14.3.10

St. Patty's Day Race

No matter how hard I train and how hardly Ryan trains, he will never let me beat him. I'm convinced he has some kind of homing device planted in my shoe that signals when I'm getting near. Just when I'm sure I'll catch him, he takes off (fueled by stubborn pride, I assume). We both finished this weekend's 10K race under 60 minutes, which was our goal. But barely, as evident in the pictures. I was happy to have ran the whole way but need to shave a half minute off my current pace of 9.5 min/mi in order to finish Seattle's Rock-n-Roll 1/2 marathon in under 2 hours.





We are especially proud of Ryker, who entered his first race and ran his first mile. The United Way Leprechaun Dash is for ages 5-15 and so Ryker was not expecting to win. He ran most of the way, however, and was proud to have finished. Ryker thinks "smoking" Uncle Case was better than taking first place anyway. :) Ungrateful little bugger, I'd say, considering Uncle Case volunteered to coach him the whole way.


8.3.10

there's this blog i love

a couple of years ago, around the time i started this blog, i ran across ree drummond of the pioneer woman's blog. you know, it was on a friend of a friend of a friends blog roll. i've been reading her ever since and aspire to keep the hubs and kids deliriously happy with good home cooking as ree does. i aspire to take beautiful pictures as ree does. however, i do not aspire to sing as ree does. i especially enjoyed ree's "confession" today. i love her particular brand of narcissism, she makes me laugh and well, i love cowboy colloquialisms. farmers use them too. dairy farmers especially. in fact, by the time i was 16, i'd been told i was useless as tits on a boar hog so many times that on my birthday, i drove myself down to the local ranch store and applied for a job, never to work on the farm again. i showed 'em a thing or two! (translation: they were glad to be rid of me.)

check her out, if you haven't already (she only has some several million viewers). who knows, you might find yourself making this for dinner tonight. take it from someone who would NEVER order a burger - they're divine!

7.3.10




We like Silver Mountain. We also like that it is only a one hour drive from my Dad's home in Spokane. The three kiddos insisted that they sleep on the "bridge" to the billiard's loft. When we took a quick break from Pinochle to dish up some ice cream, I noticed three pairs of eyes glaring at us.

"That's not fair!" Ryker complained.

"Yah. You have ice cream and we don't." Em agreed.

And so we promised them ice cream with their breakfast cereal. So sorry, Gabriel! It'd have been way more fun if you liked ice cream!



The gondola ride from the village to the mountain was fun. From the window, Ryan and I spotted a bobcat just strolling down a dirt road.




The best feature of this hill is the magic carpet. And because the bunny hill is on one side and the tubing chutes on the other, we were able to spend the day together. Em had a ball tubing, building snowman families and catching an occasional board down the hill from Uncle Case. Admittedly, the boys had more fun tubing than boarding but we were really proud of them both. Learning to board is hard work! And they didn't whine nearly as much as the teenage girl working with a private coach. Nor did they shed as many tears. By the last couple of runs, they were even using their edges and carving a bit. Ryker and Gabriel are going to be tearing it up by this time next season!