Speech Meet Finalist!

I am so excited to tell you that Emma won her class speech meet. She recited Psalm 100 and won her category in class. Now she gets to go to Woodland Park next week and compete against other 2nd graders. We are so proud of Emma's hard work and the fact that she is learning to hide God's Word in her heart.

Pumpkin Patch

While I was in Denver racing, Tim took the kids to the pumpkin patch. This is the same pumpkin patch Tim went to as a kid. So cool!!!!

Didn't they do a good job?! Nate loves to tell me who each one is...Nate, Emma and Daddy!

Denver Rock-N-Roll Marathon

Yesterday I ran the Denver marathon with a relay team. It was interesting to say the least. I had had such a great experience at my first marathon relay in Oklahoma City that I thought it would be fun to do it again. It was fun to hang out with these awesome ladies and run with them, but I learned not all races are created equal.

The Denver marathon was not well organized. They didn't offer shuttle service for the relay runners, so it was a logistical nightmare getting us to our exchange points and then picked up again. A HUGE thanks to Kisti's aunt who took on this enormous job! They also ran out of medals. How does that happen in a race where you know exactly how many people are running?! Fortunately, everyone on my team was able to get a medal before we left town.

Despite all that, we had a great race! Everyone ran the pace they had hoped for (I was even a little faster at under a 10 minute mile...my personal best.), and it was a beautiful day.

The night before the race we went to the Expo and had so much fun scoring freebies! We laughed all night!

Then we headed to the Spaghetti Factory where we laughed and laughed some more and tried to figure out the best route for getting around to the exchange points the next day.

The first leg - Kira!

The second leg - ME!

The third leg - Kisti!

The fourth leg - Pam!

Our awesome team - Between The Lines!

Thanks ladies for a great weekend! And now I am taking a break from racing for the winter. Next up: 5K on St. Patricks Day 2011.

Birthday flash back

Here are few highlights from my birthday that I didn't get to share yet.

My wonderful mother-in-law made me a peach pie - my absolute fave!

My parents took me to lunch on my birthday, and we had gelato afterwards - another fave!

When we were in Denver for my duathlon, we ate at a restaurant where a guy made balloon animals for the kids.

Emma got a red teddy bear.

Nate got a green monkey with a yellow banana.

I just love birthday week!

Fall break...more like winter sickies!

Emma's fall break started last Friday, and we had been anticipating a fun family get away to the mountains. Well, the tummy bug I had earlier in the week had other ideas. I thought we had gotten by without everyone else getting sick, but the night before we were to leave Nate woke up at 3 am vomiting. This continued until noon the next day.

We decided to go ahead and forge ahead with our plans. Nate had not thrown up for 8 hours, so we thought we were past the worst of it; however, 15 minutes from our house Nate threw up in the car! After a pit stop on the side of the road to get him and the car seat cleaned up, we got back on the road and Nate slept the rest of the way to Winter Park.

When we left Colorado Springs, it was 70 degrees. By the time we got to Winter Park, it was like this.

Snowy and 30 degrees! But we loved it and enjoyed sitting in the hot tub and cuddling in one bed to watch TV and stay warm.

Since it was so cold our plans went out the window on Saturday, so we decided to take a drive to Grand Lake, which was so beautiful! I have to say, it is the most beautiful place in Colorado!

I was enamored with all the houses that sat right on the water's edge and the quaint little town of Grand Lake. I'm ready to buy a vacation home...once I find an extra million dollars!

On our drive we saw this pretty little fox.

We ate at some really good restaurants and enjoyed swimming in the pool. Nate was feeling better, so things were looking up. Then Emma woke up Sunday morning at 5 am throwing up! Poor baby threw up all the way home and didn't stop till about 5 pm. It's been quite a weekend with the sickies!

I was grateful for our weekend away and the chance to see our first snow of the season and parts of Colorado that I've never seen before. But I wish everyone had been feeling well. The good news is Emma has tomorrow off, so she has another day to recover and hopefully we can have a little fun, too.

Nate LOVES dogs!

Every time we went to Emma's cross country practice, Nate got to play with this little dog. He is so smitten with all dogs, but I think he especially loved this one. (And I think the dog loved Nate just as much.)