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Today was marathon day!  We loaded up the kidlets, five apples and a sack of graham crackers, two lawn chairs, a blanket, and five 3-bell jingle sticks (to make noise for the runners) and settled in on a grassy spot near the 24 mile mark.  

The kidlets made signs to cheer on the runners, and they did a great job holding them up.  Sarah made two signs beautiful signs, and a photographer from the News Tribune snapped a picture of her holding them up that made the cut into the photo gallery.  You can see it here.  Scroll over to the side and you'll find her dressed in a green shirt holding two cardboard signs.  She's pretty excited to be famous.

The Banana had a sign too.  It said "Run Fast!"  She decorated it wit lots of beautiful scribbles.  Her sign was about the size of Sarah's two signs put together, and she stood at the edge of the street and held it upside down for long periods of time.  Her heart was very much in the right place.  

The Banana was a little disgruntled when she saw Sarah's picture in the gallery but she wasn't there.  We looked at all the pictures, and all three kidlets were excited to recognize different runners, wheel chair racers, and other things they had seen at the race.  

The Banana noticed that there weren't any pictures of Dr. Peds either.  She loudly protested, "No pictures my daddy fixing up sick guy!"  And then she gave us her angry face.  At the race, a runner somewhat near the beginning pack of the full marathon became delirious and began passing out right in front of us.  Dr. Peds jumped up and administered fluids and other medical stuff underneath a tree across the street.   The medics came and then left to help other sick runners (It was a super duper hot, humid day).  The ambulance came, but the runner wouldn't get in so it left too.  The runner was eventually able to walk slowly, but it took a long time for him to be able to get up off of the ground.  Dr. Peds said, "No more racing for you today!"   The Banana thought this was all MUCH more newsworthy than the pictures in the News Tribune.   There are a few other galleries of marathon pictures on the newspaper site.  Check it out if you like looking at pictures of people suffering.  Ha!  I think it's amazing that people actually choose to run a marathon in the first place, the fact that they do it quickly blows my mind.  It's extremely admirable.