Tough Mudder!!

   At the end of September we participated in the long awaited Tough Mudder race in Seattle (~11.3 miles long).  We had been training throughout the summer and were excited and slightly nervous to participate.  The nervousness for me came mostly because I came down with a random ear infection a few days before the race.  I developed a pretty decent cold the week before the race and then one night, all of a sudden I got extremely nauseous and dizzy.  I called a member of our ward who is an ENT and he sent in an antibiotic and steroid (to help with the dizziness) prescription (figuring it was an ear infection).  I started the antibiotics and started to feel better (no more dizzy spells), but still felt a little feverish and tired the day before the race.  Luckily, I felt okay enough to run on race day and only got a few strange looks from people as I had the occasional coughing spell during the race.

 

 We ran the race with Rick (one of Ryan's coworkers), two of Rick's brothers, and another friend from our ward.  Niki (Rick's wife) took a few pictures of us during the race so we are glad to have a few action shots. 

 These two pictures are from the ring obstacle.  Ryan and I both fell in the water on this one.  I actually didn't mind falling in this water because it helped wash some of the mud off.  In the distant background of this picture you can see runners climbing up a big, steep hill in another part of the race.  There were tons of places on the course where you climbed up and down muddy hills and crevices.  Most of the down hills were so steep I would just slid down them.  They were really more like drop-offs than down-hills.  Another obstacle similar to these rings was a set of monkey bars that was about 30 rungs long, 15 going slightly uphill, then 15 going downhill to get across a big pool of water.  The general sense of fun is heightened by the fact that the rungs spin freely in your hands and some of the bars are also greased.  It not only takes a ton of upper body strength to do but some pretty serious grip strength to keep the rungs from spinning out of your hands.  I just fell in the water again after a bar or two but Ryan made all the way across! The nice part was that, again, I got some of the mud cleaned off as I swam to the other side.

Me on the course looking relatively clean.  Those two extra muddy guys next to me are Rick's brothers. 

 

 This is the Mount Everest obstacle.  I was somewhat nervous about this one.  It was the second to last in the race and I was pretty spent by that time.  You have to run up a greased half-pipe and jump as hard as you can in hopes that your teammates can grab your hands and pull you over.  Most of the fellows made it up in one try but it took me three.  I was really glad to have a bunch of strong guys on my team to help me get over some of the obstacles.

 Still smiling after the race.  The last obstacle was one of the craziest for me.  It's called Electroshock Therapy.  Basically, it's a big framework of 2x4's that has wires hanging from it about every 6 inches and some of the wires are live with electricity.  The framework is over the top of a big mud pit (maybe 80 feet long?) that has a row of hay bales in the middle.  You have to run through the electrical wire-covered mud pit, jump over the row of hay bales, and get to the other side.  If you can make it through that obstacle without falling down, like Ryan did,  you'll only get shocked a few times.  Being a true maverick, I decided to not follow protocol but tripped over the hay bales in the middle of the obstacle.  Once you are down and getting shocked, it's pretty difficult to get back up.  I think I got shocked about 10 times (up to 10,000 volts is not fun, let me tell you)!  Once we finished I felt like I had electricity flowing through me (I'm sure it was mental).  

Check out the two videos on my Facebook page (I couldn't figure out how to put them here).  The first is the official Tough Mudder video of the Seattle race.  You can see Ryan at around 22 seconds in the video coming out of the obstacle called Arctic Enema (a 4 foot deep ice-bath in which you have to dive underwater to go under a wall to get to the other side of the obstacle).  The second video is of the Electroshock Therapy.  One of Rick's brothers got the worst of the shocks, falling down and getting knocked out cold several times.  If you like things that are truly unsettling, it's worth a watch.

With the team post-race, just missing one.  The shirtless gentleman has that haunted look in his eyes that comes from having just danced with Death in the Electroshock Therapy obstacle.  He was not nearly as amused as the rest of the team by his performance in that obstacle.  If you haven't watched the video yet, you should.

They had cold outdoor showers we could clean off in after the race, but I was already freezing and didn't shower off too well.  But I was proud to wear my headband for the ride back to the hotel.

Ryan, looking particularly tough, earned that headband.  He took an extensive shower in the cold open-air showers after the race so he's more Tough than Mudder in this photo.

There are a bunch of other photos at
http://www2.brightroom.com/email/101664/44823/150343574
and
http://www2.brightroom.com/email/101664/44817/150343569

They were taken by Tough Mudder photographers so we were unable to paste them onto our post. 

Good times!!

Fair and Family

 At the end of September we went to the Central WA State Fair held right here in Yakima.  In the last three states we have lived in, we have been near the State Fair grounds so we've made it a yearly tradition.  After having gone to the Central WA State Fair, I'm not sure if we will be continuing that tradition here in Yakima.  It wasn't that the fair was very bad, it just wasn't very good.  Plus, it cost much more than any of the other fairs we've gone to in NC and OH.  The combo of high price and low quality helped us decide that it was definitely not worth the price, but the kids did enjoy themselves while we were there.

 We were pretty darn cheap and let the kids each pick one ride to go on.  Tate picked the pony ride and rode that tired little pony right into the mulch it was walking on. 

 Luke's only ride was in the BOB stroller, but he seemed pretty content with that.

 We kind of wished Grant had picked the pony ride as well, so we could have headed on home after that but Grant had other plans in mind. 

 He wanted to race around a tight curve in a little blue corvette.  Unfortunately, only the back seat was available, but at least he could steer with two steering wheels!  He was in heaven!

 We have been fortunate to be able to spend some time with family over the past few months.  Here, my mom got to read her lucky grandchildren a fun Halloween book.  My mom was at Christine and Sam's house while Ryan and I ran the Tough Mudder (post to come), so we were glad the kids could spend some time with her and their cousins!

I love this picture of Luke and Nana

 In early September, we headed down to Utah for Ryan's family reunion.  We also visited Nana for a few days, which is always a nice time.  Nana will be 90 next March and is still living on her own and getting around well (and always attempts to make sure I don't do the dishes at her house so I can rest--don't worry, I sneak and do the dishes anyway :). 

 I was a bad photographer at the Wood family reunion and only got pictures of the cookie decorating contest put together by Wendy.  It was so fun to be with the family and the kids had an absolute blast with their cousins.

The family rented a huge cabin in Heber complete with game room, movie room,  bunk bed room for the kids, hot tub and tons and tons of space for playing.  The boys ran around with their cousins all day long (and well into the night) and the adults enjoyed catching up.  I actually spent a good portion of each day following Luke up and down the three flights of stairs.  Ryan and I are in charge of finding the rental home for next year and we are hoping to head to the beach.  We'll see if we can find a good deal! 

My baby is one!

 We celebrated a birthday in this house on September 20th.  Our little Lukey-Man turned one!  If there is one word to describe Luke it is happy.  He is just such a happy little guy.  The most frequent comments I receive about him (besides how beautiful and blue his eyes are), are how happy he is and that he has such a great smile.  His smile really does light up his face, and the whole room for that matter!

 I made a two layer cake in separate layers so Luke could have a whole cake to destroy.  We actually ended up taking the cake away after a few minutes because we didn't want him to get sick with all that sugar.  When the third shiver ran through his body we figured the sugar rush was sufficient and we better not add anymore fuel to the fire. He did thoroughly enjoy his cake though and made a proper mess of himself.

Enjoy these adorable pictures of our sweet little Lukey while I share what he is up to these days:

 He is in the beginning stages of walking.  I think he could walk if he wanted to, but he gets along so quickly crawling he's not quite ready to give it up.

His most used words are na-na (banana), da-da, ma-ma, and ga-ga (cracker)

Those also happen to be among his favorite things.

 Luke has taken after Grant with his early love of books.  Ryan and I remember how when Grant was still crawling, he would sit quietly for several minutes and look through his books.  Luke does the same.  We have a "reading area" set up in Luke's room (an over-sized pillow sitting next to a box of books), and Luke loves to sit himself comfortably on the pillow and grab book after book out of the box and "read" them.

Luke continues to be a great fan of baths.  All I have to say is "bath time" and he gets excited and starts racing to the bathroom.  In fact, when we were at Christine's house last week, Luke was so excited about his bath that he decided to jump right back in during Grant's bath, after he was already cleaned and pajama-ed.  That boy is quick!

He takes his meals seriously and will usually start eating before anyone else and still be eating after we are all finished.  It is sometimes hard for us to keep his plate full enough for his satisfaction.  He has found the best way to make sure we do not delay with the food is to scream at extremely high frequencies and volumes until the food is on his tray.  He has actually employed this method for several months now, so we are prepared with ear plugs and ear protectors at a strategic spot in the kitchen.  

 Luke is becoming increasingly curious and that curiosity is taking him to places he shouldn't be.  There are many places in the house that I figured he could never get to; until I later come into a room and find him in that spot.  

Some of the unlikely places I have found Luke: 

on my bed (when there was no easy way to climb on),

in a window sill, 

in the kitchen drawers, 

on a bench that is way too high for him and not close to anything to climb on, 

on top of the book shelf in the boy's room,

in my shower (he figured how to slide open those doors quite awhile ago),

and in the shoe box.

 We keep this drawer in the kitchen filled with the plastic ware the boys use.  Now, Luke is just tall enough to be able to reach inside and pull out the contents.  It is one of his favorite activities to see how many plates, bowls and cups he can throw across the kitchen floor before he is removed from the kitchen.

 Luke loves to cuddle...anyone.  I think it started with his love of hair.  He is a hair grabber, so if you have long hair and pick him up, he goes straight for it, while squeezing tightly around your neck.  It seems like he's giving you a big hug.  Thankfully, his desire to rip hair out of heads has decreased slightly; but, he still gives great big hugs to basically anyone who picks him up.

 Luke adds so much to our family and we are so grateful he is apart of it.  He is such a sweetheart.  It's hard not to have a smile on your face after spending some time with this little guy.  We love him so much!

Happy Birthday Luke!!

Backyard campout

 We had been planning on going camping at least once this summer.  However, as the summer came closer to an end we thought more about the logistics of camping with three young boys (mainly an 11 month old), we decided a nice back yard campout would be just the ticket.  That way, the 11 month old (and the lucky mom) could sleep inside while the other boys spent the night in the great backyard-outdoors.

 It had actually already started cooling off pretty significantly at night (down to the 50s), but there was no turning back once the tent was up.  All three boys thoroughly enjoyed playing in the tent throughout the day and slept pretty well at night.  I think I slept less than everyone because I was trying to keep my ears open for Tate in case he woke up scared or needed to pee (as he does at least twice a week).

 Since camping is not camping without s'mores, we fired up the grill and made plenty.  We made little s'mores and wrapped them in foil and cooked them on the grill until they were melted and gooey.  They were delicious!  The grill keeps the crackers crispy and lends a smokey flavor, yum!

 I love the s'more faces.

 The boys played a few rounds of Uno before laying down and listening to some stories before bed.  They were begging for scary stories but I kept it pretty mild because things can seem extra scary when it's dark and you are outside.  I'm not sure how scary the stories Ryan told them were, but no one came screaming into the house.

 We kept the camping chairs and tent up for the rest of the weekend so the kids could continue the fun.  I may have even slipped into the tent one afternoon and "rested my eyes" for a few minutes, but of course was caught and jumped upon as that seems to be the common way of greeting a sleeping person in this house.

1st Day of School

So school may have started over a month ago but I couldn't skip over posting about it.  Grant started kindergarten at the end of August and is in Ms. Rowlands' class.  He catches the bus in the morning and then I get to pick him up at 11:35.  We actually have just started to carpool with one of our friend's from the ward which is really nice.  Grant loves school although it's hard to find out specifics about what happens there.  Today I asked him if he had a good day at school.  He replied, "um...I don't know."  Come on, that's a much easier question that "what did you do at school today".  When I asked him why he didn't know if he had a good day or not, he said "oh, I did!"  I'm realizing we are coming to the time when I am not going to know everything that happens in his life, which is probably a good thing.

 He's such a handsome young lad.

On another note, Luke enjoys having two older brother to drive him around.

End of Summer Fun

School has officially started but we did fill up the end of our summer with lots of activities.  We were excited to be able to get Grant and Tate on the same T-ball team.  We had originally only signed Grant up, but on the first day of practice noticed that Tate was about the same size as most of Grant's teammates.  We signed Tate up too and enjoyed the season with only having the break up the occasional fight over who got the ball first or whose turn it was to bat.

 Tate enjoyed hitting but also had a pretty good arm for being the youngest on the team.

 Grant bringing it home!

 

 

We also signed the boys up for a second session of swim lessons.  This one was actually done by a teenager in another ward who taught the lessons in his family's pool.  Grant's swimming improved greatly in this session in that he figured out the basics of swimming and how to keep his head in the water and swim.  I think Tate was a little over-scheduled this week with the swim lessons and T ball (and more swimming in the afternoon) and he was a little crabby by the last day.  He didn't want the teacher to let go of him at all and was quite vocal about it.  He did, however, reach a milestone of jumping off the diving board.  By the second to last day, he agreed to jump off the diving board without holding his teachers hand.  He was so proud of himself!

 

 Grant performing his pencil dive.

We also had a fun weekend trip down to La Grande to hang out with the Kimballs.  We originally all wanted to go camping somewhere but then thought better of it after remembering there would be two very curious and mobile 11 month olds in tow.  Instead we stayed in the comfort of their home and spent an afternoon at a river nearby playing in the water.  

 The kids had a blast with their cousins!

Look!  Luke's feet are in cold water and he is not screaming!  It was truly a miracle.

Tate passed out on the way back from the river.  But never fear, he will still be ready to fight and protect truth and justice at a moment's notice by keeping the Captain America shield strapped to his arm at all times.

8 years, Woo Hoo!!

Tomorrow is our 8th anniversary so we spent a wonderful weekend together celebrating.  Unfortunately, I have no pictures of our weekend festivities to add.  We seem to be using our camera less and less these days, so you will have to use your imagination.  

This year was Ryan's turn to plan our anniversary (we got the idea from our friends, the Wares, to take turns planning our anniversary date).  The first surprise was that he happened to be off work on Friday.  We started our day early by doing our weekly training run/workout for the Tough Mudder together.  Around lunch time I was cleaning up in the kitchen and Ryan comes in and tells me to get ready because the babysitter is here for us to go out.  I had figured he had planned something for Saturday night so I was pretty surprised that he had organized the babysitter and we were going out in the day.  

We were both quite hungry since we had run 7 miles along with boot camp exercises every 1/2 mile for our workout that morning.  We headed over to our favorite (and the only) Indian restaurant in town and gorged ourselves on their awesome lunch buffet.  That's the one bad thing about Indian food tasting so good--you can be completely full but you keep eating because each bite still tastes awesome.

I thought we were heading home then because we had to get kids to nap, etc.  But we drove right past our street to turn home and into down town.  I really had no idea where we were going.  I was very pleasantly surprised when Ryan walked us into a swanky spa!  I have never been to a spa or had any spa treatments.  And since we have started this tough mudder training my back has been all sorts of tight and I have been thinking how wonderful a professional massage would be.  We got to experience the whole spa package complete with foot bath, relaxation room, hot herbal tea, aromatherapy shower, and an hour long massage.  It was so relaxing!!  Maybe even a little too relaxing because I felt pretty lethargic for the rest of the day :)  

But wait, the anniversary weekend is not done yet!  We woke up early Saturday morning to head to the temple for a sealing session.  It's always so wonderful to go to the temple and I really enjoyed being able to go with Ryan and remember the covenants we have made.  Christine and Sam met us up there and watched the kids for us while we went.  Afterward, we spent some time in Tri-Cities letting the kids play with their cousins at a slash pad park and then hitting up some Costa Vida for lunch.  Then we had to stop by WinCo for some chocolate covered cinnamon and gummy bears (awesome!).  It was such a fun weekend and a great anniversary.  I am so grateful to be married to such a wonderful man.  Ryan is my best friend and soul mate.  I'm such a lucky lady!!

And because it's not a real post without pictures, here are some fun ones:

Grant and Tate found the stash of winter hats and gloves and had to put some on to be true superheros and to better fight off the bad guys.

They are fierce!

Luke (on the right) and his favorite cousin Will stuffing their faces with puffs down by the river.  We went to visit them last weekend.  Be expecting a post in the near future.

We were trying to remember what we had done on each of our anniversaries.  I have recorded some on this blog but there are several we couldn't remember.  For posterity's sake, here's the list of what I can remember:.

year 7:  I took Ryan to the arts and crafts museum in Columbus, OH, because they had a wood carving display (which we both like to look at). Then we went to our favorite Indian restaurant (I'm noticing a trend here), and then to a bakery downtown to get some of their famous French macaroons--which happen to be probably the best cookie of my life!!

year 6:  Was Ryan's year, but we actually kind of planned it together since we had our cruise and then went to see the Broadway play, Wicked.  That was definitely our most exciting/biggest anniversary date.

year 5:  This was shortly after we moved to Ohio so it wasn't too exciting but fun to get out of the house.  We went to Schmidt's Sausage Haus (a famous restaurant in German Village) and then spend time walking around a really cool bookstore nearby.  I actually also posted about this date here

year 4:  We were staying with my parents in VA for a month for one of Ryan's rotations for dental school.  Ryan took me to my absolute favorite restaurant at the time, Carrabba's, and then he gave me some lovely white gold hoop earrings that he picked out himself and that I have literally worn almost every day since then.  For a man's man, Ryan has surprisingly good taste in jewelry!

year 3:  This is the year we were visiting family in Utah for a few weeks over Ryan's dental school break. Grant was about 3 months old and I remember I wasn't leaving him for very long periods of time because, as a new mom, I was convinced that my baby couldn't survive more than 30 minutes without me.  I took Ryan to a restaurant in the Sandy area called The Mayan.  It's themed after a Mayan temple/ruins and there's a pool in the middle that people diving into from cliff ledges.  It's one of those places were the food is only a small step above cafeteria quality but you're willing to pay $15 a plate because of the fun atmosphere.  I can't remember if we did anything else, but I'm sure we enjoyed getting out without the baby.

year 2:  I can't remember everything about our anniversary this year, but I do remember that I made a homemade apple pie with apples that our friends the Basils gave us from their family's apple tree in Greensboro, NC.  Ryan still speaks of that pie in reverent tones and always refers to it as the best apple pie he's ever eaten.

year 1:  This was right after we had moved cross country and settled into our apartment in NC.  It's fun to think about us then, still newlyweds without any kiddos.  I remember I was starting to get dinner ready when Ryan came home from school on our anniversary.  Since Ryan had just started dental school we were pretty serious about trying to save money so I figured we wouldn't be doing much and I would just make dinner at home.  Ryan walked in, pointed at me dramatically, and said (jokingly) "Honey, put down that grubby chicken, we're going out!".  We went to our favorite local Italian restaurant and had a great time not feeling guilty about spending some money!