MLK 5K Drum Run

On MLK Day last Monday, we drove down to Piedmont Park to join about 2,000 others in running the MLK Drum Run 5K.  It was a chilly morning, with temperatures hovering just over the freezing mark but Eleanor, Hayes and I were eager to celebrate MLK, all the while getting some much-needed exercise, with fellow Atlantans.  The Pickel triplets joined us 

 

as well as their mother Mary.  

 

The course proved to be nice and flat by Atlanta standards.  A big attraction to this race is that local high school drum lines are stationed throughout much of the course, providing inspiration just when you need it.  

In the end, Eleanor and Caroline ran ahead of our pack and finished in 27 minutes.  Molly followed a few minutes thereafter.  Robert ended up crossing the finish line at about 35 minutes and Hayes, Mary and I crossed the finish line around 35:30.  (Hayes agreed to run the race if I promised to run/walk with him.)

After the successful race, we met up at Krispy Kreme on Ponce for a post-race donut breakfast where we all agreed to run the race again next year. 

Hot Chocolate 5k

The following weekend, Eleanor and I were scheduled to run in the Hot Chocolate 5K with our friends Andrea and Mackenzie Watson.  Andrea and I ran in this race last year and thought the girls would enjoy giving it a try this year.  Unfortunately for me, I had the dates mixed up and was in New York City (view of the snow in Central Park from our hotel room)

 

the morning of the race where we had surprised Stephen Neville the night before for his 40th birthday.  

Since I was in NYC, the Watsons were kind enough to let Eleanor run the race with them.  The girls bundled up pre-race as the temperature was right around freezing at race time. 

Mackenzie and Eleanor finished the race together and enjoyed their hot chocolate and chocolate sauce with fruit just past the finish line.  

 

In the end, Eleanor was thrilled with her "Hot Chocolate 5K" hoodie and the sugar fix after the race.  I bet she'll be willing to run it again next year with me . . . if I can get the date right.

H Plays Sports

Hayes brought home from school the following handout, that upon reading, I had to chuckle.

 

At least he acknowledges that being a teacher requires patience, a quality that he would probably admit is still a work-in-progress for him.  Now about those sports . . . 

it is hard to deny his love for all kinds of game. 

Looming for Lives

Eleanor's classmate Janie created a non-profit business she named Looming for Lives. She convinced Eleanor to be her first assistant. The goal of the business is to sell bracelets they have made with their Rainbow Looms and donate all proceeds to the organization, CURE Childhood Cancer.  Last Friday, Eleanor and Janie set-up shop to sell bracelets on Janie's street after school. 

 

They followed up their Friday efforts with another hour on Saturday on our street as they tried to drum up business. To date, they have raised about $30 and continue to brainstorm ways to grow the business.  We can't wait to see where they take this idea!

Ben's Redecorated Room - Ben-Style

Last week, we finally began taking down the floral curtains remaining in Ben's room from when Eleanor occupied the space. That change brought about a flurry of inspiration for Ben as he took the opportunity to "redecorate" his room. He created displays on each of the main pieces of furniture in his room

 

 

 

and even took to hanging up his own pictures since he finds the amount of pictures hanging in his walls insignificant.

 

Wonder if he'll always be this interested in his room decor?

H and Fantasy Football

(Written by Thomas)
This fall, Hayes and I joined a fantasy football league called Banker Ball that had a number of my friends as participants.  It was a great experience for us as we shared the General Manager duties of running a fantasy football team.

In this league each week, you start one quarterback, two running backs, two wide receivers, a "flex" position (could be running back, tight end or wide receiver) a kicker and a defense.  Each position gets points for how well they perform that week. You then have six players on your bench that you could start in the event of an injury, bye week, bad match-up, etc so you do have to stay active and up-to-date on what is constantly going on in the league.

As rookies, we had a lot to learn and made many "rookie mistakes" at the start.  The first mistake I made was not really spending my time preparing before the draft and we ended up with a roster that lacked talent.  The league also allows each team to "keep" two players from year to year, and I made a blunder keeping Tom Brady (who I could have drafted in the 5th round) over a good running back (who are real commodities in fantasy football I've learned!).

The results at the start of our season were disastrous.  We started 0-6.   Frustrations were rising and the finger pointing began between us, the two General Managers.  For example, I blamed Hayes for starting Willis McGahee one week when starting Eddie Lacy would have won a game for us, and he blamed me for benching Tom Brady one week in favor of Jake Locker.  (Brady had a career day that day and had we started him we would have won...I deserved to be blamed for that one!). During our 0-6 start we averaged a league-low points per game (probably in the mid 80s).

As the weeks passed, Hayes and I kept persevering.  We would hit the waiver wire each week to find talent, and we also orchestrated a few big trades.  The result of all this activity was the complete overhaul of our team by season's end.  In fact, we only had three players (and our defense) from our original opening day line-up on our roster the last week of the season.  The results also started to improve.  We finished the season 4-5 and averaged well over 100 pts per game during this stretch. Hayes was completely addicted to the game and would scour through every player's stats.  He'd watch the scores of our game and each game in the league fervently each week.  I could ask him about any random player in the league and he could recite their last few weeks of production.  Maybe his calling is to be a general manager of an NFL team as he gets older!  But most importantly, we had fun together running the team.  It is always fun to win, but the value of bonding with your son like this was priceless to me.

As the season came to a close, we are poised for a big breakthrough season next year.  Our sights are set on the Banker Ball title.  There will be no more rookie mistakes.  We will make the right "keeper" decisions (Eddie Lacy and AJ green for those who want to know), and we have the first pick in the draft next year.  There is no doubt in my mind that Hayes "Billy Beane" Carroll will do all the statistical analysis during the off-season to ensure our first pick is a home run for Team TC.

E's Birthday Slumber Party

On Tuesday afternoon before the upcoming Friday, January 10th, we decided to let E have a sleepover to celebrate her 11th birthday.  (This idea came about because Hayes was invited Tuesday morning to a Friday night sleepover celebrating one of his friend's 8th birthday.)  We let her have six friends spend the night, and she was beyond thrilled.  The guests arrived around 5:30pm Friday and left by 9:30am Saturday morning.

In those 16 hours the girls were in our care, we took them to Little Azio's for dinner, fed them cookie cake birthday cake and Oreo cookie Klondike bars for dessert,

 

 

let them go absolutely crazy upstairs, showed them a movie ("The Great and Powerful Oz"), had them wake us up running what sounded like laps upstairs at 3:30 am,

 

kept our fingers crossed that they would sleep through a thunderstorm that hit at 4:30am, and fed them a breakfast of eggs, bacon and pumpkin muffins after they woke up around 7:30am. Whew!

Overall, Thomas and I had a restless night, but the girls swore they got about "eight hours" of sleep.  I bet all of us slept well Saturday night though!

Here's one final "Happy Birthday, E!" until next December 31st -

Pretzel Chips

Ben is the rule enforcer in our house, and he takes his role very seriously . . . especially when it comes to foods. 

Back in early December, Ben, with Thomas's help, packed his lunch for his long day one Monday. (He stays until 2:15 on Mondays and Wednesdays.)  Thomas made Ben a peanut butter and jelly sandwich but needed to fill up the rest of Ben's Bento-box type of lunch box. He offered Ben some sweet potato chips.  Ben rejected that option. Thomas then turned to some corn tortilla chips that we all like.  Ben did not approve of that choice either.  Finally, Thomas arrived at a solution - pretzel chips! Ben thought about that selection for a second, but then said to him, "Dad, you know Mom doesn't let us have pretzel chips unless we eat something healthy like hummus with the chips."  (Ben's right!)

Then, yesterday in the car driving home from another long Monday Ben said to me, "Mom, guess what Dad did?  He gave me pretzel chips and nothing healthy to eat with them!  I had only a sandwich, pretzel chips and applesauce."  Ben appeared flabbergasted that Thomas would even consider packing such a lunch.  I must admit that I chuckled to myself when I unpacked his lunchbox and found all of his pretzel chips still there, while his sandwich and applesauce (items in his typical lunch) had been devoured entirely. He wasn't about to consume the pretzel chips without a proper healthy companion. 

E's Basketball Summary Emails

Poor Eleanor has not had much luck with basketball teams.  I think her team has won one game in over the last three seasons.  This year, her team the Blueligans (think of blue hooligans)

are off to a similar start with an 0-2 record.  Eleanor, generally, has remained positive throughout the losses.  As a post-game analysis (and probably a way for her to process the losses), Eleanor has been known to send game summary/future strategy emails to her teammates and coaches.  Last weekend, she sent her first one of the season, after her team's first, of what will probably be many, lopsided loss.  Here is what she wrote:

Hey team. We lost 30-8 today. I have to say, we didn't do our best, but we did hustle a lot! That team was taller than us so we really had no chance of scoring unless we pump faked or shot after coming down the court with the ball or we had an open spot with no defenders. But we scored 8 points, and those were hard to get. 
 
Now, to me, we need to work on defending and getting open and paying attention    (i wasn't and what do you know, i got hit in the head with a ball). They scored 30 points on our defense because we were not guarding a man, we were guarding our section. We need to go man on man. Also, we need to try to steal the ball. When a team is passing, we need to try and steal the ball before it reaches the other   person. We need to try and get more rebounds(we got some rebounds today, but since they were taller, they got most of them). Also, we need to pay attention and know when a ball is coming your way. If you don't pay attention, then the ball we probably be stolen or it will roll out of bounds. Also, we need to work on offense. We need to get open. Those girls were guarding us and we couldn't find an open person. Well, any way, good job today. We hustled and we shot. We did great!

After her email went out, her dear friend Margaret responded with a short but succinct reply:  Yep, that's an Eleanor email!!!

Great Packer

As we packed up the car on our departure day in Florida, Ben was right there beside us,

offering to help in any way.

He packed up his clothes bag and his backpack all by himself.  He then brought both bags out to the car.  Once he had taken care of his own items, he then offered to help his sister, who seemed to be having trouble gathering her belongings in an efficient manner.  Once she finally got her act together, he volunteered to bring her bags to the car as well.  Finally, he asked me if I needed any help since it appeared that I was the last one getting my items packed. 

Thomas and I made sure we were very vocal with our thanks as we know that this helpful attitude of Ben's could be fleeting. 

Successful Fishing

(Post by Thomas)
On our trip to Melbourne, Eleanor decided we needed to go fishing.  On our last trip to Mimi and Papa's house, we bought some fishing poles and gear, and caught a few fish so Eleanor was eager to test her fishing skills again.  Ben, who is always willing and eager to go on excursion, decided to join us.  Hayes, with the summer's fishing trip in Ponte Vedra still on his mind (we caught no fish), decided to stay home.  So, we found a bait shop, bought 24 live shrimp and headed out. Our first stop was a pier on the west side of the Indian River.  Unfortunately, the wind was too strong and the weather too choppy so we quickly loaded up and headed back across the causeway to a spot where conditions were much calmer.  We immediately starting having success.  Ben caught this puffer fish

 

and Eleanor a spotted trout.

 

All in all, we caught eight fish that afternoon and were so pleased with our bounty that the kids wanted to try again the next day.  And guess who decided to join us the second day - Hayes!

 

Unfortunately the weather was nasty the second day and rained for our entire two-hour excursion but that didn't dampen our fun.  Ben caught this Pigfish.

And this trophy fish- a 12 inch Bluefish

Hayes got into the fun when he caught this Pufferfish.  He ended up catching two Pufferfish and reported how much fun he had fishing that day! 

 Eleanor also caught a few Whiting, one of which is pictured below.

Hayes actually reeled in this Whiting

 

before he caught his Pufferfish though he didn't want anything to do with it since he claimed Thomas set the hook and did most of the work.  (I also don't think he was initially crazy about fish in general, as you can tell by the look on his face.)

 

Thankfully, Hayes's attitude improved once he started catching fish all on his own! 

By the end of our two days, I think the kids caught about 20 fish.  I didn't catch anything as I was busy rigging poles, baiting hooks and taking fish off hooks once kids reeled them in but would have had it no other way.  It was great seeing the kids having so much fun

 

and embracing the sport of fishing which they don't get to do in Atlanta.  I'm sure we will revisit our fishing spot on our next trip to see if the good times will continue to roll!

E's Birthday Questionnaire

What has become a birthday tradition, I had Eleanor

 

complete the Birthday Questionnaire to mark her 11th year.  Here are her responses:

E's 11th Birthday

Eleanor celebrated her 11th birthday while we were in Melbourne.

Since her birthday falls on New Years' Eve, we always are in a celebratory mood. Mimi and Papa treated us to a NYE three-course dinner (for the adults) at a local restaurant

 

before we went back home for ice cream cake.  Needless to say, E was pretty excited to be turning 11!

The celebration continued to midnight as both Eleanor and Hayes stayed up to see the ball drop in NYC on tv.  

Happy Birthday, E!

Post-Christmas in Florida

On December 27, we made the eight-plus hour drive down to Melbourne for a week of rest and relaxation at Mimi and Papa's house.  The week away was exactly what we all needed!  We read books, played games (Yahtzee, Qwirkle, Rummikub),

 

the boys played golf, Eleanor designed clothes in the fashion design book she got for Christmas and then the boys reviewed each design and assigned it points based on a ten point scale,

we played basketball (P-I-G, Around the World), we watched a lot of football,

 

and the kids even hit the pool nearly every day.  Ben crossed a milestone this trip - he jumped off of Mimi and Papa's diving rock, and he was very proud of his accomplishment.  Here he is in action . . .

Way to go, Ben!

Mimi and Papa spent much of the week cooking and cleaning up after us so I know they were eager for some respite once we left.  Thanks for having us, Mimi and Papa.