Cherry Point Duathlon

I did one last multi-sport event for the summer.  The Cherry Point Duathlon, which was 5K run/10 mile bike/5K run on base.  I did this race back in 2008 while Josh was in Iraq.  It is low key, very small, and a fun little race.  It rained all night the night before, so I wasn't sure the race would still be on, but we got a break in the weather and it was a perfect cool and cloudy day for a race.  Josh brought the girls down to catch the tail end of the race and we all had breakfast at the cafe on base afterward. 

 Getting close to the finish. 

 All done - you can see how low key it is.  Just a few orange cones at the finish line. :) 

Yay, I won.  I came in second three years ago, so I was happy to improve.  I got a rather large trophy. 

Williamsburg with the Koupals

Last weekend we took another little trip - this time up to Williamsburg to see the Koupals and Nana.  We had a great time.  The girls LOVED playing with their cousins and Blue had the best time of his life playing with his cousin Clyde.  Piper insisted on wearing these shoes and socks and necklace as we headed out of town.  Davis Hall brought the necklaces to them at gymnastics a couple of weeks ago.  Too cute.

We spent the weekend checking out their neighborhood pool, playing some games, visiting historic Williamsburg, and just hanging out. 

 All the kids looking a little hot.  And Josh kissing an important old guy.

 Here is proof that Josh and I are as mature as Alden and Grey. 

 The Jones family and the Koupal family in front of the horses in historic Williamsburg.  The girls said "neigh, neigh" and got to pet their noses. 

Playing some games and hanging out at their house.

The dogs having the time of their lives!  We stayed at a hotel, but Blue stayed at the Koupal's house.  He was a great guest and peed and pooped inside their house! 

Remembering 9/11/01

Earlier this week, I started remembering my personal experience on September 11th, 2001. It seems like so long ago, yet it also seems like no time has passed at all. My memories of that day are starting to fade a little bit, so I thought today would be a good opportunity to write down what I remember.

Tuesday, September 11th in Salt Lake was a beautiful day. The kind of fall day you wait for all summer. I woke up early to head out for my morning run. The air was brisk and it was still dark. I ran 4 miles with Jackson - one of our regular routes from that neighborhood. As I came in and headed for the shower, I turned on the TV. The Today Show was on and they were showing video of a smoking World Trade Center. At the time, they knew it was a plane that hit it, but suspected a small plane. I thought it was odd and walked into the bedroom to wake Josh up and turn on the TV. We watched for a few minutes. While I was getting ready, another plane hit the WTC and it became apparent that our country was being attacked. I can't describe adequately how disconcerting this was. At this point, I called my parents and woke them up. I told them to turn on their TV. I still remember the sound of my dad's voice when he realized what was happening.

I decided to head to work. Josh headed up to the Lifthouse (they were painting it that day) and stayed there for a few hours. I got in my car and turned on my favorite radio program, Radio from Hell. On that day, they stopped playing music in order to help listeners cope with what was happening. To this day it remains a talk radio program. They were taking calls and trying to piece together information for listeners. On my forty-five minute drive down to Provo, they announced to us that a plane had hit the Pentagon, and that both the north and south towers had collapsed. It was beginning to set in that we were experiencing history.

I walked into work to find everyone stunned and shaken. We sat at our desks and wondered what to do until someone brought a TV into the conference room. We sat around the table and watched the rest of the day unfold. A colleague was on a press tour in New York that day and we were relieved to hear that she was safe. The news was reporting that different terrorist groups had taken responsibility for the attacks, but it was still unclear who was responsible. There were rumors and suspicions that the west coast would be targeted next, but at this point all flights had been grounded. Because we had an office in San Francisco - a potential target - our management thought we should all head home to spend the rest of the day with our families.

Josh and I spent the rest of the afternoon and evening glued to the television. It was all surreal - like a bad dream. Over and over we watched the footage of people jumping from the towers, the video of those planes making impact over and over again, and the people running desperately through the streets of New York. I talked to my parents again several times during the day. I remember my dad asking me if I understood the significance of what had happened.

In October of 2001, I went to New York for a press tour. I did not get close to the WTC site, but we were close enough to see that it was still a pile of burning rubble, but life was moving forward in New York. In the coming months, Josh started pushing the idea of joining the Marine Corps, while at the same time, our country went to war in Afghanistan. He had long had the dream of being a jet pilot and was tired of watching life pass by while working at the Lifthouse.

In February of 2002, he signed up for Officer Candidate School. On October 6th, 2002 (his 26th birthday), he left for OCS. I was in denial at the huge changes that were coming in our lives and really didn't want to leave Salt Lake. Right before he left for Quantico, VA, I once again went to New York for a press tour. I was incredibly sad to be there. We had just lost my grandma Cherie and my memories of New York were of the trip we had taken there with her a few years earlier. Now she was gone and the city had become emblematic of the horrible events of 9/1/01.

Our story of that day is unremarkable in the grand scheme of things. But it resulted in a remarkable turn of events in our lives. I have wondered what the past ten years would have been if we hadn't lived through 9/11. It's hard to say, but I doubt it would have involved a couple of deployments overseas for Josh and moves to and from six different states. As horrible as it was, I hope to never forget September 11th.

Hurricane Irene

Josh and I consider ourselves experienced hurricane veterans.  It's a strange thing for a couple of Utahns, but we have now experienced Hurricane Isabel while living in Virginia, Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Ivan while living in Mississippi, a couple of smaller tropical storms, and one Hurricane-like epic wind event in Washington state.  You could say these things follow us around.  So a couple of weeks ago when yet another hurricane was forecast off the east coast, we didn't think much of it.  Josh stocked up on some water and batteries and we kind of figured it wouldn't be much of anything.

The storm was scheduled to hit us on Saturday August 26th.  On Thursday, things were looking quite bad.  It had increased to a category 3 and was headed straight for the Outer Banks.  Josh was getting nervous.  He pointed to all the trees around our house and we wondered if we should evacuate.  He ended up calling around and found one of the last generators in town and we decided to stick around.  Before Katrina hit us in Meridian, we bought a generator, and were later reimbursed by FEMA.  Then, the stupid thing was stolen from us in Washington after the big windstorms up there.  So we forked over 800 bucks another generator.

Friday afternoon, the outer bands of the storm started to hit us and it started to rain.  I thought it seemed pretty early since it wasn't supposed to start until Saturday afternoon.  That night we went to bed with a complete and total downpour.  Josh described it as a fire hose pointed directly at our bedroom window all night long.  It was relentless and we both had a hard time sleeping (luckily, the girls didn't seem bothered at all).  We were both up at 5 am because it was strong enough that it was getting a little scary.  By then the winds had started to pick up.  Here's a picture of what it looked like from our back door.

 

The eye of the storm wasn't supposed to hit us until later Saturday afternoon, so we sat around and tried to entertain the girls and the dog.  Josh put on his helmet to take Blue out to go potty a few times.  During one of those trips outside, he found this beach ball that had blown into our front yard.  It had a bunch of little kids' names on it.  Sort of like the bottle in the ocean, only there was no note inside.  But the girls got a huge kick out of it and ran around playing with it and yelling "ball ball!".  

The power went out around 10 or 11 am.  We thought our radio would work, but we didn't have the right batteries, so we were relying on updates from family and the WITN (local TV channel) Facebook page (thank goodness for iPhones and social networking!) until Josh could get the generator up and running.  This proved to be quite entertaining.  I should preface this by staying the local news (and national news) had done NOTHING but cover this storm in the week prior.  I mean, it was constant.  And there were 5,000 stories about what to do to prepare.  But people were posting the craziest things on the WITN Facebook wall and were completely annoyed and angry that their power was out during a hurricane.  Here are some of the posts:

• do any 1knw wen power is cumn bck on n lagrange

• kan we please get sum info on williamston we are pitch blk!!!!

•  WHAT'S GOING ON WITH THE POWER IN WASHINGTON, NC?

• When will windsors light get fixed because this is redicilous I live at greens cross

• Any open Bojangles?!?  (seriously, is this real???  I can't decide)

• Lights still off in ayden nc come on ayden utilitys

People were asking about their power while the storm was still RAGING outside.  I felt bad for finding this entertaining, but it was crazy and we were bored!   Meanwhile, apparently the national news only covered what MIGHT happen in New York City.  This was extremely irritating because when we talked to our families, they didn't have a whole lot of information for us.

The storm had some serious staying power.  It continued on all day long on Saturday with the same relentless wind and rain.  The other hurricanes we have experienced are usually in and out in around 8 hours.  This lasted more than 24 hours.  We went to bed Saturday night with still more wind and rain.

Sunday morning we finally woke up to sunny, blue skies.  Of course, this means it was getting hot in the house.  We spent most of the morning cleaning up the yard.  We had one tree down in our yard and two others that were leaning at a 45 degree angle. Our neighbor Bill helped Josh pull those two down.  

We also got out and started to check out the neighborhood and drove around town a little bit.  Our neighborhood seemed to have been hit pretty hard - mainly because we live in an area with so many trees.

Monday morning we woke up and it had started to get really hot and miserable in the house.  We were all bored and antsy.  Josh went to work that afternoon and I put the girls in the car and drove around.  We wandered around the mall downtown for an hour or so.  Apparently, it had flooded during the storm, but it seemed fine when I was there.  The girls were hot and sweaty, and starting to get cranky.

When Josh got home from work, we went to eat dinner at Morgan's downtown.  We came home and right after we put the girls down to bed, our power came back on.  We did a dance around the house, immediately cleaned up all the extension cords and fans from the generator, and had a great night's sleep. Our cable, phones, and Internet did not come back on until Friday, so I spent the week coffee shop-hopping trying to get work done.

We were of course very lucky to get power back so soon, and lucky that we didn't have any damage to our house.  There were areas that took days longer.  And there was a lot of destruction and major flooding in some areas.  So really, we were out 800 bucks for the generator, a weekend, and three trees.  But still.  I'd rather not experience another hurricane.

A good reminder

People are often unreasonable, illogical, and self-centered; forgive them anyway.
If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives; be kind anyway.
If you are successful, you will win some false friends and some true enemies; succeed anyway.
If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you; be honest and frank anyway.
What you spend years building, someone could destroy overnight; build anyway.
If you find serenity and happiness, they may be jealous; be happy anyway.
The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow; do good anyway.
Give the world the best you have, and it may never be enough;
give the world the best you’ve got anyway.

You see, in the final analysis, it is between you and God;
It was never between you and them anyway.

-Mother Teresa

Home from Summer Camp

Blue boy came home from his summer training camp a couple of weeks ago (I'm behind on this blogging thing).  He was there for a total of eight weeks.  We went up there a few times to work with him and see how he was doing.  I was not crazy about leaving him there for so long, but the reality of our lives is that we just didn't have time he deserved to train him properly.  We were very happy to bring him home and he now knows how to walk on a leash, sit, stay, heel and come.  We have been continuing his training with at least one walk per day.

The girls were so excited to have him home.  Josie calls him "buba".  In the mornings when we go in there with their milk, he follows us and they yell "ruh ruh" over and over.  And at night before bed, we all give each other kisses and hugs and they always kneel down to give Blue boy his kisses.

He has been very patient with them.  They aren't exactly gentle.  But he seems to be moving out of the destructive puppy phase and is starting to understand how to act when they maul him.  Good boy, Blue.

Namaste

 

We have been practicing some yoga at night before bed.  Josie and Piper have some very nice looking downward dogs!

Weekend Trip to Raleigh

Last weekend, we decided to take a little getaway.  We have been wanting to check out the Marbles Kid's Museum in Raleigh for awhile and were kind of itching to get out of town and visit a few other places we don't have - all the 'amenities' of a real city.  We ended up having a great time. The Kid's Museum was a lot of fun and we got a hotel with an outdoor pool and annoyed all the people who were relaxing poolside with their cocktails.  Ha! 

Here are the girls in downtown Raleigh walking into the kid's museum.  They insisted on holding hands.  Actually, it's usually Piper who insists on holding Josie's hand.  She doesn't like to hold our hands anymore - just Josie's.  It is pretty cute, but Josie gets really frustrated if she's not up for it. 

The kid's museum was huge!  We were there for a few hours.  In this section, there was music from around the world and the kids can go pick the music they want to play.  They both really got into the dancing, but Josie broke out all her moves.  She went to town dancing.  The world would definitely be a better place if we were all comfortable enough with ourselves to break out dancing like that when feel compelled. 

 And of course, there were animals.  Piper wasn't happy about having to leave this horse. 

 

Unfortunately, we forgot our camera, so we took these pics on our phones and don't have any pictures of the rest of the weekend.  We also visited Trader Joe's, REI, the Raleigh Running Company, and the Raleigh Farmer's Market.  And we had dinner at a Lebanese restaurant downtown on Saturday night and a good breakfast Sunday morning.  Why Lebanese food, you ask?  Well because the restaurant we first decided on and picked (based on their menu online) only had one highchair and it was being used.  Which is really a pretty clear message that kids are NOT welcome.  So we walked around until we found the Lebanese place, which was great.  We all loved the food except Piper wouldn't eat anything except of Clif bar.  Oh the joys of feeding a toddler!   

We look forward to our next trip to the "big city".

Wilmington Children's Museum

Yesterday, we decided to take a little day trip down to Wilmington to go to the Children's Museum.  We haven't been able to do all that much this summer because of Josh's back, but he is getting better (yay!), and we were itching to get out of New Bern.  The children's museum is in a great old building downtown and near the water.  The girls got to do some art, play with blocks, sand, drive a boat, a car, and play with the slide.  There were a lot of things that were for bigger kids, but definitely enough for little kids to keep them busy.  After a couple hours there, we had lunch at the Mellow Mushroom, and headed home during their naptime. 

 It really is funny how much fun little things like this can be with kids.  I love seeing things through their eyes and watching the looks on their faces as they experience new things. 

Because Sharing is Caring

Perhaps you are sitting there wondering what is currently on my Kindle and my iPod (ha!).  Well, you're in luck, because I am sharing them.  Earlier this week, I downloaded the new Airborne Toxic Event album, All at Once.  I loved their last album and listened to it over and over during my first trimester of pregnancy.  When I listen to it now, I always think of walking, walking, walking around the neighborhood, before I was put on bedrest and wondering what life would be like with twins.  Their new album is every bit as good as the last one.

One of the songs:


And of course, I have been a reading machine this summer.  I think the following two books have been the best books I have read all summer - and there have been a lot.  I might even put them in my top ten best books ever.

State of Wonder by Ann Patchett was a bizarre story that takes place in the jungles of Brazil.  I just couldn't put it down.  Here's the NYTimes book review write-up.

I was so sad to finish City of Thieves by David Benioff.  This is an amazing story and made me want to learn more about what happened during Russia during World War II.  But it didn't feel like 'work' reading it.  It was just a great story.  Here's the review of this one. 

Two-zero months

 Josie and Piper are 20 months!  Last month got away from us and I didn't write a monthly update for the first time since we started this thing.  Some of the latest from the last couple of months:

• Talking: There are more new words everyday.  Josie leads the way and Piper will eventually say the same words Josie does.  Some new favorites are ewsh (shoes), pease, birbie (bird),  wa (when they want to walk), wawa (water).  Josie says more phrases than Piper, like "there you go", "all done" and "all gone". The other day, I showed her an airplane and the very next day I was changing her diaper and an airplane flew overhead.  She was so proud to say "airplane!". 
• Reading: We read a lot of books.  And by "read", I mean that they bring us a book, reverse back and plop in our lap, then we read the first two sentences and they say "all done" and go get another one.  But they really enjoy this, so we do it over and over.  We can get Piper to sit still for awhile by asking her to point out objects in the book.  It's amazing what she has picked up on.  She doesn't talk very much, but she can point out random objects like ice cream cones and bicycles.  It would make me very happy to see them love to read as much as I do. 
• Animals:  These girls love animals!  They know a lot of animal sounds, including snake, dog, cow, duck, bird, tiger, lion, frog, horse.  During our morning runs with the stroller, we try to make it over to the neighbors' house with horses in the yard.  They are captivated by them.  Then when we get home, they say "neigh!" over and over.  We also talk about all the other animals we see - the birds, the squirrels, the horses, and of course the doggies.  They were not with me when I saw a bear a few weeks ago, but that would have made Piper very happy!  Her bear has become almost as important to her as her green frog lovey. 
• Independence: Both girls would prefer to walk now than to have us hold them.  They ask to walk and then hold their little hands up for us to hold.  Cutest thing ever!  We finally ditched the wagon for walking into the Y.  It takes us awhile, but we make it inside eventually. 
• Eating: Mealtimes can really be a little unpleasant around here.  I honestly have no idea what they are going to eat from day to day.  They love something one day, and then look at it like its vomit the next day.  Piper would really like to eat rice cakes for every meal.  Half their meals end up on the ground.  Every day I find dried smoothie in different spots.  It's exhausting.  
• Buddies: These girls are turning into very different little people, but they sure love each other.  They will hold each others hands and walk around the house.  They speak the same language.  The other day, I watched an exchange where Piper pulled out her play stroller, patted the seat and grunted at Josie.  That was Josie's cue to walk over and sit in it so Piper could push her around.  They make each other giggle, and they completely torment each other.

Here's evidence:

Just for fun

Here are some pics we snapped the other day...

 Just looking cute. 

 Walking around the house holding hands. 

 Hello??  "talking" on the phone.  And fighting over it.