hi friends. sorry for the absence. i've been busy dealing with an abscess tooth. remember how last fall before the marathon, i thought i was having problems with my TMJ?! well, it turns out it wasn't that afterall. hard to know when the symptoms are all so similar. anyway, a root canal and over $900 later, all is well again.

what is up with the price of dental work?! ridiculous.

last weekend we had a progressive dinner with some friends from church. if you haven't heard of it, it's a dinner party where each course is prepared and eaten at the home of a different host. we had the dessert course at our house. i made four cheesecakes. 

the kids helped me decorate the tables all fancy. it was a lot of fun.

it was another beautiful "winter" day here...53 and sunny.

a good day to sit in the sun and get our school done.

i saw this quote on pinterest the other day, and thought it was so true.

 if you can just get past the first mile, it usually gets easier.

i have to keep reminding myself of this.

randomness

• after seeing a picture today, i noticed that i am indeed getting old. since when do my smiley lines stand out so much. eek. i guess it's a good thing to be a smiler though, right?! what a trivial thing...it could always be worse, but i did buy some wrinkle cream today. ☺
• this having-your-kids-grow-up thing is pretty hard sometimes. i really miss my boy now that he is at school all day. i feel like i don't get to see him much between school and sports. we're really trying to be intentional about the time we do have with him though. i love that above anything else, he'd rather be at home with us.
• this post was good to read today. i totally agree about the standards needing to be set high. it's been pretty eye opening this year to see how low the bar is set for so many families, and the lack of respect for authority is way worse than i imagined. we've been talking a lot about being a leader and not a follower.
• this is my latest read. more to come on that soon.

what have you been reading?

for the birds...

HAPPY FEBRUARY! isn't it hard to believe it's already february?!
tomorrow is sign up day for the marathon! i'm excited to get back into consistent running again. yesterday was 55 and i ran 3 miles outside. it's been so nice to have so many days like that this year.
february is usually the longest month for me, even though it's the shortest.
i think this year will be different, thanks to all the sunny days we've had.
and, my anniversary (16!) is in february so it'll be a good month.

most of school today will be spent working on fun stuff. we started off by making these gelatine bird seed hearts this morning and now we're going to make a heart garland to hang in the kitchen. after that, i think we'll curl up on the couch and read some books. it's a good day.

you can find this project here.