Kids Triathlon

{I think I may need to take running lessons from Jack.  His form is so much better than mine its embarrassing}

OK...so this will be my last summer related post and then we will be all caught up.

As the tri season came to a close, my Triathlon club organized a kids triathlon at our team gym.  I made the medals and went along to help out on the day.  The boys competed and we had so much fun.

 It was around 95 degrees that day.  An absolute scorcher so these guys had tough conditions to compete in but they all did an amazing job.

This little guy had a crash on his bike but he was so brave. I don't think I saw a single tear. If it had have been me I would have been wailing and bawling from all the road rash and blood.  But his Mom was right there to patch him up AND she doubled as the team photographer for the day. Talk about multi tasking!

So that's a wrap for summer 2011. The weather seems to have turned and we have had rain all week, so I know that cold weather is just around the corner.  Good bye summer....you were awesome :-)

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!!!!