Before we move the Great Pumpkin onto our driveway where it stays until Halloween, both the kids beg for us to bring it to school. On Monday, Jamie and I showed it to Bode’s second grade class and it was a hoot. Bode talked about how much the pumpkins weigh, how he grew them and then announced. “OK, I will take nine questions” and then pointed to various kids with their hands raised. At the end of our Q&A, he brusquely said, “OK, I will take two more comments,” and then wrapped it up.
Little dude has a future as a teacher. Or a dictator.
For the second year in a row, we were able to take the pumpkins to Hadley’s school’s fun run. Last year, I hung out eating bonbons cheering for Hadley while she ran by as I talked to my friend Aime. This year, I volunteered to run it with her, not realizing exactly what I was committing to. I mean, it was a fun run so surely it was just that, right?
Warm-up!
Turns out it wasn’t just a few laps around the park but the challenge was to get in as many laps as you could during the hour-long run. Back in the day, I was Miss Long Distance. My elementary school would have Run for Your Life where we’d race around the fields collecting Popsicle sticks for each lap and every year, Paul MacEachern and I dominated.
Those days are long, long over.
This was the longest I’ve run on my knee since my surgery but I have to tell you how impressed I was with Hadley. The first several laps she didn’t stop at all and as we got deeper and deeper into the hour, we’d do brief walking and water breaks but she kept plugging along while many of her classmates stopped. If I hadn’t been there with her, I would have quit after about a half hour when my knee started bugging me but I kept going and she later said she wouldn’t have done as many laps if I hadn’t been there. Ever since her field trip last week, she’s been much more appreciative of me and commented, “you’re one of the only moms who’s running. That’s really cool!”
And how I know she’s mine: Every time we’d run up to a boy, she’d very sweetly rub it in by saying “good job!” and then blow past him.
In the end, she did 19 laps–the most of any girl in her grade and more than most of the boys. We ran just short of five miles and she blazed ahead of me on our final lap. Though she’s really athletic, she does more solo sports like skiing and hiking so having a measurable success was a huge ego boost for her.
Having a giant pumpkin to show off to all her friends at school didn’t hurt the ego, either.
I'm a Canadian-born mom of two, former Denver Post columnist, family travel writer, editor of MileHighMamas.com and 9News contributor. Expert on all things Utah, Denver, family and travel. Lover of laughter and life. Happily married to a man obsessed with growing The Great Pumpkin. 