A Turkey Day Run and Gobble Wobble

Ahh, Thanksgiving. You are here again. I love you.

I am thankful for: my husband, kids, family, friends, and good health. For the ability to run 3.1 miles in beautiful 70 degree weather in a fantastic city and then gorge myself on a feast. For time spent enjoying the holidays at the festival of lights. And for pumpkin pie! Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours!

Here we are at the 33rd Annual Turkey Day Run and Gobble Wobble

Noah ran the kids race for the 4/5 year olds. He is very proud of his medal!

Me, my mom, and sis at the county park lights.

And...riding the train through the lights!

A Beautiful Morning

This morning was beautiful! Sunny and 65 degrees outside. It was a perfect day for a run, so run I did!

Actually, I started my training for the Charleston Half-Marathon on January 15th so I would have had to run even if the weather had sucked but I digress. After the run, I was stretching outside when I realized that today Liam is 7 months old. For some reason that fact amazed me. 7 months! It feels like he was just born and now he is past the halfway point on his way to being a year old. I remember this time last year feeling so frustrated by the fact that the bigger I got, the less I was able to run. It felt like it would be forever until I had my body back to "normal" (whatever that is!) and I could run the way I wanted. Now, here I am and I am back to running the way that I want and I am feeling like my old self....the big difference of course being the  very cute little boy riding in my jogging stroller!

I have a ton of pics to post from the last few weeks but I will leave you with this picture of the family from a couple Sundays ago when we had Liam baptized.

No Werewolves Allowed

So we were eating lunch with Wes at Firehouse Subs this afternoon when Noah said the most bizarre thing.

"Thank goodness werewolves can't come in here."

Wes and I both looked at him in confusion and that at each other like, what the heck is he talking about?!

"You know", he said pointing to the front window. "That sign right there. It means they don't let werewolves in this store." He was of course referring to this....

I almost died laughing! I mean, sure, who wouldn't look at that and interpret it to mean "no werewolves allowed"?

Halloween Part 2...Finally

I should have warned you that when I said in my last post that I would put up pictures from the rest of Halloween tomorrow, what I really meant was I would do it over a week later. Oh well, story of my life.

So trick-or-treating. It was all the usual suspects and all the usual fun. There were tons of kids, even more parents, friendly neighbors with candy, and our very own bar on the go (a.k.a., Tonya's jogging stroller filled with a cooler of her special martinis!) Noah was in heaven parading around the neighborhood with all his buddies and Liam was great, only fussing to be held at the very end. A blast was had by all and I will let these pictures tell you the rest!

Halloween Part 1: Thursday and Friday

We had the busiest Halloween this year! There were so many fun activities that I will have to break the blog entry up into two posts. Here goes!

Lets start at the beginning. In August Noah informed me that he wanted to be Buzz Lightyear for Halloween. Not wanting to be caught at the last minute combing the aisles at Party City for something (anything!) like last year, I went ahead and ordered the costume 2 months early. Of course then Noah told me that he had decided to be a T-Rex. I told him maybe next year, but this year he was being Buzz cause Mommy already paid for it! In a rare moment of agreeableness he consented and so we had our costume. (Liam got to be a skeleton because it was on sale for 40% off at Babies R Us a few weeks ago. I can only be so prepared folks!)

On Thursday the fun began when Noah joined me for my Zumba class. It was family Zumba that night and the instructor made costumes mandatory. Noah was happy to break out Buzz for the first time and I grabbed some cat accessories to pair with my all black spandex. Don't worry, its not as scary as it sounds.

My regular Zumba buddy Jennifer brought her daughter Ann Connolly too. Those two had a blast dancing around. Watching Noah attempt the choreography to Thriller was priceless!

On Friday Noah had his class Halloween party. All the kids brought their costumes to change into and then enjoyed pizza and dessert. Noah of course ate goldfish and water. I didn't snap any pictures because I had Liam in one hand - and Noah's unwanted slice of pizza in the other - but lets just say it was 12 kids running around in costumes laughing and being crazy.

Finally Friday night rolled around and the adult fun began! One of our neighbors was having a costume party and we (well, I ) decided it would be fun to go. Wes balked at the whole costume idea but I came up with a solution to pacify "Mr. No Fun".  After googling couples costumes online I found the idea of going as War and Peace - Wes was a soldier and I was a hippie. This worked for two reasons. First, the "costume" that Wes wore was just his Air Force uniform so it was nothing embarrassing or attention grabbing. And second, both of our costumes cost absolutely nothing. Free always makes my husband happy! We joined some friends and spent the evening just having fun and hanging out without kids. It was fabulous!



Wes in his costume.

Katy, me and Jan... a.k.a.  Daisy Duke, the hippie, and Cleopatra.

Good thing Cesar brings his own wine everywhere.  Joe is always a good guy to have around!

Daisy and cousin Bo. Zach, you were definitely the better Bo! :)


Well that's it for now. I will finish up tomorrow with the rest of the Halloween fun!