i AM crazy!!

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My First Triathlon!!!

Well... the big day is over, and I'm officially a Triathlete!

In an effort to keep this as short as possible, I've decided to mainly post pictures here and if you want the longer story about our triathlon you can check out my sister's site: jodyverhagen.blogspot.com Obviously since we did the tri together we'd pretty much say the same thing, and she's already said it!

The day started bright (well, ok not so bright as it was overcast all morning) and EARLY at 4:15am. We mangaged to get our butts moving and over to Naperville by a little after 5am. That gave us plenty of time to set up our transition area, wait in the port-o-potty line for 45 minutes and see the first 2 hours of the race! It kind of stunk that we were in the 31st heat out of 32, but it did give us plenty of time to calm our nerves. And it was helpful seeing everyone do it before us.



Guess we're going to have to work on our "game faces"

huddling for warmth. did I mention it was freezing?

feeling optimistic

showing off our bulging muscles!

i mentioned it was cold, right? as you can see here my true feelings are coming out as I am glaring at the lake! if looks could kill...!

The time actually flew by and before we knew it it was 9am and we found ourselves knee deep in a frigid lake in chilly weather along with 50 or so other certifiables wearing a serious amount of spandex (and goosebumps). Never the less, we were ready!! Here we are charging into the lake!!! (i'm the one with the gray criss-crossy straps and jody is in all black to my right)

ok... we didn't exactly charge. actually, I think we were one of the last ones to actually dive in and start swimming! we walked until we could no longer touch!

my arm =)

18 minutes later we were done with our "contact sport" i mean, swim! Then it was a 1/4 mile run up a hill to the transition area (cruel, i know!)

the first transition went smoothly. it was pretty easy to find our bikes since by that point the first 30 heats had already left!

it took a minute to get clicked into the pedals, but then i was off! (btw, I didn't fall once the whole day! though i did almost fall while i was trying to run in my cycling shoes!) =p

the bike was definitely my favorite part of the day

it took us 58 min to do 14.5 miles (I'm sure we could've done it faster if we hadn't chit-chatted most of the time!)

after a little refueling, a quick change of the shoes and a stop at the port-a-potty we started our run

before we knew it we were on the home stretch!

Whoops! I got a little confused and started running off the course. I'm not sure how I did it, because I actually had to go past the orange cones, and I never even noticed! There were no runners in front of us at that point and I saw a guy running with his kid off to the side and started following him, never realizing that he obviously wasn't in the race! Luckily Jody was there to get me back on track! i did make several on-lookers laugh though!

Triathletes!!

I thought the end was a bit disappointing. I had really hoped to be exhausted to the point of collapse when I crossed the finish line. But there was no drama. I crossed the finish line and felt great! Darn! It was awesome though! It was such a great feeling to have finished. I'm proud of our accomplishment and can't wait to work on our time now! 3 weeks until the next one!

lost and found

GOOD NEWS....

I found my socks!!

BAD NEWS....

I found them on Billy's feet....

and I don't think they're going to fit me any more!

(how can this be even remotely comfortable?? They barely

even cover his heel!!!)

Yikes!

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My new love....

I just realized that I never posted pics of my new baby! I got a new bike a few weeks ago, and I LOVE it!!! My last bike was really nice (I just got it last year), but it was a hybrid. The hybrid is fabulous for just regular riding around, but it just wasn't great for all of my triathlon/bike racing endeavors! Now I'm super aerodynamic and speedy! It is a LeMond Alpe D'Huez.




it's hard to tell in the picture but the white part it pearly and the blue part is really sparkly


I had these aerobars put on


and these clipless pedals


My "space age" cycling shoes. They don't have the most fashionable selection in cycling shoes!




I don't know if any of you have ever tried clipless pedals, but they are really hard to get used to! I can't tell how many times I fell while getting used to them! And it's no fun to fall while both of your feet are still attached to the pedals! As you can see from the picture, my pedals are all dinged up! I was going to post the picture of my legs bleeding after my first fall, but I forgot that they were on Jody's camera! Seriously though, if you just saw my legs you would think I was a 12 year old boy because of all the scrapes and bruises! Ha ha!


This is my old bike and our bike trailer. The bike is a Trek 7200 and really is a nice bike. I'm sure I will use it to tow the kids around. But... if anyone wants a bike and makes me a good offer... =)

Oh, I forgot to put these up! Harrison helped me make Haven's birthday cake! I think his favorite part was licking the spatula afterwards!

Haven's 2nd birthday!

hi everyone. guess what? i'm 2 years old now!

and I had a really fun birthday party!

This is me at my birthday party with my pretty dress.

there was a lot of yummy food at the party.

I figured since it was my party that i would just help myself!

yum.....

everyone brought be such nice presents!

and i had lots of help opening them

LOTS of help!

i got the most excited....

....when i saw the present from my daddy!

daddy got me a Strawberry Shortcake doll for me, and he picked it out all by himself!

i love her

my favorite part of all though was when everyone sang happy birthday to me!

thanks for looking at my pictures. and thanks to everyone who came to the party and played with me and brought me nice presents.

love, haven

another one bites the dust...

and another one gone, and another one gone...

another one bites the dust...

Missed Me.... Didn't Ya?

No, your eyes aren’t fooling you! I’ve updated my blog!!

As much as I love to make all you out there in blog-land happy by keeping my blog updated (I know you all check in on a regular basis to bask in the wit and wisdom -and of course the adorable pictures of my children- that I share with the world) I haven’t been able to keep up with blogging lately because I’ve just been too busy trying to keep up with life!

Recently I’ve started doing the bookwork for Billy’s/our business. It has been a lot of work trying to learn enough about accounting so that I don’t screw up our books or get us into trouble with the IRS! =p We also just changed accountants and found out that our other accountant screwed up a bunch of things (which we suspected, and hence why we are going to a new guy. But we didn’t realize the extent to which he screwed things up!) And I’ve had to go back and get the past six months of our books in order. All while learning our new software and trying to customize it to suit our needs. This in itself feels like a part-time job right now. Or accountant has been giving me “homework” to get done by certain dates and it feels like I’m back in school! And what makes me mad is that he basically says that I have no excuse for not getting it done because I “don’t work“. I want to send my kids to his office for a few hours and then ask him what he thinks! HA! Btw, thank you Aunt Cindy for loaning me "QuickBooks for Dummies!" =)

As usual, I have been spending spurts of time painting my house. I finished painting our backsplash, front door and closet door, started painting our porch, and I’m trying to finish painting our columns and trim through out the first floor. Oh, and then when I’m done with that I’ll finish the walls going up the stairs and in the upstairs hall (which I started FOREVER ago and never finished). Oh yeah, and the baseboards in the playroom. Oh, and the rest of the outside of the porch. And of course I want to repaint two walls on the main floor. Whew! (anyone know a good, FREE painter?!)(seriously.)

Haven’s birthday is today!! Our little sweetie is 2 years old! It’s crazy how time has flown! We had her birthday party Saturday and it was a lot of fun! She has been singing Happy Birthday to herself all week! So cute!

Triathlon training is kicking my butt! Ha ha! Actually, it’s not that bad. I really wish I had more time to put into it. It stinks because the last week and the next two weeks are supposed to be our hardest, biggest training weeks where we have to put in the most time/miles and Billy has been working so much that it’s been impossible to get it all in! And the tri is only 3 weeks away! Yikes! I’ve gotten up early a few times to work out before he leaves for work, but most of the time he leaves EARLY (5am or so) which makes it difficult!!

Well…. I think this post has gone on long enough. Don’t want to give anyone eye strain! I’ll try to come back soon and post some pictures and funny stories from the past few weeks. Thanks for reading! And for not forgetting about us! =)

Fun in a Chair -Part I

My kids are easily amused, just give them a chair and they're happy!