Trick Or Treat!

We have enjoyed another fun-filled, great weather weekend! :) Friday after Stella got out of school we started working on raking our leaves. It was SOOOOO windy here last week that a lot of our leaves blew out of our yard!! (yes, our neighbors LOVE us!!) Each year we have to rake two times as two of our HUGE trees do not drop there leaves for another couple of weeks. So round one is done! Last year we have 13 HUGE bags of leaves (the bags used for king size mattresses)....this year we just had 6 (thank you, wind storm!). The kids always love to play in the numerous piles of leaves. This year I made a pile at the end of their slide and it was a hit!

(Okay this is obviously out of order....not sure how that happened! But Stella on the monkey bars today)...... now back to your regularly scheduled program.....

Stella wanted me to take this photo of her "sleeping"!

Mike hard at work.

Porter pulling his weight.

Stella getting ready to trick-or-treat. She has been a skeleton for all of her other Halloween activities, but yesterday she decided she wanted to be a pink princess!

Porter wouldn't stand still for a photo..... go figure!

The kids with Uncle Ken

With our neighbors.

Stella's friend from school, Kaylen, went T-O-Ting with us (along with her mom and brother). They were both pink princesses!

Looking through all their loot and the end of the night.

Today at the park

Halloween Fun!

We've had a weekend full of Halloween fun! :) Friday night was Kindergarten Fun Night at Stella's school. They had a different game in each Kindergarten room, a bounce house in the gym, pizza and cookie decorating in the cafeteria....so lots of fun things to do. The kids could wear their Halloween costumes, it was fun to see Stella and all of her friends dressed up.
Here she is doing a bowling game. Each game had a different prize. Porter getting ready to do the ring toss. I didn't get many pics at fun night, I was too busy having fun!! :)

Today my mom's group rented a local community center and had a pot luck family Halloween party. It was a lot of fun as we don't get together with all the kids as much now that everyone is growing up and in Kindergarten and preschool. The kids had a blast. They got to trick-or-treat, play at the outside park, have a costume parade and eat lots of yummy food!

A shot of all the kids minus one who didn't want to be in the picture! Stella and Porter are on the left in the front row.

This evening was carving of the pumpkins......my most dreaded holiday activity of all holiday activities!! But the kids enjoyed it!! Porter wasn't too into cleaning out his pumpkin.....guess who got that job!?!? :)

Stella enjoyed taking out the "guts".

With their finished products.

Glowing............

Runners World

It's been a busy 8 days in our household. Last Sunday was the Chicago marathon that Mike and two of his good friends were signed up for and had been training for since last spring. We drove out to Chicago for a child-free weekend to cheer on our men!! Unfortunately, Mike wasn't able to finish the run. He sprained his ankle at mile 10 and ran on it until mile 12 when he then decided it wasn't worth potentially causing major problems to his ankle as he still had 14 miles to run! I am still VERY proud of him. He did a great job training and gave it his all!
Here is Mike and Jeff before leaving for the race on Sunday morning. I feel bad that I don't have any pics of him running! Here is a shot of the race. There were 45,000 people signed up for the marathon. It was quiet the sight!! (I should point out that we were near a water station and that is what is all over the ground are water cups that the runners drink out of then throw down).

A fun photo of Haydn, Porter, Hannah and Stella before bed on Friday night. :)

This morning I ran the Des Moines Half Marathon. I belong to an awesome mom's group and 9 out of the 11 of us ran the half marathon today. It was so nice having the support of so many other women pushing each other! We didn't all run together, but it was just great knowing that we were doing this as a team effort! I'm so proud of all my Sassy Mama's!!!

I had a personal goal and that was to finish under 2 hours, my official time was 1 hour 56 minutes, so I did it!!! I am very pleased and it's great to have all your hard work pay off. :) Mike took the kids downtown this morning along with our friend Lucy's children, Berlin and Eric to cheer us on. He didn't have the camera, so no pics of me looking all haggard! Sorry! Here I am after a shower with my medal and race bib.

I signed the kids up for the fun run, which was this afternoon at 1. Stella was VERY excited about this. They got their own t-shirts and a ribbon at the end of their race. Porter was not so excited about it, but he did do a great job once we got there! :)

My friends Lucy and Erin also signed their kids up for the fun run, so here are all 6 of them getting ready to run.

Just thought this was funny of Berlin and Stella harassing the poor guy dressed up as a pair of dice!

Stella and Berlin all smiles before the race starts.

Great action shot of Stella, she's on the far right.

A very proud girl with her ribbon.

We didn't as many pics of Porter since his age group started at one end of the block and finished at the other, where as Stella started and stopped at the same spot. Here he is running! He was crying towards the end b/c he couldn't see me, but at the beginning he had huge smiles!

Center Grove Orchard

This afternoon we headed to Center Grove Orchard. We have been going to this orchard since Stella was 18 months old and we just love it! :) Stella had a doctor appt today at 1 so after that we headed up to the orchard. It was PERFECT weather and Mike was even able to join us! :) There weren't many people there today, I'm so glad we had the chance to go during the week rather than face the crowds on a weekend.

Running in the corn pit Stella cannon-balling into the corn!

Porter taking the plunge Stella bouncing on the huge air pillow

Porter getting some "air"!

Air Jordan!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Finding their way through the childrens corn maze

Mike, Porter and Stella at the top of the giant slide Making their way down

Mike and Stella trying to rope a steer!

This orchard has a ton of cute little story book settings through out the grounds. Here they are exploring the Three Little Pigs houses, starting with the house built out of hay of course

Then the house out of sticks

Finally the house out of bricks

Our stop was the one room school house, Stella could not believe that people went to school in a building like this! You can tell how worn out she was at this point!!!