Halloween on 10/28??

While I could go on and on about how ridiculous it is that the local government can dictate when "trick or treat" will occur versus the timeless tradition of doing it on HALLOWEEN, October 31st, I will save you from my heated rant and just tell you what a wonderful day Thursday, October 28th was in our household.

Zack got home a bit early and decided that the kids needed to make their jack-o-lanterns. Since this is an activity I abhor, I was happy to take pictures and make dinner.


Alex was not excited about pulling out the guts, but was told he had to at least do a couple of handfuls. You can see what he thought about that.

Meanwhile CJ had no problem with the gooey innards.

I was pleasantly surprised how fast and easy this project went. The kids cleaned out most of their pumpkins, helped saw off the eyes/nose/mouth and clean up. Wow, they really are growing up so fast!!!

Then it was off to trick-or-treat. Since there are only two other houses on our street and only one house that looks forward to seeing us, we did a quick candy call at their house and headed over to a friend's neighborhood.

Princess Leia and Darth Vader ready to roll with their jack-o-lanterns behind them.


Here they are at the friends' house. We had a great cast from The Empire Strikes Back and then SuperGirl to boot! We were out for about an hour and half and then we called it quits. I am not sure if the kids were colder or the parents, but we were all happy to get inside and start enjoying their treasures!

Here comes the candy!

Today started the quest for the most candy accumulated in a 4 day period.

CJ went with a friend from school to the Villages at Penn State, which is a assisted living residence. Princess Aurora (Sleeping Beauty) and Princess Leia made the rounds and scored well.

Here is Keira and CJ -- the Princesses.

Then I took CJ to Zack's office to trick-or-treat. As always, the ladies in the office offered her lollipops (which she and Alex can get without costumes) and some DELICIOUS peanut butter chocolate things.

CJ with Old Main behind her. This is SOOO going on her college application in 14 years.

Tonight is the real deal. We are going out with some friends and I am sure that we will have more than we could ever consider eating. In fact, I think I still have some from last year in the cabinet.

Alex-O-Lantern

Alex lost his other front tooth on Monday. Just in time for Halloween.....


Just kidding.... Here's the real toothless grin:

While Zack was racing, we had Fall Fun Fest!

The kids and I had such a wonderful Fall weekend at my sisters. Zack was there, of course, but he was doing his pre-race and race-day activities. The kids did miss their final soccer games, but when we told them they would be spending the time with their cousins, not a single fuss was made.


Alex is in full-on Jack adoration mode. He LOVES his older cousin. I am not sure what he loves more about Jack -- his ability to play football with him or watch him play DS or computer games. I doesn't much matter since Alex has a fabulous time and we don't even see him until we are ready to leave.


Meanwhile, CJ and her cousin Nathan are attached at the hip. With only 6 months difference in age, they play together so very well and constantly. Here they both are enjoying the 3rd hay ride of the day.


On Saturday, we took the kids to my sister's friend's farm for a fall-fest. The kids got to ride ponies, run through a corn maze, pet farm animals, do a apple sling-shot, and enjoy the beautiful weather. Here they are taking a quick rest between activities.


My reluctant rider. I had to "convince" him to ride since Jack was not going to do it (Jack is a tween and totally not into THAT!). Alex did enjoy it... much to his chagrin.


This cowgirl was in HEAVEN. She rode both horses for a total of 4 times. I see lessons in the near future.

The kids loved petting the week-old calves. For cows, they really were very cute.

Back at Aunt Mary's the fun continued. She really does have an amusement park out back. The huge playset hardly even gets used when you have a big sand/dirt pit to dig in and ....

Hay rides around the property. Here's Mike on "his" tractor taking us around the yard.

The happy riders in back. I don't know what Zack is doing in this picture but his face and Ripley's seem to be the same!

Here's my mom. Doesn't she look fabulous? She is doing weight watchers and just slimming down to a mere fraction of her former self. I am so proud of her!

Here's my Dad. The grandkids call him Mr. BigHands. You can see why.

So your wife just completed a multi-sport race, get off the couch!

That's pretty much how it all started. Literally the day Jean was off rocking the Dewey Beach Triathlon, I was sitting on the couch after putting the kids to bed and started looking for some motivation of my own. I checked the calendar, looked at a couple of web sites, and came upon an Adventure Race that worked for the calendar. And Bonus!, the race was just miles from Jean's sister's and parent's house. Thus, an adventure race weekend was born.

For some background, 10 years ago (or thereabouts) I convinced my friend Henry to try an adventure race with me. An adventure race is a multi-sport race like a tri, but usually with paddling a canoe instead of the swimming leg. And adventure races are usually off-road (think mountain biking and trail running). Well, Henry and I haven't raced together in years, and neither of us were or are in the shape we were 10 years ago. But we were both looking to put a date on the calendar to serve as workout motivation, and so we agreed to give this race a try.

Now this race, menacingly called THE EDGE, was a little different and a little longer than any I had completed before. This was a 6 hour race, with "approximately" 5 miles of running, 5 miles of canoeing, and 10 miles of mountain biking. With a total of 5 weeks of "training" under my belt, I thought for sure we would finish in about 3 hours. How wrong I was!



We show up to the race and are given a map of the park. Then we are told that each team has to designate a runner to compete in a Prologue. Pretty simple, right? I have learned that nothing is ever simple in an adventure race. The Prologue consists of running 250 yards to a point and back, and then running into waste deep water (it's mid-October in Pennsylvania!) to pick up your passport, which will determine what order you complete the legs. Ready, set, go! Needless to say, I am happy I brought an extra pair of shoes, socks, and shorts...

On the map are 17 points marked F1-F5, B1-B7, and C1-C5. The deal is that you just have to stamp your passport at each of these checkpoints in any order you determine.



The catch is that they are spread out all over the park, and that for the canoe, one of the checkpoints is 150 yards uphill from the water, and the passport has just been attached to the canoe. Ever portage a canoe 150 yards uphill right after you've run a mile and a half over a small mountain just to get to the canoe? I never had either until Sunday! And we paid for the chance to do this!



Oh, one other thing about adventure races - there are always "special tests" or obstacles. This race included 2 special tests in which Henry had to carry me around on his back (I am so thankful I lost some weight earlier this year). And it included one where you had to climb up and over a 15 foot tall cargo net. This is some serious adult fun.



As you can see in the pictures, we had a great time and smiled throughout the race and after. We completed this race in 4 hours 53 minutes and traveled about 20 total miles with some serious elevation gain and loss.

We are already planning for a couple of races next year, with the goal of trying a 24 hour, 100 mile race next summer.

Sounds like fun, right?

Parade, Soccer, Red Tomatoes... Must be the Fall.

Finally, I feel a sense of completeness. Verizon imposed a 10-day "time out" for me and the internet. After hours of calls to India to no avail and 10-days of run-around with no access... I now have my internet back, all is right as rain.

The Fall is always a busy season here in Happy Valley. Not only are we getting back into the school-groove, it's soccer season and Penn State FOOTBALL!

Last weekend was PSU Homecoming weekend. We headed out to the parade on Friday night and had a wonderful time. While waiting for the parade to start, we saw a couple of friends and then during the parade we saw a few people from church or other activities marching. I love the small-town feel of this area. Although there were about 100,000 people on campus for the festivities. ;-)

Here the kids are at the start of the parade with the emergency vehicles behind them. They were practicing their candy-catching. We came home with quite the booty!


Among the floats of sororities/fraternities, alumni processions, and campaigning politicians, this crazy bicyclist was the most intriguing.

Alexis and Dave came up for the game. I was able to tailgate with them pre-game, which was just perfect on this quintessential fall football day.

The next day was devoted to soccer. Here are the Blue Sharks, Alexander's fall team. They did a great job and scrimmaged well. Sorry there are no more pictures --- CJ really steals me from watching to go play on the adjacent playground.

Then it was off to CJ's game....

Here CJ is just scoring one of two goals for the day.

She has come a long way from the first game. She has confidence and has really found her joy in the game.

The next goal scored was by her teammate Emily. Funniest part was that I didn't even notice that another kid had stuck his head through the net. Another parent mentioned it to me later and I was so happy I had snapped this photo of it. HA!

Just like CJ playing with me at Alex's games, Alex dominates Zack during CJ's games. They have taken to a friendly game of football.

Since last Halloween, Alexander has proclaimed he will be Darth Vader for Halloween 2010. Luckily, we already had the costume. Then CJ decided a few weeks ago that she wanted to be Princess Leia. After a quick trip to Target.... VIOLA!

The Star Wars Duo!

Update on the basement tomatoes:

I didn't know how long to wait to check in on the tomatoes, but I guess I waited too long. Two days ago, I went down to check in on them and found this:

Intermixed with the ripe tomatoes were many rotten ones. After sorting through them, I was left with two trash bags of rotten tomatoes (great for the compost!) and two baskets filled with ripe ones for sauce-making and BLTs.

Here's to Mom and Grandpa Moore for the newspaper riping trick!

Final Garden Harvest

Two and half weeks ago, we collected the last really ripe tomatoes of the season. After suffering the complete destruction of our tomato plants last year from late blight and losing my early plantings (that I started inside back in February, dagnabit!) to hungry rabbits, I think we did remarkably well. I have oodles of roasted tomato sauce in my freezer and most of our friends are sick of getting deliveries.

This was the bounty from a few weeks ago. I can't describe adequately how delicious a huge slice of tomato with some lettuce and bacon was this year!

Now that the weather was turning cooler, the plants were still producing, but just not ripening. So, we decided to winterize the garden and pull the remaining plants and call it a "growing season". However, we had two bushels of green tomatoes to do something with.

This is Saturday's booty.

My mom had suggested we cellar-ripen the green tomatoes. I thought this was another nutty idea by my mom, but then Zack recalled that his grandfather used to do the same thing. The process consists of wrapping or laying/covering the green fruits in your basement and they will slowly turn red and ripe. Having garden delicious tomatoes through the fall and into early winter -- sounds great! So I am giving it a try.

This is three card tables filled with green tomatoes. I figure that this experiment can go one of two ways: 1. great tomatoes forever, or 2. massive fruit fly infestation.

stay tuned....

Visitor Week

As if Fall wasn't filled with fun stuff already, two weeks ago we kicked it up a notch. Sure we still had the regular hubbub of school, soccer, and PSU football, but we added some visits from the grandparents and a favorite Aunt to boot!

Tuesday through Thursday, my parents joined our regular week schedule. We were so happy that they came to visit and see the kids and even catch them playing soccer. Luckily the weather was wonderful and we enjoyed soccer on a typical cool but sunny fall day. CJ had her first scrimmage that night. Oh boy, was that a mess. They had no subs (some stomach flu was going around) and the other kids were imported from the English Premier League. Not only did the
other team have great foot skills and fast legs, we are pretty sure they were all 16 years old. ;-)

Many tears were shed: CJ under severe frustration, since she thought a "scrimmage" just meant another fun game/drill they would play; and from my parents and self, because we had two girls weeping and one other kid who was playing his best tackle football game on the soccer field. He was hilarious. I guess you would have to call it a grand comedy of errors.

Here PopPop is helping CJ write her letters. She did worksheets from letter C down to letter I. This was impressive, since I have to beg her to do just one line on one page of the book. Guess she was showing off a bit, eh?

Here Alex had completed his school homework and wanted to show off to Grandma with his math skills. He finished all but 3 pages of this entire book. What can I say? My children are brilliant! :-)

Then on Friday, my sister joined us with her best friend, Kim. They stayed until Monday and we had such a great time. Again, we headed out for some soccer for both CJ and Alex (CJ's game went much better with only one round of tears), went hiking at Whipple Dam and running through the corn maze at Harner Farm. We also mixed in a trip to the Creamery (YUMMY!) and Penn State's fairly new Arboretum.

Kim and Aunt Ann, BFFs!


Action shot -- sorry it is a bit blurry.


This was in the corn maze at the Treasure Chest. When you find it, you get to pick one prize from the chest. Spider rings was the prize of choice.

It was wonderful for my family to make the trip here and just hang out with us. I think it is so important for family to stay close and experience each other in your normal routine. Holidays are special, but you act a little different and usually there is far more chaos (I have a large family). From my parents helping the kids with homework to Alexander helping Aunt Ann down a slippery slope on our hike, it warms my heart to have those moments together.

CJ's first day of school... and my distraction.

I will admit this post is a bit late. We are already into Fall and I am just now posting her pictures from the first day. Assuredly, the day was met with much fanfare and excitement, but I was very distracted.

Here is CJ in all her first day of school glory.




She was up early, dressed quickly (which is a feat in and of itself) and ready for Mrs. Wiley's class. I really believe that her first memory of school has always been dropping Alexander off at Mrs. Wiley's class when she was 2 years old. She would run into the class and immediately start playing with the toys. After settling Alexander in, she would pitch a fit when I told her that we would have to leave. So now.... FINALLY.... she gets to stay and have school in that classroom with that same teacher. She feels like such a big girl and loves it.

Now to address my distraction.

Six months ago I had a friend call me to talk me into doing a triathlon with her. HA! I laughed out loud at the mere mention of this. Not me. No way. I am a hearty woman of german-stock and we don't do those crazy athletic things. I am not sure that anyone in my family has ever played on an organized sporting team. In high school the closest I came to organized sport participation was recording statistics for the baseball team. But honestly, I mostly did that to hang out with the cute guys on the team. Then after college, I played softball and soccer on some coed teams with Zack, but that was mostly because we would drink beer during and after the games.

She assured me that she was serious and that we would have months to train and get ready. Come on, she said. It will be fun, she assured me. Okay, what else do I have going on? So I registered for the race. Locked and loaded, I had six months to figure out how to swim half a mile, bike 7 miles and then run 3.5 miles.

The race was this past weekend and I can't believe that it has already come and gone. This was a huge personal accomplishment and I will admit that I am just tickled pink that I did it. Zack (and the kids) was so supportive and motivating during my training --- literally pushing me out of the house on the weekends to go bike or run.

My family was in shock to think that anyone from the Diephaus-clan would actually do something as crazy as a triathlon race. I heard from my sister that my dad made the comment that clearly I had not received any genes from his side. Perhaps the story about mom and the milk man were true. Then on the night before the race, Zack got a call from mom asking for him to confirm that I was not about to do the swim IN THE OCEAN for pete's sake. Needless to say, he did not lie to her and I had to call and assure her that there were life guards on boats watching everyone for safety.

As for the race, it went better than expected. The swim in the ocean was really hard. Harder then I had even anticipated. Lots of swells and lots of saltwater in your mouth. Definitely a far cry from training at the pool at the YMCA. The bike was fine and the run was better than I thought. Having people to cheer you on really does help make the time go by faster. Crossing the finish line was something that I had envisioned, but certainly didn't really know how I was going to feel. As I crossed the line to the cheers of the spectators, I was so excited/relieved/emotional I was on the verge of tears. That was the one moment I wished that Zack and the kids would have been there. I was so full of joy and emotion and had no one to share it with. But that was kind of the point. I did this for me. It was a huge personal accomplishment. Something that I had to do for myself. And I did. Go me. :-)

Here I am ready to head to the swim. Transition area all set!


This is a self-portrait after coming out of the water and getting ready to head out on the bike.

As an added plus, the times were announced and low and behold, I won 3rd prize in my class. HA! Since I was hoping to not be in the last third of the race, this was amazing. In the overall standings I came in #429 out of 1100 racers. Wow. Who knew??

Now I am back home, into the daily school grind and feeling a little bit at a loss. Haven't worked out since Saturday and have eaten ice cream every chance I can. Perhaps I need to sign up for another race just to keep me focused. Or I could just stop buying ice cream. Hmmmm. Tough decision.