Saturday, April 30, 2011

Rugged Maniac Take 2

So my previous post about the Rugged Maniac 5k we ran in March just wouldn’t be complete without some action shots!  Yes, yes, I know there is a watermark on these pictures.  That’s b/c I kinda snipped them from the website.  Anyway, whatever.

A little balancing act:

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I like seeing how everyone tackled the slippery plank.  And it’s hilarious how covered in mud we all were.

Ready…

set…

GOOOOO!!

Ready Set Go

The slide was the last obstacle we went through.  It was nice to get a lot of the caked-on mud washed off :).  Hehe. 

These next pictures are interesting (and hilarious) as they pretty well depict what was going through our heads as we went down!

bloody murder  Catherine…not so sure about this thing, screaming bloody murder all the way down!  Love it!  Makes me laugh every time.

Brian sliding Brian trying to slow himself down, thinking oh crap!! 

Joey slidingkristin sliding Joey & Kristin thinking, I’m supposed to enjoy this, right?!

Weeeee Me thinking, WEEEEEEeeeee, this is awesome!!  Oblivious of anything other than the thrill of the ride!

There are many other pictures but I thought these captured a lot of the essence of the race.  So fun.

Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Quarantine!

My coworker makes me laugh.  At least she's concerned for the rest of us!

(Possible but unconfirmed head cold).  Cracks me up!

Tuesday, April 26, 2011

UNO

ATTAAaaaaCK!  Well, that’s what we got to play with Keirsten when she came to visit this week!  It was fun having an impromptu game night.  Thanks, Tracy for cooking dinner!  I’ve been enjoying family time recently.  I couldn’t believe how grown up my niece has gotten.  We had a good time doing gymnastics in the grass.  She was showing off her handstands and running cartwheels.  Can’t wait for you to come back this summer, K!  Love you!

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The Fam.


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Rob showing off his shuffling skills.  I think my favorite part is his tongue sticking out in concentration! 
Gotta.make.the.bridge.just.right.

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Keirsten being…Keirsten.  Oh, and the one of Brian makes me laugh.  He had no idea I was taking the picture.  Hence the shot of my underarm in the upper left :), hehe!  He was having a goooood time…no really, he was.  We were just pooped from not a lot of sleep the night before!  Click the picture to enlarge, you have to see his mouth; cracks me up every time.

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Thankful we got to spend some QT with Keirsten on her quick visit!

Sunday, April 24, 2011

Busy Weekend

For not having a lot of plans, this weekend turned out to be busy.

Friday I got a haircut.  It was just a trim, but I think I’ve determined that come July I’m chopping it all off.  As of right now, I’ve decided that I’m ready to bite the bullet and go for the pixie cut!  I would like to be able to donate my hair to locks of love, so I still have a couple more inches to go in order to do that. 

After my haircut B and I met up with some friends to go mountain biking.  It was a fun time other than the rain that decided to dump on us.  It made the day chilly so we were more than ready to head home to warm showers.  We then enjoyed a nice, late lunch at La Farm bakery in Cary.  Mmm, it’s yummy!  We went to the Good Friday service at our church that evening.

Saturday I went to a baby shower for a couple of hours after having a nice breakfast at Panera with Brian.  We also hit up Old Navy where I got a fun new swim suit I can’t wait to hit the beach in!  It looks similar to this one, but striped.

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When I got home after the shower I was greeted at the front door with the soccer-ball Easter basket I got for Brian the first year we were married.  You may remember the egg hunt I sent him on around our apartment! (well, you may not, b/c I just spent 5 minutes looking through old blog posts and can’t find the one where I shared how I made him search all over our apartment for Easter eggs…bummer…I wonder where that post went?)  Well, he returned the favor and hid eggs around the 1st floor of our house that I had to find.  Instead of a lot of candy filling the eggs he filled them with nice notes, like “Hot Mountain Biking Wife” and “I love my wife” and “I love DB”, etc.  It was cute and pretty fun :).  Thanks for being sweet, B!  Some pics of me searching.  Glad that soccer ball basket is getting some good use!  Ha.

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We headed to the movies that evening to see the Lincoln Lawyer.  We had both finished reading the book by Michael Connelly.  It was a good movie but we both wondered if we would have followed it very well if we hadn’t read the book first.  I didn’t much care, I got to stare at Matthew McConaughey for 2 hours, hehe!  If anything, read the book, it’s a good one. 

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So, several interesting things happened today, Sunday.  The whole reason I started this blog post was so I could remember the events of today.  Brian and I got spiffied up to head to church to celebrate the resurrection of our Savior, Jesus!  It was great to get to celebrate with our brothers and sisters in Christ.

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We headed to lunch at the Lowther’s and enjoyed some good family time along with 4 dogs!  After that Brian and I headed out to the 286 for some more mtn biking.  Several interesting/funny things happened while we were out there.

1st—As we’re going along I hear this pop pop popping noise and look behind me in time to see this tree falling over toward the trail.  All I  can think is, OMG that’s going to land on Brian!  Luckily he passed it before it came crashing down and it wasn’t on the trail like I had originally thought…my angle was weird.  We just stopped and had to laugh because of the random timing!  I’ve never seen a tree just decide it wanted to topple over out of the blue!  I guess he’d had enough standing around being a tree or something.  Crazy!

2nd—At one point I was jumping over a log and as I went over my front tire hit the ground as my back tire got popped in the air.  So for like 2 seconds (it felt like an eternity) I was suspended in a sort of “donkey kick” position on my bike.  In those couple of seconds I’m holding my breath thinking, please don’t go over your handlebars, please don’t fall, please just land and be ok.  And Brian was holding his breath thinking…well I’m not sure what he was thinking other than OHHHHHH!!!!  Thankfully, my back tire decided to descend back to the ground and not send me flipping forward.  I landed and immediately started laughing in disbelief and asked if Brian had seen me do that!  He started laughing and I had to pull off the trail to catch my breath I was laughing so hard.  I wish we had caught it on camera b/c I’m sure it was….awesome!

3rd—There is this reallllllllly fun steeeeeeeep hill toward the end of the trail (or the beginning, depending on which way you start) that I liken to the first drop of a rollercoaster!  It is that steep!  You basically have to plunge down it with no brakes and hope for the best as you come down to the bottom.  But it is SO fun!!!  I think I’ve learned that I’m very much a thrill seeker.  I LOVE the rush of adrenaline you get after doing something that could easily get you hurt or worse.  As you come through the bottom the trail turns and you go over a bridge and then go over another banked bridge.  We took the plunge twice and on the 2nd trip down I went first.  As I was finishing up my turn I looked back b/c I heard a crash and sure enough I see bike tires in the air and no Brian.  I hopped off my bike and ran back to where he was and he assured me he was ok, but man, did my adrenaline get going thinking he might have hurt himself.  He rarely falls but on the banked bridge his back tired decided to slip off and down he went.  I think I got more hurt than he did b/c as I was running back to him I broke through 2 slats on another bridge I had to cross and went down pretty hard. 

So that was that on the bike trip.  But then later tonight we were leaving the Lowther’s house (after having picked up some left-overs, yum) and Brian spots a snake crossing the road.  He puts the car in reverse and back we went to check it out.  He thinks it’s a copperhead so he called his dad.  His dad comes running down to meet us and sure enough, it IS a copperhead.  YUCK.  I hate snakes.  Well, Brian’s dad starts poking it with a stick and it starts thrashing and jumping about.  I’m creeped out at this point and start heading back to the car, but it’s dark and I don’t know if there are more snakes so I go back to Brian and his dad with the flashlights.  We finally get back in the car and I almost jump through the roof when my bag of leftovers bumps into my foot!  Ugh, I hate snakes!  Hate them.

So yeah, if you’re still reading…that was my busy weekend.  Overall, it was a good one!

Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Meet Mary Wallace

Yesterday, Brian and I got to go visit some sweet friends and meet the newest member of their family.  This is Mary Wallace and she is one of the prettiest babies I’ve seen!  She was so content the whole time we visited and even opened her eyes for us some.

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BIIIIIIIIG Yawn!

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Annnd, here we are, holding Mdubs.  She was is precious!

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