Katie-Megan-Jessica: November 2014

Rochester Posed

Our little city of Rochester has the coolest events. Rochester Posed is an evening when downtown storefront windows are filled with live actors in still poses. This year, the theme was scenes from TV shows of the 60's and 70's. See this video to get a better idea of it: http://vimeo.com/album/3008679/video/77406561

We walked up and down Main Street, and these were our favorites:

Sesame Street

The Brady Bunch

Beverly Hillbillies

Laverne & Shirley

The Incredible Hulk

The Addams Family (recognize Gomez? He's the guy who does Under The Radar on PBS...he's a local and we run into him often at our community garden)

Dukes of Hazzard. The girls were educated on the background of "daisy dukes" shorts!

MASH - in a bar, of course

Enjoying our treats from Home Bakery (in the background). I love their new 2nd floor lights: SWEET

Brooksie Way

Chris has run the Brooksie Way Half-Marathon in Rochester Hills for all 7 years of its existence. We all got up super early to join him, and this year we all did the 5K, too!

Girls before the race. Katie & Megan ran together, and Jess & I walked/jogged together. The 5K is a beautiful course through Oakland University and past Meadowbrook Hall.

Girls after the race, Jess showing off her medal, and Katie showing off her bag of goodies she won.

We got to eat a feast at the Chrysler tent while waiting for Chris to finish. There was beer, too!!

Here comes Chris, almost at the finish line! He finished in under 2 hrs, which was fabulous given the very hilly course, and his calf injury from Dances with Dirt the week before.

My running family! Chris with his 7th Brooksie Way medal!
After this pic, we went back in the Chrysler tent for more food :)

Here's the Chrysler team from the Brooksie Way.

Cross Country

Katie planned on being on her middle school's 7th grade girls basketball team this fall. She went to a week-long summer camp, we got a basketball hoop (free off the side of the road!) and she shot and she shot and she shot all summer long to improve her game. After 5 days of tryouts, though, she found out that didn't make the team. She was devastated, and she cried for a few days. It was too late to join her old soccer team by then, they were already 2 weeks into the season. We wanted to find something new for her to try, and we found cross country! It is an intramural sport at her school, and this was its first year. The coaches are a husband-wife team who own several local running stores, and who sponsor/train some of the top marathon runners in the US. They happen to have a 6th grader at Katie's school this year, and were disappointed there wasn't a cross country team, so they organized it from the ground up to make it happen! We are so grateful, because it was a wonderful experience!

Katie before her first meet...pretty nervous but it was only a 3K.

She survived!!

Some of the girls on her team.

Her next meet was much larger! And it was a 2 mi long race.

Go Katie go!

I'll find more pics of later races, I'm sure. Katie had a love-hate relationship with cross country. She loved practice and being on a team with her friends, but she hated running in races! She panicked before each race, and cried every time she saw me or her coaches. BUT she finished every race, and she improved her time quite a bit over the season. By the last race she broke the 10 minute mile mark! (which we knew she could do if she could just settle down!) We are very proud of her for sticking with it and never giving up.

MSU game

I took the girls to the MSU-Eastern Michigan football game on one magical day that we had no soccer games or cross country meets! Chris was running Dances With Dirt in Hell, MI so he couldn't join us. I met Mom & Dad C. at the Pizza House parking lot early in the morning, and we tailgated with cider and donuts before getting on the bus to campus and walking all around the stadium area.

We tried out the quarterback game. Nice form, Grandma!

By the Red Cedar with Grandpa

The best part of the game - the band!!

My cute girls!!

At Jessica's first MSU game (that she can remember).

After halftime, when MSU was up 49-0, we moved down to behind Mom & Dad's seats to watch the second half with them and scarf down ice cream cookie sandwiches. After the game, we all walked to the bookstore to do a little window shopping. I wanted to walk through campus more, but everyone was beat from being out in the sun all day, plus a storm was coming, so we drove home. The van was silent the whole way home...lots of napping after a very fun and very exhausting day!

September odds and ends

We did lots of trail walks and bike rides. And anytime there was a log bridge, we had to cross it!

This is a pic from 3 yrs ago when we did the Labor Day trail walk. Jess is so little! (pink in front)

Here are my long-legged beauties after this year's trail walk.

Katie picked out new glasses!

I got a new job! I work at a local elementary school as a technician assistant, aka computer girl. I keep all the electronic stuff working in the building. I work 8-12 daily, and really like it so far! We get to wear these super cool t-shirts on Fridays, with jeans and tennies.

We found a friend on my ash wood one morning. Can you see him?

It's a walking stick!

Here's Chris hard at work cutting logs for me. We went through the whole pile in the foreground! The split stuff behind him is the firewood leftovers. We are well-stocked with firewood for many years to come!

I won the harvest basket at the farmer's market one week! What a haul!

Chris ran a half-marathon on the Macomb-Orchard Trail to prep for his other upcoming races (Dances With Dirt and the Brooksie Way).

We came out to cheer him on!

New school year

I'm going to try to get caught up tonight while the MSU game is on and everyone else is asleep! I'll start with the excitement of a new school year. All three girls got to tour their schools the week before school started: