Turkey Trot

Today I ran the Turkey Trot with my nephew, 2 nieces, and my sister-in-law.  I ran the 10K; the others ran the 5K.  Everyone did awesome!

Taylor came in first from our family.  He would have run faster if he hadn't injured himself during a camp-out last weekend.



Next to come in was Casey.



This was Karen's first race!  She did great!



This was also Bridget's first race as well!  She did super!



I came in last in the group, but I also ran twice as far, so that is my excuse.  I've been training for this 10K for a couple months.  My goal was to come in at a 7 minute-mile pace overall.  And I did exactly that - 7 minute miles right on the dot!  My overall time was 43:29.  I'm very satisfied with my performance.



Here was have the runners:





And here is my data:

Money!

This summer Emma found $42 on the ground during a festival in New York.  In effort to teach a valuable life lesson, we tried to find the owner.  When we didn't find an owner we gave the money to a police officer.

This week, we received a letter from the police department via my dad and nobody claimed the money, so the cash was legally Emma's!  She was very excited!

I suggested Emma treat the family to dinner, so while out of town she paid for our dinner at Wendy's.

Thanks Emma!

Watching the Kids

This past week I watched the kids while Rachel took a trip to Utah with some girl friends.  Rachel watched "Survivor" with a lady currently on "Survivor" (Dawn), and with Shannon Hale who is a New York Times best-selling author.  Rachel also saw 4 of our nieces and nephews, visited BYU campus, and apparently shopped and ate as much as possible (I haven't seen the bill yet).

At home, we had some adventures.  First, I ruined our home server.  I was attempting to upgrade the software and somehow managed to seriously damage the hardware.  It is going to the grave.  As a stop-gap, I converted my netbook into a temporary server.  It actually works better than the old server except it won't fill the TV screen.  I'll be building a new server sooner or later.

Second, we took a nice trip to Kernville with 3 other guys and their kids who were also wife-less for the weekend.  We had great pizza at some nice little spot.  Kendall and Stephen brought their RC boats and had some fun on the Kern River.  The kids preferred to throw things into the river and find sticks.



We headed over to Lake Isabella and boated some more, and threw more rocks.



At home, we also played a lot of chess.



And we hiked.



We had a great week, but we were sure glad when mommy came home!

Cozy

Sleeping kitties.

You Can Do It, We Can Help

On Saturday, the kids did another Home Depot kids workshop.  They made picture frames.



Great job!

Trunk-or-Treat

On Saturday before Halloween, we had a trunk-or-treat at the Church parking lot.  People decorate their trunks and hand out candy as kids walk by.

Lost Tooth

Emma lost another tooth!  Way to go!!!

Halloween

This Halloween, Benjamin was Harry Potter!



Emma was Rapunzel!



MO was Luke Skywalker!



Henry was a pumpkin!



The kids went trick-or-treat-ing for almost 2 whole hours!  They were very tired by the end but got lots of candy!

This picture proves that Henry had a good night.  He was sound asleep holding his two dumdum lollipops!

Carving Pumpkins

On Saturday before Halloween, we carved our pumpkins as tradition dictates.  Here we have MO with his creativity at work!



And now here is Emma:



And also Benjamin:



The kids did a great job on their pumpkins!



I separated out the pumpkins seeds and prepared some pumpkin seeds to eat.  I boiled the seeds in salty water for about 10 minutes.  They I put them on a cookie sheet and sprinkled a mixture of seasoning on them.  They went into the oven at 400 degrees for a good 15-20 minutes until brown.  Some got a little too brown.  Yet, they were yummy!