The end of year catchup post

Once October hits it seems like time really speeds up. There are so many special dates (Rachel birthday, Michael birthday, Halloween) in October, then November slows down a bit at the begining, but then Thanksgiving and Christmas seem to blend into one holiday, which leads me to where I am now... about 2 months behind in my blog posts. So I'll try to post about 2 months worth here.

The Monster Half Marathon

On Jan 1, 2009 I ran my longest race ever - a 10k in below freezing weather. It hurt so bad I thought that was the longest distance I would ever do. Somehow throughout the year I go the bug to try a half marathon and ran it in Aug. That hurt so bad that I said "never again". Memory is a funny thing though, and the finishers medal was alot less than I hoped for, and when I saw that the Monster half was giving out a belt buckle for finishing, and I only had to drop 3 minutes to meet my goal in a 2 and half hour race I was ready to try again.

Here is the picture taken of me in the Monster half. Let me just say that I was about 24F, which was quite a bit colder than the 80F in Aug, and it hurt quite a bit more than the first time. All said, I was about 1 minute slower than the first time, but was alot uglier as I went out faster and came back alot slower.

Michaels 3rd Grade Concert

Next we move into school concert season. It is always fun to see the kids with the excited/embarrased look on their faces when they see you at school. Michael isn't big on singing but always tries his best though, and always looks so cute all dressed up with his class.

Rachels 6th grade band concert

Rachel had her first flute concert of the year. If I am going to have a work trip it is always during a concert it seems like, so I missed Michaels and Rachels this time. Here are some of the shots of Rachels.

Aunt Andrea visits

Auntie flew up for Thanksgiving again, which is always fun for the kiddos. Here is the lovely sisters when she first arrived.

We actually got a real tree for the first time ever also. Here is Daddy "unwrapping" the tree.

Here are the kiddos after it was all set up and decorated. Minus the nice glass ornaments though... with 3 cats and one of the them a 6 month old kitten, the oranments wouldn't have lasted. In fact, there are no ornaments on the bottom 2 feet of the tree now :)

Each year we make family ornaments, and this year was snowmen.

We had an early Christmas with Auntie while she was here also.

Candice and Andrea

The whole family and Andrea

Candice and Andrea again

The first snow of the season

The first snow came about a week before Christmas. It was only about 4 inches, but was really, really windy, which ended up with HUGE snow drifts. Here is Michael and Megan standing behing the snow drift infront of the garage.

The Gingerbread house

Halloween came so fast that we actually didn't get to carve pumpkins, so we actually made a Gingerbread house this year. It was a package set though, so not made from scratch, but the kiddos had alot of fun, and ate it as soon as we were done.

Our 10 Year Anniversary

I posted on this already, but here is the happy couple a few days later.

Here comes the snow again

Here we are on Dec 24th. We had somewhere between 15-20 inches over one day and I always love to take "the mailbox" picture, since that is where the snowplow piles it up. Here is Michael standing next to the mailbox.

Christmas day kept on snowing piling on another 6 or so inches. Here is Candice by the mailbox on Christmas.

We had to shovel out the openings on the mailbox and newspaper box so that they could be opened.

Here is the house across the street and their snow pile. This is the "hand shoveled" pile, vs our nice and neat "snow thrower" pile. Notice it is about as high as Candice.