Happy to report that I successfully made the change from “Daylight Savings Time” back to “Standard Time” on Saturday night. I thoroughly enjoyed the extra hour (and then some) of sleep Sunday morning!

I ran the Monster Dash Half Marathon in Minneapolis on Saturday morning. It was 34 degrees and breezy at the start, but thankfully, it was dry. It was a fun race, but a few hills slowed me a little the last half of the race. I finished in a time of 1:50. There were a lot of great and creative costumes, my vote for best goes to two guys running in full suit & ties!

Following the race I headed home to watch the Iowa-Indiana football game and it sure fit the Halloween theme with it being a “scary” game!

Iowa was down by 10 points heading into the final quarter and it looked like the BCS dream was coming to an end!

Iowa got the wind in that quarter and managed to put 28 points on the board and win 42 to 24. Very happy they are still in the running for the BCS and the frontrunner for the Rose Bowl, if they aren’t in the BCS.

Halloween night went well in our household…

I managed to get our “inflatable” pumpkin up in the front yard and we carved our pumpkins Saturday afternoon.

Nothing like waiting ’til the last minute!

I was the chosen one to accompany my daughter and her friends on their trick-or-treat rounds. My wife stayed behind to pass out the candy at our house.

In year’s past this usually meant a “mad” dash throughout the neighborhood.

But not this year!

My daughter and her friends made a methodical candy trek on Saturday night.

It was slooooow going!

They actually walked from house to house, even taking time to analyze each piece of candy they received.

It took us over two hours to finish our rounds and boy did they get a haul!

Between my daughter and son we are set for candy for the next year and possibly beyond!

I will be scheduling the kid’s next dentist appointment later this morning!

Another busy week in our household is coming to a close, but we have a pretty busy weekend ahead of us.

My son and I will be attending (and helping out with) his Boy Scout Troop’s big recruiting event tomorrow. It is a called a “Scout-O-Rama” and it is held once a year to introduce Cub Scouts who are preparing to “cross over” to Boy Scouts to our Troop. In our city we have several Troops, so there is a decision to be made by the Cubs as to which one they will join. This event lets the Cub Scouts meet some of the boys in our Troop and see the activites we do throughout the year.

The forecast for tomorrow calls for sunny skies with the temperature near 60 degrees, so it should be a fun day!

While I am at the Scout-O-Rama I will try to get updates on the Iowa- Northwestern game.

This is a big game!

Iowa is 9-0 and currently ranked #4 in the BCS standings. At the very least, an Iowa win and a Penn State victory over Ohio State will mean that all Iowa has to do to clinch the Rose Bowl would be to win one out of it’s last two games.

Iam still hoping for an undefeated season and a trip to the BCS National Championship game, but they will need some teams above them to lose for that to happen. Whatever the outcome, it’s been a fun season!

After I get home I need to mow our lawn one last time. The leaves are off the trees now and I still have a few left to be picked up. I also need to get my mower stored for the winter.

My other son will be working his final day at a local golf course. The course closes for the season on Monday.

My daughter has a Girl Scout event tomorrow, so all of our kids will be busy.

Hope my wife enjoys her “free time”!

“Boston or Bust”…

I registered this week for the Green Bay Marathon that will take place on May 16th.

I’m hoping to run it fast enough to qualify for the Boston Marathon in 2011.

3 hours and 30 minutes or less is what I need.

The training started this week, check back for updates on my progress.

Finally…

Noticed yesterday that our Sienna van is about ready to top 150,000 miles.

I think we may have already topped that mark in stains!

I will let you know when the “Official Vehicle” of “Dad’s Day Comics” passes that milestone!

Happy Weekend!

Sorry for the later than normal post this morning, a slight computer problem slowed things down, but all is well now.

Speaking of things not working right…

I hit a “trifecta” with gas appliances this weekend.

First was Friday night. It was a beautiful evening so I thought I would grill some salmon. Only one problem, our gas grill has decided the grilling season is over and so it wouldn’t light! It was pretty much dark and it looked like the grill needed a good cleaning and probably a new igniter, so I decided to broil the salmon inside, cover the grill (this time for good) and put “grill cleaning & repair” on my “to-do” list for next spring!

Which brings me to appliance number two…

As I mentioned in Friday’s post, my son’s Boy Scout Troop was having a recruiting event on Saturday at a local park. It was a beautiful day and we had a wonderful turnout. One of my responsibilites for the day was to oversee the cooking of lunch. We were serving tacos and refried beans. The meat was all pre-cooked and basically all I and another dad had to do was warm it up. We were using two camp stoves and if you are following the theme here you can probably figure out mine wouldn’t light!

We did have on working stove so we shifted things around a bit and got started cooking, while our Scoutmaster, who can pretty much fix any gear when it comes to camping, made some repairs on the stove and within a half hour, we were back to “full strength”! I am happy to report that lunch turned out to be a success and everyone was able to eat well!

Which brings me to the third leg of the appliance “Triple Crown”…

Saturday evening one of the kids wanted to warm some pizza in our oven and you guessed it…

…it wouldn’t light!

I think there must be some kind of “bond” between our grill and oven!

Maybe, “The Brotherhood of The Gas Cookers”!

“If one goes down, we all go down!”

Once again, that ‘ol pesky igniter wouldn’t do it’s job!

So we made do without an oven for the remainder of the weekend and I have already scheduled the repair for tomorrow.

Stayed tuned for further appliance updates!

An update on our latest appliance saga…

The repairman came bright and early yesterday morning and fixed our oven. As I suspected, the igniter had burned out and needed to be replaced. I think it took me longer to write out the check than it did for him to make the repair!

I almost needed to say, “Hey Buddy, slow down a little, I can’t write that fast!”

Judging from the amount of the check and the time it took to make the necessary repair, I think I should have gone to “appliance repair college”!

My wife and I debated just replacing our aging stove, but we are “planning” on a kitchen remodel in the near future and didn’t want to rush into a oven purchase before we meet with a designer.

We are planning on attending the Midwest Home Show this weekend at the Minneapolis Convention Center to gather some info on kitchen remodeling.

So now that our oven is fully operational again, I’m sure my wife and kids will be looking forward to getting back to some of my fabulous cooked meals.

In today’s strip, I think Max was hoping the oven would stop working before dinner time!

If our oven had been out of service longer I think we would have eaten out more.

I recently received some information about a pretty cool website if you have a family and are looking to save some money (aren’t we all) when dinning out. The site is called, Kids Eat For and on it you can find restaurants all over the country that offer deals where kids eat for free. You can click on the city near you to find the deals or they can find one for you.

The site was started by a “stay-at-home” mom in the Phoenix area and it looks like a great resource for families to use in these tough economic times. The web address is www.kidseatfor.com check it out!