East Valley Conference Champs!

In all my years of coaching and running, I think I have only seen one cross country race ever restarted. This meet, they restarted BOTH the girls' and the boys' race. I'm still not sure why, but Christine was happy. She thought she got a better start the second time!
The meet in pictures....
Courtney, the first Payne girl, with at least a half-mile to go. She was fourth overall.

The second Payne girl-5th overall.

Three, four and five for Payne with company from another team.

Casey, the 5th Payne girl, with Christine coming behind her.

Christine coming through-6th for Payne at this point and 10th overall.

Close to the finish, Christine now 5th for Payne and in 9th place.

Christine seeing the finish line. She got this girl right at the line.

Gokeys and Penningtons came to cheer Christine on.

Some of the girls after the meet.

Top 10 got medals. Payne had 6 girls in the top 10 out of 8 teams and at the very least 80 girls.

Team trophy!

Sports

Lately, our lives our seeming to revolve around three sports-cross country....

flag football...

and soccer. All the seasons run a little differently than in Ohio. Tomorrow is the last football and soccer game for the fall season and cross country goes for a few more weeks.

Happy Halloween!

Christine all ready to go.



Andrew decided the day before that he wanted to be a vampire too. Had the batman cape that doubled as a vampire cape. Had the white shirt. Went to Walmart to grab some black sweatpants. I thought all was ok. They only had black sweatpants as an "outfit", so had to buy a sweatshirt too. When we went to put them on we found out that someone had switched the pants and they were a larger size than the sweatshirt. So, we had to run next door and borrow a pair of black sweatpants-they were still a little big, but they worked!


Getting a little make-up on Maggie so she wouldn't feel left out!




The scary blonde vampire.

All the kids ready to go. Andrew got the medal at his flag football game that day and insisted on wearing it!

???

The mummy (Brad), Robin (TJ), a blue-haired ninja (Trent) and the vampire.

Vampire girl (Taylor), cowgirl (Anna) and pirate girl (Mags).

Christine with Callie and Casey.


Steve Gokey with the non-human butler. I don't know if the smoke was from the fogger or the guys starting the fire!

Kim dressed up her bug for Halloween.

While the dads took the big kids to the haunted house, we took the little ones out cruising for a little bit.

Happy Halloween!

Flat Stanley in San Diego

In the car with Andrew on the way to San Diego.

Christine and Maggie at the entrance.

Andrew thought it would be cool for Stanley to get his picture taken with the giraffes.

Stanley hanging out with the kids at LaJolla shore.

Stanley was upset he couldn't get in the water with the kids.

The kids waiting for the waves.

Flat Stanley

Suzanne came to visit for a few days when we had Flat Stanley. Here we are hiking the SanTan Mountains by us with Stan.


Stanley posing by the cactus.


Stanley posing with me.



We couldn't get Stanley to walk, so he hitched a ride with Suzanne.




Stanley watching Andrew's flag football game.





With Maggie at the game.






Stanley hanging out with Andrew and the team after the game.