lake fun...again!

I am forcing myself to sit down daily and update this blog until I am all caught up for 2014.  This could take me til 2015.  I'm not even going to try to post them in order or back-date them... so they'll be completely out of order, but ya get what ya get :)

On Monday, I planned to make a trip to Target but Scott decided we should go to the lake instead.  He won.  We had to be back by Wednesday at 4 for baseball, so we had to make the most of our one full day on the water.  And that we did!!!!  We are very blessed to have Aunt Fran and Uncle Mike who are willing to open their house to us on a moments notice (literally)! This trip was one of our best yet....the weather was finally perfect!

the dock fish have been waiting for us

 Seems like there is a new toy every time we go.  Meet the trampoline! Turn it over and it's a party float complete with cup holders! It's huge!

 

Tuesday morning was spent jumping and fishing and the afternoon was about boating and eating :) We had lunch at Coconuts, one of the kids favorite restaurants. 

me and the Bradster on a boat

 Saturday evening, Cate took a quick kick to the face on the trampoline and lost her front tooth! There was a lot of blood and Scott had to yank it out and then she jumped back in the lake to clean up.  Ewwww. (and doesn't she look just like Brady?!)

Under the stairs secret toy room

My favorite guest room and where I LOVE waking up each morning. Wish I could spend an entire week in that bed.  I try, but the kids always find me

After dinner, we headed back out on the water in the "small" boat (as Cate refers to it).  Evening boat rides are the best! (nice underwear Scott)

Always right there lurking

 Cate has the life.  Fluffy robe, cheerios and her water :)

After 13 hours on the water Tuesday, I was done.  But bright and early Wednesday, the kids were up and back at it.

By noon, everyone was worn out!  We were sad to have to pack up and leave but two nights is a good length to be there...we realize our family is like a tornado and we don't want to overstay our welcome!

pooped out

We had lunch at Backwater Jacks before heading home.  Last month when we were there, we saw this mama duck and her babies and I was excited to see them again yesterday!

 

 

 

dog fight

So, Murphy totally got mauled by a pit bull the last week of school.  For real.  He was hanging out in the front yard with Ben and Brady when a youngish (19?) girl walked by with a pit bull on a harness and leash and pushing a baby in a stroller.  Guess Murphy looked like a squirrel, because that dog dragged the girl down and attacked poor Murph.  Had a death grip on his neck and the boys used tennis rackets to get it to let go.  Nothing but fun over here.  He was left with a nice gash on his neck so I took him to an animal hospital to get him checked out.  A zillion dollars and hours later, we were sent home with a drainage tube stitched into his neck and instructions on how to care for him for the next few weeks.  Ok...so I will be the first to admit I am not one of  "those" dog owners.  I mean, I love our dogs, and both Murphy and Buddy are stellar dogs, but I'm not necessarily a super compassionate dog owner.  Had his vet bill been about $50 more, I would have chosen the $30 one-time shot and given him a "see ya on the flip side" high five.  But, I did my best, and followed all of the instructions about pain/antibiotics meds, hand feeding, hydrating, cleaning the wound, etc.  We both pulled through the traumatic event and Murphy is 100% back to his old self!

Sad dog waiting to see the vet

Cate went to the hospital with me.  After his initial exam, the vet asked me if I thought it was ok for Cate to be in the room when she started to show me Murphy's wounds.  Stupid question.  Cate was all up in Murphy's business with her nose in that wound asking about muscles and bones and if they would show her his brain.  I blame her infatuation with gross stuff to my obsession with Trauma: Life in the ER when she was an infant.  Many of her early months were spent lounging on my couch watching doctors save inner city gunshot victims! 

Anyhoo... the vet gave me two options:  Plan A was close to seven figures and involved a lot of tests and procedures.  I told her that was a no-go.  I think my exact words were "There is no way my husband is going to let me pay that.  Just do what  you can to get him well enough that I can take him home and we'll take it from there".  He passed all of her nerve and reflex tests so I was confident this was just a bad gash and he would survive.  Luckily, I was right.  I took Cate home because it was a school night and then I waited until they called at 1:30am to say he was awake from surgery and ready to go home.

This may be my favorite picture of all time.  When they handed him to me, he was still pretty drugged and completely stiff.  He felt like one of Cate's American Girl horses.  I laughed so hard in the vet lobby because I could not get over it.  His tongue was permanently hanging out and he looked drunk. I still laugh when I see this picture! Future yearbook material for sure :-)

The vet tech thought he looked funny too and added a Mohawk....bahahahaha

Yes, that's wound juice on my sheets.  (I'm picturing my BFF Jen puking as she looks at this picture).  Don't worry, those sheets have been burned

The morning after.  Epitome of a bad hair day.



Wearing Cate's old jammies so he can't scratch his wound

After a few weeks of requiring a ridiculous amount of attention, Murphy was ready to get his stitches out.  He is totally back to his "normal" self now and is rockin' some pretty cool scars. 

 70 years old and still going strong! RUFF!

well, that was stupid

Mid-February-ish, Jenna sent me a text telling me we should sign up for an 80-mile relay run on the Katy Trail scheduled for late August.  I was totally in.  August was like 6 months away and that was plenty of time to find motivation to actually start running again, train fairly hard, and be ready to run 13 miles. Right?  So, we found four other suckers friends who thought it sounded like a good idea at the time and signed up.  Actually, we asked three friends and I volunteered Vanessa and then told her after we signed her up. (I'm still waiting for a thank-you from her) Well, the race ended up selling out with a zillion teams, they held a drawing and only took 200 teams and ours was not one of them.  Awesome, right?!?!  I was pretty excited about this but kinda knew Jenna was never going to be ok about it, and therefore, I was not surprised when I received a text from her telling me she found a similar race scheduled for late May.  I guess the idea of an entire day out of the house and a new race t-shirt was enough to convince me that I would be ready to go by May...and the next thing I knew, Team WTF (where's the finish?) was born. 

 Spring is our busiest season and guess what?  I never found that motivation or made the time to train.  May 31 snuck up on me reeealll fast! The Wednesday before the race, WTF met at Si Senor to go over race plans. All of us were pretty nervous thinking about race day!

pre-race hydration!

 My game plan was to pray and rain dance like my life depended on it, but when Vanessa picked me up at 4:30am, the air was dry and muggy.  Damn.  It was go time!

 

The way the race works is the 80 miles are divided between six team members and each person runs three 3-7 mile legs and then the entire team runs the final mile together.  I chose to be runner #6 because it was "only" 12.65 miles which was less than almost everyone else and since I came up with the team name, I figured I got to pick first :)  Amy was our lead runner and as soon as she started, we jumped into the van and headed to where she would end and Joey would start. 

GO AMY!

Jenna was ready to go!

Looking fierce!

 The morning was really fun.  We were all fresh, still smelled good, and were having a great time.  We literally got lost trying to find every hand-off station but I don't think I've ever laughed that hard.  My first run wasn't too bad.  3.84 miles on a fairly shaded trail that was busy with bikers and ran parallel to the Missouri River.  From the parking lot to the trail was a mile walk and since we got lost, we had to hustle to the trail so Vanessa wasn't sitting there waiting for us, but it was scenic and definitely somewhere I will take Scott and the kids back to this summer.  I felt really good most of the run and when I finished I was really shocked proud that I could run that far without training.  Yay me!

Vanessa captured this great picture of me crossing my first finish line.  Oh wait, that's her finger!

And then it got hot.  And the car got smelly.  It was so humid and there was very little shade on the trails and we were all dying.  Sitting in a car for over four hours before the next run may seem great(!), but it wasn't.  We had to change clothes after every run and went through two cases of water.  I threw up six times.  The Katy Trail is beautiful and perfect for running and biking but the bathrooms located every 10+ miles did not have running water and were more like  glorified Johnny-On-The-Spots.  I figured we would stop at gas stations between each run, but we only saw like one the entire day.  I HATED not being able to wash my hands...especially since they were so sticky from sweat and eating oranges. 

 

My second run was the worst ever.  I did not see one person or car the entire 3.75 miles.  Just a few snakes.  There were only a few spots of shade and I was running with the sun in my face.  I actually felt like I was running on the surface of the sun.  Most of the trail was wide open and I could see nothing but the trail ahead for miles on end.  It was crazy lonely.  I hated it!

 

Trying to cool down.  Sue's van pretty much ran for 18 hours straight with A/C on full blast.

Official race photo.  I think Ness had a great time!

Waiting for our runners

Go Ness! Go Jenna! We decided to combine one short leg of the race to finish before dark.  The trails would have been too dark and scary to be out there once the sun set.  And besides, the brewery closed at 9pm and we were all dying for real food! Several teams did the same thing.

The final team mile was up three steep hills, a right turn, and then down three steep hills to the finish.  Stupidest thing ever.  Like 80 miles wasn't enough?  I think my legs hurt more from those hills than the 14.27 hours spent running and in the car.

half-way up first hill and still smiling.  Cussing a lot, but still smiling!

WE DID IT!

 After cheeseburgers and beer, we loaded up the van for the final time and made the 1.5 hour trek home.  4:30am-10:30pm = one long ass day, but I had the best time and am actually glad my rain dances failed!!!! 

official race photo-Amy, Joey, me, Vanessa, Jenna, Sue

 On Sunday, I could barely walk. My thighs hurt so bad but there was no time to rest...I had 3 baseball games to sit through.  In fact, our entire team had major plans for Sunday~~Amy was hosting a family party, Joey was celebrating her anniversary, Vanessa had to sit through 6 hours of dance recitals, Jenna had to work a 12-hour shift, and Sue had to take her daughter to Camp Ondessonk.  Today is Wednesday and I am finally feeling almost normal again. 

 

I'm really glad Jenna forced asked me to do this race (3 months earlier than expected) because a day away from my normal life was well worth the four days of extreme pain :)   18 hours to put my worries on the back burner and focus on me was just what I needed. I'm proud of myself for not stressing over the lack of training (even though it would have been really smart to train) and have the confidence to know I would do just fine.  It wasn't pretty but I did it!  The older I get the less I worry about things turning out exactly right.  I could have backed out because I wasn't perfectly prepared, but then I would have missed out on so much. Besides, it's not like we were going to win.  The 1st place team averaged 7:07 miles! I could have trained for years and we still wouldn't have been anywhere near that!  Sometimes you just gotta jump right in and hope for the best!

 Thank you ladies for a day of awesome fun!  I learned so much from our completely inappropriate conversations that still make me laugh out loud when I think about them.  I'm ready to start training for our next relay race....well, maybe ;)

Field Trip- Chapter Brady

Four kids = lots of class field trips each year.  Carter and his Sports Entertainment class went to Savvis Center, Busch Stadium and to lunch at The Precinct, Cate's class went to see a production of Cinderella, Scott joined Bennett's class for a trip to the zoo, and I attended Brady's trip to the Lewis & Clark museum, the Locks and Dam, and bird sanctuary.  I won. 

Any fieldtrip with a group of highschool boys...no thanks.
I do not enjoy theatre so Cate's trip was not very appealing to me.
6 classrooms worth of middle school kids at the zoo? Hell-to-the-no.

Which left Brady's trip.  I'm not a huge fan of history stuff (ie, old crap), even though my husband is a history teacher, but in my 12 years of school fieldtrips, this is one I have not been on and I was pretty excited about it. He only has 18 kids in his class and Mrs. V hooked me up with a group of the best behaved, which made the fieldtrip even more enjoyable :)  The museum was pretty cool and Brady really liked the tours of the cabin (no running water! no electricity! no super-comfy mattresses with down comforters!) and the little compound of buildings built to protect someone (I lost interest and have no idea who lived there).  He especially loved hearing about their gardens and, because of his immense gardening knowledge, was able identify the plants and answer the tour guides questions.  The community garden has provided my kids more real-life hands-on education than any class they could ever attend!

This would make a great United Colors of Benetton ad!  These three boys were fun to hang with all day....great kids! And isn't it weird to see one of my kids be the tallest in a group? Brady is one of the tallest in his grade. Crazy!!

 

I have listened to Brady read about Lewis & Clark the last month and was excited to see a keelboat! Finally figured out what the heck he was talking about ;)

The Locks and Dam was super cool.  I can't wait to take Scott there this summer...he will love it.  I had NO IDEA we would be taking an elevator to a bridge 80 feet up.  Watching 18 kids get on their tippy toes to try and hang over a bridge suspended over the Mississippi River is not my idea of fun.  I must have said "TWO FEET ON THE GROUND!!!!" at least a dozen times!

Brady and Carlie (or "Carls "as he calls her) have been BFF's since kindergarten.  She rocks!

The rush of water was dizzying and a little scary.  Also made me need to pee.

Our tour guide told us if you throw trash in the river in Minnesota, it will end up right there.  Gross, right?

Scott would not have survived this field trip.  He is deathly afraid of heights...throw in other people's kids and he would have gone crazy. 

We were lucky to see a barge pull in and pass through the locks.  Very cool process. The bonus was the barge workers throwing around some pretty rough language while they unlatched the hopper cars to fit in the locks. 'Um, helllooooo, we're up here.  Little kids on board!!!'

We headed to the bird sanctuary last and let the kids run off some energy on the walking trails through the reserve.  I didn't see one bird but the water banks were lined with dead Asian Carp.  Kinda smelly.  Really gross.  Boys loved it.

 And with that, fieldtrip season is over.  9 days of school left!!!