November!

Cooking Class, a photo by tracyg00 on Flickr.

November was jam-packed with activities. We started the month with a kids cooking class on a Tuesday night at "The Kids Table" in Bucktown. We went with the Swanson girls and Sarah Herrmann and sweet potato pancakes were on the menu.



The kids had a fun time making the pancakes and just as much fun eating them.





Two days later, we had Jake's friend Simone over for a playdate after school. I think I wrote about this a little bit already, but here's a photo of them decorating some cupcakes for Simone to bring home to her sisters:



Megan and Jake took a 4 week art class with the Swansons at the Niles Park District. They did a lot of painting and had a decent time, but Megan thought she could just do that kind of art at home. She probably needs a bit more of a challenge. Here's the group:



When Darin has to travel for work, we usually send him photos to his phone. Here's a quick photo that we sent...."New PJ's":



Mimi and Papa stayed with us for a little while before heading to Florida. The kids loved walking Harry. I wish I could say the same about Harry liking it. Here's Jake walking/dragging poor Harry:



I can't believe all of the above happened within the first week of the month. On November 9th, Jenny and I went to Vegas for Jimmy and Michele's wedding. Darin stayed behind with the kids. The ceremony and reception were really nice and we had a fun time with not enough sleep and no voice after one day. Fun, fun. Here's a ceremony photo:



And a shot of Jimmy, Michele and Dane at the reception:



The following weekend, we went up to the cottage and brought Francesca with us. I took them to Kettle Moraine to do some hiking. It was a pretty chilly day, but not too bad if you were moving.



We went off trail a bit to find some good photo locations. Here's one of my fav's:



And we also made it to the kids' mountain bike easy path. We didn't have bikes, but it was fun to run over the log jumps:



The Cleavelands joined us on Saturday afternoon and of course, the kids all love computer time (not really sure what they were even doing here):



And they always love to play on the trailer. Here's a top shot of Jake and Pierce:



Jenny and Flip hosted Thanksgiving, which was great for me because we launched a new Thanksgiving day 5k in Evanston. I would have been crazy to try and take on that holiday this year! The kids always love Aunt Jenny's house:



On Nov. 29, our Brownies participated in a publishing program at Journey World (a Girl Scout facility downtown). They had a really great time and was seriously the best $10 we've ever spent for an activity. It's like a little mini city there and they each took on a role to create a newspaper.



That is a quick wrap-up of the month. Perhaps I'll get more caught up and be able to add more detail to these posts while it's fresh!

Happy New Year

Golf Range, a photo by tracyg00 on Flickr.

Well, so much for that resolution of updating this blog at least once per week. I couldn't even start out the year right!! I think this photo is from October when we took the kids to the range by Darin's office (they were out of school and he met us for lunch). Too bad it was so late in the season.....but they had fun anyway. Here's Megan, too:



Megan and Jake will periodically play with play-dough. They made a slice of birthday cake here:



We coordinated a service project for Megan's Brownie Troop this past fall. We collected gently worn shoes for an organization called Share Your Soles. They distribute shoes to those in need all over the world. Our girls collected over 800 pairs of shoes. We delivered them to the warehouse and Mona (the founder) said that she believed that was a record for any scout troop. Woo hoo!

Here's Megan and Mona:



In mid-October, the kids ran in the Frank Lloyd Wright Youth Mile in Oak Park. This was Megan's second mile race and Jake's first. This is right before the start:



I started the race with both kids. I told Megan to run ahead, but she waited for us at one of the first intersections. I encouraged her again to go ahead and then we didn't see her until the finish. I ran the whole race with Jake. He walked a couple of times and when we were about 2/3 of the way through he said to me, "I think I'm like Dad and Megan's like you. I'm not a runner. I just like t-ball". Fine with me - he gave it a try! Here are both of them after the race:



I ran the Monster Half Marathon on October 29. And, I did it all in costume (I even kept the mask on the whole time). I pieced my outfit together with some of the kids' accessories. It was pretty fun.



I put out our extensive Halloween decorations in October (compliments of my creative mom). This is really all we put out:



We had the Forest Glen neighborhood party. Jake dressed as The Thing and Megan was an angel.





Jake had a few wardrobe changes for the Halloween festivities. He dressed as Venom (Black Spiderman) for one school party and then dressed as a Transformer for trick-or-treating. I'm sure my mom would have been so disappointed with my store-bought costumes....but that's what he REALLY wanted to be. I swear!



They scored a ton of candy.



And that just about wraps up October! Let's see if I can get caught up one of these weeks!