A Day in the Life

Andrea and I spent the weekend in Oklahoma City at the Red Man Triathlon.  Since December my Dad has been a workout machine.   He exercises a few hours a day and has since lost a lot of weight.  He is in great shape but wanted some additional motivation to keep going.  He signed up for the Half Aqua Bike event at the Red Man Triathlon.  The Half Aqua Bike consists of a 1.1 mile swim in a lake followed by a 56 mile bike race.  This was his first triathlon event and we are so proud of him for working so hard and accomplishing something so difficult.

The day started out rainy and cold.  The race was delayed about an hour because some of the bike race roads were under water.  Dangerous for road bikes…  We didn’t prepare for cold rainy weather but we did our best.  Notice the baby in a trash bag poncho / blanket in every photo.  We were trying to keep her lips from turning blue.  It rained all day and it turned the whole park into a red mud pit.  Needless to say we were wet, tired, and covered in red mud at the end of the day.

Even though the weather was poor my Dad had a great race.  He took second place in his age group and was 15th overall in his event.  Not too bad for a “Big Guy” (that is what every one called him as he passed, “Good Job Big Guy!”) and for his first triathlon type event. Congratulations Dad, and thanks for inviting us.  Now we just need to get training for the next one!  Maybe I will join you.

We had a great trip to Hawaii.  Here are some of our favorite photos from the trip.  Let us know which ones you like the most in the comments.

We just got back from a trip to Utah last week for Zac’s grandma’s 80th birthday party, where we met a lot of his cousins/aunts/uncles etc. His family is unlike mine, in that my cousins and I all grew up very close, almost like siblings that have different parents. He has about 7 cousins that we see regularly and spend time with, and the others live far away or are just not in constant contact with each other. So it was nice to meet the ones I haven’t met and introduce them to our family. Adelyn met so many people that I think she went into over stimulation mode while we were there. Yesterday (the first full day we were home), she took 3 naps totaling over 7.5 hours of sleep during the day. Not that I minded, I was wiped out too!

Adelyn did great on her first flight! She had no trouble with take off or landing (probably because we were jamming the pacifier in her mouth the whole time), and just played and slept for the rest of the time. On the way home I was alone with her (Zac flew home early) and lucky me, she slept the whole way! My arm was dead from holding her in the same position for 2 hours, but I was glad I didn’t have to feed her with a strange man sitting next to me.

first flight

airplane ride with mom

What's out the window?

We stayed with Nicole and Mark (Thanks guys!) and Trevor, who were so much fun to play with. I think Trevor will be the best big brother, once he gets over the fear of his mommy holding another baby…They took us to Sweet Tooth and Quilted Bear, to look for headbands for Adelyn. We made FABulous organic cheeseburgers (not fully organic, just the cow) with Kami and Matt and Tara, and loved every minute of it! Other food establishments that we made time to visit while in Utah were:

Cafe Rio - Of course

Maglebys - for French Toast

Carls Jr

zubs

After Zac went home, Adelyn and I stayed with Cami B, who took off work to entertain us! She took us shopping and took us to Denise’s to make flowers and bows for all the little girl babies in the family. Seriously, I fell in love. I know everyone around here has baby boys, but if anyone is interested in making bows with me, please let me know! It is great fun! We also went to Ty’s blessing, where Adelyn met some of her new cousins, and they had great fun together.

Addie and Aimee

Four babies

Thanks to all of you who played with us while we were in Utah! We are happy to be home, but we miss all of you and wish we could see you more often!

Wiped out

I’ve decided that pictures are so much more fun to look at than words. So I met Zac in Minnesota this weekend (he was already there for business), and we did some really cool things. The things I didn’t put pictures of were: going to CivicFest, an event in the Minneapolis Convention Center to celebrate America and Minnesota history. It was in conjunction with the Republican National Convention, which is going on in Minneapolis/St. Paul right now! Sorry, we were not part of the protest group that all got arrested. Would have been pretty exciting if we were, but we decided to stay out of that scene. We also went to a University of Minneapolis Gophers football game, where they beat Northern Illinois in the last seconds of the game. It was very exciting. Here are the things we did that we took pictures of:

Minnehaha Falls. This park is south of downtown Minneapolis, and it is beautiful! It centers around these little falls, but the place has been turned into a gorgeous park where families go for walks, picnics, and bike rides.

Walker Art Museum Sculpture Garden in Minneapolis. This is a huge cherry on a spoon. Downtown is just a few miles beyond those trees in the background.

This is Split Rock Lighthouse, just north of Duluth, MN. We took the tour and watched the cheesy video, and we even got to go up in the lighthouse. It was really cool, and really beautiful.

We walked down 170 steps to get to the shoreline of Lake Superior. AND I walked all the way back up without too many rest stops. You try walking up 170 steps while 7 months pregnant.

Zac dipping his toes into the frigid waters of Lake Superior!

Canal Park in Duluth, MN has a museum about the ships that used to come into the port there. This is a replica of the steering room in a ship, and Zac is driving the boat.

Overall, it was a really fun trip, and the weather was so nice!

I usually start blog posts with an apology for not writing to such a long time, but today I am not going to do that but update you on some of the crazy things that have happened to me since starting my first real job.  I am working for Grant Thornton LLP an international accounting firm.  I work in their Advisory Services group as an IT Auditor.

On my third week of work, I was at a client, and we were having a wrap up meeting.  My boss showed up for the meeting and we were presenting our findings.  When I got to the conference room, it was packed.  There was only one seat left in the back corner.  After I climbed over a number of individuals to get to the seat I sat down and noticed that I was too far away from the table.  I needed to scoot up so I grabbed the bottom of my seat lifted up and then tried to slide across the floor.  Apparently, I did not lift up enough because as I tried to scoot across the room, the leg of the chair broke and there was this loud cracking noise.  Unfortunately, the sound was loud enough that the meeting stopped and everyone looked at me.  I apologized ensured them that I was okay and then the meeting started back up.  Well now I was in a real tricky spot, I had to use my left leg to hold up my chair because there were no spares.  In addition, I had to present for half of the meeting.  I needed to seem intelligent and dependable but the whole time I am sweating like a stuck pig because I am doing a 45-minute squat exercise.  As if that wasn’t enough, at the end of the meeting, the CFO asked me, so who is going to pay for the chair?  I laughed while cursing her under my breath, and then said I would cover it.  Luckily, I have yet to receive a bill!

A few weeks later, I was traveling to London Kentucky.  London is about 1.5 hours south of Lexington Kentucky.  I flew out to Kentucky on a Sunday and was spending the afternoon driving around the beautiful Kentucky countryside.  Well as I was driving down this one country lane, I was in a serious auto accident.  I was traveling about 10 miles an hour down the road back toward the Interstate when another driver was going the opposite direction at 40-50 miles an hour.  He was coming off the top of a hill and did not see me until he had crashed until me.  I did not see him until I looked out my window after the accident and saw his car in the ditch.  I was not seriously injured luckily I had a seatbelt and an airbag which protected me.  In addition, I was lucky to have a rental car that had the On-star system, which called the EMT’s for me and told them where we were.  I could go in to more detail about what happened, but it is sufficient to note that I am feeling better and it looks like everything is going to work out in the end.   Here are some photos:

The accident scene

My Car

The other drivers car

Look at the window, YIKES!

As you can see this has been a very crazy first six weeks of a new job.  I hope that these types of things will stop and I can just get into a routine.  I will be traveling a lot in the next few weeks and we are moving into our new house so it will be crazy, but a routine should be close around the corner.  I hope!