Rest of the fun

The rest of the holiday weekend was filled with more fun, family activities. A dozen of us went to see the new Muppet movie on Friday afternoon. It was Ellie's first movie! And she did... OK. Ellie definitely enjoyed the candy and excitement of the outing more than the actual feature. She and I had to flee the theater a couple times during the show when her loud talking and general antsy behavior started to get disruptive. But we all still had fun :)
On Friday morning I recruited willing family members for the first Schneider's Stuffed Shuffle. We ran a 5K course starting and ending at my mom's house. (Brian would have run if he hadn't been up most of Thanksgiving night with a stomach virus... but instead he kept time at the finish and passed out Gatorade.) Since we've got some speedsters in the family — i.e. Ben and Candice — the race winner was decided not by who finished first but rather who guessed closest to their actual finish time. Candice won with a guess that was only about 20 seconds off. I finished last, but faster than my projected time. Ellie participated in the race as part of the walking contingent, which included my mom, Aunts Pat and Jacki, sister-in-law Sandy, niece Alora and nephews Mason and Jay.
It was a really good time and hopefully we'll continue the tradition at future holidays.
(From left: Cousin Alex, siblings — Candice, Ben, me, Maggie and Chris)