Free to Breathe Run

Two years ago, Sarah and John ran the Free to Breathe 5K, a fundraising race that helps in the fight against cancer.  Two years ago, that November day was very cold and the race included some snow flurries.  This time around, a lot was different.  It was a warm November day, and it was not just Sarah and John who were at the starting line.  We figured that both girls had what it takes to finish a 5K as long as we managed to balance out the running with some walking.

Little  did we know that Reese would be the first Bowes to cross the finish line.  Sarah and Reese forged ahead in the first mile and Reese never looked back.  In fact, hours after we left the finish line we found out that Reese had finished in 2nd place in the under-9 age group.  She even got a medal, which put a very big smile on her face.

Callie's race day included a bit more of a mental struggle, both for Callie and her father.  While Sarah and Reese surged ahead, John and Callie tried to deal with Callie's complaints of cramps at mile .5.  The next 25 minutes seemed a bit longer for everyone involved.  Indeed the few highlights included a woman who came up to Sarah afterwards to tell her how wonderful a father John was because of all of the encouragement he provided under the circumstances.  In the end, though, the big story was we all finished and we helped support a great cause.  Thank goodness it wasn't freezing cold.

Reese's debut in Children's Choir

Now that Reese is in kindergarten she also gets to be part of the children's choir at FPC.  So when the children's choir sings at the Sunday service we now have two little ones who get to put on the robes and lead the congregation in song.  After three years of watching her sister, this was a major milestone in Reese's church experience.

We currently have a lot of little ones who are part of the children's programs at FPC, and that means our children's pretty impressive, at least when it comes to size.  You never know know how many of them will actually sing when the time comes to perform, but their parents are happy to see them up their looking angelic.

Now these four have been singing together for a long time, and they are some of the more dependable participants when it comes to knowing the words and singing out strong.  They have come a long way since their first Music and Arts Camp, that's for sure.

We wouldn't be able to talk about Reese's children's choir debut without talking about Mrs. H, who taught music to the pre-K kids at LOGOS for the past two years.  Reese loves Mrs. H, and always waves when she sees her singing in the church choir.  And Mrs. H always has a hug and a smile for Reese.  They are a fun pair.

Halloween

If you have been following us at all, you know that Halloween is a major event in our household.  We typically spare no expense, and we typically have some kind of animal theme.  This year we went cheap and insects.  However, the end product, we think you will agree, was nothing short of adorable.

And this year our classic tree picture was even more fitting than usual.  The weather was great and the butterflies were ready to flit from house to house.  Unfortunately, Halloween was on a Monday and John taught a night class on Mondays, so this year was the first time that trick or treating took place without him.  Fortunately, the girls agreed that he could still have some of their candy.

As usual, the girls ended up receiving a great deal of candy in a relatively short period of time.  In fact, they filled their pumpkins so quickly that we headed home well before the two-hour window for trick or treating was up. This was nice in the long run, especially because it was a school night.  Next year we will either have to focus on walking a bit slower or simply getting bigger pumpkins.

Fall Fun

You are entitled to your opinion, but we think fall is the best season out there.  And we love taking time to visit the local orchards to see all that they have to offer.  This time around it appears that Evan's Orchard offered the perfect setting for some great pictures.

And it's not every day that we get a true family shot, but in this case we were able to exchange family photos with a couple we ran into in the trees. They even let us use their pumpkin to add a little flavor to our picture.  Sarah certainly wants to maximize the opportunity to take family pictures while she is still the second tallest in the family.  It seems like that won't last too long.

The little one is not so little any more, but boy is she cute.  There is a lot going on in that head of hers, and when her ideas combine with her boundless energy you need to look out.  She is also at a stage where you can bribe her to take pictures like this.  Hopefully that stage will last for a while.

On the other hand, Callie is not so easily swayed.  However, if you catch her when she's not thinking about it, you can snap a good photo and see what a wonderful young girl she really is.  How could we not take a photo where a girl wearing an I heart Fall is sitting on a pile of pumpkins?

The afternoon was filled with a ton of activities, and Evan's Orchard always has things to keep the kids busy.  Of course, as Sarah often demonstrates, nothing is really just for kids.  Reese is more than happy to play along with most of her mother's suggestions, but Callie is a little bit more reserved like her father.  Don't worry, Sarah will never give up the fight.

And as you can see, Sarah wins more often than not!  Callie loved the idea of jumping off the tire for a picture and we got some good ones.  This one is so cool because of the colors, the background, and the joy on Callie's face.

Speaking of joy, these two had a great day giggling and enjoying the sunshine.  We feel extremely lucky when we get to witness two sisters who truly care about each other.  More than that, they want to be together and play together.  They love to make each other laugh and are willing to be as goofy as it takes.  We are truly lucky.

Tea with the Master

October brought an incredible opportunity for John, as he was the guest of honor for a Master's Tea at Branford College at Yale University.  With the help of his good friend Mike Skonieczny and the hospitality of the head of Branford College, Betsy Bradley, John got to fly up to New Haven and give a presentation about his new book.  And he was able to enjoy a fine meal and spent time with some of the great folks at the university.  It was almost too good to be true.

This isn't the best picture, but here is John inside the entryway of Jonathan Edwards College, his residential college when he was an undergrad at Yale.  He is trying to show off the announcement of his talk that was hung up in that entryway.  Crazy to think that 21 years after he graduated from Yale he was able to come back as a professor for a Master's Tea.  He is going to be excited about it for at least the next 21 years.

Callie's 2nd 9th birthday

Callie couldn't imagine celebrating her birthday without some of her favorite people, and we were certainly not going to have a sleepover for eleven nine-year-old girls.  So instead we found a proper compromise and had a dinner out with another group of friends, including Murphy, her birthday partner who is only about eight hours older than Callie.

Dinner was at Suggins, our neighborhood bar and grill, and the kids lived it up by having their own table separate from the adults.  And the adults lived it up by pretending they didn't know the crazy group of kids just a few feet away.  And everyone lived it up afterwards at Orange Leaf.

There they are, the birthday partners who are a couple of crazy cats.  Callie is very fortunate to have this group of friends.  They are all FPC kids, which means if the parents play their cards right, these girls will all grow up together in a great community of families.

Callie's 9th Birthday

As hard as it is to believe, Callie turned 9 and is one year away from double digits.  She was especially excited because this year was going to be a slumber party celebration.  And from what we soon realized this appeared to be a trend for 9-year-olds.  She even attended a sleepover birthday party the night before her very own.  And she had two more lined up for later in the month.  Our strategy for the party was to keep all the girls as active as possible for as long as possible so that bedtime would be as easy as possible.  Hence, the balloons, each of which had a time written on the outside and a note describing the scheduled activity on the inside.

Reese was just as excited as the birthday girl, and neither one could wait for the guests to arrive. We harnessed this energy by giving them several last minute tasks to get ready for the party.  But in the hour leading up to arrival all they could do was run around, climb in the tree in the front yard, and think about how much fun they were going to have.

As Callie's friends arrived, she quickly introduced them all to our front yard tree, which tends to be a climber's paradise.  Kids love it and it tends to add another 5-10 minutes to the hellos and goodbyes with parents coming to pick up their children.  We took this opportunity what most likely would be our only group shot of the festivities.  They already were a pretty energetic crew.

Once everyone had arrived, the time had come to pop the first balloon and find out what our first activity was.  In a calculated move, we made sure the first activity was outdoors to give more time and space to those preparing dinner.  Fortunately the weather was nice and the sun was still shining so we were in good shape.

Since all of the girls had either been a Shark or was a sister of a Shark we began the night with some fun soccer drills.  John was in charge of leading these activities and did his best to keep them entertained.  Thus he combined shooting with keeping a cone on your head.  We are not sure if all of the girls appreciated John's humor, but we know Callie did.

The situation outside devolved relatively quickly, and before we knew it John had a bow in his hair and had lost control of the situation.  He called out for help and Sarah let him know that dinner was ready.

The next series of activities were all based around the Minute-To-Win-It games.  In the first one, each girl had sixty seconds to try and work an oreo cookie from their forehead to their mouth without using their hands.  You can see here that hands quickly became optional, especially for those who didn't want to lose their cookie to the ground.

Up next the girls had to successfully transfer M&Ms from one plate to another using only a straw.  They were all pretty confident when this picture was taken, but soon learned that it is not as easy as it looks.  If you know the competitive spirit that lives in our house, you also know that we take our games seriously.  Yes, this means that we kept score for each activity with the idea that we would have a grand prize winner.  This meant that we had some pretty fierce competition for most of the evening.

Lydia and Harper are showing off items necessary for the next game, Junk in the Trunk.  The object was to get the six ping-pong balls out of the kleenex box before the 60-second timer ran out.  Not only were points distributed for completing the activity within the time given, but a strong effort could also give you solid numbers as well.  None of the girls failed when it came to effort.

Holland and Callie definitely enjoyed this activity and went to extreme measures to empty the boxes.  At one point both did full back bends trying to get the last of the ping-pong balls free.  This activity certainly was a crowd pleaser, and all the giggles show that they almost forgot it was a competition.

Of course we had to stop for cake and presents, and everyone was ready for it by this time.  Sarah had truly outdone herself by making a fully three-dimensional soccer ball cake.  Most important, the cake held together over night and maintained its shape for as long as we needed it to.

The next stop was candy and a movie.  Reese and her friend Lola got to the candy buffet first and both made very good use of their time.  In retrospect, an all you can eat candy buffet might not have been our best decision for this party, but you live and you learn.

Keeping with the soccer theme of the party, the girls watched a few episodes of the series Kicks, which is based on stories by Alex Morgan, the famous American soccer player.  The girls seemed to enjoy the show and this allowed time for us to recover from all the activity and prepare for the final push to bedtime.  And when bedtime came, it actually went relatively smoothly.  And by relatively, we mean it only took them about an hour to get them to sleep.

The next morning, following a breakfast of waffles with whipped cream and chocolate chips (we offered strawberries but they weren't as popular as the chocolate chips), we held our medal ceremony.  All of the girls had performed admirably, but Holland took the top prize and first pick of the candy medals.  She was followed by Lily, Harper, Lydia, Callie, and Kennedy.  Callie loved being the person who officially placed the medal over each participant's head.  All had great attitudes except for Reese, who was upstairs crying because she wanted the Skittles and they had already gone to someone else.  Life is tough when you are the sister of the birthday girl.  We were excited to survive our first slumber party and will recover over the next three years to be ready to host one for Reese.