Braydon's New Hobby

Apparently Braydon has been watching Melissa while she does her yoga. Not only did he bust out some moves of his own, he even joined Melissa of a few of her moves. (By, the way, Melissa usually does not do Yoga in jeans. This was more of a reenactment.)

Dress Rehersal

In a couple of weeks, we will be heading up to Chicago for my sisters wedding. We are of course all very excited. Even more so considering the fact that Braydon will be the Ring Bearer and we tried on his clothes tonight.

We were brave to try this so close to bedtime, and then allow him to keep drinking his bottle of water after his shirt and tie were on. We did get away with all his clothes perfectly clean, but there was one casualty.

The one casualty of the night was the coffee pot that Braydon got a little too close to.

Extreme Make Over: Kitchen and Bath Edition

For several months now, Melissa has talked about remodeling our kitchen and bathrooms. Over that time, she has done a ton of research and picked up a few things here and there. Last weekend, the momentum of the remodel hit an all time high with no less then four visits to Home Depot.

Thursday was scheduled to be the day we got to work, but by the time I got home of Tuesday, the doors were already off the cabinets and the project was in full swing. Wednesday night was an off night to go to a stand up comedian show in Tampa, but from Thursday night until about 10:00 Sunday night, it has been a non-stop home improvement show.

The most remarkable piece of the entire project, aside from the finished product of course, was what didn't happen.

Somehow, in three and half days of non-stop continuous work, we managed to spend the exact amount we had budgeted for the project, made zero extra trips to Home Depot, and never got into anything that even resembled an argument.

But as I said the most impressive aspect is the finished product.

Since the project started so quickly, I din't have time to get before pictures, but here are a couple of Braydon in the old kitchen.

The new Kitchen

What Matters

Each Adventure Race that I take part in, I learn something new. From navigation skills to training plans to paddling efficiency, there is always something to learn.

Here is what I learned this time;

Wearing an entire outfit of ONLY spandex does not mean that you will win the race ( a VERY common misconception).

Riding around on a $1,000 dollar bike does not mean that you will win the race.

Having experience running multiple marathons and going to spin class every week does not mean you will win the race.

Having great teammates that work well together, although may not guarantee victory, sure as hell makes the biggest impact.

I cannot say enough about how great my teammates are. It probably goes back to the fact that we are friends first that spend much more time hanging out and traveling together than we do racing together. That foundation makes for not only for us working well together, but having a great time and laughing through it all.

Each one of us has our own roll on the team. There is "The Spark Plug" that leads the way constantly keeps us moving and energized. There is the "Energizer Bunny" who has an endless supply of energy and is moving just as fast at the end of the race than the beginning. There is our "strategizer" who takes charge of the map and plotting our route.

Together with these three people, we make a great team. I didn't have a great race individually, but because my team helped picked me up, we were able to work together to not only win the race, but win by a huge margin.

And one more thing...

Not only do we race well, we talk awesome pre-race pictures also.