Autumn 2018

So many great things make up fall.

At least I believe they are great things. 

Maybe not all involved agree. Maybe somebody is just darn tired of being asked if he has a Target Red Card.  If not why he "doesn't he want to save 3%? Today?"Truth: I'd pay 4% more if you'd quit asking!

Fall is about flannel shirts, cowboy boots, kittens, and snakes? Yes snakes!

For the record ...my father taught me never to be afraid of a garter snake and to pick them up by the neck. While I applaud Annika's courage, she is not executing proper snake handling technique. Annika's Father told her it was ok to hold the snake by the tail. As a native of Northern California what does he really know about snakes? Last I knew the only snakes he had slithering around his back yard were rattlesnakes. I doubt he and his friends went about catching them and building condominiums for snakes and frogs. Did they? It wasn't until years after the fact I found out my friend Kristi's mother was letting the snakes out of their condominiums. I'm still a little offended. Those were not low income apartments we built. They were luxury condominiums.

Annika would really rather have a kitten. Poor kid. She gets to keep neither the horse, the kitten , nor the snake.

At least she has plenty to keep her busy and entertained. College hockey games and meeting Wildcat Willie are always a hit.

Isaac still likes to be pushed around town in his Chariot  for Wednesday's infamous Muffin Run. Someday both of my kids will be in school and after the run I might actually be able to eat a muffin. Actually I lied when both of my kids are in school after the Muffin Run I'll likely run another lap or ride my bike, or go to yoga, or nordic ski, or clean my house when both kids are in school.....No actually that would be a lie. I won't clean my house who am I kidding. 

Annika stayed true to her furry animal theme. If you are going to trick or treat in the U.P. don't be a fool and pick a warm costume. 

 
Isaac wanted to be Isaac for Halloween. He ended up wearing several different recycled/reused costumes for multiple events. Halloween is a season of events now. I mean a full month of it.

 I like the costumes....but can we just stop giving kids sticky shi* with sugar and dye? Every fall goes something like this . Take Annika to her well child. Spend most of the appointment talking about avoiding food bad for teeth and eating healthy food. Listen to why parent should never bribe kids with food. Then I spend the entire next month being bombarded with teeth rotting diabetes causing candy. One evening of candy is enough.

   Schools do not need to dismiss at 10:40 a.m. on Halloween. Especially since multiple school and community Halloween parties have taken place every weekend in October. Although it is kind, teachers do not need to send home students with candy. Although it is kind, the library does not need to give out candy on Halloween day.  Enough of candy.  I get it. Kids love candy and they need to be kids. However it's a special kind of Hell parents live through when children manage to produce a previously unknown goodie bag during the car ride home from a community party. Almost always it is filled with a mixture of toxic plastic toys from the dollar store and candy. The toys are usually a combination of the following: some sort of a sticky slime, a bouncy ball about the right size to lodge in an airway of a kid old enough to know better but drunk on sugar and dye, something made of plastic that makes noise a lot of it. There is also sticky candy. The bummer about this candy is it's not only bad for the teeth but it tastes bad too. As a parent who may have to confiscate said candy it is not worth eating. Often it is so crappy and the kids are so overdone the said candy gets spat out into family vehicle. For the sake of this blog we can assume family vehicle is a mini van. Remnants are found for months. Of course one wouldn't knowingly allow their children to open said goodie bags unsupervised. It always works that children get more goodie bags than one parent is aware of.  I get it I have handed out sweets and treats at a party. It is so fun to give. It just feels good to be generous. When one solo parents at a Halloween party said goodie bag is likely to be produced while Solo Parent driving home. Solo parent will likely be navigating a round about with high volumes of traffic.The noise makers will be found and utilized . The bouncy ball will hopefully be dropped and lost even if it means tears. There will be tears. There are always tears after a big party with one parent and lots of music and sugar.  Upon arrival home Solo Parent will perform damage control cleaning operations. Solo Parent will hope noise makers break soon before she smashes them. The noise makers will not break. There will be one really cool toy in the goodie bag. It won't actually be that cool because it will be a knock off. It will be made really, really cheaply. It will break. There will be tears. Solo Parent will stop wiping sticky spots to wipe tears. Some sticky spots will be forgotten until the next day. Pressed Shirt Partner Parent will note the sticky spots upon loading clean and polished children in mini van for church. Pressed Shirt Partner will comment that Solo Halloween Party Parent should not allow children to eat in mini -van. Pressed Shirt Partner Parent will comment how no food is allowed to be consumed in Pressed Shirt Partner's self driving Tesla.

 Homemade masks rock.  They are sticky but chipmunks and raccoons are pretty cute.

 Racoons and puppy dogs are cute too.

 Elmo is pretty lovable. It's a bit harder to get stuck hard candy out of Elmo's fur. Seriously do kids just lick and stick Dum Dum suckers on purpose? Is that a new trend?

Well never a dull moment!

Happy Fall!

Back to School 2018

1st Day of School. Uniforms pressed and polished for the first grader. For Isaac the preschooler...we'll just settle for pants. Actually Isaac won't wear pants.  He won't wear shoes. He won't wear long sleeve t-shirts or a coat. It's shorts, plaid preferably, shorts sleeves and sandals. It's going to be a long cold winter for Isaac. One would think he was born in California. 

Annika plans ahead and rocks her school uniform with her trail running shoes.When  schools out adventure is just around the corner.

We've taken to afternoon trail runs/rides. Isaac rails the single track on his bike and Annika loves to run ahead.

Bancroft Furnace. Proof there was plenty of civilized life before our time here.

And proof that Mother Nature will take back her forest pretty darn quickly.

Nice place to have a snack.

With a new school year comes a birthday. 7. Already. Seems just the other day I was riding bikes with my gal pals on the PCH looking like I probably should have gone one size up in my cycling jersey. Seriously. How does that happen? 

The passing of the 7 years I mean. We all know how cycling jerseys get too small .. too much chewing not enough turning of the pedals.

For birthday #7 Annika got her ears pierced. I actually got my ears re-pierced too so we could be twinges. I hadn't worn earring in so long the holes closed. If anybody knows please tell me how not to loose ear ring backs while swimming or removing swim caps. I'm all ears for suggestions.

One event

With so many fun things to do in summer I decided to pick one event to participate in. It's a hard choice when there is just so much to do and summer is so short.

This summer I chose the Marquette Trails 50 ultra marathon. For clarification, I did the 50 k not 50 miles. The trails and training are literally ride outside my door. Also the race itself starts at 5:30 a.m. which mimics my summer training schedule. On weekends there are group training runs at ...oh dark thirty as well. 4 hour training blocks are a big ask  when you have a family but much more tolerable if you are home from said 4 hour trail run by 9:30 a.m. (and have an outdoor shower). Lake Superior will always be ready to provide you with an ice bath. 

I loved the training.

It's a pretty magical adventure.

 As  I approached "Top of The World" I heard a banjo playing and hoped it was my family. I hadn't seen them yet. Of course it was my family. My banjo playing husband, my mother in law, and my two children .

 

Of course one of my children was up in a tree and needed help down. Of course, I needed to lift said child out of tree for a hug before carrying on with my race. I told them my knee that had been bothering me was going to hold up but I was tired and struggling because I ran too hard in the beginning.  They told me I was in 4th place. My mother in law told me I looked better than a lot of people. She has watched countless endurance events and is an excellent judge of who is going to crump. The moment I told them I was struggling and why I  was struggling was magic. It was like a weight vest was lifted off me. Suddenly I had spring in my step again. I actually started to run well again. I enjoy running well ever so much (especially on race day :) I have actual Garmin data to prove it. Soon I was on my way up the final peak called Hogsback. One of my friends was working the course and commented that I had wounds on my legs. I didn't really pay much attention. I was just happy my knee didn't hurt and was trying to keep it that way. I actually sat on my butt on scooched down several spots on Hogsback not fully trusting my quads to hold me 45 k into the day. I finished all of the hard work and saw my family again at a road crossing.

 There was a grinding climb up a fireroad that I struggled to run on shorter runs in training. I fully expected to walk it on race day but Annika ran out after me and ran me up the hill. In fairness, Isaac attempted to run with us, but he made a poor choice in footwear and paid the price. 

Annika started shouting at me that my legs were bleeding. She said I should stop running.  I smiled at her said something like "It doesn't matter my knee is holding up just fine and there is only 1.5 miles

 to go". We reconnected in the last half mile of the course. 

 

Into the finish shoot with Isaac in hot pursuit. 

 I told Annika if she wanted to beat me it was her chance. She wasted no time.  The above pictures shows her turning up the heat. It also show one of my two leg wounds. 

I have a lot of ideas regarding why I chafed and wounded so badly..believe me I will go to great efforts so it never happens again. 


The finish felt like the perfect venue for a summer blue grass music festival. There was a band, food and lots of my favorite people. I wanted to hang out in the grass  all day and just soak up the goodness. Medical came over to me and asked if I wanted my wounds dressed. Tim said I needed to go home before I got shocky.  Shortly after finishing I was presented with an award for the fastest combined women's time between the trail ultra marathon and the ski marathon.


I put on  a pretty good show for my mother in law by additionally collecting awards for 4th overall female and first in age. People kept handing me awards and stopping me for pictures and greeting. Everybody was nice, most everybody new my name. It is just a different sort of experience than what an age group athlete experiences at races like Ironman or the Boston Marathon. I'm extremely grateful to have had all of these experiences. As fas as the combined award goes,  I'm not sure how many women actually did both events. I think not many but I feel honored to accept it.  I love being a multisport athlete. I love all of the sports this area has to offer. I really appreciate the race directors taking time to create a division for people like me who compete in multiple sports. I learned a lot about ultramarathon running and would like to apply the knowledge. I think ultramarathons are not unlike Ironman or really any distance triathlon where it really take few attempts to work the kinks out.

I can't take all the credit for racing. Annika and Isaac raced too.

Annika had much the same issue as me. She went out too fast. She didn't have the experience I did to own it. She panicked and tried to turn around and run back to the start.

 It was a one mile race and she was more than 1/2 mile in. I had to get forceful and say there is no way you are running backwards on the course. I think a few parents heard me and thought "wow that woman pushes her desire to compete onto her child. " That was not the issue. Isaac came up on Annika and she started running again.

She took a drink from her water bottle ...because Mom carries a water bottle on her 20 mile runs Annika carried one too and showed Isaac who was boss.

Isaac was actually looking for his BFF he believed was ahead. He put down a pretty impressive time.

After the race it was decided Annika would take a break from running competitively  (aka fun run races) and run for fun. Isaac decided he would resume riding his scoot bike and  pretending it was a dirt bike. In truth he was pretty annoyed he couldn't ride his scoot bike aka dirt bike in the race. 

Special thanks to my husband and mother in law who not only watched kids while I raced but locked small children out of my bedroom for a couple hours post event so I could rest and dress my wounds.