Young Party of Four

Today people across the country will sit down at tables with family and friends and many will reflect on the things they are thankful for. Our family talks some about this every year when we sit around our dinner table. The thing we are always most thankful for is our family, most of whom are sitting there at that table with us. We wish we could be together with everyone, but distance makes that difficult. There are other things  to be thankful for too though and in the spirit of talking about things we are thankful for, we had our family participate in something new this year and we wanted to share it. This year, before Thanksgiving, I asked everyone coming to dinner to send me something they are thankful for. The only parameters were that they couldn't say "family" because we knew that would be the number one on everyone's list if we didn't ask everyone to give us something other than that. The other rules were that it had to be PG (If you haven't met some

This weekend we took our normal road running... well, off road. Sort of. A few months ago we happened upon a 5k that had a minimal, $15 registration. We immediately jumped on that. Not only because it is one more race, but also because you can't beat that price. Plus, it was supposed to have a shirt AND a medal. For $15!! The catch to this race? It was at the Clermont Clay 10 Mile Loop. This is a loop "road" that runs for 10 miles in Clermont.... as if you coudn't figure that one out based on the name. Neither Steven nor I have ever run it before, but we knew about it. We have a few people that we know that run it periodically. Here's what we knew about it.... 1. Clay (better on the knees and joints) and 2. Hills (Serious, serious hills). I also know that periodically there are runners that come from all over the world to train there. I've seen videos. They make it look easy. It's insane. Want to see some glorious running? Check out the Clermont Clay 10

I've had a good number of people ask me lately about potty training Will and how that is going/went. A lot of my friends have little boys of their own and I think (like me) people want to know the nitty gritty of it all because one day, we will all be there. I figured that since I never wrote another update about him, I would do that in case anyone is interested as well as to allow me to look back one day. I know that having it written down with Kenzie was really helpful when it came to training Will because I could look at some of the things we learned with her (some of which I forgot) and try to use some of those same ideas with him. All that being said, what they say about boys and girls being different was definitely the truth in this house. Kenzie was a pretty easy case. She just sort of got it. Now, I do remember for MONTHS needing to ask her every 20 minutes or so if she needed to potty, but overall, she was easier. Steven doesn't remember that part, but I totally do.

It's always so much fun for us to sit and watch how things change on certain holidays from year to year. Last year, we did the usual trick or treating and Kenzie really enjoyed it. Will didn't understand a lot of what was going on necessarily. This year... was so much fun. For the first time, both kids were super into it. Kenzie would have stayed out all night trick or treating if we would have let her (and the neighbors were willing to hand out candy all night). Will probably would have too. Our Halloween was super packed this year. That was mostly because it fell on a Monday this year. That's not cool. It is what it is though and we have the next few years of even crazier days of the week but I can honestly say, the kids could care less as long as they get to partake in the festivities. We started out our day by (finally) decorating the pumpkin hanger things I picked up at Hobby Lobby over a month ago. It just took us that long to get around to it and it seemed