First race - first win!

So yesterday, the base was having their annual Fall Festival. I begged my son all week to try running as his sport. There was a kids run at the Fall Festival and I thought he would have fun doing it. All week he gave a different answer to if he wanted to run it. Yes, no, yes, no . .you get the idea. Friday night he decided that sure, he'd give it a shot. So Saturday morning we signed in for the race and he got his official race t-shirt. Then they called them all for stretching. "Stretching?? I don't want to do stretching!! I shouldn't have signed up for this . . .ugh" I got his butt out there to stretch and then we went out to line up for the race. They announces that parents could run with the kids if they wanted to and when they said that, he kind of gave me that "pleaseeeeeeeee mom" look. So there I am in my Uggs and Jeans but I couldn't say no . .heck at least I'd get a few good shots of him right? They then announced it was going to be a one mile run for him. He was very worried now, since he had never run a race in his life and certainly had never run a full mile. He lined up . . .11 kids in his 7 & 8 year old division. He kind of got that worried look on his face but kept in there like a champ. The whistle blew and off they went.




He started out in 9th place out of 11 but he never quit running.

The next thing we knew, by the 3/4 mile marker he had passed enough kids to pull out into third place. Can you see how happy he was???

Here he comes, running into the finish . . .and yes . . . .

he took third place out of 11 in his first ever race!

Now he is anxious to run more and is dying to place 2nd next time! Go Aaron!!

One week down . .. .

Well, hubby has been gone for almost a week now. Only six more to go . . . IF they stay on schedule. We try to keep busy . . .but even when we try to just RELAX in this house . . some little person decides to keep going, as her energy never seems to stop.


Dad left Friday morning and the kids were good sports about waking up early to drop him off at the ship. Then it was off to school for the Halloween parties. The older two came home with all sorts of goodies. Emmeline had a great day having a costume parade, singing for the parents, and having her own Halloween party. That evening we all headed off to the base chapel for the Fall Festival. The kids had a great time fishing for prizes, getting their faces painted, playing in the bounce house and eatting all the candy they could.

Halloween was a blast! It's different here . . we can only Trick-Or-Treat between the hours of 6-8. The kids were a bit bummed not to continue til they couldn't walk anymore but still they filled up those buckets twice. One street in the neighborhood was what I would call the Christmas Tree Lane of Halloween. You valley people know exactly what I'm talking about! The street was lit up, decorated, and was about as crowded as Christmas Treet Lane on the walk only night. Parents were dressed up, yards were decorated, and kids were running up and down the streets gathering all the candy they could.

I found this picture eiree as you could see completely through my son . . .must have been our full moon night we had.

Sunday, we went to the zoo. It's different here in this aspect too. Fresno has a ZooBoo for one night. Here, they have a two day celebration. Daytime on Halloween Day and daytime the day after are both ZooBoo's. Halloween night is more of a grown-up celebration called Fright Night. We did the zoo on Sunday. The kids had a great time hitting the candy booths (yet another bucket full of candy). They took the zooboo train as we had zombies, Cruella, a Mandrin monkey, and a man on a dinosaur chasing us. Then we saw the new baby giraffee only two days old. The kids had a wonderful time!

Monday we had a pretty mild day of doing nothing. Tuesday they had the day off of school so we met up with some friends to hit the zoo AGAIN. The kids can't get enough of that place and would go daily if I let them. We had a great view of the four baby lion cubs but had to try to sneak a peek of the baby giraffe. The baby bongos and the baby african crowned crane were all out and active. After the zoo we spent an hour at the local library searching for new books, movies and cd's to rent. Aaron is into joke books lately and he surely impresses me with how many he can memorize. He'll read them at night and spout off a dozen jokes during breakfast.

Oh and Tuesday was school conference day. Kristin is scoring wonderful grades and on B Honor Roll. Aaron has a high chance of making prinicpal's list (his first year with letter grades), as long as he takes more time to write more in response to questions. Pretty impressive for first quarter.

This morning we had a wonderful breakfast with friends from our new playgroup. Even though our IHOP was tiny and we felt like we were in a hallway, we had a great turn out and were able to meet more mom's and friends for Emme. I spent the afternoon working in the backyard while Emme was swept off to have a great time with her friend Olivia.

On an up note, all the Christmas shopping for the kids is 100% officially done. It feels good to be done before the hustle and bustle of the malls and shops.

So it looks like we had a busy week, but I feel like it was slow. One week down, 6 more to go. Hopefully it goes more quickly then slowly. And hopefully they make it home for Christmas.