Getting Ready for Christmas

We got our Christmas tree this weekend and the kids decorated it today. As a result, several Green Family records were set:

1. I am posting about an event that actually happened TODAY. Usually, there is a lag of about 2 weeks to three months. This is close to being a Christmas miracle.

2. The kids decorated basically the whole tree themselves. I put up the lights (I know, that should be a Dad job, but not in this house) and helped with a few ornaments, but they really did most of it. This is the first time I have been so uninvolved with the decorating. It was kind of liberating. Sam was the one who was really into it. He had a longer attention span for it than the girls did!

3. This may be related to # 2 above. Not one single ornament was broken in the decorating of the tree. Usually, at least three are smashed. I will admit that I am typically responsible for at least one breaking. So maybe because I was so uninvolved, the lives of who knows how many ornaments were saved.

Thanksgiving

We had such a nice and relaxing Thanksgiving this year! My sister Jen came to visit. She got here Tuesday night and left Friday night, so it was a quick visit. We packed in as much as we could into the time. Unfortunately, they moved the kindergarten Thanksgiving feast to Tuesday afternoon instead of Wednesday, so she was not able to go to it. But, she was able to see Hannah at horseback riding and Megan at swim practice. She also got our household on wifi and got our new laptop online. It was funny, because I realized that our other computer was almost 6 years old! Yeah, it is pretty slow, so this new laptop is a real treat. It was supposed to be for the kids but I am referring to it as mine now.

Thanksgiving dinner turned out awesome. This year, I used the brine recipe from the Chicago Tribune and it was really good. The turkey was juicy and the gravy was not too salty (like last year). I think this brine is a keeper. Of course, I won Rich and my annual pie contest. (Rich does not read this blog or he might protest, but he would be wrong. My pie was way better). On Friday, we tried to undo some of the damage we did the day before by going to a spin class. Jen had been to spin before, but neither Rich nor I had. Wow, it was a workout! I was really wiped after and I thought I was going to be sore, but I was fine on Saturday. I think we will try it some more since winter is finally setting in and our chances to bike outside are now pretty rare (although you never know with that polar bear husband of mine).

Here are some pictures from Sam's Thanksgiving Feast:





And here is Jen, covered with kids:


I hope you all had as great a Thanksgiving as we did.

Totally Lame

Okay, I know I am totally lame with regard to updating this blog. What have we been up to? Here it is in a nutshell:

Sam turned 5 and had an awesome party at Pump it Up.



My good friend Janey from college came to Chicago for a conference so the kids and I went and had dinner with here. This was a major achievement for me because Rich had to go to India (more on that below) for work and was not here to chauffeur me to the city, as he usually does. This was not good because I have issues with driving on the tollway here into the city. There is so much construction and so may highway splits that I prefer to leave that whole mess to Rich. But alas, I HAD to see my buddy so off we went. We made it and it was well worth the stress - I had not seen Janey for about 15 years!


As I said, Rich was off to India for a week and we all hated it. Here is a picture of the kids waiting in the rain for his taxi to arrive home. He came back on his birthday, so we had a big celebration after which he fell soundly (and quickly) to sleep.



This was the Welcome Home/Happy Birthday set up:


Megan finished he fall soccer season and started swim team. This is new for us and she loves it. She is doing great. This was here in her first meet where she won two ribbons! Her best friend Paige is doing it with her so it is especially fun.



Sam is taking a little "Intro to Soccer" class in the morning before school. He is having a great time, but that may be just because he can run around like crazy for 45 minutes. The coach is awesome and funny so he enjoys going.



And finally, we had Halloween. The weather was cold and miserable and Mary got sick. The costumes were cute, though. Sam was Batman, Mary was Dorothy, Megan was a zombie 50s girl and Hannah was a dead prom queen (we had fun making that costume).



Here is a close up of the prom queen. Rich did the blood.




So all in all, we have been busy as usual. My sister is coming for Thanksgiving which is less than 2 weeks away. Help! Somebody slow the time down!

A New School Year

I can't believe how fast the summer passed. Even the kids think it went fast. Now here we are starting school again. I now have a 7th grader, a 4th grader, a 2nd grader and a kindergartener. Amazing! So far things are going smoothly. It was sad putting my little guy on the bus that first day. I am going to miss him. But he is ready and I know how much fun he is going to have.

I also need these girls to stop growing for a little while. They are starting to make me feel old.

Triathlon!!

A dream came true! On July 18 we did our first triathlon! This all started back in April when I found this sprint distance race (1/2 mi swim, 12 mi bike & 3.1 mi run) scheduled for July and I also found a training program that did not seem too hard. If only I had a training partner to help me along... so of course I thought of Nancy, my good friend next door who I can usually rope into crazy things. She turned out to be pretty interested and she showed the training program to her husband Mike who also though it looked doable. With the three of us on board, Rich was helpless before the power of peer pressure and we were off and training!

Obsessed is probably not a strong enough word to describe the four of us over the next 12 weeks or so. Everything revolved around the race. Just ask Hannah - she was pretty sick of hearing about it. We were all so good about our training program. Luckily, Rich's work cooperated until the very last week. This was okay because that was the lightest week of the training program, but for a while it looked like he might not even be able to get to the race. He worked crazy hours that week, but he made it.


So here we are packing up to go to the race. We went the night before. There is Rich with his constant companions - the briefcase and the laptop!



Here are Nancy & me flexing our guns before the race! :)


Here are the four of us ready to go. Nancy & I were in the women only race that went first. An hour and a half later Rich & Mike went in the coed race over the same course. Since they were not starting as early as us, they got to come see us off for the swim. Now this race was in Racine, Wisconsin ans the swim was in Lake Michigan. According to the announcer, at the time of our race, the water temperature was 59 degrees! It was sooooo cold. Thank goodness we had our wet suits but even then it was so cold on my face that I physically could not put my face into the water for about the first quarter of the swim. Every time I tried I could not breathe and my heart was racing. Finally, I got used to it and was able to settle into a rhythm. Other than the cold, the swim was really nice because the race was pretty small - only about 200 people - so there really was no chaos at the start. That was great!
The wet suits help so much with the swim. They really make you more buoyant and you can swim faster. And if by chance you get tired, you can just hang out and float!


Yay, we did it! Nice picture with the porto potties in the background, I know! :)

I was so pumped after the race! It was so much fun! It is such a great feeling to set a goal and then achieve it. And to do it all together made it even more awesome. Mike & Nancy make the best training partners. So now that we worked so hard to get into shape, we are going to try to do 2 more races this season and then next year maybe try a longer one. Come and join us!

Independence Day

The 4th of July weekend became Independence Day for Joanie this year!






Yes, that is Hannah cutting the grass! Woo-hoo!

Our New Yard

After two years here we decided to do some landscaping in our backyard. All that was back there was a crummy old play set from the people before us and a small vegetable garden. Being in a subdivision, the lack of any trees or shrubs meant that we were staring right at our neighbors' yards and houses. The plants we put in are still small but hopefully as they grow and we add to them we will have a little more green to see.

So here is before:

We took the play set down a couple of months earlier and got our trampoline. The play set area makes a great spot for the trampoline, but it needed some rehabbing too.



And after:

Our plan calls for more planting along the fence, but we are waiting until next year to deal with that. In the meantime, I am loving what we have out there now.