On our own.

To stick with our fairly new Thanksgiving tradition, we started our turkey day at the Tallahassee Turkey Trot. All four of us "ran" the 5K this year, and it was so much fun. Carter and Hawthorne went off and left me and Ains, but the girls held their own. Even with Ainsley's sniffles, we managed to cross the finish line in just 46 minutes! I was very impressed with her. I gave her a couple short piggy back rides to give her lungs a break when she started coughing, but otherwise she did a great job of skipping, jogging, and speed walking right along with me.

We ate lunch downtown at Shula's, Carter and the kids played football in the yard, and now we're wrapping up the day with pecan pie and UT football.

There are many times throughout the year that I hate being so far away from family, but I love that we've carved out our own little Thanksgiving traditions so far from home. And even though our friends still make fun of us for eating out, there's something quite nice about not having to do the dishes!

Happy Halloween

Wow, October was crazy busy, and it ended with a bang and way too much candy.

Our PTO Boosters fundraiser wrapped up with us bringing in several thousand over our goal of $16,500. That was very exciting for our little school of 498 families! And I gained two good friends and walking partners out of all those joint hours of working together. Now we've moved on to our Box Tops campaign, which isn't nearly as involved and time intensive. I get to continue my guest appearances on WDTS (the kids morning TV show at school), so maybe I'll maintain my celebrity status even though my reign as volunteer of the month has come to an end.

Granna Di and Pappa John got to see all kinds of shows when they were in town last week: me throwing a fit about our principal, Hawthorne center stage as Nemo in the 4th grade play, and Ainsley playing soccer in her last game of the year. I'm thinking my performance was the most animated!

Ains is the one in the pink sweater, of course.

Look at that speed!

HF is the one inside the giant fish cutout!

So handsome!

Then we celebrated Halloween with lots of parties, trick-or-treating, and way too much candy. I've already polished off all the Reese's and put a significant dent in the Twix. Not a good start to the season of fattening holiday food. Ack!

The weather man and the Indian princess. Sounds like a good children's book.

Post trick-or-treating treats and candy trading.
(Why do they bother. Mommy is the one who ends up eating it!)

 

Now, baby, it's cold outside. Time to start the holiday shopping and plan the holiday traveling. It all sounds so normal and un-"[d]ramatic" (to quote Ainsley). When I was visiting with an ex-colleague at a birthday party last night he said, "We sure do miss you, but you seem very happy without us." He's so right. Life is good.

Prrrrr.