Hunger Walk 2010

We did some community service with our karate dojo this past weekend. We walked in the Hunger Walk 2010. It was a 5K walk, which we walked VERY VERY slowly. It was a huge group of people walking and we just stayed with the crowd.

Okay - Ryan and I just stayed with the crowd. Stephen, Ben and Nathan kept running ahead and then back to us. I think they probably doubled the distance with all their running back and forth. And I think that next time, they'll do the run. :-)

Anyways, it was a fun family day, and we raised some money for Atlanta Community Food Bank!

Here we are at the finish line


Here are the kids from The Dojo of Dunwoody, fighting hunger:

And, it's not a Lathrop outing if we're not running around like loons at some point - this is Nathan and Ryan, right before we went to the start line. They were crazy!

It was a great day!

Uh oh...

So the school had their Fine Arts night last week. It was nice. Nathan sang "Tomorrow" with his classmates. Ben and his classmates sang about the three branches of government. Yes, yes, all very nice.

But then came the other activities - one of which was square dancing. So, we go to the gym to join in. First we circle up:

And then the caller yells "Partner up, everyone!"
I get Ryan, and Ben partners up with his friend Will (because girls are cootie-ridden yuck-fests, dontcha know??)

And then there's Nathan...

Yeah, baby, yeah!

Oh, boy, do we have some troublesome years ahead...

Snow? In Atlanta?

What? I'm only 4 weeks behind! And since it snowed again a week or so ago, you could say that I'm practically on time.
Well, you could say that if you were comfortable with fibbing. Which I am.

Anyways, the snow. Atlanta has seen a record winter's worth of snow. I've never seen so much snow in the past 10 years I've lived here. Here's our backyard on February 12th, which looks gorgeous in the snow, if I do say so myself:

The kids already had the day off (Presidents Day weekend) so they were home. They went out onto the back deck almost right away of course -

And Lucy joined them. She had just as much fun as they did.

Ben was my most adventurous snow kid (no surprise there). He played in the backyard for long after the other kids (even Lucy) came into the house.

Ben's backyard snowman, wearing the hat I lovingly knit for him.

Here's where the rest of us were while Ben was building his snowman. Lucy, at least, kept him company, but only from the relative warmth of the deck.

Later that afternoon, we went out into the front yard, which was a snow bonanza. For Atlanta, I mean. Doesn't snow just make everything look so delicate and beautiful?

Our little man looks cold, no?

Holy crap, I'm not dressed for this!

The boys, venturing out. Note that Ryan is holding his little Clone Trooper laptop, like he's pretty sure that there's nothing for him to do out here...

Trying to slide down the hill

Snowball fight!

And... it's over. Snow ball fights aren't fun unless at least one kid ends up crying. We got two of 'em crying, so that makes us AWESOME, right?

Snow Angels

Um, Mommy, that didn't work like I thought it would...

And of course, it sucks to be old in the snow.

As you can see, Stephen was a total wimp about the snow, and he headed back inside pretty quickly, with Nathan and Ryan. Ben, of course, stayed outside and made a second snowman, and matching snow dog. I helped a bit. No pic of the snow dog, sorry. :-)