During Intermission, We Have a Guest Blogger...

Translated:
One day a girl named Ella went to buy a blue purse. She also bought a medium dress. When she got dressed she was pretty. She had a date. She loved him. She kissed him. She almost fainted. She thought she was love sick. She danced until midnight. She lived happily ever after.

By Dinky-T who is sooooo cute I want to kieest her.

Chain of Events (or) KARMA (or) Mother Nature's Revenge, Part 1

Where to begin this tale of woe that leads us from cheery, sugary penguins to sweating, swearing and pain....

I think we should follow the chain of events that allowed KARMA to bite us in the tuchis.

The wheels of motion were set in place with the making of the penguin cupcakes for Tinkerbell's birthday. As you may recall, the creation of those cupcakes kept me up until the wee small hours on Friday night. Nick was also up late, putting the final touches on the interior of our playhouse so it would be ready for our backyard barbecue on Saturday night. While both activities (and maybe our inner over-achievers) caused us to oversleep on Saturday morning, I was quick to blame those sweet little penguins for our failure to show up at 8:00 am to run with our training group. It was easier than self reflection on five hours of sleep.

{I believe this would be the point at which Mother Nature nudged KARMA and said something along the lines of, "Can you believe her? Always pointing the finger of blame elsewhere. First her friends and family, now innocent members of the animal kingdom. We need to teach her a lesson!" KARMA, too humble to point out that sugary penguin cupcakes are not exactly part of mother nature's kingdom, responded, "Okay."}

The rest of our Saturday was so jam-packed that we were unable to make up our run. Tinkerbell's birthday filled our afternoon. Nick did manage to squeeze in a workout since Tink's party was at the Alaska Rock Gym.

My workout at the rock gym was centered around straining to look up (can you blame me??) and taking care of these spawn:

After the birthday party, we had to skedaddle home to get ready for Nick's going away barbecue. He is leaving next weekend for the Alaska law enforcement training academy. Since he will be gone for close to four months, we decided to throw a little shindig to wish him well.

The barbecue was a blast - somewhere between fifty and sixty friends and family members showed up.

I am pretty sure everyone had a good time....

Doesn't everyone love goggles?

{My mother said, "Oh, I think I should get Nick these cool motorcycle goggles for Christmas." I replied, "No." "Why not?" my mother innocently enquired. "Because he will wear them."}

Anyhoodle, you might be guessing already that we didn't run on Sunday either.

Darn those goggles.

The Penguins Made Me Do It

We didn't run Saturday morning. We told our running group we would be there at 8:00 AM, chipper and ready to run.

We lied.

The penguins made me do it.

Sure, they look sooooo cute and innocent now. They weren't so cute at 1:00 AM. Have you ever tried to pipe penguin eyeballs at one o'clock in the morning?

It's not really the penguins fault we didn't run. I blame Tinkerbell, our middle daughter. The penguin cupcakes were for her birthday party. She opened the cookbook , pointed to a picture of these little cuties, widened her big blue eyes, and said, "Will you make these for my birthday? Please? You can make ANYTHING."

Maybe I should blame my niece. She brought the cookbook to our house.

I am such a sucker for the one-two punch of "please" combined with a compliment.

This little guy looks like I felt at 8:15 AM when Pacemaker called to see why we weren't at the Lagoon.

I was so tired, I couldn't figure out how to answer the phone.

The penguins made me do it.

Ohhh Summertime

I am still running, but between the camping, hiking, fishing, and biking with four of our kids and the two nieces, one nephew, and one father-in-law-in-law (it's complicated) visiting, it is a little crazy around here.

This summer has been incredible, and we are ferociously attacking all that it has to offer.

That's Dinky-T. She is my mini-me. That is her summer attack pose.

Here are a few invaluable lessons from this summer:

1. Don't hike Mt. Marathon with 10 kids, 3 adults and 1 dog if one of the adults has a fear of heights.
2. Bananas on a boat are NOT okay.
3. Five-year-olds are impervious to bloody foot blisters if they are having fun.
4. Mothers of five-year-olds who develop bloody foot blisters while hiking 8.5 miles and climbing over 3500 feet into an ice field tend to be VERY unhappy with you, even if you are enriching their child.
5. Not everyone gets "fish fever", therefore not everyone thinks it is okay to keep fishing at 11:00 PM when home is a two hour boat ride and three hour car ride away (not to mention an hours worth of fish cleaning yet to do), and you have to work the next day.
6. It is hard to run at 85 degrees when your body is conditioned to run at 20 degrees.
7. Toenails really are for sissies.
8. Nobody uses Kleenex like the Pacemaker.
9. If your recently-graduated-from-high-school-moving-to-Seattle-for-college-soon daughter chooses to say goodbye to you by bringing the entire family to the restaurant where she sings on Tuesday nights and then proceeds to belt out the lullaby you have sung to her since she was an infant, it will reduce the entire restaurant, including you, to tears.
10. Life is good. Really really good.