My Nieces are 6!!!

Ella and Morgan celebrated their 6th birthday this past weekend.  It is crazy how quickly time flies by....

For their birthday we headed to Wahooz for some arcade games, go carts, mini golf and laser tag.  After that we headed home for pizza and cake at home.

Morgan with her cousin Emilee

Ella with her cousin Kyrie

Morgan got Ella leg warmers

Morgan got an American Baby from her parents

Lynnea made a cupcake cake

Barber to Boise 2010

Saturday was the 34th annual Barber to Boise 10K.  The weather was perfect for racing and never got above 60 degrees.  This race is usually my "fast" race so I was of course nervous.  I really wanted to get a PR, but knew to do that I would have to push myself.  I knew to have a chance of setting a record I needed to stay under 8:30 minute miles.  About every quarter mile I would check my watch to make sure I was keeping a good pace.  I felt great for the first 4 miles.  The last two were a bit more of an effort, but more so as a mind game.  I kept reminding myself that I was still feeling good and had previously ran this fast this far before so I was not asking for the impossible.  At the end it paid off.  I crossed the finish line at 51:48.225, a personal record by 47.268 seconds!  I came in 279th out of 934 total runners, 91st out of 550 women runners and 21st out of 107 females in my age group of 25-29. Overall I have to say I am very happy with the results.

For Kerry this was his first race in his five finger shoes.  Apparently the shoes worked well for him because he also set a personal record of 44:32.23.  He came in exactly 200 people in front of me at 79th place.

We again finished in Bronco Stadium. 

Kerry

Here I come...this year they started people in waves, mine started 2 minutes after the first wave, so the finish clock is off from my start time. 

And I am done

In the end zone

Morgan, Ashley, Me, Ella

Kerry and I (note Kerry's shoes)

Ella, Lynnea, Ashley, Kerry, Morgan

Chris and I.  This was Chris' first time inside Bronco Stadium.

Later that day the twins had a cheer meet at their subdivision's fall festival.  It was fun to get to see the girls in action.  You could tell they were concentrating hard on the moves!

What happens when the girls dress themselves

Ella and Morgan

Ella and Morgan

Ella and Morgan

Happy Birthday to Me

One more year til the thirties!
Chris had been gone again for five days with work but made it back home the Wednesday before my birthday.  My parents were going to be here for my actual birthday so we decided to celebrate with the two of us a little early.  That meant sushi!!!  We went out for dinner that night to Happy Fish where we ate too much but loved it.  It had been way too long since we had sushi. 
My parents got to Boise Thursday night and we left Friday after work for Cascade.  This time around we did not have anything big planned for the weekend.  Instead we just hung out with the family and listened to the BSU game on the radio (we could not get the station on the TV).

Ashley, Chris, Me, Ella, Morgan

Make a Wish!

Chris' favorite spot, but the fire and Drake.

Elk Hunt

This is copied email from Chris about his elk hunt:

The elk hunt was a success but I didn't get to bring one home.  I'll try to make this long story short, we packed in to camp 8 miles from the truck (Dirt bike for my hunting partner Andy the whole way in, I  took my 4-wheeler in 4 miles to the trail closure and packed in the other 4).  We hunted hard the first day, covering 8 miles and a couple thousand vertical feet without seeing any elk close by but seeing them in other drainages.  

Camp

The second day we split up and went to the other drainages we had glassed elk in the first day.  I was working 2 bugling bulls which were getting pretty riled up and was simultaneously glassing Andy stalking in on a herd of about 50 on the ridge/hillside on the opposite side of the drainage.  He shot a nice 6x5 with big fronts and really dark black, white-tipped antlers while I watched the whole thing unfold.  It was hot and although the two bulls near me were still working and bugling after his shot, I bailed out 1.5 miles back to camp then up 2.5 miles to where Andy had recovered his bull.  We worked up his bull and packed it back to camp (2 trips for each of us), getting the last load there at about 6:00pm to hang above the creek.  The next day we packed it out to the truck and drove to town to get the meat to cold storage, then hiked back in to camp for me to continue hunting.  

The next morning we went back to the area Andy shot his after resting it for the previous day.  It was our second to last day to hunt so I was already set on being trigger happy.  At first light I glassed three cows and a spike feeding away from us across a huge, steep open sage hillside.  They were about 0.25 miles in front of us so we really had to move to get on them.  After a 10 minute scramble across the top face of the hill we were on, we emerged on a rock outcropping and were overlooking a small sub-basin the elk had fed into.  We saw the spike and ranged him at 195 yds.  I took 3 shots and hit him on at least two of them.  We waited about a half hour and then went to check the area where he was standing when I shot.  It was a major bloodbath.  We sat for another half hour before deciding to pursue it.  The first 75 yards were BUCKETS of blood like I had never seen, clearly had caught some lung because of bright bubbly blood and chunks of lung in a few places.  After 75 yards everything dried up almost instantly and we were on a body search at that point.  We started gridding out the mountainside and on our 5th pass we found new blood.  We tracked him on decent blood for another 0.75 miles before losing blood again.  It was back to gridding the hillside and we looked for the remainder of the day (9 hours total tracking time) before we gave up.  The bull had traveled at least 1.25 miles from where I had initially shot him according to the GPS.  I figured with that amount of blood lost that elk was dead and so was my hunt.  I decided not to hunt the next day and that my tag was spent.  It was a letdown to lose that animal, but all in all it was a spectacular hunt.  

I walked over 46 miles from start to finish and climbed over 8,000 combined vertical feet.  We were both totally spent by the end of the hunt but felt we had worked as hard as possible throughout the week.  Our actual combined hunting only lasted one day and 1 hour, so we were definately in an area with plenty of elk.  Sorry for the long story, but a lot happened in a short 5 day timeframe.

See Spot Walk and more!!!

What a busy Saturday I had last week.
First I took Lynnea to the airport at 6 am.  Then I met the running group for a morning run in the Boise foothills.  After the run I took Drake to a doggie park to let him run in hopes of tiring him out before the Dog Walk.  However, once we were driving to the walk, Drake saw how many other dogs were on the street and he started wagging his tail and whining in anticipation.  Walking to the group proved a bit challenging since Drake was wanting to meet every dog possible to see if any wanted to be friends.  Once there I ran into Anna's mom first and waited for Anna and Jonathan with their 3 boys and Nick, Kelly, and Adrianna.  Kelly's friends Taryn and Chris also came with their daughters and dog.  Also Anna's Brother and his wife met up with us, so needless to say we made a rather large group.  It was in the upper 70s so once we started walking Drake behaved himself very well.  The heat tires him out more quickly which also makes him well mannered!  This was also the first meeting between Drake and Anna's boys.  Barney was perfect Barney, Chief wanted play away with Drake, and Tucker kept trying to show dominance over Drake and bite him!  It was actually pretty funny to watch.  Drake still kept trying to make friends with Tucker, and Anna was very much on top of Tucker, so the walk went without incidence. 

Drake and I

Anna, Jonathan, Tucker, Barney, Chief

Colleen, Lindsay, Duke, Anna, Tucker, Joel, Joyce, Audrianna, Sami, Alyssa, Drake, Kelly, Nick, Barney, Jonathan, Chief

Once we got home Drake fell fast asleep in the cool house and I grabbed a quick nap myself. Then it was time to head to Colton's (Joy's oldest) 4th birthday party.  He is so cute and Joy is such a creative mom.  Colton really likes Mario Brothers right now so Joy set up a whole scavenger hunt for all the kids to play so they could find Bowser at the end and save the princess!  Unfortunately I had to leave early because I was on Eagle call for that evening.  I got called in twice before my day was over...