Halloween

We abused the fact that we now have a baby to go trunk-or-treating.  Jonah wore a chicken costume.  Like he ate any of the candy.

New River Gorge

 Here's us at the New River Gorge bridge.  It's the largest arch bridge in the U.S., one of West Virginia's few claims to fame.  

 Jonah is a natural camper.

 Jonah's favorite person is his daddy!

 We got to camp for free for signing up for the half-marathon. What a sweet deal!  We had the whole grassy hilltop basically to ourselves.

 John, the punk, walked away from cheering at the race with 3 FREE T-shirts.  I, the one who actually ran, only got one.  Something isn't quite right here.

 We had to get creative keeping Jonah warm.  Lovely socks on his hands.  

Yes, I'm smiling because I'm finally on a road, and almost done at this point.  Holy cow, trail runs are so much harder than road races!  I felt like I should have been wearing hiking boots rather than running shoes:)  I rolled my ankle 4 times on hidden rocks under all the fall leaves.  I've never ran up so many hills on a single run in my life.  I thought I liked downhills, but these ones were too steep to pick up a lot of speed.  Wo is me:)  I guess all this complaining is my excuse for getting such a bad time.  I did run hard and had a fun time enjoying the beautiful West Virginia fall.

A day in the Park

Jonah sticking his tongue out at the camera.

 We love playing disc golf!  We like to play for prizes.  I won our first game, so we're going to go get some yummy shakes.  John won our 2nd game, so we had to watch football:(

Quality picture of John in motion.

  

 Jonah loves swinging and playing with his daddy!

John is teaching Jonah how to fight.

Swimming

We finally took Jonah swimming for the first time! Jonah didn't crack a smile the entire time- he was totally weirded out by the water. At least John and I had fun playing with him.

Running 5:30am= Crazy Idea

Don't ask me why I went running this morning at 5:30.  A few things must have caused me to put on my running shoes and brave the cold, dark morning air.  I was up last night drooling over the St. George Marathon website, and wishing that I was running it this year with my 3 sisters.  Jonah woke up at 5:00 to eat, and after putting him back to bed I just lay there in bed unable to sleep because the road was calling my name.  If I slept any later I would have to take Jonah with me on my run, and I was dreading pushing him 13 miles in the stroller.  So I decided to be motivated to wake up early for once and exercise.

I opened up the door and realized that it was completely foggy and dark.  I could hardly see the building next to ours.  I convinced myself that I had survived many early morning runs and that the sun would come up soon enough.  Staggering across the street in front of me were two drunk students.  It was a good thing there weren't any cars on the road for their safety. I was glad there weren't any cars so I could have the nice smooth road to myself.  I ran a mile and a half to get to the river trail, which was uneventful.  When I got to the river, I decided to run towards downtown, because it was a better trail and I assumed I would see more people that direction.  After a half a mile, I started to realize how dark it really was.  And, the trail was dropping closer and closer to the river into thicker fog.  Occasionally I heard sounds in the thick trees surrounding me, which I assumed were deer, but all I could see was darkness.  I started to get really freaked out.

John tells me that my imagination can really get the better of me, especially when it comes to spiders and being in the dark all alone.  I started to worry because I had gone the opposite direction from where I told John I was going, and thought that no one would ever find me if anything happened.  Why didn't I bring my cell phone?  I was too annoyed with having to carry it on a long run.  Not a smart move.  I decided to keep running and thought it would eventually get lighter outside.  Still, darkness and fog enveloped me.  Then I started to worry about all the homeless people that lived in the parks in the direction I was running.  What am I doing???  By this point I was too fearful to turn around because of how dark the trail was.  Finally I saw a street light from a road ahead.  And then, I saw lights from a factory.  I never thought that a dirty, rusty old factory could calm me.  As soon as I met up with the road I left the trail and ran home the shortest way possible.  I was so grateful to have made it out of the trail of darkness alive.  As I neared our home, a car full of partiers yelled out their car window "Go to Bed!."  I thought that was excellent advice.  I ran straight home to my warm bed.  Man, what a crazy run!