Honors and awards

Well, the flip-flop costume was a big hit! The girls had a lot of pictures taken yesterday at the school Halloween parade. One was by a photographer from our local newspaper, and it ended up making today's front-page! Awesome!

Also, the girls won the Team award at their school for the costume. I felt they could have also taken most creative, most effort, or funniest, but that's probably just my biased opinion.

Tonight we will trick-or-treat and see lots more costumes (and be seen, of course!). Unfortunately, the two flip-flops won't be trick-or-treating together. No big deal, though. They look pretty good individually, I think.

Happy Halloween everybody!

Halloween '09

Halloween is almost here, and for the first time in years, the kids' costumes are done with a few days to spare. Not entirely sure how that happened, but I'm pretty excited about it!

My oldest and two of her friends will be the Three Little Pigs with Swine Flu. They have pink sweats, pig noses, surgical masks and rubber gloves. It looks great, and they did it all themselves. Nice work, girls!

My youngest is teaming up with a classmate, and they are a pair of flip-flops. I worked on her flip (or is it flop?) with the other dad, and we basically finished up the shell of the costume. Only took three hours. We also got some material to cover the shell and make it pretty! I finished ours last night, and I am really looking forward to seeing the two of them together. Altogether, about 8, maybe 10 hours working on it.



The flip-flop is nearly 5 feet tall and 4 feet wide. When it is being worn, it is over 6 feet tall! Trick-or-treating in that monstrosity may be exhausting, and a little treacherous, so I think we may need a plan B for Saturday. But the flip-flops will definitely kick some butt at the school parade and costume contest!

I'll update this weekend.

Halloween costume

I worked on the flip-flop costume yesterday. We managed to get the shell of it nearly done. We also picked up everything else we need to finish it. Now all that is left is the cosmetic work, you know, making it look pretty! So far I think it is looking pretty good, and I can't wait to see it when it is finished!

Nearly November

Simply put, I've been kinda busy. Both of my girls played volleyball this fall, and I shared coaching duties for both of their teams. Practice four days a week, and games on the weekends, since the start of the school year. Add to that everything else (homework checks, picking the kids up from school, WORK! You get the picture.), and this blog gets lost in the shuffle.

I have been keeping the running blog up to date, mainly because I like to have a record of my running, and also because I pretty much always have something to say when I check in with that one. Much easier to pop in, type in a distance and time and be done.

So, as I said at the top, it is nearly November, and Halloween is almost here. My oldest daughter is 13 now, and she hasn't asked for any help with a costume this year. She is dressing up with 2 of her classmates for a "Three Little Pigs/ Swine Flu" costume, and they are working on it themselves. Nice, but I kind of miss the process of getting an idea for a costume, figuring out how to put it together, and the actual construction, if need be, of the costume.

Luckily, my 9-year-old needs some help this year. She is also partnering with a classmate. They are going as a pair of flip-flops. I talked with the other girl's mom today, and she told me to check a website for instructions, which I did. Looks pretty easy, and cute too. Now I need to talk to the dad and find out if he wants to work on these together (seems like a good idea to me).

Like last year, I will post pictures of the costumes once we get them done.

July 4, 2009

The day started early for me, around 5:30, so I could get up and get ready for an 8am 5k in Louisville. Brian and I met up around 6:45 to head over there together. Due to a bit of miscommunication, we actually passed one another on the way to the other's house. I saw him drive by, so I called him and headed back to my house. After that mix-up, we headed to the Peterson-Dumesnil House, the starting point for the run.

We arrived early, since we hadn't signed up for the run yet. Once we signed in, we waited around by the starting line, watching the runners arrive and getting a little bit of a stretch, discussing the plan for the run (which was nice and easy), and basically just hanging out.

The weather was better than you could ask for. Temperatures were in the mid to high 60s. It was a little overcast, so no early morning glare. About as good as it gets around here on the 4th of July.

I think we ran a good run. The pace was pretty even from start to finish. There were times when I wanted to kick it up a little, but I resisted, and we ended up finishing the 5k in 26:40. We had expected to do it in under 30, so we managed to meet that goal.

The only thing I found disappointing was the lack of any kind of post-race activity. It was a run-and-done event. I guess I'm spoiled from the other runs we've done.

So, after the 5k, I went home, had a shower, then we went out to get Cassidy's birthday present. Yep, she's a 4th of July baby! She had been wanting a digital camera, so we went to look at a few places. She had her eye on one, mainly because of the color of the camera, but we convinced her to look around a bit before settling on that one. And I am glad we did. We found a Nikon Coolpix L19 for $110, in a color she liked, and bought it. She hasn't set it down for longer than a few minutes since she got it out of the box. Its a nice camera with some cool features, and I am glad she looked around for a bit before making her final decision. This way we are both happy with it.

After that, we grabbed a snack from Panera and headed home for a bit before going over to Brian's house for the First Annual Yeti Independence Day Festival. Brian, Gibby, Dustin and all of their familes were there. It was nice to hang with everyone outside of a work setting. Not like that bothers us too much when we are at work, but we can't eat burgers and drink beer at work. Plus it was nice to get all of our families together. I think everyone had a great time.

Unfortunately, we had to cut our visit short, since we were also going to my wife's aunt and uncle's house for more food and fireworks. It was an even louder and rowdier event than usual, and by the time the fireworks died down, we were ready to head home and get some rest. It was nice to see everyone there too, but most of her family left early, so we didn't get as much time with them as we would have liked.

All in all, a very good holiday.

Gatlinburg 09: a preview

Recently got home from Gatlinburg, where my brother-in-law got married. I'll have more time for an in-depth report this weekend. Until then, I'll leave you with a picture from our adventures.

BOOM!

A little after 3:30 this afternoon, I heard a loud boom. I didn't think too much of it, seems like its always noisy near our house. Could have been any number of things. Once I got up to investigate, I saw that it was our brick mailbox, all over my front yard. Someone had been leaving one of our neighbors' houses, and while setting something in his floorboard, veered right into our mailbox. BOOM!

I walked out to investigate, and talked to the guy. He was pretty nice about the whole thing, cleaned it up and hauled it away. His truck was a mess, too. Left a nice stain in the road from some fluid leak. Needless to say, he's going to replace it.

The funny thing is, that was our second brick mailbox. The first one was demolished by an intoxicated driver late one evening. Luckily for us, one of our neighbors saw the whole thing and was able to run the kid down. His car had come to rest on an electrical box two doors down and he tried to get away on foot.

So now we have to have another one built. I wish I could remember the name of the guy who built our last one. It'll come to me soon, I'm sure.