Triathletes

Kira and I are officially triathletes. We competed in our first sprint triathlon last Saturday. It was a 200 yard swim, an 8 1/2 mile bike ride, and a 2 mile run. The race was up in Birmingham near Vulcan Park. We have been training for a couple months now, although we just barely bought our bikes a week before, so we didn't train on them much. Instead we just trained in the bike class at the gym for the bike part of the race.

We actually did pretty good for our first race, except on the biking, because our bikes were so bad for road racing. We just bought some cheap ones at a local sports store, and they slowed us down a lot. They were mountain bikes with mountain bike tires, while the best triathletes all had nice, expensive, aerodynamic road racing bikes.

We started swimming a couple months ago. It turns out that Kira is a natural swimmer. She is a faster swimmer than me. She swam the 200 yards in 4 minutes and I swam it in 5 minutes. I ran about 8 and 1/2 minute miles and Kira ran 9 minute miles.

We forgot to bring our camera to take pictures on the race, but we do have some pictures of us training on our bikes. There is a nice bike trail along the Black Warrior River here in Tuscaloosa just down the street from where we live.

In Memory of Joy

I wrote the thoughts below after I found out my sweet Aunt Joy passed away today about 2:30 p.m. The picture above is a picture of my aunts, Joy and Janet at my wedding reception.

I just found out my Aunt Joy passed away. It's somewhat bittersweet because while I feel she was still young at the age of 61, she is now relieved from the mental illness she suffered with for most of her life. Joy was diagnosed with schizophrenia before the age of twenty.

I have so many fond memories of her. As a little girl my cousin and I would go to Joy's apartment and spend the night with her. She had a bed in her room filled with stuffed animals as well as a day bed in the living room full of them. I loved going to Joy's house and playing with all of her toys!

She was always so generous and kind to others. When I would spend the night at her house sometimes we would go to a rest home the next day and sing to the lonely people staying there. Joy loved to sing and play the piano and I really enjoyed going and singing with her at the rest home!

Joy always thought of others. She did not have much but always offered to give me and others her things. She gave me some of her clothes and jewelry when she first moved to Utah. Even the last time I saw her at Christmas she tried to give away some of her hair clips to me.

Joy loved food! (So do I, so we shared that in common) She was always happy when you made a treat for her or gave her candy! She loved a good home made meal or to go out for a burger and shake.

I'm glad I was able to live near Joy for a little while near the end of her life. I'm sad I did not get to be around her much the last year and a half because I was in Alabama. I loved the times I was able to go visit her and take her out to get an ice cream and French fries or just stop by and chat with her. She lit up every time I came to see her.

When she moved to Utah I gave her a Winnie the Pooh stuffed animal and she just loved it! She had lost a bunch of her stuffed animals in her move but by the end of her life she had another collection of them.

Joy also loved animals. She really enjoyed playing with cats and dogs! Some of her favorite movies were about animals, like Babe the Pig and Milo and Otis. She also liked Disney movies. She loved it when we would bring our dog Celine with us to visit her. It brightened her day. She loved to let the dog lick all over her face, it was a little gross, but it made her happy and in turn made us happy too.

She was so happy for me when Pete and I were getting married. We showed her some of my bridal pictures and she said over and over again what a beautiful bride I was. She was excited that we sent her an invitation to our wedding. When we visited her at Christmas she had our wedding announcement still hanging in her room.

The best thing about her was her laugh! It was easy to make her laugh and her laugh was contagious.

She really could not have had a more fitting name than Joy! She was truly a great Joy to be around!

She missed my Grandma and Grandpa and I know she is with them now and very happy. She will be greatly missed. I am thankful for all the sweet memories she left me with and I look forward to seeing her again some day.

Camping

Pete bought me a tent for my birthday because I have been wanting to go camping for a long time. We decided to break it in this weekend by camping at Lake Lurleen State Park Friday night. I checked the weather forecast when I was at work Friday and when I saw that the weather was actually going to be cool Friday night we decided to take advantage of it. It's usually pretty hot and humid already this time of year so we lucked out getting a cool weekend.
We brought our air mattress to sleep on inside the tent. Our air mattress is two feet high so it basically took up the entire tent...we were very comfortable though. That's me attempting to blow up the mattress below. It was a lot more complicated than you'd think to fill up such a large mattress inside a tent.
Pete collected fire wood while I tried to blow up the air mattress. (Pete actually wound up finishing blowing the mattress up because I was having some difficulty but at least I tried to help out).
We had a big storm come through Alabama the day before our camping trip. The rain from the storm made all the wood we collected very wet. It took us a while to get the fire going because the wood was wet and we neglected to bring any lighter fluid. Luckily Pete is a great boy scout and was able to get the fire going. We just had to wait for the fire to get hot enough to dry out the wood and then burn. We dumped a ton of leaves and pine needles on that fire before it finally burned correctly. We brought hot dogs and stuff to make smores. Below is a picture of Pete roasting our hot dogs.
I love camping and roasting things over a camp fire! We had a lot of fun..Here's a couple pictures of me roasting marshmallow's in our camping chairs.Our campsite had a nice view of Lake Lurleen. We went on a walk Saturday morning and hung out on a dock over the lake. We watched some cool birds that were flying around the dock for a while. I'd never been so fascinated by birds before. It was fun watching how they fly through the air and interact with each other and the sounds that they make. I wish I could fly like the birds were. Anyway we had a good time camping and plan on doing it a lot more often. We want to go visit other areas around Alabama and the south and just bring our tent to camp instead of staying in hotels. Here are a few more pics from our camping trip.

Morning Sunshine!!

This is Kira just emerging from the tent in the morning on our camp out at Lake Lurleen this weekend. Notice how bright it is outside already.

I'll let Kira make a post about the rest of our camping trip.