A little time in the sun

Nojah showing off his skills

and Alexyss just having fun

and two girls who obviously had a great time at a beautiful wedding this weekend.

Well, we had another busy yet wonderful weekend. We were honored to be invited and attend Jeff and Cydney Sines wedding on Saturday in Portland. A couple who couldn't be more perfect together! We left the kids at grandma's and grandpa's and were able to spend time with our friends Mark and Annette! Thanks for a great time guys. It was fun to get away minus the little ones. Now it's back to work!

The plan.....................

Ok so here is the plan.......
How about 3-4 days at home? Yep you heard me NO school, baseball, meetings, training, racing, camping, or traveling. No plans (right this moment at least) until work Thursday night.
Update: Never mind........ meeting tomorrow morning, extra shift at work Wednesday night, work Thursday, leave for wedding Friday, come home Sunday, back to work Monday. :-( So much for time at home!

But before I go off and enjoy nothing I will briefly share our past weekend. The kids and I went to LG on Thursday after I got off work and stayed busy helping with triathlon stuff until race time Saturday morning. The triathlon started out with a really chilly 1k swim in the lake, then a 25k mnt bike ride, and finished with a 10k run. I had a great time, improved my time from last year overall by a couple of minutes. The best part was when a HUGE 6 point bull elk crossed in front a couple of us on our bikes. What an amazing sight. I have seen a lot of elk obviously in my life but to have a bull that close to us on a bike race was really cool. Although, the girl in front of me seemed a little more shocked then I. Tob joined a team and biked the course this year. He only flipped over his handlebars once so I think he considered it a good race. Their team had a high school swim team swimmer, Tob biking and an EOU cross country runner. Umm, they got 1st place in their division if you couldn't guess.

Then the kids Duathlons started right after I finished. Alexyss competed in the the easy course, which is a 1/4 mile run and 1/4 mile bike ride and won for the 2nd year in a row. Next year she is going to have to step it up to the medium race. Nojah competed in the "hard duathlon" which was a 1/2 mile run, 2 laps around the lake so 3-3.5 miles or so with some rocky technical trail (a small portion of the adult course) and then finished it off with another 1/2 mile run. He came in 4th and did awesome. They both did a great job and had fun (of course the most important part). Ok so was that brief? Because in all truth I could keep writing.

Now we are home and I am going to enjoy it!

Let me quickly say thank you to those who came up to the lake to support us and watch us race! It helps so much to hear your voices! Thanks mom and dad and Kiley and Grant and of course all you others who were up there cheering us on!

Adventure Sports Week

7 friends + 3 Children + 4 different races (with 7 racers) and 2 nights camping = FUN!

This weekend we drove up to Northern Idaho to check out their first annual Xterra sponsored Adventure week with 24 different racing events in 1 week! Our family did 3 racing events and 3 of our friends competed in the triathlon. On Friday night Korrie and I pre-road the bike course to check it out before the races the next day. While we were out on the course we found our boys who had taken off to check out the course themselves. They were quickly disciplined and sent back to camp. I can't even imagine where they would have ended up had we not seen them. There were SO many splits in the trails. Yikes! After our ride, dinner, smores we headed off to bed in anticipation for the next day.

I signed up and competed in the duathlon vs the triathlon (mostly because I didn't want to swim) which ended up being a lot of fun. It started off with a short run and then a fast fun 11 mile mnt bike ride and finished off with another great trail run. It was a fun course and the weather was perfect.

This was the first race that I have placed in which was really fun. I placed 3rd in the women's division overall and then 1st in my age group.

After my race I joined Tob who was keeping track of the kids. Nojah and Kody did a 3 hour adventure race clinic with Michael Tobin (Top world's adventure racer) which was awesome. Alexyss was able to sit in on the clinic as well and picked up some tips even though she didn't want to race this time. She says she "REALLY" wants to do it next year since there were other girls who did it too. After the clinic they had lunch and then broke into their teams. Tob got roped into taking the boys since they didn't have enough people to help. He was handed the map and told to follow the kids. YA RIGHT! He didn't mind helping but he was frustrated he wasn't briefed on the course. Luckily he is a very patient man. The course consisted of 12 check points and included running, mnt biking, kayaking, and of course orienteering. They ran into a few frustrations such as rough water and missing check points, etc. I guess that's the "adventure" in adventure racing. The course was fun but a little advanced for 8 & 9 year olds. The kids had a good time and raced for 4 1/2 hours!

Where's checkpoint #7? Thank goodness Tob has his helmet in case he trips and the boys their life jackets in case of ...............................??

Award ceremony! Gold medals for all! Nicknamed "The Lost Boys"

On Sunday Tob and I competed in a husband/wife mad dash bike relay. We spent 4 hours taking turns riding a 7 mile course. We did 6 laps and I was 1 min and 40 secs too late to get in a 7th lap! I tried. We still placed 3rd overall. TEAM NAME: 2 nuts looking for a squirrel

Tob and Nojah back at camp trying to pop popcorn. 35-40 minutes later and some extra help we had 1/2 of it popped and edible.

We purchased an all day ticket for Alexyss for the bouncey slide and castle which kept her entertained the whole day. Best $5 spent that day!

Nojah and Lex in front of Lake Pend Orielle.

In conclusion it was a great weekend and we look forward to participating again next year!