Seattle Tough Mudder with the “Eh Team”
Scott talked two of his brother-in-laws into doing a Tough Mudder race with him up in Washington and we all went up to see the pain live and in person.
Our kids like being in the car for the most part. And this boy is explaining how much he loves me in the picture. 🙂
The night before the race, we went out to a super fancy restaurant with Scott’s sister and her husband. The food was spectacular and I lost count of how many tiny, beautiful courses were brought out.
We tend to eat cheap food we cook ourselves most of the time (lentils, rice, etc.) and then splurge every great once in a while on a completely memorable gourmet meal out. We bypass the mediocre restaurants entirely.
Here’s my fancy self:
Here’s the pre-race shot of the Tough Mudders on the team. They each have a different interpretation of the word “tough”:
If you click here you can read in the captions and flip through the photos to see my take on the whole event. I’ll just share a couple more photos in this post.
My reddish-haired, curly-haired sister-in-law looks more like these girls’ mama than I do. 🙂
The kids had their own mini mudder and they could run around their course as many times as they wanted:
More from Fall 2014
– Visiting a corn maze is a hard and fast family tradition, even though I have no sense of direction and always worry if we’ll actually be able to find our way out. 🙂
– I did manage to blog about Halloween back here.
– What didn’t make the blog was that I broke my foot (maybe?) on Halloween night and was on and off crutches until nearly Christmas. So many nice people asked me how I hurt my foot and I honestly have no idea, but it wouldn’t bear weight the next day. An x-ray showed a floating bone chip but was inconclusive on a fracture, but my foot went ahead and turned colors and swelled up like it was broken. I wore a snazzy boot and chased my kids around on crutches until I could finally walk without pain again. It made for a tricky holiday season for sure.
– Scott auditioned for the Willamette Master Chorus and was happy every Monday night to go sing beautiful music with talented people.
They do one concert every year with more modern/pop music, but generally they sing classical pieces. As it turns out, Scott scored a solo for “Born to be Wild” and decided to dress the part for the concerts.
There was some of this on the stage, and the crowd loved it:
– A snippet from my journal about our efforts to be on time to church one morning in October:
“After feeding the kids and cleaning everyone up, Caitlyn came back wearing her pretty church dress with a pink stuffed panther underneath. ‘That way, when I need him, I can just pull him out!’ I talked her out of the panther, but she came back with a stuffed carrot. Finally everyone was dressed, but Caitlyn squirted lotion all over her dress and bumped into Mackenzie while trying to find me to tell me. So they were both lotiony and distraught. The carpet was also lotiony but didn’t complain as loudly and so (I just realized) it never got cleaned. Then there was a meltdown after Caitlyn came back wearing bright orange socks with her shiny white church shoes and I told her white was her only sock option. Then Daniel required yet another diaper change as I was loading him in the stroller… I finally texted Scott and said there was no way we’d be on time! ”
– And one more journal entry about the very busy toddler I had last year. I still have him, of course, but we’ve pretty successfully ended the pushing around of kitchen chairs at this point and it’s really been a game-changer.
“Today Daniel pushed his chair over to a bowl of food on the counter while chanting excitedly to himself, ‘Eat that, Me!’ over and over. I overheard his running commentary from the next room and needless to say, I thwarted his efforts.”
Thanksgiving
We lucked out for Thanksgiving and had Scott’s brother, Paul, come to stay along with his adorable dog Buster.
I was on crutches watching the Turkey Trot but Scott enjoyed being humbled in the 10k by his brother. Despite Scott getting a personal best at that distance, Paul ran the first race of his life and placed third in his age group. He’d never run 6 miles before!
Anticipating having a meat-eating guest in our home, Scott learned out to spatchcock a turkey and I’m told it was pretty tasty.
My kids were hilarious as they regarded the turkey with these suspicious looks, like it was going to jump out of the pan. They are, um, not accustomed to having meat around.
You can see Mackenzie in the back here, fascinated by the carving process:
We added another new dish to our Thanksgiving lineup and this one will be back every year (and many times in between). Roasted green beans with lemon juice and almonds… heavenly
Scott made his traditional baked alaska with homemade sweet potato ice cream and it did not disappoint:
Also, an apple tart, which was a reminder that I married a man very different from myself. If I had made a tart (which I wouldn’t because the crust is made of things like butter and white flour)… it would have been made with efficiency and there would be a pile of apples sitting in the shell. Scott, on the other hand, took the time to create a thing of beauty. And I’ll admit, the butter and flour were not ill-used. 🙂
Predictably, my kids were instantly enamored with Buster. He was a source of endless entertainment and featured prominently on our Thanks and Giving tree by the end of their stay. I kept having to remind my kids to think of something different that they were grateful for… so we ended up with “I’m thankful Buster played with me” and “I’m thankful Buster is so cute” and “I’m thankful Uncle Paul brought Buster”, etc.
