Brain Fails with Happy Endings

Today Dan brought home a delightful amount of tasty cheese. Don't ask, just be envious. I was in the process of making Tacos when he got home. That is when I realized I had no tortillas. No taco shells, no tortilla chips, nothing. Okay, no problem, I'm adaptable! I figured we could have cheese and crackers. Then I discovered I had no crackers! Aaack! I always have tortillas, and I always have crackers! And yet..... So, epic fail on my part for dinner.

The solution is that Dan hopped over to 7-11 and got their last bag of tortilla chips, and I added a pound of mozzarella, cheddar and cheddar-jack cheese to my taco meat and we had nachos! Joshua was thrilled.

Also of interest, we use to have 3 phones. I unplugged the one in the bedroom for a nap a few weeks ago and the cord fell behind the dresser and it was too much work to get it back up, so we have been phone-less upstairs since then. No problem, we had 2 phones on the main floor. And then one of them disappeared. The "call" button on the phone jack failed to locate it. It was gone and neither Dan nor I could figure out what happened to it. We concluded that Rylee must have done something with it. One phone is annoying. If I am upstairs, I can't hear it. Still, doing something about it required more motivation than I have.

Fast forward to earlier this week. As we're walking in from church, Dan says, "Why is the phone on the car?" Oh. Yeah, I vaguely recalled being outside with the kids on a lovely day and bringing the phone with me. Apparently I put it on the hood of the van to rake leaves and it was tucked neatly in the crevice below the windshield. The amazing thing is, that we got some cold and rainy weather and it sat there for at least 2 weeks. I plugged it in and darned if it doesn't work fine!

So proud!

Before I get to the main reason for this post, I had to share Marian's homework. It was so doggone cute and creative. And she did it all with no help. Well, after I read the assignment to her, she did it all by herself. And I was amused and had to take a picture of it!

And this week the school running club had a little mini meet. We went to a neighboring school for a little cross country run. The K-3 kids ran one loop, for half a mile, and 4-6 graders ran 2 loops to make a full a mile. Joshua and Callie participated.

Callie was not thrilled to realize she wasn't going to get a medal. She thought that since Dan got medals at each of his events, she would get one for hers. Poor girl. She felt like she ran for nothing!

Here's Joshua on his first lap. He was going strong, in the front of the middle of the pack!

Marian and Rylee had a good time on the playground while I cheered for Joshua.

Here he is on lap #2. Look at that stride!

On the home-stretch! He's almost at the finish!

He's sprinting to the end!

He finished his mile in 8:25. He was the 4th 4th grader to finish, and he was 25 out of 60 kids running. I was really proud of him!

Joshua relaxed on the playground with Rylee after his run. He kept an eye on her while I snapped pictures of Callie's run.

There goes Callie in the pink shirt!

Callie ran her lap and here she is sprinting to the finish. She ran her half mile in 5:34 and was 60th of 88 runners. Not too bad for a kindergartner!

Callie had more fun after the race on the playground. Funny how its the same one as at her school, but it is soooo much more fun at another school!

Delaney had a blast.

Of course, Delaney always seems to have a good time!

Marian had a good time playing and hanging out in the stroller. She was just happy I didn't make her run! It was a successful first event for the kids.

The Richmond Marathon!

Dan had been looking for a challenge. He wanted something that would motivate him with his working out. After the Ragnar Relay, he felt equal to the task of a full Marathon. Yesterday was that day!

We got up at 4:30 in the morning and threw the kids in the car and drove on down. We met up with our friends E & J, which was really nice for me. Dan was excited and prepared and barely made the 8am start due to the ridiculously long lines to the potties.

With the men gone, J and I headed for her hotel room. They had stayed there to better be on-site for the race, and it was a good idea! On the way, we passed the State Capitol building, and it only seemed right to get a picture.

The kids were delighted to hang out in J's hotel room for an hour. It was warmer than outside, and it had cartoons!

And they enjoyed playing with J's kids. I was happy to have a crowd-free, enclosed area to let the kids run around for a bit.

J was familiar enough with this course to be able to help us get to the 16/17 mile area to cheer on our men. I'm so glad she was there, because I couldn't have found it myself! We staked out a good spot, and waited. Rylee fell asleep, and Marian crawled in next to her. Such a funny girl!

Delaney found something fun to play with!

The kids had a great time in this little lot while we kept watch for the guys.

Yay! I spotted Dan and we cheered like crazy! Joshua was jumping up and down and waving his arms, so most of the pictures I got have a lot of Joshua's arms and not much Dan! We stayed another 15 minutes to cheer on E, and then we headed to the finish line.

We parked our strollers at a decent spot in sight of the finish, but away from the big crowds. We cheered in the runners who came by and had fun. Callie and Delaney climbed on everything! I have decided that when you do an event like this, you need to wear a shirt denoting something about yourself. Spectators who don't know you need a reason to cheer for you! The people wearing shirts with info on them got more cheers. And there was one point where there was a guy wearing an Army shirt who was 10 paces ahead of a guy in a USMC shirt. So there was a lot of hollerin' for those two!

Thank goodness, Rylee still slept! I can't imagine how hard it would have been to try to keep her in one place had she been awake and wanting to run around!

The bigger kids found a way up onto this wall behind us and I was actually happy to have them where I could see them! They thought they were hot stuff up there.

And then we saw Dan!

He was looking good and still running strong! We cheered loudly so he would see us in the crowd.

Yep, he heard us!

Then he sprinted to the end. Knowing it would be impossible to find him in the crush of humanity there, I waited with J till her husband passed, and then we headed to the finish line. Dan called from his cell and told me where he was, so we met up with him.

Here he is, mere minutes after finishing the race. The kids were obsessed with his medal and fought bitterly over it.

All in all, it was a good day, a good race, and the kids were AMAZING. Oh, Dan was also quite amazing!

Marian's Dino Book and Lunch at School!

Marian made a dinosaur book for her best friend, who loved Dinosaurs. She checked out a book on dinos from the library and used it to model her book. It was so cute. And I am getting better at reading her phonetic spelling. Here is her book, with translation provided.

Dino Book

A Triceratops' horn are his weapon. His beak is for chewing leaves.

(Check out the nifty bone insert drawn at the top left corner!) A Hypacrosaurus bone looks like this. Hypacrosaurus can grow up to 30 feet long.

A Argentosaurus is one of the biggest dinosaurs. It eats leaves in high up places.

A Tyranosaurus Rex is a meat eater. It isn't as big as a long neck dinosaur. It guards his eggs and eats meat while he's waiting. Some dinosaurs lay their eggs and leave because they could squish their babies.

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Yesterday the school held their annual Veteran's Day lunch. Its their Thanksgiving lunch, but they have it on Veteran's Day I think because so many dads are off work that day. Maybe not, but it works out well anyway. Marian said she wanted Daddy to have lunch with her, so Dan went and enjoyed cafeteria fare first. I met him at the tail end of their lunch and handed off Rylee. Dan and Rylee went home and I waited 15 minutes for Callie's class to come to lunch. It was fun to sit with her at a table with a bunch of giggly, adorable kindergartners! Joshua's class came in just before Callie's finished, and he came to join us, and I hung out with him till his lunch was done. Th kids really enjoyed having us come. Callie was so excited all week for it, so it was nice to feel like we were special!

Dan and Marian. And Marian's friend who really wanted to be in the picture too!

Me and Callie. I don't know why my teeth look funky.

And here is Joshua enjoying some tasty turkey.

Museum of American History

Today Dan didn't have to work. We decided to go to the Smithsonian! We tossed Delaney in the stroller, and Rylee in the backpack and off we went.

The day was gorgeous, and Rylee was content to hang out. She liked being up high where she could see everything.

There was lots of neat stuff to see. We especially enjoyed the section on War. It was really interesting. Delaney enjoyed posing for pictures.

She was cute here. She was concerned as to why the man had bandages on his head.

I wondered how George Washington might have felt about a shirtless statue of himself here.

Delaney liked riding the Metro, but she thought that was all we were going to do. She was less impressed with the Smithsonian!

Rylee conked out and slept for about an hour in the carrier. It certainly made the Metro ride easier!

Delaney wanted lots of pictures of herself on the Metro. The funny thing is, she wanted me to take her picture as she looked out the window. I wasn't going to take pictures of the back of her head though.