Trail Race

I was a bit intimidated signing up for a trail race... after all - it hasn't been that long since I have actually been trail running - and I just don't think I'm that great at it! That said, Rik and I participated in the Catalina State Park Trail Run last Saturday morning. I didn't think it was *that* cold when I got up, but once we arrived and saw the mountains looking like this... yes - that is snow on the mountain... I changed my mind immediately! It wouldn't have been so bad waiting around for an hour for the race to start, except the wind was blowing making it about 40º below if you have lived here for any time at all!

So, Rik got to start first - he was the brave 10.75 miler. I started 5 minutes later in the 5.5 milers (the race for chickens! :)) He really doesn't like this picture the photographers around the course took of him, but I like it - he looks like he's really enjoying himself! And, it's much better than the tiny dot of a photo I got of him - stupid digital camera lag! Luckily, the race photographer never found me because I looked Oh So Lovely after I warmed up a bit and had my jacket tied around my waist over my fanny pack. I probably looked 5 months pregnant! Thankfully, we'll never know!

Race results - Rik finished in 1:36:06 - 46/111 and 6th in his age group. I finished in 49:54 - 69/325 and (gasp) 2nd in my age group. Which means I had to go out this week and pick up this lovely beer glass that was my "trophy"! Philip thought it was going to have "Budweiser" or something written on it - thankfully not - just the race and date type stuff! I have since decided that because of the weather, everyone in my age group must have stayed home, leaving only the seriously insane, slow people to race! :)

It was a great time! Maybe we'll do it again next year???

"The Best Vacation Ever"

This is an exact quote from Caitlin, who while sitting in an Arby's in San Diego declared our 3 day tour of Disneyland "the best vacation ever". I'm not sure if Rik agrees with that, but, we did have fun!

We started the fun by getting up at 12:30am on Monday morning so that we could start our drive to LA! We arrived in LA just in time for rush hour. Besides sitting in traffic and seeing a rollover accident, we did make it to Anaheim with plenty of time to eat breakfast and scope out our hotel before CA Adventure opened.

We were one of the first in the gate and off to see what there was to ride on since none of us had been there before. I'm not sure what I was expecting, and it might have been because there was quite a bit of the park under construction, but it was a lot smaller with a lot less to do than Disneyland. If I had been the one in charge of building it, I would have just added it as another "land" to Disneyland and saved myself the trouble of an additional theme park! The kids are pictured here in front of California Screamin' - which we rode twice - and was pretty fun. I was disappointed that they took down the famous Mickey ears off of this ride! My favorite ride there was the Soarin Over California. It made you think you were in a glider of some sort and were flying over different places in CA. While this may sound just OK, what made it neat was they had smells involved too - you could smell the orange trees, the salt air, etc. I thought that this was a cool idea!!

Then off to Disneyland. At about 6:30pm. A little anticlimatic, but we had run out of things to do at CA Adventure, and many rides had run out of Fastpasses for the day. Of course, this is the busiest time that we could have picked to go to Disneyland, but we did get in a couple of rides before we were all just too tired to care. It might have had something to do with the fact that we had been up since 12:30 and it was now 9:30pm!

The next morning, we had a pass for early entry into Disneyland. How this was part of our package, I don't know, but what a nice surprise! Caitlin woke up not feeling good at all, so I took Philip and we went and enjoyed our "Magic Morning". We rode a LOT of stuff in the extra hour we had there. It's amazing what you can get done without thousands of people in your way! Two hours later, Rik called and said that they were almost to the entry gate and Caitlin was feeling better. I was relieved because I had been so sad that she was missing out on all this fun! So, we spent the rest of the day riding everything possible - sometimes even 2 or 3 times. My favorite part of that day was riding on Thunder Mountain Railroad as the fireworks were going off that evening. It was really pretty!
Day three of our adventure was a little more slow paced, but we still managed to ride many rides many more times than we deserved! All in all, our total for Thunder Mountain was 6 times! I have never ridden it more than once while at the park, so this was really an exception!

We were planning on going to the beach on Thursday, relaxing and going home, but a lady at breakfast came up to us and offered us her San Diego Zoo tix that she wasn't planning on using. She just wanted to give them to us. So, we made the trip down to San Diego and spent some time there. We saw a couple of shows, rode the bus and the sky view tram, and of course saw the panda...

I think we wore the kids out though - it was pretty quiet on the way home! (And for the record, I'm pretty Disneyland-ed out! I should be able to last a few years before we go back! :))

School basketball

Philip made the school's basketball team again this year. He is on the "A" team this year. They won their first game 56-19. The second was a little closer, but they still won. I haven't gotten a decent picture of him yet, but he is #11 in the photos.

I met Jennifer Ward...

At the end of February our school had an author visit. I got to help out a bunch and she is really a very cool lady. Actually, I already knew she was a neat lady because I took a 4 month writing workshop from her last year at our local Barnes and Noble. It just happened to be that the school ended up having her come do workshops for all the kids as well. I am not sure why in this picture I am holding the book I am. My favorite book that she has written is actually....

All about Philip..

Philip is getting a lot of attention here lately. First, a couple of weeks ago, he got these put on his teeth... he hates it, but is getting used to the idea. On the plus side he is brushing is teeth on a regular basis because the video they show the kids right after they get them on scares you that you are going to have huge holes in your teeth when they are removed if you don't. Philip doesn't want his picture taken with them on either, so you're lucky to see this much. Girls at school come up to me all the time and tell me that he won't show them. I told them they just needed to trick him into it!

And, then he informed that his shoes were too little and practically worn out. I couldn't believe this because we had just bought him new shoes at the end of October. So, I took him to the store and his feet had grown a *whole size and a half*. The kid wears an 11.5!!! I sure hope he grows into his feet! And when he took his shoes off to try on new ones, I realized how terrible they truly looked and am surprised he wasn't sent to the office to get new ones from the Family Resource Center at our school! The best part of this whole deal? They cost me $3.04! Yes, you read it right. We have been saving Coke points for some time now and I had enough to get a $50 gift card to the Nike Factory store! The even better part is that we don't buy soda. We got most of the points from finding them. Rik gets a lot at work because lots of people buy soda there and don't save the points. Who knew that such cool things came from saving other people's trash???

A day hike...

We went for a hike in the Chiricahua Mountains south of here. I had been wanting to do it for a while. A friend at work had shown me her brochure a few years ago and it was on my list. Rik got a Trail Runner magazine and it was the featured run in it and I remembered how I wanted to go. We decided to take a day and go! It was a beautiful day and we had a picnic lunch in the middle of the Heart of Rocks loop which has lots of really cool hoodoo formations! The kids were busy naming all the ones that hadn't been named. They came up with much more interesting names than the ones with the signs. "Dirty Elmo" was one name that was my favorite!

And, on the way home we solved a mystery that had been bothering Rik and I for over 30 years! You always see these signs advertising "The Thing" when you head south. Not just a couple - but the road is littered with them. We both had always wondered what The Thing was, but our parents had never stopped. So, we decided to. It was $3.50 for our whole family to go and see The Thing. It turns out that our parents were just saving their money because The Thing happens to be, well, a lot of "antique" junk that is on display in some dusty sheds. There is a "mummy" looking thing, that I suppose is what all the hype is all about, but, it wasn't even labeled. The best part was the Dairy Queen we got on the way out! Rik doesn't think we wasted our money though. He said that our kids won't have to spend over 30 years wondering what it is!