Turkey Trot

Caden wants to wish you all a Happy Thanksgiving!



That turkey is 27 pounds, believe it or not. It was Brian's prize for winning the Turkey Trot 5-Mile Race. He managed to finish in about 29 minutes (WOW). It was an up and back course so I saw him on his return. I told him to keep it up because WE NEED A TURKEY. Now, I am not sure we need 27 pounds of turkey, but at least we'll have plenty of leftovers!

As for me, I certainly didn't win, but I did have a 5-mile personal record of 38:40, which put me at about 7:56 splits for each mile. I didn't feel like I was going faster than usual, so I kept thinking perhaps the mile markers were in the wrong spot. Ha.

Take care and once again, Happy Thanksgiving!!! We will miss seeing our family but are fortunate to have some good friends out here to share the day with us. Have safe travels and a blessed holiday.

Marine Corps Ball

The Marine Corps Ball was last weekend and it was our very first night away from Caden. He stayed with our neighbors, Mel and Kevin. They were so excited about it and couldn't have done a better job. Caden loved running around in the walker chasing their dogs and thoroughly enjoyed Mel's beef stew. He was restless that night so unfortunately, they didn't get much sleep!

For us, the night started off shaky as we got lost on the way to DC (standard operating procedure really), but the rest of the night went great. The food was yummy and Brian managed to snatch an extra dessert. We did not know very many people but hung out with Brian's platoon commander from Radio Battalion in Hawaii. Other than that, it was refreshing to have some QT with just Brian, minus little guy.

In other news, Caden began crawling yesterday! I was on the Webcam with my Mom and she requested that she see her grandson crawl. So I put him on the floor and figured he would do his usual low crawl, but he surprised us both! He went from the crawling position to sitting position last night too, so it was a big day. He also eats a lot of our food lately. We can't get away with eating anything in front of him without him demanding some for himself!

It's hard to believe that Thanksgiving is almost here. The Turkey Trot 10K Race is Saturday and we're having dinner at our house Thanksgiving Day. Daryl is flying in and Brian invited a few other friends and their families.

Happy Thanksgiving! We hope your thoughts echo ours in that we have a lot to be thankful for. Please keep all the deployed military and their families in your thoughts over the holiday season.

Where did puppy go?!

Daddy does Caden's hair while Mommy is running


Carrie's birthday (She was in town on business...yay!)


We converted the exersaucer to a walker toy


Chilling with Daddy, playing with the remote (a favorite toy)


Beautiful fall color seen from our front door

Monkey Boy

Halloween was a a fun event for us this year. The festivities began Friday when we went to our neighbor's 80's themed movie party. We dressed as Elizabeth Shue and "Thor" from Adventures in Babysitting. Brian looks good in a mullet. We did a lot of kareoke and made lame attempts at dancing.

On Monday, we carved pumpkins. Caden was not sure what to think about that.

We often call Caden "spider monkey" when he gets hyper and climbs all over us, so it was easy for me to select his Halloween costume. (And yes, that is a banana peel on his head.) I took him trick-or-treating with the neighbor kids. I have never seen so many trick-or-treaters in my life, and the amount of candy they collected was insane. Caden will have a ball next year. He did enjoy his pumpkin bucket and chewing on his tail.

Brian has recovered from the Marine Corps Marathon, which he ran on Sunday. This race is the 4th largest marathon in the U.S. He placed 147th out of 20,675 finishers. He was pleased with his time of 2:58:51 but of course he wants to do better, so the training continues. His favorite part of the race was running past the beautiful gothic architecture of Georgetown. He said the scenery during the race was incredible, but the course was much hillier than he anticipated.

I made the leap today and registered for the Marine Corps Historic Half Marathon on May 18 in Fredericksburg. No turning back now!