October is Birthday and Costume Month

Here's a collection of pics from the last couple of weeks. The boys bday party with their friends... a rowdy two hours with 14 hyper boys in the house eating sugar and snowballing energy off of every wall in the house. Fortunately the Alschulers were in Washington, DC for Ericka's first ever marathon run! She did 26.5 miles in 4 hours 8 minutes. She was upset that she didn't reach her goal of under 4 hours... but we are so proud of her finishing let alone coming in so close to her actual goal!!!!! (26.5 miles!!!!) Anyway, the party went well. No injuries. Nothing broken in the house. All the friends went home tired and happy. The boy's friend Aiden spent the night and the kids were pretty tired on sunday. I went for a fantastic bike ride for 2.5 hours on some of the most delicious single track covered in bright yellow leaves which made it beautiful and challenging. Some other pics are of that rascal who should have been a girl but turned out to be a boy (gerbil), Anika at some cute moment with her hat (the family bday celebration on Wed), the boys with nylons (removed from the shoe shop where we caused a raucous while trying on shoes for Isaiah), and some images of a nice walk we all took after work to a fort I found behind one of the Umass dorms.