Welcome!

Welcome to our blog!  I decided to start blogging for two main reasons - first and most importantly to keep everyone up to date on Olivia!  I have been slacking on taking pictures of her so I figured if I had somewhere to post the photos without overloading Facebook I would be more likely to photograph our darling daughter. 

Olivia is now 13 months and I say this every month but this is my favorite age yet.  Right after she turned one we noticed that she was understanding a lot more.  We can now tell her to do something (bring us her blankie, bring us her baby, etc.) and she will do it!  If we ask her if she wants to have lunch, she will head straight for the kitchen.  My absolute favorite thing to tell her to do is to give Mommy a hug.  Seeing her toddle towards me, arms out, is the best feeling ever!

Can you even handle her preciousness?

                                                 

My favorites.

                                                                 

Secondly - I am selfishly starting to blog to hold myself accountable while training for the Des Moines Marathon.  I'm starting to get into the rough part of the training and I thought if I had somewhere to post how training was going it might help me stay motivated when  my alarm clock goes off at 4:45 a.m.  Right now I'm trying to do all my runs early in the morning before Jason and Olivia get up.  I want my training to impact them both as little as possible.  Of course that will change when I have to run 16, 17, 20(!!) miles on a Saturday morning, but for now I'm gone and back before they both even think about waking up. 

This blog very well might only be interesting to me and that's okay :)  For now I'll leave you with one of Olivia's latest tricks!