I've had other picture-less posts before - but not when I've had a camera full of great pictures.  I've lost my camera's PC interface cord.  I figured it out a couple of days ago (hence the vintage pictures of Nate) but I was hoping it would turn up by now.  It hasn't.  And so it looks like I am going to have to buy one - and my camera is quite old - so I hope its not too hard to find one.  Its probably hanging out with my missing iPod shuffle and missing eye cream (yes - eye cream).

Saturday I ran in the Children's Memorial Hospital second annual Race for the Kids which benefits the hospital.  It was a 5K run/walk and the first 5K I've run since before I got pregnant with Finley.  I was just hoping to finish it given that I've only been running again for a month or two at most averaging 2 times per week.  The good news - I finished.  I averaged about a 12 minute mile but there were plenty of other people in the back of the crowd with me and it was a lot of fun - we ran on the gorgeous lakefront path and next year I hope to have a team in honor of my beautiful princess.  Here's the nerdy part.  I found myself tearing up a couple of times before the race.  First - I had lined up at the start behind several people wearing t-shirts with a picture of a beautiful little boy on the back and they read, "Caleb Jacob Tokarski 4/6/2006 - 4/12/2010"  He was Nate's age.  I started crying.  Then they had a special guest kicking off the race.  He was an 11 year old cancer survivor.  I started to cry.  I was looking around the crowd to see if there were any others like me.  There weren't (at least that I could see - haha).  That is when I decided I wanted to have a team.  Finley deserves a team.  And so next year - she shall have a team!!

Saturday night was equally as special - Finley had her first official outing.  A lot of our friends and family know this - prior to Finley's heart repair surgery - we didn't really bring her out of the house. Not to the store, not to friends/family's house.  The only place we EVER took Finley was to her clinic appointments or to the hospital.  You see,  Finley came home from the hospital at the start of cold and flu season (November).  We wanted to keep her as healthy as possible leading up to her surgery.  And so as crazy as it was - we never took her out.  We didn't want to take the chance that she'd get sick because we weren't certain how her little body would handle it.  And in spite of never taking her out - she came down with three colds - all three required trips to the ER and two resulted in hospitalizations.  Unfortunately as vigilant as we were trying not to expose her to anything, the reality is that Nate goes to daycare and is exposed to a ton of junk there and she has 5-7 therapy sessions a week - as adamant as we are about hand washing and using sanitizer - it doesn't prevent everything.  So anyway - while Finley has had a couple of brief trips to the store and such since she's been home - this was her first true outing.  We went up to Grayslake (our old stomping ground) to visit Mike and Susie Rowan and their son (and Nate's friend) Quinn.  We put Finley's mats out on the patio and she rolled around with the warm late afternoon sun shining on her and we sat in their lovely backyard and enjoyed the evening watching the kids play.  We enjoyed ourselves as much as the kids did and the smile never came off of Finley's face!

And so Father's Day began the same way my evening ended last night.  Pretty much as soon as we walked in the door last night - I got a sharp shooting pain on the left side of my head and it was quite literally one of the worst, if not THE worst headache I had ever had.  I even skipped pumping, took two Tylenol PM and went straight to bed.  I woke up to do Finley's feed several hours later at 4 am and NONE of the pain had subsided.  It was crazy.  When I woke up this morning, it was slightly better, but I just felt completely exhausted.  Like barely functioning exhausted.  So as soon as Mike came home from the gym - he sent me upstairs to rest.  I slept for an hour, tried to get up, and then ended up going back to sleep for two more hours.  Fortunately, while I didn't end up getting up until after 1, we spent the day together as a family and for dinner I made a new Crunchy French Toast recipe (that we were supposed to have for breakfast) and then later this evening we celebrated Father's Day with the cake that Nate picked out that said "My Dad is a Super Hero" and we sang Happy Birthday.  No.  Its not Mike's birthday but Nate thinks that every cake is a birthday cake and that eating cake = singing Happy Birthday.  Gotta love it. Who doesn't love a special rendition of Happy Birthday every now and again?

And so I've decided that this post won't be a picture-less post after all.   In honor of Father's Day and in celebration of Mike who is one of the most amazing dads of all time - one of my favorite pictures of all time.  Happy Father's Day!