First track meet

Last Wednesday we entered Hannah into her first track meet. She loves to run (although not in a straight line) and her unbiased mama would like to have at least one kid be a runner, so we thought it was a good idea. Which is exactly what it turned out to be, a good "idea". First of all, it was kids nine and under (Hannah being one of two 2 yr olds, the rest being around 6 and up), it was 60 meters and secondly, they actually used a starter gun. Which made the two year olds turn and run to their parents behind them. Once we got Hannah going the right direction, she managed about four steps before bursting into tears. We have it all on video. We also have it on video me trying to take pictures and then stopping and trying to run with Hannah and then just picking her up and comforting her.

We had even practiced starting blocks, but she had a bit of performance anxiety.

I just bought a new running skirt, so I thought Hannah could run in a skirt too. Here she is totally focused.

Here she is four steps out, with her hand still in her mouth. Not quite the running form I had taught her.

She got a ribbon and she didn't even get to the finish line. She wasn't too thrilled at this point, but we got her a sucker and popcorn so the night wasn't a total bust.

Here she is, hanging on to daddy. Still needing some comfort after the starting gun and the tears.

Olivia loved the whole thing. She just walked around the infield of the track, loving the grass and all the people.

Also, I finally finished painting the cabinet, then I painted the inside of glass jars I had kept from various things with colors from all the extra paint I have. (Both ideas from Pinterest). I like it.

Painting our dining room table. My color decision consisted of walking into the hardware store and finding the most durable paint I could find, which only came in four colors; black, gray, yellow and white. So I picked gray. It cost me $10 and the table was free. I'm hoping to make it through my life never buying a dining room table (I have lofty goals).

We are really loving summer and can't believe it's already July 4th. Here in Indiana, people celebrate with fireworks for like three straight weeks. Hannah is scared of fireworks. We even took her outside at 10pm so she could see them to see if it would make her less scared. That didn't work. So we are taking her to the official fireworks tonight to see how it goes. If she's too scared, we will go home. But I'm hoping it's good for her to see what the loud booms are. Needless to say, no one is sleeping well in this house (except for Liv who is sleeping like a rock through everything.)

Happy 4th of July! For a full discourse on Why America Celebrates the 4th of July, read this.

My favorite part:

The remainder of the document is a bill of indictment accusing King George III of some 30 offenses, some constitutional, some legal, and some matters of policy. The combined charges against the king were intended to demonstrate a history of repeated injuries, all having the object of establishing "an absolute tyranny" over America. Although the colonists were "disposed to suffer, while Evils are sufferable," the time had come to end the relationship: "But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government."
One charge that Jefferson had included, but Congress removed, was that the king had "waged cruel war against human nature" by introducing slavery and allowing the slave trade into the American colonies. A few delegates were unwilling to acknowledge that slavery violated the "most sacred rights of life and liberty," and the passage was dropped for the sake of unanimity. Thus was foreshadowed the central debate of the American Civil War, which Abraham Lincoln saw as a test to determine whether a nation "conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal" could long endure.