Halloween

So I said I was trying to catch up on old events....so well here are some pics from Halloween. In the pics, you will see some pumpkin carving, pictures of my sweet pumpkin with the lights out and candles lit, our adventures at Eastern State Penitentiary (one of the largest haunted houses and one of the best in the country), and a upside down scarecrow I made. All in all it was a nice week or so. The Haunted House was really only fantastic because Sara kept getting spooked by just about everything so it was fun to laugh. I do have to admit I was given a good solid scare a few times myself. The prison is huge and you actually get to go in old parts of it and see where the prisoners lived. Kind of spooky....Al Capone was actually a prisoner there once....

Red Bull Art of Can

We went to this really neat art exhibit about a month ago in Philly. Red Bull put on a contest for any interested artist in which they had to make a piece of art solely out of Red Bull cans - great for advertising right? Anyway, not all the pieces were made solely from Red Bull cans but the exhibit was still very neat. They allowed us to take photos so I managed to take pictures of every piece of art until the camera died. Check out the slide show below. My favorite was the play on Sistine chapel...or at least part of it.

You will also notice some random pictures of tape on a wall. I took these pictures because the exhibit was in an old MTV Real World house, so there were still some leftover pieces of Real World being there. You could even use the bathroom they used if you felt so inclined. It was neat to be there but the exhibit was what really drew me in :)

Lasallian Volunteers Marathon Video

A friend of the Lasallian Volunteers put together this video of the marathon. It is nicely done with pictures and audio. I make a decent amount of cameos. Take a look....some of my friends from Loyola made it into the video as well. If you know them you will recognize Alex, Jackie, Allie, Rachel, and Maggie. Maggie probably gets the award for most pictures...that is probably because she scarified herself to run 9 miles with me during awful heat just so I could make it....thanks Maggie.

Here is the link

http://www.lasallianvolunteers.org/news_1007_marathon_video.asp

B. More Night on the Town

Well like I said I haven't been doing well at posting on this blog...so I am going to try and catch up with past events and let you all know what I have been up to. The following slide show of pictures is from a night in mid-October. The Brothers had an event honoring a Brother for his many years of service and it was also used as a fund raiser for one of our Lasallian schools, Lasalle Academy where Sara and Denis work. Some of the pictures are from the fundraiser and others are from when we went out afterwards to celebrate Sara's birthday. Most of the people in the pics are current or former volunteers. All in all it was a great night. Enjoy....

A Little of What I'm Doing

So I have been pretty busy lately....trust me there will be more coming in terms of this blog. The last couple of weeks have been jam packed with all sorts of events, trips, haunted prisons and other things that have been taking up my time. While you are waiting for these wonderfully entertaining blogs to come your way, I thought I would let you explore some of the work I have been doing with the volunteers. Part of my volunteer position includes working at the Christian Brothers Spiritual Center with our Young Adult Program. I have been doing a lot of the "technology" aspects of what we do....this is comical to me because sometimes I don't have a clue as to what I am doing but I learn as I go.

One of my "learn as I go" experiences was building a website. I finished it a little while ago and I think I worked out the initial kinks....enjoy perusing and learning a little more about what I do here.

http://thebrothersplace.org/

I'm One Proud Aunt

This last week has been very exciting for me because my sister delivered her baby on Tuesday. She is absolutely beautiful. Here name is Rosemary Elenbaas but I like to call her Rosie. Here are the details of her birth.

Birth Weight: 6lbs 8oz
Length: 20 inches
Time of Arrival: 11:10am

You can also check out the blog that Pete and Leah made to share pictures. Here is the website http://theelenbaby.blogspot.com/

Also I thought you might want to see some pictures as well, so here goes.

The Chicago Marathon - Did I mention it was cancelled

Well the marathon is over and I survived. I was on of about 25,000 other people to make it through hours of unbearable weather, poor conditions on the race, lack of water, lack of paramedics and ambulances, and an all around bad marathon. This is one race I won't soon forget.

I ran the Chicago Marathon with a group of 20 other former or current volunteers. We flew from all over the country and raised money to support our volunteer program. Many others came to support us as well. I think in all about 60 people came for the marathon. It was great to see other volunteers and do the marathon together.

The night before the race. We had mass together and then had a huge pasta dinner. We received our race jerseys for the next day and got ready for the big morning. I woke up around 5:30am, had breakfast, and we headed down as a group to the race course.

It started out nicely. Yes it was already warm by 8am in the morning. I think it was already in the 70s but hey I wasn't going to let that deter me from finishing my 3rd marathon. By mile 2, I knew that I wasn't going to hit my running goals for the day. I wanted to try and run the marathon in 4:30 or under, but I knew it wasn't going to happen. I was already extremely hot and slowing way day because of the heat.

The first two aid stations were almost impossible to get water. There were so many runners trying to get the water and Gatorade that it wasn't even worth trying. I didn't witness this, but one of the other girls running with my group saw runners drinking out of the fountains in Lincoln Park. Yes we were that desperate to get water so early in the race.

I started running the race with two other volunteers, but I decided I couldn't keep up with them. I was having stomach problems and if I tried to run much faster I am sure someone would have found me puking on the side of the race course. So I slowed down. It was probably the best decision I made the whole day because it helped me finish the race. I ran miles 4-10 by myself which wasn't terrible but I was getting lonely, hot, and feeling dehydrated. At mile 10, I found some of my friends from Loyola and with them was my friend Maggie. She was supposed to run the marathon with me but injured her knee about a month ago. She was feeling better and I was begging her to run with me so she did. Maggie ran miles 10-19 with me...yes 9 miles. I was impressed and grateful because I had really low motivation at this point.

During these 9 miles, it was becoming increasingly harder to get water and gatorade at the aid stations. They started running out of cups so I just carried a cup with my along the route to guarantee I would at least have something to drink out of. I mistakingly threw my cup out and at another aid station again there were no cups...so what did I do. That's right I picked up a cup off the ground. Yes I was that desperate for water.

At every aid station, I was grabbing water to drink and probably two more cups to pour over myself. At the 30K mark, I started noticing tons of ambulances and fire trucks. I have never heard so many sirens in Chicago at one time...not even during the two years I lived there. I was getting concerned with all of the sirens but kept on running. Around the 20 mile mark, police stationed around the route started making announcements that the marathon was canceled. All the runners around me were just as confused as me. We thought they were joking. Marathons can't get canceled after they started. But it was true. The race director had decided to cancel the race because high temperature and because of the medical needs along the course. They city was running out of paramedics and ambulances and there was one fatality during the day.

The cops were telling us to stop running because the race was over. I was so confused and couldn't believe they would just tell us to stop running because it was over. The more I ran the more serious it got. Fire Fighters started opening up hydrants to spray the runners and cops were driving through the race course telling people to stop running. At this point, I decided what's the point. I was running by myself and hot. I actually met a woman from Australia named Kathy. We decided to run together to help motivate ourselves to the finish because we both lost our running partners. Kathy and I ran to mile 22 and decided to start walking. The water supplies were few and far between and we both had ran marathons before so it wasn't so much a loss to us to know this would be a slow marathon for us.

I also didn't mind walking because I was hoping that one of the other Lasallian Volunteers would catch up to me. I didn't really think that anybody would, but it was worth a shot. At about mile 25, I happened to look to my right and my roommate, Sara, ran by. It was probably the best thing that happened to me all day. We talked about finishing the marathon together but we didn't think it would actually happen. Sara actually motivated me to run the final mile and we finished together. I thought finishing my 3rd marathon wouldn't matter as much as it did, but this marathon was probably the most meaningful because it was the hardest run I have ever had.

Our whole running group finished the race and nobody had to receive medical attention. The marathon was rerouted at one point after it was canceled and a few of our runners were put on the rerouted course that took them about 20 miles instead of 26.2.

All in all it was a pretty rough day and the city of Chicago will probably be defending themselves for awhile for all the things that went wrong that day. Lack of water, resources, and medical support causes problems when you have a race on such a hot day.

Here are some pictures from the day....enjoy (If you can't see the photos if you get this in an email, just go to my blog to see them).