A Smattering of Duehrings

I did it! I completed my first duathlon. There was a group of 9 of us from our church that went to do the race together. I had so much fun training with these girls and then doing it together.

The transition area was outside of the woods and then we ran and biked down in the woods. In the first picture Damon is just coming out of the trees to the transition area. The running part was definitely the hardest part for me. I love the biking, but running up and down steep muddy hills after riding wasn’t so easy. My biggest lesson of the day is that dehydration is much worse than needing to use the bathroom while running/biking. This morning I nursed Molly right before leaving and then refused to drink much for fear I would need to go to the bathroom while running/biking. I have never felt so dehydrated in my life. At the finish line they told me my lips were blue. The last run was really hard. Don’t I look thrilled to be running?

Here is Damon sprinting to the finish line. He ran in under 7 minute miles. Pretty cool!

Damon finished in really good time. I finished about 27 minutes behind him. I was so happy to see him at the top of the last hill waiting for me. He met me down in the trail and ran the last part with me to the finish line.

I had fun and all the girls are ready to do another one so who knows what we might do next. Damon’s next duathlon is in two weeks.

Last Saturday when I got home from biking Damon was laying on the couch and looked really bad. I went over and felt his head and he was burning up with fever. His throat was in terrible pain so we decided to get to the urgent care clinic before it closed. Sure enough he had strep throat. He was pretty sick for quite a while so stayed home from work Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. I hate for him to be sick, but it was a nice change having him home from work for a few days. So far everyone else has managed to stay well.

Maggie has started her spring soccer season and has practice two evenings a week. With that and Awana we have something going about every evening now. She was supposed to have her first soccer game of the season tomorrow afternoon, but it was canceled do to weather and muddy fields. Everything around here is getting flooded.

Eli has had an exciting week of disasters. He cleaned out all of my supply of diaper rash creme by paining everything in the house including the carpet, painted the bathroom with toothpaste, painted Micah’s bed with Maggie’s paints, flooded the bathroom, colored the kitchen floor with an ink pen, fried the phone by filling the phone cradle with water…you get the idea. He is a busy boy. He still prays every single day that he will be a good boy and not be naughty.

Tomorrow morning Damon and I are doing the trail duathlon. It’s nice they chose the rainiest weekend this spring to have the race. They said that the race is on…rain or shine, so it ought to be fun. On Tuesday, I went to the trail with a friend to ride it and poured rain on us so I got to practice riding and running in mud and it was kind of fun. A bit more scary, but fun. We saw 4 deer running on the trail right in front of us right before the rain started.

The boys have been busy playing outside this week. Eli helped his daddy mow the grass yesterday.

Here is my first bouquet of flowers this spring given to me by my sweet little Micah Man.

Molly spends almost all of her days going from window to window watching everything going on in the neighborhood. We have been able to have all the windows open every day for quite awhile and she loves it.

Damon fixed his truck this week and the boys were so excited to get to go on a ride with him in his truck again.

Damon has a big ol’ project ahead of him in the back yard this week. Well, just as soon as the swamp back there goes down a bit. The kids can’t wait to help him. Pictures to come…

Not only can she walk (limitedly at the moment), but she also “sings” while she does it! Yep, she is pretty amazing.

Every time Jeremy comes over he becomes something you’d usually only see on a playground; a jungle gym. Yes, his super-hero powers are a bit unique. But then, I guess every super-hero has unique powers. Jeremy’s are just a bit  more domestic than the average super-hero. You know, the ability to survive being rigorously trampled upon by multitudes of children versus melting lamp poles with beams of energy shooting out from your eyes. Hmmm. Energy beams from eyes. Pretty cool. Maybe we’ll all have to rethink his super-hero status…

Wanna know what made Molly squeal with excitement for a long time? Sitting in the front yard watching her daddy ride back and forth on his bike. She thought it was the coolest thing in the world. I took the opportunity to take another 50 pictures of her. (I am pretty sure I have reached about a million by now) After each picture she would crawl a ways, then stop and clap, then squeal “Daddy” and giggle. It was really cute. Have I mentioned that I love spring weather?