Last night, while Jake was at practice, Brian and I took Tanner and Faith on a long walk in the hills behind our house. It was so beautiful and the kids had so much fun it made Brian and I both wonder why we don't do it more often. Our "backyard" here in Hidden Springs is the foothills and has tons of hiking trails right outside our door. I figure we need to toughen up Faith for the hiking we will be doing in Utah on our National Park Road Trip in June! Tanner ran ahead of us most of the time and Faith didn't complain once and in fact asked today if we could start going on more hikes. We're hitting 4 national parks in 9 days so I guess we'd better get going!
We had to make the sad decision to sell our boat last month. It's something we've been discussing on and off since last summer when we only managed to take it out for two days. The kids just never really took to skiing or wakeboarding or tubing, despite our best efforts. Brian was just a driver and didn't really have any desire to ski. So oftentimes it was only my 2 seven minute runs a year that we had. I guess my dream of reliving my childhood was sort of short lived... we owned it for five years. Not like our trusty old Evinrude of my youth. Well, we decided to list it to see if we got any interest, then three days later when the Suburban broke down again (at 152,000 miles) we decided the time was right to get some money out of the boat and put it into a new (used) car. Brian has been driving the Suburban for almost 9 years and he was dying for a truck. We found one I could approve of- a Ford F150 with 6 seats and lots of legroom for the kids. It only has 22000 miles and according to Brian has very cool rims (I guess that's kind of like me caring what my shoes look like?? I don't know. I never even really looked at rims before but I guess I can see the appeal if I look hard enough!). While I know I will miss being out on the boat, I won't miss owning it. Hopefully we can still get a day out on the water each summer, either with friends or on family reunions or whatever.
I've gotten into Obstacle/Mud races this year. Last summer I did two local small races and last month I flew to Sacramento and met up with an old high school friend to run The Zombie Run. It was a 5K that had 20 obstacles (walls to climb, balance beams, mud pits, etc...) and you wore a belt with three flags. Zombies (well... people made up to look like zombies) chased you through the course and tried to grab your flags. If you were able to keep at least one flag by the end of the course you were considered a "survivor" and got a green medal. If you had no flags left you were considered to have been turned into an "undead" and got a red medal. Pretty. Damn. Fun. It was a BLAST. Seriously. The only bummer part was on the last bit of the race there was a big mob of runners tryinig to get around a big mob of zombies and a guy tripped and fell in front of me and I tripped over him and fell, HARD, on my right knee. I don't think it's permanent damage, but it still hurts if I work it out the wrong way. Anyway... pretty sure Midlife Crisis #2 is coming in the form of obstacle races. (Midlife Crisis #1 was the mini Cooper I bought when Faith was a year old). I am doing once called the BADASS DASH in Las Vegas in May, one in SLC in June, and one in Boise in August.
Summer is shaping up to be lots of fun. Our Utah trip is in early June and we are meeting Lisa/John/Quincy/Jessa for a camping trip in Oregon in August. July has three camps- one for each kid- and my yearly trip to Pitt for work. We are hoping to get in a few short camping trips on the weekends and attend all our neighborhood outdoor concerts. We have tix to go see Matt Nathanson in June with Sheila and Wayne, and at least 2 mud runs for me. There will be baseball games to watch in June/July (both boys are playing Summer Ball) and football to watch in August (Jake on year 3 of tackle, Tanner on year 2 of flag, and Faith in her second year of cheerleading). I think the kids will pretty much entertain themselves for most of the summer. Kind of like when I was sick in bed with strep throat during spring break last month and I let them have the run of the neighborhood for a few days. They had a lemonade stand and built a huge fort at the creek and went to the Merc to buy candy and ran around like feral animals. They built an RV out of a big old box my mom had and jumped on the trampoline for hours at a time. It was so reminiscent of my childhood that it makes me smile just to think about it. Of course, the reality of working full time from home while all three of them are here all summer is another story and I have no allusions that it will be easy!
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