Running

Hello!

It's A. Today, my father's organization Northwestern Mutual held its 37th annual Roots and Wings Run/Walk. Northwestern Mutual is an insurance company, and it has field workers and office workers. The main office for NM is here in Milwaukee, where my dad works, while the field workers are all over the country. Once a year, the Roots and Wings Run/Walk is held to bring all of NM's workers together, pitting the "Roots" or the office workers against the "Wings" or field workers in a race. For 22 years the Wings have won, while only 13 have the Roots won, and one year it ended in a tie.

The place was packed. Thousands upon thousands of people were there. The actual race was packed itself, with about 150 people within my sight range at all times.

This was just the preparing area. The Wings always have their cool little shirts, typically matching and everything.

My dad and I were the lucky ones representing the Koenig family in this race. I wore my sunglasses for the race, and was number 3126.

The run route was all along Lake Michigan, and near that was the Milwaukee Art Museum, and its architecture is absolutely stunning. If you are ever visting downtown Milwaukee, that is totally a tourist staple.

Some of the outdoor scupltures downtown, most associated with the art museum, were simply spectacular beautiful pieces of art.

This was the beginning of the race, a lot of sitting around before the wave began to move.

The actual running was quite eventful. It was roughly 70 degrees outside, and it got hotter as it went. Along the route, there were many water stops, different audience locations, and a fireboat on the lake spraying water up at us near the end. The second mile marker was missing, which was deeply concerning for me because I was very tired to just have been on the second mile. I came in from the run with a time of 30:14. My dad came in with a time of 27:43. Hopefully we represented the Roots side well!

I knit a little bit on the way there, and I will be sitting in bed listening to Harry Potter knitting, so hopefully I'll finish another square today.

I used to beat my dad in these races. Needless to say he's been working out, and I haven't. It was very tiring for me, and in just a few weeks I'm going to be hardcore training for soccer season.

Oh brother.

-A

Family Reunions

Hello everyone!

It's A, as always. Today was a particularly exciting day. It was the yearly family reunion at Regner Park, with most of my great grandmother's descendants, which involved a few pretty awesome people.

Take Sue. (She's the lady in orange.) She is a mother of three, who apparently babysat me when I was little. Sue owns a daycare, and is a very funny person to be around. Her eldest daughter, Shelly, is in her mid-twenties and is an inside salesperson at a very succesful business in New York. Apparently I remind Sue of her daughter, and Sue actually took a picture of me to show to her daughter. Pretty cool.

The woman next to her is Sue's mother, and she rocks at Quarters, which is a variation of the game LCR where you play with quarters instead of chips.  She won all three times we played.

And I also met a new person in the family, Caleb. He's a month-old twin, and is absolutely adorable. He was born in 2014, so I decided he needed a proper...

selfie. I was kinda obsessed with holding Caleb, he was so chill all the time, so I spent most of the day holding this baby.

I think he liked me too.

Regner has a spring fed lake, which was absolutely gorgeous all day long.

Regner also had a lovely merry-go-round.

All in all, I'd say it was a pretty successful family reunion. The food was fantastic too. I got some knitting done, maybe half a square? In all the festivities, I forgot to take a picture of my knitting.

After this, I went home for about ten minutes, and then went over to Hoyt for the members night where I sadly got no pictures, but it was fun nonetheless. 

Today I was told that a fourteen-year-old boy died/was severely injured over at the common rope swing along the river. I don't know whether I know this boy, I don't know any details. All I know was that someone got hurt at the rope swing, he was our age, and he was admitted to Children's. I am praying for this boy, I hope you all are too.

Tomorrow? 6:30am wakeup for a 5K. Should be fun.

-A

I have commitment issues.

Hello again readers!

It's A. It has been such a long time, almost a year has passed since my last post. In my defense, 8th grade was a very time-consuming year. I was playing soccer, going to Maryland (church camp), writing on a story, keeping up a 4.0 like I did all through middle school (got a super dorky little plaque), getting fifth in Forensics state for my storytelling piece, got a narrator part in the school play, tried to sleep and attempted to keep my room straight so I wouldn't be late.
Alas, it is finally summer. Summer school sucks, especially if it's for credit. I was going to take Oral Communications and Gym during the summer so next year I could take Latin along with French and Orchestra, but I had conflictions so now I'm taking Acting first semester and a study hall the second.

All very confusing. I know.

For the past two days, I've been feverishly knitting the secret project that has been secret for a while now. I finished it, it's absolutely gorgeous.

My Chevron Scarf.

(Yarn: Knit Picks Bare Swish Worsted, colorway bare, two skeins, one hand-dyed with Kool-Aid. Go mom.)

(Needles: US 8mm, wood, Crystal Palace)

It's about 5 and a half feet long, and I used up every bit of the non-dyed yarn.

It was all very, very stressful. I actually had to go back and refinish it because I didn't have enough yarn to bind off with the extra repeat I added.

But it's okay now, because it's done, and I can go and work more on my blanket. Which is coming along quite nicely, by the way.

How Many Squares Finished Count: 15 out of 40 (but 4 are unusable due to the change in pattern, so really only 11 are done... I've got four random green squares if anyone wants them...)
How Many Green Squares Finished Count: 14 out of 10 (woohoo overachiever here)
How Many Pink Squares Finished Count: 1.5 out of 10 (I'm working on the second)

This has been the setting of my life for about three days now, constantly knitting and listening to audiobooks. Specifically, I've been listening to the Harry Potter series through the library's CD of The Sorcerer's Stone narrated by Jim Dale. He's a very talented reader, but one thing really bugs me. The way he says You-Know-Who's name is wrong to me, because he leaves out the "t" at the end. It's Voldemort not Voldemor... Just saying. But he has the most hysterical Hermionie Granger voice, and Hagrid voice that really bring the characters to life. Listening to these audiobooks instead of trying to read them has been super awesome for me, because I couldn't stand reading through the book because it was too boring for me. Dale gives it such a spark!

Alright, I'm off to go listen to the 10th Chapter of Harry, and hopefully knit another few squares.
Goodnight!
-A