Halloween fun!

Look out, it's that time again!!  Halloween!!

 This year Sydney wanted to be "something scary" so she picked spider witch.  Luckily it was the costume I bought on clearance last Halloween.  bonus!  Zachary was a Ninja.  For some reason he didn't want to wear his hood other than for a few pictures.  Odd, because when he has his hoodie on, the hood is usually up!  go figure.  Anyhow, here they are ready for some candy.

The night was just a blur - I didn't even get any pictures of Alan and I with the kids!  Luckily Grandma & Grandpa Bachli came over to pass out candy so I got to run around with Alan and the kids.  I need to be better organized next year and come up with a costume for myself.

We ran into one of Sydney's BFF's (Rebecca) and spent the night running around with her.

After 2 hours of running around, we were all tired and we retreated back home to the warmth and to count out the loads of candy the kids received.  It was so much the kids could make life size models of themselves!

Good thing our neighbors give out lots of Reeses PB cups... they are my favorites!! :)

Apple picking at MacQueens!

With the weather feeling so much like fall (and really it is fall around here now) we decided to head over to the apple orchard to pick some apples.  We had intended to get to the orchard before their festival (an apple butter festival I think) happened, but even now the orchard was a mad house of people with the same idea.  Imagine that!

The kids couldn't wait to shimmy up the trees and pick some apples.  They were big helpers this year.

 Of course I made the family pose for pictures.  The apple orchard is just perfect for pictures!

Yep, I see some family xmas cards...  :) 

 Hamming it up!

This is the best part of owning a truck... climbing on it to pick the big apples that no one else could reach! 

Travel back in time...

Imagine if you will, being back in 1850 traveling on a canal boat in Ohio.... We visited the canal boat today in Grand Rapids. We have seen the Volunteer many times running on the towpath trail (well, Alan has seen it many more times than I have!).

The tour was a 45 minute ride in which people in period costumes explained what life was like back in 1850. Imagine ripping down the canal at a whopping 4 miles an hour to Cincinnati (in a mere 6 days!). It was quite interesting and the fall weather was beautiful. When we got to the locks (the only operational historic lock in Ohio), we had to be pulled by the boat employees.

We also learned what a Mule was (not a donkey!) The mules pulled us along the canal.

Imagine me forgetting to grab our hoodies for the ride though! Good thing I had a blanket in my car to keep us warm. Well, it was warm at our house when we left, who would have thought it was going to be so cool. Looks like Zack was not so thrilled that I forgot his coat. oops!

After our boat ride we took a tour of the mill. 

Camping at Pokagon

It's definately fall around here again, and that means weekend camping trips!  Now that we don't have soccer interrupting our weekends, I'm hoping we'll take a few more trips.  For this trip we went to Pokagon state park in Indiana.  We camped in our favorite campsite... the one with the big rock!

 The kids also love the nature center at the park.  We went on our first nature walk with a guide.  We learned a lot - most especially how to correctly identify posion ivy!  We got a new saying "hairy scary".  good to know :)

 Zachary made a milestone lately - he can now conquer the monkey bars!!  That is very exciting (but also sad because he's not so much a little boy nowadays).  He did a great job, made it to one side and back again.

 We also went on a hayride around the campground.

 We all had fun - until the driver scolded everyone for causing straw to fall out of the wagon.  Geez, what a crank!

 Even though Sydney was really hoping to find many caterpillars, we only found one wooly bear.  We brought it home, but it's not looking so good.  We did find a little frog that was really cute too.  Thank god the kids let him go.

 The kids stayed up really late riding their bikes around.  Well, at least 9pm seemed pretty late since it was so dark out (and chilly!).

 Nighttime is also time for s'mores.  Yum yum yum!  My favorite :)  The kids even had theirs the "right" way this time, with toasted marshmallows.  They liked them, but they still like eating all of the parts separate.

The kids did stay up until 10:30 both nights, so that was late for them.  But with the heater cranked in the camper, we all sleep in pretty late, so I don't mind too much.

 Sunday morning we went down to the beach.  We were surprised to see 4 beautiful swans swimming in the lake.  When we first saw them we thought they were fake!

 The beach was empty - but still a fun place to explore.

 They begged Daddy for a super push on the swings.  Hang on tight kids!!

 This is a pretty cool picture because Sydney took it.  I don't know if she purposely tried to get me off center or not, but I think so.  I think some of my random mumblings about shooting pictures has rubbed off on her!!

 A beautiful day at the Inn as well.  Some day we will stay at the Inn for the weekend, to see how the "other half" lives :)

Running update

Today we ran the Boy Scouts Half Marathon race in Bowling Green.  I knew Alan was going to be running it, and I saw it was a smaller race, so I thought I might have a chance of scoring a 3rd place medal, so I decided to sign up too.  Sometimes I have those crazy ideas *after* my good runs :)

The weather was starting to cool down so it seemed like the perfect time to run a race.  Much to our surprise, the weather kicked back up in the 90's right before the race, and on race day the forcasted high was 94 degrees!  Well, no problem, just try to run it easy and not hurt ourselves was the plan.
Since it was so hot Alan ran with no shirt and I just had a sports bra on.  That was a nice change because quite frankly, I would run in my sports bra everyday if I could - I hate to have the feeling that I am overdressed or getting hot because of my running gear.

Once the race got started Alan was no where in sight of me, so I just kept running the best I could.  I ran it at a comfortable pace, but knew I wasn't going to beat my PR (1:55) because I saw the little pacer dude on my watch run right off my screen ahead of me.  oh well.  I did stop at almost every water stop though, walking through them all (it was a nice break from the heat!).  By the time I had got to the end, I was running around the track and saw the finish line.  As I squinted I could see that the clock still had a 1 in front of it! (1 hour time)  I was in disbelief.  I really need to learn how to read my watch better because I was soooooo close to coming in under 2 hours on this race!  So I ran the best I could, but the clock flipped and I finished in 2:00:22.  darn!  Next time I will do better reading my watch :)

Alan also got a surprise at the finish line - he was also "taking it easy" and when he crossed the line at 1:34, he had gotten 1st place in his age class!  Not so shabby!!  It was a good race.

As we were lounging around before picking up the kids from Grandma & Grandpa's house I got a call from Sydney's BFF Morgan and they invited both Sydney and Zachary over for a sleepover!  That was great news.  I knew they would be a bit tired from being at Grandma & Grandpa's, but I didn't want to pass up the opportunity so I sent them over there for the night.  That allowed Alan and I to go to see the movie Appollo 18 (good!) and then over to Granite City for a brew.  The perfect way to end a super day!