Tuesday, October 30, 2007

Pumpkin Carving

Tonight I decided to carve a pumpkin with Noelle. She really liked scooping out the seeds with a spoon then dumping the seeds back into the pumpkin and looking at the pumpkin with the candle in it when it was finished. We had lots of fun!

Noelle didn't like the feeling of the slimmy stuff in the pumpkin. I thought she would like it since she loves the feeling of sand, mud, dirt among other gross things. After she would stick her hand in the pumpkin she would take her hand out and want me to clean her hand.

She liked it alot more after I gave her a spoon to get the pumpkin seeds out.

I tried taking pictures on Noelle sitting next to the finished jack-o-lantern. Usually Mike is really good at distracting and making her smile but he was at a meeting, so I tried my best by myself. As you will see she wanted to do everything but sit next to the pumpkin.

Another picture of Noelle sitting on the pumpkin.

Noelle looking under her legs at the pumpkin.

After many pictures, I finally got one of Noelle kind of smiling and sitting in back of the pumpkin.

Noelle was very fascinated with the candle in the jack-o-lantern. She kept saying "hot,hot" and tried to blow out the candle.

Last night we also carved a pumpkin for Mike's work. They are having a pumpkin carving contest where the winner wins $75! So we decided to enter a jack-o-lantern.

This was the final project. Mike found this idea on the internet and we tried our best to copy it. It turned out pretty good. I hope it's good enough to win $75!

Monday, October 29, 2007

New Hairdo

Noelle's hair is finally grown enough so that it is starting to get unmanagable. So today I decided to try to put some gel in her hair since it actually has a natural curl to it.

What do you think?

Thursday, October 25, 2007

Mike ran a half marathon!

This past weekend I ran in the Kansas City Half Marathon. I have been training for the last couple of months (although my runs came to a screeching halt about 3 weeks before the race due to a sick kid, company in town, and other more important things that came up). The goal was 8 minute miles or 1 hour 45 minutes. I couldn't have asked for a nicer morning to run. The weather was beautiful and the atmosphere (6000+ runners for the marathon, half marathon, and 5K) was absolutely amazing. The run went smoothly, and the course was a lot more challenging than I had trained for. But I persevered throughout and actually averaged 7:36 minute miles and came in with a final (chip) time of 1:39:33, good for 128th overall out of close to 2600 runners!

In addition to my running in the half marathon I was also raising money for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society and Rotary Youth Camps. So if you're feeling generous feel free to donate to these worthwhile institutions.

Special thanks to those at my work that have already donated: Kenna, Rita, Harold (thanks for the fartlek tips), Carol, Andrea, Monty, Kent, and Karla.

We arrived to the race about 10 minutes before it actually started. This was the extent of my warm-up, squatting down for this picture with Noelle and then I was off to run my 13.1 miles!

Noelle waiting patiently for me to finish the race.

Down the home stretch, and boy was I happy to see the finish line!

Me intently searching the crowd for Nicole and Noelle, there were tons of people at the finish line and I was hoping that I wouldn't miss them. But then all of the sudden a ray of light shone down from the sky and there, cheering loudest of all was my beautiful wife and slighty freaked out daughter (she was wondering why the heck Mom was screaming her head off!).

Although it looks like I'm praising the Almighty here, I'm really just trying to get Noelle's attention by clapping. I was so happy to see Nicole and Noelle, they really were troopers in supporting me at the event and my training. I love my girls!

Wednesday, October 24, 2007

Noelle and Vivian in crawling through this tunnel. Noelle is getting pretty posessive, and you can tell by her face that she didn't want to share with Vivian.

Noelle playing on this see-saw toy at the playground.

Vivian getting ready to go down the slide.

Gulp Gulp

I got a goldfish for Noelle a couple of months ago. We were going to name it Goldy, but since I would always refer to it as "gulp, gulp" (the sound a fish makes), it kind of stuck. Noelle loves to feed Gulp Gulp, and watch me clean his tank.

Noelle trying to get a close up look at gulp gulp.

Friday, October 19, 2007

Sneek, Peek and Read

On Wednesday nights we have been going to the library for a program called "Sneak, Peek and Read". Noelle has had fun doing the activities and reading the books. It has been good for her to try to sit during the class and learn how to better interact with other kids.

Noelle's favorite part of the night is being able to go up and get her book which we read together and get to take home.

One of the activities that they did was putting different color hens in the barn while the teacher read a poem about the hens.