Candy construction at its finest

It looks good enough to eat … but I wouldn't, due to that whole "seeing how sausage is made" thing. Carrie and Park whipped up this edible edifice last weekend at the Gingerbread Village fundraiser here in Wichita (I did one too, but they kept it to display).

We were introduced to the event several years ago when we were still relatively young and child-free by our then-neighbors/friends/adopted family the Crowduses, so when we landed some tickets this year we called them up to see if they would want to accompany once us again now that we actually have a reason to be there. When they said yes, we figured we'd probably score just a couple of them due to individual schedules that rival the commander in chief's, however when a caravan of cars pulled up and every last Crowdus poured out—along with a couple of extra friends for good measure (not sure if I need to put Zoe's friend in quotation marks or not) we were shocked.

Once inside we had a great time, especially Park who got to follow around his idol Max and his friend Zach who were both absolutely incredible with him. As for Carrie and I, we had just as much fun hanging out with Erick, Stacey, Wesley, Zoe, Lily and Max. Erick and Stacey kind of took us under their wing when we moved across the street from them as an un-married, new home-owning couple and the kids became our playmates who we have watched grow up and for whom we now kind of feel like a pseudo aunt and uncle. We don't get to see them nearly as much as we'd like (see above scheduling conflicts) so it was great when we got the extra surprise of being able to go to lunch with them. It was probably the first meal in … I can't remember how long, that Carrie and I didn't have to attend to Park. He sat at the far end from us at an 11-person table and couldn't have cared less if we were there at all—at one point I was getting a drink across the crowded restaurant from our table and I could clearly hear him laughing above all of the noise. When all was said and done and it was time to leave, Park, who had a chance to go with them to a basketball game but declined out of "shyness," was pretty upset.

Luckily he's three, so all it took was the sight of a few ducks to make his world right again.

Trust us, Park is smiling on the inside.

Best of Show?

Park's Halloween attire caught the eye of the people over at Ruth's Homeworks who named it their favorite costume of the year and asked to add him to their list of local handymen.

For transparency purposes, it's probably important to note that Carrie used to work with Sarah Gilbert, the woman behind Ruth's Homeworks, but we prefer to think he was selected on his own merits.

Give it a "like" on Facebook.

Nailed it.

It's hard to believe, but last night was Park's fourth Halloween and the first one during which he actually mouthed the words "trick or treat" (although at times there was an uncomfortably long delay between the person opening the door and the actual utterance of the phrase—making us seem more like loiters than Halloween enthusiasts).

Anyway, as hopefully you can tell, Park was a construction worker. While that may seem pretty simple, it took us roughly four months to get there thanks to the attention span of, well … a three year old, that never really allowed us to determine what he was going to be. In fact, as late as two weeks ago when we asked Park what he wanted to be, we were surprised to hear "the Easter Bunny." Luckily, he came back to the construction worker (or as Park calls it "a worker man") idea we were already planning on. 

As far as our route, we decided to stay close to home to check out the new neighborhood and hopefully meet some of our neighbors … and we did, we met the only two other trick or treaters we saw maybe four or five times. Unfortunately there were a lot of unanswered doors, however the ones that did open up were very nice and were more than happy to unload some candy on Park, he even brought home a tube of tooth paste.

All in all, I think he had fun, and to be honest, I don't think he could have handled much more.

Oh, and by the way, Carrie and "the fetus" also dressed up. Here they are with Park.

And if you couldn't tell what's on Park's hat, here it is. He really wanted a construction cone to be part of his costume, so I found a way to give him one.

We want to hear from you.

A couple of weeks ago I changed our blog so that if you wanted to leave a comment you had to sign in. I did this for a couple of reasons, but mostly because we were getting a lot of "anonymous" comments that were written as if we should automatically know who they were from, but more often than not we didn't. I had hoped my little tweak would solve the problem, but it created a new one—people stopped commenting all together. I did a little checking and I'm guessing the drop off was due to a lot of people not having Google accounts. So rather than asking everyone to do something they may not want to do, I'm switching it back so that you don't have to sign in. That said, please comment when you feel like it and if you can, sign your name. We love hearing from you, it helps us not feel like we're talking to ourselves (we do enough of that when we're not on the computer).

Thanks,

The management

Bragging rights

Since Craig is too modest to brag about his marathon of an achievement Sunday, I will.

The marathon scene is nothing new to Craig. And unfortunately, being injured during training and the actual race was nothing new either. But Sunday, his third marathon and his first attempt at the one in Wichita, was different.

Throughout the 18 weeks of training, Craig was plagued with one injury or another ... or a whole bunch at once. I'm pretty sure his IT band was causing him issues before he ever started. In fact, I think he waited to register up until the last minute to see if his IT band was up for the challenge. Then there was the calf ... make that two calves that tightened up several weeks ago. The achilles. The groin. And don't forget the shoulder (not actually caused by running, but it counts.). While all of this was bad enough, the poor guy caught Park's cold three days before the race. The guy had it bad. But he still ran.

So, with kinesio tape covering his outer and upper thigh, calves and ankles, and compression socks for extra support, Craig set out to conquer 26.2 miles on Sunday with two goals in mind (one he would talk about - 4 hours - and another he kept to himself).

At the starting line, with 4,600 other runners, Craig joined up with a pace group for the first time to see if he could achieve the "secret" goal of 3:45. Oh, the stories he had from that ... like one of the pacers dropping out of the group at mile 6. Thank goodness there was a back-up. But he stayed with the group, and Craig's fan club (Park, grandpa Sam, grandma Barbie and I) were thrilled to see him looking strong along the way.

While running a marathon is no easy feat, being a spectator has it's own challenges, too. There's the stress of making sure you get to the next viewing point before the runner, meandering around closed roads and holding up signs. We had lots of fun (and were as exhausted as Craig afterward)!

In the end, the pain and exhaustion was worth it. I couldn't have been more proud of the two guys in my life -- Craig for achieving a huge challenge with the odds stacked against him and Park for admiring his daddy so much that he told me he wanted to run a race, too.

For those of you keeping track, Craig finished just a few minutes later than his public goal at 4:07. Yes, he's disappointed. Really disappointed. But he has nothing to be down about. He had his personal best and beat the odds. And not only was he walking upright afterwards, he got a bitchin' blood blister to show off with his medal.

Congratulations, Craig! We couldn't be prouder of you.

Carrie

On the route? Give me a shout.

That is if I can make it three days without my cold progressing or getting hurt any more hurt.

Planes, trains and … well, I guess that was it.

Last weekend we took advantage of having Hagen and Cheryl in town (Curt had to stay behind and work) to celebrate my dad's birthday a few days early. We kicked things off with our weekly trip to the Benton Airport for lunch then headed back to the new house for some surprise festivities.

But before we could get started a little swinging was in order.

Then things kicked up a notch when we moved over to the tire swing.

At some point this seemed like a good idea.

Then the kids surprised Grandpa with his present—a trip next year to Colorado to ride a train through the Rockies (which means we have 12 months to listen to him talk about it).

After that, there was some singing.

And a birthday kiss (luckily that came before she got to the cake).