Colors of Fall

Since I was off today I decided to get out and enjoy some of the fantasitc fall weather as I was running errands. I grabbed my camera and drove through some of the neighborhoods around town to take some pictures. Nothing like a great day, the windows down and the radio on some classic rock. Fall has to be one of the most beautiful times of the year when the trees start changing colors. Hope you enjoy the pictures! Oh, and Happy Halloween!

A Heavy Heart

I write this post with an extremely heavy heart. Brad, the brother of our close friend Orin was in a serious car accident on Sunday. He hasn't regained conciousness yet, so the entire Amos family could use everyone's thoughts and prayers. Brad, Orin, Jeni... we are all thinking about you and love you.

Man, I'm a Slacker!

That was my first thought when I signed in to blog tonight. I can't believe it has been almost three weeks since I have written. I guess life got away from me. I know I told myself a bunch of times that I should sign in and write, but obviously I never did. I guess I'll spend some time getting everyone caught up on the last few weeks.

Wendy had surgery to remove her gall bladder October 16th. After a series of tests they determined this was what was causing her stomach pains because it was not functioning properly. Surgery went well and she spent a week at home recuperating. She went back to work last Wednesday and is feeling almost a 100% now.

Zachary got his cast off October 22nd. I have to tell you, I underestimated just exactly how badly his arm was going to stink once he got it off. It was RANK!! They took one last x-ray and said it had healed fine, so he is back to normal. Looks like the next adventure for him will be basketball. He wants to try playing at the Y this year, so that will start around the first week of December.

Zach survived his first nine weeks of middle school. His new elective this nine weeks is LEAP, which is his gifted class. He really enjoyed it in 4th and 5th grade, so I'm hoping this class will be just as fun for him. His first orchestra concert is Election Day, so that should be fun. They have to wear white shirts, black slacks and a black bow tie, so he should look very handsome. I'll be sure to take a picture for all of you to see.

Things for me have been going pretty good. I love working the four tens. Having Fridays to run errands, sleep in a little or just be lazy have been really nice. Work is pretty busy. All the Project Managers are trying to finish their initiatives so they can include them as accomplishments for 2008, so lots of training initiatives are scheduled to be finished before the end of the year. That's fine by me, time goes by faster when I am busy and I just look at it as job security.

Emma is getting bigger by the day. We have our third class of beginner dog training tomorrow night. So far we have learned sit, lay down and leave it. Much like a regular kid, some days she does really good with these and other days not so much.

Saturday was pretty much a lazy day. We slept in, had a big breakfast, and then I had baseball practice from 12-2. Zach had some issues doing his chores, so he spent the rest of the day in his room and Wendy and I watched a couple movies. First one was 27 Dresses. Funniest line in the movie? "Love is patient, love is kind, love slowly makes you lose your mind." LOL Oh man, I laughed so hard. Wendy didn't think it was quite as funny as me. Second movie, Feast of Love. Interesting movie with another really funny line. "The Greek gods created love. Then they created laughter so they could stand it." HEHE Again, I thought it was funnier than Wendy did.

Today we went to church then to Buffalo Wild Wings to watch the Redskins game since it wasn't on cable here. You know your a true fan when you switch into your football gear in the car after church! It was fun to watch the game and a bonus that we won.

The plan was to carve pumpkins tonight, but Zach wasn't feeling well, so he went to bed early and we finished up the weekend with one more movie, Stop Lose. A very thought provoking movie, but definitely not too many funny lines. I would recommend it though.

Now I am getting ready to call it a day. I hurt my calf last week, so Friday was my first day back to the gym in a week. I'm going to get back into the regular routine tomorrow, so the alarm will be going off at 445am. I hope everyone is doing good. Have a great week and I'll do my best not to go another three weeks before I post again.

Last, but certainly not least, congratulations to Danny and Althea on the birth of their daughter Sierra. I can't wait to see you guys in December. Give Jaysen and Sierra a hug for me. Good night everyone, hope you like the new pics.

Lordy!

Last weekend was the Spirit of Survival race in Lawton, Oklahoma. We decided to make a weekend out of it, so we drove down Saturday morning, had lunch at Meers Restaurant, and then drove to the Wildlife Refuge to do some hiking. You would think in a wildlife refuge hiking trails would be clearly marked and animals would be all over the place. Unfortunately neither of these were true! We finally stopped at the Visitor's Center and got directions to a trail. It was a nice hike, but there weren't any animals wilder than a duck. On the way out we did see some Texas Longhorns, so we took some pictures of those to help satisfy the need to see animals. Oh and Wendy bought a stuffed buffalo since she didn't see a real one.

After our fun in the "wild" we checked into our hotel and meet my brother by another mother Noel, his wife Dollie, Dan and his family for dinner. Noel and Dan were doing the run with me Sunday morning. After dinner we headed back to the hotel. Wendy and I decided to watch a movie. It was Mama Mia. And since I have nothing nice to say about it I'm not going to say anything at all.

Sunday morning can way too early. I met the guys downstairs at 530am so we could catch the 6am bus over to the race starting point. Our race started at 810am, but we weren't sure how long it would take us to get our registration packets so we figured better early than late. As it turns out, we could have taken the 7am bus and still had plenty of time, but we just hung out in the bleachers and chatted until it was time for our 10K.

On the website, they say that this is the hardest 10K in the world or something close to that. I didn't give it much thought, but now I completely agree! There was a lot of elevation changes (ie running uphill!) and at one point about 4 miles into the run it climbs 400 feet in 1/2 a mile. LORDY! It kept winding around corners and you would think it was about over, just to round another curve and see it still kept going up. Despite this, I finished in 65 minutes, about 5 minutes faster than the 10K I ran in April. I'm pretty happy with that considering that this course was much harder.

After the race we headed out of Lawton for a stop in Chickasha to go to a corn field maze. It was fun. One of the mazes was really hard and we had to call for a clue to get out, but we made it. After the mazes Zach got to shoot some pumpkins and corn cobs out of a huge air gun. Needless to say, that was a big hit!

Frustrations

Wow, I'm getting to be almost as big of a slacker as Patrick when it comes to posting. I'll see if I can get everyone caught up to where our lives are now.

When I posted last Zach had fallen out of a tree and had a small fracture on his right arm... according to the Urgent Care doctor. He told me to put the splint on it for 2-3 days and then have him start squeezing a tennis ball to strengthen his arm back up. I just wasn't comfortable with this response, so I took Zach to the base doctor on Friday for a second opinion.

Turns out I was right. Zach has a broken wrist. They couldn't put him in a cast that day because his arm was still too swollen, so they put him in a plaster splint and told us to come back in a week. So he now has a red short arm cast and we go back on October 22nd for more x-rays and to hopefully get the cast off. It stinks that he wasn't able to finish up the baseball season, but he has been working as bat boy at the games.

Work had some changes as well. They rolled out flexible work schedule options about two week ago that included several options. First, you could work from home two days a week. This obviously wasn't an option for me since I work from home all the time. Second, you could work 9 hour days and have every other Friday off. The last option was working four 10 hour days and taking every Monday or Friday off. I decided to try the four tens schedule, and this was my first week with this schedule. It was nice having today off to run some errands and relax a little. I guess time will tell if the 10 hour days get to be old.

On to my frustrating news. Thursday morning when I got up to go to the gym I discovered that my car had been broken into. They busted my dash and took the radio.

So I called the cops, filed a police report, went to the gym, came home and called the insurance company. The damage is covered, after my $500 deductible. I got an estimate to fix the dash today, it will cost $250. They said they will replace the radio with an equivalent model. Another company does this but I have to wait until the dash is replaced before I can do that. I take the truck in on Tuesday to fix the dash, so hopefully the radio will be taken care of soon after that. I talked to some neighbors and our house wasn't the only one that got hit. The neighbor at the end of the block lost a radio and had some other vandalism.

This had to be one of the most frustrating things I have experienced in a long time. The fact that someone would go house to house looking to steal things is unimaginable to me. I guess I will try to count my blessings that they didn't try to come into the house and that no one was hurt.

On a much more pleasant note, we are heading for a weekend trip tomorrow. We are driving down to Lawton, Oklahoma to spend the day seeing some sites. Then on Sunday I am running in the Spirit of Survival 10K with Noel. It should be a good time. The muscles in my right leg have been a little sore this week, so I hope I don't have any problems. I would love to finish in 60 minutes or under, but who knows. Sounds like there are a lot of elevation changes so that might be tough.

Ok, you are all caught up! Hope everyone has a great weekend. Go Redskins!