The Racecourse

Also in October, Dan created a obstacle racecourse on our land.  I asked him to make some kind of an obstacle course/racecourse for the boys in our homeschool playgroup when we were meeting at our house.  So he made this awesome course, which all the kids like to run on!

On your marks, get set, go!

After they run over the giant tire, the course curves around and then the runner runs over these hay bales.

A stop for some silliness.

Add in a little dancing!

At the halfway point!

Go, Catherine, go!

Here comes Dominic!

All tuckered out.

I mostly had the kids race against themselves by trying to beat their fastest times.  It is a fun way to get some good exercise!

Girls In The Mud

One day in mid-October, I noticed the girls sitting out in the mud in the garden:

Anne and Catherine getting dirty!

They seemed to be very busy doing something, and after quite a while I went over to see what they were up to.  You don't usually think of your girls spending a lot of time out in the mud!  They were making things out of mud like it was play-doh.

Anne's horse.

Catherine's hotdog on a bun.

Fun On A Friday Afternoon

The girls with their friends and cousins.  They had painted designs on aprons at our previous get together and here they got to wear them for the first time.  On this afternoon in October, they wore them while my friend helped them to make and can Blueberry Jam.

Meanwhile the boys were busy hammering nails into blocks of wood.

The boys show off their finished projects.  The wood blocks had their initials on them and they hammered the nails into the initials.  What a fun project for the boys!

Cross Country Track Meet in Victoria

 As you may have noticed, I have fallen just a little behind on this blog.  :)  So, I am going all the way back to the beginning of October, and then I'll try to catch up as I can!

That first weekend of October was just a few days after Anthony broke his arm.  Dan, Dominic, and Joseph drove out to Victoria on Friday night, so that on Saturday they could go to the Fort Hays State University track meet held at the Sand Plum Nature Trail on the Brungardt family land. 

The entrance to the track meet.

The athletes prepared for the race.  You can see the double towers of the Cathedral of the Plains in the background.

The runners lined up for the first race.  This was the girls.

There were some killer hills on this course.  Here, two of the runners came down a hill and crossed the bridge that Dan's brother built.

The cannon that was fired to start each race. 

A guy on a bike led the way to make sure the racers knew where they were going.  I would not want his job going up those hills!

Joseph and Dominic rested on one of the benches Uncle Joe built.

Here come the racers!

 Meanwhile, I drove down with the girls and Anthony on Saturday morning.  After lunch at Grandma's house, we went back to the nature trail to check out the racecourse. 

Walking sticks in hand, everyone headed down a hill.

You can't tell, but Anthony's arm was wrapped up in a splint.  It didn't stop him, though!

Dominic checked out the turkey caller.  We did not see any turkeys, though.  I'm sure we were too loud.

Behind the girls you can see one of the track meet signs, pointing the way for the 5K or 8K races.

There were a lot of pretty fall colors.

Coming down one of the monster hills.  Can't imagine running up something like this!

As you can see, it was a cold weekend for October.