Candlelighters 5K

Way back at the beginning of the summer, my office sent around a sign up for a 5K walk/run to raise money for childhood cancer that would be in September.

I signed up and convinced my unsuspecting family to sign up also.

Way back at the beginning of the summer, September seemed a long way away.

Way back at the beginning of the summer, I had goals to get in shape and do some hiking.

Way back at the beginning of the summer I actually did some hiking.

Way back at the beginning of the summer I hadn't bought a new house yet or moved which crushed my hiking/get in shape plan.

So September crept up on us.

I'm not in shape, but hey - 5k, no big deal right? So we did it.

Here's my group of suckers family members who braved to course pre-race.




Cathy and Dwain ditched us to actually run. Psha, who really does that?

Here's Eliza with the kids at around the 3K mark. Still smiling!



Then we switched so she could take a picture.

Here's a look at the crowd as we reached our final kilometer.

There were 2,400 people - the biggest group ever for this event. Many of those that attended wore t-shirts with a picture of a child who had passed away from cancer. That was the most disturbing part and we made every effort to pass those shirts.

Note to self, next time only sign up for the 5K walks that are trying to raise money for school supplies or city parks. It's just too emotional to have to walk behind the smiling face of some child you know didn't win their battle with cancer.

Here I am at the end! Yes, we did finish.

Don't let the smiles on these boys' faces fool you. They complained, cried, begged to ride a stroller, and sat/ran off and on for 4 kilometers.


Next year for sure I'll be in shape and I'll be able to run it.

(I just snorted my Diet Coke at the thought! Ha ha!)

What did you do in the summertime

I've been feeling this guilt every time I look at my blog and see a 3 month old entry staring at me. Not that I don't love looking at those pictures, but it's kind of like when you forget to update your journal, and then it just builds and builds until you'd rather just start a new journal than trying to go back and update everything you've missed.

I actually thought about starting a new blog.

But who would I get to read it? Everyone (I use the term loosely as I have no hopes that more than 3 people still have links to my blog) already has this blog address.

So this is me biting the bullet and digging in with my summer update.

Just as a disclaimer I'm not going to include EVERYTHING I did this summer, but hopefully I'll hit most of the highlights. And if I forget something, it's not like you're going to know anyway.

Also, in self defense, I actually had a pretty eventful, busy summer so you can just take your judgmental tongue clicks to another blog.

Here we go.

1. We bought a house!

Well, another house. We didn't have an official plan for our old town home, but after having it hit by lightning and a neighbor setting our truck on fire, we took those as very solid hints that we needed to get out. So we became homeowners... Again.

The original plan was to make repairs and upgrades to the new house slowly and then take our time moving in at which point we would figure out what to do with the old house.

Sophia was a big help with the painting as you can imagine.


Then we had a sudden change of plans when we found renters for the old house and they needed to move in 5 days later.

So our calm repairs turned into frantic packing, moving and shoving everything in any available space. There may or may not still be boxes packed and shoved in corners along with a partially painted living room and upstairs.

This is the only box Sophia packed. She's totally fired as a mover.


In the moving and unpacking I took some time off work to get set up in the new house, and instead worked on projects that were unnecessary, but seriously desired.

Like this antique window divider I put up between the family and living rooms. I found the windows for $5 on craigslist and sanded, painted, measured and hung and I totally love it.


It definitely divides the 2 rooms without closing either of them in.

One of the things we were most excited about was having a yard for the kids to play in. Currently that yard consists of dead grass, sand, rock, and a dying tree - but it's a good size yard so we instantly set up a poor-man's slip'n'slide.

It was a hit in the hot summer months!


We made it to a baseball game.



Went camping - sorry, no photos.

AJ and Sophia played.

And I started a new obsession. Headboard benches.

I was perusing a blog one day and found a re-purposer who takes old headboards and turns them into benches.

They were so cute so I rushed (I'm not kidding, I couldn't contain my excitement for a little manual labor and carpentry) to a thrift store and bought them out of headboards. Well almost - I think I left one or two in the store.

Then I made benches - ahem, am making benches as this project that I was sure I would finish in a day or two has been extended... indefinately.

Here's my first one. I took this headboard...

And made this bench, which now sits outside the front of my house on a little patio waving at all the people who come visit.

Seriously, it waves. Pretty cool.

And my friend Jen got into it and came over to make a bench.

(She'd kill me for posting this picture if she were one of the 3 people who read my blog - but I don't believe she does, so I'm probably safe)

Here's how that one turned out.


And I'm in love with how it fit right into her house.

And then I have this one still under construction.

This was my first attempt at adding "arms" and I was happy how it turned out until I started painting it. The goal was to do the bench black and the seat pastel yellow. But the black paint decided to throw up all over the bench and leave it destroyed and then to add insult, it refuses to be sanded off so I'm stuck with a black blob and no immediate solution to how to make it resemble a bench.


In the mean time, I've stopped working on the benches because I enter deep depression stages when I look at this one so I'll probably leave this project as undone as the paint in my upstairs hallway.

That's how I roll.

So, can anyone beat my summer?