Friday, July 31, 2009

Taper Time

I am fully into my taper for Pikes. I do 12 today and that is going to feel so short after the 20 last week. After I am done, we need to pack up and get out of here. We are headed to Copper Mountain because Dan is riding Copper Triangle tomorrow. Go Dan!! Then, Dan's brother, Mike, is meeting us at Copper and we are headed out for a couple days of camping. I'll probably just do a couple of 5 milers up there. Should be fun!

Thursday, July 30, 2009

Mom Things Part 2: The Resolution of the Fit

When I was last on here, I wrote about Noah's bedtime story fit. I am back to tell you how we handled it. So, there we are, locked in our bedroom with Noah banging on our door yelling "I want another story!" After about 5 minutes of that, I went out, picked him up, carried him back to bed and told him that he had already had his story. I told him good night and left his room. The screaming and crying continued and he came out 2 more times and I just repeated the same thing. On the third time, I also told him that if he came out again, he would have to sit in the stairs (his time out place). That did it. He didn't come out again and he quit crying and fell asleep within about 5 minutes. It felt like forever though. Any other suggestions?

Tuesday, July 28, 2009

A Few Mom Things: Fits, the Grocery Store, and Going Back to Work

Noah has been throwing fits. I mean crazy screaming, yelling, running in circles, throwing himself on the ground fits. Two nights ago, he didn't want to go to bed so he was yelling and screaming that he wanted another story. Dan had already set a limit of one story because it was late, so there was no way were backing down. So Dan basically told him "no" in a calm voice and left the room. Noah was screaming and Dan figured he would try to follow him, so he came into our bedroom (where I already was) and locked the door. Noah came running across the loft and started banging on the door and yelling and screaming, "I want another story." (Crystal, if you are reading this, it reminded me of a story you told about Will at this age). What would you have done at this point? I'll come back tomorrow and tell you what we did.

On a brighter note, I saved $18 with coupons at the grocery store yesterday. I couldn't believe it. I've never saved that much!!! More money saved for Spain!!!

In 12 days, I go back to work for the school year. I always have a difficult time adjusting. One of the hardest things is simply managing the new schedule: working, spending time with Noah and Dan, running/ working out, and keeping the house from looking like a tornado hit it. One of the biggest issues I am having right now is menu planning. I am trying really hard to avoid processed foods, but those are the easiest ones to prepare. Do you have any quick and easy recipes that use natural or at least unprocessed foods?

Sunday, July 26, 2009

It's a Colorado Summer

It must be. So much camping! Last weekend we went to the Dumont Lake Campground outside of Steamboat Springs. We drove up Friday afternoon so we were there by about 5:00. So we get to the site we had reserved... and someone else was there. Turns out that someone else had taken the site they reserved so they took ours. Just so you know, taking someone else's reserved site is seriously bad camping etiquette. Anyway, so we tried to get the campground host to work it all out (because of course all of the sites were full for the night) and he was nowhere to be found. Someone called the area forest ranger and I called the reservation system, but we never did get it worked out. It turned out that the people in our site were really cool and they had family staying at a different campsite, so they moved in with their family and gave us the site. Thank goodness they did because the campground host didn't show up until everyone was leaving on Sunday. We saw the ranger chewing him out on our way out.

Anyway, by the time we were actually setting up our tent, it was after 7:00 and the mosquitos were horrid. Luckily we had bug spray and we just ate, made s'mores, and went in the tent. The next morning, Dan and Noah went fishing. I took a little 5 mile run up the trail towards the Rabbit Ears, and when I got back, Dan took a long and strenuous bike ride down to Steamboat and back up over the pass. He is a crazy person, but I know it was a great training session for Copper Triangle, which he is riding this Friday!!!

Noah and I headed to Steamboat after his nap and got the picture of him riding the pass on our way. He is truly a badass!!!

We did a nice little hike around the lake that night. The wildflowers up there are incredible right now and it was just at that exact right time of the evening when the sun is setting and the colors get brighter. Beautiful!

On Sunday, we wandered around Steamboat for a while. We did a little shopping at FM Light & Sons (can't miss it if you go to Steamboat, literally) and had lunch at the Rio (some of the best Margaritas in the world). Then we headed home with a little detour for fishing at Georgetown Lake.

We are home this weekend, but we have more camping in store for next. Friday we are headed to Copper Mountain for Dan's race (staying in a hotel right in the Center Village - yay for the race participant rate Dan got) and then Saturday Dan's brother Mike is meeting us there. He is coming all the way from Minnesota so we are really excited to see him. Saturday night and Sunday we are camping at Bogan Flats which is out west sort of near Aspen and Crested Butte. Should be beautiful!

Saturday, July 25, 2009

Ouch!

My 20 miler is done as of about 2 hours ago. YES! I took a cold bath afterwards, but my feet are still pretty sore. My legs feel good, unless I walk down stairs. SO now it's time to taper, which means the longest run I will do in the next 3 weeks is 12 miles. YES! again. I had some new tunes for the run today thanks to some time spent on the internet googling run songs last night. Here are my 10 favorites:

1. Boom Boom Pow, Black Eyed Peas
2. Waking Up in Vegas, Katy Perry
3. My Milkshakes, Kelis
4. C'Mon C'Mon, The Von Bondies (the theme from Rescue Me)
5. Talk Dirty to Me, Poison (shut up!)
6. Stronger, Kanye West
7. Rehab, Amy Winehouse
8. Anytime, Eve 6
9. Sexyback, Justin Timberlake
10. So What, Pink

Most of this is stuff I wouldn't normally listen to, but it's great motivation/ distraction for running.

Thursday, July 23, 2009

He Passed!

Noah passed his first swim level last Friday! It's Swim Ladder Level 1 (I don't know how that correlates to Red Cross levels), but I am really impressed by the face that he knows front float, back float (both with help), and all the kicking and bobbing stuff. Ms. Gabby was great! Noah loved her and would do anything she said. I am so proud of my little guy. The other day at the pool, one of the other moms asked me how old he is. When I said 3, she said she couldn't believe how great of a swimmer he is!!! :) Here are some pics.


Wednesday, July 22, 2009

Take Your Kid to Work Day

It's not really the official "take your kid to work" day, but I took Noah to my job today. I wasn't really supposed to work today, but someone asked me to help with some planning for next school year so I said I would. The good news is the extra pay! The bad news is that now I am exhausted! Noah was really good, but it is hard to entertain a 3-year-old and follow what's going on in a meeting at the same time. I am not planning on doing that again anytime soon.

Monday, July 20, 2009

6/100

One of Suzanne's friends had this on FB and I though it was interesting.

The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books here. How do your reading habits stack up?Instructions: Copy this into your NOTES. Look at the list and put an ‘x’ after those you have read.

1 Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen – X
2 The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte - X
4 Harry Potter series – JK Rowling – X
5 To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee - X
6 The Bible (I have read most of it, but I can't promise I've read every word.)
7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte – X
8 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell - X
9 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman -
10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens -X (Hated it, but had to read it in high school)
11 Little Women – Louisa M Alcott – X
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy - (Supposed to read in high school, didn't!)
13 Catch 22 – Joseph Heller - X
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare -
15 Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier – X
16 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien -
17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger – X
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger -X (love this one!!!!)
20 Middlemarch – George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell -X
22 The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald – X
23 Bleak House – Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy - (tried...way too boring)
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams -X
27 Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky -(another one I was supposed to read)
28 Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck – X
29 Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll -
30 The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame -
31 Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy -
32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens - X (and hated every minute of it)
33 Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis – X
34 Emma – Jane Austen –
35 Persuasion – Jane Austen -
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis – X
37 The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini -
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden -
40 Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne - X
41 Animal Farm – George Orwell -X
42 The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown – X
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez -X (hated it)
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving -
45 The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery – X
47 Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy - X (hated it)
48 The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood - X
49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding -X
50 Atonement – Ian McEwan -
51 Life of Pi – Yann Martel -
52 Dune – Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons -
54 Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen –
55 A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth -
56 The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens -
58 Brave New World – Aldous Huxley – X
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night – Mark Haddon -
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez –
61 Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck -X
62 Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov -
63 The Secret History – Donna Tartt -
64 The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold -
65 Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas-
66 On The Road – Jack Kerouac - X (loved it!)
67 Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy -
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding -
69 Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick – Herman Melville - X (hated it)
71 Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens -
72 Dracula – Bram Stoker - X
73 The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett – X (loved it)
74 Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses – James Joyce
76 The Inferno – Dante – X
77 Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal – Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray -
80 Possession – AS Byatt -
81 A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens - X
82 Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple – Alice Walker – X
84 The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert -
86 A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry -
87 Charlotte’s Web – EB White – X
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom –
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad - X (hated it)
92 The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint -
93 The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
94 Watership Down – Richard Adams -
95 A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole -
96 A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas -
98 Hamlet – William Shakespeare – X
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory -X
100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo

Well, I got 40, which might sound good, but I probably should have read more considering I was an English major....

Friday, July 17, 2009

Training On the Top of Pikes Peak

My running buddy, Debbie, and I drove down to the peak yesterday to run the top part of the peak as part of our training for the Ascent. We drove to the top (beautiful, by the way) and it was SUPER WINDY! On the way up, we were delayed a little by cars practicing for the Pikes Peak Auto Climb which was this weekend. Dan and Noah would have loved to see all the cool race cars if they were there too. Anyway, so we started at the top of the Barr Trail and ran/walked down just over 3 miles to the A-Frame, a shelter that is right at timberline. Once we got off the top of the peak, the wind died down and it was really a beautiful day; literally there was not a cloud in the sky when we started. The trail up that high has some sections that are really rocky/bouldery, so we didn't run as much as we probably could have. Going back up was a different story. There were plenty of sections that I should have run that I didn't because I was dying from the lack of oxygen. But I did manage to run some of it, and it was a really good workout. I didn't bring the camera because I didn't want to carry it, but I took some pics on my phone that I posted on facebook if you are interested. All in all, we did 6.5 miles 12,000 and 14,000 feet, and we had a great time!

Wednesday, July 15, 2009

I Can Ride My Bike With No Handlebars

OK, maybe he needs the handlebars, but he is definitely getting the hang of it:

Monday, July 13, 2009

Grocery Champ

I finally did it! I am the most amazing grocery shopper ever. I remembered both the cloth bags and the coupons at the store today. ((Insert picture of me with the sun's rays shining down as if from heaven on my angelic head.)) Halleluia!

Of course, maybe it's because Dan was working from home today and I went by myself while Noah took his nap. Things that make you go, hmmmmmmm.

Sunday, July 12, 2009

I'm Tired but Happy

We have had an insane couple of days. Here's what they looked like:

Friday:

1. Wildflower hike with Noah
2. Swimming at our neighborhood pool
3. Park and flying Dan's model airplane

Saturday:

1. Farmer's market with Dan and Noah (found some great calabacitas, which I'd never had before and tamales!)
2. Noah's friend's birthday party
3. Castle Rock Outdoor Movie Night: Journey to the Center of the Earth. They had a band that played before the movie and Noah danced his little booty off. Dan has video that I will try and post. It is hilarious.

Sunday:

1. I helped throw a baby shower for a chick I work with who is having triplets. Yes, TRIPLETS. Spontaneous too. No fertility stuff. Can you imagine???

2. Good news: Dan made veggie manicotti for dinner. YUM!!!

In these three days, I also managed to get in 2 shorter runs (a 3 and a 5 miler) and a strength training session (30 minutes). Time for stuff to slow down.

Friday, July 10, 2009

Music in the Meadows: Dotsero

Our neighborhood associations do about 4 concerts every summer and they call them "Music in the Meadows." Last Wednesday, the band was Dotsero, a Colorado jazz band that has been voted best in Denver for a ridiculous number of years. They were pretty good, but modern smooth jazz just really isn't my thing. I prefer that wild jazz, like Ben Markley, a dude I took Dan to see downtown for Valentine's Day. Anyway, it was a gorgeous night and we all had fun. Here are some pics:

Noah getting a baloon animal made: The show: Swinging at the park right by the concert: Noah with his cupcake:

Tuesday, July 7, 2009

I Like the Stairmaster

Seriously, I do. I think it's because it's something different than uphill running on the dreadmill, which I hate. Anyway, today I did nine miles all uphill and three of them were on the Stairmaster (the kind with the actual steps that move). It felt like I could have kept going when I finished, but now my legs are super sore. Tomorrow will be a leg rest day (I'll still do about 30 minutes of core and arms, hopefully) and then Thursday I am doing my 18 miler. It is going to be insanely hot, so I am planning on getting up around 5:30 or 6 so I can get most of the miles out of the way before it hits 90. The race is in one month and 8 days. SCARY!

Monday, July 6, 2009

The Mad Shopper Strikes Again

This week, I made it to the grocery store with my cloth bags, but no coupons. When will I get it together? Ugh!

More July Fourth Pics

Noah playing a fishing game at the festival: Waiting for his turn on the bouncy slide:
Noah can put on his own clothes now. Notice the backwards jammy top:
Fireworks:
At the fireworks show:
Noah and I at the festival:

Sunday, July 5, 2009

Independence Day

No, we didn't spend July 4th blowing up aliens. But we did get to watch some stuff 'splode! We went to our neighborhood's Fourth of July festival and then came home for a nap. After that, we were going to go to Castle Rock's celebration, but it poured rain for like 2 hours. Luckily, it cleared up in time for the fireworks. Here are a couple of pictures from the day. I will post more tomorrow hopefully if this stupid computer isn't moving so slowly!

Saturday, July 4, 2009

Swimming, For Real

Noah is starting to swim by himself! He can totally go across the pool by himself with a noodle and he is starting to get it even without a flotation device! He has another session of swimming lessons starting in a week and a half and I am excited to watch his progress! Here are some pictures of him swimming with Daddy.



Friday, July 3, 2009

A Hot Day at the Zoo

Last Wednesday, we went to the zoo with my friend Katie and her daughter Emma and my other friend Kerry and her Granddaughter Kailyn. Noah is 3, Emma is 2, and Kailyn is 1, so it was interesting to watch how the kids interacted. It was super hot, like 95 or something. Kerry and Katie left after only about 2 hours because they were exhausted and couldn't take the heat anymore. I don't mind it so much as long as it's not humid, so Noah and I stayed and had lunch and rode the train and the carousel. Noah said his favorite animals at the zoo were the giraffes and the polar bears. He also said he loved "all of them, mom." Here are some pictures from our visit:

Noah riding on the train: Noah on the carousel:

Noah pulling Emma and Kailyn in the wagon:

Noah and Emma checking out the elephants:
Kailyn:
Emma:

Wednesday, July 1, 2009

Do-Able and Domestic

If the title of this post made you think I might actually be cleaning today, you are sadly mistaken (Domestic Goddess that I am). It's actually about vacations within the US that might actually be do-able sometime soon for my family. My sister-in-law, Suzanne came up with this idea. Click on this link to connect to her blog. The top 5 places I would like to go in the continental US:

1. Sanibel Island, FL: I've heard it's beautiful and we have to get Noah to a beach soon!

2. Glacier National Park, MT: I'm dying to drive Going to the Sun Road and I really want to do a backpacking trip there.

3. The Boundary Waters, MN: I know, I've been there, done that a million times, but it is awesome up there and I want to take Noah. Also, my child needs to know how to canoe.

4. San Juan Islands, WA: I know Noah would love to see the whales and I could begin to teach him to kayak.

5. Maine: My friend Josh swears it is the most beautiful place in the US. Mountains, forest, oceans, tons of open space. Sounds like my kind of place.

All this being said, we probably won't do a vacation in the near future because we are saving money for our spring break trip. My sister, Amanda, is going to be an exchange student in Spain second semester next year and we are going to go visit!!! She will be in a smaller town near Madrid. I think it's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, so I can hold off on the vacays til then!