Florida Conference of SDA's Walk for Childhood Obesity Awareness

In October, Grandpa helped organize a walk to bring awareness to Orlando's continuing childhood obesity epidemic.  That's a huge cause to get behind, so we worked around a few things on our schedule to attend.  It was a Thursday, which is a tough night for us homework-wise, since Fridays are spelling tests for all three kids, and this particular week was also a science test for Joshua and a Math test for Megan.  That morning  Megan also had a project to drop off for school, so I was able to go with her to her classroom in the morning. 

Megan outside her classroom.  

We stopped by the FCE library.  I love the mural with all the different book characters.  So fun!!

The walk was a lot of fun.  We had the opportunity to talk to a lot of folks that we hadn't seen in a while.  The sun was bright and the sky was so blue.  It was a great afternoon to be outside. 

Daniel got to help start off the walk by waving one of the red flags. 

It looked as though the walk had a good turn out. 

We walked 1 mile (one time around the park) out of the 3 suggested, and then had to get back home to dinner/homework/baths/reading/bed. 

Patriots Homecoming 2012

Fall is a big time for football season.  Pop Warner celebrated Homecoming in September, but the High School football season celebrates Homecoming a little later.  It came during the same weekend that the Mity Mites were cheering at an exhibition, so we were juggling football celebrations and extra cheer practices.  Oh, did I mention I work full time and go to graduate school?  Yeah, October was a bit rough...but oh so worth it!!

 October is Florida is perfect.  The girls practiced their routine and I sat on the outskirts of the field creating mock research studies. 

The girls had a "pep rally" inside in the gym to prepare them for cheering indoors in front of a crowd. They are lining up preparing to take to the mat. 

Here's the crew all ready for Homecoming Friday - they got to watch the LBHS Homecoming parade from the school parking lot.  How fun!! 

The Mity Mites watching the Tiny Mites perform.  

Then it was a quick run across the street to the high school football game to grab a snack (yuck, when you aren't used to eating that kind of junk, it tastes awful!). 

The awesome Lake Brantley High School marching band playing "Don't Stop Believing". 

Lining up to bring out the boys. 

The Freshman, Junior Varsity and Varsity cheerleaders all get to cheer at Homecoming.  Megan was so excited to see her Jr. Coaches in action as real cheerleaders. 

Such a social butterfly.  She spotted two of her friends and they (and their moms) came to sit with us.  It was a big moment of trust for me, but they wanted to go get a drink from the concession stand, so I sent Joshua with the 3 girls and told them to all stick together.  They did great.  Baby steps for responsibility!

Megan asked me to take a picture of the Patriot mascot. 

Part of the half-time show included these goofy guys dancing.  It was so funny!  Very much like the Blue Man group.  

We had a great time.  It was just Megan and Joshua and me.  Daniel was still stick, so Keith stayed home with him.  Megan was standing up the whole time cheering from her seat with the cheerleaders.  We were high enough up in the bleachers to be near a group of high school kids that were bouncing beach balls around and having all sorts of fun, brought back some good memories. 

In October, Pop Warner "pinked out" to celebrate Breast Cancer Awareness. 

Here are the girls lining up for the boys to take the field. 

That's Megan squatting down to fix her socks. 

On this particular day, we were playing against the Hagerty Huskies.  A friend of mine that I worked with as a brand new nurse when I worked on a cardiac floor...she and I have recently run into each other again (nearly 15 years later!).  Turns out we work in the same service line at the hospital and see each other every once in a while.  Her boys play football for Hagerty.  And a friend from the NICU has a daughter who cheers for Hagerty.  And another friend from Labor and Delivery has a daughter that cheers for Hagerty, so it was fun to see a bunch of people on the opposing side that were friends.  

However, it wasn't so fun when we got our tushes handed to us by Hagerty.  It was a rough game. 

There was a little girl who cheers for Tiny Mites (the next age group down) whose sister is a Mity Mite (our age group) cheerleader...the Tiny Mite cheerleader was very sick with brain cancer.  Our fabulous game announcer had a special prayer for her right before the National Anthem, and during half time, our girls went across the field and instead of cheering for the opposing team, they each released a pick balloon for the Caitlyn and her family.  

Moving on to the Cheer Exposition at the Silver Spurs Arena.  I had worked the night before and came home to take an hour nap before we had to be out the door.  It was worth seeing our team get out there and do their thing!  I'm so proud of them. 

Megan, practically running in ahead of us, because she's so excited to see her friends. 

Our girls are up on in the stands filing in rows.  We could see them the whole time while other people performed.  It was funny to see them all burst out in cheer for each of the groups. 

And here they come, our amazing leaders!

Here come our girls.  They are so excited!!

We had pretty decent seats, thanks to our friend Terri, who nearly jumped over people to save a row.  I don't know how people did this craziness without technology...we were texting people to tell them where we were sitting and how many seats we had left. 

Look at that face!  She knows they hit it out of the park!  

It was a bit bright out there.  

A video during one of their rehearsals. 

Daniel's 6th Birthday

Catching up from October, the big news was that Daniel turned 7.  Now, we originally planned to have a birthday party just like we've done with the other children.  Unfortunately, we had to quickly cancel plans for the weekend of his shin-dig because was had 2 kids knocked down with influenza.  

Grandma and Grandpa Holloway invited us over for dinner sometime around Daniel's birthday. And the pictures speak for themselves: 

Daniel's new play guitar being put together by Daddy. 

Daniel and Megan listening to some music with Grandpa on his phone. 

Daniel, Grandma, and Joshua

Daniel strumming out a tune. 

 Megan singing along with Daniel's tune. 

It was a nice time and Daniel enjoys his PaperJams guitar. 

Tower of Terror 10 Miler Weekend 2012

Sometime in early January 2012, my Shandra and I decided that we were going to run Disney's Tower of Terror 10 Miler.  In my defense, I think the hustle and bustle of post-holidays business and my mom's cancer diagnosis, I completely wasn't thinking about this race at all for the first half of the year.  It stayed in the back of my mind, and somehow I was thinking "oh yeah, I've got that 10K in the fall."  Well, therein lies the problem....there's a difference between a 10K (6 miles) and  10 Miler.  Duh, I know that, but I kept calling the race the Tower of Terror 10K.  And low and behold, just about a month before the race, I was like "what? this is 10 miles long, oh that's not going to be pretty at all!!".  

We went and made the best of it. 

 Shaundra decorated these awesome shirts for us to wear.  It was me, her and a friend of her's Christine.  We all matched and got multiple complements because the lettering and the Mickey glowed in the dark.  Pretty sweet for a night race!!

My crazy work/school schedule kept me from joining up with Shandra to go to the race expo, so I recruited a couple of the kids to come with me. 

Megan didn't want to come, she was busy trying rewrite Harry Potter with better illustrations.  Silly girl!

Oops, this one got out of order.  This is Joshua at Disney's Wide World of Sports where the Atlanta Braves do their spring training.  It also happens to be where Disney tries to hold all the running expos and race packet pickups. 

Back to what I was doing Friday and couldn't go play with my friends....I had to attend a lactation class at the hospital as part of my requirement for working in Labor and Delivery.  It was a fun, fluffy class for me, since I already have a bit of a background in lactation.  Overall, the material was great - very evidence based, but the class dragged on and I was ready to go!!

Class got out and I raced home to grab the boys and get out the door. 

Daniel and Joshua checking out the craziness at the Health and Wellness Expo. 

Look who is all smiles near the Space Coast Marathon booth.  The Space Coast will likely be my next half marathon, if I can manage to fit proper training into my crazy schedule. 

The Space Coast people gave out moon pies and the boys found a quiet spot to eat their moon pies and yogurt while I signed my race paperwork for the TOT. 

After picking up everything from the expo, the boys wanted to look around, so we checked out a little bit of some baseball practice. 

And then home, so I could fuel up for the run. 

I picked Shandra up and drove out to Hollywood Studios around 6pm since this was an evening race. 

We met up with Christine and twisted together some glow stick headbands so we could keep track of each other when it gets dark.  

Oops, had to sneak another one in of my cutie pies!!

My race bib was on, and I was ready to go!!

In no time at all  the weather went from cool and breezy with a small afternoon shower to thick, thick humidity.  

Despite the amount of moisture in the air, the fireworks went off and we were all set free to run!!

Finally crossing the starting line!  I did not wear a GPS, since I just wanted to have a good time, but I'm guessing leading up to this area, I probably already walked a mile between parking and the crowded/long race staging area. 

It was a fun experience to check out the behind the scenes stuff at Hollywood Studios.  I got to run through the Lights, Motors, Action stadium and that was pretty cool.  But the humidity was rough and the race was packed, people were getting sick all over the place.  I was trying to drink water only at every water station, since Disney uses Powerade products and Powerade is not a safe gluten-free food, it is not one of my top choices to drink during a taxing run.  

We did not stay for the post-race party, although it looked like it was rocking.  We were exhausted and the air just felt heavy. 

At least the dust bunnies taking over my house have a sense of humor!