Autumn

I just love this time of year. I find myself frequently staring at the trees and it is not like I haven't lived in this area of the country before. It is just so beautiful!

With that time of year, brings lots of fun things. Preschool, playing in the leaves, cute kids, hiking, running races...

So here we go again, a photo dump. This is really the only way I can get these things recorded these days.

Sam does the cutest thing when you pull the camera out. You tell him to say cheese and he makes and makes a nose that sounds a lot like humming, but in reality is him saying cheese. And he keeps saying cheese until the camera goes away. Then we get priceless pictures like so...

Jimmy was making the face with him, which looks a little sillier on him...

Poor daddy...

I just love that Lucy can write some letters now. Although that does mean she is growing up. But she is getting really good a writing her name, mom and dad and some letters like H and T, and P. I will blink and she will be reading chapter books.

We had a week, two weeks ago where the weather was amazing, every day. So naturally the kids wanted to be outside. This is where they spent most of their time, in the dirt. I took everything out of this garden bed the week before so the dirt was perfect. I got to read books while they played. It was a win-win. I have read six of the Lemony Snicket books. Cute little books I must say. Cute, dirty little kids.

The last weekend in September we went to a Medieval fair, King Richard's Faire near the cape. I have never been to one, and Jimmy likes fantasy kind of stuff so we went. Lucy rode a pony, we saw some animals and a jousting contest. It was fun, but expensive. So it was nice to go, but we probably won't go every year.

Lucy was a princess and Sam was a dragon. Thank you Costco for a $10 dragon costume. And yes, these are their Halloween costumes. We do recycle!

One of Jimmy's work friends dressed up as a fawn. I think Lucy was hoping he would have a scarf and an umbrella so he could be Mr. Tumnus. But he assured her that it was too warm for those things. They are best buddies anyways.

This is just a cute picture that occurred before church one day.  Look at that cute sweater vest....

And honestly, could these kids be any cuter?! This was right before we went on a hike near our house. Lucy has been very insistent about wearing her princess dress. So it came with us on our hike.

My kitchen looks like this more often than not....oh Sam!

So here is the hike. Seriously this trail is 200 feet from our house. And my kids are holding hands. Precious...

Lucy wanted to know what happened to this tree and was sad to hear that it had lost its bark.

And this is right next to our place. You could probably see our house if you squinted...

I tried to get some nice fall photos of the kids. Sometimes they cooperate. Other times, not so much.

About a week ago, Jimmy decided it was time we do another Iron chef competition. So when he got home, we packed up the kids and headed to the store. Our plan was to get a store flyer, tear it into the different foods, have Lucy pick our secret ingredient and then go and buy only $5 worth of extra stuff to cook with. Lucy picked halibut filets and Jimmy and I both spent less than $4 on extra food. In the end we came up with interesting dishes.

And this random picture is Lucy riding the horse right outside the grocery store.

And these are the dishes. Jimmy made a seafood stew with veggies and I made halibut patties with plantain chips. Both were not perfect, but it was fun anyways. Lucy was our judge and said she liked the patties while she was stuffing her face with the stew. We will call it a draw.

This last week I took to the kids to the Children's museum in Easton. We met up with a bunch of our friends from church and played. Lucy was able to go to a music class while I chased Sam around. I was told she had a lot of fun by one of my friends who stayed with some of the older kids.

I also lived vicariously through my children while they played in the "space ship."

 

I mean seriously, doesn't she look like the cutest astronaut?!

Sam really got into steering this ship.

 

Last but not least, I ran a marathon yesterday. The Hartford Marathon. This was my training schedule, which was not all filled out because I took this picture on Wednesday of last week. I should fill it out some more, but needless to say I made it to race day, and finished. 

Here I am, after the race. Jimmy didn't get any of me running, which is fine. He only saw me at the beginning (miles 2-6) when I was happy go lucky and at the end (mile 25) when I looked very tired and spent. Probably better that he caught a picture when I was done and had a few minutes to recover. It went well. I ran 3:35:02, which was just where I wanted to finish, though I wouldn't have minded if it was 3 seconds faster, then I would have qualified for Boston again.  But really, I was only 1.5 minutes slower than my last marathon and it rained the entire race.  I ran 23 miles very even paced and then kind of hit the wall at mile 23. It took all my strengthen to finish those last 3.2. But I did. And I got a nice medal and some soup and I can walk today. So marathon in the future? You bet!

 

 

So until the next photo dump, happy autumn! Go make some apply crisp and watch the leaves fall. And if the leaves aren't great where you are, at least make the apple crisp. Life is always better with apple crisp. Believe me, I made some today :)

Here we go...

So I know that I am behind, but we have been relatively busy. Even though we aren't really in any sort of crazy school schedule like years past, I still feel like once the autumn season starts, life gets busier again.

So here we are, dumping a bunch of pictures and giving short descriptions. Better than nothing, right?!

Mid August was fun because it brought about several visitors. Annie and Tod (with 1 "d" and Lucy's birthday) came, and the kids had a great time with them. As you can see below, Lucy loved giving Tod's knee kisses. Awkward, you bet! That is what my kids are about...being awkward. We love them for it!

Sam also followed his favorite person around, or he followed Sam around. Either way, they are buddies. Besides mommy, Grandpa Coop really is the one person Sam gets all excited to see. He even starts searching their house if he doesn't see him right away. It is cute.

Here are the Cooprider boys. We had several gatherings, and this one happened right when Joe got home and Annie and Tod were about to leave.

My garden did give us some harvest. Our tomatoes did okay. I think they would have done better if I had planted them in the ground. I was scared that animals would eat them, so I left them in their pots. Consequently I had to water them everyday, and they still struggled. We still got some pretty decent sized tomatoes though, and it gave me enough of a harvest to want to try it again next year.

 While Joe was in town we all went to a baseball game. The night before Joe came over to hang out. The next morning before the game, Joe watched the kids with Jimmy while I ran 22 miles. I lived.

 

Within the last month or so Lucy has really started to improve her drawing skills. This isn't even the most recent drawings. Now her drawings include curly hair and smiling or frowning faces. It is fun to see her getting excited about drawing.

Here is a picture of one of our friends that is between Lucy and Sam's age. His mom and I think he looks a lot like Sam. He is cute, easy going kid. We love having him over to play.

And this is what happens when I let the kids play with water in the backyard. I will be honest though. I was totally okay with the mess. It kept them occupied for probably an hour. They sat in the dirt shuffling around dirt and water and had a wonderful time playing together. And in the end I just took out the hose and sprayed them off. Lucy loved it, Sam tolerated it.

Here is a kitchen we got for FREE! We have some really awesome people in our church!

And this is just one of my favorite series of pictures. Sam is such a cute, imp of a kid.

At the beginning of September Lucy started a once a week preschool with 4 other kids from church. Super low key, super exciting for Lucy. Every time she goes she seems more grown up. But let's be frank, this girl already talks about going to "university."

Here are some pictures from her first day.

And her backpack, which I love. When we went to Target to pick out, she talked about liking the WWF backpack...I was kind of wierded out by that request so we moved on to more age appropriate backpacks and she agreed on the owl one because it had a heart-shaped pocket.

 

At the end of August Jimmy and I celebrated our 5th year anniversary. We didn't party too hard on that day because it was the middle of the week, but we did exchange some homemade gifts. I made Jimmy and Captain America shirt and a superhero bag and signed him up for a trial Judo class. He has since had the class and loves it. It looks like he will start up the actual class in September. Jimmy made me a slideshow that made me cry like a baby, because I am sentimental like that. Once Jimmy got home from that day, we went out to dinner and had a cupcake with 2 inches of frosting on top. It was epic!

 



A few weeks later (last weekend) Jimmy got half a day off from work, and I dropped the kids off at the Coopriders for the weekend. With this kid-less time, we decided to sleep in (at our house), watch a movie, go to Providence RI, go to the beach, sleep in a hotel for a night and just simply relax. It was lovely.

We also made ourselves a little celebration basket.

During our time in Providence we went to a culinary museum. It was pretty cool. Lots of old kitchen gadgets, some famous chefs items and some pretty amazing cakes.

Plus, they had some pretty giant sized tabasco bottles.

After wandering around Providence, we decided we are not really city people and drove down to our hotel in Warwick. After settling in the hotel we went to a beach near by that had some seafood restaurants. After walking along the beach we went to eat some seafood. We went to the fancy place which wasn't that great, but it did a lovely view.

After the beach we went back to our hotel and played our new board games "Sentinels of the Multiverse." Jimmy was pretty excited to try it out.

 

 

This past weekend I was part of another relay run, Reach the Beach. Just a month ago I was asked to sub and I jumped at the chance. My marathon training is going fine (1 more long run to go...), but I have been running by myself. I have been really wanted to do some races and run with people. It is definitely more exciting and it makes me run faster. 

 

We had a blast and though we didn't really get much sleep I found that all my runs went well. It looks like we might do another one in May.

And one last picture, our cantaloupe that grew from the compost that I had spread over our side garden. Turns out I picked it too early, but it still looked pretty.

Other than that, we have also bought a new car, which we love. It is Honda Odyssey and it drives like a dream. And I am now officially teaching. I had my first lab last week. It was pretty easy-peasy. I don't have another lab until the end of September.

Hope you are all loving the fall weather. I know I am. It makes me all nostalgic for pumpkins and apples and running on trails...

Someday over the rainbow...

I will update this blog, but today is not that day. I will just give you a glimpse into what has happened this last month.

I know you are itching for an update....or at least a description of each of these photos