the 100 km challenge

We have a fire/service road that loops the outer limit of our complex (but is inside the gates, and has very limited traffic).  It's a great bike and roller blade path.

And one lap around the complex is almost (but not quite!) 1 kilometer.  So we act like it is 1km, because life is hard enough already and why not?

And this fall we challenged the big kids to run the loop 100 times before Christmas Day.  100km (almost!) = 60 miles (almost!)

The kids made 10x10 charts with 100 blocks and they made one for me too.  And every time we ran a lap, or three, by ourselves, or in a group, we wrote the date in one of the blocks.  The blocks slowly filled, and by early December we decided that we would run the last 5 laps all together, as a family, on Christmas Eve.

The little boys rode bikes while we ran.

And the big reward for completing the challenge?  Heading deep into downtown to the hippest shopping and restaurant area in our entire city, for dinner, at a super popular burger place.

Blue Frog Burgers has BOGO on Monday nights, and you better believe we showed up on a Monday :)

The burgers are huge (and a bit pricey) but such a fun treat!  And on BOGO we managed to feed everybody for the price of two burgers (and an appetizer) - ha!. It won't be long before every kid at the table can down an entire burger that size, so we'll enjoy these years before our food budget hits the roof!

So we ran the laps, and we ate our burgers, and I'm thinking about making our spring challenge a huge 10x10 poster with 100 blank boxes we can fill in with "100 reasons we enjoy our siblings".....  something to counter act all the squabbling around here would be a nice change of pace!

After dinner and heading back to the subway entrance we passed this amazing fountain with lights and spray choreographed to classical music.  We could have watched for a long time! It was mesmerizing.

A super fun night on the town with our crowd.  and worth all those laps!