Monday, June 27, 2011

Weekend

Had a nice little weekend getaway with my husband and two other couples this weekend.This is our third trip doing this. Here's the blog entries of the other two if you are interested:

Two years ago: Don't rock the boat
Three years ago: Macy's Arm, Part III

We tried to go to Lamberts for a late lunch, but couldn't even get in the parking lot! Dropped off the girls at Bobby's sister's, then we were on our way. We went to a different campsite this year, and while the bathroom/shower situation was less than desirable, it was still a very nice quiet campsite. We canoed the same river I did growing up, but hadn't been in many years. One man kept asking me, "How much longer?" and I'd reply, "I don't know! I haven't been here in 15 years!"

The men did the usual crazy jumping off cliffs into ice cold springs again, and the women did the crazy "let's float down the river without a canoe, just us, and get beat up by rocks!" thing again. 

I sooooooo treasure this time with my friends, time with just my husband and no kids, and I know they enjoyed their weekend with Aunt Carmen and Uncle Kelly. One of these days the girls will be out of the house on their own, and it's important for Bobby and I to spend time together, as well as the girls learn some independence being away from us.

Here's the view from our campsite!

Until next year!

New blog!

I started a new blog detailing my journey to training for a half marathon. I imagine it will be pretty boring, as I will just keep track of my running. But I wanted to tell you about in case you were interested. The link is here: My journey to the Half

Wednesday, June 22, 2011

Catchin' up

Just noticed it's been almost 2 weeks since I've blogged...nothing terribly exciting going on, just life.

Last week Macy had a volleyball camp in the morning, and then both girls did basketball camp in the afternoon. It was a busy week of shuttling kids back and forth!

We've spent some time with good friends at Worlds of Fun, and it's always funny to watch the girls be tour guides. They know every inch of that park and aren't afraid to tell people.

We spent an evening with good friends from college, and it was fun to watch all our kids play together. We've all came a long way in the last 15 years!

I signed up to run a half-marathon in October...apparently I have lost my mind. But I'm going to do it, and I've got some amazing support from friends!

We've done a lot of Oceans too, even though the water is brr brrr brrrrrrr cold. 

Two funny stories from the girls this week:

We were in the drive-thru at Wendy's, and Kaylin's window was down. She leaned up, held up her QT Freezoni, and yelled to the worker, "I have a Freezoni!" The Wendy's worker looked at her like she was crazy. Maybe you had to be there, but all 4 of us laughed until we had tears coming out her eyes.

Then a couple nights ago, a movie was on Disney with the daughter moving away to college. I said something about crying my eyes out when the girls left for college, and Macy mutters, "Unless you're dead!" Gee, thanks, Macy. Killing me off already?

That's it for now.

Friday, June 10, 2011

A night in the aquarium

Oh, my. What a trip to Omaha. Both girls and I set off on Tuesday afternoon for Omaha. Both girls Girl Scout troops were spending the night in the aquaurium with their cookie money.

First stop was the pedestrian bridge that overlooks the Missouri River. It was a little windy. This is all of Macy's troop, minus one.It was a little ahem interesting finding the bridge due to some incorrect mapquest directions. Let's just say that it's a good thing I'm the homing pigeon and awesome with directions/maps/finding my way around.

Here's Macy and her cousin Hannah. Hannah and my sister came with us on the zoo troop too, and I'm so glad they came! See the wind? It was crazy! See the Mighty Mo in the background? Yeah, it's flooding out of its banks.




Standing with one foot in Iowa and one foot in Nebraska.
We then went to the zoo, got to drive into the employee parking, did some zoo orientation activities, and had an AWESOME guided tour through part of the zoo. The tour guide is a high school biology teacher, and was very knowledgeable.

Here he is showing us Ivan, the cockatiel (don't know if that's right, it was a bird) that I've walked by a million times and didn't ever see. He "cries" like a baby, talks, and at TJ's command, will "stand up" and ruffle his feathers. Pretty cool.



Then we loaded all our crap into the aquarium. We got to sleep in the aquarium tunnel, and it was AMAZING. here's all our stuff. We had 31 people total between Kaylin and Macy's troops.

Here's a little better picture that is lighter.

Lights at were at midnight. Even then, it wasn't terribly dark because of the lights in the tunnel. I had a really hard time falling asleep--kept watching the fish and sharks swimming. I would start to doze off, then this same stingray kept coming right by my head and it would startle me. Eventually all the girls fell asleep and I did too.

Morning came early, 6 am. We packed up, ate breakfast, loaded cars, then did another guided tour of the zoo. Seriously, this guy was so cool. He told us tons of behind-the-scene info we wouldn't have otherwise gotten.

Our final stop of the morning was a look upstairs, behind-the-scenes of the aquarium. We got to see the top of that tunnel we slept under, and the top of the jellyfish cylinder where they feed the jellyfish with an IV-looking thing. It was really neat seeing things from that perspective.

Then we did a quick tour of the zoo and headed home. It was a whirlwind 24 hours, but a really, really, really (did I say really?) neat trip. Once in a lifetime, truly, to sleep in an aquarium underneath the tunnel with fish, sharks, stingrays, and sea turtles swimming all around you.

I wasn't with Kaylin much of the time; she was with her troop, but did sleep next to me in the tunnel. So here's proof she was on the trip:

Sunday, June 5, 2011

I survived!

Remember a mere 2 months ago, when I ran my first 5k? 

Yesterday, my good friend Jenn and I met at 6:00 am to go do to the "grandfather" of all races, the Hospital Hill race. If you've lived in KC long, you've heard about the HH race. Or rather, you've heard of the 3 h's--heat, hills and humidity. All three were present yesterday, even at 6:00 am. The hills were as bad as they said..only a little bit was downhill!

We met the other 7500 people at Crown Center, snapped this picture before we started.

We stayed together through the whole race. It was nice to have someone to talk to, to make fun of people we saw on the sidelines or racing, etc. I've trained a tad more than Jenn and probably could have gone faster, but I'm glad I didn't. With the heat and hills, I probably would have ended up with heat exhaustion from running too fast.

When we got close to the finish, she tried to stop and walk. I literally grabbed her by the arm and forced her to run across the finish. I said, "You can't walk the finish! We've ran 3 miles, let's go!" She said later people on the sidelines were laughing at us.

Here we are after the race, after 2 water bottles, a banana (for her) and a cheese stick (for me) and some rest on the steps. We then went and got our free flip flops, skipped the free beer and free bbq, and headed home.

I can now say that I've done the biggest race in Kansas City, the Hospital Hill run. Will I do it again? Probably. Depends on the weather. 85 degrees at 7:00 am (race time) isn't fun...a crazy high humidity percentage isn't fun either.

Last night I reserved some books on running from the library, and am thinking about training for a 1/2 marathon in October. Verdict is still out on if I'll actually do it.  Got a couple 5k's I want to do between now and then.

Either way, I have grudgingly began to enjoy running.

Wednesday, June 1, 2011

Macy's pictures

If you know me, you know I love photography. I would fill my house with cool shots if I could. And if you know me, you know I don't like to brag on myself. But I am moderately gifted at photography; not saying I could do it for a living, but I can get some awesome shots, and am usually asked to take pictures at events for others. I've done 2 weddings, mainly bc the bride/groom couldn't pay anyone else, but I've done them.

Imagine then, how proud I was, when Macy got these shots. We were at Kaylin's bridging ceremony, waiting for it to start. She had the super nice camera (which is a HUGE part of getting nice pics) around her neck and just went nuts taking pictures. There were some very random ones--trash in the trash can, the inside of my mouth,etc. These are the ones that stood out to me, though. If you know anything about photography, you'll see what I mean.







Girl's got an eye. When I told her that, she said her career plans were no longer to be a vet, but to be a pet photographer.