halloween and 1/2 marathons

loren started off halloween by running in a 1/2 marathon! he did a great job (finished in 2 hours and 20 seconds). this picture is of him at mile 4. my camera died after this, so i don't have any other pictures. sadness! i guess he'll just have to run another one!

i was able to get in my workout while i was waiting for the race to start (i had to drop loren off at 6 in the morning for him to catch a shuttle to the starting line, so i had an hour to kill). i'd decided i would go for a run--let me tell you, south miami at 6 in the morning (before daylight savings=pitch black dark) is not the best place to run if you're alone and you're a girl. i was figuring people would be out running on the boardwalk by the beach. nope. just me. and the riffraff. 5 seconds after i started running i turned around and ran back to the car to get my mace. i started off again, running slightly faster than normal and practicing my escape/attack plan. i finally saw another lady jogger and asked (begged) if i could run with her. phew! (side note--i found out she does bikram yoga, too. maybe it's affected both our brains.)

anyway----------it was so fun to see loren in a race. he trained a lot for it, so it was fun to see his efforts pay off.

okay, so halloween in south florida is great. it was the first year ever that i didn't have to bundle my children up in their costumes to brave the weather. (even in california, it gets chilly at night if you're out for long). there were no long-sleeved shirts sticking out of fairy costumes. the "lowest" it got was a comfortable 80 degrees.

when we started trick-or-treating, we discovered that in south florida, you don't have to knock on people's doors to get the candy goods. everybody sets up lawn chairs in their front lawn and hands out candy outside. it's a very efficient system, and saves a lot of time not having to knock on doors of people who might not even be home.

we went to a friend's house and set up camp in their driveway for the festivities. we had pizza and a snow-cone machine and had a great time.

and to think that loren wants to move to canada next!

my pace man was an army guy. he loved his "halloween", as he called his costume. when i showed him his face in the mirror after i put makeup on him, he just stared and stared, and then finally said "that's pace!" and broke into a huge grin.
gretchy was a ballerina/tinkerbell/fairy. we had sort of motley costumes this year. i think she was happy in the end (after 20 or so costume try-ons). i put glitter on her face, and that helped things a lot.

madeline was sleeping beauty. wrong color of hair, i know, but the snow white costume was dirty.

liesel and gwyneth were "nice vampires". their outfits were decided upon after much deliberation/compromise. i'm not a big fan of scary costumes on my children--on other people's children it's just fine. i got them some great wigs that made me want long, curly hair. under their wigs, they sprayed their hair with pink stripes. very exciting and tweenish.
i got in the spirit of things and wore my friend's long, black wig. i lived my dream of having beautiful hair for about 2 minutes, until the wig got hot and scratchy.
i did leave the fun socks on. they are a throwback to my college days when i was very into socks and wore a fun pair every day. in fact, the first gift loren ever bought me was a pair of socks.