Rock and Roll Marathon

Anthony has been training for the Rock and Roll Marathon since July.  He runs 5 days a week with his long runs on the weekends.  He would get up early to run, but we still missed having him around to be lazy and hang out with on the weekend mornings.  

Friday CeCe and I made him some peanut butter cheesecake brownies for an after race treat!  

The kids and I knew we wanted to see him during the race so I came up with 3 good (easy to get to) places to watch.  We watched at miles 11, 16 and 20.  It was perfect!!  Traffic and parking weren't bad at these places because we purposely avoided downtown until the finish line.  We left the house at 7:45 and made it mile 11 in plenty of time.  It was chilly out that early!!  

Next we hit Chik-fil-A on the way to Savannah State's campus to watch him at mile 16.  We were close to a band here and there were lots of people cheering.  The runners had spread out from each other enough that we could easily spot Anthony.  We took his sweatshirt from him and passed him his sunglasses.  It was warming up!  

Next stop was mile 20 which happened to be right in front of our church!  We hit a little traffic trying to get here, but made it just in time.  

The kids were excited to get high 5s from Daddy! 

 From the church I was a little nervous about getting into downtown (so many roads were closed and tons of people trying to get down there).  But it was easy peasy!  We lucked up on a great parking spot fairly close to the finish line.  I had told Anthony that we wouldn't try to see him at the finish line, I didn't think we'd get there in time.  We made it with 25 minutes to spare!  I had been getting text updates on my phone when he passed certain points so I had it figured out pretty close as to when he should finish.  I had the camera out, kids were on the fence watching and.....we missed him!!  He sped up a little at the finish (just like last year, maybe I'll know better next time!) and he came through about 1 minute before I really started watching.  GRRR!!  We waited and waited and I got worried something bad had happened to him but then I checked my phone and sure enough, he had finished 10 minutes earlier!  We were so glad to see him and hug him once we found him.  He finished 22 minutes quicker than his goal of 4 hours.  26.2 miles in 3:38!!  Crazy!!    

We found our friends the Tootles again and Bryce and Nick had fun running around playing. 

 We stayed for about 1.5 hours after he finished and then came home for the afternoon.  Other than a really weird gross looking toenail, he came through it without any injuries!  He just figured up that since his training began in July he has run 472 miles!  Bryce has his Rock and Roll one mile race tomorrow so check back for pictures from that!  

Our Weekend

Our weekend started out like this...... CeCe was diagnosed with walking pneumonia on Friday.  Thursday night after trick or treating she coughed  all.  night.  long.  It was a loooong night and I knew she needed to see the Dr. the next day.  I didn't expect pneumonia though!  She never had fever, only a bad cough.  

Even though the weekend started out rough, it ended on a GREAT note.....last night we went to Disney on Ice!  It was our first time and we all enjoyed it.  Thanks to the clearance costume aisle at Target she was able to go in style.  Presenting Merida from Brave!  

 Amazingly CeCe woke up Saturday doing so much better.  We had tickets for all of us to go to Columbia, SC for the Mississippi State football game and I tried to give mine and CeCe's away on Friday because I sure didn't think she would be feeling up to going.  But she slept great Friday night and seemed to feel good Saturday so we all went!  It was a 3 hour drive there and back but since it was a 12:20 start time we could easily go and come home in the same day.  

We made it to our seats just in time to see the bulldogs score!  Glad we did because that was the only time they looked good all game.  Boo for another bulldog loss!  

 As you can see CeCe was feeling great and I'm so glad we decided to all go!  

Bryce was in a grumpy mood after we started loosing but luckily he snapped out of it and enjoyed being at the game.  

On the way home we hit sonic and got the kids their first milkshakes.  Of course they loved them!  

Happy Halloween!

We had such a fun Halloween!!  Bryce got to wear his costume to school today for book character day (he was the football player from the Hello Bully book!).  CeCe and I painted pumpkins and put together our sucker pumpkin (which she said looked like Cappy's hair!!) :)  We left the pumpkin out on our sidewalk while we all trick or treated together.  I'm not sure it was in a place with enough light though because there are a ton of suckers left in it and we passed at least 100 trick or treaters!  Oops!  

Here are our costumes from this year......Bryce is a Mississippi State Football player and Miss CeCe is wearing one of my old dance costumes!  

This is from the other night....our friends the Tootles have their hayride again this year and we all went on a fun ride the other night.  The girls were having a blast being silly while the boys rode in the back of the truck.  CeCe and Anthony rode in the hayride again tonight, Bryce and Nick wanted to keep walking with their friends so I stayed with them.   At one point the group of trick or treaters we had was about 40 people!  (kids and parents) I just love our neighborhood and all of the friends we have that live so close!  

Yesterday CeCe wore her Dr. costume from last year to school for trick or treating and the Halloween party.  She looked super cute again!  

Pre-Halloween fun!

We've discovered that Savannah loves Halloween!  People decorate their houses with decorations and lights and the parties start early....we had 3 this weekend!  All in our neighborhood which is awesome!  

 The festivities started Friday night at a friend of Bryce's just down the street.  These parents were brave!  (the mom is the Vice Principal at Bryce's school so you would think she would be over kids by Friday night!) There were about 40 kids there.  Kindergarten - 4th graders.  CeCe and I walked him down to the party but didn't stay.  He chose to be David Freese for this party because Ethan's dad is a Red Sox fan!  :)  GO CARDINALS!!  

Bright and early Saturday morning we walked to our neighbors yard to watch Anthony run a 10K.  How awesome is that, the race course took him right past our house?!  It was COLD at 8am!  We hopped on our bikes and rode up to Bryce's school to watch him finish.  He came in 3rd in his age group!  

After the race we went up to the church to help with the fall clean up day, then had a fun yummy lunch downtown.  We came home for a late rest/football watching afternoon before getting dressed up to go to party #2 of the weekend.  This time we all went and dressed up!  Football coach, cheerleader (I know I don't match, not many choices out there!) football player and referee.  It was a super fun party at another neighbor's house.  

 Susan is a great baker and made these brownie pops and decorated them as eye balls!  She also made delicious praline pecan cheesecake bars, delicious I'm telling you!  

Party #3 was this afternoon down the street at Sophie's house.  Bryce decided he'd rather play football with Anthony and go to his running club so he skipped it.  We are saving CeCe's real Halloween costume for Thursday night so she chose her Snow White dress up dress for today.  

It was a fun party with some fun games for the kids to play!  

We are all so tired after this busy busy weekend!  Early to bed for everyone tonight!  

Cappy and Papaw Ruff

My parents got here this past Tuesday for a week long visit!  My mom's birthday was the Sunday before so CeCe and I baked a cake and my dad made a delicious lemon cheese icing for the cake.  It was a labor of love (the icing took over a hour of constant stirring!), but turned out so yummy!  

We had a busy week planned but some of the activities were cancelled (baseball and running group) and CeCe had a quick but nasty cold on Wednesday night into Thursday that caused her to miss gymnastics. We made it to kids choir Wednesday night before CeCe's coughing started and my parents jumped right in to help out when the choir leader couldn't be there.  Daddy played the piano and Cappy helped lead the songs!  Saturday we drove over to Charleston to spend the day.  I took my camera but left it in the car the whole time!  We had fun walking around the City Market and waterfront park, eating a delicious lunch and walking around some more.  Charleston is such a beautiful place!  

Before church on Sunday

After church we drove to Tybee and had Hucapoos for lunch (our fav!) and then walked and played on the beach for a few hours.  Cappy and CeCe could look for shells for days without stopping.  Kindred spirits!  

And of course Bryce brought a ball and between Anthony and Papaw Ruff he was able to play ball the entire time we were out there!  

All last week Bryce had to care for and carry around this pumpkin, which he named Jamerson Love (Miss St. football player) for school.  

As we were leaving CeCe started doing these 'cannonballs' into the sand.  It was hilarious!  

Kiki and Papaw Duke and a hike

We had a great visit with Kiki and Papaw Duke a few weekends ago.  They were here for Bryce's baseball tournament which was great!  That made it seem like a busy weekend but we were able to fit in a trip to Tybee for dinner on Sunday night.  

CeCe has been talking about hiking lately.  She has this plastic backpack of play McDonald's food that Bryce got her for her birthday that she carries on her 'hikes' around the house and neighborhood.  She talked about hiking so much we decided we needed to take her on a real hike!  We headed out to Skidaway Island State Park last weekend (the plastic backpack came with us of course!)

The one mile hike was perfect for us!  We were able to see some tiny fiddler crabs, watch the tide begin  to come back in, watch a woodpecker at work, and learn a little history along the way.  We had a picnic lunch at the park before heading home.