Spring Biking

As I mentioned in the post below, we've gotten a lot of biking in so far this year. There are so many trails close to home we just keep picking new ones and trying them out. A lot of times we'll even squeeze a ride in before work to start the day off right. I'm loving my bike and every time I ride it I'm so glad Megan let me buy it. :) Even old trails seem new because I can ride them so differently than I did before. My friend from work, Brian Shindurling and I both have passes to sundance as well so we head up there a lot to hit the lift-accessed biking. Here's a little video I put together of some early spring riding, featuring Brian. I apologize for the low video quality, this is off of a small helmet camera I have.

Bear Lake Classic

Our friend Ben Parker is a road biker and I'm a Mountain Biker. They each have two wheels, a chain, and pedals, but that's about where the similarity stops. We agreed that this year we would each try the other's sport, so to taste a little of the "other side" of cycling I joined him for this year's Bear Lake Classic, a 52-mile race that circles Bear Lake in Northern Utah/Southern Idaho. I put in a total of about 20 miles on the roadie before this trip, so obviously I was plenty prepared.


We headed up the night before and camped out with all the other crazies to wake up early and be ready to go for the 9am start. Here we are in all our Spandex glory:

Omniture has a cycling team so we did have the hookup with some really good gear. The weather was beautiful and I really enjoyed the race. The problem was that I hadn't looked at a map beforehand so I didn't realize where we were at on the lake. If you click on picture below you can see the Start/Finish line was about half way up the west side of the lake:


I thought we were actually right at the bottom of the lake, so we took off clock-wise and when we hit the North end of the lake I thought we were about half way through. I figured, "This isn't bad at all, I'll be done in no time," so I paced myself to about where I thought the Finish line was. Then on the East side the lake just kept going. We rounded the south side and I thought we must be close. Then the road turned straight south and started heading away from the lake! It finally turned back in and for the last 10 miles or so I expected to see the Finish line around every corner. I almost stopped to rest but it was getting close to 3 hours and I had told myself I would not go longer than that. I finally came in at 2:59:17, 43 seconds shy of 3 hours.


As you can see, when I thought I was half done, I was really only about 1/4 of the way through. Other than that, it was a lot of fun and it has really helped my endurance with Mtn. Biking this year. I've already put in close to 100 miles on the Mtn. Bike so far, so I'll have some posts up about that soon.

Sol's 1st Dip

I think he liked it!

i'm so in love with this boy.
(photo coutesey of tiffany johnson)

Visit to Grandma's House

I'm a little behind on my posts...

Two weeks ago Melissa (older sis) and I decided to take our kidlets on our little trip to visit Grandma and Grandpa. I drove to Melissa's house and then from Melissa's we drove to Laramie. Sol isn't a big fan of being in his car seat and so he had few meltdowns that nearly resulted in my own meltdown. Sweet little Mason experienced his first bout of car sickness. He threw up; we were in the middle of no where. Thanks to a bag holding some bran muffins I had made, we didn't have to smell his pukey clothes all the way to laramie. The muffins got left on the side of the rode. Grandma and Grandpa were so excited to see the kids. There was some serious spoiling that went on. :) For the mommies too, my mom let me sleep in a few times... bless you mom. It felt so good!

Here are some pics of our cute little babies


Grandpa and Sol

Thanks for such a fun week G & G!

Solomon's Crib

I've been meaning to write a post about Solomon's crib since before he was born. Solomon has a very special crib. His Grandpa spent a few months this winter making it for him. I have to brag about my dad's abilities for a minute, my dad makes furniture as a hobby. I think he got started right after my parents were married, out of necessity really. My dad is one of those guys who can pretty much do anything, he just reads the manual and does it. He even sewed up his own leg one time; a story for another time... He's made all the furniture in my parents house, and its really gorgeous stuff. He has a gift.

I simply found a picture of a crib I liked and he drew up the plans and made the crib from scratch. The crib is made out of walnut. The first time I saw I teared up a little just because I could feel the time and love and care that went into making it. Solomon (and the rest of our children that will use this crib) is lucky a boy.

I hope you noticed the bumper pads in the crib. My sister Melissa is another wealth of talent in our family. She is an excellent seamstress and made these bumper pads for Solomon and the crib sheet. She's working on a quilt that matches. She also simply took a picture of what I liked and made this crib set based off the picture and the fabric I'd chosen. Thanks so much Melissa! I'm in love with Sol's crib! What a blessed boy he is to be so loved.