Halloween

I love the holidays but time sure does fly by. We had a great Halloween. Kate decided to be Tinkerbell so I went against my rule of not sewing Halloween costumes and headed out the day before our ward party and found Tinkerbell material, drew our pattern and made this outfit. Kate was all excited for it for the first day. I did convince her to put it back on for Halloween for a picture hoping she'd still go for it but she instead decided to be a cheerleader. It works out that OSU is the same color as High school Musical. I should've thought of that before and for sure could've settled on cheerleader much earlier.
Jack was more than happy to be Batman. Lilybug was going to be a lady bug but ended up wearing this pumpkin that has been used every year since Kate wore it at 8 months. It's become tradition to walk the parade with cousins collecting candy. Of course we have way too much but luckily as usual they forgot all about it after a week and over half of it is still sitting in their buckets.

Money maker

Kate always comes right down in the morning when she wakes up but a few days ago I saw her light was on for quite a while so I went up to check on her. She was sitting on the floor surrounded by her little "treasures". She said she was sorting into a "keep" pile and "giveaway" pile. She says pointing to the giveaway pile "I'm going to give all these away ......(pause).....for $5". After giving excuses all summer for not wanting to do a lemonade stand I gave in on this warm day for her to set up a table in the driveway with her treasures. Thanks to a few friends who graciously bought her stuff she made $5. Jack didn't care so much about selling but didn't want to miss out on the action and brought his favorite toys out. Kate is always thinking of ways to make money. Here's an example of a conversation we had while putting her to bed a few weeks ago.

Kate: We need someone who makes cars to build one like the ice cream truck but has a shelf for Hot Chocolate.
Mom: What would you do with that?
Kate: I'd drive around and sell it to everyone
Mom: Did you know Jane's Dad sells cars?
She then thinks about this for a minute and then says in a tone telling me she doesn't think this is much help to her "well yeah but do you think he could build us one?"

This is just one of many entrepreneurial ideas from her. I think I see part of her future right here and now.

First Annual Benefit Tot Trot

I have to say thanks to my friend Shannon for inviting us to our first Tot Trot 4 years ago. It was so fun and since Shannon moved away 2 years later I've wanted to host our own Tot Trot. One idea led to another and we were able to make it a benefit for a little boy named Hatcher. He's just 10 months old and has had 3 open heart surgeries and will have one more in a year or so. In just 3 weeks we were able to get about 100 kids registered and we ended up raising over $1000 for Hatcher's family. The support and offers for help was incredible and it just makes us want to go bigger and better next year. The kids all got t-shirts, race numbers, finishers medals, and goody bags filled with stuff from our sponsors. Here are a few of the pics from the event.




And since I'm in such a nostalgic mood lately here is a picture from that first Tot Trot 2004.. (Kandace if you see this post - do you remember this pic when our girls posed as rappers?)

Then the next year - TOT TROT 2005 Starting Line

And they're off..................

What I'll miss....

I think as the kids grow I'm going to miss homework assignments requiring them to cut open a pumpkin to count and sort the seeds. I'm going to miss them snuggling into me during basketball practice because in his words "I just wanna take a break". Life really is good with kids isn't it?

Remember that?

So last weekend I got to run my first race since Lily joined our family. On on our way there Kate asks if I'm going to win. Not wanting to sound negative I said, "hmmm well maybe but it's ok if I don't". Then she asked if I remembered when I won that really big race and brought a medal home. I wasn't sure which race she was talking about as I've never won one but she has cheered me on at a few. She said, "ya know when Dad brought you those socks." I was shocked - she has to be talking about a race where Ray was there too and something with socks. Well the only one that can be took place when she was 20 months old. No kidding, just over a year and half and she can remember that? I don't think we've talked about the socks since then for her just to be repeating a conversation she's heard.

So the race was my first marathon in Indiana in 2004. I had gotten a new kind of sock and was undecided about which one to go with. I think I was nervous about it being my longest race ever and paid too much attention to my socks so they of course started to bother me. So as I ran by Ray after a mile I asked him to find my other socks in the bag and have them ready next time I passed him - big mistake, don't ever do this. The next time I passed him was mile 12 and of course he was standing out in the cold with our baby girl bundled up in the stroller with my socks ready. I stopped, sat down and switched socks - again, big mistake, don't ever do this. I got up to start running and felt like weights were pulling me down. I should never have stopped. That is the sock incident. I wonder what else she remembers from so long ago. And BTW those first socks are my favorite kind to run in now.
I love good memories, so just for fun here are some pictures from that fun day - it was freezing!

We all drove from Columbus the night before and each one of these gals had little ones that our husbands each watched after in the freezing cold.

Isn't she cute?

All the after shots make me laugh because I thought I had a huge smile on my face. I remember thinking I was so happy to be done I was thrilled. But I was so tired and numb from the cold that it wasn't the big grin I thought I had!

So back to last weekend my SIL Trisch and I ran a 5K trail run. I thought it was so fun. The kids even got to jump in the fun run at the last minute. They did great and each took a medal home. My wonderful mummers watched the kids for me while I ran. There was a cut-athon going on as well that Trisch and my Mom took advantage of. For $15 you could get your hair cut and all the $ went towards a good cause.

Spooky

I think Jack has seen Scooby Doo one too many times. He loves the word Spooky and frankly we love hearing him say it. "Jack is that Scary?" .... "No, it's spooky"

Oh what a difference two years makes. Here are the kids at Jo-Ann's 2 yrs ago, then scroll down for the "spooky" ones taken last week at Target.

Spoooooky!

Strawberries

So apparently strawberries are pretty good plants to have because I've hardly done
anything and this is about what we get every few days: Eric came and planted them for us, I've weeded once, watered a handful of times and I've seen him outside unable to resist weeding when he comes over. We love having fresh berries and are lucky they had so many plants to spare.

Hiking/walking

We're slowly discovering all the gems in the area. This was a perfect mini hike for us. There was a cool waterfall, lots of pebble throwing, and of course lots of searching for sticks that look like guns followed by shooting the bad guys all the way back down!

The School post

I've loved seeing all my friend's little munchkins head off to school. We needed a school post of our own as little missy braved the big world and has been in school for 2 weeks now. She's loving it of course which makes it all so much easier to let go for a few hours of the day!

Growing Baby...

Happy Baby...

Jumping Beans!

Best buy of the summer.......

As Jack takes his first jump I look over and see him going headfirst into the grass. He cushioned it with what looked like a well rehearsed somersault. Although he is an expert at falling gracefully it reminded me why we are holding off on getting a full-sized tramp. Found this on craigslist this week and we are all loving the entertainment it gives!

Summer Fun

Summer fun.... cousins visiting, swimming, movies, shopping, tea parties, more swimming, gymnastics, fair rides, cotton candy. We have had a fabulous week - thanks for coming, we miss you already!