Run, Greyson, Run...

Yesterday Greyson participated in his very first marathon - the Music City Marathon right here in good 'ole Nashville TN. Now I am sure that some of you are saying....Greyson ran 26.2 miles, come on. Well he did, thank you very much, just not all in one day.

How the kids marathon works is that over the last six weeks he has been training with his school and during gym class and his marathon practices he has run a little over 25 1/2 miles. The last mile (or 1/2 mile in the case of the Kindergartners) is run on the same race course as the regular Music City Marathon- around Titans stadium, which for my sports obsessed son was like running around heaven.

It was actually a pretty amazing experience. There were over 3,700 kids participating - from 7th grade all the way to Kindergarten. It was great to see all these kids out and active and excited about running.


Here is the Kindergarten team getting ready to go.

The countdown to the start, can you tell they are slightly excited?

On your mark, get set......

GO!!!!!!

My son shot out of there like a bat out of hell (that's him on the far left), taking the very early (and large) lead. Clearly, Coach Wells didn't stress pacing one's self.

Now the only bad part of this whole thing is that the finish line is on the OPPOSITE side of the staudium and by the time we got there he had already finished, so I never got to see him cross the finish line (boo) or actually run any part of the race except the beginning (boo again) but next time (Greyson has already said he wants to run it next year) we will be prepared and have multiple cameras stationed along the course.

And to make the day even more special, Greyson had a cheering section drive up all the way from Atlanta - Ms. Susanna and Mr. Keith. (OK, perhaps they drove up to run in the 1/2 marathon on Saturday but really let's be honest, they came to see Greyson run, the 1/2 marathon was just their excuse!!)


As always, we are so proud of him. Way to go Greyson!!

So Proud...

So I came out of the house this afternoon and found my children doing this...







Amazing!! We haven't been working on riding their bikes since last fall. I have seen Greyson get on his bike several times and just try to balance as he goes down our driveway but never pedaling. I guess this is what happens when you leave kids alone to do what they want!!

(On a side note to Grandma and Nini - I am well aware that Greyson did not have his helmet on and after our oodles of congratulatory hugs and kisses we had the talk about wearing it, but didn't want to spoil the moment by making him put it on. Going forward he will wear it!)

Hark, Will Thou Understand??

We had a very busy day on Saturday. Along with our wonderful spring romp at The Spring Art Hop, we had tickets to the Nashville Children's Theatre's production of Robin Goodfellow.

For those of you not versed in children's theatre Robin Goodfellow is a children's adaptation of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. I had been looking forward to this play all season long because a) I have actually never seen the play before (my bumble Kansas public school education left a little something to be desired in the literature section) and b) I wanted to see the kid's reaction to what would be our first somewhat older children's play. My assumption, of course, when I heard that this was adapted for children, would be that they would convert the old English into a more modern understandable English and keep the storyline. And so I was quite shocked when the play opened and Robin Goodfellow (who was Puck from the original play) began spouting off Elizabethan English. My heart sank into my shoes. I thought the kids wouldn't understand what was going on, they would get bored and wouldn't enjoy themselves. As usual, I shouldn't underestimate my children. They both sat in their chairs intently watching the whole play. There were times when Greyson looked a little confused (Quinn was with Raif and so I don't know how he handled these parts) and so I quickly whispered into his ear what was going on and he smiled and continued watching. They laughed at the appropriate times and at the end of play declared it a winner and promptly wanted to see it again.

One small step for man, one giant leap for culturing of the Erim children.

Spring Rituals

My absolute FAVORITE spring activity is Cheekwood's Spring Art Hop which occurs the Saturday before Easter.

The kids get to say hello to the Easter Bunny.


Enjoy face painting (or in this case arm painting)


And arts and crafts (Greyson and his garden bunny pot which hopefully will soon grow into grass)


And of course Easter Egg hunts.


What they do really well here is have multiple Easter Egg hunts (every 30 minutes) on multiple parts of the grounds for every age group. Which means that at each hunt there are a reasonable amount of children not a massive horde of them that we have experienced elsewhere (Nashville Zoo I am talking to you).

But I think what I really love most, is that this is usually our first 'outdoor' event of the year. The flowers are in bloom and it just really, for the first time, feels like spring.

So welcome Spring - please stay around a little while before relinquishing to your sometimes brutal sister Summer.

Just us Girls

Last Saturday, with Greyson having not one but two birthday parties to attend (he is such the popular boy) Quinn and I were left with a day, that for all intents, was just us girls.

We started out with dance class and then a ladies lunch.


Then we spent an afternoon tackling a big project - making dinner for the boys. Now when I say making dinner I mean MAKING dinner. From the pasta to the sauce EVERYTHING was made from scratch - and mostly by Ms. Quinn herself.

She stirred the egg into the flour.


Fed the dough through the pasta machine.


Laid out her pasta to dry.


And cut all the veggies up for the sauce.


At the end of the day, our weary party go-ers were thrilled to have something to eat other than less than mediocre pizza and high fructose corn syrup.

I was just glad to spend the day with my girl.

This Picture Says It All...

Quinn: A whole lot of sweetness topped with just a little bit of mischief (in case you can't make it out that is her scary spider Halloween headband).

Question?

So at what age do the giving up loving the box the stuff comes in?