Mommy & Spencer Weekend Getaway

Alan and his dad went to Florida for a race timing conference a couple of weeks ago.  They use Jaguar timing equipment and the head honchos at Jaguar asked them to come help man a booth and tell people about their equipment.  Jaguar has lots of timers all over the country, so it was actually a pretty big compliment that Alan and Darwin were invited to go to this conference.  They came away with a lot of good information and some good networking.  The only bad part was that it left Spencer and I home alone for several days.  We were bored and the beach house was available, so we packed our overnight bags and headed to Lincoln City on Friday afternoon.

It was dark by the time we got there, so we got a pizza and played some games before bedtime.  Spencer LOVES playing games at the beach house.  He got to watch cartoons on Saturday morning while I showered and cleaned up the house, then we headed down to the beach.  We had fun exploring the beach for about an hour.  It wasn't windy at all and wasn't too cold.  I did have a jacket, coat, scarf and gloves on though, so maybe it was kind of cold. :)  I had to do some serious convincing to get Spencer in pants.  That crazy kid is still wearing shorts and t-shirts every day.

After the beach, we did a little shopping at the outlet mall before going back to the beach house for lunch, more games and cleaning.  We stopped at Snack Attack for a kiddie ice cream cone for Spencer on the way out of town.  We wish Alan could have come with us, but this little trip was a lot of fun and great break from our routine.  I'm sure we'll be going again soon.

The End of Soccer

Spencer's first soccer season ended a couple of weeks ago and it sure was a good season.  Spencer loved every minute of it and I actually kind of enjoyed helping out too.  Here are a few pics:

End of year party:

Coach Melissa did a great job and was really fun with the kids.

Soccer buddies!  Probably the only time I will ever have a shirt that says "coach" on the back!

What better way to celebrate the end of a great season than to jump in a huge pile of leaves in the backyard?!

Halloween 2013

Carving pumpkins.  

Spencer wanted a happy face and a silly face.  This is what he and Alan came up with:

We didn't know Spencer would be allowed to dress up for school when we planned his Halloween costume this year.  He wanted to be Mario Andretti from Cars.  The race car I made for him out of a box turned out pretty cute, but it wasn't suitable for wearing to school so he came up with this "Super Spencer" costume for school.  He changed his mind and decided he didn't want to wear a costume to school at all right before the bus came though.  I had him take it in his backpack just in case he changed his mind, but he didn't.  Spencer was the only kid in his class who wasn't dressed up, but that didn't seem to bother him at all.

I got to go help out at the "Harvest Party" in the afternoon.  The kids made witch hands out of gloves, candy corn, and popcorn at my station.  Nearly every station had treats and I thought that was way overdoing it, but I wasn't in charge and it was fun to meet some of the other moms.

Spencer changed his mind again in the evening and didn't really want to wear his Mario Andretti costume, but there were no other choices at that point.  (Plus, I worked hard on that costume and didn't want it to go to waste!)  It was pretty bulky though.

Spencer wound up trick-or-treating to a total of five houses: two in our neighborhood and three more that we drove to.  He refuses to go to anyone's house that we don't know really well so that limits the choices.  He got about 10 pieces of candy plus a cool plane from Grandma and was perfectly content with his haul.  I can't complain.  Now I don't have to worry about him eating too much candy.  What a funny kiddo!

Playing School

We checked out this book about what different Sesame Street characters want to be when they grow up.  Bert wants to be a teacher and that inspired Spencer to want to play school for several mornings last week.  He got his desk all set up and wrote his name (Misdr Spencer) and the topic (weather) on his white board.  Then he spoke in a deep voice and taught me all about different kinds of weather.  We even made a snow flake craft.

"Stop messing around Kristin!"

It was fun and a nice break from cars and trains!

Halloweenathon

Last Saturday was Uberthon's annual Halloweenathon race.  Actually, it's a bunch of races.  They rent an 18-hole golf course and have races all throughout the day.  The kid's race was at 1:15 so that's when Spencer and I went.  He had already played a soccer game in the morning so I wasn't sure how Spencer would do, but he did great.  He started off really fast and it was actually hard for me to keep up.  He ran the entire 1k without stopping.

Spencer and I were both surprised to see Grandpa dressed up as Skeletor.  We didn't even recognize him until he started talking to us!

I ran a 5k right after Spencer's race.  I didn't have a time goal and didn't really even think about the race much before I started.  Once I started though, a competitive side that I didn't even know I had came out and I ran really hard to beat the four girls in front of me.  I passed two of them in the last mile.  Sadly, once we crossed the finish line, I realized that they were running longer races and just kept going.  I was dead and couldn't have kept going at that pace.  Oh well.  It still felt really good to run hard and I finished in 22:57 which is one of my best 5k times ever!

The morning started out foggy and cool, but the sun came out after my race and it turned into a gorgeous day. 

Alan's "desk" these days:

A couple of Spencer's friends from our ward ran the kid's race too and he had fun playing with them while we cheered on other racers.  A lot of people dress up for this race and there was good music and food.  It turned out to be a really fun afternoon.  Good job Uberthons!