The week in pictures

 Some presents from Grandma Suzanne for Halloween.

 The kids all got capes and they love them.

 Sometimes going to bed in her real bed isn't nearly as nice as sleeping in a patch of sunshine.

 He just wanted to go running too.

 Look at that mop! I actually chopped his hair off this week.

 I still don't know what this actually is. I came upon him in the Botanical Garden running down the road. I first thought he was a dog since he was just moseying along down the road, then I got closer and realized no, definitely not a dog. It looked more like a fox, but gray and much bigger than I normally have seen. Didn't really look like a coyote except for the color, but who knows. He was not shy. He just hung around looking at me like he was wondering what I was doing there.

 Trying on costumes from the box we had in the attic. Genevieve is a butterfly, Spencer a bumblebee. Well, half a bumblebee. :)

This kid is serious about his pudding.

A rather uneventful week

It boggles my mind how expensive car repairs can be. The estimate for the repairs on what felt like a minor fender bender last weekend is $3000. That is crazy to me! The other guy's insurance will cover everything, plus two new carseats and a booster seat, plus a rental for the time it takes to fix it. Seriously, it's so much money. There are many forms of insurance I dislike, but car insurance is really making my life easier right now. We're just waiting for all the parts to come in to get the van in for repairs. 

This weekend we headed Greenville direction to do some shopping. We ended up at Steak 'n' Bake for dinner, which is not somewhere I would go again, but it was okay for one meal. Aaron was hilarious there. I find myself forgetting regularly that he's not a little baby lump anymore. He has opinions and wants to do everything everyone else is doing, and eats normal food like everyone else. This is him chowing through a grilled cheese sandwich and fries in comfort. lol. He is actually my biggest eater of the three. That kid can put down food like no other. He was all over playing with the cardboard truck they gave him and generally having a grand old time going out to eat, which we don't do very often. 

Aside from that, we haven't had much happening this last week. The lawnmower is on the fritz, so my lawn is half mowed from when it stopped in the middle of mowing, and looking like a jungle. My fingers are crossed that once we fix the mower we'll only have to mow one more time for the season, but no guarantee as it's supposed to be 79 degrees on Friday. The weather is being exceptionally fickle of late. I was a bit shocked by the 40ish degree nights the last few days, but I could be done with 80-degree temps too. I guess I'm like everyone else and just can't be satisfied with what the weather throws us, lol.  Good times.

Oh, I did run 11 miles Saturday morning. The half marathon is in two weeks. Bill is still uncertain whether he can run it. Fingers crossed on that, but I'm not thinking about it too hard. I've found that it doesn't matter how many times I train for long races like a half marathon, any time I run more than 10 miles in a training run, it is grueling mentally. Often physically too, but definitely mentally. It still just seems like a long time. Of course it is, but when you run lots of miles, sometimes your perspective gets distorted. So yeah, 11 miles is a LONG run! It's a big accomplishment. Go me. lol. My brother is driving in to run the race with me and hopefully Bill, so that's going to be awesome.

A little of this, a little of that

 I got to go with Spencer's preschool class to a farm nearby called Denver Downs. It's pretty pricey for normal entrance, so I jumped at the chance. We had a great time. He picked his own pumpkin and jumped around in a hayloft and played in a corn kernal pit and slid down a big slide and generally had a great time.

Aaron is a food lover and it makes my heart happy. He is as messy as they come when he eats, but he just delights in it, so we go with it.

Here's a bit of a peak at Genevieve's new bed. She adores it. I have more work to do on Spencer's before I take real pictures, but the kids are really happy that I built this for them.

 It was pretty rainy yesterday and Bill was out with the boys running an errand when a guy coming to the Clemson game slid into the back of him on the slick roads as he was coming to a stop. It wasn't a huge accident. The slick roads helped the impact as our van just slid too instead of rebounding really hard. But there's a good amount of damage. We have an appointment tomorrow to get it inspected.

Running Update

Bill and I started running at the beginning of this year. It's been a great change. We've both lost some weight and generally gotten in better shape, we feel way better, and it's been fun to train the last few months for the half marathon we're running on Halloween.

Bill just ran into a hiccup. Whoops, no pun intended, lol. He thinks he sprained his ankle on his Thursday run and, not realizing that, ran again yesterday and totally aggravated it. So now he's hobbling around hardly able to walk and hopefully we can get him healed soon. Such a bummer.

Hurricane Joaquin didn't make landfall this week like some expected, but it did contribute to a crazy rainstorm that we've been in for the last three days. We're basically floating away. Our yard and carport are under inches of water. Thankfully it rains a lot here, so everything we have outside is pretty well rainproofed. I haven't had to move much of anything to keep it from getting soaked.

Despite the rain, I had a nine-mile run scheduled yesterday. It has only been in the 60s, so the rain is way colder, but I got myself out and going in between conference sessions yesterday. It happened to be a Clemson game day as well, so despite the crazy rainstorms the tailgaters were out in force. I generally run around the university because it has the best roads and trails, so I wound my way through all the revelers, got a few high fives and shout outs along the way, and got my run done in about a nine-minute mile.

Bill and I have seen our mile times significantly decrease in the last month. We found a multivitamin that has made a huge difference, and we're in such better shape after nine months of running, so that was actually a slow run for me, which was nice. I didn't want to be fighting my lungs and exhausted legs at the same time as dealing with all the rain, so I took it slow. Nine miles still feels like a long distance, so I was a bit worried. I can't describe how nice it feels to be back feeling like I can actually run fast. I haven't been at that place since before we got married, so it feels amazing to finish runs closer to eight-minute miles than nine and some even faster. The last half marathon I ran was in 2008 and I ran it in 1:39, which is sub-eight minute pace. After so many years of pretty weak efforts at running, due to a combination of grad school and three kids, it feels amazing that I can imagine getting back to that kind of pace again. I had wondered if I just had gotten past my prime for those kinds of times. Turns out that's totally  not the case and with a combination of a serious training program, better nutrition, quality supplements, and efforts to get decent sleep (haha!), the speed is coming back.

And just for kicks and giggles, here's what I looked like after my run yesterday. I was completely soaked.