Family: October 2008 Archives

Today was a big day of trick or treating. Will got early release from elementary school today (it was also the last day of the first marking period), and they had a fall festival (including halloween costume dress up) at the three boys’ daycare. I spent some time in Sean’s and Daniel’s class, where they ate a lot and were a general mess. Unfortunately, by the time I made it to Will’s class, he was done.

Then came time for trick or treating in the neighborhood. Sean and Daniel (if you cannot guess from the pictures above) went as football players, while Will got to dress up as a fireman. (Just like his dad did when he was seven — that picture will have to wait for another day.) The temperature was perfect — no need for jackets, just a long sleeve shirt underneath any of the kids’ outfits.

All 5 of us went out (the bowl of candy went on the stoop for kids to help themselves — of course, it was all gone when we got back). Sean and Daniel pretty much rode in the wagon the whole time and were very good about sitting back and enjoying things. Will actually made the trips to the various houses to get his sack filled up. There’s more than enough candy to go around.

As the temperatures cool down, more runners start turning their attention to running/racing a marathon. (No marathons for me this year. I’m only doing a half-marathon in mid-November.) But how would you feel if you ran a marathon and posted the best time, but you didn’t win the race? You don’t think that’s possible? Well, it happened at the Nike’s Women Marathon in San Francisco two Sundays ago. Turns out someone in the regular group (Arien O’Connell) ran 11 minutes faster than the winner in the elite group (which started 20 minutes before the regular marathoners). But because she wasn’t part of the elite group and they didn’t have to adjust their strategy to Arien’s time and effort, Arien wasn’t the winner of the race.

To which I say - BS. An 11-minute difference cannot be easily made up just because someone was racing in the same group as you. Anyone who has run a marathon for a good time knows you are spent by the end of it. If your first-place finisher only managed a 3:06, I don’t think she was going to average 25 seconds per mile faster if she had to go against Arien. Arien was eventually declared “a” winner and received the same trophy, but it’s not the same. And I think it just shows that starting the elites in a separate category is nonsense, especially when the elites race at a time that is not so elite.

Which takes us to the Chicago Marathon the preceding weekend (where a situation similar to Arien’s occurred in the men’s race — a regular pack racer had the 4th best time, but wasn’t awarded a fourth place finish). In this race, you had someone fall 10 yards from the finish line and struggle to make it across the finish line. He finally got some help, unlike Julie Moss, who lost the 1982 Hawaii Ironman just yards from the finish line after her legs refused to go on.

I love the music background on that clip.

With that, I want to wish my sister Emily good luck this weekend in the New York City Marathon. I think her training has put her on track to set a personal record in the marathon.

I told you I was falling behind on a bunch of postings of pictures and videos. I just have to make a little time each day to pull things together. Today’s posting is a follow-up to the Fall Festival notes I had from two Saturdays ago. I decided to just put it together in a video package, rather than separating the pictures out into a flowing display below the video portion. I think it works alright and isn’t too long.

The moon bounces were obviously the most fun for Will. As I said before, Sean and Daniel weren’t quite as interested. There were other items around the festival that we got to do, but in many ways, it was just cold enough out to not make it too fun. (By comparison, I think it was sunny and in the 70s last year.)

I don’t have enough time to pull together the pictures and videos from today’s main activity — getting cold outside in the wind and damp air. Oh wait, that wasn’t the original purpose. Today was Will’s school’s annual Fall Festival. We had a good time (the full brood went), but it was not great weather — overcast, windy (from the north), and damp (the rain ended overnight).

We enjoyed it. Will’s favorite stuff was the moon bounce, but he painted a pumpkin. We even tried out Sean and Daniel in the moon bounce (when only a couple of other 2- and 3-year olds were in it), and Sean (normally Mr. No-Fear) wanted nothing to do with it and immediately crawled out. Daniel, however, was content to crawl to the side, near a corner, and just sit there as the other kids caused a little movement in the bounce so that he’d go up and down.

And do you remember my note yesterday about the local Boy Scout council and how they were recruiting for the Cub Scouts. Well, the school pack had a table at the festival, and I stopped by to find out more about the pack. They start them in first grade now, believe it or not. I got a promotional DVD from the pack (which includes a groovy music video, which I was able to find at this Pack website), and we’ll sit down with Will to see if he’s interested. I had no idea yesterday’s idea would lead to this today, but those are the coincidences of life.

I was also going through one of my backups of the old, dead computer and found my old bookmarks. One of the bookmarks was for a full catalog of the Real Men of Genius radio commercials. Many of them are brilliant. Hopefully, they can give you a few laughs when you get around to them.

More on the dead hard drive later…

Today did not involve anything extraordinary. We had another church fundraiser at Noodles & Company. But we remembered to take our camera with us this time, and we got the video of Sean eating his bean sprouts. (He ate them all again this time, just like the time we first discovered his love of them in late June.)

And while I’m too late for the Olympics, I found this amusing little gymnastics routine to be — what? Inspiring? Confusing? Over-the-top? Any way you look at it, that is still some good skill to be able to do a non-standard routine like that.

We did get out to the Richmond Folk Festival, and I’ll be honest — we had a great time. The weather was perfect (mid-70s, a light breeze, mostly sunny). Will still talks about how much fun he had, so I think we’ll want to go back next year.

We actually parked by 11:30am and found a spot just a couple blocks from the festival area (down on Brown’s Island and the Tredegar museum area). We were there before any of the acts started at noon, and we also beat the crowds. Things were definitely getting more crowded by the time we left at 2pm. (The kids needed to get some rest.)

But in the time that we were there, we were able to catch parts of 3 shows, all of which were excellent:

• San Jose Taiko (Japanese ritual drumming)
• Dale Watson (honky tonk country)
• Líadan (Irish)

As we wandered around between stages, we overheard a couple of other acts — a bluegrass and a Persian percussion act stand out. There were many more performances which we didn’t get to stick around to see that I would have enjoyed, but we have kids now. I think Kellie really wants to go back to see Dale Watson tomorrow afternoon. We’ll see — though he did mention that he comes through Richmond a couple times a year. He was very good.

Here are some quick pix and video from the three performances that we did catch. (My apologies on the quality, as everything was taken with a small digital camera at a distance at max optical zoom.) Maybe you can join us for the festival next year.

Been offline for a couple of days, trying out a few things with the blog and continuing the computer recovery process. But I got some photos from Dena earlier this week on Nicholas’s 2-month birthday. And I can also provide you a photo of 6-week old Nicholas. He certainly is growing up — 13 pounds and 24.5 inches. As a comparison, Daniel was 12 pounds and 22.5 inches at 2 months. Of course, he was also 5 weeks premature (versus Nicholas being on-time). But that’s still a healthy baby. Congrats, Dena and Dennis.

As for this weekend, it’s hopefully going to be a touch relaxing. We are planning on visiting the Richmond Folk Festival downtown tomorrow. I think the kids will enjoy hearing the different music and maybe want to get a little exercise in.

We won’t mention the significance of this birthday. We know how you like it low key and everything, so nothing fancy this time. We hope you’ve enjoyed your day, particularly the cake and ice cream and anything else you try. (Golf game scheduled today, maybe?)

Also, Will typed the following note for Grampa on his birthday:

Grampa………happy………birthday………chaa………chaa………..chaa………….chaa

Lou………..la……..la………haaa……..yah……….oww

I think it will make more sense once I get the video for Will’s birthday party finished. Here’s a shot of Grampa with Will about a week before his first birthday (after we had abandoned Richmond because of Hurricane Isabel).

I’m suffering a little because of the loss of about 9 months of photos to find something with Sean and Daniel. So while the first pic above is a repeat (because I like it), I’ll close out with repeat of the shot of 3 generations of Frees. Looks like we need a more recent one. Happy birthday, Dad!

OK, I still don’t have the State Fair slides done. (Gotta work with Kellie on figuring out what the pictures represent in some cases.) Busy day of a long run, a run to drop off recycling, shopping, and yardwork. But I did catch a quick video on the cellphone this evening before Sean’s and Daniel’s bath time. I thought you might enjoy it. (Converting it from the 3GPPS format is a bear. I finally found a decent converter.) The video is actually at double-speed, as the cellphone only takes 15 frames per second, but most videos are 30 frames per second. The boys do not run around like they are part of the Incredibles family.

And congrats to Emily for breaking 1:45 in a half-marathon today. She’s 4 weeks out from the NYC Marathon — looks like she’s rounding into form nicely.

Not a whole lot going on for us right now, though we are in the home stretch for 2008. (I cannot believe it is October already.) I don’t have time right now to post the photos and video (the vice presidential debate is coming on momentarily), but Will and Kellie went to the Virginia State Fair this afternoon.

I believe this is the last time it will be at Richmond International Raceway complex. The State Fair will be at a new complex in Caroline County (near I-95, between Fredericksburg and Richmond) in 2009. I don’t know if we will go next year, but Will will probably want to do it again. I just looked at a map and realized that the new site is right near Kings Dominion and only about 20 minutes from the house, so it’s not too far away. And we’ve got back roads from our house to get in and out and avoid the highway access to the site. So yeah — we might go next year after all. (And maybe with Sean and Daniel, too.)