The Boulder Peak!

Meg's been bugging me to blog our race, so here it is......

Last weekend Dave (Fleisch), Meg and I finally finished the Boulder Peak! What's the Boulder Peak? It's my first Olympic distance race (1 mile swim, 26 mile bike, 6.2 mile run) that I signed up for in January. Now let me tell you that I sign up for these things thinking it's so far ahead in the future, it's no big deal. Then it starts creeping up on you.....and before you know it it's time to race!

The part that makes this race scary, besides the distances is a hill on the bike portion called "Old Stage Road". It's a 15% grade with a 600 ft. vertical climb in 2/3 mile. Pretty Steep! So I was unsure if I could pull of the swim, jump on the bike, make the hill and still have fresh enough legs to run a 10K. So what should I do??? Get my cousins suckered into racing with me!!!

So Dave, Meg, and Deb fly out from SLC to Colorado for the big race. We wake up way too early in the morning and set out to try to live through this. We all pretty much decide that this is the dumbest thing we've ever done and we won't be doing it again. That is, until we start the race.

My age group started first, and off I went. The swim was a really good warm up and it was pretty fun overall. Off to the bike, I see my Dad driving into the tri, he honks his horn and waves at me. I get to Old Stage and I'm with a bunch of other riders. There are people everywhere cheering us on, and somehow I made it up! The fun part was cruising down the other side of the hill. I still felt good on the bike and came into transition with my Dad and Deb cheering me on. I start to leave the transition area to my run when I realize my bike helmet is still on. Man! Run back, throw the helmet, off to the run. By the run, I'm finally feeling tired. I somehow push myself through and I see Meg and Dave on the run, which helps! I finally cross the finish line! Not my best running time by far, but I finished. Deb and my Dad have Gatorade and a ton of water waiting for me...nice! Deb and I watch Meg and Dave finish! We all made it through, not only that, but we all had fun doing it.

I can't figure out how, but I thought this distance is more fun than the sprint distances that I've done! It was a blast! And it was even more fun having Dave and Meg racing with me!

Before the race, we're all smiling...that will end soon!

ha ha ha! A couple of geeks. (I shouldn't post this picture, it'll probably become blackmail later in my life)

Dave finishing the swim, looking good!

Me coming out of the swim

Meg coming out of the swim

Me coming out from the bike to the run

Dave done with the bike!

Meg done with the bike!

My finish....not lookin' so lively!

Meg's finish!

Dave's finish! The look says it all. We're all tired!

Camping

We finally got to go camping this year! Dave set it all up and figured out a good place to go for kids that wasn't too far away. They had so much fun roasting hot dogs (Kenzie didn't like the "black stuff" on the hot dog so she ate a veggie dog with me, woo hoo!) making s'mores, and Dave insisted that we bring up Jiffy Pop (I didn't even know they still made that!) and made popcorn over the fire...so yeah, we basically sat around all night and ate! We woke up the next morning and took the girls for a hike. They loved hiking because there were a ton of wild mushrooms, and they spent the entire time picking them.

Dave making popcorn with the girls



Lookin' pretty tired!

Reading bedtimes stories by flashlight

Happy 5th Birthday Kenzie!

Kenzie is officially five years old! She wanted to have a princess party, and also wanted to invite some boys, so we had a "Princess & Pirates" party for her! She picked out a special princess dress that she got to wear, and invited all her buddies over for her party. We had a bouncy castle and lots of cake, ice cream, and a pinata for the kiddos.

Kenz in her new princess dress



blowing out candles

Some of the scary pirates!

Cute princesses!




Mema and Papa!

My Grandpa came into town that weekend, so we had a little party while he was over too. Kenz was very lucky and got to have 2 cakes!

They love Great Grandpa!


Jen and Ryan

They love Grandpa and Grandma too!

Kenzie is growing up very fast and is really excited about going to Kindergarten in the fall! Her favorite toy to play with is her "rainbow flute" and her favorite thing to do lately is counting, and practicing writing her letters and numbers. She loves to play with Maddie and play outside with her Dad every night.

Happy Father's Day Dave!

Okay let get this straight. 99.9% of the reason why Dave loves the Renaissance fair is that there are turkey legs there. That's it. That being said, for Father's Day all Dave wanted to do was to take the girls to the fair to play games and EAT! We had lots of fun and the kids had a blast! We went with Dave's cousin and they tortured me the whole time trying to talk in the renaissance talk. I was going to kill them! They know I hate that stuff.

The kids saw the trampolines with the bungees attached to them and ran right up. I wasn't worried about Kenzie going on and she had so much fun! They threw her so high in the air I couldn't believe it. She giggled the whole time. I didn't even think that Maddie could go, but she was begging to after Kenzie. The rules were that she had to weigh at least 30 pounds to go on. We put her on the scale and she was 30 exactly. So off she went. I couldn't believe it when the guys threw her just as high as they threw Kenzie and I was waiting for the screams....no screaming or crying just laughing!

Dave and his turkey leg. Enough said.

We found out that Kenzie is a GREAT climber! She made it all the way up to the top on the first one, so they brought her down and put her on a harder climb!

Kenzie up in the air

Maddie!

The Carnival!

Every year the carnival comes to town and I think it's Kenzie's favorite thing in the whole world! She talked non-stop about it until we finally took her there. They rode all the rides there, including the kiddie roller coaster, which they both loved (I was a little worried about Maddie on that one).