Winding down

The wonderful summer is winding down at Teddy's house. We had one last vacation with M and Abi, which turned out to be a lot of fun,
M hadn't been hiking in the white mountains in 20 years and it was so nice to be able to get back up on the mountaintop with her and allow her daughter to experience the fatigue of a long climb and the joy of the summit! Even Josh admitted that it was pretty fun. We did have to coax him down the last 1/2 mile with starburst.
Laboe day at Teddy's house means a day on the boat and Lee's annual 25k around Rockport and then the real school week begins. With football games starting the week after that, the weekends are nearly completely given over to sports.
My triathalon is in a few weeks, but after that I will have to think carefully about committing to another race before spring. The training time and pressure really takes a lot more planning than I can manage to squeeze into the schedule these days,

Another family 5k!

It was a rainy night and we headed over to Lynch Park in Beverly,... none of us wanting to get wet. The skies cleared breifly while we stood in line to get our race #'s.. Josh and I agreeing that there was no way we were going to run in the rain.

But, of course we ran and it was cool and misty, which was just right for a nice 3 miles. Lee ended up with his fastest time ever - 23 minutes. Teddy also had a fast run, 32 minutes and Josh and I ran our slow and steady 12 minute miles, and we didn't stop once.

In fact, Josh chatted happily for the entire run! It was one of our best yet, and then we went out for some big yummy ice cream cones!

Mount Major, NH

Lee and I have such a hard time getting through a weekend without a lot going on and with something fun planned. This weekend, of course we were completely busy, but only busy with busy work. We need to have some sort of adventure in the schedule to work toward.

With nothing really going on and sick of looking at the kids lying around being lazy (that's what summers are for, right?) We packed up snacks and dogs and boys and drove north into NH. Realizing that NH is full of mountains and lakes and wonderful day hikes.. we fell back to a hike that we had been on before, Mt Major.

We hadn't been here in a few years and weren't exactly sure how far a drive it was or how far the hike was to the summit.. but as it turns out it was perfect and exactly what we needed!

The boys were quite grumpy on the drive north and didn't stop until we left the parking lot with the challenge that they couldn't make it up to the summit and back to the car without grumbling. The reward being a mini-golf.

Mini golf has been outlawed in our house for a few years... we have never been able to complete a round of mini golf without fighting, crying, punching, cheating, yelling, .. well, that is the idea. So Lee and I declared that we would never again take the kids out to mini-golf.. until now.

They made it up and down the 4 mile hike smiling and happily munching on blueberries...

look for the mini golf posting soon, we'll see if we can make it through without a fight...!

Backyard Cook-out

It is really feeling like summer here tonight. We finally unpacked the little campfire that Lee got for Father's Day and made a fire out on the patio. Hot dogs and marshmallows followed, with bouts of swimming in between. It was nice to have just the four of us home and in the backyard, relaxed. This really doesn't happen enough,