Overly Emotional Mom, Party of One

Booker lost his first tooth today. While the Superintendent was in their classroom speaking to them, he yanked it out! He is over the moon. I'm so excited for him, but at the same time feel like bursting into tears! Two best things about it are 1) I didn't have to pull it out, 'cause that grosses me out! And 2) he pulled it the day before school pictures so we get to capture this moment forever!

Free Olathe Women's Tri Pics!

The End to Tri Season

Today was my last triathlon of the season.  Jen and I did 4 this year, and hope to do 5 or 6 next year.  I love everything about triathlons.  I love the change in pace from swim to bike to run.

The first tri we did this year was the Kansas City Triathlon on May 20th.  Last year, the water temp was only 59 degrees, but this year we warmed up to 69 degrees, which is a huge difference, but still cold.  Gotta love the first tri of the season!  Our 2011 time was 3:29 and our 2012 time was 3:24.  We were SO please with this improvement.  However, we both had bike envy as we stared down our competition, and also realized how well we do on the swim and the run, but got our butts kicked on the bike.  And we are competitive, and didn't like that, so that was the last triathlon we did on our old road bikes.  By old I mean mine was an early 90s Trek and Jen's was an 80s Schwinn.

Enter the era of "The New Babies."  Jen got a brand new Felt tri bike and I got a used (but still a 2012) Cannondale tri bike.  Let me just say, we love them more than most humans we come in contact with on a daily basis.  And I wish I were exaggerating!  AND, they make a huge difference.  We give the same amount of effort and fly down the road at about 4mph faster, and don't feel like we are trying nearly as hard.  And uphill?  Wow!  Where we used to slow down to about 8-9 mph we are now going about 12mph.  Just love them.

So we tried out our new bikes at the Shawnee Mission Triathlon on July 8th.  We finished in 1:13 and floated on cloud 9 for days.  That is one heck of a hilly bike course!  And this was the first time we finished and saw our names on the first page of the results!

We had high hopes of really getting going on our bikes at the Midwest Meltdown Triathlon on August 26th.  However, it decided to rain for the first time all summer, and mixed with the 8 tons of brand new asphalt they put down on the bike course, we took it easy.  This was a great course.  The swim was 750m instead of 500m, but Jen and I locked in at a 1:50 pace, which was great!  This was the first triathlon I finally got into a swim groove.  I wasn't being "as" clobbered by other people, so that was a major factor.  We also had a great run!  Our 5k time was 25:59.  This will be a redo next year because the bike course was really flat, and hopefully the roads will be dry next year so we can fly!

Today we did the Olathe Medical Center Women's Triathlon.  We found out earlier this week that we were in different swim heats.  This doesn't work for us.  Jen and I do triathlons TOGETHER!  And our heats were 30 minutes apart.  And they said if we miss our heat, we can't participate.  So we had to regroup and plan to go solo.  Not cool.  Jen started at 7:35 and I got to watch her entire swim, which was fun.  I started at 8:05, and she was completely done by the time I got off the bike.  Have I ever mentioned I hate to run by myself?  Well, I do.  And Jen and I have a system.  My watch tracks our entire tri time and our splits.  But it doesn't show my pace.  Jen's watch paces our run.  We both have speedometers on our bikes, and neither one of them were working today, so we had NO idea where we were on the bike.  And without Jen, I had no idea where I was on the run.  On both, I just decided to push til it hurts, and then I knew I was giving it my best effort.  My swim was 10:15 for 500m, my bike was 38 minutes for 10.6 miles and my run was 25:29 for 3 miles.  I placed 7th in my age group and 39th of 307 overall.  Jen did fantastic too, and our times were only a couple minutes apart.  However, it just wasn't the same without her.  I'm bummed we aren't the same age.  We are 7 years apart, so this heat division problem is going to definitely come into play again in the future.

In the off season, we both plan on getting more miles on our bikes.  I can't wait until May 2013 rolls around so we can do it all again!

How Is My Baby FIVE?

In honor of Chief's Friday, here's my happy lil Chief's fan!

And the big FIVE year old!

Bodey, I'm not quite sure how you did it, but you woke up five years old this morning.  I told you I wasn't going to let you, but you did it anyways.  Secretly, I'm really happy.  So happy to have such a healthy boy that is growing overnight.  

When I woke up to sing happy birthday to you, in true Bodey fashion, this is how it went.

          Me (singing):  Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you....

          You interrupt:  Um, mom?  I had a wet fart!

And that was how your fifth birthday started!

You are the most fun-loving, crazy, redneck, tough, lovable, ornery, sweet, funny, and smiley 5-year old I know!  We love you!

Not All It's Cracked Up to Be

Conversation tonight while tucking in Bodey:

Me:  This is my last night hugging you as a 4-year old.  Did you know when you wake up in the morning you'll be five??

Bodey, extremely excited:  Yeah, and I probably won't fit into any of my clothes!!!

Me:  Do you think you'll be a lot bigger in the morning, too?

Bodey:  Well, ya, I'll be five.  Booker's six and he's a lot bigger!!!

Poor kid, what a let down!!

Thunder and Major

We said good-bye to Thunder and Major tonight.  I went to feed the frogs their crickets, which is normally really entertaining to watch because Booker's frog, Thunder, attacks the crickets, and Bodey's frog, Major, is sooooo lazy you have to move the crickets right to it's mouth.  Major was lucky enough to have a cricket basically jump in his mouth tonight, but I noticed Booker's wasn't attacking.  I knew right away that he was dead.  And I was scared.  I've been dreading a pet passing away for a while now because the kids get so attached... even to frogs.  I have to admit I was a tad attached to them too.  My heart just dropped.  I told Booker and he immediately burst into tears.  I just went and loved on him, telling him sorry, and gave him the speech that pets are only here for a short period of time and we are so lucky to get to enjoy them for that short time.  While Booker was crying Bodey said he could share his frog with him.  Then we gave in to Booker's request to bury him in the front yard (not the back yard because he didn't want Avery to dig him up).  While I was outside digging a hole in our landscaping, Dusty somehow talked Bodey into letting his frog free, so he wouldn't die too.  Bodey thought that was a good idea.  What a strong little boy.  So we buried one, let the other go, and then celebrated with ice cream that Thunder was partying it up in Heaven!

Booker's a 1st Grader!

Day one of 1st grade - success!!  I was relieved that Booker wasn't nervous, anxious, scared or sad to march right in to school this morning.  Makes it a little easier on mom, who is nervous, anxious, scared and sad.  After school he had a great report, with a few details, which is different from last year.  Almost every day last year his response on how his day went was "good."  Today he told me about recess, jitter juice (they got to drink to help them get rid of any first day jitters), what he found outside, who he played with, who got to move their card to purple, etc.  He loves his teacher and is ready for day two!