2 year old Soccer

 I put Asher in a soccer class last month. I thought it would be fun. For me, for him, who knows? Lets be honest, 2 is kind of young for a sports class. It was...chaos. But cute chaos, no? There were 5 kids in the class, 4 boys and 1 girl. The girl was really good at listening and following directions. The boys had their own agenda. It was a good opportunity to take lots of pictures. Maybe he'll be more ready next year. By day 3 of the class, he wanted to watch/play baseball. He is his father's son. Please follow along the excessive amount of pictures for the play by play of class that week.

 

 He improved his kicking skills!

 He found throwing the ball was a much more consistent way to make a goal.

 He sat a lot. They all did.

 

 He played with the cones. They all did.

 He needed his mom!

 He was cute!

 Lots of parental involvement. I was exhausted after every class. I think every parent was.

 He learned coordination in kicking over the cone with the ball (it was an exercise they practiced a lot).

 

 Bill made it to one class to see Asher play! Consequently, Asher was very distracted.

 He did some ball kissing? I like Bill's look on his face "what?".

He was tired of soccer, needed to be held.

All and all, it was a fun and exhausting week. We both napped well. Not to mention it was so humid the whole time. Ug, DC in the summer, it's the worst! Anyway, I love the bazillion pictures we got from it so I guess it was a success. And Asher does have some mad soccer skillz.

OBX 2012

We're taking a trip back to the great month of July. Our good friends J&P invited us to the outerbanks with them, so we packed up our matching SUV's and drove on down for a week of fun. These are mostly pictures of our kid, because that is who we take pictures of these days? Probably should have taken more pictures of adults. Oh well.
It was a great week of beach, food, and relaxing. I think Asher had a great week, he had a playmate to spend every waking second playing with. And they played really well together. Lots of cars and trains on this vacation. (almost every picture where there is a kid, there is also some kind of vehicle close by)

 

 

Muchas gracias, J&P for an awesome vacation!!!

Photo Dump - June

 Photo Dump. It has been a wild month. And since it has been month, I have a bit to catch up on and if I don't do it now, it won't happen.
We had a major storm here at the end of June which left us without power for about 24 hours. We were very lucky. Lots of people were without power for much longer - up to a week and it was blisteringly hot and humid. Think 106 and no power. And with humidity, shade isn't cool. It made for a miserable 24 hours. But really, I can't complain. Though we got power back on quickly, we didn't have internet for over a week. Who knew life could be so hard without internet. I had no idea what to do with my billions of eggplants and zucchini. And thus, no blogging. So here is a major catch up. I'm into instagram lately, so excuse my funky filters, but I like them.

 

 This boy loves his kung fu panda hat. He wore it all day long. Had to practice for the big SF Giants game.

 Happy anniversary to us (next month). We bought ourselves a new lens! I like it. It makes our camera look so beefy.

 Lego architecture exhibit. Pretty cool, and you can build stuff too. Bill and Asher were in heaven. Until Asher got bored, which was shortly after this picture. In due time, Bill. Be patient.

 I couldn't help myself, I had to buy Asher these euro swim trunks. I see why mothers eat their babies. He is delicious!

 Cousin's birthday!

Asher's cars had been disappearing one by one. We opened up the sub-woofer and their was a parking lot of cars in there.

 Bill has been playing on the firms softball team. All the firm league games are played on the Ellipse (behind the White House) pretty cool.

 Firm league baseball. Yep, we live in kind of a cool place.

 More baseball. We went to the Giants/Nationals game. Again, was blisteringly hot. So hot Asher could only wear his hat while Sandoval -the Kung Fu Panda, hit. We think Asher was lucky, because Sandoval hit a homer. We left before the 7th. We spent a small fortune on beverages trying to keep cool and still couldn't cool down.

 4th of July fireworks were view on the roof of Bill's firm. We were just off capital hill, so we could hear the show they were putting on at the Capitol and see all the fireworks going off down by the Washington Monument- as seen in the background.

 Another game, but with awesome firm seats. 2nd row behind the Nationals dugout. Who knew professional baseball players were so big? And, it was blisteringly hot. Again. But shade kicked in and we were able to make it through the entire game. Our friend Jeff, who came with us, was sitting next to Ben Bernanke - the Chairman of the Fed.

Fini!

My Tri

 Warning: this post will probably only be interesting to me. It is a lot of me.  I'm writing this down so that I don't forget how the race went and all the mistakes I made. I figure if I write them down, there is no way I can forget them for future races.

I can't believe it is June. In January, after years of harassing from Bill, I signed up for a triathlon. He has been bugging me to do one for a long time and I'm not sure why I haven't. I guess I've just felt the need to get my running under control, then when I was somewhat satisfied with that, then I could try some other things. So in January, I signed up for a June triathlon, that way, I could get some good spring road races in before I focused on 2 other events.
I was really nervous going into this. There was always guilt about not getting in more workouts. I felt like my scheduled bike rides got rained out every week, fitting in two a days was hard (or I was lazy), Bill tends to work a little bit later with this new job, yada yada yada. I'm full of excuses. Plus I always felt like my running was getting the shaft, which made me grumpy since I like running the most.
I felt pretty confident in my swimming and running skills. My biking is weak. I'm the first to admit it. I hate riding, I don't hate it, it just stresses me out. There is way less control, you could get a flat tire, gears aren't shifting properly, cars don't share the road, etc.  But I was as ready as I was going to get. And the morning of the race, after looking at the swim course, I was little panicked. It was 1,000 meter swim and it was really far out - in the Chesapeake Bay (waves and salt water). But I got over it all and it was really fun.
Anyway, after the first 200 meters of the swim, I felt like I got in a good rhythm and didn't feel like there was too much jostling for position and hung on for the ride. I came out of the water in 11th place (of the women's wave) and was happy with the results, especially since the 10 people in front of me were all within less than a minute.

 My transition was super slow, I fumbled around, I lost my Gu that I shoved in my pocket, and turned around to place my wetsuit out of the way. It was ridiculous. Lost lots of time on the transition.
 

  And I lost even more time on the bike. I know that cycling is my weak event. But everyone was passing me left and right and they were all on awesome/expensive triathlon bikes. I'm sure they already had a lot of skill, but I think having an amazing bike could have helped me, even just a little bit. I still would have been destroyed but maybe not quite as bad. The leading women were about 10 minutes ahead of me. And the Athena's were flying past me too.
 

Above, the home stretch, the announcer called my name and said I was looking strong - thus I gave the pose which Bill managed to catch. Below, though I dislike posting pictures of my backside, Bill wanted to document how salty I was - literally, not figuratively.

 Luckily, I'm a runner. I had yet another ridiculously slow transition from bike to run. But overall, I was feeling fine. I grabbed a Gu and my water bottle because it was getting hot and that salt water made me really thirsty. In the end, yes, it was one more thing to haul along, but I think it paid off not having to grab water at an aid station. Anyway, I flew through the 2 lap 5 miles course. Felt great and was surprised at the pace that I was able to hold through the whole thing. Passed a lot of people and made up some time.

 My run time was number 1 of all the women, by about a minute. So I guess I learned that my running wasn't suffering by having to split up my workout between swimming and biking.

Anyway, the race was awesome. Loved the distance, it was between a sprint and an olympic - with the distances being 1,000 meter swim, 20 mile bike, and 5 mile run. Bill loved it way more than watching road races. And, he was a great support. I spotted him a couple times running around to different locations with Asher in one arm and the camera in the other. Asher was a good sport kind of. He woke up at 5:30 and didn't fall asleep the night before until around 11pm. So by 9:30 after the race, he was just crying. A sippy cup full of sprite can only do so much. I definitely think I'll have to do more tris. Lots of fun and a good little challenge.

North Face Endurance Challenge

 Tis racing season. I love it. My latest race this year has been the North Face Endurance Challenge- marathon relay. Can't think of a better way to run a marathon than in a relay. Best. idea. ever.
I had an awesome team that consisted of my sister and two good friends from church - Lindsay and Maren.  I had zero expectations for the race since it was a trail run. I usually hate trail running. It's hard and trails (non-paved) are few and far between in the greater DC area. But we all had a great time. I would definitely do it again. And of the 3 teams participating in our ward, our team won. Always an added perk. We didn't win the whole race, but we were all happy with our individual portions. Anyway, somehow I didn't manage to get a picture of our whole team, so the three of us will have to suffice. Above it the start/finish line. Sister started the race and I ended it.

 Did I mention that it rained like crazy the day before the race? The trails were a slick muddy mess. And the last 400 meters leading up to the finish line was basically a wading pool. So by the time you finish the race, you are spattered with mud and soaking wet.

It really was a perfect day. Great company, great course, smaller race, and perfect temperature with very low humidity.  All in all, it was a success!