Halloween Happy Times

 I didn't want Jordan to miss out on the pumpkin carving fun, so we waited until he was back in town to bust out the pumpkin guts.

Our works of art!

Left to right we have Moms owl, Rues scary pumpkin, Tillies scary pumpkin, My pumpkin (some little dragosaur monster that came in the pattern book) Adelaides punkin and Jordans silly smiler.

Rue had a halloween party at school, but they had to bring their costumes to change into halfway through the day, and Tillies class missed out on Pajama day during spirit week earlier in the month, so they got to have a pajama day instead of costumes, and then had a spider party, so I decided to make them these spider hair clips that I saw on Pinterest- they were supposed to be clipped onto headbands, but I didn't find the right headbands so we just went with clips.

The Princesses on Halloween night!

It was so nice, having bought these dresses in the summer I didn't have to worry about anything for their costumes this month. I'm the laziest thing ever, so that worked out really nice for me.
I had put Rues hair in little buns earlier hoping for some curly Merida worthy hair, but we only ended up with a gentle wave that totally wilted before we got home from trick or treating. Oh well, we still had a pretty fun Halloween:)

Pumpkin Patch

 It's that Pumpkin Patchy time of year!
We headed a few miles down the road from mom and dads house to Spooner Farms to check out the cuteness they had going on. It was extra fun for us this year because David, Angela and Avery came out to Orting, and we all went together!

 I thought this little pumpkin barn was inordinately cute.

So are the little girls inside.

Giant hay bale spiders, but they look so friendly, don't they?

Cute lil punkins.

As you can see, the day we went was rather wet and muddy, but it was all good.

By now you know that I'm a big sucker for cousins holding hands!

 Circusey entrance to the corn maze, which we did not do because of the aforementioned muddiness. We might try to make it before Halloween if there's a nice dry day and I'm in the right mood;)

Avery was completely mesmerized by this guy. (I stole this picture from Angela, by the way) It was so cute, she just stood there like this, staring up at him for several minutes. When someone walked up to her to say maybe let's look at something else, she got so startled! She is seriously such a cute little thing. 

They had a covered area with some kids activities and some animals to look at- rabbits, chicks, chickens, turkeys and piggies... It got pretty stinky in there at one point, but it was fun:)

Towards the back of the farm they had a goat that you could look at (that goat totally judged us for being out in the rain) and a little castle for kids to climb.

Cute little princesses.

And one more of Avery cuz she's just so adorable:)

It was a lot of fun, and their prices were pretty good too.
I've been able to put off carving the pumpkins for a fair while now, but Jordans back up here this weekend, so I think those days are numbered:)

The Portland Marathon!

 When I got home from the Reaper with my shredded fingers, one of the first things LaRue asked me was, "Are you still going to do your marathon tomorrow?"
And I told her that I was sad, but I didn't think I would be, because my fingers hurt so much, and they were just making me miserable.
To my surprise, she was a little bummed, I didn't think she even cared about my races. And if she did, that it was more in an annoyed sort of way, but she told me, "You can do it, no matter what!"
While it would be nice to believe that was true, I wasn't so sure, and I went to bed that night not having my running stuff laid out or set up, not having any alarm set, and telling myself (and Jordan:) that if by some miracle I woke up around 4:00 am, and my fingers weren't murdering me, then I would probably go ahead and do it.
I woke up at 3:15, and I was like, "Nooooooo!!!" I tried and tried to fall back to sleep after that, but I just couldn't, so I figured, I could lay there tossing and turning, and spend the day probably a little grumpy for punking out, or I could just get the crap out of bed and do this thing. So I did.
Jordan dropped me off in Portland with plenty of time to spare. By some miracle I even found the right corral- I had about forty-five minutes until the start of the race, so I found myself a cozy seat on a step, prepared to settle in until it was go time.
And then as someone was passing me, I happened to look at their feet, and my heart sank when I saw their timing tag, and realized that I had forgotten mine in the bathroom at home! Dang it!
As ever, Jordan is my total hero, he was almost home when I realized I'd forgotten it, so he hurried to pick it up and bring it back out to me. I got it on my shoe, and made it to my corral just as the race was starting, phewf!
I LOVED this race.
I did way better than I had reason to hope that I would. I started off running three minutes, walking one, repeat, repeat, repeat, and I did that to about mile 11.
Then I switched to running two minutes, walking one, but pretty quickly changed that to walking two minutes and running one. Around mile 21 I changed to walking three minutes and running one. . I know that doesn't sound impressive, and it's not, but it got me through it, and I feel pretty good about it. There were lots of times when I thought, I'm tired, I'm just going to walk the rest of the way, but I kept running my one minute intervals. Hmmm. It felt a lot more impressive than it's sounding, but oh well, I'm pleased with myself. I finished in 5:58:38, which is only two minutes and three seconds longer than my time for the Newport marathon last summer, and I had trained my heart out for that one! AND I hadn't run a crazy, hilly obstacle course the day before, and I wasn't running with shredded fingers. So I feel really good about it.

Here I am just coming off of St. Johns bridge, shortly before mile eighteen.

 

This might be my favorite race that I've run yet. I really liked the course, running over the bridges was awesome, and it was mostly nice and flat except for one good sized hill and few little ones.
The volunteers were fantastic, they just seemed really happy to be there, and they were so encouraging. There were plenty of water stations, and there were people cheering you on almost every step of the way, it was SO good! If I weren't moving, I would probably want to do this one every year, I'm so glad I got the chance to do it before we leave.

And the finish chute was really organized too, and they had lots of good food and drink options, all in little cups which made it easier to carry. They gave us flowers and a tree seedling, and in addition to the medal:

 Nice, right?

 You get a finishers shirt, a commemorative coin ('kay, not too sure what I'm actually going to do with that:) and a pendant that looks just like the medal, but less ostentatious for day to day wear:)
SUCH a good race.
 You know I love to get me some good cell phone pictures during my run, and heaven knows I take it easy enough to have the time to do it, but I couldn't this time on account of my mutant hands.
Here's a pic of my little picnic set up back at Pioneer Square while I waited for Jordan to pick me up.

 Bagels, grapes and string cheese never tasted so good, I tell ya.

So glad I did it!

I'm an Idiot

 Remember how I mentioned that after the Heck Run, I was really eager to do another race like that? Well, I sat down at my computer and searched and searched for something comparable and came across Race the Reaper.
This would be a six mile, 20 obstacle adventure race about an hour and a half out of Oregon City, on a day that I was supposed to be down there anyway, score!

*Tangent* What I was supposed to be down there for was the Portland Marathon, which I'd signed up for MONTHS ago, but which I had failed to prepare in any way for. When I got back from Disneyland, dismayed with how I'd done in the half, I decided that I was tired of running in races that I wasn't prepared for, and I was just going to skip the Portland Marathon, which made finding this race scheduled for the day before just perfect! Now I wouldn't feel so bad about skipping Portland!
Oddly, once I'd signed up for the Reaper, I felt like it took some of the pressure off. Nobody would do great in a marathon the day after doing something like that right? I decided to pick up my PM bib on my way into town, and play things by ear. *End of Tangent*

I talked my friend Katie into doing it with me, and so on October 6th, we donned our matching skirts and headed to the middle of nowhere - (I am not kidding about this being in the middle of nowhere, I put a lot of faith in my gps, but when we had gone about 20 minutes on a dirt road, about 40 minutes since seeing ANY other car, I started to get a little worried! Luckily, gps didn't fail me, and we ended up at the right place:)

Here's the course map.

It's kind of useless, but that's what I do.

The obstacles listed on the site were not accurate to what was on the course, but there were twenty, and they were TOUGH! This race was SO hard, I'm not even playing. See how you kind of curve around and to the right from the start? Well as soon as you round that curve you are going uphill. STEEPLY uphill. Like, this would be a difficult hike, uphill. I was not expecting the uphill. I did not enjoy the uphill.
But Katie was great, and very understanding of my pathetic need to walk at any hint of an incline.

The obstacles were pretty tough too, they all required great amounts of upper body strength, of which I apparently have NONE. Although, here I am killing it on the inclined monkey bars.

Just kidding, I got scared, so I just dropped to the muddy water you can't see at the bottom and ran to the other side.
Yeah, the obstacles were pretty hard, but you could help each other and if you couldn't do it, that was okay too, we tried to at least try everything though.
At one point, maybe about four miles in? You had to carry a tire up and down a steep hill, it was total death, I am telling you, it made the Heck Run seem downright adorable.
But we just kept moving forward, except for one point at what I thought was the top of a killer steep hill- no mountain, it was a mountain, but when you reach the "top" you turn a corner to see that you're only really halfway up, I had to sit down for a minute. Katie was wearing a watch and I told her to check it and give me exactly one minute, but I ended up getting up before the minute was over - what!? Ah yeah, not wimpy at all!

The good thing was that when we weren't on the insane inclines, I was feeling great, and neither of us were getting hurt, so I was thinking I would be able to go ahead and do the Portland Marathon the next day, yay!

Finally we made it to the second to the last obstacle, you could SEE the finish line. All we had to do was climb a twenty? foot platform via wooden slats, easy peasy, and then climb down a rope.
Well. Once we got up there we hemmed and hawed about whether we should try it, we absolutely did NOT have to, we could climb back down the easy way, do our last obstacle and finish up.
But. I'm an idiot. These two guys were manning the obstacle and they were climbing up and down the ropes like spider monkeys saying 'look, you just do this with your feet and you don't even really use your arms at all' and there was a crowd of spectators down below yelling 'you can do it! It's so easy!' And I just kept thinking that I would regret it if I didn't even try it.

It did not go well.

(This picture was taken two days later)

So there was no climbing, just sliding. Painful, burning sliding. I even somehow managed to get a little rope burn on my forehead? So you see, I didn't just fail. I failed epically. In crazy grand style.

I got to the bottom and called up to Katie, "Don't do it! My fingers are wrecked, it's not worth it!"

Then I slunk over to the medic tent, where I cried as they cut off my skin flaps, put some goo on my bloody stumps and bandaged me up mitten style. They were really nice about me being ridiculous for getting hurt and then crying like a ridiculous baby, which was nice.

So, I skipped the last obstacle (because it was a slip and slide into a muddy water pit, and I didn't want to get my fingers dirtier than they already were) and crossed the finish line with Katie at 3:01:25.

Sad Lisa.

But they gave me a medal anyway, which was nice, though I have mixed feelings about it- I didn't do that last obstacle after all, but I did pay a little in actual flesh... Oh well.

And here's the kicker. Katie and I didn't bring gloves, but they were selling some at the check in, so we both bought a pair. But we felt like we wouldn't be able to get the grip that we wanted, so we cut off the finger tips. Stupid Lisa, stupid! If only I'd had those finger tips on there, maybe it wouldn't have been so bad.

Because it turns out, you use your fingers for pretty much everything, and a week and a half later, they're only just starting to feel like they're healing a little bit.
I'm lucky though, because Jordan took reeeeeaaaaaalllllyyyy good care of me.
Katie kept encouraging me not to let the pain of my accident ruin what the rest of the day had been, and now that some time has passed I can honestly say that I'm not letting it (different story on the day of:) I'm glad I did it. I did it terribly - as is my usual -  but I survived it.
And I learned a few things to boot;)
As Katie drove us home afterward I kept thinking half bemoaningly and half relievedly that there was no way I'd be doing the Portland Marathon now:(

Heck Run

I had been wanting for a while to do an obstacle course/mud run type of a race and finally, a month ago, my dream came true!
Way earlier in the year I got Jordan and David locked in to a commitment to do this with me, and I'm so glad that I did, it was so much fun!
We did the uh, Heck Run, a 5k in a rural area outside of Seattle, here's a course map to give you an idea of what it was like.

The course wasn't exactly like they've got it mapped out there, but it was fun! The very first obstacle was plunging into an icy cold river up to about your thighs, and heading upstream a little ways. So odd to run on numb legs afterward.
It was definitely tiring, but it wasn't KILLER, which was good. At about the second mile we weren't too muddy yet, and I remember thinking something about I might make it through this thing without getting too gross- cut to us at the finish line:

I don't know that the picture does it justice, but we were MUUUUUDDDDYYYY. It was pretty gross, but as I've said about five times now- FUN!
I left this race way eager to do some more like it.
Oh, and we stopped for a few minutes on the way back to take in this pretty view at Snoqualmie Falls.

All in all, it was a pretty great day!

Cuteness

One of the many things we're loving about being in Orting right now is how much we get to see Avery. Mom usually watches her for David and Angela at least once a week, and the girls and I are loving the time we get to spend with her. She is SO cute, and SO funny.
So when we were at Disneyland we just couldn't stop ourselves from buying her her own little set of mouse ears.

Isn't she just the most precious thing?

Seriously, I cannot get enough of this girl:)

First Day of School!

 We got back from our California trip at about nine o clock on Sunday night, and the next morning was the girls first day of school!

They look a little tired, but they were both excited to go.

We made it back just in time for Tillie to start on her actual first day, but Ruesie missed about four I think, whoops.
Totally worth it:)

Day Four!

Day four was our last day in the parks, sad:(
It was also the morning that everyone else headed home, also sad:(
We definitely missed having everybody else at the parks with us, but we managed to power through and have some fun:)
Before we left for the parks we made a list of the top three things that each of the girls wanted to do in each of the parks, and with a little help from Ridemax, spent the day doing those things. Jordan and Adelaide would split off whenever the girls wanted to do something she thought was too intense.

One of the times that we met back up was when we finally got to meet Merida!

LaRue was SO excited, Merida was THE ONE that LaRue really wanted to meet most of all, and she was so delightful.

After you talk to Merida, you get to go shoot a bow and arrow, which the girls thought was fun!

Tillie taking her turn

Adelaide got to do it too, so cute!

One thing we were all going to do together was ride the Mark Twain Riverboat, but it was having a delay so we got the girls some cotton candy while we waited.

It was so much messier than I thought it was going to be, but they were happy to have it.

After some more rides and fun, we lined up at Pixie Hollow to meet us some fairies!

This was a puzzlingly long wait.

But we got to meet Fawn and Tink, which was fun!

After that we headed over to California Adventure where we stopped to watch the Pixar Play Parade, we had a great spot.

The Incredibles!

Mater!

One of the things that Tillie was super set on doing at California Adventure on this day was to ride the Tower of Terror. Her cousins had gone on it over and over again over the past couple of days and they LOVED it, so Tillie was determined to try it.
I was scared she was going to have a little baby heart attack, but she ended up liking it just fine and wanted to go on it again!
I don't think Daddy wanted to though, I know I didn't:)

Here she is, waving goodbye to the real world.

While they were doing that, Rue, Adelaide and I went on the Monsters Inc. ride where we saw Sully and Boo!

We ended up making our way back through Cars Land after the sun had set and I was surprised at how pretty it was at night.

As usual, my pictures don't do it justice, but oh well:)

LaRue desperately wanted to go and see the interactive Bugs Life show again, and that was fun. Daddy and Adelaide sat this out because surprise, surprise, it was too scary for Adelaide:)

But how cute are these girls in their buggy glasses?

And this picture is to show you that LaRue lost one of her teeth while we were in California Adventure!

It turns out that when you lose a tooth at Disneyland, Tinkerbell is your tooth fairy that night, so that was fun and special:)

In case you can't guess by the hundreds of pictures, we had the time of our lives. We LOVED our Disney trip- which is good, because the drive back was murder for the soul, but we survived it, and are completely obsessed with getting back there in a couple of years. We can't wait:)

Day Three!

 Day three was interesting for Adelaide, she woke up feeling no good at all, and running a fever, so she and I decided to sit the first half of the day out, and sent everyone else on their merry way.

And on that merry way they met a Storm Trooper!

 

 And had a good climb through Tarzans Treehouse

 

They rode space mountain

Some enjoyed it more than others:)

They met Aladdin!

So after getting a little bit of extra rest, Adelaide said that she would like to go back to the parks, so we walked on over... mostly I carried her. It was hot, but we made it and met up with our group in time to do some souvenir shopping.

The girls picked out some mouse ears, and then met the mouse himself!

And the Minnie!

 Our little family split off from the main group for a little while so that we could take things slow and easy for Adelaide. She was super cautious about what she was willing to go on, a very nervous sort of Adelaide. We thought the little train ride around Disneyland would be a good speed for her, but once it got moving she got very nervous saying it was, "too fast, too fast! I wanna go home!" So she and Jordan got off at the first stop, while Rue, Tillie and I went the entire way around. While they were waiting for us to get back, they saw Minnie walking by, she had somewhere to be, but she let Adelaide (and Perry) walk with her for a little bit, and I couldn't love this picture more.

After that we headed over to California Adventure to meet back up with the rest of our group.

We tried out Heimlichs Chew Chew train- possibly THE mildest ride in either of the parks.

But again, it was too much for Adelaide, so shortly after meeting up with Flick

 she and I set off to head back to the motel, and left the rest of the group to enjoy their day.

On our way out of the park we passed by a Disney Junior show that was just about to start so we decided to head in and see if she could take it. She started out really nervous, but by the end, she really ended up enjoying it.

It was a pretty cute show.

After that she seemed to mellow a little bit, and wanted to go on the Ariel ride, so we did that and then rode King Tritons Carousel.

There was no line for the carousel, so the operator let the riders keep riding without having to get off after every turn, so we rode this one for a while.
We didn't end up heading back to the motel early, and we just had a really mellow, slow going afternoon, doing whatever Adelaide wanted to do. It was a really sweet day for her and me together.
And I think the rest of the group had a good time too;)

Adelaide next to the GINORMOUS bear in front of the Grizzly River Rapids when we were touching base with the group at one point.

We lasted the rest of the day!

Here we are heading back to the motel, Adelaide sporting her fancy, light up Mickey ears.

Honestly, this walk back was NOT great, but we survived another fun and magical day:)