Fenton's

You know the movie, "Up?"  The old man and the little boy scout end up at Fenton's Ice Creamery at the end of the movie.  That's a real place down in Berkley and we LOVE it!  My favorite thing to order is the toasted almond ice cream with jersey topping (malt, whipped cream, and chocolate sauce) and a side order of caramel.  Sooo yummy!  Well, Fenton's is obviously quite the drive from our little house so the kids and I figured out a recipe for toasted almond ice cream.  And let me tell you...it was delicious!  The kids had a blast using the ice cream maker and we all had fun devouring our treat.

Hot Day at the River

Lu Lu cheesing it up for the camera.

It was hot enough that no one really complained about a stray shot of water from the kids.  Actually few of the shots went stray...the kids aimed for anyone within range.

Lu Lu had fun getting Sarah wet. 

Arni takes the big jump...she did it a few times...and perforated her ear drum on one of the jumps.

If Arwen's going to do it I had to too.

We had lots of fun!  Matthew and Bethany and the cousins came too along with our friends the Dickinson's.  That and about half of the drunk young adults in Portland.  We had ourselves a few really good laughs at people so wasted I'm pretty sure they won't even remember.  Good times!

Hood To Coast 2010

I just finished the worlds largest (not longest) relay.  Some 12,000 people ran the relay.  Hood to Coast is a 197 mile relay from The top of Mount Hood to the ocean at Seaside.  We had a 12 man team and each ran 3 legs.

See how good I am at pretending I'm not terribly tired and sore?

Team "We Eat Dust"

There was another team we followed for a while in the van named "Eat Our Dust".  I thought that was pretty funny.

 I told Arwen I'll probably never run this race again until she talks me into it.  So she strapped on my bib number and started training.  Registration for next years run starts in 3 weeks.  I guess that's time enough to forget the pain.  I hope so.

 I had 3 shirts I ran in on each leg...one from Intel, they payed for my run and gave me a nice dry fit shirt to do a littl advertising, one they gave me at HTC, and my real one "TEAM SARAH"  Who was my real supporter for this event.

We had 31 hours to do the run to qualify, we came in at just shy of 30.  The top team came in around 17 hours.  The record is 15:44:55 hours (that's a crazy 5.19 min/mile).  We had a few guys on the team get lost (other van)  and after my last leg I came into the finish line and the other van was not there.  It felt like I was waiting for ever but the whole thing only cost us 6 min. I guess.  All in all the race went smooth and most of us met or exceeded our goals.  Though I think I did have a goal of a little sleep that I wasn't able to meet.  I was up a lot of the night before we left for the mountain at 4:00 AM, then over the next 30 hours I got about 2 hours of sleep out in some field.  No sleep added a lot to the difficulty of the relay.

We also took Road Kill stats in our vans.  A Road Kill is anyone you pass on your leg.  It got me running faster than I probably would have, especially on my first run.  I got 9 kills in the first 4 miles then chased some guy for the next 3.4 miles before passing him just before the finish line.  He heard me coming (I had an annoying rock stuck in the tread of one of my shoes) and kept looking over his shoulder and speeding up.  I just had to out run him in the end.  I was a tick mark on two of the vans out there.  The first guy that passed me was on my night run.  The cars driving by would cast my shadow on the road in front of me and then all of a sudden there was two shadows.  I tried my best to keep in front of him but with each car his shadow got taller, then I could hear him and he made a break for it.  I tailed him for a while but he was just too fast for me.

My Road Kill stats:

Leg1 Kills 10

Leg2 Kills 4  Killed 1

Leg3 Kills 6  Killed 1

Huh.  Look at that.  I've become such a lame lazy blogger that it has been taken over by a more responsible party. 

Anyways, there have been a few things that have really made me giggle lately.  This morning, during family scripture reading, Larkin waved her hand as if she had a question.  She waved it around until Aaron stopped talking and asked if she had a question. 
"Yesh."  She said.
"What is it Lu?"  He asked.
"So...ummm...I got germs."  Then she lifted her hands to show him. 

I think Noah's wig has made an appearance or two on the blog.  Let me tell you about him and his wig.  First off, we found 4 hilarious old lady wigs at a thrift shop in Aurora while visiting my mom and dad.  Noah is obsessed with his so much so that I don't even notice when he has it on and wears it on all our outings and errands...that is until all the comments start.  They don't even phase him.  It's like it's his real hair and he's always had to deal with the admiration of everyone around.  I usually just suppress a grin and let people oohhhh and aahhh.  He spends hours combing and brushing that thing to get it to look just right.  In fact, I just noticed him on the couch and laughed at loud at the wig today.  It is extra full and standing straight up.  He informed me that he was able to acheive this by using my brush.  Nice.  

I put the kids to bed in the tree house the other day then came in to watch a movie with Sarah.  It was already late and dark as it's not easy getting the kids to sleep when are all together, throw in the tree house and it's even harder.  Anyway, about an hour into the movie we see a flashlight bouncing around this way and that in the back yard.  It didn't look like it was going to get back into bed by itself so I went out and found Lu-Lu hunting for strawberries.  I wonder if we'd gone to bed how long she would have wandered around foraging for food in a big dark backyard by herself.  I don't have a picture of Lu-Lu sneaking around the back yard but here's one from her sneaking out of bed the other night...she's set up camp in the living room.


So here's a look at the club house nicked named "Death Star" (Not yet completed but fully operational).  I still need a door and to cut out the windows and to paint it and...but it's getting there.