Happy Halloween!

We celebrated a week early for Halloween by volunteering at Washington DC's "Boo at the Zoo!" Aubrey was Asian and wore her panda shoes, Tim was a lumberjack and grew a handle bar mustache, and I was a pirate. It ended up raining all day, so this isn't the greatest picture, but we had fun handing out granola bars!

"ARrrr!"

We also decorated our trunk for our wards Trunk or Treat. We didn't get any pictures of it, but we did decorate our living room with the leftovers...it's our Virginia Cemetery, and our dead tv.

Things I like...

Okay, so I do have more things to post, but I just felt the need to express with everyone some things I am passionate about. Here goes:
1. Cute Puppies2. Other puppies that are cute, but not quite as cute as the really cute ones.
3. Puppy Labs and Golden Retrievers
4. When Puppies have friends.
5. Cute Puppy pictures and the search engines that find them.
Of course, at this time in my life, I am satisfied with the pictures, and I enjoy getting excited when I see them on walks, but I am not ready to be a pet parent (and still not quite ready to be a baby parent, either). I just thought I'd share my joy with you. Feel free to save these pictures for your desktop backgrounds, christmas cards, and frames. I pretty much just stole them from google.

A Bushel and a Peck (...and a Hug Around the Neck)

To add to our fun list of Fall Festivities this year, Tim, Aubrey, Kristina, and I went to a "pick your own" farm in a more rural part of Virginia. I had been very excited to pick apples, and Aubrey wanted to go to a pumpkin patch, so we killed three birds with one stone (they had a free hayride, too!), and had a great time.

Us on the hayride

Okay, so we didn't technically pick our apples from a tree, but I liked this way better. We "picked" each specific apple from a big carton of them. There were all different kinds, but Tim made sure to "sample" them before he picked. Aubrey thought it was pretty funny that Tim was the only one there taking bites out of the apples.
They even had fresh caramel apples (which we made later on our own) and made apple cider right in front of you. The top middle picture is of an apple press. I also spent a lot of time trying to capture the beauty of the season, but I would need DeAnne's camera for that, so I took one picture of the leaves in the center of this collage.

And...the pumpkin patch. We all managed to find pretty decent pumpkins. I'm sure we'll take pictures once they are carved.

Falls Church Farm Day

As you can tell, I am enjoying the Fall Festivities already! The city of Falls Church held a Farm Day for kids (and me) which had pumpkin painting, corn grinding, old fashion activities, and (my favorite) a petting zoo! My friend, Jen, from work came along and is the one holding a board she proudly drilled a hole in. We got a kick out of the old Barn which had the horse I am feeding (below) and all kinds of dangerous tools (see the saws in the picture behind Jen) that came right off for any little child to cut their finger off with. I also got to pet a dwarf horse and a chinchilla!

Manassas and the Battle of Bull Run

The city I work in is called Manassas. It is located about 20 miles away from me in the opposite direction (west) of DC, and I like the city because it is smaller, newer, and more rural than where I live. Last Friday, Tim met me after work and we explored the downtown area as well as the battlefield.

City Hall

They had a fun town pavilion and train that Tim took a picture by. I am at the cute train station that is still in operation.

The coolest shop downtown was an old used bookstore. There are always people on movies going in these places looking for books on ghosts. I had never been to a real one, but as you can tell from the picture, it didn't disappoint!

Manassas is famous because it is the location of the Civil War Battles of Bull Run (there were two). We quickly checked out the battlefield and were impressed with it's beautiful rolling hills and scenery. The pictures just don't do it justice. It's Fall here, and I am LOVING seeing the leaves change. -Hopefully it will be even prettier next weekend.

This is the spot where Thomas Jackson was nicknamed "Stonewall Jackson" by General B. E. Bee. Tim is standing next to his statue (posing like him), and the bottom corner of the collage above this tells the story.

I came...

I Ran...I finished...
I know these aren't pretty, but I promised some pictures.

Family Fun!

My whole family came for the marathon...or at least used that as the excuse to get together. We had a great time:
Playing with the kids....

Carving pumpkins....

(I did the ghost one. They all looked pretty awesome)

(Tim rebelled and didn't use a template. Instead, he dedicated his pumpkin to me...so sweet)

...and Rocking out.

Even Will got into it. Maybe he'll take after me and be a drummer.

I also think I ate back every single calorie I burned in the marathon. It was a great weekend!

The Monster Marathon

Tim and I flew back to St. George last weekend (thanks, dad!) so I could run the Marathon. It was my third time.....and may be my last. St. George is known for it's beautiful, "fast," course and good weather, but Saturday, October 4th was the first time it's rained during the race in 25 years...and it rained the entire race.
These pictures are compliments of the Spectrum (the newspaper), because I didn't take any, and I wasn't about to pose in the freezing weather once I finished. Nevertheless, you can see the conditions we ran in.
This is not me, however, you can compare this runner to me, because I did wear a poncho for the first 4 or 5 miles (she is wearing a bag).
Even though the conditions were not ideal, I did feel pretty good during the race. I got my best time (even though all three times are within a minute and a half of each other), and lived to tell about it! Below are some things I stole off of my results page. My time ended up being 3:28:02. Boston, here I come! (--Maybe. I'll have to think about this some more.)
This maroon pictures shows my place out of the women. It said I was 123rd out of 2180 women, and 6% of the women were faster than me.

Rainy Day in Baltimore

I happen to be behind in my blogging, so I know everyone on the Larsen side has heard this, but a little over a week ago Tim's siblings (Scott, DeAnne, and Aubrey), and I went up to Baltimore. It was my first time there, so I followed Aubrey's example and ate some delicious crabcake. I have to admit, I'm not a big fan of seafood (shellfish), but I sure love crabcake! We quickly walked around the Inner Harbor in the rain, but spent most of the time indoors. (Where we saw this exciting show about fudge.) We finished our night with $1 tickets to the Orioles game and made it through 7 innings before the rain started back up. All in all, it was fun to see a new city and spend time with family.