Underwear Ninjas

We are so very proud.

Riley's First Race

Riley ran her first 5K this spring!!!  The race was to benefit a group "families supporting adoption" that our friends belong to.  They adopted the sweetest little boy a few months ago.   Riley is my most exercise-prone kid.  She likes to do yoga with me, if  I'm doing a video she likes to join me, she asks to run with me...  so I had visions of us training everyday after school - which only happened once- so I was surprised and PROUD that she ran all but about 1/2 mile of the 3.1 miles of the race.  She just kept plugging along.  the longest she stopped was at the end - the finish line was in a park and there were lots of people around, and the people who put on the race are friends in our ward, so when Josh said her name in the microphone Riley's shyness got the better of her and she refused to run anymore.  There were friends at the finish clapping and yelling for her and it was all a little too much.  But I couldn't let her run almost the whole race and not run across the finish line- so I was trying anything to get her to run and she was refusing, so I told her I'd take her to Target afterwards to get anything she wanted, so she ran the last 20 yards to finish the race!  Thankfully the 'anything she wants' from Target ended up being a $11 Barbie make-up kit - whew!

 2.5 miles and still going strong!

 Proud girl at the end:)

Ragnar SoCal

In April some friends and I ran Ragnar SoCal.  We left the morning of my birthday so my cute friends showed up early in the morning to pick me up with cupcakes and happy birthday crowns that we wore all the way to California,

Nikki, Erin and Jarrie having healthy breakfast burritos at the airport after we had yummy cupcakes:)

On the plane.

The flight attendant had the whole plane sing me 'happy birthday' and made me this crown of pretzels.  I felt so loved:)

at the start line.  I was in van1 this year - so we got to get up super early - I can't remember our start time - I think it was 7 something.  We started right on the beach in Huntington Beach.  I was runner 2 so I got to wake up a little bit before I ran.

This is one of our 2 fearless van drivers - Amy.  Stephanie was our other driver this year - they are awesome - we had huge 15 passenger vans this year so they were super brave to drive!!!

Funny van - it wasn't ours:)

The Biggest Loser had 2 teams in the race( we kicked both teams butts!) - so we got to take a picture with Sione and Jesse:)

 I have to say Van 1 has the best times for breaks and the best weather for runs - early morning and later evening.  Van 2 runs in the heat of the day and the middle of the night.  But having run van 2 last year and Van1 this year I have to say  I prefer van 2- for some reason it feels like there is less down time.  Here we had bad Mexican for lunch then lounged around on the grass trying to sleep a little before run #2.

The Rose Gardens in Carlsbad

 mileGetting ready to start my night run- after someone was killed on a night run in a Ragnar relay year you have to be lit up like the 4th of July from dusk to dawn - in a head lamp, reflective vest, blinking butt light.  My mileage was this: run #1- 5 miles, run #2- 9 miles, run #3- 7.5 miles.  So run #2 started at dusk, I felt awesome through the whole thing- except for miles 3-6 which were on a "horse trail"- it wasn't a trail so much as a rock garden - it was a miracle there weren't a ton of sprained ankles.  I felt that  I trained pretty hard for this race and was pretty happy with my runs.

The finish line on Coronado Island.  it was so pretty- I loved being right by the beach most of the time.  We got to hang out here for a long time.  Then we headed to In-n-Out for some well deserved burgers:)

The next day we spent the day being tourists on Coronado Island - good times!

This is us "packing lightly" b/c we had to have all our luggage in the vans w/ us during the race

All of the Mind Over Mileage moms at the finish line - I think we look pretty good for being up for the last 32 hours:)  We'll be doing this again next July in Seattle!!!

While it's a blast to get away with friends it's always good to come home:)

Happy Happy Birthday Max

Max is now almost 5 1/2 - but my computers been broken & wouldn't stay on long enough to load pictures, so now I have a new computer and much catching up! Max turned 5 April 7, so here are some facts about Max:

Max is usually either smiling or sleeping. He will fall asleep anywhere, and often does on playdates. Once he fell asleep in his friends car with food in his mouth. I had a whole bunch of pictures of his random falling asleep but he and his little friend Gavin were taking pictures of them throwing cereal all over (a post for another day) and deleted the sleeping photos (but not the ones of their destruction!!!)

Max LOVES to play dress-up in his sisters dresses- but refuses to wear a pink helmet to ride a 4 wheeler!

He is a ladies man. At his last preschool parent conference the teacher told us the girls won't call on anybody until Max raises his had during sharing time. And if he's in the bathroom they will wait. You can already tell he has a preference for blondes, but a few brunettes have caught his attention:)

He is a crazy man, but still has a healthy dose of fear. He will jump from any height, drives a jet ski with abandon, and watch out when he's on his scooter!

Max is a great brother. He takes good care of Brody and is concerned about "my girls" as he used to call them:)

He loves to make people laugh. Anytime someone asks him a question you can see his wheels spinning, trying to come up with something funny to say.

We love you Max!!!

Spring in Colorado

Just 24 hours before this picture was taken they were on the same grass, in their swimsuits running through the sprinkler in 80 degrees.

Ragnar SoCal pictures

Several friends and I are running the Ragnar relay in Southern California in April, so we had a little fun with our team in a photo shoot - taken and photoshopped by our fabulous teammate Amy. Our team is Mind over Mileage (M.O.M.) so we thought we'd have fun with that -- The race starts in Huntington Beach and ends on Coronado Island. Our blog is www.mindovermileage.blogspot.com to see my other awesome teammates pictures. It's definitely worth the visit:)

The rest of Costa Rica

So here is the rest of our time in Costa Rica. We drove around to several beaches and shopped a little ( and found the best headbands for boating !) on day 2. We shopped on this street and got stopped by a guy selling boating trips. He promised us a 6 hour trip, snorkeling, surfing (with a surfing guide - body boards for Darren and Cindy) a cooler full of drinks and fruit - an overall great time! So we met the boat the next day, it had 2 surfboards - no guide- 1 body board and a cooler with a bag of ice, a small pineapple cut up (which was REALLY good) and 4 warm water bottles. Even though it was not what we were promised we did have a really good time!!!this little girl was the cutest, chubbiest baby in her cute green bikini! We had to sneak a picture! I think this is the beach Ryan and I tried to surf(below) - White sand beach. It is soo pretty. We had to swim out from the boat to the shore, try to surf, and then battle the waves and swim back to the boat.I you look hard there is a sea turtle in this picture, kind of above center. So after the first 2 days we realized that the small tube of sunblock I had brought was not going to last the 4 of us, so we headed to the little gift shop at our hotel. It was really reasonably priced, it had cute t-shirts for $12, swimsuits for around $30, but sunblock - for all of us white North Americans, was $25.99!!! Definitely a supply and demand scenario!!!On the boat We had a bunch of dolphins come swim up around the boat, there were 10 or more. They stopped the boat and they were all around us! Super cool!

This is Witches head - from some angle it looks like a witches head, we didn't get a picture from that angle

Me and Cyndi having lunch before we left

This is Gorilla head rock, we snorkled around it, there were tons of colorful fish - it was pretty cool. There's a monkey up there!

Ryan thinking deep thoughts On our way back it was high tide so the captain took us up a river. Darren was super stressed out, he was sure the "crew" would make us get off the boat and leave us there - what was stopping them?!?! He was really funny - this is him worrying.

Our "crew". They were really cool! Our last day there we headed to "Playa Grande" or as we call it Beeg Beech. It was Georgous! It was really relaxing and rejuvinating. And as we left we noticed a little shack that was advertising surf lessons. oh well.

Our last morning, on our way to breakfast