Summer Happenings

In between our travels this summer, we've had a few other activities going on:

EFY
Sarah and Rachel got to go to EFY again this summer.  They had a fabulous time!  Sarah came home afterward and talked to me about it nonstop, and Rachel went into her room and didn't come out for two days after so much social time--they are so different--but both claimed it was a wonderful week.

Here is Rachel with some of her friends after I dropped her off.

 Rachel and her friend and roommate, Brooklynn.

 Sarah got to room with one of her friends from last year.  They were so excited to see each other!

Football Camp
While the big girls were at EFY, Ben had football camp.  He loved every minute of it!

Activity Day Camp
Also that same week, Kate had a three-day camp with the girls ages 8-11 from the Stake.  It was amazingly well done, and Kate had such a great time.  The theme for the week was Courage.  She said the worst thing about it was that it had to end! 

Golf Fun
Ben's baseball team had their end-of-the-year party at the Performance Golf Center.   The kids had such a great time hitting balls at the driving range. 

 Then they tried their hand at miniature golfing.  It is one of the few sports that I beat David at, so he conveniently only got balls and clubs for the kids.  Nice...

 Here's Ben's championship baseball team:

Mariner's Game
David, Ben, Sarah, and her friend Ally, and I went to a Mariner's game one night.  It was a busy Saturday for us--we were redoing our bonus room--but we decided to leave the mess and go play.  Rachel stayed home with Kate and William for us (thank you Rachel!).  It was a very exciting game and the Mariners took home the victory!   We stayed up late working hard to finish up the bonus room after the game, but we were still glad we went!

Ragnar
I spent an awesome weekend with a bunch of friends running 200 miles.  Sound crazy?  Definitely!  It is also known as Ragnar.  Ragnar is a relay race with 12 people in 2 vans running about 200 miles nonstop in 2 days.  Each person runs three legs ranging from 2-9 miles.

The race started in Blaine, Washington, at the Peace Arch State Park, right at the border to Canada. 
Here I am at the starting line.

And the runners are off!  There were multiple start times, so this picture doesn't do justice to how many people were actually in the race.

 My friend, Sarah, was the first runner for our team, Harbor Racers.

After we got her started, the next order of business was to decorate our team van.  All of the teams decorated their vans--some were really crazy and lots were very creative. 

I was runner number 6, meaning I ran legs number 6, 18, and 30.  It also meant I was the last one in our van to run before we handed the baton (or rather, the slap bracelet) off to the other six runners in van #2. 

My first leg was 6.5 miles.  I was so ready to go by the time it was my turn, which was about 1:00 p.m.  I ran the best I have ever run, at a pace of 10.25 minutes per mile.

This is Sarah after her run, but it shows how I felt too!

My second leg started at 11:50 p.m.  I started getting sleepy about 10:00, and I had a headache, so I took an Excedrin to help me get through.  This leg was 5.5 miles.  It was a hard run for me.  I was sore from my earlier run, and it was just hard to run in the middle of the night.  But it was nearly a full moon and a very beautiful night.  I had good music and I just got into a zone and ran and ran until I was done.  I still ran pretty well--about a 10 min 45 sec pace, and was proud of myself for pushing on even when it was very hard.  After that, it was time for our van to get some sleep, and let the other van of runners take their turns.  I had a seat in the van to sleep on and was warm and comfortable.  However, I was still wired from my run, and the Excedrin, so I could not fall asleep.  Plus, I was very stiff and sore, and I didn't have much room to stretch.  I eventually got an hour or so of sleep before we were all up for the day.  Our friends that slept on the grass at a school where we parked for the night (one of the exchanges) got a rude awakening about 5:15 when the sprinklers kicked on.  Once again, I was glad I had chosen to sleep in the van. 

However, when I woke up, I was so stiff and sore, I could barely walk.  I wasn't sure how I was going to make it through my third leg.  Stretching and moving around helped some, but I was still in pretty sorry shape.  Thankfully, my third run was my shortest. 

The route wound down through Bellingham, Mt. Vernon and ended on the southern tip of Whidbey Island.  We ran through some beautiful places.  Here are some pictures I snapped along the way. 

Even when we weren't running, we stopped along the way to cheer on the other runners.  It really helped to know that someone was going to be there after a few miles to give me some water and encouragement.  

The first day it was pretty warm, up into the 80s.  It cooled off considerably that evening, down into the low 50s and stayed cool through early afternoon.  My third run was around 11:00 a.m. and the temperature was just right.  I took this picture as I ran my third leg.  It was my shortest leg at only 2.4 miles.

It was so great to be done!  Such an awesome feeling!  Here's a link to a video of me at the end of my third leg.

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10201697949877634

Here we are at the finish line. 

 It was an amazing weekend!  I can't wait to do it again!

Other summer fun
We've stayed pretty busy this summer so far.  But we've had a few lazy summer days with time for playdates and lemonade stands.  Check out the poster Kate and her friend Noah made for their lemonade stand last week:

The best part is the poster, which is a little hard to read.  It sells tickets for a puppet show to be held the following day ("tumoraw").  The prices are as follows:  1 child = 25 cents, 2 children = $1.00, 3 children = $2.00.  The prices keep going up exponentially from there.

I love the comments section as well:  "Awesome!"  "So cool!" "So not scary!"  "Over 1,000 pepol have come!" 

I'm not sure how many tickets they actually sold, but they did sell lots of lemonade.  We have such great neighbors!