Looking for the Garbage Truck

I snapped this picture or Peter today when I walked by the front door and saw him sitting on the front porch.  I should remember that I can usually find him here on Tuesdays as he waits for the garbage truck to come and pick up our trash.  He loves to watch it!  I guess it's good that the weather is still so nice.

Goofy kid.

Thanksgiving Cake?

I know the traditional way to celebrate Thanksgiving is with pie, but Cake Boss, Jr had other ideas.  She decided to make a Thanksgiving cake, or technically, to decorate a Thanksgiving cake.  Grandma Cathy kindly baked and froze the cake for her and provided her with all of the necessary supplies, but outside of that, the decorating was all Samantha.

She spent the entire day before making all of the leaves to cover the cake, and Thanksgiving morning she put together/sculpted the turkey for the center.

(We had a little bit of an issue in that she had spread her mess, er, project all over the entire kitchen and I was having a hard time finding a place to make rolls, but it all worked out in the end.)

I think it turned out fantastically.  Look at that fancy tail.  I don't know, but I think this girl may have some decorating skills.

We had a very nice Thanksgiving day at Shawn's Uncle Doug's house.  In fact, we had such a nice time that we didn't even stop to take pictures.  We enjoyed just sitting around and chatting.  Dinner was great.  Doug's wife Michelle had some fun crafts for the kids to do.  They played with the dog and some toys.  The kids all went swimming, and we all played a little Just Dance.
The whole day was fun and enjoyable - just the way Thanksgiving should be.

RAGNAR: Las Vegas

Somehow, someone talked me into doing this race.  Here's Van 1 getting ready to head out.  We left Thursday afternoon and drove to St. George where we spent half a night at my parent's house.  We were up about 2:30 in the morning to make the drive to the Las Vegas ski resort for the start.

You would think Vegas would be pretty warm in November, but it was not!  At the top of the mountain, in the early morning it was soooo windy and cold.  We were being pelted with hail, too.  It was so windy that all of the port-a-potties at the first transition had blown over.  That clearly wasn't going to work out in the long run, so Shawn and Chad took on a little service project to get as many of them up right as possible 

They had to use a few to stabillize the others so they wouldn't just keep blowing over.  I wish these pictures showed just how hard it was blowing.

Fortunately, the weather didn't stay like that for the whole race.  There was still plenty of cold and wind, but at least the sky cleared up and the sun came out.  The guys found these eagle shirts and all wore them on their runs.  It kind of became the team theme.  Man, those are ugly shirts.

We had a little picnic in the parking lot.  Just like last time, people were jealous of our fully catered pasta meal.  Van 1 didn't seem quite as bad as Van 2 was at the Wasatch back.  Van 2 let us use their hotel room for a few hours and just getting a little bit of sleep made a HUGE difference.

I definitely finished feeling much better than at the last Ragnar.  But my running legs were a bit less challenging as well.

Shawn and I (and several other team members) also got out Saints to Sinners medals for finishing both Wasatch Back and Vegas.

So glad to be done!

All of the Saints to Sinners Medalists...

And the whole Millcreek Militia team at the finish line.

After the race, we all went out to eat and to see the newest James Bond movie.  It was good, but I was so tired, I could barely keep my eyes open.  I had to keep poking my really sore muscles to stay awake.

The ride home was pretty cushy, since the Morgans went home in a different car with their kids.  We folded down the middle seats and had a pretty good set up.  Enough space for napping,

and totally stretching out.

We passed this truck on our way home, shortly after it had been totally burned up.

We switched places part way home so Shawn and I could stretch out, too.

Yeah, he's hugging a jar of jelly bellies.  They really hit the spot after a long run apparently.

When we got home, Samantha couldn't wait to show us this treat she had made.  Awesome, huh?  A rice krispie treat Ragnar logo. 

A couple pictures of the car before I washed it all off.

I still don't know that I love this whole Ragnar thing, but I have definitely had great teammates!  This team was made up entirely of couples in our neighborhood.  They made it a (mostly) fun event.  I may even have enjoyed myself for a good part of the time.  (We also managed to miss the massive snowstorm that came through here while we were out of town.)  Some of them are already talking about future Ragnars, but I'm not ready to commit just yet.

A Few Fall Pictures

Shawn has spent some time at swim meets.  The swimmers seem to have a good system figured out here.  But what about the one at the back?

I took some pictures of the chapel that is just around the corner from us because they are getting ready to tear it down.  I think it's a pretty building and fairly unique.  It's not where we have been going to church because it is too small for our ward, but apparently we will be going there when the new building is built.  Anxious to see what it will look like.

And of course, there was plenty of playing in the leaves.  Somehow these are the only pictures I ended up with this year.  (But that may be because a certain little someone regularly deletes pictures from my phone.  Otherwise, I would have a few other fall activities to post about.  But since all photographic evidence was lost, its kind of like it never happened.)

Peter loves to play in my closet when I'm in my room folding laundry or cleaning up.  On this particular day, the door was closed and I heard a big thump, bump sound and an "Ahhh!"  I opened the closet to find this scene.  Apparently he had fallen backwards into the basket and was stuck.  He said, "A little help here?"  Love this kid.

Cyclocross and a Dead Tree and More Cyclocross

This cyclocross race was the weekend before Halloween, so several of the riders dressed up.  This was one of my favorites.  Pretty impressive, huh?  His costume disabled both his movements and his ability to see, so he gave it up after only one lap (which took him the same amount of time as 2 or 3 laps by the other riders.)

Shawn opted not to dress up and just raced as usual.

This sand pit was a lot of fun to watch.  The riders would come barreling towards it really fast and then get totally bogged down, either stopping completely, or falling off their bikes.  It got worse as the ruts got deeper on each lap.  Good stuff.  Most managed to power through it, though.

This is a crazy sport, I tell you.

Sometimes, you pick up a few things along the way.

These guys show up at my house every few weeks asking if they can cut down our dead tree.  I finally decided to have them do it, just to get some peace.  Plus, it really needed to come down.

I love aspens and was sad to see it go.  Maybe we'll plant a new one there eventually.

And one final cyclocross race in November.  This one didn't go so well.  The riders took off on their first lap and I went to watch them come through the trees.  I watched and watched and pretty soon realized pretty much everyone in Shawn's group had gone by, but no sign of Shawn.  After a bit, he came trudging along, pushing his bike.  He had snapped his derailer clean off.  Not so good for the bike, and not so good for being able to race.

This is how he felt about it.

But, on a good note, we were back home pretty quickly.  The bike is headed to the shop.

All Made Up

Apparently, it's time to put away the Halloween stuff.  Every time I turn around, the girls have made themselves all fancy again.  Duffy's face courtesy of Samantha,  I think.

Here, they each did someone else's face.  Clearly, we have some practicing to do before wearing make up out in public.  And, they're going to have to learn their make up skills from someone other than their mother.  I had to buy all this for Halloween because I didn't have any of my own.  I'm hoping Samantha will figure out a better color scheme before this becomes a habit.