We had so much fun. Jeana and I took the girls to see the Tangled movie finally. It was as good as we had hoped. Not long after our trip, Jeana bought the soundtrack to the movie and all the kids sing along, even Simon.

I found a new place that could suck away all my money: Yogurt Land. If you haven’t been there, it’s like a frozen yogurt buffet, except you don’t keep going back.

On Presidents Day before we drove home, we went out to Red Rock Canyon and went hiking. It was a blast. There were some stressful times when the kids ventured to big drop-offs, and times when they were a bit more conservative and safe.

Because I’m a show-off, I had to do this:

The snow was packed really well, and the need for snowshoes was practically non-existent for most of the hike. That didn’t matter to us though. Occasionally, Adam and I would wander off the path just to feel the power of the snowshoes on the fluffy snow.

When we got up to the waterfall, it was almost completely frozen over. We have never been able to get this close. We walked right down to where the falls are and took some pictures.

Snowshoes have a claw positioned right under the ball of your feet to prevent sliding. I wanted to try skiing down to the waterfall area, so I had to lean back to keep the claw from digging into the snow.

Thanks Adam and Jamie for the fun day!

We each got to get pulled in a buggy by Billy Bob.

Candice is a veterinarian which is what Audrey wants to be when she grows up.  Needless to say, Audrey couldn’t have been happier.

Kate riding Lucky.

Audrey riding Dozen.

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.

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.

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.

Right as we pulled into the parking lot, we noticed Blair and Wendy pulling in behind us, so we all ended up going together.  It was a good thing they were there because we found out that we could only have two kids in our boat.  So, Kate rode with them at the beginning for a little while and then Audrey did at the end.

Simon started out brave and standing, but by the end was whining and burying his head in my lap.

Audrey started out scared and cautious, but by the end she was brave enough to stand up.

And Kate was just a delight the whole time out there.  She really was so stinkin’ fun and cute and helped Audrey (her older sister) to be a little braver.

We had so much fun looking at all the turtles on the lake.  There were tons of them all lined up on the logs.

After our canoeing adventure, we all went to Flip Happy for some delicious crepes.

We started off with trekking about a mile and a half to find the first four cp’s.  Along the way, we picked up our third teammate, an egg named, Richard.  Here’s a quick story about Richard: I totally forgot to reserve a kayak for us in advance, so by the time I called, they were all gone.  So, I emailed out the Adventure Racing group and asked if anyone had a kayak I could rent.  A guy named Richard replied back and let us use his.  So, when we got to the point where we were supposed to get our eggs and the one on top had the name “Richard” written on it, I viewed it as a good omen and took it.

We got back and did the kayak/trek portion where we got all the cp’s, but got a little turned around with directions.  We then headed out for the biking portion.  We had gone out the week before and checked out the trail so this one was pretty straight forward for us.

When we got back, we saw Jamie and her girls there cheering us on.  (Our families had decided to stay home, since it was just too hot for our little babies.)  Jamie said that the top three teams were already back and the people who got first place took about an hour on the last kayaking portion.

We only had 1 1/2 hours until the cut off, so we knew it would be close.  We trudged through some very nasty grass in the water that was way taller than us to get to a cp on land.  And one cp we looked for forever, before we had a moment of luck and scrambled up a ledge to find the cp just at the top of it.  In the end we got back about 10 minutes before the cut off and we got all of the check points.  We were pretty happy with that.

We learned some funny things about the Wayes on this outing, which I have no problem blogging about since they’re moving away from us soon. I will miss them. First, Becca has issues with some funny things: sand in her nails, fish, and eating meat off bones (although this is dwindling with the advent of Texas BBQ). Second, Scot told us a funny story about him running full speed into a chain parking lot barrier and falling face-first into the pavement. Thanks for the laugh. And, thanks for bringing Bernie to entertain our children. Oh, and thanks again because now they want a pet dog!

Ocean was so thoughtful of Jeana by offering her a piece of licorice. Jeana declined the offer, but Ocean insisted on keeping track of a certain piece of licorice in case Jeana changed her mind. Jeana sat at the campfire watching Ocean caress the licorice in her hands and thread it through her toes. Ocean asked for another piece, to which Adam replied that she already had one. Ocean told Adam that piece belonged to Jeana. When Jeana said she didn’t want it, Ocean caressed and threaded more, and finally took a bite.

While in Utah at my parents’ house this summer, my dad carved some walking sticks for Audrey and Kate. Yesterday we finally took a hike for the girls to use the sticks for their intended purpose (rather than just play with them around the house with some sort of princess theme) up to the top of “Enchanted Rock”. Kate surprised me and made it up a good portion of the hike – she was a good little hiker.

Poor Audrey. Audrey had school pictures on Friday so she dressed up a bit. Jeana packed her camping gear for her so that we could just pick Audrey up from school and drive straight to our destination. I paid our entrance fee after arriving, and when I returned to the car, Jeana told me we had a problem. Jeana had grabbed two right shoes for Audrey. You see, Audrey and Kate have the same shoes, except that Kate’s are smaller. Oh well, what can you do? Scot asked me at the campfire, “So what’s the deal with Audrey’s shoes?” As if she had some “condition” – just kidding. Despite the two right feet, Audrey hiked all the way to the top and most of the way back down before complaining. In fact, she and Jackson were racing to the top of the hike! I found it easy to take pity on her and carry her on my shoulders part of the way down.

The funny part about this is I had a dream the night before that we got to the race and found out that we had to swim too. I told Jamie about the dream on the way to the race and when she saw the sign, she said, “We DO have to swim!” Neither of us have trained in swimming for over a year now, so as we waited in line to sign in and get our packets we just kept laughing nervously thinking, “What have we got ourselves into?”

Luckily someone explained that the swim portion really entailed putting on a life jacket, running through the water (swimming if you wanted, but not necessary), and getting out where the kayaks were waiting for us. So, the race began with the running portion. We were running mainly on biking trails so it was really hard to pass people without running into trees. Jamie did great at passing a bunch of people, but I didn’t have so much luck, so we were separated for a while. We were supposed to stay within 20 seconds of our teammate, which we easily did, but I just couldn’t keep up with her. Then, we got to the swim part and after the hot run, it felt so good to get into the water.

Next, came the kayaking. Jamie and I have taken kayaking lessons, but never in an inflatable kayak. It was impossible to steer at first. Every time we shifted our weight at all, we would turn sideways. They told us to bring beach balls to sit on, which didn’t work for us, so we tried kneeling…. no go. So we ended up sitting on the bottom of the kayak. I had some nice chafing up my arms as my short little torso tried to have enough height so that the paddle could reach the water. Not our strongest event.

Onto the biking. The biking was awesome and hard. It was long. Jamie crashed 4 or 5 times and got some nice bruises and a little road rash. I endoed once and caused a crash behind me. Because of the tight trails, it was hard to pass people on the bike too, but we did alright. We ended coming in 10th in the female category.

This race didn’t have any navigation involved, but they set up some checkpoints you could find for fun after the race, if you wanted to. We decided that this could be some good practice for our girl adventure race at the end of this month. However, once we had finished the race, we had really lost steam. We kept trying to talk ourselves into it, but we just weren’t too excited about it. We started it, but quickly changed our minds and headed back.

Our families got there probably about 10 minutes after we crossed the finish line. Scott had been at scout camp all week. He rushed home, grabbed the girls and then headed up. So, we were quite the stinky family.

Our team name is AOKE – named after our daughters in age order: Audrey, Ocean, Kate, and Eden.

They also had a kids race afterwards that the girls got to do. They got singlets and medals for doing it. They now have more medals from races than Scott and I.