Spokane2Sandpont 2011

First things first, We are AWESOME!
I'm sure you already knew that but I needed to be positive. Or team totally rocked it out and we were the Co-Ed team champs! Third over all! Once again we separated the teams into boys van, girls van. Crucial when driving for 24 hours straight and not sleeping. We don't want to share with them and they don't want to share with us. The guys ran first this year and got us off to a great start. They also all decided to grow mustaches, totally gross but funny. Seans was way to creepy and huge though.

Mario and Luigi. (random)
Borat Mankini. (costume contest)

While we waited in the park for the boys van the girls freehanded a t-Rex body tattoo on me for the tattoo leg. Pretty amazing the just busted it out with a fruit snacks box as a guide. Nice work Katie, Grace, and Caroline.

Ladies turn to run! The guys cheered us on for a few until it was time for them to go and rest. Seriously look at Seans stach sick.

We run this race not only because we think it's crazy fun, we also run it in memory of our friend Erik, he also loved to do crazy things with running and would love to do relays. Mariza stopped for a moment to say hi to him as she crossed the Bowl and Pitcher bridge. Us girls also posed with the memorial that his name is on in Mission Park.

My turn to run finally. Being the 12th runner is fun but it takes forever for your turn. I was quite excited to get it done and get out of my leotard, it was 1 size to small ouch.

Then the boys got the camera and took creepy pics of their nasty mustaches. Sean, Jason, Rick, Eric, Chris, Blake in all their Glory.

I had quite the crash on my second leg. Good thing I only had half a mile to go when it happened. It felt way worse then it looks, then a few days later it got pretty scabby.

The final leg is when we start to go a little crazy. No sleep and too much 5 hour energy make us all a little loopy. The other teams didn't know what to do with us.

I was the last leg this year. That's a hard leg, waiting so many hours to get in 3 runs. It felt like less rest because you wake up when your team does but you still have to wait for 5 runners to go. But finally I got to run it in!

TEAM ERIKSAUROUS REX ROCKET IT THIS YEAR! GO TEAM!

Kids At The Park

The kids have been having a fun summer going to the park and playing. It's so nice because this year they can both just explore and play.

New Patio

So it turns out that Sean and I are not great with landscaping. There is just not enough time in the day, and it's not a top priority. So to solve that problem we decided to make our large flowerbed in the front of the house into a patio. Lucky for us we had some slate in a corner of the backyard that was just wasting space and it was almost enough for the area. We solved that problem by digging up the little path in the front yard and we were golden. We spent a few late nights and had a little help from Mae but we got it done. All that's left is the mossy ground cover to secure the stones.

It was basically a life size puzzle. Even Mae got into figuring out where to place the pieces.

Since we did the work by nightfall the camping lantern was awesome. It provided plenty of light to work by.

It was all laid down but it needed to be tweaked just a bit. So we broke a few stones to give it some character.

Done! Sean just needed to get the sand and fill in the cracks.

Snails

Maes cousins found some snails at the lake and she loved playing with them. After they took off she played with them for a long time. I was so surprised that she liked them as much as she did. She tends to be leary of things of that nature.

Escargot anyone?

The Road Back Home

The last leg of the journey arrived and not a moment to soon. The breaking point had been reached by the kids and I and we still had 22 hours to drive home. It doesn't matter it the vacation is 3 days or 14 days by the last day I'm just ready to get home. But we still made the most of the ride home. It was just Sean and I driving home. The other car with Jim, Leslee, Mary and Quinn had another few days of road trip and national parks to hit up.
So we got the kids loaded up and headed out on our journey.

In Antinito we swung by the Indiana Jones house from one of the movies and snapped a photo.

The kids in the begining happy and napping. Excited to be heading home to their own beds. We stoped by a cool park in one of the towns a few hours from Antinito, the kids had so much fun getting to stretch their legs before the long ride ahead.

The park had some of the coolest old toys mixed with new. It was bringing back some fun old memories!

Mae and Owen then practiced their creek jumping. Mae loved the little creek running on the edge of the park. It made me think of growing up again. Walla Walla has little creeks like that and I loved them as a kid.

After that little breather we had to get going hard again. Sean drove us all the way to Grand Junction where I took over. We had a few stops on the way to change poor Owens poop, his tummy was not happy with him from traveling. Right before Grand Junction our car did hit a milestone of 100,000 miles. Woop woop.

100,001 the same number backwards and forwards (april pointed that out). Note the check engine light is on too. Makes me laugh because the car was running great. That is until our AC went out on Utah with temps of 99 degrees. It was at that point that we decided to drive throughout the night. We also just wanted the kids to sleep there were a few meltdowns that put us over the edge.

Driving through the night wasn't bad until about 4am and I needed the sun to come out. My eyes were so tired of the dark. It finally came over the horizon and Sean and I had to switch about every 1 1/2 hours, we also did a few Chinese fire drills when we got into Idaho. But we made it home safe and sound after 24 hours on the road including stops. Tuesday was spent laying around and watching bad movies all day. It was wonderful.