Gingerbread cookie's

For a fun family activity last Sunday we made some gingerbread cookies.


They were so yummy!

My Marathon Man

On Saturday, Jeremy ran a marathon! That's 26.2 miles to be exact. He spent many, many, many hours preparing his body and mind for this goal. He had a few moments when he thought it wasn't possible but he kept pushing on. There were scary moments when he would collapse from exaustion, I watched him carefully, wondering if this goal would kill him, but remained supportive. When race day came, we both approached it with excitement and nervousness because he had some challenges that he would have to face on race day like the temperature being 25 degrees, and pain on the top of his foot from tieing his shoes too tight, and his knee still isn't perfect either but he had to try.

The boys and I met him at mile 14 to cheer him on.

I worried for 4 hrs. and 33 minutues about whether or not he was injured somewhere on the course and then all of the sudden, there he was giving it his all at the end.
WE were so proud! He got his finisher's medal and we immediately had to get him out of the cold. He couldn't feel his hands (the hand warmers didn't work) and the temp only warmed up to maybe 30 degrees so he needed to get out of his wet clothes. The cold temp took more out of him then we expected but he did it!

3 new blessings!

Our Thanksgiving weekend was a nice break away from the craziness of life. We enjoyed the family togetherness, food and quiet. Then on Sunday we got 2 text messages. Jeremy's sister Ali delivered a little boy and... my brother Jason's little girl was born. Within 20 minutes of each other. Who gets to be an aunt/uncle/cousin 2x in one day without the birth of twins? Isn't that awesome!
Then on Friday Jeremy's brother Rich announced his new little boy had arrived too. We are so lucky to have all these sweet new little people to get to know. Unfortunately, we get to meet only one during the holiday's but we hope to meet the other 2 soon. Congrats to the new Mom's and Dad's. Welcome Walter, Elise, and Little Rich, we can't wait to meet you!

Micheal's Informance

Micheal has had the opportunity to do band this year at his new school. His wonderful Grandpa Fowler let him borrow his trumpet for the year so that Micheal could participate. Part of Micheal's grade is participating in an informance (he chooses a parent that he will teach to play a song on the trumpet.) Micheal chose Jeremy to teach and I was able to take pictures and video of the experience. I have video of the parents playing but the song "Hot Cross Buns" wasn't easy to recognize so I just added a picture of Jeremy with the trumpet. Then the 5th graders played some of the songs they were practicing for us. Keep in mind that they only get 30 minutes a school day in band so they are still very new musicians. And to make it even more interesting this was the very first time that the brass and the woodwinds have played together, ever. Micheal's favorite song was the theme from "Jaws". Micheal had a hard time playing it because he was smiling too much. I have video of it, but unfortunately, my camera battery died in the middle of it and it won't let me load it for whatever reason.

Harvest Run

Today was race day! It was really foggy and a little wet but was perfect for the run, not too hot or cold. I'm not sure you can see too well in the picture but the leader on the bike had long pink hair and wings. At least it's halloween right!


I completed my first race and first 10k all in the same day! My time was 1:04:41. I beat my goal of doing it around 1:05 so I'm pretty happy considering I've never done this before. Micheal and Clayton ran with me at the end so that was fun too.

There were 6 sisters (including myself) from my ward that all trained and ran the 10k together. And...the Relief Society Pres. was there to cheer us on at the finish line and then ran the 5k herself. It was so great to do this with so many friends. We were there to keep each other moving and motivate each other to endure to the end. The bishop is a runner too so he said that he was really excited that we have a running group with lots of first timers, he says that once you get one race under your belt, you are hooked. We'll see...

I am glad that it was on Halloween morning because I finally have something orange and black to wear for halloween (I do not dress up) and I can eat chocolate tonight without guilt:)!

Tweetsie

Back in the summer, Micheal won 4 tickets to Tweetsie Railroad for doing such a great job reading. So last Saturday we traveled north to Boone, NC. Tweetsie is a small amusement park that has an original coal and steam engine that takes you for a ride through the Smokey Mountians/Blue Ridge. The boys got to ride on their first ferris wheel which happened to be at the top of the mountain so it felt really high, but the view was incredible! We intentionally saved the trip for the fall so that we could see all the fall colors. It was beautiful! The biggest downside was there wasn't much to keep Micheal and Clayton happy, they were to big for most of the rides that they wanted to ride on and too small(or sensitive to motion sickness) for the more exciting rides. Tanner, on the other hand, had a blast riding all by himself. There were tons of oldtime shops to check out and fun halloween decor thru out the entire park! We had a great time! Enjoy the slide show!

Booster-thon Funrun

Clayton's school did a really cool fundraiser this year. The kids were sponsored by family or friends to run laps (1/16th of a mile for each lap). All the money that was donated would go to their school and 10% of their donation would go to their classroom. Clayton was really excited about this because he was able to do something to help his school. We were really excited about it too because the kids were able to participate and they weren't selling crap to make us unhealthy or clutter our homes, the kids were running for their school! They made it fun for the kids with fun, loud music and an occasional theme lap to keep them energized. Each students goal was to run 30 laps, but Clayton shocked us all by running 41 laps! He was really proud of himself and we were so proud of him too! Great job Clayton!

Tanner is 4!

It is hard to believe that Tanner is now 4 years old! He has been so excited for his birthday this year. He is very proud to say that he is 4 now! Here are a few pictures from his birthday...





I had to post this picture because I think we all look hypnotized by the flame...just thought it was funny.

I will do a Tanner slideshow soon.

We Needed A Break!

Ok, since school started a couple of weeks ago we have been in overdrive. Our list of "things to do" has gotten out of hand. Between church responsibilities, church activities/meetings, work, housework, carpool, scouts, service projects, school projects, running, etc... our lives have been insane! We have not had one day in a month to just be together and Sept/Oct are looking the same so when everyone had the day off for Labor Day we reserved it to be a "family day" so we could just take a break from life and enjoy being together again. We decided to disappear (we even turned our phones off, and didn't check email that day), we did what we had to do to fight the chaos from consuming us. We had a homemade breakfast for the first time in almost a year, then drove 1 1/2 hours to a secluded zoo in Greenville, SC and just casually walked and talked and played.


Tanner was a kick that day.

Did you notice that Tanner isn't too close to the chicken pen? When he got dressed that morning, he came down and told us that he was wearing a belt so that the chickens wouldn't pull his pants down. We were so tickled by his seriousness that had to fight laughing. We had been to that zoo before but he was only 2 so we didn't think he would remember anything. He obviously remembered that there were chickens and they tried to peck his clothes, shoes and toenails.

Just outside the Greenville zoo was a huge playground with lots of fun things to play on. Some of them were very modern in design but to kids a playground is a playground.




Oh how I miss the simple life! How nice it was to just relax and take it slow!

Sunflowers!

These are our sunflowers. They have been one of my favorite things this summer because they have gotten so big so fast and they are colorful.

Because they are so tall we decided to name them Steve and Rich in honor of Jeremy's taller younger brothers. This a picture of Jeremy with one of sunflower plants (before it bloomed) so you have an idea of just how tall they are.

The Challenge

My wonderfully fun sister Diana is the most active person that I know. In fact, she is usually good at any sport that she trys. You never know how athletic you are until you can keep up with Diana. She told me a little over a week ago that she had taken a class that encourages you to set a challenging but attainable goal and then accomplish it in 90 days. Her goal is to run a 10k (6.2 miles). She has never run long distances before but has always wanted to try a 10k, especially since Jeremy and my sister-in-law Anissa have been running races. So to support her I told her that I would run a 10k too. We will be training until about mid October and then she will run her 10k in Arizona and I will run mine here in NC. Maybe when I go out to Arizona for Christmas we can run one together. That would be fun! I've needed an extra excuse to keep running and to sign up for a race. This was the perfect "challenge" for us to do together and I am excited to see what happens. Wish us luck!

Lingo

Tanner says the funniest things. Usually what he says is close to what he means. Here are a few examples of Tanner's lingo:
root beard-rootbeer
basketti-spaghetti
mazogna-lasagna
scritchers-scriptures
miss-a-merry-missionary
topato-tomato
kajamas-pajama's
mustake-mustache
stummyache-stomach ache and tummy ache combined
sunscream-sunscreen
thlipflops-flipflops (you have to watch his mouth to see what he is actually saying)
Taytin-Clayton
Abblegale-Abigail
strange cheese-string cheese
pompkin-pumpkin
pah-corn-popcorn

Everytime we notice that he said something a little different, we all tend to repeat it as if to say "he did it again" and we all smile. We know that he is little and trying so hard to be big. His vocabulary is growing everyday but it isn't perfect yet and that is why we think it is so cute. It's just fun to watch him continue to do his best. We just love Tanner!

Pictures

Sleepy head Tanner was pretty tired this day. I thought he was being too quiet. I'm just glad that he didn't fall while he slumbered. Scary!

Our Garden!
This is what some of our garden looked like before we went to California. We had so much to harvest before we went, we even told some of our neighbors to raid our garden while we were gone so that nothing went to waste.

Strawberry patch-we've only had a few strawberries to eat because something is eating them before we can get to them. Probably squirrels or rabbits.

Peaches galore! Our poor little tree had so many peaches on them that the branches were sagging almost to breaking. The peaches were very tiny but extremely sweet.

Our tomato's were thriving so we had lots of tomato and cucumber salads. Tanner loves tomato's so he was excited for all the tomatoe's to turn red.

Raspberries, we had about a handfull of raspberries to harvest each day for about a month and then the birds and japanese beetles found them.

Corn patch, here is the corn patch. We had one particular stock that seemed to be a mutant so it is almost 2x as big as all the rest. We had one piece of corn come off just before we went to California but it was kind of small so we probably should have fertilized the corn. Then the bugs got to it.

California pictures

Shark attack! They loved pretending that they were being attacked by the shark. If you click on the picture you'll be able to see all the silly faces.

This is a life size statue of a baby humpback whale, there was a statue of the mom too but we couldn't fit it all in the picture. It was really cool to see just how big they actually are.

This is a 4 generation picture. Great-Grandpa Lund, Grandma Fowler, Jeremy and the boys.

Tanner at the grapevine playground.