My First Triathlon!

Rochester had their first annual triathlon. The only eventful thing that happened was Nate accidentally blew up my bike tire the night before the race. He put a little too much air into it. I showed up at the race with my bike, the tire, and some bolts, and a new tube that Nate bought at Walmart at 11:00 PM. The tube had a good 3 inch rip in it from the explosion (I say explosion because even the kids in bed wanted to know what the sound was. It sounded like a firework went off!) I was able to get it all put together, but wasn't sure if it would hold through the race as it didn't fit properly and they couldn't cap the valve. Anyhoo, it was all great practice for my triathlon in WI in 2 weeks.

I had a personal best record:

Time: 1:37

Swim (1/4 mile): 9:41
Bike (10.25 miles): 45:14
Run (3.1 miles): 33:39

Here's a couple of pictures and I hope there are more to come!



This is one of the hardest hills that I had to bike up. For those of you in Rochester, this is a right onto 18th Ave. from 55th Street. The first time I tried to climb it, I gave up, went home, and cried. I didn't give up and a few days later, tried again. I practiced the route a few times a week (since it was so close to our home) until it was doable. I took Mikayla to this hill when I took this picture and shared with her this story of why you shouldn't give up, just keep trying...

Elyana Turns 2!!!

We celebrated Ely's birthday Saturday evening instead of on her birthday since my triathlon was on Sunday. She got some nice presents. I think her favorite was her Elmo baby and her bubble maker lawn mower. She pushed her lawn mower a good 1/2 mile and back that evening. I had no idea a 2 year old could walk that far! Here are some pictures of the momentous occasion!

Weird

Last weekend when we were in WI for the 50th Wedding Anniversary celebration, a relative of Nate's told him that a long time ago, he had purchased a mausoleum here in Rochester. Since he no longer lives in Rochester, he's asked Nate to sell it for him with a 10% commission. Like we know the first thing about mausoleums! I had to look it up to be sure I knew exactly what it even was! We got really silly and were thinking about making flyers to distribute in nursing homes. The flyers would have a picture of one of us laying in it, smiling, and waving. The caption would read, "Picture your happy dead self here! No better place to decay, than this place to stay!" After going to Chucky Cheese last night, we had some left over tokens. My friend, Vicky said we should through free tokens into the deal. "Free Chucky Cheese tokens with the price of this mausoleum if you call today!"

Another odd note, on the 4th of July, Nate is going to an extra in a movie being filmed in OshKosh, WI. Guess, what kind of an extra? A zombie of all things!

Well, at 8:24 this Sunday (29th), the gun goes off for me to start my first Triathlon! Say some prayers for endurance, strength, and safety!

Nate's Parent's 50th Wedding Anniversary

I just got back from the Tomah, WI area from my in-law's 50th Wedding Anniversary party. I did manage to sing "Think of Me" from Phantom of the Opera as a surprise for my mother-in-law (per request of my father-in-law). It wasn't the best I can do because I've had this weird dry scratchy throat for a few weeks now. (Anyone have any home remedies you'd like to recommend I try?) Anyway, if I can figure it out how to transfer it from our camcorder, I'll post a video clip of it.

While they were taking pictures, the girls were goofing off on the pulpit. Notice there aren't any pictures of Mikayla. She got the slightest rug burn/scratch on her knee and was too pouty to want her picture taken. These are some cute ones of Ely though! By the way, Ely's dress was on clearance at Walmart for $2! It was very pretty. More professional pictures are to follow as soon as they come in.




Mikayla was playing with my camera and actually took this cool picture of the stained glass in the church. This is the same church my in-law's were married in and that Nate attended growing up.

Enjoying Summer

We inflated our kiddie pool for the first time this summer today. The girls didn't want to sit all the way in it since the water was still so cold. Here's a picture of them enjoying their summer break!



Elyana's hair is getting very long so I tried piggy tails in her hair today. Mikayla wanted some too even though her hair is shorter now than Elyana's. I couldn't help snapping a few pictures. The new do definitely makes Elyana more like the grown up 2 year old she will become next week. I also think she looks a bit like me in these photos:

Sick Kids

Elyana has had a cold for over a week and then developed a fever. We took her in to the doctor and they couldn't find anything wrong with her so we just waited it out. This Saturday, she seemed much improved so we headed to WI for Nate's family reunion. A few hours after we got there, Mikayla wanted to take a nap. She sleep for a very long time and woke up with a fever and aches. The fever wasn't coming down, so around 7 that night, we drove 2 hours back home. It was a rough night as Elyana has started to not sleep through the night again and is waking every few hours for some ungodly reason!

Nate left this afternoon to go to a baseball game in LaCrosse with his Dad for Father's Day. I was tired of being cooped up in the house all day on such a beautiful day. So, when there was a break in Mikayla's fever, I headed outside. I got the idea to set up Mikayla's princess cot/bed in the shade where a nice breeze was blowing. She loved it and the fresh air and breeze took her fever down much more.



Meanwhile, I was washing the van and Ely got into the kids tools. She first was sweeping the garage. The next time I turned around, she had Mikayla's winter hat on and was pretending to shovel the driveway! She looked so hilarious I took some pictures.

New Table and Chairs

Well, we sold our chairs at our garage sale as they were purchased from Shopko and were starting to fall apart. We had gone furniture shopping and finally found 6 new chairs to replace these. After purchasing them, they told us that they would come in, in 2 weeks and we had 2 weeks to cancel the order. Meanwhile, the swap n' shop classifieds came out and we saw an ad for tables and chairs similar to our old one for less than what we were going to pay for the brand new chairs. The newer tables and chairs we just brought home are only 2 years old and sturdier and prettier than our older version. Here's some pictures:

Mikayla's Reading Testing

We were getting just a little concerned that Kayla didn't seem to have much interest in reading or writing, so we enrolled her in a week-long reading class this summer. Maybe we are just thrown off by Elly already knowing the alphabet and stuff, or the fact that some our friends' kids the same age as Kayla are already reading, but anyway. Today was her pre-reading class assessment. After the assessment was over, to distract Kayla to discuss the results, the instructor tells Mikayla to go pick out a book. Kayla wonders around the little library we were in. The teacher begins by saying that we should start saving up for Harvard. Just then, Kayla brings the teacher a book. Wanna know what she picked out? "A teaching manual!" Too funny.

The teacher said Mikayla is quick as a whip. Kayla scored in the 8 or 9 year old range for reading comprehension (which is weird because she can't read -- but maybe for her age reading comp. is just listening to a story or something). And she said Kayla did something that she's never seen another kid do. She had told Kayla to draw a square. Kayla said, "I can't do that very well, so I'll just trace yours." Pretty funny, but the teacher said she's never seen that level of problem solving at such a young age. This reminded Nate of the first time he took Kayla to the movie theater and the chair kept folding up on her. "I remember clear as day -- she was still learning to talk (what was she, a little over two?), but she sat up on my lap and said, "'nd get some rope 'nd tie it down!"

Just feels good to have a teacher say that about our big girl.

Summer Photos

Just some photos from our adventures today. Kayla had swimming lessons this morning. We met our friends at the park beforehand. After lunch, Kayla picked more flowers in our flowerbed. Then, when Elyana woke up from her nap, we went to Foster Arend Beach. This is the same place I'll start the Rochester Triathlon in a few weeks.

Kindergarten Testing

Well, It was definitely affirmed that I wouldn't make a good homeschool teacher. Mikayla had to be tested to see which class to be placed in and to see if she needed do go all day to kindergarten. She passed the test fine. When she came running out of the room, I told Mikayla that she was so smart. She replied, "I know. I also reminded the teacher that I already know I shouldn't talk to strangers and she shouldn't either." The teacher reviewed what she got wrong. One of them being, she didn't know what a trapezoid was. Geez, not sure if I do either! Then, she told her that one of the shapes was a diamond. "We call it a rhombus," said the teacher. "Oh, I told her it was called a diamond," I replied. Oops. She got her 9 and 6 mixed up which the teacher said was common. She also needs to work on her pencil grip and the sounds letters make versus just knowing the letters. We're doing a one week reading readiness class in July which I think will help also.

In regards to Ely, she is still an avid "reader" as you can see in the below picture:

My Favorite Snack

I wanted a more positive blog post, so I thought I'd share with you all my new favorite snack. 14 pieces, 120 calories, and 2 g. of fiber is a serving. It's dark chocolate covered plum bits and really hits that chocolate craving.

Garage Sale Nightmare!

Well, the girls have seemed to adjust to sharing a room and Ely hasn't seemed to be bothered we took away her crib and room. She's even done great considering she has a cold right now. It has been a very busy week with up to an hour of training several nights this week and up to 2-3 hours each night preparing for this weekend's garage sale.

We weren't scheduled to start our sale till Friday late afternoon when I had someone there to help me. However, I forgot I shouldn't open the garage door to take out the trash and people started to flood in. I at first thought, I'll do this for a 1/2 hour and then shut the door again. Then, I heard the forecast was calling for thunderstorms possibly later that day and all day Saturday. So, by myself, with two kids, I managed a garage sale until reinforcements arrived 4 1/2 hours later.

That wasn't what was bad though (although it was very tiring and stressful). An elderly guy arrives in a handicap van he drives himself and comes out of it in a motorized wheelchair. Since he is handicapped, he asks me, "What's that? OH, can you put that aside for me. Oh, that's nice, add that to my pile, please..." He also would snap at other customers, "That's mine, I just bought that-put that back down!" So, after a while, he has a huge pile formed ($55.00 worth of stuff). He tells me to keep it aside, he'll be back that afternoon. True to his word, he did come back that afternoon, starts up a whole separate tab and huge pile of stuff. All along, he's bickering with every price, trying to talk us down. Keeping track of the tab soon got confusing as we discovered that our calculator timed out after awhile. Anyway, his total came to 260 something. He says he only has 150 and needs to go get more money. He does come back and gives us more money, buys more stuff and is ready to load. Nate arrives home from work soon and kindly offers to haul stuff to his house in his truck for him. Nate had to bring 2 separate loads of stuff. After the 2nd load, this guy starts to bicker about the final sale price. Turns out, he wanted $5 more dollars. Nate kindly gave him $5 more dollars, despite the fact that he hauled all the stuff for free for him. 3 hours later, this man arrives once again in our driveway. He claimed that he bought a nice container from us (which I recalled) and that it was filled with Crystal. He did buy most of the crystal we were selling. He says he can't find it at his house and thought we forgot to load it or something. There wasn't anything of the sort left in our garage and he starts bickering once again about his horrible loss. He said he would come back the next day to figure it out and get it settled. I was in tears by this point from stress and Nate didn't sleep a wink all night wondering when he would come back and what we should do with him.

This is a warning to all of our Rochester friends, if you see this guy arrive at your garage sale. Either he has mental issues, or is a scammer. On a positive note, we did make some descent money from him. Just don't want to ever in my life see him again!

What A Week!

Well, it's Monday again. We are currently getting an entire new air conditioner installed. Nothing like spending a couple thousand on a Monday, huh?! Basically our two goals for this week are for me to train even more for the ever nearing Triathlon and to prepare for our upcoming garage sale this weekend. Oh yeah, if that wasn't enough, we decided this was a great opportunity to sell our crib and changing table/dresser. This means, transferring Ely to a toddler bed this week. Yikes. We are extra crazy and are putting the toddler bed in Mikayla's room and reclaiming our guest room again. Needless to say, we are all starting this week tired and cranky!