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!