Beech Tree 5K

This past Sunday, we ran our first 5K together as a family.  James was Quinn's buddy runner, and they also ran with Quinn's best buddy Jack.  I ran with Keely, and we ended up running along with two other 2nd graders.  Quinn finished in just over 33 minutes, which was about 6 minutes faster than his first 5K last month.  Keely finished in just over 37 minutes, pretty good for her first 5K and with no training.  Her only practice was to run around our basement for about 40 minutes while I ran 4 miles on the treadmill.  I couldn't believe she ran the whole time, and just kept doing laps around the outline of the basement.

The school got a ton of great photos of the event, and I've clipped those that show our family in action.  It was fun, and I'm proud of the kids for running a 5K at such a young age.

Running is such a great way to keep in shape, and I hope to instill in them an enjoyment from running so that they can continue with it on through their adult lives.  I've definitely been hot and cold about running, but I do think it's important to stay fit and running is just one possibility for that. I'm not sure if the kids will love running, or continue on with other races, but I do know that we all had fun on Sunday, and that's a great start!

Keely's First Communion

Last Sunday, Keely's long anticipated day finally arrived.  She has been preparing, and very much looking forward to celebrating her first Holy Communion and being able to fully participate in Mass for the first time.  She was very excited and looked beautiful in a little bit of old and a little bit of new...new dress, shoes, sweater and old veil, a hand me down from Aunt Lois who wore it on her First Communion many years ago.  It completed her outfit perfectly! 


The First Communion was held during the noon mass, and to celebrate afterwards we held a luncheon at our house.  It took nearly 13 years of marriage, 3 states, 2 kids and 2 cross country moves but we finally held our first extended family gathering at our own home.  Because we live so close now, everyone was able to drive here to help Keely celebrate.  We had 26 people total at our house on Sunday!  Thank goodness the weather was nice and we were able to use the backyard as planned.  James spent many hours toiling and making it look so much better....it's still a work in progress, but the improvement is impressive.


We made most all of the food ourselves including pulled pork & chicken, BBQ sauce, potato salad, pasta salad, and green salad.

Dessert was the piece de resistance though...a homemade, beautifully hand decorated cake made by Keely's very own very talented Aunt Judith.    She spent many hours decorating, and just when I would think she was done she added another touch of beauty.  It looked so good I didn't want to cut it!  But we did have to taste it, and it tasted as good as it looked :)  We were so grateful that Judith could make the cake for Keely on this very special day!

Everyone enjoyed the food and the company,and  we are so grateful to everyone for making the trip to Virginia to celebrate Keely.  It was yet another reminder that the move to Virginia was meant to be...we felt very blessed on this day indeed!

The Best of Friends

By my recollection, Jess and I met the summer after 4th grade when we were both campers at Manalapan Recreation (or what we called Rec for sure).  I was 10, she was about to turn or just had turned 11.  We didn't go to the same school at the time, but we met up in middle and high school.  No matter how much time passes or how far apart we are, we always fall right back in line with each other.  We've spanned different colleges, different states, have been leading arguably different lives - but our friendship has remained true and pure.  We are now both 35, and we marvel that it has been 25 years.

We are both thrilled to finally be living on the same coast...the closest we have lived to each other since we were in high school.  We visited New York in November for the kids' TV debut (which was made possible by Jess) and they made a trip to DC this weekend to stay with us, and do some sightseeing.  We have created a bit of a monster with Keely (Keyak as Ethan calls her) and Ethan...a bit of an obsession.  Ethan just loves her, and was so excited to be seeing her again this weekend.  They spent most of the time together.  She was such a diligent babysitter, waking up much earlier than usual to hang with E, and taking such good care of him.  She even took a bath with him (her in a bathing suit, of course) and I question who enjoyed that bath more.  There was much laughter and good conversations, and Jess and Jon got to experience the bliss of having older children around to care for the little one so that they could relax and chat as adults get to do when their kids get older.  We braved some pretty cool April weather on Saturday to explore DC...walking around the Washington Monument and WWII Memorial.  We followed that with some museum hopping, from American History (love that First Ladies exhibit) to Natural History (the Titanoboa exhibit is pretty cool, along with the old favorites) and then a bit of the Castle and the surrounding gardens.  After some downtime back at the Donovan homestead, we headed back out for an early dinner in Old Town Alexandria.  This was Jon's idea, and thanks to Jess and yelp.com we found what will most definitely be a repeat dinner establishment for us...the Columbia Firehouse.  We walked down to get some cupcakes from what will most definitely not be a repeat bakery for us (they weren't worth the calories) and then down to the water.  We didn't get rained on, and it was a busy but fun day.

Their visit was so much fun, and we wished it would have been a bit longer but it was really perfect.  We're already talking about another meet-up...Philadelphia is being discussed or maybe we will be NY bound again.  It's so great that we are both so close to Amtrak. 

And I've just had the realization that I can credit Rec for both my soul mate and my lifelong best friend.  It's unlikely that James and I would have met without Rec and while it's likely that Jess and I would have, it's still where we can credit the beginning of that friendship.  How amazing!