Carving Pumpkins

We didn't make it a huge deal to carve pumpkins this year. Life happened and things got busy. We did have time to do them the Tuesday before Halloween but it was kind of a quick event. We did get to capture a couple of pictures though.

Johanna Update

Johanna...this girl is full of fun but she sure has a mind of her own. She is genuinely funny, like really, really funny and she knows it. :) She's also super strong willed and lets us know what she wants and when she wants it. How does she get disciplined? She doesn't get to change her clothes. What do we mean by that? I choose her clothes in the morning for school or daycare. That's what she has to wear. When she gets home she can change and her clothes and she cannot WAIT to do that. She likes to wear the SAME outfit about 10 times in a row before moving on to something else. Her favorites include her Clifford shirt, Silver Lake shirt, jean skirts and her pink Polo skirt and sweatshirt. She wears some combination of this daily. So if she isn't behaving we threaten her by saying she can't change her clothes.  Works like a charm. She may be tough at time but boy do we love this girl! She is an amazing ball of fun energy!

Here are some current pics of Jos:

 Making Banana Bread with dad (notice the Clifford shirt and jean skirt)

 Oh yeah, she wears these fake glasses a lot too. She loves them.

 Here she is looking super innocent and sweet. She loves when I dry her hair and brush it out with a round brush after a bath. She wanted to model her "straight, pretty hair" for some pictures.

 Johanna got to be the helper for the first time in threeschool last week. They get to take someone with them on that special day. Jos was insistent that Grandma Rita would go with her the first time. Insistent. :) Grandma was happy to oblige! I love this cute picture of them together right before school. Can you tell Jos is excited? The cute sweater was knitted by Grandma Rita too!

 Johanna by her teacher, Mrs. D

 Dressing "Weather Bear"

 "Show and Tell" time. The above picture cracks me up because Johanna is sitting like such a lady with her legs crossed.  Cracks me up!

 Here she is sharing Chester the Cheetah with Mrs. D and the rest of the class. Did I mention she is also obsessed with cheetahs? This one was a gift from YoYo and Abby from Washington, D.C.

 Getting ready, with some of her cutie classmates, to go home for the day!

Trail Mixer

Johanna loves to eat Trail Mix. She loves almonds and M&Ms the most and often picks those out but definitely likes raisens, cheerios, granola clusters, peanuts and dried fruit too. But more than eating it she likes to make it! She's definitely our "Trail Mixer." A couple of weeks ago I came home from the store late at night and she was still awake (doing that crappy if she naps she has trouble going to sleep but if she doesn't nap she's a crab thing) and once she saw the trail mix ingredients she really wanted to help. So she made a HUGE batch of trail mix. This batch included raisens, granola clusters, cheerios, almonds, peanuts, coconut, butterscotch chips and M&Ms. She did awesome!

Art Prize

A couple of weeks ago we packed the family up on a Saturday night and headed to Grand Rapids to visitArt Prize. We are so fortunate that this nationwide event happens right in our backyard! It's such a great event, showcasing great artists and their talents and appealing to everyone. Definitely worth checking out if you never have! The kids had so much fun seeing the different kinds of art, telling us which ones were their favorites and seeing how some of them got even cooler as it got dark out (with a full moon no less)!  We went on the last night of voting so many of the pieces had the artists by them asking for votes. It was very neat for us to meet the artists and the kids had lots of questions for them. :)

 Making Walrus faces :)

 This was our favorite piece, Disposable Game. Everything was made out of recycled materials. The kids liked the animals of course, but also liked finding common household "trash" that was used to make the cool animals. We got to chat with the artist of this piece for awhile.

 Johanna's obsessed with cheetahs so she had to have a picture by this one.

Park2Park 1/2 Marathon

Last Saturday morning started out beautiful - not too hot, not too cold, a little breeze. It was perfect running weather for Colin and the 1500+ other runners taking part in the 2012 Park2Park 1/2 Marathon and 5K for Neighbor's Plus. Colin was running with Haans, his friend Larry Smith and a couple of other running buddies. We saw them around mile 3 and they were looking great!

 See the blue sky in the upper left corner?

Here they are around mile 6 (I think). Still going strong. This picture is facing East and the sky is blue. Behind us, to the West, it was getting dark and the clouds were rolling in. Colin had said his goal was to finish this 1/2 marathon in under 1 hour, 30 minutes. At this point in the race I told him that my goal was for him to finish before the rain!

 At 9:50, 1 hour and 20 minutes into the 1/2 marathon they black flagged the race, meaning they quit timing it and racers were to finish "at their own risk." Colin crossed the mat at 9:57 with an "unofficial" time of 1 hour, 27 minutes. Official or not, he met his goal, set a PR (Personal Record) and did AWESOME! Did he make it for MY goal? Just barely! Within minutes (seconds?) of crossing the finish it began to rain. And then continued raining and thunderstorming for hours that day. We were glad to get in our cars just as it really began to poor.

Colin and his good friend Larry Smith. They usually run together on Saturday mornings so for them it was just another Saturday morning run. :)

Colin is in the best shape of his life - running often and going to Crossfit daily. So proud of him and how well he did on this race!