day drive she adjusted along the way and we haven't had any problems so far.
-The Cincinnati Zoo. We caved and bought a zoo pass and I'm so glad we did. We went today and were there for 2 hours and I'm sure we saw about a 1/4 of the zoo. Charlotte and I will be spending a lot more time there. 




Things I'm not loving....
-Hearing the frogs and birds chirp at night. While it's kinda nice and soothing to hear all these creatures when you are falling asleep at night, it is NOT nice and soothing at 5 a.m. when they wake you up!
-I don't like humidity. I don't. I'll take dry, burning heat any day. 
-Everyone smokes here. EVERYONE. So gross. We went to a lake the other day and were surrounded by smokers. 
-No public pools. This one is probably one of the worst for me. One of my favorite activities with Charlotte during the summer is going swimming. I've been so bummed to find out any pool in the area is part of a club and you HAVE to be a MEMBER to go swimming. Seeing how we are on a very tight budget, I don't see us joining any of these clubs soon. Maybe I really will be at the neighbors house swimming more often than I thought. 
-This is the other worst part for me, every time I've gone running I haven't seen one other runner while I've been out. NOT ONE! I've been hoping to find a running partner, or join a running group but I don't think I'm going to have any luck joining up with others. In SL I couldn't go running 5 minutes without seeing lots of other runners. It feels so lonely out there while I'm running. I was spoiled this last year having so many different people to run with. I also think I would feel slightly safer while I'm out running if there were others runners out too. Oh well. I will enjoy the quiet mornings to myself I guess. 
-How far away our families are....miss all of them so much. 


In some ways it feels like we have been here forever and in other ways time could not drag more slowly. I'm sure once we get everything all settled and in a routine time will be flying!


PS I'm almost 18 weeks pregnant, 2 weeks away from being half way done with this pregnancy. That baby will be here before we know it. Still don't know whether this baby is a boy or a girl, hopefully we'll find out in the next few weeks!

Short races are my thang

Yes, I know I spelled thing wrong, read it with some hipster slang please.


Since my devasting marathon. I had a hard time getting motivated to train hard for another race. I kept up my speed and tempo workouts begrudingly throughout January without any real goal or race in sight. Truth be told the beginning of January we knew we wanted to add another babus to our family, so the idea of training hard for a race that might not happen since I could get pregnant just didn't sound appealing to me. So I did keep running through the winter but my once die hard weekly speed and tempo sessions were coming hit and miss and not a high priority towards the beginning of January.

March came along and the opportunity to go to St. George and run the Spectrum 10k (one of my favorites) came up so I decided why not run it? My mom was going to run it and it would be fun to race together since my days of running with my mom would be dwindling in the next few months due to the big move across the country. I put no pressure or time goals on myself. I thought if I can get under 50 minutes great, if not just have fun and enjoy the scenery. I swear to you, the relaxed and familiar atmosphere of short races speak to me. My plan was to run hard the first three downhill miles and from there keep the pace as much as I can for the last 3.2 miles but not stress over it and NO looking at my garmin until I hit mile 3. My plan worked. I ended up running my second fastest 10k. What? I didn't know I had that kind of pace in me, since my training hadn't really been training but just running regulary with friends at a casual pace. It was so fun to run hard again and have a good race. 

I didn't get any great pictures from the race so I searched the professional photo website from the race. While scrolling through the race photos I found something kinda funny. The first picture below on the left, is of me crossing the finish line. I wore my Hobble Creek half marathon race t-shirt, black running skirt and had started the race in a long white tee that ended up around my waist about half way through. Two other girls had the same thought as me. How random is that?  Funny right? 

After such a sucessful, fun 10k I convinced my cousin Annie to run The Running with the Leopards 5k with me the following weekend. I've always wanted to do this 5k but haven't had the chance to run it before. I'm so glad we decided to run it last minute. This was such a great, well organized 5k. It wasn't just a fun run but an actual race that supports a local high school. If you are a runner is the SL area you must do this race! It's a great, mostly downhill course. It has a nice mix of competitive runners and people there to just have fun. So if you are looking for a competitive race, it has that effect but if you want something where there is no pressure and you want to just run for fun there are plenty of runners who share that same desire. 

Annie and I before the race. Love this girl so much! 

My legs were still a little heavy from the 10k the weekend before and one of my running partners had wanted to do a tempo workout Thursday morning so I wasn't sure what my body could handle even if it was just three miles. The race started and Annie and I were off. I told Annie from the get go to just run without me. That girl is fast. She's just a natural and I did not want to hold her back. Annie and I played a little bit of cat and mouse. She took off and I caught up to her during one of the uphills. Then we ran together until the last two tenths of the race and Annie had an extra spring in her step that I just didn't have in me. I was so proud of her. Annie did awesome and finished third in her age group!!!!! I was just ten seconds behind her with a new 5k PR under my belt. Again I had no idea that kind of pace was in me after a few months of hit and miss speed work. I could feel how tired my legs felt a few times during the race but knowing it was just 3.1 miles I knew I could just stick out the pain a little longer.  5ks are fantastic because they are over before you know it. But I find them a challenge too because you want to run as hard as you can and sustain the pace for 3.1 miles which can be exhausting!  

After those fun, successful short races my drive to race and start training hard again returned. I thought about signing up for a 10 mile race, a couple weeks away and the Salt Lake half marathon the following month BUT....the following Tuesday after the race I took a pregnancy test, just had a feeling I should take one, and lo and behold I was pregnant. There would be no serious training for me, which was fine with me. We were thrilled to be pregnant!! But I will say it was nice to end of racing career for  awhile on such a race high! 

BUSY

Well I'm sure you have noticed but I haven't blogged much in the last few months. And truth be told since about mid January we've been REALLY busy at the Walker house. 


In February we went to St. George and bought a car while we were there. We've had our eye on a Honda Pilot for over a year and finally decided to take the plunge and buy one. However the one we wanted wasn't in stock so we didn't come home with one but just ordered the car we wanted. 

We came home and sold Mike's car. Wipe a tear. I'm sure come winter we'll miss that little green subaru. 


We became a one car family and drove Mike all over the valley to get to all the different places he works.  


We went to Cincinnati to decide between a couple of houses to buy.

Came home put an offer on the house we fell in love with. 

We put our house up for sale in the SLC.

Our Honda pilot was finished and joined our family. Mike and I are in love with it. 


We signed our contract for our home in Cincinnati and now just await closing day.


We sold our home in Salt Lake and now just need to pack up and await for closing day.


And for the past three months we've, well I guess I've been busy growing A BABY!!!! Yup, Baby Walker #2 is due to join our family December 2, 2012. We couldn't be more happy about it and look forward to meeting this bundle of joy the beginning of December.

(Cake we made to tell family the exciting news)

So can you see why I haven't blogged? I'm exhausted and slightly (OK VERY!) overwhelmed by all the good changes coming our way. I do want to be better with blogging, but let's be honest that's not going to happen until my house is packed, we driven across the country and unpacked in our new home in Cincinnati. So until then, blogging will be hit and miss.