Day in the life

Just another day in the life...

Boys playing with fireworks

Boys doing garage science experiments

Large tic-tac-toe outside of the ice cream parlor that we were able to ride our bikes to! This was especially exciting to me because some of my earliest, albeit fuzzy memories are of taking bike rides with my family to get ice cream while we still lived in Ohio. And we found a way to do it here, in Raleigh, on bikes! It's not perfect in that we have to cut through a forest and cross some busy roads, and ride some hills, but we did it!!

And then we rode over to the golf store with an indoor driving range and hit a few balls. Because we could. 

Aaron

Just some Aaron cuteness. 

Sleeping bear

Eating bear

Bear in the woods. Yes, with goggles. Always be prepared when you are a bear. :-) 

Track awards

And just like that, the track season is over. The kids had a great time and learned a lot about track and field. Emily constantly improved on her PR in the mile. Kyle remained undefeated in the mile and set his own PR. Great job Kyle & Em!

Darth Vader at fair

Just a random Saturday morning at the North Carolina fairgrounds for an agriculture festival. Who doesn't go in their Darth Vader costume with a sword? 

You can fry anything in the south. Anything. 

Emily mile

Emily running the mile

Kyle mile

Kyle running his mile at track. He has so much left at the end and is just kicking it in. He remained undefeated in the mile during this track season. 

Monkeying around

Just a day in the life with these boys. 

Kyle climbing

Kyle up on the bouldering wall at rock climbing. He is pretty strong and must more fearless than I thought! Great job Kyle!

Asheville with Spike

This weekend I went to Asheville with Spike to run in a trail race. It was great to get away and spend time with Spike. And it was my first race since before Aaron was born!! That's a long, long time. My race was only a 10k while Spike did the 30k. It was up in the mountains through some pretty cool trails. 

It's beautiful up there

Pre-race drive up the mountain with Spike

I did fairly well at my race coming in first for my old lady age group. :-) I was pretty proud of my race though I think I told myself I was done racing because I didn't like the pressure I put on myself to do well. I trained hard for it and was prepared and did well so that's what matters. 

The 3rd place girl had already left. The awards were a while after the race, but before the 30k runners had come in so I was a captive audience while Spike was still out there running. 

Spike finishing her race. 

Running series finale

What was even cooler than a fun weekend away in Asheville with Spike was making it back home in time to see Kyle, Emily & Aaron run in the final race of the running series. Aaron did his speed mission and Kyle and Emily ran their miles. Em had accumulated enough points in her division to be the overall winner for her age group! Way to go Emily!! Kyle raced to first place in this race. He didn't compete in all of the races in the series because he had soccer at the same time. He ended up with a 3rd place in his division. The kids have certainly gotten a great does of running and are seeing how much fun they can have with it. Way to go!!

At the starting line

Kyle sprinting down the finish line. 

Emily kicking it in

Finisher medals

First place Emily!!

Aaron's sayings

A gems of communication that Aaron had with Jeff on the way to preschool:

Aaron: "it's drippy out"

Aaron: "it's almost daddy's Mother's Day"

Mother's Day

This was our Mother's Day: a great 9 mile family bike ride in the forest. 

Mother's Day preschool style

Aaron's preschool class put on a sweet Mother's Day performance for all the moms in the class. They made muffins to share with us as a snack afterwards. They also made us little flower pots that they created out of clay and painted themselves. It was very sweet.

Protectors of the Jedi

While Aaron was napping, his Star Wars dudes stood guard to protect him. Both The Force and the Dark Side came together in a moment of truce to protect this young Jedi Knight of the Future. 

Family visit

This weekend, we had family in town for a visit. Papa & Kari came to see us as well as Adam and family. We had so much fun having family here. One of the highlights was going up to Duke, Jeff's alma mater, to show them around. We went through the gardens, around campus, and to the K-ville. We did a quick basketball tour and got to see the hall of fame (I think that's what it's called) museum there where they feature all of their superstar athletes and accomplishments. Was pretty awesome. We also went over to the track where Jeff spent a lot of his Duke time and the kids ran some laps. (Note: Jeff, I think you have more pix on your phone to add to this post)

More track

More from the track season.

Emily running the mile, playing with the slow motion feature. Good form.

Kids running series

Back with the kids' weekend running series, Aaron ran another 50 yard dash and Emily ran another mile. And Kyle joined this week. Aaron had fun again doing his "speed mission" as he called it. Emily bested her time from the previous week and remained unbeaten in the girls division. Kyle took to the course for the first time this week because soccer was cancelled due to field conditions and came in 2nd to a very fast kid with some height and stride on him (which I think surprised the other kid because in previous races he had been so far out in front of everyone). This has been a great intro to cross country style runs for Kyle and Em. Great job Kyle, Emily & Aaron!

Kyle hot on his heels

The sprint in

Go Em!!

The homestretch

Kyle & Emily track and field

Kyle and Emily had a few more track meets. They had wanted to do the javelin in the first meet, but could only do 2 events so it was the mile and 800. For the rest of the season, they switched to the mile and javelin. And to clarify, the kids use what they call a "turbo javelin" which is basically a much smaller and soft javelin. Yea, could you imagine a bunch of 9 year olds running around with giant spears?!

Emily's javelin

Kyle's javelin

Bike ride

We finally all have bikes now (Kyle's was stolen before we moved, Emily outgrew hers, and we only had 1 adult mountain bike) so we hit the forest for a ride. Well, first, Jeff took Emily & Kyle for a nice ride to test it out. 

We got Aaron in on the action with his Weehoo trailer that we picked up right before we left for San Diego. It. is. AWESOME! He can sit back and pedal and he could even fall asleep if he so chose. And it's 1 wheel versus the other trailers that are 2 and enclosed which would be too difficult to handle on these paths. He loves it. And so do we. Except on uphills because man is it hard to haul an extra 50 pounds (part Aaron, part trailer) uphill on gravel!! It's a beast of a great workout that's for sure! And with the pedal, Aaron can actually help to a small extent. 

Track season has started

Kyle and Emily decided to run track this season after having fun with running at school. In this first track meet, they both decided to run the mile and 800 meters. And both have started off to a successful track season. Kyle set the time to beat in both the mile and 800 for the boys. Em set a great time to work off of with each meet. 

In the first lap. Kyle employs the "go out conservative" start and then just turns it on and gets stronger and stronger as the race goes on. 

Aaron & Emily run

Aaron and Emily started participating in a fun kid running series. Aaron's age group runs a 50 yard dash and Emily's age group runs 1 mile. It's a cute little mob of mini-runners (and unfortunately some parents behaving badly). Regardless, the kids had a lot of fun. The girls mile was certainly a smaller group but Emily enjoyed it and was the rabbit of the group. Great job Em!!