The bird sadness

Today we discovered that there are only 3 eggs in the nest. I'm not really sure what happened to the 4th, but I'm sure it was sad. Alas...such is life...

The Hug Family Bird

Ever since we've moved in, there has been a nest in the tree right by our house. I always just assumed that it was abandoned because I never saw any activity there. Well, about 2 months ago I noticed some freshly placed twigs. I didn't think much of it until Rachel told me about the eggs. Yeah, eggs. There is a Robin that has made a nest and it has 4 blue eggs. How cool is that! Well, it's really cool until you forget about the bird and then it flies right by your head when you walk up to the front door. But I guess that's just the price you pay to have baby birds. So I've adopted the bird as "our" Hug family bird. Today Hannah picked some berries and left them below the nest for the bird to eat. Anyhow, here are some pictures.

Here's a picture I took of the bird through the window.

These are the eggs.

Here's Hannah and Peter looking at the nest.

The Zoo

Last Monday we went to the zoo. I know you all have probably seen tons of animal pictures, but there were a couple things about this zoo trip that made it more exciting. First of all, we went with Grandma and Grandpa. Second of all, Peter is now at the age where he really likes animals. Every so often I'd pop him out of the stroller so he would have a better view of the animals. I could always tell as soon as he spotted the animal because he would dive forward, point, and start breathing rapidly (as if he was trying to say Elephant or something). It was pretty cute. Also, Grandma and Grandpa bought Hannah a food stick while they were in with the birds. Here are some pictures:

Here's Hannah holding the food stick. A bird flew right up to the stick and started eating. Hannah thought it was pretty darn cool!

She's so serious.

Here's grandma and grandpa with a lion. They tried to get Hannah to join them but she was too scared. She couldn't understand why grandma and grandpa would willing go stand next to a lion. In fact, while I was taking the pictures she stood in front of Peter, as if to protect him. She's a great older sister.

Here we are with the Elephants. As you could have probably guessed, the kiddos are more interested in looking at the Elephant than the camera.

Here's Peter and myself with the 2 brown bears. The bears were really active and Peter was really into watching them. I had to hold him real tight to make sure he didn't dive out of my arms.

Here's Grandma and Hannah riding a snow leopard. Apparently snow leopards aren't nearly as scary as lions.

As always, we had a great time at the zoo...and with Grandma and Grandpa of course.

Fun Weekend

Last weekend was quite the exciting weekend. Not only did I do a triathlon on Saturday, Celeste and Kiefer had a huge birthday bash on Sunday. Kent & Cheryl and Titus & Elizabeth (and Joe and Judah) all came out for the weekend and the birthday celebration. Unfortunately I don't have any pictures from the birthday party itself, but we basically spend the whole weekend at Josh and Celeste's new house. Here are some pictures:

Here's Peter enjoying Grandpa's hat.

Here are the birthday kids. :)

Josh and his new BBQ.

And possibly more exciting than the BBQ, the BBQ box...aka the boat.

Judah in the boat.

The cousins playing together.

Kiefer being cute.

Joe is really into cowboys. He had an extra hat and gun, so here's Hannah and Joe playing cowboys together. They were pretty darn cute!

Hannah and Judah.

More cowboys

Here's grandma helping Peter open some belated birthday presents.

Peter and Kiefer playing with Kiefer's new table. Can you believe these 2 are only 9 days apart?

I Rock

Let's just be honest...I'm feeling pretty good about my triathlon performance. Not only did I finish, I beat my goal. My time was 1:34:19. My 0.25 mile swim took just under 8 minutes, my 15 mile bike took 54 minutes, and my run took about 28 minutes. And for those of you mathematicians out there who think these numbers don't add up, it took me about 3 minutes to transition from my swim gear to my bike gear, and about 1 minutes to switch from biking to running.

I would just like to put in alittle thanks to everyone who prayed for sun. Your prayers worked. The weather in Seattle has been drizzly and overcast for about 2 weeks before the triathlon, and on Friday it was raining pretty hard. But on Saturday it was sunny and beautiful! I couldn't have ask for a better day for an event like this. Of course the water was still really cold (59F) and the grass was basically mud, but the the sun was out and it was warm (and I actually got sun burnt). Then on Sunday, it rained again. It's like God threw one sunny day in there just for me. :-D So thanks for praying!

The triathlon started at 7am. I got there about 6:15 so I could haul all my stuff from the car and get my transition area set up. Among triathletes, transitions are considered the 4th discipline because it is also included in your time and there is alot of skill involved in transitioning well and quickly. For instance, after the swim, alot of people won't put on socks because it's hard to put socks on wet feet and it just takes too long (I wore socks). That said, I wanted to get there early enough so I could have time to set up my transition area efficiently.

Although the race started at 7am my group (females 29 and under) didn't actually start until around 7:30 (each "heat" of 50 people starts 3 minutes apart to avoid major congestion). The way they time the race is that everyone wears a timing chip around their ankle. That way they know exactly when you start, and they can accurately record your splits.

As I mentioned earlier, the water was really cold. I did alittle warm up swim and I was fine except for my face. One of the gals next to me suggested that you can put your tongue on the roof of your mouth in case you get a brain freeze. Luckily I didn't need to use this strategy. I just swam with my head above water for the first 50 yards or so, at which point my blood was flowing and my adrenaline was up so I was OK. After the swim I ran out of the water while unzipping my wetsuit and pulling the top half off. I ran into the transition area, finished taking off my wet suit (not very easy), pulled on my shirt, socks, shoes and helmet, grabbed my bike and then I was off.

The bike portion went pretty well. I had biked the route before so I knew where the hills were and that was encouraging...I had done it before so I knew I could do it again. The only thing that really surprised me was that my toes were really cold. I don't think they recovered from the swim until after I started running. Anyhow, after the bike portion I ran my bike to my rack, took off my helmet, grabbed my hair scrunchy and ran out. The run portion was definitely my weak link. However, I ran most of it (which I wasn't expecting to do) and I finished in under 30 minutes (which I also wasn't expecting to do). So I think the run went OK...especially considering I've never run 3 miles straight in my life.

It also turned out that Caleb's parents were in town for the weekend, so Caleb and Kent came and took some pictures of me while Cheryl stayed home and played with the kiddos. Unfortunately Caleb didn't get any pictures of the swim, but he got tons of me on the bike and running. Here are a select few:

Here's a picture of some people swimming.

Here I am getting on my bike.

Here's a shot of Kent waiting for me to come riding in.

This is me finishing up the bike portion.

Here I am starting the run.

This is me finishing. I took off my sunglasses because I thought it would make for better pictures. :)

Here I am wearing my medal. As you can see, the weather was amazingly beautiful!

I bought a new pair of running shoes a week before the triathlon because mine were starting to hurt my feet. They were bright and shinny when I arrived Satruday morning, and this is what they looked like when I left. Like I said, there was a lot of mud!

And here's the the T-shirt I got.

Success

Today I am officially a TRIathlete!!

**more details and photos to come soon

This Morning's Cuteness

The pasta strainer was the source of many giggles and squaks of laughter this morning. Here is a series of pictures I took.

My sweet daughter

The past 2 nights Peter has not gotten much sleep (I found out today that it is the result of an ear infection). As a result, I was pretty tired today and yesterday. Yesterday Peter took an early nap so I was reading Hannah some books. Around 12:30 I just got really tired. Here's how our conversation went.

K: Mommy's really tired. I'm going to take a quick nap
H: On the floor?
K: Yeah (we were in Hannah's room). Could mommy borrow one of your blankets? (Hannah lays a blanket over me and tucks me in.)
H: Mommy need a pillow?
K: No thanks
H: I go get mommy a pillow. (I hear thud thud thud as she runs across the house and runs back). Here you go mommy.
K: Thank you Hannah
H: Mommy need another blanket.
K: Sure. (Hannah pulls another blanket out of her crib and tucks me in again.

How sweet is that! I ended up laying down for about 30 minutes while Hannah played with legos.

Peter's Birthday

On Monday Peter had his first birthday. It's hard to believe that it's been a year. It's even harder to believe that a year ago we were in Boston. It feels like a lifetime ago.

For Peter's birthday we played it chill. We went over to Josh and Celeste's for a gourmet breakfast/brunch and hung around and watched the kiddos play together. We gave Peter some balloons, which he loves. Balloons are one of his favorite things. He points and says, "ba, ba" and then when he grabs the string he gets all excited and then crawls all over the house with this balloon in tow. It's pretty cute. It's the easiest way to get him to stop crying.

Anyhow, here are some pictures.

Here we are a year ago.

Here's Hannah and Peter playing together. They do quite a bit of that. Although normally it is Hannah that does the initiating.

Here's Peter and Caleb. Peter loves to stand.

Thanks for all the birthday wishes.

17.5 mph

Last Saturday I biked the exact 15 miles that I will be biking for the triathlon. It wasn't so bad. It took about an hour and that was with having to wait for a couple of stoplights. There are 2 not so big hills both of which I ascended without having to go into my lowest gear. At one point during my ride I went past one of those car radars that tell you how fast you are going. And since there were no cars around me, it clocked my speed: 17 mph. However when I pedaled just alittle faster it bumped up to 18...so I figure I was probably going about 17.5mph. That's pretty good. Of course who knows how fast I'll be going after having swum...

While I was biking in the drizzling rain, it occurred to me that the weather might not be that great Saturday. I don't know why this never occurred to me before...after all this is Seattle...it's suppose to rain alot here. I guess it's because most of the days that I've trained it's been sunny and beautiful (as you can tell I'm really hard core :-D). The consequence of poor weather is longer transition times. I was planning on just wearing my swimming attire for the whole race, but if it's cold and/or raining, I'll want long sleeves while I'm biking and probably some sort of warmer shirt while I'm running. It would all just be easier if it were sunny and warm. So you can all start praying for great weather on Saturday. Actually sunny and warm at 7am?...you better start praying now :-D

Wish me luck!