The Lieslands

This past Sunday through Tuesday we made our annual trek to E T Mahoney State Park, just west of Omaha, NE. We all enjoyed hiking, fishing, mini-golfing, playing Frisbee, and swimming.

Check out the pictures.

For those of you who don’t know, this past weekend I participated in the HyVee Triathlon, here in Des Moines. I just put together a brief race summary for Hope and Jeff Austin-Phillips, and thought I would post it here for the world to consume:

Hey Guys –

As my unofficial coaches, I thought I would give you a run-down of how things went. I also think it will be good for me to put things in writing.

On paper I finished right where I thought I would. The actual race itself went pretty poorly for me.

I couldn’t fall asleep the night before and ended up finally sleeping at 12:30. I was up at 4 and felt like crap. When I don’t get enough sleep it leaves me feeling nauseous. I was hoping it would pass once I got moving. Murph dropped me off a little after 5 and by the time I got to the transition area, at about 5:25 they announced they were switching to a Sprint distance because of the weather. I was disappointed, but had also had my eye on the radar, so I understood. They cut it to a 400m swim, with a time-trial start, to get everyone out of the water, a 20k bike, and a 5k run.

As soon as I hit the water I knew I was in trouble. The first 100m of the swim were rough, and I thought I was going to throw up. I think that the nerves and nausea from lack of sleep were winning the battle. Eventually I settled in and finished OK. I was definitely on the slower end, so I will work on that. I wasn’t sure what to expect.

The bike went well. I felt great as soon as I got on the bike. People were definitely passing me a lot more than I was passing people, but people also were obviously some pretty serious bikers. I actually had the worst bike of everyone I saw. I am not too worried about that. 12 miles was certainly a lot easier and faster than 24.

The transition to the run was rough, but I was ready for that. The run was going OK until about a mile into it, when I started to feel nauseous again. I walked for about 100 feet, threw up a little but, and then got moving again. That also could have gone better.

Eventually I finished, Susan and Andrew greeted me at the finish line. I grabbed a drink and banana before waiting under a tent for 45 minutes for the thunderstorms to pass. Eventually I biked a mile or so to a spot where Susan could pick me up. I got home, got out of my wet clothes and crawled into bed for the couple of hours.

Physically I felt great, but my stomach was still a little wacky. I learned a lot and am ready to start training for my next race – http://www.bigcreektri.com/eventDetails.html . I think it is a little less intense than Hy-Vee, and starts a little later, which means I won’t have to get up at the butt crack, but also I really need to have a good hydration plan worked out.

This afternoon we went to Greenwood Park to walk around the lake and check out the rose garden. Andrew has been in to bird watching lately and when we got there my mom pointed out a red-winged blackbird. We noticed that it was ‘talking’ to us a lot and when Andrew walked past it it swooped down and got him in the back of the head.
It barely got him, but there was a fair amount of blood. In Andrew’s defense I threw a backpack at the bird and it got stuck in the tree with the nest that the bird was defending. My dad and I tried for a few minutes to try to get close enough to get the backpack out, but the birds wouldn’t have it. Finally, a neighborhood friend came along to help us out and he was able to get close enough to get the bag. What an adventure!

After 4 days, with a splint, two weeks with a cast, and 4 weeks with a walking boot, Mari is finally cast free. Her left calf is considerably smaller than her right, and she still walks funny, but she is getting around a lot better. She is all, or at least mostly, healed up just in time for the summer swimming season!

Today was field day at Andrew and Mari’s school. I think that it was mostly relay races. Andrew had a great time, but Mari looked exhausted when we got there. Later she said to Susan, “Field day was stressful.”

Mari has a cast that comes up over her knee. We have an appt on the 18th and they are going to take off the cast, see how things look, and then hopefully transition to a boot for a few days.

Initially, Mari wanted to be carried everywhere. Eventually she learned to crawl, and yesterday she started walking. Today she returned to school, and everything went OK. She can do just about anything she wants to, sometimes she just doesn’t want to.

Mari was running into our house yesterday and as she made the turn to come up the stairs she fell and ‘got all twisted up.’ She cried for a while, so we decided we had better take her to the Dr, and sure enough, she broke her leg. Right now she has a temporary cast. She will see an Orthopedic next week for the final judgement.

Andrew lost his first tooth tonight. He was very excited and might still be awake upstairs.

I apologize for the red-eye here. I tried to clean it up, but was having some serious issues.

This year we spent Easter in Kansas City, with Mary, Casey, Joe, Colin, and Luke. We had a great time. The kids were worn out and Elliot and Mari both fell asleep in the car on the way home. The weekend included basketball, life, soccer, a farmstead, s’mores, egg dyeing, egg hunting, church, and grilling.

» View the Pictures

It’s official – after two and a half years of speculation, Andrew has a loose tooth. As expected, it is one of his bottom, front teeth. He is excited about the loose tooth, but not about the pain.

Elliot is officially finished nursing. For the past few weeks he had still been nursing before bed and occasionally during the day. His form had degenerated and Susan didn’t think he even wanted to nurse anymore. So they other night while he was ‘nursing’ she said, “Elliot, do you want to stop nursing?” He said, “Yes,” and that was that.

Last night I asked Susan how she felt about it and she said “It was kind of anticlimactic.” I agree. After almost six and a half years an important phase of her motherhood and our parenthood has come to an end. It was only a year ago that we night-weaned Elliot, and now he is ready to be off on his own, well, almost.