"Before and After Party"

We interrupt this Mantra Monday for the Baby Tea Leaves "Before and After Party." If you're coming here from there, then you know the story: Christie O. is doing the March of Dimes' Walk for Babies, in honor of her son (3 years old now, but born prematurely) and for other families dealing with the premature birth of their babies. She chose the "before and after party" because the walk happens around her son's birthday, and it's a reflective time for her. She explains it a lot better than I do, so I hope you'll head over and check it out!

I thought I'd share my web album of photos of my health quest. There's a lot of "before," but there will never be an "after," since this is an ongoing process. Milestones include my before-and-after for the Baby Tea Leaves "Hot for the Holidays" challenge, my "arrival in Onederland" photo, and my two 5K races (of which I'm especially proud).

I'll have to verbally share the "before and after" of our Easter egg hunt. Because Easter weather is kind of iffy and we don't want our dog to find the chocolates first, Mr. Cottontail's tradition at Case de la Pubsgal is to leave the eggs for Mr. Handsome-and-Handy and myself to hide. This year, while the kids happily played with their basket loot, we did the hunt-before-the-hunt: picking up the "lawn sculptures" left by our creatures. "Well, this is parenting, alright" I chuckled to myself. "The kids get to hunt for brightly colored eggs filled with candy. We grown-ups get to hunt for poop." And, of course, it's worth it to see another year of excitement and fun...although we'll have to find harder hiding places, they found 39 eggs in no time! There was one egg unaccounted for, and we grown-ups (who hid them) must've searched for 10 minutes before we found it. In plain sight, on the hose reel. We should have called the kids back out to find it, but we were a little unsure that there was a 40th egg.