Hero Up Race

For the last couple of years our friends Joe and Lindsay have participated in a Hero-Up Race that was put together from some of their very close friends who lost their 4-year-old son to Cancer. The mom of this little boy was a runner and put together an incredible race that collects money for the Children's Cancer Hospital and Cancer research. It also honors little Keith who passed away and also LOVED super heroes! We've wanted to participate for awhile but haven't been able to. But this year, we made it happen. The boys both got to dress up like super heroes and do the kid run. Max signed up for the 5k and tried to see how fast he could run. (He never really tries to see how fast he can go, especially if we are running together) I was there for support this time. There is a half marathon as well that Max may try next year. He's been running consistently a couple times a week now (4-7miles/run) and is remembering how much he loves it. Anyway, we had such a fun day participating.

Max actually finished before we even got there. He ended up running a 6:30 minute mile (for 3.1 miles) and finished 1st in his age group and 4th overall.  He actually dressed up in all blue spandex and was some character from Fantastic 4. (We both had to google it) But we were so proud of Max, that is the fastest he's ever run! 

Anyway, once we got there we started with some super hero warm-ups! (spinning)

Then the kid race was about to begin. The two and three year olds were in a group, so Miles got to run with Tali but Charlie did not.

I ran with Miles so there are no picture. It was a pretty short loop and he did great.
Then it was Charlie's wave. Max stayed close but Charlie ran the whole thing on his own. His loop was a little bigger and went all the way around the park.
Miles and I waited for him at the Finish Line.

And there's our Charlie, coming around the last corner!


We were cheering for Charlie from all sides!

And we had some happy and proud boys in the end.

The race was followed by a lot of playtime in the park with Tali and Alisi!







And Miles flying into Daddy's arms.

 

And there's that! Another fun family event that we plan to repeat next year. 

Family demolition date and grilled Cheese

This was just a quick little family night but it has a lot of photos in my phone so I thought I would document it in its own post. We have still been working away at our real estate business. We had some things slow us down like our first two houses needed a bunch of permits but we are making great progress and now have 4 houses in our possession. Thanks to Max's diligent hard work the houses are making serious headway and some should be on the market by Thanksgiving time. Anyway, The boys love to go to work with daddy and help with demolition. On this particular day, we all went. There really is no need for us to lift a hammer but what fun is that to our little boys? We went to one of the project houses and let the boys hammer at a wall that was going to come down anyway. It is seriosuly the best and it makes them so happy. It was also my first time seeing this particular property so it is fun ot visualize the transformation. (Which has been well on its way since we had this outing) Anyway....photos.

Boys!!

After our little outing, (and after we made a decent hole in the wall) we went and checked out another house that was close then made our way to Grilled Cheese Grill. This is where Max and I went on our anniversary weekend and we've wanted to take our boys back ever since.  They loved playing and eating on the bus. I still had a little hesitation about eating on a bus since I personally know how disgustingly dirty they can me. I'd like to think that since this is a restaurant, there are some sort of cleanliness codes...but from appearance, it didn't really seem that way. Oh well...it is a very Portland outing.








And that's all from our little outing.

Preschool olympics

I have been wanting to put together some sort of event like this in our yard for awhile with some of Charlie's friends. It seemed that during the Summer Olympics would be a great time to do it. We really didn't watch much of the olympics since we don't have cable and we were gone rafting for half of it but we did keep up to date with the girl's gymnastic team and Simone Biles who Miles likes to call "Simone Biles Miles"...then laugh like a loon! Anyway, we decided to make it a preschool event. Each child had their own score card with 5 olympic-ish events. We started tumbling inside with Charlie's mattress. (I was really bad at taking pictures)  Each child did some somersaults. It turned out that Tali had never tried somersaults and she loved it and has been somersaulting daily since then. They each got a sticker on their score card. We then got all the little olympians their water bottle and went out to start the races. We set up the cones around the yard and did a couple different types of races. Then they got another sticker on their score card.I made Max come out to demonstrate some gymnastic tricks. I don't even know if our boys had seen him do these flips.

Next we did some balloon volleyball, which ended up with the kids all having their own balloon and hitting it into the air. We lost a couple balloons on the holly plant so then we moved on...

Next we moved on to the water balloon toss. (That should be an olympic event, right?) It didn't last long before the balloons were gone, but it was a good time for all

We then did an Olympic ring glitter craft and swam! Before Tali and Alisi had to go home, we had a medal ceremony with these awesome medals made by Lindsay. We also had some lunch with olympic apple rings and GOLD fish and some chocolate gold medals to enjoy.




The glitter crafts and score cards...



Alisi's favorite part was the stickers.



It was such a fun day of running around and playing outside!

Operation

One day Max had come home after visiting a garage sale and he surprised the boys with a couple of kids games. They boys were so excited about their new games and we decided to have a little game night with them. The games included Don't Break the Ice, Ants in your Pants, Don't Spill the Beans and Operation. We played them all for our family night. Charlie was so into it and Miles liked the idea of it but was a little rough and wild.  I couldn't wait to watch them try Operation. Just pulling it out of the box made me feel the same anxiety I did when I played it years ago. We didn't even tell the boys what was going to happen before they started playing so it was fun to see their reactions. Mostly they just laughed, but eventually Charlie started saying "I'm never playing this game again!" Only to go 2 minutes, then beg for a turn. Anyway, it was a good time and I think Max and I got sick of it first and had to put it away!