I'm sure it sounds like Olivia is a holy terror but she really is a sweet girl. There will be times when we're driving in the car or sitting at the dinner table and she'll pipe up, "There's Jesus." And we ask, "Where?" and she'll point out the window or somewhere else in the room and say, "Right there." Then she'll say, "All gone Jesus, bye-bye." None of my other kids have done anything like that so it makes me wonder and hope that she keeps that special connection with Him. It's also a constant reminder to me that we're not alone, even though we can't see Him, He's still there.

This morning, as I was cleaning up the mess Olivia made with the banana's downstairs, she was making another mess upstairs.

That is craft paint and she did manage to get some on the carpet. Thank goodness it all came up (thank you Leslie for the carpet cleaner, it has saved us many times).

Triathlon

For the past three months I've been training for a triathlon. As my Gramma says, "Why would you want to do that?" I don't know, it just sounded like fun, not to mention a good way to get myself into better shape. Friday, the day before the race, I wake up with the flu (I hadn't been feeling well the week before but I only had a cold, but the flu...come on!). I call Doug crying, "What am I going to do? I feel terrible!" Later that afternoon we get a call regarding our sleeping arrangements and the plans fell through for that. It was also questionable whether Doug was going to be able to get off work early since we were going to be traveling up to Seattle. I was devistated. All this hard work and the money that was put into this was all going down the drain. I called my friend who was going to watch the kids for us to tell her it wasn't going to happen and explained all that had gone wrong. She then tells me, "Well, I can get you a room at Best Western for free. Give me a few minutes." Doug calls shortly after that and says they found someone to do his last pickup so he'd be home early. Things were starting to look better, all except I still felt like death warmed over (I'm not even going to complain about all the things the two younger ones got into). Things ended up working out, we got to Seattle around midnight, I hardly slept at all due to my achey body, and was up at 6:30am to get ready for the race. I still didn't know how I was going to do it. We arrived with about 15 minutes before the race started. My friend, who was also racing, helped me get ready since I had no idea what I was doing. The race started at 8am with four waves going every 5 minutes, depending on the age. I was in the last wave (us youngsters going last). Once I put my wetsuit on, I didn't feel sick anymore and I was able to complete the race. The race was 1/4 mile swim, 14 mile bike ride and 3.2 mile run. I did the whole thing without stopping or walking and finished 109 out of 130 and with a time of 1hr 39min. After I crossed the finish line, that was it. My body shut down, I felt terrible again and slept from 6pm that night until 9am the next morning.

Waiting for my turn in the water. Each age group had their own color of swim caps.

The water was freezing! We were told it was about 60-65 degrees but it felt a lot colder than that. The girl behind me was the only one without some type of wet suit. I'm so glad I had one.

Me in the transition area heading off for the biking part. We couldn't get on our bikes until we got to a designated place.

Olivia's latest masterpiece

Thursday morning I had been upstairs for only 5 minutes and when I went back down, Olivia had opened the fridge and all my eggs and half a bottle of soy sauce were on the floor. Her hands and arms were covered in them and Aiden couldn't even stand up because the floor was so slippery. If you look hard enough you will see foot prints next to Olivia, which led right to the carpet and she even has egg shell in her hair.