Running Sin City

T-minus 3.5 days. "I'm leaving on a jet plane..." off to sin city to run my first half marathon (Rock N Roll Las Vegas) and doing it means leaving my little ones and the hubby for two days and nights. (Boo! I am pretty teary about that.) I have never been in better shape but I got hit by a chest cold last week and am still recovering. My runs lately have made me feel like I'm dragging my legs through the mud while battling a case of asthma. Instead of hearing my footfalls in sync with my deep, calm breaths they land to a nice rhythm of cough, cough, wheeze, wheeze. Oh well, I'm sure the desert night air will do me recuperative wonders.

Maybe lady luck will come out and show some support for me too. Or at least she could smile down on the $100 I'll be laying out on black at the roulette table. It would be great if I could come home having earned back all my costs of going there. That is one great thing about a trip to Vegas, there is always the potential that no matter how crazy a time you have there, your trip costs can be covered by a genius night at the tables thereby invalidating your desire to complain about anything.

It should still be a pretty good trip even if I don't cross the finish line under my goal time of 2 hours 20 minutes. I just have to keep remembering that finishing is a great accomplishment in itself and to stop to drink in the lights and sounds and music along the way. This is the ultimate way to run sin city after all: rock music, the strip closed to traffic at NIGHT and a post-race party at the Palazzo. Okay, I'm feeling better about this already. Now let's shake a tail feather at those little 13.1 miles!

Preschool ideas I love

Gi has brought home some very cool preschool craft projects that I wish I had thought of myself. I had the chance to work in the class when they did these contact paper "windows" for Halloween and today I was also there when they made them for fall. All the kids really seemed to enjoy the process from start to finish. And, as a parent I enjoyed that they got to work artistically and also were challenged to use scissors, fine motor skills working with tape and hole punchers. Hey, don't underestimate how difficult it is to put a long piece of tape straight across an edge of paper and fold it around to the other side! But these kids did great and were so proud of their creations that I just had to share the idea.

To create them, just cut out a rectangle shape of clear contact paper, remove the backing, let the kids fill one side (not putting anything big over the middle of the paper where you will fold it) with objects (anything work, don't limit to flat, one-sided objects), fold it down the middle and tape up the sides. Punch two holes at the top and tie a length of yarn to hang.

These "windows" would be perfect projects at the beginning of every new season, using their interior contents to talk about all the things that make the season unique. For example, today we made fall windows and inside we put autumn colored foil leaves, turkey stickers, real maple leaves found on our leaf walks, branches, twigs, moss etc.

Happy crafting!