wrapping up the weekend

Hello friends. Boy have we been busy the last few days. After our big day in the city on Friday, we went to a summer solstice dinner party at my friend Erin's that night(what is a summer solstice party you ask? nothing more than an excuse to have some friends and their kids over for dinner and backyard fun), then we had Rebekah and her family over on Saturday to go swimming and for lunch (and to celebrate her son's 1st birthday!) and then I spent all Saturday afternoon packing the copious amounts of food, clothing, and race gear that it takes to get the four of us through one of my triathlons. Plus, I had to prepare the traditional pre-triathlon meal of bbq chicken pizza. Pure energy food, my friends. Anyway, the kids were pretty wiped out from the go-go lifestyle of Friday and Saturday, and then we had to wake the poor guys up around 5:30am on Sunday to leave for my race.

Speaking of my race, it was really, really fun. I thought there were some organizational issues with the race - the race organizers were really not on the ball with simple things like say, working microphones, or marking the entrances and exits for the various transitions between race portions, but, it was still a really fun course and a nice day. The participants were super competitive as well - nice and friendly - but you could tell that people were into it. I finished 4th in my age group, so I was pretty psyched on that. I was also the 15th woman to finish out of around 240, so I felt like that was pretty respectable. Probably the best part for me was that I had the 2nd best bike time and the 2nd best run time in my age group. Well, you might be saying, how did you not get 2nd overall? Uh yea. The swim is not exactly my strong suit, as I tend to finish exactly in the middle of the pack every time. This was a crazy swim too, as they put something around 100 people in each start wave... which means that it was super crowded; I never got any open water to get into a groove with my stroke; and I got my goggles knocked off and hit and kicked and elbowed more times than I could count. Now, usually that sort of shenigans happens at the beginning of the swim but after a couple minutes, the crowd thins out. Not so this time - there were just so many people that it literally never thinned out until right as I got back to the shore. On the bright side, I did this course last year, and my swim time was about 1:15 better this year... so I am slowly getting better!! If I could have swam that course alone, I know I could have done it several minutes faster... but I guess dealing with the crowds is part of the competition! Anyway, I also knocked around 4 or 5 minutes off of my bike time from last year and 2 minutes off my run. So that was cool to see that I've improved. And may I just say that my new bike was amazing!!! It was so much fun to ride that I literally couldn't stop smiling the whole time! Well, okay, I probably stopped smiling briefly for some of the climbs. Anyway, I felt really, really good on the bike portion. Overall, a great day. Now, I am just trying to decide which race to do in July.

The kids both instaneously fell asleep on the car ride home, and I was pretty much toast myself. In fact, I'm still kind of beat today... not so much from the race as just not getting enough sleep in general lately. This morning was my big rest day to sleep in (I was hoping for 7am) and not get up and work out. Unfortunately, around 6:30am, Parker started calling for me, and I was greeted with one of those scenes taken from the file, "things no one tells you before you had kids". Parker's poopy diaper had come up the back and on the outside of his pj shirt and shorts. Not only that, he had apparently sat back against a wall and a windowsill, covering them in poop, and also left a trail of poop tidbits between them. What a way to start the morning! And of course, to disrobe said poopy pj's from his body entails smearing poop over much of his legs and feet; there's really just no way around it. So, yea. Chad was leaving for work, so I was on my own to get Parker bathed, start up some laundry and scrub his room down. Thank goodness Brandon is a good listener in these situations and knows to do things like get me a washcloth and not get near his brother's room. Might I also had that we had a similar situation on Saturday, except that time the poop had come out of the side legs and smeared on his sheets, blanket and nightstand. I have been doing ALOT of laundry the last couple days.

And on that note, I leave you for today.