A Smattering of Duehrings

All of Damon’s brother’s families are coming to town this weekend. Travis and Dawn arrived this morning with their girls. There will be lots more pictures coming soon…

There are only about 2 more weeks until the triathlon. I have loved training for this more than any other race. I love swimming and now that I am swimming/biking/running - my feet/knees/hips don’t hurt anymore. It’s amazing! I am pretty sure I am going to be hooked on triathlons from now on.

There are about 10 girls from church training together. We have been going to the lake every Monday for the last 4 weeks to practice our open water swimming. We then bike and run afterwards. It is a great social time, too. Tonight Damon came along so he could stay with our transition stuff so we could go straight from one leg of the race to the next without stopping. We did the whole shebang tonight and it was really fun. The water was really choppy so it was a great night to get some race day practice. I am pretty sure 400 women swimming at the same time will make it choppy. I only crashed into a few people tonight. (everyone else was out there practicing, too) I still haven’t figured out how to actually see out of my goggles.

During the week I have been taking the kids to the YMCA. I am having to teach myself to swim again so I am swimming almost every day. I had never mastered the rotary breathing with the crawl stroke. I have gotten so I can do it for a few laps before I start choking on water and/or hyperventilating. Then I have to switch strokes for awhile to recover. So… I swim, run to the dressing room and quickly change from my swim suit to my running shorts in the middle of 50 water aerobic ladies (really awkward), then go jump on the bike and then the treadmill. It is awesome doing the last 2 things all soaking wet because I hardly have to sweat.

I have 2 hours of free child watch a day at the YMCA so I am taking advantage of it. Maggie, Micah, and Evan have a room where they work on their schoolwork and Eli and Molly get to play. The older kids do an hour of school work and an hour of exercising(their PE class). They have been running their mile a day around the track during that time. Oh yeah, and Maggie uses the YMCA’s water to take her showers which is perfect for her long showers.

So, that is what I am doing in my spare time these days.

Man, I love this weather. It has been unbelievably nice out for August. The kids are loving being outside all day, too.

This morning after breakfast Evan and Eli washed the seeds from their apples and took them outside to plant another apple tree. Bless their little hearts. They have apple trees planted all over the back yard. They take really good care of them by watering them and checking on them often, but no trees are growing yet.

As soon as I let Evan have a break from his school work they were off again to chase some butterflies. They went across the street to a big open field that is full of butterflies and came home with all kinds of butterflies and their shirts full of golf balls. I guess someone didn’t pick up after themselves because my boys now own a LOT of golf balls. Maggie, Micah, and Molly went with buckets to pick up more golf balls. It was like a big Easter Egg hunt.

When they were done with that I found them in the back yard again and I noticed that they had a big area of grass cleared that is now dirt. I asked them what they are doing and Eli showed me his pile and told me that they are pulling all the “roots” for daddy. I had to go out and give them a little lesson on what kind of roots to pull.

And this was all just in the first few hours of the day.

Molly’s favorite shoes of all time are her crocs. I bought them at my own garage sale. (from one of the hundred’s of peoples drop offs) They are the first thing she puts on each day and the last thing she takes off. Even after I put her jammies on she puts those crocs right back on. I put her pretty little white sandals on her for church and before I get her out the door she has done the switch-r-oo. She even leaves them on when she swims. She loves them.

I was going through my picture card and found these cool pictures that Damon took the other night. They look better not squashed down to blog size, but I have to squash them.

Molly in the sunshine above. Micah skipping stones in the lake and Abby picking a bouquet of weeds at sunset below.