Best swim yet and - of course - baby stuff

Well, I had my BEST SWIM yet today. I swam almost all the way across the lake and back.. NO breast stroke!!! Only freestyle and just a few breaks! :) I am pretty proud of myself I must say! It's time to step it up and get ready for this race.. no more pussy footing around this swimming thing. I need to get it done! :) I now LOVE my wet suit too... we had a rough start together, but now I think I can finally get it on all the way and we are doing well together! YEAH!

We have our first Swim/Bike brick on Sat... I'll let you know how it goes!

Lily is starting to show interest in dropping her a.m. nap while Jason is powering through and taking a longer one than normal...ah he joys of twins. So now I might have to get creative. :) Today Lily decided she flat out was NOT taking an a.m. nap so she and I went to the zoo while Gma stayed and waited for Jason to get up from his power nap. I realized yesterday - when Lily got up EARLY from her a.m. nap - that she can do things that I didn't know she could do. I felt REALLY guilty. Jason is such a mama's boy and Lily is so comfortable playing by herself that I feel like she gets that shaft... so we went out by ourself today. Wow, (no offense meant to the mom's of one) having ONE kid - after doing two for a year - is SUPER easy... especially when the one kid is Lily. It rained while we were at the zoo and all Lily wanted to do was play in it. She's so curious about things. She still isn't really saying many words - though she babbles a lot - but I discovered that she DOES know what things are. I suspect - as w/ most thing w/ her - she is storing up her vocabulary and getting ready to just start spouting out sentences!

Here are some cute pics of the kiddos. Sorry I'm behind on our photo album.. I'm one busy mama these days... even w/ gma here!
Jason points to Lily's nose:


Mommy gets a kiss from Mr. Man. (such a sweety!)


Lily sporting my head band and eating a banana like a big girl (they are no longer interested in slices of banana):


I was fixing their lunch and they wanted the big stem of the broccoli. Actually and effective teether! (no plastic.. ha ha)




That's all for now.. have to go clean the kitchen AGAIN before they wake up and need to eat AGAIN!

Fun pics and video...

So these babies are testing me lately. Not sure if it's an age thing, but DAMN! Jason is throwing temper tantrums left and right. They are both very extreme in their emotions.. no flat line middle of the road mellowness from these two. They are Hot and cold. Here is a small video showing the ebbs and flows.. God forbid one should take something from the other... put this video on repeat and you have an idea of what a day in the life might be like. I need a nap! ha



Then they do cute things like share an apple and all is well in the universe again:

6th in my age group (of 28)

So there were 28 people in my age group (30-34) and I was 6th! WOW! I surprised myself. Looking at my time I ran almost an 8 in mile. Certainly didn't feel like I was going that fast when I was doing it. I feel great about how it turned out. I didn't even HATE the swim even though it was SUPER choppy / wavey and relatively cold. I think it was a great eye opener b/c I expected everyone to be just swimming... except me! Maybe if the water hadn't been so choppy????

We had quite a bit of drama to get to the race. We (Gena - my tnt mentor) and I headed down the night before and had to be at the race expo no later than 8pm. Well we pulled out of Madison just before 5pm for our 2 hour drive and hit BUMPER to BUMPER traffic for THREE hours!!!! So frustrating. Luckily Gena's friend Erin got to the expo and talked them into giving us our goody bags so that we could race. Just had to get the 'crucial items' in the a.m. :) So we got there finally.. Erin tried on her wetsuit and we chatted a bit. First obstacle tackled. Next morning we head out and hit road construction and have to improvise a bit.. FINALLY get to the start. Second obstacle tackled. Go to pump up my tires and I have hole in my tube. CRAP! Go to the mechanics tent, guy looks at my tire and says, "what kind of tire is this anyway?" (not a good sign.) he can't get it off. I offer him my tool. He gets the tire off, replaces the tube and goes to put the tire back on... can't do it. I give him my tool... he breaks it ... then loans me a new tire. Third obstacle tackled.

We get out to the beach too late to really get in the water b/c the first wave is starting. We sneak our feet in during the national anthem - it's not too bad. The water is really choppy and I'm nervous.... The swim went as I expected it would - some swimming freestyle, some breast stroke. I did mostly freestyle, but looking up to see bouies over waves was tough. I had a decent time.. though could use improvement. Oh, and running in a wet wetsuit half off is tough.

The most difficult part was getting my breath back after running in from the water, taking my wetsuit off and getting on my bike. There was a head wind on the bike so I wasn't spinning as fast as I would like on the way out, but was able to get in a groove on the way back and hold it around 20 to 22 miles per hour. I was worried that I wasn't saving it for the run, but it turned out great. My legs were tired as I got started, but felt better than they did at brick work outs... not surprising since our brick workouts are usually at least a 2 hour ride.

All said and done I would definitely do it again to improve on some things and see how I do. I'm definitely not feeling ready for the International distance after this race.. good thing I have another month to go!

Here we are post race. (erin has the 'wetsuit' photo on her camera)

Evil eye, yoga, potatoes in the hair and funny faces

I'm cleaning my camera off to take to Racine w/ me for the Triathlon and wanted to share some funny pics.

Lily has already mastered the evil eye. (Jason was taking a little break from trying to steal her toy):


I'm not sure why he does this.. in this shot he is doing the downward dog while walking:


When he is done eating he likes to put his food in his hair... ???:


Lily making a funny face: (I remember Liam doing this)

Man they test me but,

then they do this....

Kissing:


And here's another cute video of Jason and Lily 'sharing'... HA!


We had a REALLY long afternoon today... lots of whining. I've created little monsters. They want to go outside ALL THE TIME!!!! And when I'm by myself that is really difficult. I've got to get our yard in a condition where I can take them out to explore safely!!!! De-poopified basically.... not sure how I'm going to figure that out.

This Saturday is my FIRST triathlon. Saying I'm nervous would be an understatement.. when I get the opportunity to think about it. I had a crappy run this a.m... eek! I'm still trying to figure out when I'm going to get a chance to get in the water again before this thing ... in my straight jacket - I mean wetsuit! I've also heard that Lake Michigan is a BALMY 55 degrees. My friend's friend did a tri in the lake last weekend and said her face is a nice shade of red similar to wind burn from the CHILL of the water. GRRREAT! Way to add insult to injury..... I'll be sure to photograph that awesome look I'll be sporting... should look pretty nice w/ my sweet tan lines!

Okay.. off to have some ice cream while I try to ignore the tornado that went through my house today.. I SHOULD clean it all up before I go to bed tonight, but I think there is a pretty good chance that won't be happening!

Saying Grandma and our new toy

just real quick.. it's late... a video of Jason w/ his now mower (gee, thanks mom) and him saying GAga... Grandma I guess. :)

My new hero...

I'm surfing the net when I really should be cleaning (babies napping) or maybe I should nap too! ha

Anyway.. this lady - mom (to twins and a son), coach and elite triathlite is my new hero! I can't imagine how she gets all this stuff done. Can you say HIGH FUNCTIONING!? While I have no aspirations to be "pro" (haha just makes me laugh) I think what she does is pretty amazing.

HERE's a bio on Heather Gollnick.

This mornings swim was windy/choppy - good practice for LAKE MICHIGAN! I'm happy to have that under my belt. It certainly wasn't an AWESOME swim, but it was acceptable. Awesome would be if I could actually swim freestyle the WHOLE way.. not quite, but I'll get there. The good news is that we are supposed to get our wet suits this weekend and I should be able to give it a test run on Sunday.

We have our second brick workout (when you do two sports in one session) on Saturday. We'll be doing a 2 hour ride then a 30 minute run. :) This will be the first non-swimming workout I get to do w/ my other team mate so that should be fun. Maybe I'll kick his ass on the bike (doubt it) since he always kicks mine on the swim. :) Then next Saturday is the sprint tri. I'll be sure to report back!

First Triathlon...

okay.. I just registered for my FIRST triathlon.. gotta get a shorter practice run in before the big event. I'll be doing the Spirit of Racine Sprint distance triathlon on July 21st. This will be .25 miles swim, 20 km bike and 5k run. I'm nervous and excited. My swimming definitely isn't at the level I would like it to be, but it is much better so I'm hopeful that I can struggle through the 750 meters and not be dead last... or have to be pulled into a boat b/c I'm drowning. HA!

I will be heading over to Racine on Friday night by myself (well w/ a friend and I'll be staying at my dad's place)... w/o Tom and kids. This will be Tom's first solo overnight and morning. I'll plan on nursing them before I leave in the PM.. unfortunately I won't be able to hang around to put them to bed b/c I have to hit the pavement by 5:30pm to get there in time to pick up my packet. This won't be J/Ls first solo overnight... we are switching houses w/ mom and dad tomorrow night. They are going to come over Sat night and we are going to put Jason and Lily to bed then go out for dinner and a movie then go stay over at mom and dad's condo... for a moment I thought - "well this is dumb, they are sleeping through the night now so what's the big whoop?" then it occurred to me.... we can SLEEP IN!!! Watch ... I'll still wake up at 6am anyway.. Hopefully this will go well or I'll be worried about it for the tri. :)

Tomorrow Tom and Tom (grandpa) are watching the kiddos while mom and I do some landscape planning and research. We are going to do some work on the front yard one of these days. We have a guy coming over on Monday the 9th to talk to us about our bathroom and our front porch.. the last two NEED to be done items in the house. The front porch looks like some guy threw it together in a weekend and the paint is peeling really badly.. and that bathroom EEK! It's BAD! Small and bad. Hopefully we'll be able to get both done in our budget! :)

Jason and Lily are continuing to amaze me daily. Jason now knows where his ears are and Lily points to her nose and her belly button. Yesterday we were looking at a book and Jason pointed at peas than at his mouth and Lily immediately started signing to eat. They are little people. :)

I need to upload some photos to our album, but I will leave you w/ these gems from our naked (okay NOT our, THEIR) frolic in the front yard... I assure you mom and I were appropriately clothed.

Look at that belly


Why won't the water come out!?


All wet

WE played in the water...

here's a quick video of the kiddos playing in some water.