Mud Wrestling

OK...so that title is a little deceiving but it got your attention didn't it!

In July we headed over to North Bend with the usual suspects to do the Warrior Dash. An obstacle course style race with lots of mud, fire and potentially hazardous obstacles to climb over, slide down and jump through. It seemed like a fun race to do back in January when we all signed up for it but as the race day approached I think there were some questions about the wisdom of what we had gotten ourselves into.


We had our game faces on...



We had our official photographer...



The flaming start line...check out the ominous clouds in the background. Yikes...I was a little scared as we waited at the start.



And we're off



Climbing the rope ladder and then jumping over the flames.we are SO hard core!



Through the barbed wire covered mud pit



Matt was our teams officially mud extractor



After we got out we had a quick hose down from the fire truck ( or was it the public sanitation truck I can't remember) and it was time to congratulate ourselves that we actually survived



I like her kind of crazy...still smiling right to the end.



We made it...woohooo!



And this was us after...( yes I know it looks like I am missing an arm but the course wasn't THAT hazardous).  This race turned out to be an obsolute blast if for no other reasons than I got to do something outrageous with my favorite group of friends!

Homer

One of the things about this summer that the kids enjoyed the most would have had to be this little guy....his name is Homer. 



He came into our lives as a foster puppy. 

Ciara wanted to volunteer at the animal shelter and she wasn't old enough to be able to do it by herself.  So instead we decided to sign up as a foster family for dogs that were too young for the animal shelter.

Homer came to us as an abandoned pup when he was five weeks old...Yummm...couldn't you just eat him up!







The kids totally took ownership of looking after him. They fed him, trained him and cleaned up after him.



They took turns looking after him at night and even got up at night to potty him. Occasionally we would come down in the morning to discover scenes like this.



He may also have been a little spoiled...but only a little.



This was Homer when we first got him...



and this is what he looked like the day he left when he was 10 weeks old.



The good news is that he was adopted on the day he left our house...so no lonely nights at the shelter for Homer. He is now part of a family that loves him as much as we did. In fact they called the shelter recently to ask them to pass on their thanks to us for doing such a great job training him.
Total happy ending.

Glacier National Park

WARNING: Photo heavy post...you may feel the need to mumble obscenities about me as you wait for this goliath size post to load.

In the spirit of the previous post I am going to keep the summer recap short.  Don't want to bore you to death.  But one of the highlights of this summer for us was definitely our trip to Glacier National Park with friends.

The scenery really says it all....

























And of course the people you go with can make a good trip great





especially the feisty ones!!!!

You know Summer over when....

While speaking to my friend Cath over the weekend, she reminded me what a poor blogger I've been lately.  Summer is over and I hardly even bloggged about it.  So I thought I'd better catch you up a bit. 

This is how I know that summer is REALLY over.....

It's peach picking time



Kids that were in high school are now headed off to college...(boohoo)...and of course fall soccer season is back in full swing.



School starts back again .  Apologies in advance to the neighbors....



And my baby started high school.  BIG Booohooo. Please summer, don't go!