See Jane Run

I was sooooo proud of Amelia and Evelyn tonight.

But lets start at the beginning...

Back in June the girls' school participated in a 5K run. Very non-competitive, more of a fun-run/walk for French schools in the area. This year Amelia came home kind of down. She said that she wished she could run it, that she had the ability to actually run a decent chunk of it. I told her that for sure she could do it if she was willing to put in a little bit of work. She really wanted to so we sat down and made some goals. We looked up learn-to-run programs for young girls and committed to running 3 times a week. We found a calendar we could track her distances and time in so she could see her progress and found a Halloween run in October to work toward.

The last 4 1/2 months have not been easy and it's been a learning curve for me too. The hardest part was finding the time to run. Early mornings are out because they're too early with Rene having to leave for work by 6:30am. Evenings are too unpredictable.  So we finally settled into a habit of running as soon as Rene gets home from work. I try to have dinner half ready or at least prepped so he can finish up and we can come home to a hot meal on the table.

Next hurdle, how do you keep a 9-year-old and nonathletic mother motivated? Add an energetic 7-year-old to the mix. It didn't take too long before Evelyn wanted to join in on the runs. Also add a crazy 2-year-old dog who really needs to get out and work off some energy. We also found a favourite place to run. A nice flat trail that has km markings every 1/2 km.

We didn't always want to get out but with the addition of the Halloween run looming in the background it was usually enough motivation to get us all running.

Thankfully on Thanksgiving weekend a treasure box of old dance costumes were discovered which sealed the deal. Add yet another reason Aunt Becca rocks!

The week before the run was the first time we ever ran 4kms so I wasn't sure how 5 was going to go on the day off but figured we'd get to the end no matter what. The day of the girls were pretty pumped. They were in their costumes as soon as they got home from school. Flashlights were found and readied (the run was at night) and water was stocked. We got to the run with plenty of time to enjoy face painting and balloon animals. I made the girls hold off on the free pizza, hot chocolate and gobs of candy being handed out and told them they could have their heart's desire AFTER the run.

I forgot how energizing participating in a run like this is. I've only done a couple in my life and this was by far the most fun. Probably because I was doing it with my girls but something about being behind a space-ship stroller, surrounded by minions, monsters, farm animals and grapes made the night a little more magical.

When the starting bell rang, the girls were off. And when I mean off, they were OFF. I kept asking if the needed a break and got an unequivocal no every time. We ran for over 10 minutes before one of them finally needed to stop, and even then they were ready to get back at it after 30 seconds. The furthest we'd got in our training was 3.5 minutes before breaking for 1.

We crossed  the finish line at just over 40 minutes to find a surprise personalized cheering section of Grandma and Aunt Erica.

What a fun night. Santa Shuffle, here we come.

First Annual Thanksgiving Apple Picking Trip

We had to start the day with chopping wood. The novelty has worn off for our helpers. Hmmmm, that insinuates they were ever excited.  Rephrase: the task continues to be daunting for our helpers. But they are troopers! As an incentive to getting the job done we promised them an afternoon of apple picking.

Still monkey see, monkey do

Initially I had visions of visiting one of those farms that makes the apple picking a small portion of fun as kids can participate in wagon rides, petting zoos, hay jumps, corn mazes...you get the picture. As the day wore on though the hours quickly passed and after wood chopping, lunch, and a quick jaunt to help a friend with roofing we ended up leaving Orangeville around 4:15pm. We hastily arrived at a farm 15 minutes before they closed, jumped on the last tractor ride out to the orchard, speedily picked a bag of apples and ran to catch the last tractor ride back to the farm.

I felt bad. The girls had really worked hard all morning with the prize of apple picking, which ended up being a 30 minute frenzy of apples and tractors. There was a farm dog (petting zoo?) and we had to remember where we parked (maze?) and they did jump over a chain fence (hay jump?) so I suppose we did cover all our bases.

The neat thing about kids: they know how to have fun. They were thrilled to be allowed to climb a ladder to reach the high branches (where Rene insisted all the best apples grew).

The look of concentration...

The scrutiny that every apple went through,
only the best for our family.

Lucienne's squeals of delight with the tractor ride would make anyone think we were on the ride of her life.

Heading back.

I had to question why there were people there without kids. Because pick-your-own-apples is really just a clever way to disguise make-your-own-work and without the antics of children it's really not that much fun.

Stop, Drop, Roll

**sorry for the low quality of pictures...it was dark out and the camera flash didn't seem to want to cooperate all the time.

The local fire department had an open house so we thought we'd stop by.

They had a fire house going that they let the kids spray. I tried to convince them to hit families going back to their cars (lets put a bit of a challenge to it) but the firefighter didn't seem to think it was a good idea. Audree wanted nothing to do with it at first but later in the night decided to try (Rene had the camera though and I couldn't find him so it will only be documented in our memory).

They had all the trucks open so the kids and Dads could climb inside. One kid even managed to get the horn on one of them working. Those firemen really can move fast, I got the impression that it wasn't suppose to be operational.

They had all the gear out and kids could suit up and see how far they could walk. They even had them holding oxygen tanks and axes...not sure how safe that was but the kids' sure thought it was great (once again, Rene and camera were MIA).

They had a spin-the-wheel-answer-the-question-and-win-a-prize table. Apparently I need to brush up on my fire safety knowledge, most of the answers I fed the girls were embarrassingly wrong (once again, no Rene and thus no camera).

There was someone dressed up as a dalmatian dog that Lucienne thought was hilarious, until he took a step towards us. She would then yell "No, scary, scary" until he would take one step back which she would burst out laughing and think he was great. We played that game for a few minutes until it just seemed cruel. Audree was quite enamored with him and gave him lots of hugs and high fives (and of course, no Rene and camera).

For most of the night I couldn't find Rene (which really made me wish I had the camera).  Turns out he made a new volunteer fight-fighter friend who was talking up the profession. He now has the fire-fighting bug in his head. Volunteers need to be on-call from 6pm to 6am but don't necessarily get called every night. I wonder if he realizes there may be heights involved.