Triathlon numero dos

Thanksgiving Day found me, Tammy, her husband Greg and brother Matt competing at a triathlon in Goodyear. It was early on a holiday and freezing (well, in Arizona temperatures that is. It had to be like, 50 degrees out!!) but other than that it was awesome! I was really hoping to be faster this time around and I managed to cut 10 minutes off my time from the last one! (this one was 1 mile shorter of a run and 2 miles more on the bike). I had a spedometer on my bike this time which made a HUGE difference. I finished in 1:12 which was 8th place for my age division. Go me!

Transition from bike to swim. Give me another 15 pounds to lose and then I'll start posting swim pics :)

Start of the run. There was an old lady behind me who was stuck to me like glue the entire time. Man, if ya can't shake a 60-year-old then you know you got issues.

Look at us: all flushed and ready to pig out the rest of the day! Thanks for inspiring me, Tam! NO thanks for the 5:45 am runs, Greg! (um, maybe that needs clarification...he made us go running that early, he didn't GIVE us the runs. :)

Eeeek!

My baby is SIX months old today!! What the heck??

Whoo Whoo!

Today I did my first triathlon! Yay! It was a blast and I can't wait to do the next one I have scheduled with some friends on Thanksgiving. Now i know what I need to work on! It was so great to have something to work towards while exercising these last couple months. I got my butt out of bed every morning so I didn't come in dead last in this thing!

My friend Sarah convinced me to do this one with her and afterwards she and her fam took off to move to Vegas. I will definitely miss such a great workout buddy!

The nursing moms and their cute babes.

Me and another girl I met...also named Bonnie!

Great action shot of Sarah! Check out those legs! DANG girl!

Me in the swim. I'm in the center with my mouth open wide...I was gasping pretty badly at this point, just 75m from the end :)

Me at the end of the run. I was really dirty and feeling the burn!

Richard did it too...and hadn't trained for like a year. Jerk.

Sarah after the bike.

Me after the bike. I really was running to the transition area, or at least I felt like I was :) My legs were total Jello for the first mile of the run.

It was so exhausting watching mom race that poor Juliet got all tuckered out. Check out that thumb sucking!! Love it.

My goal was under an hour and 30 minutes for the whole thing...and I got 1:22! Sweet! These were my times:

swim - 9:37, bike - 45:06, run - 27:30, total - 1:22:13 (22 out of 39 in my age division)

(the distances were 400m swim, 10 mile bike, 3 mile run)

I definitely need to work on that bike time...yikes!

NaNoWriMo, Yo!

I was invited to join a friend during NAtional NOvel WRiting MOnth (November). You get 30 days to write a 50,000 word novel. No editing, minimal planning, just writing.
Sounds like a blast!
Please join me in doing something everyone wants to do but almost no one does...write a novel! Sign up here and then connect with me. My profile name is bdiggity.
Happy writing, you writing fools!

Children's Museum with the Liimattas

MOAB!

The immediate Payne clan got together in Moab this past weekend. Seeing as how some of us siblings live out of state now, it behooves us to have a real, full-fledged reunion, of sorts.

Pat & Ashley

Pat with his only niece! He just met her the day before. And are those tights not the raddest EVER?!?! I wish they had them in my size! Ok, not really, but Juliet was STYLIN' in them with that leopard dress (it had a pink bow on the collar). I shoulda kept the headband on for the picture...

You get some pics of me this weekend since Luke mainly manned the camera. Oh yeah baby!

The money maker. Seriously.Juliet was so tuckered out that she just crashed during game night.

Moab, day 2

After a long day of shooting for Grandpa and shopping for Jules, the both of them are wiped out.

Toby and his rubber band gun.

Mean guy face

Liam with bazooka/Jenga box

Grandma brought a fun puppet project for the boys

and the puppets go to war

Pat's dog gets friendly with Toby. This one's going on the wall.

Moab's hair-raising finale

On our last day in Moab, we rented 3 jeeps and drove some really hairy "roads" suggested by the jeep rental place. The one I went on is called "Hell's Revenge". uh, yeah.
So, pictures don't really do it justice. If you want to really see what this thing was like, go to youtube, search hells revenge and rollover. You'll see what happens when people have less sense (and self control) than we did.

How's that for advertising?And there it is, folks. "Hole n" the rock" or whatever.

Ok, so those boulders ARE the road.

Nice.

The fun-V...er, jeep.

Self-portrait while bored waiting for my dad to navigate his way down the sheer cliff face we'd just maneuvered. Change of shorts necessary.

Um, remember how i said pictures don't do it justice? Note how you can't see sky. At this point, the jeep was at about a 30 degree angle.

This is some crazy evil knievel on a dirt bike. No, the jeeps did NOT attempt this bad boy.

I should've taken the picture without Luke and sent it into Low Rider magazine. Oh, without my shirt, that is.

If you look REALLY closely, you can see Tom.

The whole crazy crew. My mom went earlier and declined a second trip in order to watch the kids. I'm not sure how any of the rest of these yahoos made it through the day with so much whiplash.

Nice scenery

It's like a stinking roller coaster! Only without the Disney safety stamp of approval.

2nd quilt

I made this quilt for the first baby of one of my bestest ex-roomies/ice cream-binging-buddy EVER! Now that i've pilgrimaged to Utah and given it to her, I can post it. Here's to quilting attempt numero dos!
I decided that I am not a huge fan of the handcrafted look (i.e. hand quilting is time-consuming and looks ugly when I do it :) So my perfectionist nature may just stick with machine quilting from now on.

My super rad labels i got on Etsy! (before the shopping ban, mind you :)

All gussied up

An exceedingly talented friend made this outfit for Juliet and today was the first day she got to wear it. Pretty freaking adorable, eh?

Four Months! and change...

I finally got around to taking Juliet to her four month appointment. She's at the 50th percentile for weight, 70th for head and 80th for length. So she's long and skinny with a big head. "It's like an orange on a toothpick!" Of course it's nothing compared to Toby's head at the same age. Now that was a noggin'! She loves to smile and laugh, chew her bottom lip, drool and gnaw on anything that reaches her mouth. When laying on her back she loves to grab her toes and almost gets them to her mouth...i LOVE that! She's an excellent sleeper, just like the boys were. The only difference being that she's gone to bed at 8pm right from the get-go! Of course that meant that she liked to get up at 1 or 2am for a feeding until recently when her dear old mother had had enough and just let her cry at that unholy hour. Now she goes all night.

What a good little girl! And so cute! (even though she is balder than both grandpas...)

Work it, girl

So, a very brave friend of mine recently posted the Glamour Shots of her early teen years and tagged all her friends to do the same. I have absolutely no shame, so here they are! I can't decide which I like more: the 1995 bouffant bangs, oh-so-stylish beret or the tiara. (I was voted my Mexican junior high's version of a Homecoming Queen, by the way. I wasn't just holding a sceptor because I had royal aspirations. It was my mom's idea, as most regretted pictures often are.)

It boggles the mind that it was a full 10 years later before I found a guy to marry me, don't you think?? I was such a catch!!

Rollin'

The result of Juliet's first official roll! From back to front, no less. That's the hard way!
Way to go, Jules.