Category Archives: Adventure

Audrey and Kate’s triathlon

Posted on June 13, 2011 by Jeana| Leave a comment

Audrey and Kate participated in the Provo tri on Saturday.   When I first told them about the triathlon, Kate told me that she wasn’t going to do it.  Audrey was game, but Kate was quite emphatic about her decision.  So, not wanting to force Kate into anything, I only signed Audrey up…. until Kate saw that Audrey was getting a new suit that would work better for all three events.  Then, she said, “I think Audrey’s right.  I’ll be sad if I don’t do it.  So, I guess I’ll do it.”  Luckily, there was still time to sign her up.  Being the nice Mom I am, I told her she could do it and get a new swim suit, but if she whined at all at the race, we would put her old suit on and take the new one back.

Kate did really good not to whine until we put on her swim cap – which she usually loves.  I think she was just getting nervous about things and it was coming out in the form of complaints about the swim cap.  I threatened the whole swim suit thing again and she snapped back into shape.

The temperature outside was mid 60′s.  The temperature of Utah Lake averages 60 degrees this time of year.  I’m pretty sure, it was no where close to that.

Originally, Scott and I were both planning to swim with the girls but once we got there we convinced ourselves that one parent (Scott) would be enough and that way they other one (me) could stay with Simon and take pictures.  Audrey started out great.  Look at her awesome freestyle in those pictures above.

Apparently, Kate was having a hard time getting started in the frigid water, so Scott picked her up and put her on her back.  I had just enough time to take this picture of her screaming before I saw Audrey begin to come back toward Scott and grab onto him because the cold was finally getting to her.  So, I ran back to the stroller, stripped down to my swim suit, ditched Simon, and jumped in the water.  It was a good thing I went out there.  Scott had already run eight miles that morning and was feeling like he’d be lucky to finish the swim, let alone helping two panicking girls.  They both finished with a backstroke – well, more like floating on their backs and kicking, but hey, they finished.

While I helped them dry off and transition to bikes, Scott dried off himself and ran off after them.

The girls came back looking great and full of energy.  Scott, however was spent!  Audrey got back a little before Kate, so I sent her off on the run and then followed along with Kate a few seconds later.

Audrey finished her run a couple of minutes before Kate and was able to cheer for Kate as she crossed the finish line.

I was so proud of both of them.  They worked so hard and did awesome coming in, in the last two spots.

I think Kate may have been the youngest one to do it.  They rocked!

Way to go girls!

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Posted in Adventure, Biking, Kate, Running, Scott, Simon, Swimming

Winter Cabin Fun

Posted on February 22, 2011 by Jeana| 2 Comments

In December, the Birds invited the Peteez and our family up to their cabin in Idaho.  It was a BLAST!

We played in the snow!

I mean really!  What says sheer happiness more than smiling so big you can’t contain the spit from spilling out onto your lip!


Ready for some snow shoeing!

Unfortunately only three of us truly got to enjoy the snowshoeing.

For some reason we got on this crazy jumping kick and took TONS of pictures jumping but these three are some of my favorites.

The guys all went snowmobiling and got some awesome pictures of them jumping, but they’re all on Scott’s phone, so he’ll have to add them later.

We went on a hay ride,

singing Christmas carols,

got stuck, unloaded the kids, pushed until we were unstuck, ambushed the husbands – tackling them in the snow, but just like we knew we would, the wives all got the worst of it… except for maybe Jeff… I think he ended up the worst of all.

We warmed up with some hot chocolate and took a nice, big family picture.

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Posted in Adventure, Audrey, Friends, Idaho, Jeana, Kate, Scott, Simon

ARG Challenge 2010

Posted on July 27, 2010 by Jeana| 5 Comments

On June 26th (yikes! a whole month ago), I did my fourth ARG Challenge.  This year Jamie and I raced as Team Spirit USA (Spirit USA is the name of the kayaks we used).  Five minutes before the race even started, we had our first bit of excitement when we noticed that Jamie had a flat tire.  Lucky for us a guy from a bike shop was there to help out with any bike issues, so he had it fixed in no time.

The race started with us receiving our third teammate, an egg (whose name I can’t even remember).  We had to run around a loop in the parking lot while balancing our egg in a spoon.  Then, if he survived, we had to keep him with us through the entire race and keep him safe.  I won’t keep you in suspense; he survived the entire race!

We ran and swam in the first leg finding a bunch of check points.  This leg went great for us.  Biked the second leg. We both crashed on this one.  Here’s the deal: we both are new to toe clips and hadn’t practiced taking our feet out quickly, so when each of us hit sand going around corners pretty fast, we went down.

We kayaked the third leg and although this isn’t our strongest point, we did pretty well since we were in these awesome ski kayaks that rock beyond description!  Love them!  Our navigation was totally on too.

When we got back from kayaking our cute little families were there to cheer us on.  It was fun to see them.  We headed back to our transition area refilled our waters and figured out the navigation for our last leg (on bikes) and headed back out.

We knew this last trail pretty well, so we expected this last leg to go smoothly.  And of course when you expect things to go smoothly, they don’t.  We found all the check points great, but we decided to do a little bush whacking so that we wouldn’t have to back track on the trail.  Somewhere while we were starting to do this, the passport got dropped.  The passport is pretty darn important.  At each of the checkpoints, there is a little punching device that you use to punch your passport.  If you don’t have your passport at the end, you don’t get credit for any of the checkpoints you’ve been to.  So, Jamie started looking for the passport while I started carrying our bikes through a tangle of thorns, trees, bushes, spider webs, and critters.  As I started carrying my bike, Jamie said, “I feel like crying.”  I said, “Don’t cry. Just pray.”  Then, I started praying in my mind and looked back at Jamie who was kneeling on the ground praying.  After a good ten minutes, I got my bike through and went back for Jamie’s.  But for some reason I took a different route and got really, really tangled in and scratched up by some thorns.  SERIOUSLY!  I still have scars! When I was a little over half way through, Jamie said, “I found it!”  I couldn’t believe it.  I finally got her bike through and we went and got the last check point and headed back in.  We were really hoping to get in the top five this year, but we didn’t see how that could happen after our major mishap.  We were pretty sure we were even over the time limit, so spirits were a bit down.    As we rode back in, I had to remind Jamie to smile for the camera.  This was as good as she could do.

We got back and turned in our egg and our passport and heard someone say, “Hey- they got all of the checkpoints!”  Then after a few more minutes I saw the board!

Can you see that?  Team Spirit USA came in 5th!!!

Check out that thorn wound on my shoulder!

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Posted in Adventure

The Beach

Posted on July 25, 2010 by Scott| 1 Comment

Finally we kept our word to take our kids to the beach. We told them a couple years ago that if we read the Book of Mormon every day for a year that we would go to the beach. We finished the year during the summer of 2009 but since we were already making a trip for a family reunion we negotiated an exchange of Yellowstone National Park for the beach.

This year we opted out of our normal summer trip to Utah and Idaho and after another year of daily reading, we set out for Port Aransas, Texas.

Dark Horse, our cottageSimon in the cottage

Kate in the cottageAudrey in the cottage

Our cottage was called the Dark Horse, and it was conveniently located only two blocks from the beach. It was a cozy little two bedroom place with no carpet. At first I thought that was odd. Maybe the flooring option is obvious to you, but it took me a visit to the beach and back to understand the wisdom of the vinyl flooring.

The first day of the beach was full of excitement and anticipation. After all, we had been waiting for this day for two years. The suspense built and built until Kate and her eczema skin touched the salt water. We quickly dropped our expectations and resigned ourselves to focusing on building a sand castle and other non-water activities.

After our first day (really only a few hours) at the beach we headed back to Dark Horse and attempted to clean the sand off of us. There was sand everywhere, and the grittiness on the bottom of my bare feet reminded me that I wouldn’t be clean until we returned home.

Somehow we got the kids to sleep all in the same room and then we got to bask in one of our favorite BBC-produced chick-flicks: North & South.

Day 2 began with the normal morning routine plus a helping of sunblock to prepare for the exposure. Simon smacked his face on the corner of the kitchen table and to soothe his pain he thought it would be a good idea to rub the sunblock in his eyes. That, coupled with the intense brightness of the sun, led to a morning of drooping his head, squinting his eyes, and struggling to see. Awesome. This day was going to be so fun!

Based on Day 1′s results with Kate’s sensitive skin, I knew that I couldn’t just take off running into the waves with her. Instead, we setup our gear close to the water, and eased into beach play. Little by little, we got in the water, and eventually Kate was playing in the water with Audrey. Surprisingly, she was enjoying it pretty much the whole time.

My time with Simon and Kate hanging out on the sand gave Jeana time to play on her own and to help Audrey try some new things on the boogie boards.

Kate was in heaven gathering sea shells and finding sand dollars. Simon did much better the second day keeping the sand out of his eyes and off his face. He (and I) hated the water in our eyes though. I took him out in the waves and he kept getting pummeled by the water and was going nuts with it in his eyes.

Audrey was a skimboard hog, but I enjoyed watching her trying to figure it out.

I think the best part of this trip to the beach was the sense of adventure that we got to share as an entire family. None of us had been here before so everything was new to each person and we each got to explore in some way. Jeana stayed in one afternoon while Simon took a nap, and I took the girls shopping for souvenirs. Ugh, it was so hot getting in and out of the car so much, but we found some fun t-shirts to come home with.

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Posted in Adventure, Audrey, Family, Jeana, Kate, Outdoors, Scott, Simon, Texas, Vacation 2010

Biking in Bastrop

Posted on June 29, 2010 by Jeana| Leave a comment

Scott and I have been wanting to go biking together for a long time.  So, he took the day off of work and we went to Bastrop to check out the site of my adventure race.  We took last years map with us and found where the check points would have been according to my map.  No one had been on the trails for a while so we were covered in spider webs and spiders.  It was so much fun!

We held up our fingers to show which check point would have been at each location.

Right about the time this picture was taken, I was saying, “No, no.  I’ll get the bikes.  You go ahead and keep playing with your iphone.”  In his defense, we had found some really cool apps that would track our route and map it out for us.  Apparently, he just couldn’t wait to start checking it out, while I loaded BOTH bikes.

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Posted in Adventure, Biking, Jeana, Outdoors, Scott