Thursday, October 28, 2010

Parker in the Pumpkin Patch

Last week we headed to "The Great Pumpkin Patch" to pick out a few pumpkins for Halloween.  It's not exactly a Pumpkin Patch, its an open lot at church, with a bunch of pumpkins on crates, but it works.  This year Parker was all over the place, so it was kind of hard to get a good picture.  He doesn't hold still for long.  Always on the move...

Family Pic

2008
Actual "Pumpkin Patch" near Seattle, a week before Parker was born.


2009

2010


Eron & Suzanna joined us at the Pumpkin Patch

So Strong



Hope everyone has a great Halloween weekend!

Happy Champagne Thursday!
Cheers!




Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Happy 30th Chris!

Happy 30th Birthday Chris!  (Better late than never.)  Chris celebrated his 30th birthday on the 18th.  We had a fun night out with friends over the weekend and on his actual birthday we had a nice dinner at home, lots of presents and cake!

30 Presents for 30 Years!

Parker helping Daddy open his presents.  Getting lots of practice for his birthday.

Happy 30th!


Cheers to my amazing husband!  I love you!

Tuesday, October 19, 2010

Mini Shelves

One of my favorite websites is Young House Love.  They have so many great, do-it-yourself projects and ideas.

One project that I did recently was to build mini shelves for our kitchen, to hold cards, pictures, etc.  Young House Love built these postcard shelves for their office and I loved the idea.  You can find all the steps on how to build them here.  And my dad was pretty excited when I called to ask him if I could borrow his Dremel tool for the project.

I don't really like a ton of stuff on my fridge, but I like to have a place to display cards and pictures, so it was the perfect solution.


Decorated for Halloween with some mini pumpkins

Decorated for Chris' Birthday

I love them!  It's ever changing art!

Cheers!

Thursday, October 14, 2010

30K Follow-Up

Guest post from Chris



First, thank you so much for supporting my run. It's all over and I thought you might like to know how it all went.

Going into the run, my real goal was simply to finish without getting injured. Since I left myself less than a month to prepare, I felt this was reasonable.

A few days after deciding to the do the run, I found a trainer here named Kiefer at Momentum Athletic Training who put together a training plan. I stuck to the training plan for about 4 or 5 runs then did a big run with hills. 

I started getting some pain on the right side of my right knee. I found out I had developed IT Band syndrome. This is a very common running injury and is caused by a tendon repeatedly rubbing over your knee when you run. I had to back off from my training plan and started a heavy dosage of stretching, icing, and Ibuprofen hoping it would get better by race day.

The weather was amazing on race day. 70 degrees and sunny doesn't happen very often in October here. My wife and son came out to see me start.

After a short warm up and listening to a few announcements, I lined up at the back of the pack. There were 100 runners for the race and most of them looked in much better shape that I am. With a gun blast we were off.

My focus on the first 1/3 of the race was to take it easy and try to stay in sight of the back of the pack. 

A few Kilometers into the race I was staring at the first mountain I had to climb. In this type of run, most people (except for the hard core ultra-runners) hike the uphill sections and run the flat and downhills. There was no way I was running up a mountain so I was happy to see everyone was walking. I turned on my Ipod and settled in for the climb.

Somewhere between the 5K and 10K mark I started mixing up kilometers and miles in my head. The run was 30K or 18.6 miles. At 10K I was thinking I only had 8K more to go when really I had another 20K to go.

When I reached the 15K mark, I snapped back to reality. At the aid station where they give you water, food, etc., they told me I'm half way done and was probably on pace to finish in 3 hours and 45 minutes. I loved the aid stations. Everyone was super supportive and when you're running a long time it's amazing how good pretzels and fresh orange slices taste.

The trouble started when I came out of the half-way mark aid station. I think it was a combination of just running a long downhill section and letting my muscles tighten up when I stopped to rehydrate but my IT Band really started hurting. I was able to run with the pain for awhile longer and climbed the second mountain in the race. 

I didn't realize how difficult the climbs were going to be in this race. There was the same amount of elevation change as climbing up and down the "M" trail here in Missoula about 6 times. It does make for some nice views though.

The top of the third mountain was amazing. It's the highest point of the race and provides a 360 degree view of the Missoula and Bitterroot valleys. I filled up on pretzels and orange slices and started back down, but this time I couldn't run. Basically every step hurt due to my IT Band.

This was the low point in the race. I realized I probably wasn't going to be able to run the rest of the race, I'd have to walk. Injuries are very frustrating and knowing I had over 10K left to go where every step would hurt really got me down.

However, I was committed to finishing and kept going. As cliche as it sounds, all my supporters who donated and thinking about what the kids at Camp Mak-A-Dream have to go through kept me motivated to keep going.

On a lighter note, by this time I was completely sick of all the music on my Ipod so opted for the sounds of nature and the occasional ATV zooming around the trails. At this point, all I really wanted was to be done.

I pushed through the remaining 10K and even managed to run through the finish line. I was so focused on finishing that I ran right past my Wife, son, and sister-in law who were cheering me through the finish.

My time was horrible, but that's okay. I finished in under 5 hours and was the last of the men and 3rd from last overall. However, considering my goals going in and my knee issues, I'm happy with the result.

It took me about 4 days of recovery to be able to walk somewhat normally, but I'm doing much better now.

I'm also so grateful for everyone's support. I'm amazed I was able to raise over $2,500.00 for Camp Mak-A-Dream. That's enough to send 5 kids to camp for a week for free. Thank you so much!

30th Birthday, here I come!




Happy Champagne Thursday!
Cheers!


Tuesday, October 12, 2010

October Centerpiece

I made a cute Halloweenish Centerpiece a couple weeks ago and it was super easy and inexpensive.  I used a few vases and filled them with candy corn, white beans and split peas and topped them with mini pumpkins.  A little trick I used was turning a cup upside down in the vase and then I filled the vase, then you don't need quite as much filling.

Here are a couple pictures:




Cheers!

Thursday, October 7, 2010

Floating Mantel

We recently completed our last project, under the category "remove all log and knotty pine from our house".  We built a new mantel or should I say "floating mantel" for our fireplace.  While I was browsing the Young House Love website, I found myself looking at their floating shelves, in their dining room and figured one shelf would work as a mantel.  All of the mantels we had looked in stores or online were too long, too fancy or too expensive.  This one is a nice, simple and affordable design that fits in great with the rest of our house.  I found the directions here and changed the dimensions (increased the height, shortened the length) around to work for our mantel.  


Before
(Don't mind the baby on the floor)

Chris patching up some holes from the old mantel
Sorry about the poor picture quality

After

Don't you just want to lay by the fire and have a glass of champagne?

Happy Champagne Thursday!
Cheers!