Trunk or Treat

We had our ward Trunk or treat last night. Aside from it being very cold, compounded with Graham being sick, it was a fun little night. That afternoon I went out to clean out the trunk and decorate it. I started by making a spider web out of yarn. Then I added a few embellishments :

Spider with a real, dead fly in it's stomach cavity,

Check. Gross and ironic, but Check.

That cottony spider web stuff,

Check. I hate working with it, but check.

Large rubber spider to sit in the center of the web,

Check.
Little spiders hanging out in the web as well,
Check.
The finished product:

I did end up adding some glowing balloon ghosts. I put glow sticks into balloons and hung those up too.
So then it was time for the party. Grammy and Grandad came up for dinner and to see the kids get ready for the evening. My mom made this awesome Captain Hook costume for Nate. Graham was Thor. Although he would not wear his helmet or carry his hammer. And after Nate got a mustache, Graham wanted one too.

Nate won the contest of who had the most involved costume. He had the coat, the belt, the sword, a neck ruffle and the hand ruffles. The hook obviously, and then the wig and the hat. I was only able to find an adult pirate wig, so I had to cut it down a little bit or it would have gone down to his bum.

Here is that mummy costume that I was talking about. Jesse asked if I would make him a mummy costume, and I had forgotten what a pain it was to make the first one, much less a large one, so I said yes. I did end up getting it done, and I think that it turned out pretty well. I love the head wrapping. It really adds to the costume.Here is a family shot. Olivia was Olivia the Pig. I think I've talked about that before. I was a Marathon runner. (duh!)

When we got home from the freezing cold night, and we put everyone into bed, we couldn't find a paci for Olivia. So while we were looking for one, she did some looking of her own. She found what she was looking for.

Happy Halloween Everyone! It's snowing here today, and the forecast is calling for 8-10 inches, so we may have to take the sleds trick or treating on Monday night!

Jinxing it

So this may be like announcing you're pregnant when you're only 4 weeks along, but we found out today that the owners accepted our offer on a house today. It's a short sale though, so we still have all of the headache with the bank. It's valued at more than we can afford, so it'll just depend on how low the bank is willing to go with us. Keep your fingers crossed for us that the bank will be nice, because well, this is pretty much more than I could have dreamed of for our first house!

But speaking of dreaming, I dreamt last night that we bought a mansion. I think that it stemmed from a conversation with my mom about a house only having one set of stairs, instead of how some houses have the back staircase. Anyway, this house that we bought had no less than 5 staircases. (And that's not counting the ladder from one level to the other at one place.) Plus, it came with a staff. Like, there were 2 crafters on staff, for when I wanted to do scrapbook demonstrations (I haven't scrapbooked in like 8 years, so I would need a demo if I were to do it now!) There was also a grounds keeper, but much to my chagrin, apparently there was no cleaning staff. Who does that? Employs 2 crafters and no cleaning staff? Anyway, I guess in my mind that's how I feel about this house- that it's a grand mansion compared to what I'm in now.

Sorry about the first photo. It's from the old camera and for some reason they don't like to turn automatically.

This mummy costume was way easier and cuter than the one I'm making right now. Stay tuned for more details.....

If not Math, then art

So Nate won't admit it, but I have a feeling that he enjoys art class just as much as he enjoys Math. I say this because he is always drawing at home. I shared this a while back on Facebook. It was something he did on the whiteboard easel. We kept it up there for a while. The main part of the picture is supposed to be Jesse lifting weights. I love the word bubble! Also, the tiny Superman at the bottom of the picture. That is what I love about Nate's pictures- all of the little details that he adds. Last night he had another gem that I just had to share all of the details of. Here is the whole picture:

This is a detail of the bottom. Outside of the haunted house. "Deth" abounds. Grave stones for Nate, daddy, mom and baby. It appears that Graham has escaped the horror. (At least until Nate learns how to spell "Graham")

Even though there are plenty of ghosts on this picture, this is not actually a ghost. It is in fact a person dressed up as a ghost trick or treating. You can tell because it has arms and legs.

I love this ghost chasing a person.

The bats that he drew are priceless. Look at those fangs. I love the look on the ghost's face here. I'm sure it's not intentional, but that is one scared looking ghost!

And of course a "mume" is included (mummy)

Plus, the random owl thrown in. I love the wings on this owl. Where in the world did he learn to draw such a cute owl?But my favorite part of the whole thing? This tiny little part:

Sure enough- "Jusden Bevr" made an appearance in the horror of this Halloween town. (Look at his hair!!!)

One of my favorite parts of being a mom is getting the chance to see a little bit into the minds of my children (however disturbing it may be at times!) I love getting to see the creativity really start to take hold in Nate as he is maturing. (I don't love the 2 yards of scotch tape that he went through to tape his masterpiece to the wall however)

Math

Today we went to Nate's parent teacher conference, and his teacher said that he had told her that Math was his favorite subject. So we were talking about it, and he confirmed that Math was his favorite. He then said, "do you want to know why Math is my favorite? It's because you can learn new things, like 10+0=10" So I said, "do you want to know the other reason why Math is your favorite? It's because it's in your blood. Your Grandpa White was a Mathematician." And then I explained what that meant, about how he did math for his job, like Jesse does computers for his job. After this explanation, Graham immediately chimed in with "Mommy, what's in Nate's blood? Math is in his blood?" Ahh, to be 3 and take everything at face value!

Check 26.2 off the Bucket List

Or at least that's what my medal says! I've never had a bucket list really, and I can honestly say that if I did have a bucket list I would not have put "run a marathon" on it, 'cause that's what crazy people do. But as I've mentioned before, last spring my running partner said, let's run a marathon, and after a bit of a misunderstanding (I thought I heard "half marathon") I signed up to run a marathon. It all happened very quickly, with me only thinking about if I wanted to do it for about 15 minutes before I signed up to run.
Well, 7 or 8 months passed, and there I was, at the starting line of the Baltimore marathon.
We actually started our experience the night before. Cindy and I got our families together to have a carb dinner (and let me tell you, I loved the carb loading 3 days before the race, hmmmm.... what shall I eat, how about bread? muffins? potatoes? yes, all of it!) We left dinner to go and spend the night in Baltimore. The race started at 8 am, and we thought it would be nice to not have the stress of driving there that morning, so we spent the night at the Marriott just a block from the starting line. After a good night sleep, that is when we found ourselves with all of the other crazies at the starting line.
For those of you who don't know about the Baltimore Marathon, it is described as "challenging but fair" I'd say that the "fair" part is negotiable. To put it into perspective, the world record is somewhere around a 2:03, and this year the marathon was won in a 2:15. (By a Kenyan, no surprise there!) And it's a decent sized race- there are about 25,000 runners in all of the events, and about 6,000 in the full marathon. Anyway, there are a ton of hills. The first 5 or so miles are mostly up hill. Then a little down hill, and flat area for a good amount of time. We actually hit the half way point, and it was a PR for a half marathon. That's when I knew that we had been going too fast and there was no way we were going to be able to stay with the pace group that we had joined. I'll say that the closest I ever came to hitting "the wall" was at about mile 9. I just kept on thinking how tired I was, and how much my feet hurt, and how much I wished we were only running 13 miles, and how much further we had to go. At about mile 14 we hit the major up hill area, and that's when we broke off from the pace group. I think that helped me to move past the wall. At mile 16 we were joined by a friend. Rebecca is a girl in the ward who runs lots of marathons, and had just done the St George Marathon 3 weeks previous. Her son had been training for the half marathon, but at the last minute, he had a soccer game rescheduled, and he had to miss the race, so she ran in his place. She waited at her 3 mile point, our 16 mile point for us to show up, and she ran the rest of the course with us. It is up hill from about mile 15-20, and then you get a mile and a half rest while you run around this lake, and then it is up hill again from mile 21 to about mile 23. Then there is a mostly down hill area after that to the finish line, but there are still a few hills thrown in, and you can't truly say that you have finished the hills until you hit mile 25. YUK! But Rebecca kept us going. She made us pick points to start back up running whenever we stopped to walk. She rubbed this stuff on our knees to reduce the pain. She carried anything we wanted her to. It was great. It probably would have taken us another half an hour at least if she had not been with us. But we finished the race in about 5:18. Since our goal was to finish, I figure we did it!
Our families came to cheer us on. They missed us at mile 9, it took them a while to get into the city and park. But they hung out and waited to see us when we ran back by the Harbor at mile 13. I actually missed seeing Graham and Jesse because I guess Graham had just fallen down. These are some pictures of them playing while waiting for us to run by. The first one is with Grandad I think at the steps to the Science Center.

Jesse said that Olivia just walked up and down the streets the whole time. Which is what she does at home. Or at the bus stop. Or at church. Or anywhere she is allowed to be set free. That little girl likes to be moving!

This is the boys cheering at the almost 26 mile point. They had a while to cheer at this point.

They gave out high fives!

How cute is this picture? They are with Cindy's little boy, Andrew.

And here we come. There is one black arrow pointing to me. I am waving at Olivia and Grandad. (the other black arrow) She looked thoroughly confused every time I ran by and yelled her name.

Getting closer. Cindy and I are in the light blue shirts. Rebecca is wearing a pink shirt.

Ready to give high fives!

And I finished. If that medal weren't so heavy and in general in the way, I think I'd wear it all day every day. As I was approaching the finish line I thought I was going to cry. It was just all of the sudden there. The moment that I have been headed to for so long. Soooo many hours and miles have gone towards this one goal. I have been running for a year now after having Olivia, and look at how far I have come! I did it. How many people can say that they have run a marathon? It really is an accomplishment.

And then comes the recovery. I'm looking forward to the next week of not running. And not having to get up every Saturday morning and run anymore. I'm also looking forward to one day being able to get up and down and not be in pain. Last night as I was lying on the couch I would move sometimes and cry out in pain. Jesse thought that there was something wrong- nope, I just ran a marathon. I can honestly say that the only other time I was in this much pain was after giving birth. As I listed off for the boys all of the places that my body hurt today, I really listed every part of me. The next race that I would really like to run is the National Half next March. There are others that I'd like to run as well, but races cost money, and right now we're looking to buy a house, so perhaps I need to be more judicious on the number of races I run. But just for the record- I have not caught the bug. I do not plan on running another marathon, well, ever again.

16 Months

Look who is 16 months old! Do you know what that means? It means that in 2 months she can go to nursery. In just 1 month she can go to nursery with a parent chaperon! :) AND it means that we are finally going to let her get out of her infant car seat. Yup, as recently as last week we were out running errands and she had fallen asleep, and we were still able to take the seat out of the base and throw it into the cart, sleeping baby and all. She looks thrilled to have a bigger seat. If Nate weren't such a shrimp, I'd say that maybe our car seat buying days were over, but I have a feeling that we'll need to buy one more cheap booster before it's all said and done. To celebrate her 16 months birthday (or to celebrate running a marathon really) we had milkshakes and brownies. She was in heaven!

With how much she enjoys milkshakes and brownies, I don't know why she is such a lightweight still. (OK, her meal eating has gone down quite a bit lately, and I'll be honest, our milkshake and brownie eating has really gotten less and less frequent lately.) But just about every day I look at her and think that she is just getting cuter and cuter. She makes my life a whole lot funner! (And prettier- I have not gotten tired of dressing her up in cute dresses and outfits.)