Water Safety Day

Last week my sister's daycare posted and handed out flyers about a free water safety day at The Pointe Hilton Squaw Peak Resort. It is an older resort, but it is still awesome. We actually stayed there for my sister's bachelorette party 4 years ago. They have a whole river ranch area with several pools and a lazy river. It is not cheap to stay at the hotel and you have to stay there to use their facilities so we were pretty excited to get to use the resort for free. It actually ended up being really awesome. There were a bunch of vendors with booths talking about water safety. We got a tip about assigning a lanyard to whoever is in charge of watching the kids by the pool which was really cool and I also got some information from a company that makes kid-safe pool fences which we need to install in our new house. The weather and water was perfect. All 3 kids had a blast and loved the lazy river, and I am lazy so I loved it too. I am so glad we went!

 

Too cute!

Cameron and Teddy trying to devise a plan to get inside the fire truck (they did).

Teddy being my baby model while the big kids were inside the truck still.

Well, all three are facing the camera so that is a bonus.

Touring a helicopter.

Cam hugging the giant blow up shark.

Action shot of Cam throwing a shark in the baby pool.

We don't turn down free cupcakes.

 

Poolside reading (aka watching Frozen and Mickey)

 

No better way to end a great morning!

Chidren's Musuem of Phoenix and Freddy's

On Friday night we took advantage of Free First Friday's and headed to the Children's Museum of Phoenix. It is normally kind of expensive so we love taking advantage of the free nights. When we used to come we had to take the stroller which is difficult in a 3-story museum with only 2 elevators on a busy night. It was really nice to have 3 walkers and not need the stroller (although, Teddy kind of wanted to be held the whole time because he was still sleepy). It does get very busy and can get overwhelming if you don't know what you are doing, but I think we do a good job of moving the babies through as many different exhibits as possible. I think they had fun.

After we headed to Freddy's for dinner. All 3 kids were just in heaven. Cameron literally ate the entire time we were there. He just kept eating (growth spurt??). Teddy and Everly thought they were hilarious playing with a stack of booster seats in the corner of the restaurant. Later Everly was "sharing" an ice cream cone with Grandma and decided to feed some to Teddy. We were laughing so hard watching her feed him. He had ice cream everywhere, but they were having a blast! It is no surprise that all 3 of them slept in on Sunday morning! Such a great Friday night!

 

 

On a previous trip she helped paint this castle.

 

Making Mother's Day cards

 

Learning about magnets with Grandma

 

 

Cameron tried to climb in. He was almost successful.

He has little brother/cousin syndrome. He didn't want to put the ball down because he didn't want anyone to take it.

Ice cream cone cheers. She loves to do "cheers" with everything!

Pat's Run 2014

Last Saturday I completed my 6th Pat's Run! It is a 4.2 mile run that ends on the 42 yard line of ASU's Sun Devil Stadium in honor of Pat Tillman and it benefits his foundation. It's probably one of my favorite runs. I didn't post about it last year, but last year I ran my fastest time ever. The year before, I had run my worst time ever. It was still fun and you can read about that race here. While I did not run my best this year, I was 21 weeks pregnant and I am pretty happy to say that it was also not my worst time. I ran at a 9:30 pace and I feel like I could have done a little better if I didn't feel like I had to pee the whole time, but that kind of comes with the pregnancy I guess. It's really kind of crazy to me that I ran better at 21 weeks pregnant this year than at 7 months post partum with Everly two years ago. I have obviously made a lot of changes and I hope to continue to maintain those. I was joined at the run by Justin, his sister Stephanie, my littlest sister, and my brother in law Doug. We were also lucky that my mom and sister helped with Everly so that we could both run. My sister is recovering from knee surgery and although she still could have run faster than me, she stayed with me the whole time and we crossed the finish line together which was pretty cool. Everly got popcorn in the kids area after the race so she was happy. When we were walking back to the car she kept saying, "this is so fun!" Haha! I don't have a ton of pictures as I don't run with my phone on shorter runs anymore but I did steal some race photo proofs so enjoy!

The 3 Larkins finishers!

 

He had some good race photos...for once!

 

He didn't run once in April, and still ran well...men!

It was her first Pat's run and she killed it!

Me and the sister. I don't even really look pregnant.

 

Popcorn freak. It wasn't even 9:00 AM yet.

Toddler Talk

 

We have definitely entered that hilarious toddler stage. Sometimes she just says the funniest things and I have been trying to type them in my phone to remember to share them here. Here are a few recent ones:

 

-Last night we were coming downstairs after shower time and she yells to Justin, "Papa, papa! I'm alive."

 

-She still sleeps with a pacifier and I always make her take it out right when she wakes up. The other morning she put it back in her mouth and I said binkies are for babies. She said, "No they're not. That's not true."

 

-Right before I took that picture above she was talking to her baby and saying, "Baby, wake up. Wake up, baby. Baby, talk to me."

 

Haha!

Easter

We had a pretty good Easter this year. It started on Saturday night when we painted some Easter eggs. None of the kids are quite yet at the age where they understand how to be gentle with an egg. They want to throw it in the cups of die (or across the kitchen). We got a couple pictures though. Everly enjoyed putting stickers on her egg and Cam did too after he had a bath. Shortly into the coloring session he grabbed an unattended cup of blue dye and well, you can see the picture of his high chair below.

The next morning, Everly woke up to her Easter present. We would fill a basket, but she has been really into tea parties lately so we wanted to get her a tea set. She loves it. After that, we started Easter Sunday off with mass like we always do. It is definitely no easy task to make it through a catholic mass with 3 toddlers but we outnumber them so we manage. There were definitely worse kids in church than ours, haha (and worse adults). After mass we headed back to my sister's house for a French toast breakfast. It was delicious. Post-breakfast we were all ready to go into a food-induced coma so we headed home to relax. It sure is nice to just relax on Sunday.
Later that afternoon we went back to my sisters for an egg hunt and dinner. We started with the babies egg hunt. Teddy won, but you can see in the picture below he totally cheated and took a head start. The adult egg hunt was much more competitive and I kid you not, there was actually blood shed. I am pretty sure my little sister's boyfriend thinks we are crazy. We had our traditional honeybaked ham for dinner and some village inn French silk pie for dessert. Eating food all day is actually pretty exhausting but it was a great Easter and our last one with only one kid!

 

 

 

Splashpad Season is here!

Last Saturday we wanted to run a couple of errands and wear out the kids so we decided to run up to the outlets at Anthem. Last minute we decided to pack the swimsuits for the splashpad even though it was overcast and could rain. Thank god we did because the splash pad was a hit! The slashpad at the Anthem Outlets is nothing spectacular but it allows the kids to burn off some energy after we have made them go in several retail stores. Speaking of retail stores, I got 3 long sleeve thermals and two long sleeve onesies at the gap outlet for .97 each!!!! Anyways, this was our first splashpad of the year and it was perfect. The kids had a blast. Teddy couldn't even walk last summer so it was really fun to see him play. He just kept trying to drink the water. Everly was also a lot more adventurous with the splashing then she has been in previous summers. Cameron was having a rough morning but just lit up when he was in the splashpad. He didn't want to leave but he was getting cold so eventually we had to remove him, haha. I love that there are so many splashpads in AZ because the pools are still too cold but it is definitely hot enough out for the babies to want to get wet! Can't wait to take them again!



I call this: 1. Teddy getting into trouble 2. Happy brothers 3. Dang it, the grass is wet.