I Survived

I survived the 2011 Southern California Ragnar race. Our team of 12 successfully ran 202 miles from Huntington Beach to Coronado Island in San Diego.

We flew out all together Thursday afternoon and got settled in in our hotel in Newport Beach. The six of us from our ward left behind our adoring husbands and 24 kids. It was strange to be without all the kiddos so we celebrated our short-lived independence by jumping on the beds a little:

We also had to get our vans ready-each team has 12 people (except for those "ultra" teams that do it with just 6-crazy!), so you divide into two groups of 6 and each group has an 15-seater van that they basically live in for the duration of the race. The ladies in my van were all from my ward and all great gals. Here's the side of our van:

Our team name was "Sea Level is for Sissies", borrowed from the Bolder Boulder (a local 10K) a few years back. The sea level dwellers didn't really care for our name (I can't imagine why) and the few who passed us (did I mention how awesome we were?) made a point of asking us, "So how's sea level feeling now?" Oh well. It was really hot which obviously outweighed any oxygen benefits we may have had.

The night before the race began all 12 of us ate like pigs at the Spaghetti Factory (love that mizithra cheese and the spumoni). Guapo's sister, who lives in the "OC", was kind enough to join us and to listen to all of our pre-race fears and dreams. She's expecting her first baby in 6 weeks or so-the first girl in 10 grand kids!

We got settled in for the night and tried not to think about all the running we would do during the next 24 hours.

In the morning we filled up on breakfast at the hotel and headed out to register. We were the second van, so the other 6 started the race around 7 that morning. Here we are before my first leg (I was runner #7, so I was the first runner of our van)

Because the other van started in Huntington and ran inland, by the time we stared running we were nowhere near the ocean, or more importantly, the nice ocean breeze, and it was HOT. Like 90 degrees hot-not quite what we had trained in. My first run was 7.3 miles and I started getting goose bumps when I hit mile 3-not good. But, I finished it in decent time and re-hydrated while I rested and cheered on the other 5 in our van (so happy that I got to go first and have it over with).

I felt great after the first leg and we started making plans for next year's race. A veteran of Ragnar races on our team told us to wait and see how we felt after the second leg...

We all soon realized how important these little babies were:

It seemed that we all knew who had gone, who needed to go right now, who would need to go soon, and who couldn't go (a very sad state to be in). I hate porta potties (Pedro calls them "torta potties") but I learned to appreciate them (kind of) during the 30 hours of the race.

Our van finished our first leg and handed off to the second van near Lake Elsinore. We had about 5 hours to kill, so we went out to dinner at California Pizza Kitchen. Did you know in California they are required to put how many calories things have on the menus? Wow-that's a drag-probably smart, but dang, you could easily put away 2,000 calories with an appetizer, drink, and main dish-without even thinking about a desert.

After dinner we wanted to go see a chick flick, but there was nothing good at the theaters so we went to Trader Joe's instead and loaded up on a bunch of their fun treats. The Sea Level Sissies (ie the locals) didn't particularly care for our outfits mocking their lack of elevation. Oh well.

Then we headed to our next exchange to wait for the arrival of the van 1 runner who would hand off to me. We all got out our sleeping bags and tried to sleep but I just couldn't-the second run of my leg was horrible-a huge hill, 8.2 miles (that we found out later was actually just over 9 miles), and at night in the dark-spooky.

Not that you care, but so that I remember it, here's the profile of my second leg-icky!

So, thinking about that huge hill-I couldn't really sleep. I did visit the porta potties a couple of times and listened as other runners came in and were talking about how creepy it was to run in the dark with very few people around- so very helpful.

Finally, it was time for me to run. Here I am with some of my peeps (I'm the one with the headlight)

That leg was a beast. The hill was so long and so steep and so dark. And near the top, when I felt like dying, there was a guy standing off the road in the shadows-no car in sight, no flashlight or anything-just standing there. That really freaked me out. I mean, how easy would it be for some sick-o to look up the course maps and know just where to be-by the later legs it's so spread out-a lot of the time there was no one else around me that I could see.

So, I made it up that beast of a hill-I did walk a teeny-tiny bit while I rearranged my clothing (my long sleeve shirt got way too hot)-but it wasn't much. The downhill was FAST. I had been so concentrated on that first hill when I was studying the course map I didn't even notice the second 1.5 mile hill-much smaller, but very painful completing the first one.

I felt like crap (if I could use a stronger word I would) after the second leg and wondered why I had ever thought this would be fun...

I was in and out of the van for a while trying to decide if I was going to throw up or not. My stomach finally calmed down and I curled up in my sleeping bag in the van and slept through a couple of the other runner's legs-bad teammate.

We handed off to the other van around 3:00 am and had a little more than 5 hours before we had to start running again (yuck!). We got a hotel near our next exchange-everyone had to decide if they were going to shower and then sleep or sleep and then shower. Since I was near comatose when we arrived at the hotel, I chose the latter option. We slept from 3:30 to 7:30-a whopping 4 hours-but it felt so nice. I even got my own bed.

When I woke up the last thing I wanted to that day was run again. I was exhausted.

Before we started the race, we decided as a team to even things out since my leg was 25.2 miles and the next closest runner from our van had 20.0. So I traded off my last leg which would have been almost 10 miles for a 6 mile leg. I was very grateful that morning that we had traded. I kind of felt like a wuss but I still ran just over 22 miles, and I felt so bad that morning, I just didn't care that much-at least not enough to trade back.

Here I am taking off at the start of my last leg-I looked a lot happier than I was feeling:

The great thing about it was that it was through La Jolla and went right along the beach for 3 of the 6 miles-it was gorgeous. But I was so tired and it was hot out again. It was pretty painful. And whereas my other legs were pretty much straight on the same road or path, this one had lots of turns and not a lot of signage-so I was scared for a lot of the run that I was going the wrong way and was tacking on extra mileage-not what I needed. But, I ended in the right place and was DONE.

What a great feeling.

Everyone else finished their legs up; here is our team at the finish line on the beach in Coronado:

and the six that were in our van:

We ate dinner at In 'n Out, sat in the hot tub and went to bed at 9:30. When the alarm went off at 6:30 it felt like the middle of the night. I was so tired. And sore. I flew home that morning and made it to church that afternoon.

By Monday, amazingly, I was hardly sore.

I've woken up almost every night wondering when my next leg starts and if I'm in the right place.

We're planning our next race and are thinking of inviting our husbands to join us...

Spring in Colorado

Was I just complaining about no snow?

That's spring in Colorado-I took the pictures this morning and now it's up to 50 and most of it is melted. Crazy.

Anyway, I'm headed to the airport to head off to California for my race. Do I feel ready? No. Am I scared? Yes.

Wish me luck.

Not Today. Not Today.

My blog haunts me every night as I go to bed; it nags, "You didn't post today. AGAIN." Oh, the disappointment, the guilt, the horror. Not only am I missing my blog friends and their interesting lives, I'm not recording my own life. But I just don't have any big chunks of time like I used to when I didn't have to cook and clean and that's what I require to write. I'm hoping that at some point I will be able to get it together enough to post a couple of times a week, but so far, I'm just living with the daily nagging of my blog.

So, forgive me. It's not you, it's me. I promise.

Anyway. You may have wondered how our first Thanksgiving back in the States went after 9 years of it slowly losing its meaning because I couldn't get fried onions, cranberries, or sweet potatoes and Guapo was always at work anyway, so what was the point?

Well... we spent it...back to Mexico on the beach where we spent our three Mexican Thanksgivings. We went with my parents and siblings and their families. I'm obviously not complaining, I just think it's funny. I also think it's funny that after 9 years of having to travel with with baby after baby, making each and every flight a veritable nightmare, our kids are now pretty easy to travel with and now we won't do nearly as much airplane travel. I took naps, read a book, stared into space for long periods of time-I didn't have to do barely anything for them.

So, here are a few shots from the trip...

The lovely beach that has unfortunately been discovered by Europeans snorkel enthusiasts-it used to be so sleepy and this time there were certain days when herds of waddling-finned and goggled people invaded in hopes of seeing a few of the many turtles that live just off the shore.

The sand crabs the kids caught every night:

Poor Pedro was terrified of them and refused the nightly "crab hunt" after the very first night when he told me, "I can't take it anymore!" (My mom asked, "I wonder who he's heard that from." Who? From me? Yeah, probably.)


Here's the little guy on the beach.

Awwww. He's growing up.

Speaking of "Poor Pedro", he spent a good portion of the 8 day trip sick. I gave him the croup which I had right before we left (I know, you thought grown-ups couldn't get the croup. They can.), and then he got a bad case of "Montezuma's revenge" the last 3 days and spent most of his time on a lawn chair sleeping:

He was still pretty good natured though:

We relived our Mexico days and climbed the ruins of Coba:

And, we did some zip-lining into a cenote:

Yes, I was that scared. After having lived there for 3 years and seeing the lack of quality control, and the high frequency of jimmy-rigging with wire and duct tape, I'm still surprised I did it (and let my kids do it). But, we all survived and had a ton of fun in the process.

Here's my splash into the beautiful cenote:

And with that, I'm going to go to bed IN PEACE for once, having appeased my nagging blog.

A crush, a fox, and a storm

We went to the mountains for an overnighter on Friday.

We have made some friends here who are willing to travel with us-dog and all (at least they were last week, who knows about this week). It is the family of Pedro's "crush", a word that the older kids tried to teach him. I don't think he gets it; although they got him to say that he has two crushes, one on the darling little girl below and one on Margarita (awwwww-so cute), I also heard him say, "I have a crush right here in my mouth!"

Yep, he's still got that bad smile thing going on.

They're pretty funny together, always laughing and chasing each other around. We've heard her say on several occasions, while giggling and batting her eye lashes "Oh, Pedro, you're so funny!"

And here's a fox that was outside our back door:

He had his full winter coat and his tail was beautiful-I wanted to wrap it around my neck (please don't tell PETA).

While I had envisioned a day of being out of doors hiking, I way overestimated the temperature (my running clothes consisted of shorts and a t-shirt-no running for me); it was a balmy 28 when we got up and stayed in the 30's most of the day-so much for fall in the mountains.

In the afternoon we had a special treat: a snowstorm that lasted about a half an hour.

And now I'm ready to face another week of the rat-race.

Have a good one.

A Little Break from the Rat Race

I know, two trip posts in a row-how obnoxious and boring. But, at least I'm blogging, right?

We had a five day weekend (only in Brazil) last week and so we traveled with Ballerina Girl's and one other family to a sleepy little beach town an hour and a half out of the city. We rented a large 6 bedroom house where we could spread out and play. The house came with a cook, two maids and a "house boy", so we weren't exactly roughing it.

One of the things that I least like about where we live is the almost-suffocating-at-times apartment living. There's no, "GO PLAY IN THE BACKYARD RIGHT NOW BEFORE I LOSE IT!" when I'm feeling frustrated with the kids. Every place the kids spend time has walls and gates and locks so they have zero freedom to do much of anything on their own.

So, when we can get out of the city and let the kids run wild, it's a real treat for parents and kids alike.

And run they did; between the 3 families we have 9 kids who got along superbly well all weekend and NEVER even turned on a TV or a computer. Pretty amazing, I think.

We kept ourselves busy riding in our little boat:

climbing rocks (Margarita's favorite):

looking for ocean wildlife (Guapo's favorite):

playing on our (mostly) private beach (we had to scare one other family off the beach on Saturday, but other than that we were alone the entire time):

chitchating in whatever shade we could find (moms' favorite):

playing in the pool (pushing was outlawed about 30 seconds later when the first injury occured):

blowing bubbles for the bubble blowing contest (Julio was the winner):

playing game after game after game (bananagrams, backgammon, mancala, war, scum and several kid invented card games):

brushing up on our archery skills with dad:

eating, eating, eating; here's Ballerina Girl about to roast a marshmellow for smores (I know. You're wondering why such a pretty girl would wear such an ugly sweatshirt. I wonder that myself.)

and...enjoying the magnificent view from the deck:

We feel so blessed that we have friends here who are willing to travel with our big brood-it really takes a special kind of friendship to be able to spend 24 hours a day together for multiple days.

Sometimes our families aren't even willing to travel with us. :)

Trip to Sao Paulo

So, I'm doing something I never do and covering past events. A few weeks ago I traveled to Sao Paulo with Margarita and Julio for their regional Destination Imagination competition. Ballerina Girl and I traveled on the bus with the kids. It took 8 hours each way. Thank goodness for Dramamine- while BG used her time wisely and read three books during the combined 16 hours, I took a really, really long nap.

The cool thing about the trip was that I got to go and be supportive of my kids, but I wasn't in charge of them. Their team managers were. I didn't have to do anything-just say hi, give hugs when I saw them, and cheer a little here and there; I didn't have to wake them up, make sure they were in bed, make sure they were ready in the morning, make sure they were on the bus. It was someone else's responsibility.

It was absolutely delightful.

During our down time, which was quite frequent, BG and I were socially introverted, preferring to find a couch to curl up on and read our books (or Kindles, or iPhones) instead of chitchatting with the other temporarily irresponsible parents.

We did take a little time to be social and met with our fellow blogger Fabiola who lives in Sao Paulo. We had a delightful breakfast together in the hotel. She is just as cool in person as she is on her blog:

I realize that none of us are actually looking at the camera. Had I used the "good" one of me, BG never would have forgiven me. (that's the kind of sacrificing friend I am. :) )

My kids did great-they both won their challenges for their age divisions.

Here's Julio and his group performing their skit about a teacher who had a change of heart towards his students.

Julio even got to show off his Beethoven's 5th symphony (I swear I hear that song in my dreams). (and nightmares).

Margarita's group only had her and two other boys; there team name was the "DIlanders". It was supposed to be the "DIslanders", but the boy who made the sign spelled it wrong. Oh well, they still won.

Their group had to make a structure out of only newspaper and glue and then during their skit (about the earthquake in Haiti) they had to see how much weight it could hold. Below is Margarita adding the weights which was actually really exciting:

Here's the Rio group in front of a famous bridge in Sao Paulo (sorry, can't remember the name).

And, finally, here's Julio jumping on a trampoline at the big final DI party the night before we left:

It was a really fun trip!

I'm Leaving on a Jet Plane Big Bus

Well, I'm off to Sao Paulo tomorrow with Margarita and Julio for their Destination Imagination competition. Thanks to me and my (irrational) fear of flying without my kids, Ballerina Girl and I are going to suffer through a bus ride (with 20+ kids) that takes anywhere from 5-8 hours, depending on whom you ask. Did I mention I get carsick?

Sounds like fun, eh?

It's a humbling experience for me to see Juan Carlos (6 years old) crying tonight because I'm leaving. I spend a fair amount of time feeling frustrated with my kids; so to see one of them crying because I'm not going to be here, when I sometimes feel like they'd be happier if I wasn't around nagging them about this or that, makes me feel grateful that kids love so unconditionally.

That's all. I'll be back Sunday.

What I'll Miss

Well, it's that time again. Time to back up the bags (a serious undertaking) and head down south for the next 5 months give or take a day or two.

So, here's what I'll miss, and what I'm looking forward to in Brazil (in no particular order. Well, except for the part about Gaupo :) ).

What I'll Miss:

-Redbox (how cool is Redbox?)

-Not shaving my legs

-Running in cool weather (despite the fact that it didn't happen nearly often enough)

-Sleeping in (we've been getting up around 9:30 am everyday, which is 2:30 pm in Rio. Could be a rough adjustment.)

-Good ice cream

-My Mommy

-Not having a maid

-Being around family

-Target

-My latest fashion faux-pas:

Furry Crocs. Most comfortable thing EV-ER.

-Dressing like a slob and fitting in just fine (as opposed to dressing like a slob and feeling like a dork in Brazil)

-Amazon (how will the UPS guy survive without his daily trip to my parents' house?)

-Driving

-Church in English

-Church at the correct temperature (our chapel in Rio is the only one without AC and the temp has been over 100)

-Feeling relatively safe all of the time

-Doing a load of laundry in less than 4 hours

-The snow

-Milk

-Getting wrapped up in a super soft blanket at night to read


What I'm looking forward to:

-Seeing Gaupo

-My skin not looking like leather because of the cold, dry air

-My kids going back to school and Pedro starting preschool in February

-Wearing flip-flops 90% of the time

-Having full use of my iPhone

-Playing tennis (if my elbow ever heals)

-Hanging out with Ballerina Girl

-Not packing up and moving 5 or 6 people every week

-Not having to wear panty hose to church

-Having a maid

-Drinking Guarana (Brazilian Soda)

-Eating the wonderful fresh fruits

-Not being a single parent

-More blogging (I promise!)

-Taking the kids swimming

-Seeing Ron and Kitty

-Running on the beach


We had a memorable vacation and ejoyed spending time with almost all of our family. I can't believe it's already time to go back.

Wish me luck tomorrow. I can think of about 1,000,001 things I'd rather do than travel by myself with the kids for 20 hours.

I'm on a Blogcation (In Case You Didn't Notice)

I'm taking a little break from my blog lately. There's just not a lot going on that hasn't gone on during other trips home. Lots of:

-Milk drinking
-Infinite cereal choices (somedays I have to have 3 bowls)
-Trips to Target
-Egg McMuffins
-Drinking water right from the tap

I don't want to bore you with the details.

My trip home in 9 days with the four kids, without Guapo or any other adult help, on a flight from Houston that rarely leaves on the right day let alone on time, is looming large. I'm not looking forward to that.

Other than that, it's all good.

The Ugly Face of Jet Lag

We made it. We had a very tight connection in Houston; we, along with Ballerina Girl's family, were literally running through the airport, but we made it. It was one of the better trips we've had-the kids slept most of the long flight and I flew first class on the short flight-so I don't have a lot to complain about.

As world travelers, we pride ourselves on quickly adjusting to jet lag. Our strategy? Staying very active our first day of arrival no matter how crappy we feel. Remember last summer? We bought a car, went to Target twice and got everyone a haircut. Summer's a little easier though because it's only a 3 hour time difference and during the winter it's 5 hours.

Anyway, Friday night, after a very busy day including a child's size root canal for poor Juan Carlos, my dad offered us tickets to a lacrosse game at the Pepsi Center; even though the starting time was 8 pm local time, 1 am Brazil time, we accepted. At first things were going fine,

Everyone was awake and having fun. Pedro was particularly revved up-hopping around the box like we'd given him a hit of Red Bu11.

And then, they started dropping like flies:

Here are Julio and Juan Carlos shortly after arriving in the mountains yesterday:

And I'm sad to report, the kids are dealing with the jet lag better than I am. I can manage alright for a while and then I'm just exhausted and MUST sleep.

But, we're up in the mountains now, having a great time. It just started snowing and we are all loving it. Tomorrow I'll post our lovely Christmas tree.