drumroll please......

today i put my last PA school application in the mail!!!

yikes!!!

we're boring

this weekend our only major accomplishment was re-arranging rocks in our yard. i know.... so thrilling. ez and william have a patio out of their door now and won't track as much dirt into the house.

my winter goal is to re-do this super tiny room in our house to our tv room.
things we need for the room:
super comfy oversized chair
AND
a flat screen tv

uncle dan, if yo'ure out there somewhere, i think we have been discussing this for the past couple years now.
HINT HINT!!!

colorado relay

.....because i've only procrastinated blogging it for a week

the co relay is a 24 (+) hr running event that starts in georgetown and ends in carbondle (which is just west or south or some direction farther than grand junction).

there are 10 people on your team (ours was all girls)
our team was called "we can glow all night long"
and wore glow sticks at nighti realize this is a dog, not a glow stick. but the dog's owner's team was just as slow as ours and we got to play with hurkey at every exchange point.

there are 2 vehicles:
van A carries runners 1-5. so while they are out running we are (pretending to) sleep in a car, eating, or wishing we were asleep. every runner has 3 different legs to run
i'll use my legs as an example for this

the beginning
dropping off runner #5...we had some extra time so we decorated the vehicle
loaned to us by liz's very generous friend4:00 pm
i finally get to do leg one
6.something miles
from the downslope of georgia pass to breck's golf coursei was #9. handoff to #10.
after she comes back from her leg our van is done while the other one is out. we got a condo in vail to shower and try to sleep. i think if you got 2-3 hrs of sleep you were going great. we have to leave again at 10:45 in order to get to the next exchange point

1:00 am
my team sees me off on my 11.something mile stretch that ends in the town of eagle. i have glow sticks on my shoes but you're running along this creek in the middle of the night wondering "i wonder when the mountain lion is going to come out and attack me"
and then run faster

finish at 2:40 am.
we wait for #10 to finish and drive to grand junction for the beginning of the last legs

(between this time life is hazy. there are 5 girls + driver in this vehicle and really there is no room to sleep but you lay your head on the pillow.... and pretend....)
liz's friend volunteered to drive. he stayed up all night driving us around
so we tried to help him out a little bit with free advertising

7:00 am.
van b is up again!
everyone is on their last legs!

10:00 am
LAST LEG! of course, my last 5.something mile leg is 700 feet of climbing.
for those of you that dont know--- i HATE going up
i took the neon/glow theme literally
i suckered liz into doing this too

the finish!
for being not-so-competitive we came in 4/8 in the women's team division.
maybe next year we should train?

this was a fantastic experience
i would do it again in a heartbeat!

i had never had seats to a baseball game where you were close enough to see that the moving figures running around were actual people without looking thru a zoomed camera lens

dallas got free tickets monday---- we had to go.
row 20 seats aren't too shabby
it was great.

ez is the luckiest dog in the world

auntie liz brought him a bone stimulator
so his leg would heal faster.

this is seriously the most spoiled dog of all time

co relay

tomorrow is the co relay. yikes!

dallas: you are running 22 miles?
andi: yeah..... scary huh?
dallas: that's funny. i havn't seen you running much
andi: i know. i'm in trouble. relying on muscle memory

this is gonna hurt folks.
pray i can make it thru it in a respectable amt of time

posting pics when i get back!

wednesday: 3 days s/p ACL surgery

(3 days prior)
monday---day of surgery,
our conversation:

dallas: did you hide the frisbee?
andi: no, i thought you did. i didn't see it anywhere
dallas: i didn't do anything with it. i thought you did
andi: maybe we got lucky and some other dog took it

we're idiots.
today i thought i'd go out front and pick at the weed garden we are growing only to look up and find this.......the little stinker hid it from us!
sadly we've been outsmarted by our dog

all in a hard day's work

ez goes bionic!

today ez came home from his 2nd acl surgery
you might be thinking..... this sounds remotely familiar?
YOU'RE RIGHT!
we just did the other one in january

since we have a frequent flier card at the vet's office,
they agreed to give us a special x-ray
showing both legs & their hardware

the image below is a picture of where
all of our expendable cash has gone
don't be expecting anything for Christmas this year

pikes peak

this weekend d & i took my family (& liz) on a small hike up pikes peak.
this was my family's 1st 14er
13 miles to the top
they did AWESOME.
i was so proud

we did a 2 day adventure.

day one: manitou springs to barr camp

bring it on, barr trail!

ranger rick, er uh, dallas showing us whats up
(look all the way to the back and you can see pikes...)

6.5 miles later....
enjoying chipolte burritos for dinner
(do you have any idea how much weight 5 of these add to your pack!? holy moley....)
d found a long lost friend (he played the same guitar about 6 years ago when he last stayed here)

day two: barr camp to summit

40 min into hike beezer needs a food break

later....
dallas would like a 2nd chance at his senior portraits
(remind me never to be a pro photographer
i havn't figured out the shadows-on-the-face-thing yet)

while beezer needs another nemo fruit snack break

did i mention how big my pack was?
(there are 3 sleeping bags in there!)

getting closer to the top!
way past tree line (& still smiling!)
on a side note... my mom is a camel
by this point she has drank 2L of water in 4 milesthere were some cool cloudsand another 6.5 miles later,
we're at the top!
OF COURSE, we have to do the KSU!!
long story short, we ended up taking different cog trains down
so while waiting, d, liz and i had fun at the top
i'm pretty sure that liz is a long lost sistergo us!

i really don't think this is the best advertising.
just how bad were these before they "became tastier?"

leadville 100!

this is kyle and paulette
they are our awesome hiking/adventure/trash your legs
friends. we love being with them
not only do they participate in the leadville 100 (which is a mtn bike race in leadville, co elevation 10,200), they ride a tandum. ya gotta give it to them. that's pretty awesome

wishing you the best of luck tomorrow k&p!!

also, we have the highest of expectations.
i mean, you kinda have to when your name is right next to lance armstrong on the sign-up sheet.
go team arnold!

there is a very adorable little pit bull
that would love to spend this saturday night with you
low maintenance and well behaved!
in fact, he is sitting on my lap right now
begging for someone to have pity on him
any takers?

happy early birthday dallas!

d was pretty pumped to get his early b-day present in the mail......
how exciting could a box of boards be?
well, depends on who you ask,
but i suppose pretty exciting.
assuming he doesn't miss a cut,
he'll have a guitar built by the end of the semester!

aaaaah.
dallas and i might be sick in the head, but we really enjoy the weekends where we come home and can barely walk.

nothing beats the wednesday night email that you get from fellow snifferdoodle saying "we're in leadville this weekend, what are you doing!?!" and we say "WE"RE THERE!" my whole objective of the weekend was to get my legs trashed at altitude and then use the next couple weeks to recover before the co relay. right now my leg's fine motor mvts are slightly better than when i ran the marathon. here's a rundown (some pics are missing as kyle has these and has yet to send them to us... hint hint kyle!)

friday:
wait for dallas to get home from MRI
ez to get back from being sedated for his xrays...
meet kyle & paulette and head to buena vista. camp at the base of mount yale

saturday:
get up semi early and begin hiking
get lost and go a good extra 40 min than necessary
climb up the east ridge of yale, literally climbing the whole way up over boulders (which is about 10000x more fun than just walking up)
get to the top and watch kyle enjoy his salad that he has hiked up the entire way
only people like kyle hike salad and guac to the top.

snifferdoodle reunion!
since our party has: one person recovering from possible strep, and 2 people with knee injuries, we decide to take the easier way down. this means that when we get to the parking lot our car is still 3 mi away. we decided the best way for me to train for the co relay was to leave the party and run the entire way down the mountain, and down the extra 3 mi to the car and meet everyone by the time they arrive.
WHEW.
drive to leadville, goof off, and then find camping spot in the dark

we were hungry. actually dallas was super hungry.
what best to order than the MACHO NACHOS?
he was quoted at dinner saying "i only eat on platters, not plates."
even the waiter was impressed with his devouring skills
while at dinner, we were discussing our hike. you know you're hanging out with a GIANT nerdo when he (dallas) says, "yeah, kyle hiked up and then went along the ridge. i took the hypotenuse." good grief.

sunday: (pics to come)
mtn bike all over leadville
we were going to just ride the powerline since k&p are racing the leadville 100 on their tandum next weekend.... so none of us brought food.
but the 1:00 rain didn't come.
so we kept riding.
and the 2:00 rain didn't come.....
and the 3:00 rain didn't come.... and we are STILL riding.... and since leadville does not accomodate the gluten free population and my breakfast was slim i bonked around the 1:00pm mark and literally barely made it into town. so we got a good 5 hrs on the bike today. it would have been much more awesome if i had taken food. who knew?

it was an awesome weekend.
i live for weekends like this.

WATERWORLD!!!

jen and i have been planning our great ww escape for the last 3 years. today it finally got done! the lines were a little longer than i remember, the rides seemed shorter, but SO glad we went!

is it just me or did this wave pool seem twice as big 12 years ago?my really only serious complaint was the lazy river. it wasn't very lazy. there should be a rule that you need to be at least 18 to be lazy. the best thing i heard was from this group of little girls: "hey you guys! people are trying to be lazy! we need to be quiet!"
YES! exactly!

anyway, there is no one else in the entire world i'd like to go ww with than jen.
(i think we're both on the same life agenda to never grow up!)
thanks for the ww date jen!

you will not believe.... but this week i have special parking at work since i am employee of the month!

yes, that's right. i get to park in the "employee of the month" parking space, even though i only get it for one week. so even though i usually ride my bike to work every day, i MUST utilize my special honor by driving to work every day.

ok really, don't be impressed.
i'm pretty sure they just draw names out of a hat.

at any rate, since i'm driving in every day, i thought i'd take a little poll with the boulder traffic. as many of you know, boulder is notorious for several things, one of them being su-bie drivers.... which are people who drive subaru vehicles. normally i'd never notice but non-boulderites are always laughing at the boulder-ites for their little fads and i wondered if this really was one of them

therefore i have decided to take a poll. for the 5 mi i drive thru boulder (10 mi round trip), i'll be counting the numbers of cars i see. for example:
monday: 39 subarus
today: 19 jeeps
tomorrow: no work, water world
thurs: toyota
fri: honda
and we'll just see if this su-bie thing is a misconception or not

i'll even make a graph for you at the end of the week. how fabulous is that?

what!?!?

you're tired of looking at bushes?!?!?
are you bored like this?
geez... you think i should blog more?
yeah, you're right.
SORRY!!!

i feel like the summer has literally slipped away beneath us! where did it go? well, here's what's going on as of lately.....

we got to hang out at winter park, which was wonderful.
one conversation went like this:
dallas: yeah, when we were dating you had a rounder face and a thick neck
andi: what?!? a thick neck
dallas: well, er, uh, thicker than it is now
andi: it's thick now!?!?
dallas: noooo... (backpedaling... ha!!!)

dallas was out of town in louisiana for 10 days. so when you think it's hot, wherever you are, it's not. you could be in louisiana with 110 degree temps + humidity. it's ok. you can complain. i'm sure i'ts hot where you are. conversations between us were like:
andi: OH MY GOSH it's hot here. i cant' handle it
dallas: how hot is it?
andi: like 90! (take in mind... and dry)
dallas: PAUSE (which i'm sure he's thinking, suck it up cupcake.) wow. that's hot. it's hotter here
andi: i doubt it :)

ok.... phew. that was a lot of blogging for one night.
look forward for more to come, when?
TOMORROW!