December Part 1 - Happy Birthday Daddy and Lilly!

December always begins with Daddy's birthday on December 1st!  Unfortunately, with Thanksgiving and Christmas, Daddy usually doesn't get much of a celebration for his birthday.  Here we are celebrating with his snowman cake (courtesy of Meijer - sorry it isn't homemade, Daddy) and a serenade by his favorite girls!  We love you Daddy!

Two days later, we celebrated Lilly's 3rd birthday on December 3rd.  I can't believe she is three years old - it can't be possible!  Lilly requested a Scoobie Doo birthday party at the Little Gym and I think the kids had a wonderful time.  I know Lilly enjoyed every minute and loved all her presents!  

Lilly's new big girl bicycle!

Lilly and her cousin Callie playing with the drum sticks.

Its a Scoobie Doo Party!

Trying to blow out her candle!

Lots of presents and some cool Christmas shades courtesy of Uncle Bob and Aunt Windy!

I would be remiss if I didn't write about an important milestone.  After much agonizing, and my admission of complete defeat, Lilly must have heard my anguished cries, because she finally decided she was ready to be potty trained.  I gave up on a Friday near her birthday and for the next week she used the potty without accident.  I am fully convinced that Lilly doesn't do anything unless she wants to and she didn't want to be potty trained until she was three years old.  In fact, I am so convinced of this that when she finally had her first accident, in clothes I picked out for her birthday party that she emphatically did NOT want to wear, I believe she peed in the outfit on purpose.  I think Lilly and I are going to butt heads years before she hits puberty - please pray for me to have patience!

November - Happy Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving is a time to be thankful....

For the time we have with friends (especially at Churchill Downs)...  

And family!

Happy Thanksgiving!!

October - Orchards, Fall Fun, Potty Training, Reunions, Fall Soccer, Run Like Hell, and Halloween

October was an incredibly busy month for the Lankster clan, as you can tell from the pictures.  We started the month with our annual visit to the Orchard...

Time to pick some pumpkins!

We took our pumpkins home and immediately made our skeleton and witch!

Then we had a little fall fun at William McConnell's first birthday party - a hawaiian luau!  The girls liked the face painting the best - Olivia chose a butterfly...

And Lilly a puppy dog!

Liv enjoyed a few school days out of uniform for good behavior and picture day, which she said was "awesome!"  This is the outfit I picked out for her on picture day....

And this is her favorite "uniform" - her Supergirls Shirt!

We started a new milestone for Lilly - potty training!  

Here she is modeling her new My Little Pony panties...

Jeremy celebrated a Transylvania Baseball Team reunion...it didn't go so well for him, but at least he tried!

Liv finished her fall soccer season with the Twisters.  It was a rough season this year - Olivia decided that she isn't sure that she likes soccer, but she certainly has a lot of fun socializing with the girls.  This may end up being our last season of soccer - Olivia told me she was taking a break in the spring!  We will see...

Here are a few rare pictures of her actually going after the ball and breaking a sweat!

Lilly and I bundled up most Saturdays in an attempt to stay warm...

One thing that Olivia does like is getting an award!

The girls also enjoyed the many fall days jumping in the leaves.  As Lilly would say, they are gorgeous!

October brought a new challenge for me and Jeremy.  We made a commitment in August to train for the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation's Run Like Hell 5K.  If you know us, you know this was a big commitment.  Neither of us has run a 5K, at least not in the past 15 years!  So we started a C25K program that we followed faithfully and finally had an opportunity to complete not one but two 5Ks in October!  We participated in both the Louisville and Lexington Run Like Hell races.  Jeremy finished 109th in the Louisville race with a chip time of 31:13.7 and I finished 111th with a chip time of 31:29.1.  We then managed to beat those times in the Lexington race, with a chip time of 29:15.2 for Jeremy and a chip time of 30:06.8 for me.  We won't be winning any 5Ks anytime soon, but we are pretty proud of ourselves and excited about the opportunity to participate in another event to fundraise for the CFF.  We ran in costume (an important part of the run) and chose to run as Batman and Superman to honor Lilly, who loves superheroes and is, of course, our superhero.  We also have to give a shout out to the friends and family who ran with us - we are eternally grateful and had a wonderful time!

The Louisville Run Like Hell Group

Just finished our first 5K!

Jeremy and I after our second 5K!

Chris and Jeremy post run!

Our little superheroes in their Halloween costumes, i.e. Wolverine and WonderWoman!

The Superhero Squad, aka the Lanksters!

I did manage to take some time out for a little wine tasting with my dinner club girls at Wine + Market...a much needed break before...

The Halloween preparation!  Here we are carving pumpkins (notice who isn't in the pictures?  Yes, me.  I wasn't going to be part of that mess!)

I think Daddy did a pretty good job, don't you think?

Finally, we spent a very cold and rainy night "trick or treating" with the Bowe family and their neighborhood.  What a fun time!  The kids enjoyed a hayride around the neighborhood to collect mounds of candy.  As you can tell from the pictures, the girls had a great time!

Finally, October wouldn't be complete without a trip to Transy's Pumpkin Mania!  So cool!

The girls favorites?  You guessed it.  Spiderman...

And Darth Vader!