Mailliard Moments: Ketchup on March's top 10

OK, so this really has nothing to do with ketchup. I'm just playing "catch-up" on being behind on a few posts. I left my camera at my mom's house for awhile. My awesome brother came to visit & brought it back to me. So, here are some of the highlights from the past few weeks.

1. Tyler has taken a huge interest in the piano recently. He has even started to compose his own songs. He's not far into it yet, but it's so cute to see him actually writing the notes on paper & playing the notes over & over while brainstorming what will come next. The first song I taught him was Peter, Peter Pumpkin Eater. I think Trenton was a little jealous, so Tyler then taught Trenton how to play. I just loved how he put his fingers on top of Trenton's fingers to show him exactly which notes he was supposed to play.

2. I actually had both boys peacefully (if only for a few moments) doing chores together. May miracles never cease!!

3. I finally painted what is hopefully the last room in this house....the kids room. They finally agreed on some colors. The hardest part for them is they wanted to go bold, but I wanted to stay fairly neutral for the purpose of selling the house while still adding character & warmth. They chose gobi desert (beige) for 3 walls & Americana blue for the wall with the bay window.

4. Next up was a trip to visit my family. Grandma made an especially fun St. Patrick's Day breakfast complete with green food & hats for the boys.

5. Tyler decided Grandma's bathtub makes a great reading spot.

6. A Peter, Peter duet with Grandma:

7. A visit to see Great Grandma:

8. Back home again, on March 28th, my brother Chad & my friends Amanda & Greg came from Northern Utah. Along with them, Trenton & I participated in a 5K to benefit ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease). Tyler ran in the kids 1K but refused to actually run until Uncle Chad joined him. I won't actually put my race time on here as it was kinda pathetic (but at least I finished...that was my main expectation). I prefer to blame it on the lovely sickness in the weeks before the race, or the uphill climb the second half of the race. Maybe if my stomach isn't so queasy next time & I don't spend so much time leaning over the side of the trail & garbage cans, I may just do a bit better. Anyway, Trenton was amazing! He ran the entire time & beat me by 10 minutes. So much for telling him we'd wait & go at the speed he wanted!

9. In the days following the race, it was back to the house projects. The only thing we completed was replacing the outdoor carpet on the stairs & porch in front & back. We had more on the list, but the weather wouldn't cooperate. Thanks so much to Greg for all his help! We also thought we had a good start on the new counter tops until a mis-hap caused the counter to tear. Oops!! So, we'll be hiring extra help on that one!