Family Photos Fall 09

We went to McFarland Farm this past weekend and took some fall photos of the family.

More Leif videos

Leif playing piano:



Leif finally got brave enough to use the hand-vac.
He’s always been afraid of the motor, but when he saw
that it was actually picking up crumbs, he had to try it!
(turn your volume down, it’s a little loud)


Second video of Leif vacuuming. He vacuumed for
so long, the vacuum ran out of batteries.

Leif videos- Oct 09

This first video is really short, but I only had 6 seconds left

on my video camera. Leif was dipping his garlic butter noodles

into his Chai Tea, and seemed to really like it!

This video is perhaps a little long, but Leif was not feeling well,

and we let him sit and watch a Veggie Tales video while we

were getting breakfast ready. He would clap every time they

would sing, and Charles had to capture it:

We're Pregnant!

We found out on Saturday, Sept 26th, that we were pregnant! My body was showing signs that I might be miscarrying, so we got into the Dr's office on Sept 29th to try to get some answers. Ultrasound confirmed pregnancy, but could not find a heartbeat. The midwife estimated the pregnancy at about 3 weeks, and prepared me for a possible miscarriage. She also ordered hormone tests which were inconclusive, and the Dr. sent me for a hi-res ultrasound on Friday, October 2nd.

I sat in the waiting room for the ultrasound shaking, because I knew that this would confirm the pregnancy one way or the other. I lay patiently while the ultrasound tech began her exam, and waited as long as I could stand it (probably 2 min) and finally asked her if she could see anything. She said, "Oh, yea, I have a heartbeat and everything". And we got to see our little baby's heart beating away, it's little body moving with each beat. The tech estimated that I was 7 weeks pregnant and set the due date for May 21st. She also told us that at this stage the baby didn't have clearly defined limbs yet, and looked more like a seahorse. So, we've been calling baby #2 "baby seahorse". Even Leif knows that Baby Seahorse is in mommy's belly.

Carrolton Sprint Triathlon

Charles competed in the Carrolton Sprint Triathlon this past weekend. He finished 8th in his age group and 36th overall. 

Total time- 1:11:41

The best part of it was that we have great friends who live in Carrolton, so we stayed overnight with them, and hung out with them after the race. Eric took Leif on his first boat ride. The boys, Andrew & Nathan, loved playing with Leif, and he LOVED playing with them! We may have to make this a yearly tradition!

Leif's latest videos

Leif has been really enjoying kissing us lately. It's delightful! 

Sometimes he will come over to us and just plant a wet one 

on our lips. This particular afternoon, he just wanted kiss 

after kiss, so I grabbed the video camera:

Leif and Charles have this howling thing they do. I only 

caught the end of their playing, but you get the idea:

Callaway Gardens Sprint Triathlon

For my blog about my first triathlon, I was going to recount all of the arduous details of the previous day- like how before we even left our house Charles tried to pull the car into the garage with his bike already on roof with Leif in his carseat pointing at the ceiling say "Wow-wow-wow", and the hours of traffic we sat in because of the car fire in front of us, the mix-up with room assignments that took us forever to get settled once we arrived at Callaway. But, while the day before the triathlon seemed more like an endurance-sport then the actual event itself, it's not all that interesting to hear all of the details.

Along with the amazing pictures by the beautiful and talented 

Sheryl Duckett I will try to briefly describe each of the three events:

The swim. I trained for 12 weeks, working to perfect my swim strokes, to increase my speed and endurance in the water. 

The actual event of a group swim is more like water wrestling, interrupted by some brief doggie-paddle. 

For me, it was also The Great Apology. 

Picture 150 women in their 30s hitting and kicking each other in the water, and with their only remaining breath trying to apologize constantly. There has to be a better way to prepare for this section, but I don't know what it is. 

I'm sorry! (There, I said it again)

The ride. I did pretty well in the biking section, so a brief description of this section, could be summarized by, "ON YOUR LEFT!"(the polite way to pass), which I said so much, I finally abbreviated to "LEFT!".

(Transitioning from biking to running.) 

The run. I knew the run would be my hardest section. I was tired from the swim & bike, my legs felt like rubber, and the sun was starting to feel REALLY hot. On top of that, a lot of competitors were walking by this point, (at least the ones I was passing) which actually drains a lot of psychological energy. 

My mind was saying, 'let's just walk now', but one of the things I learned in my weeks of training was to honestly assess my body, and not listen to my mind. 

My body was okay, and I pushed through, and was able to sprint the final section which was a downhill to the finish line, which in my head sounded a little like this- "I'm sprinting to the finish! I'm sprinting to the finish! I'm sprinting to the finish! Holy Crap, there's still a long way to the finish!

I'm sprinting to the finish! I'm still sprinting to the finish! I'm sprinting to the finish!" My final lesson learned was that I need to cool down after an event like this. I stopped short as soon as I crossed the finish line, and thought I was going to die. But, I didn't. 

Here are our results:

Charles-  Race Rank- 6th in age group/ 50th overall

Race Time- 49:28

Swim (.25m): 31st/ 8:40min/ speed 1.7

Bike (9 m): 2nd/ 21:37/ speed 25

Run (2 m): 15th/ 14:53/ speed 7:27

Dawn- Race Rank- 19th in age group/ 444th overall

Race Time- 1:02:44

Swim (.25 m): 14th/ 9:30 min/ speed: 1.6

Bike (9 m): 16th/ 27:54 min/ speed 19.4

Run (2 m): 23rd/ 19:02 min/ speed 9:31