Friday, August 30, 2013

It's Official!!

We are ultra runners!!  Ok, so I know having your name in Ultrarunning Magazine in no way makes you  an ultra runner or not an ultra runner.....but it's pretty sweet to see your name in there for the first time!
Check out #44 and #45! (click to make it a bit bigger)



Not to mention we knew Allen before he turned into a famous, published writer : )  Allen, aka NTL, or NotTHATLucas, will soon have to change his name to "YesIamTHATLucas" he's getting so famous!  Kudos for having another article published.  We are all waiting for your first "Tales From the Trails" book, you've got some whoppers to share!!  The cover photo could be the picture of the ladies helping put your comfy pants on after the 12 hour : )

NTL fueling at Brazen's Dirty Dozen 12 hour run....that is how you get 40.4 miles done, people!

Shoot, the list of all the things you have used as fuel would be entertaining enough that I'd buy the book!

No, really though, congrats on the article and thanks for the heads up that the results were in Septembers issue!

In other exciting news....Emma is running her first 13.1 on September 7th at Brazen's Trail Hog! I'm super excited to run it with her and fully expect her to leave me in a cloud of dust!

Thursday, August 29, 2013

First Day of School, 2013

 Oatmeal and berries, a great way to start Middle School. She looks too old in that pic.  Both girls had very specific hairdos that they wanted. It sounded something like this - Sophie-"I want it down and curly and pulled back on both sides." Emma-"I want it to have a bump in the front, small braids on the sides that go back into the pony tail, which should be straightened so it's not frizzy looking."  Girls.  Myles just said he didnt' want it spiked.
 Sophie was excited one minute, and shaking with fear the next...wasn't sure how the morning would go once we actually got to the school.  But, she loved her outfit!

 My handsome boy, off to first grade.

 I should probably say that nobody wet themselves, I had just watered my plants.
 They also all loved their backpacks. Each is such a good representation of the kid wearing it.  Em's is a Van's bag from the skate shop, Myles is self explanatory if you've seen Monsters, Inc., and Sophie's has glitter and lights up.
 Walking to school for the first time! It was so nice!
 Myles meeting his teacher and handing him a letter explaining certain things, but the teacher greeted Myles with a "Myles, I just read all about you, we are going to have a great year!" and handed the letter back to Brian. (It was a print out of an email I sent to both Myles and Sophie's teacher).  Myles loves his teacher already.

 Sophie, this girl kills me, she is so like me in some ways.  She was about to have a nervous breakdown at this point, whimpering and saying she didn't know what to do.  We literally had to shove her through the door to get her to go in the room.  Below, she actually sits next to the boy in the yellow in the bottom right of the picture,  but she's standing over by the California state map....the kids couldnt' figure out the seating chart.
 I had told her if she has a hard day, when she walks outside to stop and take a deep breath and look at the mountain, we'd be up there waving at her.  For perspective, both the middle school and the elementary school sit at the bottom of the back of the mountain, near the Mitchel Canyon entrance.

 Parent's breakfast at the elementary school, Em wanted a cup of coffee to drink as we walked her over to the middle school.  She starts 20 minutes later then Sophie and Myles.
 We just cross the street and walk down about a block and we are at the middle school.


 She's just about to walk in the door in the above picture.  Her schedule is crazy compared to what I had at her age. It's different on Wednesdays because of the shorter day, and she has certain classes on Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and different classes on Tues and Thurs.  So basically her first day was a short day, so today her classes will be in a different order, at different times....and she panicked as we were walking to school because she forgot her schedule today.  Thankfully for her, I have been more worried about it than she was, so I had it memorized and wrote it out for her.
 After we got the kids off to school, we got up on the mountain. Sadly, it was only a half day, so we only had until noon to run. We drove to the top and parked, did the little loop that goes around the summit, then headed down Summit Trail to North Peak.  I knew climbing back up to the summit was going to be rough because it was super hot already and not much, if any, shade, so I turned around and started the climb, while Brian continued to the summit of North Peak, then down that summit and up the main summit. Then he ran down the fun single track of Juniper trail to the campground where I picked him up.  Here's his recap of the morning.

So at the end of the day, all the kids had great first days. They loved all their teachers and made friends already.  Em loves everything about Middle School.  She loved all her teachers also, and changing classes and eating outside in the courtyard and PE and....pretty much everything.  I'm looking forward to a great year!

Wednesday, August 28, 2013

First Day of School!!!! Woo Hoo!!!


 How did you celebrate your kids going back to school?   When you're a stay at home mother of 3.....you celebrate hard!





I had a great morning on the mountain with Brian. This was climbing Devil's Pulpit just below the summit of Diablo. 

I'll have a legit first day o school post up tomorrow.

Tuesday, August 27, 2013

Night Hikes and Things

The kids recently received headlamps as a gift, something they had wanted for ages.  Of course, when mom and dad said "ok, kids, lets go hike!", at 9 at night, they all freaked out and got scared.  But, we made them go, and they had a blast.  Here's a few pics, but it's hard to get good pics in the dark-



 They had a great time! Who knew toads came out at night?? Not us.  The kids slept out in the tent Friday - Sunday night, their last weekend before school starts (tomorrow). My big fear about this is that a car will come through the fence behind our house. There's a busy intersection, in fact in the picture you can see the green light from the traffic signal. A total "mom" fear.  Guess what?? At 11pm we are all in bed w/the kids in the tent and what do I hear - screeching tires and crunching metal.  There was a pretty bad accident at the intersection directly behind our fence, directly behind the tent.  But all cars stayed on the other side of the fence, thank goodness. The kids slept through the entire thing, even all the flashing lights.

 Above is fishing at Lake Anza, Below is an early Sunday morning run on the Mt w/Brian.







 And these are from today, our last day of summer break!  Middle School starts tomorrow for Em, and a new school for Sophie and Myles!!




How anything lives in that water, I do not know, but it was full of turtles and fish today.

Brian took tomorrow off to help send the kiddos off to start the new school year....and then, he and I are heading up the mountain to find a trail called Prospector's Gap.  Should be fun!

Monday, August 26, 2013

Tilden

Friday of last week I was feeling brave.  By brave I mean I was willing to drive in the Berkeley Hills to get to Tilden Regional Park.  I don't like heights, steep curvy roads, or not really knowing where I'm going.  Why I thought this outing was a good idea I don't know since it threw all those fears into one basket.  I do know that when I have a wave of "lets go do this" -ness, I just go with it.  Lots of adventures happen this way, and fears are overcome, and comfort zones widen.  Friday proved to be no different. 

What you see in the below picture is the Botanical Garden.   It's huge, and beautiful, and the kids loved it! They took their time exploring in there for over an hour and read nearly every label of every plant.  The first batch of pictures below are all from the garden-

 Lots of Redwoods















After the garden, we headed out on our hike.  We hiked through the woods down to Lake Anza, around the lake, and back up to the Anza building where we had parked.  This next batch is from the hike-



 











 
 After we made our way back to the car, we headed out to find a picnic spot.  Along South Park Drive there is a series of picnic areas, so we just drove until we saw a spot that looked cozy, and then had a nice picnic!



That was our cozy picnic table. We had a great day, totally relaxed and wandering.  I originally had no intention of going to the garden, but the kids really loved it in there, so we lingered for a long time.   The hike down to the lake resulted in us going back the next afternoon w/Brian for some fishing and more relaxation (no fish), and another picnic.  It was a great hike, and I can see running up there once school starts....in 2 days.  But the day was not over.....at 9 that night we headed out with the kids on another hike so that they could test out their new head lamps!  My next post will have pictures from that outing.