Marathons and Birthdays

Two weekends ago we had Nana and Papi visit as well as Uncle Ben. We had fun visiting and ate a pre-marathon carb-loading dinner at Buca di Beppo. On Sunday, Andrew and Benjamin got up before the crack of dawn to head to the start of the Twin Cities Marathon. So it's October right? It should be pretty good marathon weather, right? Should be crisp, cool, maybe a little rain. Nooo, it was sunny and 70 degrees in the morning, reaching 80 degrees by the end of the race. Despite the weather, Ben got off to a great start.

We saw him at mile 8 and 17 and then met up with Andrew's parents and Aunt Gail at Mile 22. Even at 17 he was still doing all right, but the route starts to go uphill from there. He was having a hard time by the time we saw him at 22 but he was determined and finished the race at 4 hours, 37 minutes (a bit behind his goal/personal best). But didn't seem too worse for wear the rest of the day. There were people who didn't finish the race due to the heat and we saw a woman collaspe right in front of us (there were people there to help her). It wasn't as bad as the Chicago Marathon on the same day, but definitely not prime marathon conditions and I'm not sure Ben wants to run this race again anytime soon. :-)

As if that weren't enough excitement for one day, we had Lily's birthday party in the afternoon. She chose a Finding Nemo theme so we had the house decked out with crepe paper and balloons. The kids searched for fish around the house and then got to decorate them. We "returned them to the sea" by attaching them to a wave on the wall. Lily LOVED opening her gifts. And not in the way most kids do. She didn't rip open each one with a flurry and toss it aside to get to the next one like most kids her age do. She actually opened each card first. Took time to look at it and enjoy each picture. She then opened each present carefully and was excited by each new thing. She looked at the front and back of each box and then handed them down to be put in the pile. It was a lot of fun to see her savor each one!

After the gifts, we sang "Happy Birthday" and she blew the candles out before we finished singing. We didn't even have to tell her what to do, she just started blowing! :-) Her cake was a cupcake cake. We got it at Super Target. You can get any regular birthday design done on top of cupcakes. When I saw that, I knew we were going to do that. Genius! No cutting the cake, kids love cupcakes (as well as adults). We couldn't go wrong.

Ella and Lily spent the rest of the night opening her toys and playing with them. And Holly and Uncle Ben spent the rest of the night opening the toys, unwinding the annoying wires, and pulling them out of iron clad packaging. I hate toy packaging! But they sure had a good time with the new toys and continued their fun the next day with our friends Arie and Jody when we had a playdate at our house.

All in all, I think Lily really enjoyed her birthday. If you ask her how old she is, she won't say two, she says, "Five!". Sometimes she acts like it too! Such a sweet little girl!