A Windsor Weekend

Beau and Emily hooked us up this weekend with a TrendWest condo in Windsor. We started out early Friday afternoon, thinking we were in for an hour and a half of driving. Three hours later, we pulled in. California traffic...enough said.

Highlights of the trip include: yummy chicken taco soup, games, MI III, talking and laughing late into the morning, and of course listening to Beau explain how to do a prostate exam.

The kiddos were great, but thank heavens for "Cars"--good entertainment (and obviously not just enjoyed by the kids).

Echo playing with her dog.

The next morning, Brady and I took off on a jog around town. It was beautiful--still green, tons of trees, and a small-town feeling. We got back to a hot breakfast from Emily.

We hit the road toward a redwood park, taking in gorgeous roads covered in a canopy of trees. The best part of the drive was going over a one-way bridge that seemed to be placed right in the middle of a storybook. It overlooked a peaceful river engulfed in fall colors. Whew!

The kids were troopers, engaging in a hike through part of the park. Porter suffered a sock loss, but was all smiles when his parents were carrying him!

It's hard to believe, but the pic below was not framed. (It's especially hard to believe when you see that they are all walking in sync. Awww...that's just "tearin up my heart." haha)


By the end of the hike, we were all ready for lunch. Thanks for the getaway, Beau and Emily!

Happy Halloween

Thanks, Kristen and Cory, for a fun Halloween bash.

Beau and Emily
Greg and Katie

Brady's impressive rebar injury

My official, OSHA-certified accident report

Edwards Day Care

The past few weeks have been loaded with kids for us! We have worked a ton with primary kids in our ward lately, and Cory and Kristen finally trusted us enough for a night alone with Blakers and Rachel. I've wanted to decorate cookies with them for weeks, and was thrilled for a night of icing, "stiwwing" (stirring), and candy corn.

We even made snail cookies--although once they were iced, they were un-identifiable.

Blake's not-so-surprising comment, "Gee guys, this is the funnest thing I've ever done." (He takes after his father...everything new/exciting fits into that category.)

Can you tell which ones the kiddos decorated?

I was a little concerned today when a lady in our ward asked if we were officially the ward babysitters. Uh oh. But we'll take Blake, Rachel, and any other nieces and nephews any day!

Weekend Retreat

Bet you can't guess where we went... If you've been reading our blog, it won't be hard to figure out. This tree is one of the top 10 largest redwoods in the US. It's amazing how tall it is for being so hollow.

Highlights of our camping getaway included: an early morning trail run (Brady whooped up on me!!!), a long hike through fall leaves and catepillars to see the tree below, hot showers (yes, I am lame, and very okay with it), late night games of Dominos and Phase 10, brisk (read--FREEZING) fall weather, and surviving 3 days without a brush. Impressed?

Pretty sweet shot, eh?
Brady stuck his hand in these...can you tell what they are?

The first real fall leaves we've seen out here.

"Karen's Kitchen"

Take Me Out to the Ballgame!

Northern Cal is definitely into baseball, and we're working on becoming fans. Brady's work was able to hook us up with box seats at the Giant's game last week, but other than food and good company, it was a bit of a disappointing game. It was fun being at the Giant's stadium, though!

These are two of the guys Brady works with, and their wives. We all piled into one car to save on parking at the stadium. It was squishy, but entertaining.

Friday night, our ward went to the A's game, with 85 of us in the group. The kids in our ward were hilarious, popping out some hip-hop to the music in between innings, and running up and down the stairs. I'm not sure any of them actually watched the game, but they sure had fun eating their Cracker Jacks.

As you can tell by our apparel, we are quickly becoming A's fans.

We were a little late getting to the game because of work. We were both uptight, pulling in during the 4th inning, but that ended up playing to our advantage. We still saw 8 innings (as well as 4 homeruns), and most importantly, the last play of the 12th inning--Mark Skootero's base hit that drove in the man on third. Afterwards, we all went to the field to watch the best fireworks we've ever seen. (And you'd think that out of 6 pics, we'd have something better than these fireworks...but I'm a firm believer in experiencing the event, and not just getting great pictures.)

Our New Toy

We decided Labor Day was as good a day as any to bleed money, so we went out and bought ourself another piece of furniture for our one-bedroom apartment.

We always said we weren't the kind of pianists who would resort to a keyboard, but what choice do you have when you live three stories up???

And if you ever want to invite us to your child's birthday, you may or may not get a present this spectacular. (Cory and Kristen around gave us props for this, but this pic is just higher-quality. haha)

Big Trees, Big Fun

Finally! We have been so excited to go camping and this weekend was very anticipated. The location was last minute, but the experience was perfect. We drove two hours to arrive at Calaveras Big Trees State Park--home of the Giant Sequoias.

A combination of getting out of town a little later and the travel time taking longer than expected meant setting up camp at dusk. It didn't matter though, we were thrilled to be out in the woods. As seen below, I impressed Karen yet again with my fire starting ability (and I'm not even an Eagle Scout).

Friday night's menu included hot dogs roasted to perfection, chips with ridges, and crispy red grapes. Of course all this was shortly followed by smores. (Have you seen Karen's marshmallow roasting skills?)
The ground was hard (air mattress has a hole), but we slept beautifully. The next morning we ate with anticipation for the morning's activities.....hiking!
It was better than we had hoped. This is actually one tree, not two.
It was worth a try....

There really is some interesting history in these woods. This tree is over 1400 years old. After it was cut down in the mid 1800's, the stump was used as dance floor for several years.

We were pleasantly surprised to also find a river....with fish in it too. Unfortunately, I left my pole at home. Karen says the white water really adds color to my legs.

The next thing I knew Karen was jumping in the river, clothes and all.
The water did look refreshing.

Who's coming with us next time?

Tri for Fun

After splurging on bikes, we decided to go for a sprint triathlon. We trained for 2 months, received some advice from pros like Aaron, and basically planned our weeks and weekends around bike rides, swims, and runs. Finally, Saturday morning came around and it was time to take a stab at this new sport. (Although Sat morning came around at 4:45 am, and that was definitely against my "nothing before 6 am" rule.)

Here we are just before the start of the race. There were about 1000 participants, which makes for a lot of bikes to hop around during transitions.

Our first experience with swim caps...strange. It's amazing how many girls look like men with these things on. (I may or may not be refering to myself--you decide.)


The first part of a triathlon is a swim. This is our weakest event, but one we have worked on religiously 2-3 times a week (in our tiny apartment pool). We both had nerves before the swim, considering that we have never tried out freestyle in a lake. In the end, we both felt we could have done better at this segment. I started way too far back, and kept veering off course. Brady drank enough of the lake water to stay hydrated throughout the race.

Here's a pic of the beautiful lake:

Here's a pic of what we actually experienced:

Seaweed grabbing the legs combined with murky green water doesn't add up to good dreams later on. I much preferred the bike and run, although I still want a road bike!

We made up some time on the bike/run portion. In the end, I decided that my next tri will be longer. I don't think I could have gone faster throughout the event, but I felt I could have gone longer (although a longer swim sounds terrible).

Here we are after the event. We were started in 7 different waves of people, so we ended up 15 minutes apart. Overall, we finished with almost the same time! It made me wish we had waited for the 7th heat (friends/family). It's a little sad that it's all over--especially the training. I'm looking for our next event...