Flashback - May travels

OK so I admit I am not a very consistent blogger. I will try to improve! Since I work on the computer all day supporting Hewitt web apps, I don't often feel like signing on after hours to post to my blog, unfortunately. But I will try to get better about squeezing in blogging sessions here and there.

During one of my blogging hiatuses (hiatii?), we went on a whole bunch of weekend trips during the month of May. So I thought I'd back up a bit and post some quick pics and videos from back then.

Our first weekend trip was a visit back to the Chicago area for Jorie to help lead a Premier training session. We stayed in Deerfield at the Hyatt thanks to an awesome deal we got on Hotwire. I think it was about $50/night - at the Hyatt! Anyway, we also met up with Jason and Roxanne and Annikah for our very last Chicago visit with them. :(




The kids had a great time at the Kohl's children's museum. Silas and Annikah were, as usual, extremely cute together. After the museum, we went to JayRox's place for some hanging out at the beach and park, some Chicago pizza, a little Mario Kart Wii, and watching the kids chase each other around their condo like wild animals. It was hard to imagine that things would never quite be like that again, since JayRox are heading off to Africa. If you're not already following along with their journey on their blog, I highly recommend you check it out. Jason's got a great story about going to see the new Batman movie in Kenya in one of their recent posts too.

Funny quote from Silas during this trip: Joel and Silas met a boy at a park and Joel asked what his name was. The boy said, "Mark, M-A-R-K." Joel and Silas looked at each other with shocked expressions and then Silas looked at us and shouted, "His name is Daddy!"




After Joel bought this macaroni and was "checking out" at the little cash registers, Silas started piling Joel's macaroni back into the cart. Joel shouted, "Hey! I already paid for that!"


The next weekend, we drove down to Nashville for the Lauer cousins reunion. It was a great time of reconnecting, sharing goofy stories, swimming, and eating way too much. Jim and Rhoda graciously watched the kids all weekend so that made traveling, especially the loooong drive from Cedar Rapids to Nashville, much more manageable.



Everyone enjoying their "Five Guys" burgers

Tessa and Evan, Jorie's youngest cousins. Evan is the same age as Joel.


Then, the weekend after that, we headed to Des Moines for the Dam to Dam half marathon. I ran it, along with Jim (father-in-law), Justin (bro-in-law), and Roxanne (sis-in-law). Also, several other friends from our church ran in it as well. Although I didn't do as well as I had hoped, I think it was overall a positive experience for me and I hope to train and run in another half marathon someday and run a much steadier pace. Here's the changes I'll be making for my next run: (these are good tips for all you aspiring runners out there)

1. Sleeping pills - I was a bundle of nervous energy the night before the race. Add that to the strange bed, noise of the city outside, and snoring Silas in the same room, and I only got about 3 hours of sleep before the race. Ugh.

2. Better prep for training runs - I planned very carefully what sort of things I wanted to eat and what sort of things I should avoid eating in the days leading up to the race. I put no such thought into the days before my long training runs, and as a result, my training was not as effective as it should have been. Particularly my final training run, which I ran while in Nashville. I had spicy Jerk chicken the night before at this awesome little Caribbean restaurant. Unfortunately, my digestive system did not think it was so awesome, and it pretty much ruined my final training run. It was supposed to be a breeze of a 10-miler and it ended up being an 8 mile struggle with many pit stops throughout.

3. Train on hills - All my training runs were flat, with the exception of one time I went out and purposefully ran in a hilly area. I should have been doing that once a week. Just before I got to mile 10, I was feeling great and I felt like I could run the rest of the race at a good pace. Then I hit mile 10, and there was a steady uphill climb from mile 10 to mile 11 and it totally drained me.

4. Don't start out at your fastest training pace - Justin specifically warned me about this, but I messed it up anyway. He said, "Run the first half of the race at a very comfortable pace, then if you are feeling strong, you can pick it up and go a little faster in the second half." This is GOOD advice and I recognized at the time that it was good advice, but I still didn't follow it. I tried to run at my fastest pace I had ever gone on one of my long training runs, (about 8:40 per mile) and hold it for the whole race. With better training, and more sleep, I might have been able to do it. But on race day, all it meant was that I had a great first half of the race, and a horrible struggle for the second half. I had to take several walking breaks throughout the second half of the race and even when I ran, it was probably no faster than a 10 minute pace.

So, hopefully, I'll follow my own advice and have a much better run next time. I definitely want to run another half marathon, and I know I am NOT ready to attempt a full marathon yet until I can feel great about how I finish a half.

Animals Invade our Yard

We have had all kinds of crazy wildlife sightings around here lately, right in our yard. We have some kind of berry trees that dropped all their berries in mid-June, both in our front yard and back yard and we have been seeing all kinds of animals hanging out and enjoying the free food.

I first spotted a raccoon while mowing the lawn one night. I was shocked it actually came out into the open while I was mowing, and only about 25 feet away. It must have really wanted those berries. Raccoons aren't all that unusual around here, but this was just the beginning.

The oddest thing that we've seen in our yard, and he's been back several times, is this large wild turkey. We got to see him take off and fly for a short distance right down the middle of our street too. Who knew turkeys could fly? (I guess Les Nessman was right after all -- see if anybody catches that reference, leave a comment if you know what I'm talking about) It didn't look like it could keep it up very long though, looked like hard work.




A few days later, we spotted a good-sized deer. It was a buck with medium-sized antlers. He seems to be a bit of a loner though, as we haven't seen him with any herd. He is actually our most frequent visitor, but we haven't managed to get any pictures of him, as he always decided to dash off just as we pull out the camera.

UPDATE: Got pics and a video of our deer friend, who we have nicknamed "Bucky". Or sometimes, "Bucky the Vampire Slayer". And he does indeed always come out at dusk.




Our last visitor likes to hang out in our yard for hours and just sit and munch away. It's this guy:
He really makes me want to start constructing little animals out of C-4. (that's an easier one, I think -- it's not just a blog, it's a pop-culture quiz!)

Joel is 4!

Joel turned 4 on June 25th and we enjoyed several birthday celebrations throughout the week. The first party was at Grandpa John's house, with my extended families. My dad went all out with great food from the grill and a Thomas cake for Joel with a little train that actually chugged around on top of the cake. The cake was a big hit with Joel and Silas, as were the presents he got from Grandpa and Uncle Tim and his great Grandmas and Grandpa. When Joel opened a card that had a dollar bill inside, he was really excited to be receiving actual paper money. After that, whenever he opened a card, he'd say "No dollar" then immediately close it back up. At first, I thought, "Oh great, he has the wrong attitude about birthday cards already." But then I realized that if you can't READ yet, opening your own birthday cards isn't too exciting, and really, that dollar bill is the best hope you got for something interesting. So I cut him some slack.

Silas and Great Grandpa Leo were very cute together





We had a mini-celebration at Jorie's Aunt and Uncle's house for Joel, where we broke open a "Cars" pinata. The kids loved it, but the pinata proved a bit too tough to break for the little guys, so Uncle Jason finally destroyed it with one powerful blow. Unfortunately, our camera was out of batteries at this point, but if I get some pictures or videos from others who were there (hint hint) I will post them later.

On Wednesday night, Joel's actual birthday, we brought the boys to their favorite destination, the Iowa City Mall and Children's Museum. When we got there, we were disappointed to learn that the museum closes at 6pm on weekdays and it was already 5:55! Ouch! But we took the kids inside and let them play for about 10 minutes, and then we went to the food court to have dinner. The kids ended up having a blast doing other things at the mall, like riding the carousel and playing at the kids' climbing area they have there, so it wasn't a huge deal that the museum closed early. We promised we'd come back another time when we could have more time to check out the museum. They have a new dinosaur exhibit which looked very cool and which I'm sure the boys will have a great time exploring in more depth.

Digging for fossils at the Dinosaur exhibit

Silas loved riding with Stuart Little

Joel is piloting the helicopter





After the mall, we picked up a special birthday cookie treat and came back home and Joel got to open some presents from us.





Finally, on Friday Joel had his first real kids' birthday party, (this is birthday celebration number 4, if you're keeping track) where he invited a bunch of his friends and they got to play at the PlayStation here in Cedar Rapids for a couple hours. The PlayStation is like a McDonald's playplace on steroids and the kids all totally loved running around inside of it, jumping in the balls, sliding down the slides, and basically bouncing off the walls the entire time. Grandpa Jim, Grandma Rhoda, and Aunt Annie and Uncle Justin also came to this party and they enjoyed seeing Joel and Silas and their friends interacting. Annie and Justin will soon be joining us in the land of little kids, with baby Schumacher on the way! We are very excited for them! Annie has also started a blog, so please check it out if you want to follow along with baby Shoe's progress.

The room is all set up, and the boys are anxiously waiting for the party to begin

Joel chose "Cars" as the party theme this year and we got this great cake at Hyvee

The ball pit was one of the highlights of the PlayStation for the kids. These things are pretty rare, nowadays, and I know why! I used to clean the ball pit weekly at Great Odyssey in Carol Stream when I worked there and it was a major pain! We had a huge vacuum that would suck up all the balls into bags made of netting, and then the bags had to be run through another machine that would clean them. It sounds pretty automated, but there were always problems with jams, and the whole process took several hours.





Present opening time was pretty much complete chaos. I think it always is at this age.

And finally, the big present of the week for Joel: