Fairmont Triathlon

I never got around to blogging it, but a few weeks ago we loaded up the kids and drove north for a triathlon in Fairmont, MN.  Super convenient that Tim's dad only lives minutes away from the race course!

Tim had quite the crew present to cheer him on:

Mom and Bob

Dad, Susan, Audrey, and 3 cousins (notice the bookworm in the background...I love this picture!  So classic Autumn.) :)

Norah was not happy that I kept her confined to the stroller during the swim portion of the race.  Grandma JoDi saved the day (or at least Norah's attitude) with cow bells.  So much fun!

Here he comes!

Yep, it's him!

So proud of this guy.  He cut 13 minutes off his triathlon time from last summer!!!

Norah also enjoyed some shoulder rides.  (I'm pretty sure Grandpa "Poci" did too.)

Biking and running legs of the race...

All finished!  And he doesn't even look that tired.  (Just skinny!)

My sweet family.

Proof that I can take a 2 year old and 3 year old to a 3 hour race while 7 months pregnant.  

Not that I'm rushing to do that anytime again soon.  So thankful to have Grandmas, Grandpas, and cousins along to help corral these natives!

Way to go, Tim!  We love cheering you on.

What's been keeping me from blogging?

1.  I haven't blogged in over 2 weeks.  This is my primary excuse:

This girl is IN. TO. EVERYTHING.  She hasn't quite figured out how to open doors, but she's close.  If Big Sister leaves a door open, she sneaks in and closes the door behind her, then I have to wander all over the house playing "who's behind door #___."  She can now open the actual oven, rather than just the warming drawer.  And she's continually emptying out dresser drawers, strewing all of our clothes all over the house.  I can't say much else except that she keeps me on my toes.

Other things I've been doing instead of blogging:

2. Spur of the moment road trips.  Last week we needed to get our car serviced, and after calling around realized we could save $300 by driving to a repair shop in Omaha that we used to go to back when we lived there.  Tim had some comp time off from work since he worked the entire previous weekend, so we took a trip to the zoo! 

Audrey's recurring comment was "Wet's go hunting for anuvver animal!  I wike the ones that stand still that I can climb on the best." 

3.  Redecorating!  I am almost done with our master bedroom makeover. My goal was to do something that felt fresh, new, and light. (Our bedroom before was just too dark and cavelike.) After way too many deliberations about paint color, I settled on Agreeable Grey, and the night before our new bed arrived, we stayed up way too late getting the room painted. Here’s a sneak peek at the progress pictures I have so far:

Before

During:

(believe it or not, this is NOT all of the colors I tried out.)

After
To Be Posted...
Sorry, I hate it when people post Before Without After pictures, but I don't have any yet and I'm too tired tonight to go make the bed and take some. :)  Sometime soon, I hope.  But don't hold your breath.

4.  Making big decisions.  After talking and praying and talking and praying and talking and praying some more, we are narrowing down adoption agencies and have set a goal to send in an application around December. More on that sometime later.

5. Running Jogging. I’ve been trying to keep up my "running" (trust me, I use the term loosely) routine in preparation for my first (team) triathlon this morning. My goal was simply to finish, and that I did.

Me with Teammate, Karen.  (I'm terrible, I didn't get any photos with Chen before she left!  Karen swam, Chen biked, and I ran the 5K at the end of the race.)

Me and the Hubs.  He, of course, did the entire race himself.  And finished a full 14 minutes faster than my team did.  Sheesh.

6.  Napping.  (When I can.)  I’m tired. Norah has been waking up between 4:30 and 5:30 a.m. for the last 2 months? 3 months? I can’t remember, it feels like so long. In the last 2 weeks she has made it to 6 or even 6:20 a small handful of times, and I cannot even begin to describe how wonderful I feel on those mornings.  And now that I typed that, she'll start waking up early again.  ;0)  She also got sick this week, so I'm not holding out much hope of a good night tonight.  Poor baby threw up at bedtime tonight, successfully missing me, and her own jammies, but nailing the basket of books by her crib, dousing at least 15 books.  I think that maybe I wish she would have gotten me instead; a shower sounds so much easier than cleaning them all.  Speaking of which, I should probably be cleaning up vomit right now instead of blogging, but Tim is putting Audrey to bed and the computer is all mine, so I'm taking advantage.

7.  Parenting Toddlers.  Preparing to parent a teen.  We had a pre-placement visit today with a young lady who will be moving in with us sometime this week.  This will be our first foster parenting experience that has the potential to be longish.  Please say some prayers for us.  In many ways we feel like we have no idea what we are doing, and will definitely be relying heavily on the Lord for some Divine Wisdom.  Moving on from potty training and saying "no-touch" all day to sex talks and curfews.  Hmmmm, I just reread that sentence and chuckled to myself...sex talks and "no-touch," maybe there will be some overlapping in parenting practices here after all.  Ha. 

8.  Listening and Laughing.  My girls are talking more and more every day and cracking me up all the time.  Here's Norah's latest round of tricks.  She understands probably 90% of what we say, is using a few words, and doing lots of sign language.

Audrey's best quote of the month occurred on the way to the tire shop a few weeks ago.  She announced "I'm going to see if Mr. Denny has a new Mommy for me that's not so crazy."  Apparently I'm as easy to replace as a set of tires!?!?

Where has the summer gone?

Recently I've been contacted by a few friends asking if everything is okay, since I haven't blogged in awhile.  So I guess that means it's time for an update.  Thank you to those of you who faithfully check our site day after day, even though I've posted nothing new in so long.  Let me assure you that all is well, we've just been BUSY!

During this past month,

1.  I ran jogged the 5K portion of Midnight Madness.  (Did I blog this already?  It's been so long I can't remember.)  Anyway, I finished without walking.  To me, that counts as success.  I'm pretty sure I couldn't have done it without my brother running with me.  Thanks, Kyle, for the moral support and encouragement! Oh, and to my crazy husband, biking to every half-mile marker and cheering us on, and entertaining us with some wild antics.  Once he flashed us his newly shaved chest. (which he shaved purely for the purpose of 'shaving' off some seconds off his swimming split, or so I'm told.)

2.  Tim participated in the Iowa Games Triathlon.  And I drug along the kids to cheer him on.  Couldn't have done that without reinforcements.  Thanks Uncle Kyle and Grandma, for coming along to help corral the kids!!

Yes, I know, Tim looks crazy-skinny in this next picture.  He is.  Have I mentioned that he's lost 55 pounds since he started training for tri's?  Don't worry, I AM feeding him.  He eats like a horse.

Sharing some of Daddy's post-race snacks.  He did well, too!  Finished 58th out of 271 (male) participants and 8th out of 32 in his age division.  Not bad for his 2nd race ever.

3.  We finished up swimming lessons.  A big THANK YOU to my brother, Kyle, who came with me to lessons every day for 2 weeks.  With both kids requiring an adult in the water with them, there was no way I could take them by myself!  On the last day Audrey finally gathered the courage to jump off the edge of the pool, into Tim's arms.  (He took his lunch break early to join us for the last day of class.)  I guess it just took the security of Daddy's arms for her to make the leap. 

4.  Tim competed in a cycling time trial with the Iowa Games.  He placed 2nd in his age division, taking home the silver medal!

5.  My friend Karen came to visit for a weekend and we spent an entire day scrapbooking.  I am now only 6 months behind on Norah's book. :(  As soon as I finish her first year of life I am switching over to digital albums!!!

6.  We attended my cousin's wedding in Des Moines and got to catch up with some extended family we hadn't seen in awhile.  The girls both had fun tearing it up on the dance floor, even though we left the reception before the music even started!  (Did I mention we spent a ton of time with Uncle Kyle this month?  He was back visiting from North Carolina for a few weeks, and we soaked up every minute of time we could get with him.) 

WE MISS YOU UNCLE KYLE!!!  COME AGAIN SOON!!!

7.  We celebrated our 7th wedding anniversary a few nights early by getting a sitter and going out for dinner and coffee.  I can't believe we've been married for 7 years!!!   Last year we started an anniversary journal, recording major events of the year and writing some goals for the coming year.  It's so good to evaluate each year where are priorities are, and what we would like to change or accomplish.  I may write more on that later. 

8.  On our actual anniversary we sent Audrey to the cabin with Papa and Grandma, and headed to Omaha for Tim's first Olympic Distance Triathlon.  Norah and I got up at 4:15 a.m. to cheer him on.  If that's not love...I don't know what is.

Tim finished close to his goal time and placed 17th out of 49 in his age division.

We also grabbed dinner with some sweet friends, went to our church that still feels like home, and visited the Mart to splurge on an anniversary present to ourselves...a king-sized bed.  I can't hardly wait for it to be delivered in just 10 days!  I'm now busy trying to choose new bedding...which is leading to the entire redecoration of our bedroom.  Before and After picture coming, hopefully sooner rather than later.

9.  Grandma JoDi came to visit for the week and put on her annual "Cousins' Camp" for all the kids.  This was our first year participating, and though our girls weren't old enough to join in for all the festivities, they LOVED the activities we did join in on.  The new water park was especially a hit.

10.  I've also been working a bit more.  Which is good for keeping up my license, but sad for me at the same time because I know I'm probably missing out on more moments like these:

Norah putting her baby to bed.

These days Norah LOVES to be surprised.  Not just peek-a-boo surprised, but come-around-the-corner-out-of-nowhere and yell-as-loud-as-you-can-to-make-her-jump surprised.  It's hilarious.  She nearly jumps out of her skin, then cracks up laughing.  This girl is going to love scary movies and haunted houses when she's older.  This video hardly does it justice, but it's all I have on camera for now.

Audrey singing "If I Were a Butterfly."

 

So there you have it, our month in review.  And this, dear friends, is why I usually blog more often.  When I wait too long there's just too much ground to cover!  If you're still here, thanks for sticking with me and reading the whole post. :)

Big Weekend

Norah started walking.  She's actually doing better than this, but this was the best video I could get.

And Tim survived his first triathalon.  Unfortunately they cut the course in half due to inclement weather, so he didn't get to compete in the full distance that he wanted to.  But it was a good experience, and he'll definitely be signing up for a longer one sometime soon!

And we learned that our second born prefers fruit to cake.  Stay tuned for more on Norah's 1st birthday party!

Cross One Off the Bucket List

...appearing topless on television.