Boulder!

Hi Friends!
We are still happily ensconced in the lovely town of Boulder, enjoying cooler temperature and lots of family-friendly activity. I've not been lonely one second, with a steady stream of visitors/fellow-heat-escapees – Lizzie, Christine, and Katie have all kept me and Sky busy while Marc is back in Austin, and Lee and Barry already live up here. Our daily schedule resembles run, kid-play, work, kid-fun!, work, yoga, kid-stuff, work. Not bad. Lots of hikes, runs, and a really consistently fun yoga studio. Last weekend we got to visit Barry Lee’s sister’s farm in Nederland and meet llamas! (and his super-awesome family and chickens and horses and donkeys and watermelon juice and raw macaroons!) We also went to the Farmer's Market and got raw cheese and Kombucha by the big jug! We are really enjoying all the opportunity be outside here most of the day – so much so that I have been trying to figure out how to stay a couple more weeks! We will keep you posted. More pics here. OXXO

Breck2Boulder

Hi from Colorado! Marc did the Firecracker 50 on Saturday, and shaved about 45 minutes off his time from last year. He was really stoked. Jess also took off a bunch of time from last year, like an hour-fifteen, and Kyle was 30 seconds faster than his already-fast time from last year. So, it was a good racing day for all of them, despite the whole limited-oxygen thing (Breck is at 9600 ft, and then the race goes up!) I was altitude-humbled first thing in the morning at the 10k - I went into the woods near the top of the female pack, and after about two miles was barely crawling up the hill that was STILL going. I was able to make up some time pounding out the downhill by trying some ridiculous moves I would never try at home. Wishing I had worn some sort of Texas flag sportswear (socks?) to illustrate to my competitors why I was such a sucker. Get it!? Sucker?? No air?? Haaa!

The Breck Epic was going on in town too.We ran into Marc's friend Ryan Hamilton, who was doing it as "Leadville prep" - he was 7th at Leadville last year. He's a total badass. Anyhow, the Epic looked cool! for someone other than me.

Sidebar: … what is up with the Permethrin (sp?) application everywhere in Breck? Nothing like driving 20 hours to an idyllic mountain town to be confronted by a zillion little yellow flags with a big SLASH through a picture of a kid and SLASH through a picture of a dog. I was not so pleased with this development. And what it does to their watershed and water quality?? GRoSS! I always hope that the people that apply, want applied, or regulate the application of pesticides somehow know better than I do that they are "OK". But, they don't. Sad.

We did some super-fun hiking on the Colorado trail. Skyler wants to walk herself - no holding hands. And she goes fast.

Yesterday we made it to Boulder, where I was faced with the conundrum of what to do with my super-loveable pit bull who would like to eat every golden retriever here. The place we have rented is very cute, has no yard, and behind us live two tiny little dogs. The trails close-by are leash-free, which means I could not save the dogs who would come run up to Senor Gomez. So I started frantically googling dog daycares up here – I found one that would take him, and told me they were going to put him outside with up to 15 dogs. HA! Hahahaha. I couldn't stop laughing about that. Well, Gomez got the last laugh - when I picked him up, they said he was great, and they told me a story of how he made buddies with another pit mix, but this other pit was mixed with dachsund or something. HA!

Skyler has perfected her high-pitched scream. It is super-awesome. At driving Marc insane. And it may even be super-awesome for the man who we are renting this place from, who houses his Rolfing practice right above us. Gomez + high pitched screaming child = rolfing perfection!

Barry Lee lives two blocks from where we are staying, which actually is truly super-awesome, we had a great visit with him yesterday evening, Barry is so much fun to talk to, and didn’t even bat an eye at my high-pitched squealing baby and Mack-truck pit bull coming over his house. I love Barry. And he had just gotten back from Kansas, where his team did so amazing – again. He took us up the mountain to check out some awesome running trails, where I hope to spend a lot of time on the next couple of weeks.

We spent much of today with Lee and Christina - so fun. Lee navigated me around and even bought Skyler her first kite!! Can't wait to fly it tomorrow.

We are in a great location, close to town, so we walked around down there where I would actually consider shopping (!!?!) But, we are also within walking distance to great hikes. I took Skyler up a popular one this evening - she walked back down most of it, doing her horrible screech if I tried to pick her up to get things moving faster. Then, this evening, I read in the local paper about the bears in that area walking into houses??
That's it! Our list of things to do is filled with the mundane. Yah!
OXOX

On the road again, July 09

Hi friends!

We left Austin and made it to Lubbock Tuesday night - 6 hours in the car was the max we could bear with our ever-vocal monkeychild and our other travel companion, hotstinkybreatheverywhere Gomez. On the drive through West Texas we were treated to the sight of perhaps the world’s only “Nothing but Smokes” store. Yah, that'll show 'em!! In Lubbock we stayed directly across from Texas Tech at the Woodrow House in a caboose!? The caboose was not bad other than the overpowering Glade plugin that I wrapped in paper towel and put in the yard upon arrival (cabooses do not have a lot of functioning windows via which caboose-aeration can occur). The next day was a relatively much-longer-seeming 8 hours to Taos. During some point on this leg I became obsessed with the Mayan Calendar and 2012, reading about it on my iPhone and texting Katie about it. Yay New Mexico!!!

We spent two days in Taos at a lovely B&B (Casa Gallina) where everything is Fair Trade, organic, eco-etc. – they even had chickens! The little casita was gorgeous, totally "New Mexican" style A++. Taos is an uber-kooky little town, with at least 40% of the population I saw resembling a Dead show parking lot that was space-transported into the desert for 30 years with only psilocybin for sustenance. And of course: smoking tourists, very poor Indians, artists, and rich people. I took a 7 mile run along a huge Gorge and Marc did a long ride on the South Rim Trail where he got very lost. Sky practiced dressing Gomez in his favorite dress. On the way out of town we passed acres and acres of Earthships – def checking out on the way back through. We are on the road to Breck now, tomorrow Marc races the Firecracker 50 and I am going to do the relatively much-less exciting 10k beforehand. My butt is pancake flat from sitting in this car and I am fantasizing about gym workouts that surely I won’t have time to do. Jess and Lisa are going to stay with us in Breck, and Kyle and Maria are going to be there too, Kyle’s also racing. P.S., I am so sick of/from Marc’s driving and surely he is so sick of my bitching about it! Almost there!!!!!!!!!

Cool!!!

Tricky

This is some cool-ass stuff