Adventure Race

So, those of you that know me know that I used to do a lot of adventure racing before Jaden was born. It's physically taxing, but lots of fun. My favorite part is the orienteering. I love the thought of find a small flag in the middle of the woods with only a compass and a map!

This past weekend I did a sprint adventure race and Jeremy was my partner. It's the first time we've ever raced together with no one else on our team. We were either going to have a blast or kill each other before the race was over. As it turns out, we didn't need a divorce lawyer. lol! We had so much fun and even though i was slow as heck from being out of shape, we still had a great time.

It started with a run around the park to collect three CPs. This was a good way to spread out the field. Then it was kayaking for 3 more CPs. We did awesome in kayaking. It's our strongest area. Since it is our own kayak and we are used to paddling together we kicked some bum. I think we passed about 8 teams on the kayak and 3 of them jokingly asked us for a tow! However, that thrill was very short lived. Next was biking, but on the hiking trial since there are no real bike trails there. And there were LOTs of ROCKs. I think I hiked-my-bike more than I rode it. Jeremy could have completed this part in probably HALF the time it took us but that's where me being out of shape really showed. It was too hard for me to move quickly over the rocks with my bike. I was so SLOW. We got passed by all the teams we passed kayaking and them some! It was a beating and I was hating it by the end. Poor Jeremy had to drag me around. :o) Then the last thing was hiking for the last 5 CPs back out on the hiking trail which was a lot more fun with my running shoes on. We hiked around and had fun finding the checkpoints on our own. We did really well finding them. Only one point we second guessed ourselves and wasted about 15 minutes, but as it turns out we were on the right track before we second guessed ourselves.

I think we finished around 16th out of 21 coed teams. Oh well, our biggest problem was speed and I need to be in shape to get better at that, but it was definitely fun being out there again!

Aggies in the making

Jeremy, Jaden, our nephew, Austin, and myself visited the campus of Texas A&M the weekend of March 29th. We took our dogs and Lisa Ward and I performed demos on behalf of the frisbee club for the College of Veterinary Medicine's Open House. After the demos' we toured the campus and did a little shopping for some Aggie t-shirts. Here is a picture of Jaden and his cousin, Austin. They look so cool!

Jaden's Remote Control Car

Jeremy's brother's family bought Jaden a remote control car for Christmas. Unfortunately it had a defect and had to be returned. He received a new one in the mail on March 20 and was immediately fascinated with the remote...not necessarily the actual car itself. The remote has two musical tunes on it and Jaden immediately danced to them over and over and over. You might enjoy some of his moves...

Jojo Sleeping Position #6

In The News...

Click on this link and keep hitting the "refresh" button until you see a familiar face rotate to the top!

http://www.ufoworldcup.org/

Picture from opening day of the Denton Dog Park:

http://www.cityofdenton.com/pages/dogpark.cfm

Jaden the Painter

Here's a picture of Jaden painting his boat that we made yesterday courtesy of Home Depot's home project kits for kids.

SNOW!

On March 6th we had what is probably our last cold front of the winter blow through. With it came sleet and snow for all of North Texas. Dallas was right on the border of sleet vs snow. At our home in Carrollton we got a little snow and a lot of sleet. But further up north in Pilot Point where our property is at we received 9 inches of glorious snow. It was so beautiful, but we weren't there to enjoy it. No making snowmen for us. :o( Our neighbor, Jason, was kind enough to snap some pics for us.

Jojo Sleeping Position #5

The Flock Revealed

Okay, so apparently some of you know what it means to be flocked! We had no clue. Its when someone secretly sticks pink flamingos in your yard in the middle of the night so you wake up to a flock of flamingos hanging out in your yard! This was a fundraiser for the local high school "after prom party". You can have someone's house "flocked" for a small fee. Our friend, Sarah David, flocked our home and we in turn flocked our neighbors behind us. It was a lot of fun!

Flocked!

We've been FLOCKED!!! Can you guess what that is before I post the picture?

Family Picture

I'm always amazed how people manage to work full time jobs and have kids and yet still manage to get all their Christmas shopping done AND send out Christmas cards that ARRIVE on time. I think I've managed this only once and it was when I was not working. In the past we have skipped Christmas and sent out Valentine cards instead (there's not a whole lot going on in the month of February). We decided to do that again this year. This is the picture we used and the quote below it was on the card.

"The greatest thing you'll ever learn, is just to love and be loved in return"

from the song "Nature Boy", lyrics by Eden Ahbez

Jojo Sleeping Position #4

A Warm Winter Day

This video and picture were taken January 6th. As you can see it was warm enough to wear shorts that day. That's why we love Texas! It can be 38 degrees one day and 70 the next! Here is Jaden enjoying the leaf pile!

Symphony!

Jan 19th

While Jeremy was out of town, Jaden and I joined Beckie, Lee and Carol to a night listening to the Las Colinas Symphony. Jaden's first symphony! I was a little hesitant at first, but he does listen to music in the car pretty good so I thought he might like it. He's also seen the video of Metallica performing with the symphony so he knew what the symphony looked like. The performance was divided into 3 sections. The first section was music by Greek artist Nikos Skalkottas, the second section was Piano Concerto No.5 in E-flat Major by Beethoven with a special performance by pianist Jan Jiracek, then there was an intermission and then the last section by Dvorak. When it was about to start is was very quiet and then when the first note hit it was loud and caught Jaden by surprise. He jumped a little in his seat! He did such a good job of listening to the music! For the second section he crawled onto my lap and quickly fell asleep. I heard a slight snore and I leaned forward to see if it was Jaden. As it turned out, it was the older man sitting behind me! :o) The night was even more special because Beckie's close friend, Victor, is the concertmaster for the Las Colinas Symphony this year. He is an incredible violinist! The violin is my FAVORITE instrument! All in all, it was a nice night. We left at intermission and Jaden slept the whole way home!

MOVIE RECOMMENDATION: The Red Violin

Bucharest, Romania

Jeremy's work sent him to Romania for a week to visit team members from a company that is contracting software engineers to NEC. Several engineers will be working on a project that Jeremy is working on. Here is a picture of a church across from his hotel. Doesn't look that cold does it?

Wham-O!

Here is the passing of a great American. No doubt our frisbee club owes him and his deceased partner a big thank you. These guys knew the meaning of having fun at work!

http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-knerr17jan17,0,1584494.story?page=1&coll=la-home-obituaries

Their picture in the article says it all.

HAPPY NEW YEARS!!!

Y HAPPY NEW YEARS!!!! Y

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Here's wishing everyone a wonder full and prosperous new year!!