Spooktacular Halloween

Please know I'm only joking with the title of this blog post. I actually find the word "spooktacular" to be completely corny and a little over-used this time of year. Yet for some reason, saying it with a bit of mocking in my tone always makes me smile.

No matter what you call it, the adorable costumes, the chill in the air and the near constant sugar rush I've been on for days now can only mean one thing: Today is Halloween!

Along with many of you, we did our celebrating yesterday since this year's event fell on Sunday. Actually, it was a three-day Halloween-fest.

Girl's night with a Halloween twist

I got together with a few girl friends this year for a Witches Night Out party. I stole the idea from my amazing sister-in-law who hosted her own version of the party on the same evening in Texas.
We had a great time showing off our witch hats, playing a game of Which Witch (and other witch trivia) and doing what girls do best at these kinds of gatherings: Talking, laughing and eating tons of food.

Guests came wearing their most creative witch hats. I, however, forgot that I had planned to take photos of each hat (or at least of the contest winners) so I only have pictures myself and my friend, Paige (who was one of the hat contest winners for her creation that incorporated all the holidays into her witch hat.)

In another photography faux paux I failed to break out the camera for the group shot until after some of the guests had left. Oh well, even witches can't rely on their magical powers to help them remember everything.

Halloween equation

What do you get when you take this adorable little monkey...

...add a big yellow hat...

...and a kite?

"Curious George Flies a Kite," of course!

We took Lydia for a little trick-or-treating to a few homes in our neighborhood. We weren't really after any candy, we just wanted to show her off. Naturally grandma showed her what Halloween is all about by giving her some M&Ms. She wanted nothing else the rest of the night.
She reminds me a lot of me.

Eating M&Ms at with Grandma Larson

Costumes on parade

Derek's school has a costume parade every year for all the kids. All the teachers dress up and lead their students around the track so parents can "ooh" and "ahh." This year it just didn't seem right to have the man in the yellow hat marching around without his Curious George so I brought Lydia to be his accessory for the parade.
Naturally, they were a big hit.


More of my favorite monkey

Half-monkey, half Lydia

Am I a runner?

For the last several months I've been training to run my first race ever -- a 5K.
To all my amazing friends who could run this distance in their sleep, please don't laugh at the smallness of my goal. For a girl who has never run more than a mile or so without stopping, a 5K was the perfect-sized race to start out with.
My goal was to run without stopping to walk and over the last few months of training, I've really started to enjoy my morning runs. Occasionally, I'd skip a day of running and, amazingly enough, I'd actually miss it. Some mornings I couldn't believe the fact that I was actually looking forward to getting up to go run.
I've seen this kind of attitude before in many of my running friends over the years and I started to wonder: Is it possible? Am I becoming a runner?

Standing at the starting line of the Save A Sister breast cancer race this morning, surrounded by people who looked very familiar with racing, I wondered again, am I a runner?

I think the reason this question kept coming back to me is because I've always viewed "being a runner" as something so far out of my reach but secretly something I have always admired in others. Now, I realize today was just one race, but as I crossed the finish line and heard my own little fan club (Derek and Lydia) cheering for me I decided that, for me, I'm definitely headed in the direction of being a runner :)

For information sake (and because I'm pretty proud) my finishing stats are listed below:

Time: 29:11.5

Average mile (9.23 minutes)
6th place for women in my age category
32nd of 119 overall

Waiting at the starting line

And they're off!

Crossing the finish line :) I did it!

My super supportive cheering section

When I'm 58

When I'm 58 I hope I'm in good enough shape to want to hike 14.5 miles along the West Rim of Zion National Park to celebrate, which is exactly what we did on Saturday to mark my mother's 58th.

Derek and I went with my mom, led by our favorite hiking guide: Derek's father, Kurtis. The views were incredible and we couldn't have picked a nicer day. I think fall is the best time to take this hike because along with Zion's smorgasbord of geological wonders, we had the beautiful fall leaves too.

Kurtis brought along a frosted sugar cookie, a candle and a lighter so my mom even had some birthday "cake" on the hike. How thoughtful!

Looking down on Angel's Landing.

Happy birthday Mom!

Broken

Yesterday was a rough day.
Actually it was a fine day until bath time came for Lydia. I was in my usual post next to the tub -- literally touching the porcelain -- and Derek was standing in the doorway while we discussed our weekend plans. I turned my head to say something to Derek and the next thing I know, Lydia is screaming. I looked over so see her bleeding out of the corner of her mouth! I scooped her up and did my best to stay calm, wiping her mouth with a cold cloth and then I saw the real issue -- her broken front tooth!
I started to cry too.
Derek and I just looked at each other and neither of us had any idea what to do.
Naturally we called a mom because moms (unless they are me, apparently) always know what to do . In this case Derek called his mom.
She suggested calling our dentist who also lives in our neighborhood. It was a little after 7:30 p.m. but Dr. Hilton said he was just on his way home and would stop by our house.
A house call?! Who does that? He is one of my new favorite people.
He came by to assess the damage and said it looked like a pretty good break (if there is such a thing) and no nerves were showing. We just have to watch to see if the tooth starts to change color (a gray tooth! How terrible!) or if there is any infection in the gums. If that happens she could be going in for a baby root canal type procedure.
I was beside myself at the thought of that. I've never even had a root canal so I can't imagine inflicting one on my 14 month old.
Oh, ya, this all happened on her 14 month birthday.
Sad.
Lydia seemed relatively unaffected by it all though. She went to bed like usual and slept all night. This morning she seemed to be her normal self and had no trouble eating and drinking.
But here is what the aftermath looks like:


You can see that about 1/4 of her front right tooth (left side in the photo) is missing! Here's the really crazy part: I have almost the exact same break in the exact same tooth! Mine was inflicted on my permanent tooth, however, when I was a senior in high school. When that happened my immediate fear was that I would look like a hillbilly. The same thought crossed my mind when Lydia's tooth broke. She's lucky it's only on her baby tooth and I'm lucky they were able to fix mine.
Still, I imagine I'll be rather sensitive about poor Lydia's mouth now so here is fair warning not to make any sort of "snaggle tooth" or "hillbilly" jokes about her. I will not find them amusing.