My new favorite workout

Does your gym offer turbo kickboxing? If so, have you tried it? And if so, do you love it as much as I do?? You know I must be obsessed with it if it's making it to the blog! I fell in love with it this summer when we were in Houston. I didn't have much going on this summer so I had plenty of time to spend at the gym. Which I loved because I was able to trim down a bit since I worked out so much and began obsessively counting calories. Thankfully Madeleine and Ian loved going there too. They made some good friends at the kids club and were thoroughly entertained while I worked out. Anyway, our gym in The Woodlands had a fabulous TKB instructor who made it so fun! Even though I will be the first to admit it took me a good 4 or 5 times to feel like I was actually doing the moves at the proper times. It is so fast-paced! You really need to give yourself at least a time or two to understand what they are telling you to do.Even though I don't agree with her 100%, this blogger gives a pretty funny account of her experience with TKB. I know where I'll be every Saturday morning at 8:30. And I know I'll be thinking about it in anticipation every Friday night as I fall asleep.

Field Trip/Sneak Peek at Ian's Costume

Grandpa Paul took Ian on a "field trip" to the firestation earlier this month. Ian was thrilled! He is going to be a firefighter for Halloween this year so we decided he might as well be in uniform for their visit.
Isn't this picture cool?
Of course the real firemen thought Ian was pretty neat.
They concluded their outing with ice cream and playing at McDonald's. Pretty much a perfect day!

Halloween Party

Can you believe Spencer and I were the first ones to attend a Halloween party this year and not the kids? I was kind of surprised too. Anyway, we got dressed up in our new used referee shirts and whistles to party it up with some of the other MBA students and their wives.

We always have fun with this crowd and this party was no exception. We started the night with a delicious spaghetti dinner eaten off of or out of random kitchen or hospital wares. My plate, for example, was a pink puke receptacle. I don't know what the proper name is, but that's what it's used for. One lucky person had a bedpan for their plate. Spencer's drinking cup was a urine sample collection cup. Sounds appetizing, huh? The really tricky thing was getting the food sucessfully into your mouth with the utensil at your seat. Spencer had an especially difficult time eating the salad with his potato masher. We also had a pumpkin carving contest. A 20-mintue time limit was imposed so it was a very high pressure competition! We managed to carve the skull despite our tools all breaking on us. I guess you can't expect too much from the $5 kit from Walgreens.

The highlight might have been when the wives finally won a round at Catch Phrase. We have played many times and the husbands always win, so we were very pleased with ourselves for a few minutes until the husbands came back and beat us again. Oh well! Thanks, Clarks, for putting on such a great party!!

Party, party, party!

Our little man turned 3 last week!! We had a lot of our family over one night for his "family party" and then had another party with his friends a couple days later. He loved all of it! Here are some pictures:Blowing out his candle at the family party.

These are our kids' cousins, Jalen and Lizzie. They are so lucky to get to live near each other and play together so often! Ian loves playing with Jalen especially. He has learned to appreciate things like Spiderman and Star Wars thanks to his cousin. He has never seen Star Wars, but he told me today that he wants his next birthday party to be a Star Wars party. I guess we'll have to wait and see if that still holds true next year.

Here are some of the kids at the friends party. A couple more came later and Ian loved having all his friends over.
This is the bike we gave him. He is a little nervous since it's a bit big for him, but he'll get the hang of it soon I'm sure. Since we are on a tight budget as poor college students, we got the bike at a second hand store (which is my new favorite thing, by the way!). I cleaned it up pretty good I thought, though I didn't clean the tires very well. Who knows how to do that? As soon as we wheeled it out, Madeleine says, "It's dirty!" Luckily Ian didn't seem to mind that.
Second Costco cake of the week. I was crazy to get that much cake. I don't even want to think about how much I ate. Except that they were both so delicious! I just knew I didn't want to make cakes and why would I pay more for a regular store bakery cake when I could get one from Costco? You see why I had to do it. Thankfully there are a lot of people around this house willing to eat lots of cake!

Ian, you are such a sweet boy and we love you so much! Happy birthday!!