Halloween Party

Sydney's class had their Halloween party. They couldn't dress in costumes, but the did get some yummy treats!

Pumpkin carving

First, we planned out what the faces were going to look like. Sydney instructed Daddy on how to create the perfect face.


Surprisingly, Zack wanted to help get some of the pumpkin seeds out.

We had 5 pumpkins to carve this year. Our hands were tired at the end!

We made two big batches of pumpkin seeds - including these "gourmet" ones. They were all yummy!

School pics are here!

Here are Sydney's 1st grade pictures. awwwww

My big race day!

The day I have been training for all summer has arrived. The 10K run! I made it my goal this year to not only run a 5K with Jennifer, but also to run a 10K. Alan agreed to run it with me, and he did. Look at us - we're Team Willford!! :)

It was a chilly run at the Racing For Recovery event, 39 degrees at start time I think. Thank god we had hats and gloves. There were only 80 runners in the 10K event, and 191 runners in the 5K event.

The results were:
54 30/38 339 Alan Willford 42 M 57:27 9:15
55 25/42 340 Lisa Willford 41 F 57:27 9:15

That's a time of 57 mins, 27 seconds. We laughed because I ranked 4th in my age division! yippie!! oh, but there were only 4 in my age division, so technically I was last in my age division - and so was Alan because he ran so slow with me! hahaha oh well, you have to start someplace. My only goal was to finish under an hour, so I was still thrilled with my results :) Next year... a half marathon. Destined to be Alan's slowest time ever!!

**** Update - the final results were posted and I now noticed that someone took 1 hour, 4 minutes to finish - making her 5th in my division. Whew! Ditto with Alan's group, 1 person was slower than him too. I love not being last!!

Poor Zack :(

After a weekend of dragging Zack over to Grandma & Grandpa's, Chuck E Cheese and the park, he was too sick to go to school today. Should have seen that one coming. He's been coughing a lot, runny nose and running a slight temperature in the middle of the night. Here he is with his new best friend, the box of tissues....

This is what he looked like a few days earlier - he fell asleep on the floor!

A walk in the park

It was such a beautiful fall day that I had to drag the family out to Side Cut park for a walk. The kids were lured there by the promise of being able to play at the park, while I had my camera in tow with other thoughts on my mind :)

We all tried to skip some stones in the river. Alan was the most successful.

We searched for the grasshopper... which got away.

My cuties on the rocks.

Then we finally made it to the playground as promised.

Wow! Look at the awesome fall colors! oops, maybe I photoshopped that one a bit too much, but it was really beautfiul.

We've been booed!

This morning I happened to glance outside on the front porch and saw two orange bags. Much to our surprise we had been "boo-ed!" The bags were packed with awesome treats that were hard to get a picture of without a set of hands in the picture!

Grrrrrrrrrrr

Grrrrrrrrr!!! that's the sound we heard all evening around our house. I've been toying with the idea of getting another kitten so Pico could have a friend. I've looked at the Humane Society every week looking for the "right" kitten. Well, when I stopped by our Vet's office a few weeks ago they had some kittens to adopt. I finally decided to take everyone over there to check them out. Of course we all fell in love with a little grey one right away. We decided to adopt her. She is so tiny, only 10 weeks old.

However, once we got the new kitten home, Pico was not so thrilled to meet this "friend" of hers. Ever since she saw her, she has been growling at her. And it's not just a growl and then walking away... Nope, Pico stalks her all over the house, just staring and growling at her.

Pico got so close to her and growled at her that her fur blew in the breeze from Pico's breath. Wow, hope they are buddies tomorrow. :)

Columbus Marathon Weekend

Well the big weekend has finally arrived. You know, the weekend Alan has been training for 18 weeks! The Columbus Marathon! But this year we decided to let the kids in on the fun and signed them up for the kids run. It was .35 miles for Sydney and .15 miles for Zack. They both did a really great job. Here are some shots of the kids in action...

Zack getting ready to make his way out of the back of the pack at the starting line.


Sydney zooming in to the finish line!

I was so proud of them because they both ran the whole distance without stopping - something neither one of them could do during our "training".

Proudly wearing their finishing medals.

We enjoyed a yummy pasta dinner at Carrabba's Saturday night. The next day, we got up at 5:30 am (much to my dismay, despite my disbelief that we REALLY had to get up that early - yes, YOU were right Alan...). It was so darn chilly!! In fact, it was only 33 degrees. All of the spectators and supporters were bundled up in hats, gloves, winter coats and scarfs - and the runners were in shorts & t-shirts.

Alan's training sure paid off - here he is right before mile 26. Still looking strong.

His official finish time was 3 hrs 16 mins - although the service provided by the marathon published a finish of 3:15 on Facebook! Either way, he rocked it. That's a Boston qualifying time. WELL DONE! His previous best time was 3:27. Quite an improvement. He placed 381 out of 4,078 finishers. In his age bracket, he placed 42nd out of 388 finishers. That was as pace of 7:30.

When we came home I ran a measly little 2 miles and then had to come back inside because my ears hurt from the cold. However, I was awarded with medals from my family - so we all had medals. If you could see mine, they say "#1 Mom!", "#1 Wife - Best Wife Ever", "Go", "First Place Mommy" and simply "You Won". Seems I have a pretty great cheering team too :)

The worst part of the weekend - I got a $25 parking ticket for not paying for my parking spot in a lot. Hey, I sure didn't see anyone manning the lot at 7am when we got there. Geez. Oh well, lesson learned.

Hocking Hills camping trip

We took at camping trip down to Hocking Hills. The weather was cool, but as usual the area was so beautiful! We hiked in all of the caves, and even explored a new one we hadn't been to yet.

(not sure why the pictures are showing up so odd, but I can't seem to move them to the right places!)

The kids had the most fun jumping across the rocks. Surprisingly, no one fell in!!

I think this is the area in which the campers used to drive over. They had rebuilt the entrance to the campground, but in the past you actually had to drive right over a little stream of water. Pretty cool!

The kids went "fishing" with sticks. What?, no bites yet? :)

Go Generals!

At Sydney's school they had a cheerleading "cheer clinic". It was a two night event where the kids learned cheers, and then they were going to join the cheerleaders at this weekend's football game. Unfortunately we won't be able to make the game, but Sydney had a great time learning the cheers - and later mentioned to me that she wouldn't want to cheer at the game because she would be nervous. She did a great job! That's her in the black pants and white t-shirt in the middle....


While she was at the cheer clinic, Zack and I played games at home. I find it interesting that a 4 year old has a such an interest in Battleship, but he really does a decent job at playing and gets a huge smile when he makes a HIT!

Zack's special day

Today the neighborhood playgroup met at Playground World. It's actually a store that sells playsets, but twice a week they invite people in to "try out the merchandise". I had never been there, so I decided to keep Zack home on my typical "Mommy Monday" and we went to playgroup. Not only did they have several of these cool playsets, they also had a train table which Zack spent a lot of time at.

After that, we went to our favorite library (which also has a train table) and I picked up some books for our upcoming camping trip to Hocking Hills.
For lunch, I had packed some sandwiches and snacks and we went to the 577 Foundation and ate in the garden.

It was a beautiful day for a "date" with Zack. He was having such a great time he did a little dance! See that big scratch on his nose? He tripped at Cedar Point a couple of days ago and did quite a face plant. ouch. We had such a good time we were late to pick up Sydney from school again this week. oooops. My record is not so good, I have to get better at being on time.

Pumpkin Patch

It's time to decorate for Halloween, and a trip to the pumpkin patch with Grandma & Grandpa was in order. We were remembering how last year it was almost 90 degrees when we visited, and this year it was probably about 55!




Here is a picture of the kids 3 years ago on their visit... they have really grown up in 3 years!





The little piggies were oh so cute, as always.


Zack demonstrated his super hero strength and had to carry his pumpkin over to the wagon. It's so cute that he tells us all of the time how strong he is.

In order to keep everyone happy, we had to take pictures of our pumpkins so no one fought over them when we got home!

The most interesting part of our visit was feeding the cows an apple! As soon was we walked over there with our apple, the cow stuck out his tongue - which was huge!! The instructions were to just roll it down his tongue, but the kids wanted no part of that. A big crowd gathered for the show. Alan was our brave feeder, and he did a great job.