Spring Break

We planned a trip to Arizona during our son's last high school spring break. It started out as a visit to Grand Parents and evolved into a day trip to the Grand Canyon and further to four wheeling in Sedona. We had a busy but fabulous trip. Anyway, here are a few pictures from the trip.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cheers!

Posted with Blogsy

Beach Vacation 2013

Last week we went to Navarre Florida for our nearly yearly beach vacation. Navarre is between Pensacola and Destin. We stayed in the same condo (The Pearl) and the same room as last year since we liked it so much. The condo has three bedrooms, three baths, kitchen, dining, and living areas. I looked up the square footage and its bigger than our first house (and 10x more expensive). My son brought two friends and my daughter brought one so we had three 16 year old boys and two 21 year old girls with us. As far as I know, they didn't get in any trouble, but then again, I was asleep by 10 pm every night. We all had a good time and with the big condo, never felt cramped. Anyway, here are a few pictures.

View from the front balcony

View from the rear balcony

One day I took the kids parasailing and we had a blast.

We went up about 500 feet. It was very relaxing.

The boys got dunked up to their necks :-)

I went up with the girls.

The boys

 

The girls

 

Hopefully we can go back next year.

Posted with Blogsy

Vacation Wrap Up

Vacation on Santa Rosa Island (Navarre, FL) was fabulous!  We spent a lot of time visiting friends, relaxing, swimming in the ocean, eating sea food and watching shark week.  

Besides the normal routine, the girls made it out for a jet ski ride.  Sara is a crazy driver, jumping her own wake full speed and flipping the jet ski at one point.  Cheryl was hanging on for dear life.  I have no idea where she gets it :-).  Hopefully she didn't inherit my poor backing up skills too :-).

I took the boys on a helicopter ride.  I remember my grandma paying for my sister and I to go on one when we were little and it's something I'll never forget.  This was only my second helicopter ride and Josh and his friend Cody's first.  They were a little nervous, so I calmed their fears with some basic questions like "what happens if we get struck by lightning?" and "do you think you can swim to shore?".  My favorite was "I can't hear the helicopter, do you think they crashed?".  The boys weren't deterred and we had a blast.  We even saw a couple hammer head sharks (just off shore) from the air.

Our condo was in the high rise 2nd from the right

The pier you could see looking left out of our condo

Wavy buildings caused by heat? rotor wash? or proof we are in the matrix?

I didn't see our tent while flying over but did after the fact.

   

Training wise, I planned to go on a couple runs and greatly exceeded my expectations.  The first full day in Florida I went for a run early in morning and that set the stage for the rest of the week.  By 10 every night I was really tired (the heat was brutal) so I went to bed early which led to me getting up early and running.  I ended up running seven days in a row for the first time ever and hitting a 30 mile run week for the first time ever as well.  Neither were a goal of the trip, so that was pretty cool.  I did have a goal of a 1.5 hour run but the heat was just too much.  The heat index was over 100 for just about every run.  Even when I made it out before 7, the humidity was 100%.

Yesterday we I drove straight through 765 miles.  I had plenty of offers for Cheryl or Sara to drive, but I love driving and have trouble sleeping if someone else is driving, so I might as well drive.  All I need is good tunes, sun flower seeds and caffeine and I'm all set.  Hopefully we will be fortunate enough to go again next year.

last day of vacation

I've tried post this twice now and have had issues hoping on the neighbor's Wi-Fi so I'll re-write it and post it in the next couple days.  Short recap, vacation was awesome!  765 miles of driving tomorrow and we'll be home.  I have a bunch of pics to post but will wait until I have a real internet connection again (instead of using my phone).

On vacation.....

This has become a yearly vacation for us (most years) and we all look forward to it.  It's just our speed, easy.  A typical day involves napping on the beach, walking the beach, swimming in the ocean, and reading.  No plan, except just to relax and eat seafood (for me, no one else likes it).  We let both kids bring a friend which makes for a full van but more fun for the kids and less refereeing for us :-).

Looking left from the condo

Josh and a couple friends in the hot tub 8 floors below

straight out from the condo

looking right down the beach

I'm missing some key workouts for my home grown 70.3 October 2nd.  Thursday evening my legs had this fatigue to them that said the long workouts on the weekend were going to tear them the rest of the way down so they could build back up.  I missed a 2:45 brick Saturday and a 3:30 hour ride Sunday.  Besides missing two 1:30 rides during the week, I'll also miss a key 4 hour ride next weekend.  Oh well, I'll throw a couple extra runs in.  I'll do a little ocean swimming but I have to admit, I am scared of sharks.  Watching shark week on discovery channel doesn't help either :-).