my.chicas!

I got to hang with my two favorite nieces today! I thought you all might enjoy seeing how they are changing everyday! Literally, Lyza is changing ALL the TIME! I saw her two weeks ago, and today her cheeks looked chubbier and her hair stood up even more!!:) She's so cute. And then there's Claire...Claire talks ALL OF THE TIME! She has a very big vocabulary, and she repeats EVERYTHING that you say. We went outside for just a little while today because it was about 40 degrees outside.

Claire is very animated, and I called her a drama queen today...she repeated me and said "dw-ama keen?!" (so cute)! (click on the image to make it larger).

Claire loves pushing her baby in the stroller. She takes it VERY seriously. You can tell by her concentration here!





Claire was trying to get up into her Little Tikes play thingy by walking up the slide. That didn't work out for her so well:)


Then she thought it would be fun to knock on the window to get people to look at her inside.




Here's Little Lyza. Check out the HAIR!!!


CUTE:)

avery andrew | newborn

Last weekend I got to meet an awesome family. The Homan's are friends with the Hummel's and Walker's. I am so glad that I got to meet them. You will be seeing a lot of this family on my blog because I'll be keeping up with Avery every three months!! Avery was born on 12.27.07, so he was only 9 days old here. He was wide awake and very alert the entire time. He kinda HAS to be though with two lively big sisters! They were full of energy and LOVE getting their pictures taken. I had a hard time limiting my favorites, so enjoy LOTS of images below...

Look at this bright-eyed little cutie. Avery is 9 days old here:)


Look at the little piggies:)

Avery is the best dressed kid in town!

Samantha is a loving big sister who takes great care of Avery. I love this shot!

What a good lookin' bunch!! From L to R: Samantha, Graci & Avery (click on the image to make it larger)


My future assistant:) Believe it or not, this is a Fisher Price kids digital camera. Amazing!


bigggggggggggg yawwwwwwwwwwwn!





I'm a sucker for little feetsies and toesies.

This one's for Andy!!



Jenny & Andy...CONGRATS on your new little bundle of joy! IT was so great hanging out with your family. I will see you guys again in April! I hope you enjoy your slideshow!!

boston!

Sorry I have been M.I.A. for the past week. I thought things would slow down a little getting past the holidays, but they obviously have not! In fact, I'm sitting in the airport right now waiting to board my plane to New Orleans (hopefully I'll be able to post a few pics--I've never been before!!).




Well, starting on Jan 1st, my friends Tara, Meg & I started a VERY BIG UNDERTAKING...training for the Boston Marathon! (that's another reason why I've been busy). Yes, if you remember back to New Year's Day, it was bitterly cold here in Indianapolis! I braved the cold and did my first training run at Eagle Creek Park. Despite the ice crystals that were forming to my eyebrows and eyelashes, it was actually quite peaceful. I felt like I was the only one there besides the deer that passed in front of me, clueless of their surroundings. Tara, Meg & I ran the 2006 Chicago Marathon together, which is where we all qualified for the Boston Marathon. This is only my second marathon EVER, and I think Tara & Meg have both done somewhere between 5-7 a piece. We have our trip all planned out, because everything books so early in Boston for race weekend (not to mention everything costs 3 times more this weekend--hotel rooms = OUTRAGEOUS!). The race is April 21st, and I am so excited that you all will be able to track me on my run to see how I am doing along our 26.2 mile adventure:) I believe that it shows my progress every 5k (or 3.1 miles). For now, here are some photos that Simon caught of us running the Chicago Marathon. We all wore really bright colors to help our families pick us out of the 40,000+ runners!!

No...this is NOT us! ha. These guys are so freakin' fast!

As you can tell by the smiles and waves, this is still "early" in the race. If I remember correctly, I think this is about mile 13 (the half way point). That's me in the orange shirt, Tara in the red, and the Meg is behind Tara also in a red shirt.


Quite possibly one of the world's worst photos of me, but this shows all three of us. You might be thinking to yourself, "man, Tara and Meg look a lot alike." Yes, they are twins! The funny thing is that even though there's not an ounce of family blood between us, I sort of look like them when we're running...same build, blonde hair:)


Oh dear. I STILL feel the pain when I look at these next few photos. You can barely see me there in the orange. I am maybe 100 meters from the finish line, and I remember thinking that it seemed so long. By this time, my body was completely spent. I had to pound my right quad with my fist the last mile and a half because it was tightening up into a big ball! In any case, we finished and we qualified for Boston!!

...another of me finishing

...and another

probably 20 feet from the finish line:)!! Hooray!

This is a shot I stole from my friend, Jon, who has participated in the Boston Marathon before. The Boston Marathon is known for MANY traditions, one of which is "heartbreak hill." Basically, you hit heartbreak hill with about 5.5 miles left to go, and the hill goes UP for over a half mile. In that half mile, you climb 80 vertical feet.


Alright, that's all for now! I'll be posting more photos soon. Up next are newborn pics of a cutie named Avery!!!

the.keller.fam!

A few weeks, I got a call from my elementary school principal! If I had gotten this call 20 years ago, I would have thought I was in BIG TROUBLE!!! This time though, it was great to hear from Mr. Keller!!:) He wanted to plan for family pictures at Christmas time. The only wrinkle was that they had received a message from their son that he would be home some time around Christmas, but they didn't know the exact date since he would be traveling from out of the country. He is in the military, and at best they would know about 2-3 days before he would be home. I told him, no problem--I would just be on-call! I wanted to make sure that they had pictures to remember their time together! I hope that you got to spend quality time together! Check out our fun shots...

Meet the entire Keller Family:

If you haven't noticed, I love to take shots when people don't know I'm taking shots. These end up being my favorites, like the top one shown below:)


Scott, Karl (it's weird to NOT say "Mr. Keller") & Steven...


I think this pic is so cute!


Boys will be boys! Graham & Seth were acting silly and making everyone laugh!



Thanks so much for calling me! I had fun:) I hope you enjoy your slideshow!