Life Marches On....

Once again I am left chasing...chasing what, I am not sure... the kids, the housework, yard work answers to life.  For now I will just try and keep up with the kids which is a bit hard but so fun and rewarding!  Ron and the boys headed out the other weekend for a couple nights of camping, or rather-tenting.  If you camp you will know the difference.  They had a great time despite waking up to rain and wetness on the last evening.  They canoed, fished, hiked, shot air soft guns and pushes over dead trees-basically just got to be boys for a while!

The girls and I stayed busy with a visit to a friends craft/bow room.  The women work and the girls played.  They were in heaven-between guinea pigs, and a room full of craft supplies they were busy well into the evening, so fun to see them be creative and silly.

The rest of the weekend Becca and I helped packed thanksgiving boxes/bags...Andrea was off to University of Tulsa STEM event with her girl scout troop from school.

We made it to the Philbrook to enjoy some free crafting and exploring of the grounds...the girls loved all the leaves.  I think they just loved that they didn't need to rake them all!

Almost 10 and 8!

 It is that time of year when the classes are very busy with extra activities besides keeping up with the academics.  The kids-the girls love these plays.  Andrea  performed her play this past week and had a lot of fun.

 We love Mrs Maney for Second grade-we had her for Brayden and are so thankful for her!

We continued with our Thanksgiving presentations with James' class.  It was quite the production-as I am finding out with his teacher but so special.  James learns so many bible verses and songs with her-amazing.  The best was to have his light up in church on Sunday when the choir sang "Come Ye Thankful People come... "and say- Mommy!!  I am singing this for you tomorrow!"  Such an old hymn but so special to hear his excitement and then hear the little voices singing.

James' Teacher set up up an entire thanksgiving feast for all the families after James' program.  It seemed like a big deal but so nice to sit and celebrate-a great way to begin the holiday season.

 This past weekend we braved the cold to watch the Jenks Christmas Parade-you can see how brave we were.  The first freeze of the season and we were all pretty cold!

 The girls are at such a fun age.  They love spending time together-lots of creativity going on upstairs.  I never know what I am going to find when I go to clean out their rooms.

We survived soccer season with all of the kids.  We found it actually a lot of fun and somehow managed all the practices and games.  James got a participation trophy that he was pretty proud of and Becca's team got a second place metal in the beginner's division.  So fun to see this team learn the game and work on their skills.  Their most enjoyment came from ice-cream after many of the games!

It has also been cyclocross season.  A bit hit or miss when we can participate but Ron made it out for a race this Sunday.  Hard to miss such a beautiful day besides the cold.

We definitely had more fun than Ron-lots of hills along this course, making for a hard ride!

 Finishing is always fun-the kids had fun playing with this stray, that is until it decided James was a chew toy.

Silliness

What do you do with your rotting pumpkins??

Well, we usually have to use a shovel to get them into a garabage bag before loading them up into the trash.  This year we decided to toss them...literly.  I wasn't so sure how it was going to go-somehow my kids and a baseball bat makes me nervous.  Things went fairly well and pick-up was pretty minimal.  The less mess makes me happy!!

It was a day off from school, and yes we could have started to prepare for our week.  The teachers were so nice to put out all the work for the week over the weekend.  Sad to say we decided to enjoy the outdoors but was left cramming with poor Becca on another set of States.  She will conquer them!

We decided to head out to Turkey Mountain to do a little hiking-super fun since I can follow the map Ron has posted and not get lost!

 Oklahoma Rock

 Moonscape

 And this is when the fun ended.  My purse was stollen from the back seat complete with checkbook and all the other fun stuff filling my purse.  James was upset his gum was gone.  The police came to do a report....this is what I got??  All I could think of was he sure wasn't as cute as officer Farmer from Body Guard-ahhh soo frustrating.

Happy Halloween

What a day!  The kids have been looking forward to trick or treating this entire week.  The hours were full and fun the entire day.  So wonderful to have an extra hour to recover this sunday morning, everyone was moving prettty slow.
  We were up early Saturday, checking on the weather and the Tulsa Run was on the schedule.  As usual fall weather blew in and it was freezing and raining all friday and friday evening.  It was misty but thankfully had warmed up a bit.  We loaded up and headed to downtown to join the masses for the run this year.  Brayden ran the 5km with his friend Hudson and I ran the 15Km.  The strangest feeling was leaving the two boys at the start with about 1000 people, the best was seeing them run by with huge grins on their faces.  I was doing some last minute explaining before leaving them and I got the comment "I got this" as they melted into the crowd...and they did!  The rain cleared, the clouds stayed and the morning was perfect for running.  I managed the course-hills played with my brain much of the way but tackled them all to reach the finish line,  My conclusion is that I would much rather chase a ball for exercise then run seemingly endlessly for exercise.  But it was nice to still be able to accomplish it this year.

 Ready to run...just before we left them.

 Brayden is still complaining about sore legs today.

 All finished!

 Before the race.

Hudson's mom missed out on this group shot-all up and ready to run and cheer...a fun way to start out the day.

 This was my cheering section-the best!

The best is seeing them along the course.

 At the finish...no longer very fun.   My time this year for the 15km was 1hr and 26min.  Brayden did the 5km in 28min.

The winners of the 15km...44min??!?!!

After some soccer games-Andrea was good to go after her hernia repair and she was ready to score.  So fun seeing her play.  Both Becca and James played.  We are so close to the end of the season-crazy that this was the first game the kids played when the fields were muddy-it has just been the best fall to be outdoors.

 Who is concerned with sugar???  It was a sweet day from the morning donuts to afternoon cupcakes to evening chocolate.


Finally it was time to get home, throw on costumes....literately, and try to catch up with our neighbors to do a little trick or treating around our home.  It is always fun going with a group, just hard to coordinate times.

 Andrea was off to a friends house for the evening.  Always hard to find a balance between fall parties and trick or treating.  I have to say the kids still prefer dressing up and hitting the houses for candy!  But Andrea had a great time carving pumpkins with her friend and the kids made sure she got plenty of candy.

 Our neighborhood group of kids.

We ended the evening meeting up with a couple more kids and their parents-all walking our old neighborhood trick or treating.  Seems kind of crazy but actually kind of relaxing-probably because the kids are happy, the weather was prefect and the company was great.

 The evening group ready to head out.