Living the Life We Love: running

November was a good month for us!
Ty celebrated his 5th birthday at this awesome place called Dart Warz! It was so much fun and we are all dying to go back! It is an indoor Nerf battle ground (think paintball except for inside with Nerf guns!) It was seriously so much fun, I wish I had a better picture of Ty's vest pocket because you were supposed to keep the darts in your pocket that way you can have them ready to shoot. He had his pockets stuffed, whenever he would bend over or run darts would spill everywhere! We all highly recommend you check it out. (Must be 5 years old to play and they offer black light play where you must be 8 years old.)

Ty in action!

Our "Team" minus me and Bella!

After Dart Warz we had the rest of the family meet us back at the house for a small party, a Green Bay Packer birthday party! I made Ty's cake again, this time a camo colored cake on the inside! (Those two ball cake pans are the best money I've ever spent!!) All in all, Ty had an awesome birthday!

Ty's actual birthday is on Veteran's Day and there was a huge snowstorm that day so we didn't get to eat our normal Golden Corral meal, but he was okay with it.

The Sunday after Veteran's day Vinny, Tucker, Trey, and I ran in the National Veteran's Day 5k. Now remember when I said that there was a huge snowstorm on Veteran's day, well the weather hadn't warmed up much, so it was FREEZING!!! There was still a ton of snow and ice on the course. It was seriously the coldest race I have ever ran! Vinny and I ran together the whole time and even though I was running, I just couldn't seem to get my body warm, it was the slowest I have ever ran before, but it was actually nice to do this with Vinny. Trey smoked all of us again, but got his slowest time ever because of all the ice he said he had to walk quite a bit. Tucker keeps improving upon his 5k time each time he races and I am proud of him for taking on these runs. It was a great way to honor Vinny and all of the Veteran's and the proceeds went to a pretty good cause too!

My parents gave us all an early Christmas presents of taking us to watch Wisconsin play CC. We all proudly wore our WI Red, but got spanked by CC! It was a lot of fun going to the game anyways!

We have had quite a winter so far and man has it been beautiful! I just love the mountains covered in white! I just had to throw this picture in here (I actually took it with my new phone..I am loving the camera and the phone in general.)

November also brought the official start of wrestling season! This year all 3 boys are wrestling. Trey finally decided to wrestle, but strongly told us that he is only doing practicing and only to keep in shape for running and soccer. I think it is extremely important for the kids to participate in some sort of physical activity so Vinny and I were completely fine with him doing practices and no tournaments. (I know there are a lot of people who do not like wrestling, but I honestly thing it is one of the greatest sports for kids to participate in, I know it's not for everybody, but if children are coached correctly the benefits are huge..I think I might have to post a separate post on this because it's kind of hard to explain in a few short sentences...)
Tucker moved up to 10 and under this year and it has been tough. He now has to wrestle 5 matches instead of 3 and he is in A class, which is made up of very good wrestlers, some of these kids have been wrestling for over 7 years now, where as this is only Tucker's 3rd year! Although challenging for him, he has made a big mental breakthrough, which for him the mental/emotional stuff is his biggest challenger.

Well remember how I said Trey only wanted to do practices, well the second tournament of the year, his cousin Bella (yes girls do wrestle, we have 6 in our club and they are AWESOME) decided to do the tournament, Trey, not one to get shown up by his cousin, decided to do the tournament too. To say I was nervous was an understatement! However, this boy got on the mat and it was like he has been doing this for years! He did amazing!!! He wrestled hard and listened to his coaches. I was so proud of him!! He took 2nd place (but he should have taken 1st, but the Ref was messing up on the handing out points and gave points to the other kids, and when our coach tried to talk to the ref about it, the ref wouldn't admit his mistake...so Trey ended up loosing by points..when he actually won!) However now we always have two coaches on the mat, one coaching and one taking points down! Trey has done every tournament since then and has taken 2nd twice and 1st 3 times. My favorite part about him wrestling is that when his coaches tell/show him to do something in between rounds or when time has stopped, he will mimic their actions on the mat. It is so comical, but it works for him because when the match starts he will do what they told him!

This St. Patty's Day we did something different to celebrate...we (me, my brother, Jenny, Issac, Kim, and her mom) ran in a 5K. Then after the adults ran, there was a kids run. Tucker ran the older kid race, which was 1 mile and he was awesome!! Then me and my 3 boys all ran in the half mile race. (Trey could have totally ran the 1 mile race, but was nervous because parents we not allowed to run with kids, so he only wanted to do the one I could run with him....but about 5 seconds into the half mile race, Trey took off and ran the entire race himself...he did great!!). Then Ty..I wasn't sure how he was going to do with this running thing, but just ran and ran and ran...it was so cute because he was just weaving in and out of people and ran the entire way to the finish line. I was so proud of them and they were proud of themselves. Gramma and Grampa were there cheering all of us on and they stayed downtown and watched the parade with the grandkids, but Kim and I had to run off to a baseball meeting!

It was a pretty awesome day and I definitely think we are going to do it again next year!!

(oh and as far as my time, it was pretty good... 29 minutes 41 seconds...especially for being a 100% flat course...I have a harder time when there aren't any hills...but it was still good...my goal was to be under 30minutes and I did it!!)