August 8th weekend

Nice cool relaxing weekend. Just catching up on movies, TV shows and sleeping in.

I woke up on Saturday with the intent of beginning my long weekend run before the rest of the family was up. Came downstairs, tested Larissa, decided to lay down (for just a minute) next to her, and the next thing I know it's an hour later... I guess I needed more sleep :-)

I did stick with my long run commitment and put in full 14 miles. I am not sure I can do more. Finishing this long of a distance was tough.

The rest of the day is a big blur, full of chores, nothing exciting.

Jon got a "handcuffs" sweatshirt passed down from Larissa (previously owned by Gabe) that he thinks is the greatest thing ever. He wore it all weekend

I checked our backyard on Saturday evening and discovered that we have quite a bit of ripe blackberries there. I picked as much as I could. It was much more than I expected. A full bowl! I finally got tired of looking for a pen or a pencil and not finding one, then kids not finishing up their homework because they "couldn't find a pencil". I KNOW we have about a million pencils around the house, so I gathered as much as I could find in five minutes, sharpened them all and put them in a pencil box. No more excuses!!

Last weekend I put together a little appetizer (goes really nice with a glass of red wine) that I forgot to mention. It's a pita cracker with herb goat cheese, smoked salmon, avocado and sun dried tomatoes in olive oil. Yummy!! I am working on it's variations now ;-)

On Sunday we all went to the yearly Celebrate Hillsboro event. It is always filled with free entertainment and giveaways for the kids. We were not disappointed. Perhaps not as grand as last year, but nothing to sneeze on.

Gabe pretended to be a firefighter

Jon loved sugar powdered mini doughnuts

and Larissa was sad because Jon stole the show with an extremely cranky attitude, right about the time she was going to do the same...

We stopped by the crafts booth and everyone got to hammer out a creation

Gabe made art with hinges on it.

Larissa's creation has a super-power girly cape and wheels

and Jon was so upset that I made him leave a craft table (after 30 minutes) that he refused to pose for a picture with his artwork...

It didn't take him too long to get over the grumpiness with so much fun around him.

Gabe learned to throw Chinese yo-yo's.

and Larissa twirled the "sticks"

We all had much fun, I just hope kids don't run away with the circus now!