Being three...

Wow - what a week. We are all exhausted. Nothing particularly exciting happened this week, but I think it's the fall out from the princess birthday party, then Easter weekend, and by now we're all ready to do nothing! I always have the best of intentions to do nothing on the weekend, and then there are things that just crop up that have to get done. Such is life I suppose.
Last week I had to give 2 trainings on safety at work. Although I've been in charge of safety at work for quite some time, I haven't always given the presentations for our training sessions. We had a consultant come in and do it in the past. She still works for our company, however in my goals this year I have taken over a number of leadership roles on the safety committee, and included in that is doing the presentations at our in-house trainings. So that was Thursday and believe it or not, I am not a huge fan of talking in front of a group of people. Especially when they're just sitting there looking at me like "tell me more!" I'm more accustomed to smaller discussion type meetings where others give their input. I got through both of them and even got two thumbs up from my boss!
On Friday Brant got another emergency deadline thrown in his lap at work. This is becoming almost comical as he gets these "emergency projects" at least weekly, and sometimes when he's in the middle of one they'll tell him to abandon it and start another. So he was at work late on Friday night...poor guy. There's not a worse day of the week to have to stay late in my opinion. We know we are blessed to have these jobs and aren't really complaining. We're just trying to look at it as a learning experience.
Last weekend Sara and I topped out our training for the La Jolla Half Marathon - we did a whopping 13miles which is how long the race will be. The race is next Sunday, so this weekend we backed off a bit and did a 10miler this morning. The hard part for us is to only do 4miles three days this week. I know this sound ridiculous to people that are not possessed by the running demon, but for us running is like medicine to the soul. We're excited for the race next Sunday and hoping for cool weather. Overcast and about 60degrees at the finish (around 9am) would be perfect. Last year there was a heat wave and it was 85degrees at the finish - it was torture! Cross your fingers for us!
Ellie is in rare form. Sometimes she is so sweet that we just want to eat her up like a piece of candy, but other times she is so defiant that we don't know what to do. Today we were in the shoe store and she was misbehaving. I asked her to be a good girl and she looked me straight in the eye and said "Momma - you're wasting my time." What? No child of mine is going to talk to me like that! Sometimes I just don't know what to do with her. I told her it was not OK to talk to anyone like that and she said it again. Often I don't know when to ignore her and when to come down hard on her. This parenting business is hard! We were in that same shoe store today and she pointed and said "Momma - look at that man - he's making funny faces!". There was a gentleman with Downs Syndrome. She's only 3 and doesn't know about handicapped people, but that's still not ok. The worst part is that she wouldn't listen to me when I told her to stop. I scooped her up (against her will) and took a bucking and crying child to the other end of the store to try to explain that not everyone is the same and it's not nice to point and laugh at anyone. I'm sure we'll have to revisit this and I'm sure not looking forward to it.
The picture in this post is one from Ellie's most recent professional photo shoot. This is the same woman who did Ellie's Santa pictures last year. We really like her style and she's able to get good shots even without the cooperation of the child.
Hope everyone is having a nice weekend.