Happy Cyber Monday, and Post #200!

Hello to the Blogosphere and all my Run-Blogger friends. I have been traveling to Illinois and Missouri for the last week and am way behind on my blogging. I have a lot of catching up to do.

This post is my 200th post since I started blogging almost exactly one year ago. Nothing fancy or fun about this post, but it is a milestone anyway.

This past week, first we spent a few days in Illinois, celebrating Thanksgiving and Christmas with family, and had a really good time. We had decent weather (well, at least it didn't snow), spent quality time with family, and ate a lot of great food, including a Thanksgiving dinner that included both Turkey and Prime Rib. Good thing that the day before I ran 3.5 miles and worked out at the local college's fitness center with my wife and aunt. I think I gained 10 pounds.

the kids decorating the tree

We opened some early Christmas presents, and my son got a fun Yoda hat, among other things.

my son and his cousin on Thanksgiving/Christmas

We traditionally all go to the movie theater on Thanksgiving day, but this year they were not showing any "kid-friendly" movies, so we rented some DVDs, grabbed another piece of pie, and watched a couple of movies together--Monsters vs. Aliens, and Imagine That. Both were pretty good, but I think I liked Imagine That better. I had never heard of it (it is with Eddie Murphy), but it was funny. (By the way, I watched "Up" in the car during the 10 hour drive, and while I thought it was good, it kind of had a sad underlying theme to it. I won't say more than that, in case you haven't seen it yet.)

We left the day after Thanksgiving and headed to St Louis. We were going to take the kids to the St Louis Childrens Museum, called The Magic House.

Let me just say that for anyone within driving distance of St Louis, with kids between the ages of 4 and 12, you need to go to this place. It was amazing. We got there when they opened and spent 7 1/2 hours there and were never bored. It is huge, and my kids thought they were in heaven. It truly was incredible. We took a gazillion pictures while there. Here are just a few:

the oval office

changing a tire in the service center

Curious George was there too

working in the grocery store

ahoy matey!

delivering pizza in the restaurant

working in the bank

building a house

One funny thing happened while we were there, too. We ran into our neighbors who live across the street from us. 8 hours away, and we happened to be in the same place at the same time. What are the odds.

It was an amazing day, and we topped it off with a trip to the St Louis Zoo, where they had over 500,000 lights for their "Wild Lights" event, with a great holiday light display. It was excellent weather, a great time, and a perfect end to the day.

By the way, I did get some running in also, and I have another post I want to share about a couple of really cool runs I had while on vacation.

Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving, too, and didn't eat too much turkey.

I'll leave you with a poem that we created at the Poet-Tree space in the Childrens Museum too--