One of my very favorite new Halloween traditions is the pumpkin patch farm. I am always looking for fun activities to do with Anna, and luckily, she and I usually have the same criteria for complete happiness in an outing-- sunshine and room to run. The pumpkin farm is the perfect place to find both.

I love to make this girl happy. The first year after she was born, most of the activites we did were all things that I wanted to do, and I just took her along for the ride. Now, I like to plan things that I know will make her happy. Because when Anna is happy, mommy is happy (not necessarily the reverse, though :)

Perfect pumpkin patch attire! For the ballerina ghoul inside all of us.

Anna fell in love with these baby pumpkins. She wanted to adopt them all, and spent half of our time at the farm putting them in her basket, and then taking them out, and then putting them back in again. I told her that just like most children, pumpkin babies only come one at a time.

We went to three times to pumpkin farms this year. How can you be sure you went to the best one if you don't try them all? It was very important to pick a good wheelbarrow as soon as you got to the pumpkin farm for a number of reasons.....

This just happened to be the most important reason to pick out a good wheelbarrow!

I told Anna to work on her scary face!

"Yep, thats the car I want when I get my license....a good solid tractor!"

Anna is "top of the mountain!" Now that was a successful pumpkin farm outing! Do you see that smile. I probably have exactly the same grin on my face (except with braces!).

A return of the queens

I had the pleasure of having some good friends come and visit me the first week of October. For reasons beyond my understanding, these two lovely ladies, Melanie and Kelly decided to spend most of a week with me celebrating a 30th birthday, October, and friendship.

I met them in graduate school. They, and their apartment became a kind of second home to me, the stop off place on my way home from school each day of my 1L year. Together we would go for late night Maverick yogurt cone runs and complain about our respective programs. When they finished finals we celebrated. When I finished a brief we had a movie party. We went to Idaho together and ate a 2 lb hamburger and I watched my first Baliwood movie. And together we traveled to California for the wedding of one of the room-mates.

And then they graduated and moved. I am a really good friend in close proximity-- I remember birthdays, I come over, I make dinner for you. Not so great at keeping up with friends over distances. Something about loathing the telephone...

They came to wedding and baby showers. We had lunch a time or two. And then out of the blue we made arrangements to see each other for a whole week in October, here in Seattle (the middle ground between Utah and Canada). I was just a little nervous...it had been a few years-- what if I forgot how to speak...what if we ran out of things to talk about...what if they didn't like Anna?

And then they got here, and I remembered why I used to stop by their house every evening on my way home from school. Because they are the best of women-- educated, thoughtful, intelligent, fun, spontaneous, and so easy to please. It was a wonderful week!

We had one of those nearly perfect Seattle days of brilliant sunshine and breezy weather. We hiked down to a lighthouse in Discovery park, ate cuban sandwiches, and sampled chocolate.

Kelly is one of those crazy people who actually win stuff when they enter a raffle. She won an ipad! An ipad! Which promptly won her the love and devotion of my darling daughter who loves apps with animal sounds.

In true girlfriend fashion, much of our entertainment during the week centered around food. One of our adventures was in making caramel apples. I was perturbed when I discovered that Kraft no longer included popsicle sticks in its caramel packages, but I think we figured out a pretty good alternative!

A Journey of a thousand miles begins with two tickets

Journey. Foreigner. In concert. Do you see that look on Richard's face? It is pure bliss. HE only gets that look when he is eating buffalo chicken pizza and watching the Empire Strikes back...and when he is at a concert featuring his favorite band of all time!

prior to Richard's birthday this year, Richard told me "you know, there is not anything that I really want for my birthday this year..." which is code for "this is a test to see how well you really know me, and there had better be at least 40 presents, all nuanced and specific to my unique likes." (or, at least, that is how I chose to interpret that benign but loaded statement).

I like a good challenge! So for Richards birthday, I gave him the 12 days of Richard's birthday, and gave him a heart shaped note with a poem on it and a present for 12 days. The gifts were sometimes as small as his favorite orange juice or cheese or candy bar, but I also got him a Hot Wheels miniature delorean (ala "Back to the Future") and drew him an original cartoon featuring a pun ("the Eyes have it"-- accompanied by a drawing of some ears and eyes playing a championship basketball game in which the eyes are winning. It was brilliant.)

On Richard's actual birthday, we had lunch in the space needle and I gave Richard his grand day #12 gift: tickets to see Foreigner and Journey in concert.

Hah! Take that Mr. "There is not anything that I want" Rose! You wanted it...bad!!

I was surprised at how many songs I knew. In fact, every time I knew a song I would shout gleefully to Richard "I know this one!!" and "I know this one too!!" All of them were hits! Foreigner was the stand out act of the evening. They still know how to rock hardcore!!!

In fact, if this picture above looks like a supernova is occurring on stage-- well, that is EXACTLY what is happening. They were on fire.
I think going to this concert helped Richard feel more like a kid again, despite the fact that we were surrounded by 40 year olds... which is better than our last cruise, where we were surrounded by 70 year olds. Maybe next year we can actually hang out with our own generation and go see the Backstreet Boys :)

First Pumpkin carving

Halloween is by far my favorite holiday! I didn't realize it until this year when I became giddy around October 1. Visions of candy buckets and jack o lanterns danced in my head! Since my husband is an accountant, I have to view everything in terms of a cost/benefit analysis, and Halloween comes out on top every time-- even compared to Christmas. Reasons why Halloween is the best:
1. kids in costumes! And costumes are cheap when you do exchanges with friends or get them second hand!
2. candy, candy, candy!! I know I can buy myself candy any time I want to, but getting it for free brings out my inner 6-year old, and you see the best variety of candy at Halloween. I would never buy myself Airheads or Whoppers or those cheap Palmers chocolates, but I am an equal opportunity candy monger and I love everything at Halloween!
3. Pumpkins. They taste great in everything, are the perfect cheap Halloween decoration, and provide a whole evening of fun
4. Chili/chili cookoffs: Chili is the official food of Halloween and I couldn't be more thrilled.
5. Perfect fall weather! Colorful leaves, breezy sunny autumn days.
6. Trick or treating. Melts my heart to hear Anna shyly whisper "trick or treat"

The Halloween Season kicked off with Anna's first ever pumpkin carving

This is a video of Anna assisting in the pumpkin carving a nd entertaining us with her rendition of "Old McDonald had a farm!"

Miracles and Marathons (well, half at least!)

Ever since I ran my first marathon in 2004, I have dreamed of someday running a marathon with my husband and crossing the finish line together with hands clasped in shared victory.

Well, that didn't happen, but we came pretty darn close.

A couple of months ago, a few friends and I decided to run a half marathon in October to celebrate Oktoberfest in this little Bavarian town called Leavenworth. Thinking that I was being both understanding and magnanimous, I told Richard that he could come up and be my cheerleader. Little did I know how that comment would fester until RIchard would decide to run the half marathon himself and show me who was a cheerleader.

Leavenworth was really great! It only took two hours to be transported to Switzerland!
But Washington would not be Washington without its Starbucks coffee (but it is just so much cuter with flower boxes and European lettering).
this was the fish hatchery (the FISH HATCHERY) where we picked up our race packets and both started and ended the half marathon. We did not get a free fish with every entry.
But at least you get a sense of how gorgeous Washington can be (once the clouds move).

a picture taken along the half marathon route. (its a camera AND its a phone! and its also a mapmyrun thingy).Richard just before the race. At the fish hatchery. In Leavenworth. During Oktoberfest.

Anna and I made these posters for Richard. He went from total sedentary accountant to roadrunner! Every long run he would say "thats the longest I have ever run in my WHOLE life." And then he would compare it to me running 27 miles. The biggest dillema for me was whether we would run together or individually. On the one hand was my dream...on the other hand was my desire to beat the pants off of everyone! I asked Richard what his preference was, and he responded that the main factor was whichever choice produced the least amount of regret for me. In his own words: "I know that you always wanted to cross the finish line with your husband...are you going to make me run another race because you didn't get to live your fantasy?"

In my defense, my fantasy involved running a marathon together, not a half, and my fantasy also didn't involve my husband listening to his ipod with noise canceling headphones which negate any opportunity to converse and share the experience while we run together.

So the fantasy still lives.

One of the really cool parts of this race was having so many friends up there running it with us. In the picture above, Jared is demonstrating the absolute joy that comes with wearing Dora the Explorer bandaids for chafing protection.

These women were just two of the dozens of runners in full costume regalia celebrating Oktoberfest. I'm sad I didn't get a picture of the man in leiderhosen :(

Kari, my friend who just showed up spur of the moment to run the race with her friend. No big deal, just 13 miles when you haven't trained for it. She looks like she just won publishers clearing house.

Rose and Becky. Awesome awesome. They both made times that were well under their goals. Do I know how to make friends, or what!!!

My favorite part of the race, as always, is the grab bag afterward. I judge the strength of a race by the free goodies they give me afterward. THIS WAS THE BEST RACE EVER!!! There were candy bars, apples, bananas, muffins, granola bars, licorice, jelly bellys, nutella, cookies, and fruit leather. The other runners were mere amateurs, just trying to hold snacks in their hands. I asked for a bucket, and then filled it to the brim. My bucket makes me happy!

don't know why I am making this expression. I would like to think that I am just trying to pop my ears from the increased elevation, but I don't think that was it. I leave you to imagine.

Richard finished his half marathon in 2 hours 23 minutes.

Rachael finished her half marathon in 1 hour 41 minutes. Richard was right, your playlist is everything. I finished the race listening to Bonnie Tyler's "looking out for a hero" from the Footloose soundtrack. I am the hero!!

The miracle of the race was that Richard had our car key in his pocket when he started running t the race and at mile 7 realized that it was no longer there. A single black key, somewhere in 7 miles of trail. Two hours away from our home. The couple carpooling with us promptly decided they were going to go home with somebody else, and Richard and I both said some prayers. I had seen God work miracles in our lives before, but I honestly didn't know how HE was going to get us out of this one. However, when Richard was getting his race T-shirt from one of the volunteers after he finished, he just happened to mention that he had lost his car key somewhere on the race course and she said "oh, someone turned in a key about 10 minutes ago-- its right over here. Is this it?" and there was our single black key, turned in by some awesome, and compassionate runner."

Hallelujah! God does answer prayers! Happy Oktoberfest to everyone!