HUH?

So...I woke up on Saturday, thinking about the wedding I had to photograph. I looked outside and laughed. You've got to be kidding me? Snow?...a nice dusting across everything. WOW... Laughing I felt really bad for the bride who was so excited about getting outside pictures taken with the fall colors.



Waking up today (MONDAY) I couldn't figure out what month it was? Did I fall asleep and it's now December? Did I miss something? What's up with snow the middle of October? We haven't even had summer yet? I think I missed the warm summer weather, the mid-fall weather and just went straight to winter..again. Oh how I long for Hawaii :)

Party time!

We put the kids birthday parties together again this year. Last year we thought we'd try them seperate because they enjoy different things and are getting older. It was so hard. So this year, we were back together. 17 kids running crazy at Grand Slam, a huge building that had laser tag, mini golf, batting cages, bowling, arcade, indoor play zone, crazy bumper cars and more. It's great fun not having to clean for or up afterward. My kids loved it and had a TON of fun! I loved the stress free part of it all.

Cakes

I was thinking this might be the year I end up buying cakes for the kids...or making just a simple delicious out of the box, flat frosting across the top, cake. However....my kids informed me that one of the things they look forward to the most is the cakes I make them. So...after 4 hours (much faster than previous years) their two cakes were made.


I showed Sydney her cat cake. She looked at it and smiled and then shrugged her shoulders. "Mom, on the picture it showed that the face part had curly things on it."

"Actually, I followed the picture pretty closely because you wanted it just like the picture. I'm pretty sure there is no curly things on the picture."

"Mom, I saw it. I know there was."
So...being the mom I am, I went and got the picture and said, "See honey, just like the picture." "Well...I still think the picture looks better than your cake."

I told her that I didn't need to make cakes for her if she didn't like them, to which she responded: "Mom, your cake is good, just not AS good as the picture. You can still make them for me." ;)

Good thing my daughter has a lot of OTHER good qualities :)


Jordan loved his cake and everything about it :)

My boy is 8

That's right...eight. I'm not sure how it happened or where all the time went, all I know is I'm too young to have an eight year old :) October 1st he turned eight. On the kids birthdays if they want to stay home from school (just the birthday kid) we let them. Arlie takes the day off of work and we just spend time with them doing whatever they'd like (within reason :) ). Jordan, after checking to make sure he could celebrate his birthday with his class a different day, decided to stay home with us. He woke up that morning to his room full of balloons hanging from the ceiling (a tradition we started several years ago; decorating their rooms while they are sleeping so when they wake up they feel like it's their birthday from the second their eyes open). We dropped Sydney off at school and after some time with at home with just Arlie and I, he decided we would go to Brunswick zone to play in the arcade. NO ONE is there during the day. We had the arcade pretty much to ourselves. Two other people came toward the end, but other than that...we had free reign. We played a ton of games. He earned lots of tickets which he can turn in for prizes. The store to redeem the prizes didn't open normally until 4pm (we needed to go back to pick up Sydney by 3:45), but the lady who opens it was there early and opened it just for him. He was just about 13 tickets shy of 500 and had about $1.00 left on his card. She asked him if she could show him a game that would put him over 500 that way he could get a great prize. Of course he didn't pass that up. She brought him over to a game and proceeded to show him how to play, giving him tokens upon tokens, which ended up probably being about $10.00 worth of tokens. He ended up with 965 tickets. He was so excited. After that we went to the half-priced book store where we found a transformer dvd. We picked up Sydney and went home and had popcorn and watched the transformers. Then we went to Space Aliens (not my favorite food that's for sure) for supper and off to small group for ice cream cake from Dairy Queen. Jordan said he had a great day. We sure had a ton of fun spending time with him. We're very blessed with such a wonderful "not so little anymore" boy!

Kids who make me laugh

Jordan got his school pictures back from school. As we're walking home he said, "Hey mom, guess what? I got my school pictures back. I didn't know I had 100 identical twins." (He delivered it completely serious without missing a beat.) I probably laughed for 3 minutes straight.

I was giving the kids a lecture about their birthday party. If we open gifts and it's something we already have, what do we say? That's right...thank you. What if we don't like it? That's right...thank you. What if it's the second one we got that day? That's right..we say thank you. We never say, "I already have it, I don't like it, or again?" Sydney looked at me and grabbed a sheet of paper..."Mom, can you write that down for me, so i remember what i can't say?" I laughed and said, "Sydney you just be your polite self and you'll be fine. Just remember to say thank you." "Mom, can you write that down so i don't forget?" My funny little lady :)

6 blisters, 2hr and 7 min.

On Saturday, after not near enough training, at 5:30 in the morning we awoke to embark on an adventure of...pain! ;) Actually it turned out to not be so bad. We drove to the Deck, took a bus up to Two Harbors and waited for our waves to start our 26.2 mile trek. Arlie's sister Amie and brother-in-law Joe were also doing the marathon. They started in the wave before us, 3 minutes before our wave. We had to catch up to them right from the start so we could all skate together. We caught them and skated with them for most of the marathon. For lots of the miles, we drafted which was great! The last 10 miles or so they took off and we stayed at our "slower" pace! :) My knees finally got warmed up and stopped hurting at about mile 5 which was great. Arlie's lower back started to bother him not too far into the race. By mile 16, I could feel my feet getting blisters around all my ankle bones. Every time I'd put down my skate, it would feel like little knives poking at my foot. I didn't want to stop and chance having my legs freeze up, so we carried on. Right about mile 20, we really had to motivate ourselves to keep going. We were both pretty tired, but after going that far we didn't want to give up! It was an absolutely perfect day for blading. Not too hot, not too cold! There was hardly any wind. We got to watch Lake Superior as we skated. It was fun to people watch as well. It made the miles go fast. (However, we did notice the farther we went, the longer the miles felt:) ). There was also people along the whole thing cheering you on! Arlie and I crossed the finish line together (we talked about if we wanted to race across or go together and we opted for the second) feeling very accomplished! Surprisingly, after sitting for about 2 minutes and taking off our blades, we didn't feel too bad. In fact, besides my knees, my legs weren't really that tired or sore. I had a wedding that I went to photograph after the marathon, the only thing that hurt was bending down ;) Sunday we both felt fine and went for a nice hike in the woods! I'm not sure if I'll do the marathon again...but it was great to do and see if I could finish it!

Stretching before the marathon
Getting ready
Trying to figure out what to wear so we weren't to hot, but were warm enough

We didn't realize we matched until we saw this picture. It wasn't planned :)
At the starting line...wave 8
Skating with a view of the lake

Going over the starting line for the half marathon...only 13.2 miles left!
Just crossed the finish line! We did it!
Our finisher shirts...it's proof we finished!

Blessings come in all sizes

One very large blessing was a hot tub that was given to us! Arlie's parents got a new hot tub and decided to get rid of their old one. They gave it to Arlie's sister. Awhile after they gave it to her, she asked if we wanted it because they weren't going to use it. We looked into how much it would cost to run it and then jumped all over that one! We've had it at our house for almost a year because we didn't get an electrician out here to rewire. Finally, last week the electrician came. Tuesday we added water and last wednesday, we felt incredibly lucky and blessed as we soaked in "our" hot tub! It's been great for my back after photo shoots and holding pounds of equipment! We are so thankful that we get blessed in such amazing ways!