Another Fall, Another Soccer Season

Soccer started again in September, and ended today. This season was extra fun because Finn was finally old enough to play as well! Since soccer is soccer, and there's much one can really say about it, here are pictures of the first day of soccer, some point during the season, and from the award ceremony at the end of the season.

Run30

Back in August, Josh got it into his head that he wanted to run every day for 30 days in a row. Since September has exactly 30 days in it, he decided September would be the perfect time to do this. He named it Run30 and went about asking people if they'd like to join him in the Run30 Challenge he made up. Apparently quite a few people were interested and so, on Septeber 1, 2014 it began.

Every day Josh would get up, go for a run, come home, eat something, then post his run to facebook. Along with his run Josh also put up some sort of running tip and an encouraging quote about running. Some people dropped out after a few days, some lasted longer, most made it the whole month.

Of course, because Josh is a bit of an over-achiever, the initial goal to just run every day for 30 days wasn't enough. Half way through the first week he decided that he wanted to hit 3 more goals over the 30 days. One, run at least a marathon a week (so 26.2 miles or so every week). Two, run 100 miles in total over the 30 days. Three, run 1 mile in under 6 minutes at some point before the 30 days were over. He totally achieved all of his goals.

Josh ran all 30 days. He covered over 26 miles every week, with a grand total of 110 miles for the month. He even ran a mile in 5 minutes and 50 seconds once (and I'm sure that once was enough). I'm so proud of my running nerd.

As this challenge was so near and dear to his heart, Josh asked me to participate too. Now, if you know me, you know I'm not a runner. Not wanting to disappoint my man though I agreed to walk every day for the month. I did a Walk30, if you will. I did miss one day, but that was the fishing day, so I made up for it by walking twice as much the next day. I made a second goal for myself too, to get at least 50 miles over the 30 days and I got to 51! It was a lot of fun, even on the days I had to take all 3 boys with me because Josh was out of town and I had stuff happening in the morning (when I'd go with just Finn). I also managed to get out there every day during that week I was sick. I didn't go as far those days, but at least I got out there.

To make the challenge even more fun, Josh and I decided to donate a dollar a mile to World Vision. At the end of the month, as if to congratulate us and what we did that month, God put a most beautiful double rainbow in the sky as I was making my way home on my last walk. Well, my last outside walk. I had one more day and knew I'd be walking the mall with Finn to make it easier on myself, and to make sure I did it. But it's with that rainbow that I'll leave you now.

Chop! Chop!

This happened Saturday:
















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Off To Work With Grandpa Bob

Last Friday, the boys had off from school so we took the opportunity to (and the beautiful day) to visit my dad and go to work with him. My dad, Grandpa Bob, owns his own tree company, which means he has lots of really cool "toys" that we went down to see in action. The boys and I met him at his office, followed him to the yard where he keeps his stuff, then all piled into his truck to drive around to different jobs and see what's what.

We saw all kinds of cool things. We saw a guy in a bucket truck cutting down branches from the tops of trees, a giant stump grinder grinding out giant stumps, chainsaws, and the like.  It was a lot of fun.

The boys' favorite parts (besides the new puppy we met at the office) was the chipper:

and the dump truck:

The chipper I get. It's super cool watching big branches get chewed up into tiny wood chips. But the dump truck? I mean, we live next to a quarry and see dump trucks every single day.  Lots of them. Every day. I guess seeing them by our house and actually sitting (and taking a 10 foot ride) in one are two different things though.

My favorite part was when Finn decided he was going to help. As we stood watching the wood chipper chip wood, Finn looked around, found a stick (small branch) that was a bit bigger than he was and started carrying it towards the machinery.

Thankfully it tripped him up before he got very far with it, so I decided that where it landed was the perfect place to make a pile of sticks and branches for my dad's workers to then pick up and put into the chipper themselves. Zeke and Finn loved this and enjoyed it. Deacon wasn't as thrilled, but he got his fun later in the dump truck.

He's so cool.

After the dump truck we were hungry so we went back to the office for lunch. Well, Zeke and I walked across the street to the deli to order lunch while my dad took the other two boys back out to check out his mini bulldozer thing. I don't remember what it's actually called, but Finn asked for a bulldozer that morning, and this was the best we could do and it was perfect.  All in all, a really good time was had by all. Thanks, Dad!