The latest...

So, we both survived the race this weekend. We went up to Pinetop on Thursday and did a short ride in the afternoon. Friday we did a 10 mile ride on the loop that made up most of my ride so that I would know what to expect. I wrecked lots of times and have more bruises right now than I have ever had at one time. But the good thing about that was that I didn't wreck at all during the race. The weather Thursday and Friday was gorgeous and sunny. The forecast for Saturday was rain but luckily the weather held out and it was beautiful Saturday too. Thank goodness no repeat of the weather last year. The rest of our group came up on Friday afternoon/evening. Some of us went to lunch at Darbi's on Friday afternoon (love that place) for a great lunch. Saturday morning we all headed out to the race starting area. The guys' race started at 8:30 am and mine started at 9:30 am. I ended up finishing right around the same time as the guys did. So yes, it took the guys only about 1 hour more to do 21 more miles than me! But my only intention was to finish the race, which I did. I started at the back of the pack and any time someone got behind me I pulled over for them to pass because it made me nervous to have them behind me. There were about 5-7 other people that I kind of went back and forth with throughout the race so that made me feel good that I was able to keep up with a couple people. I was pretty worried at the start of the race because it took about 2 miles for my legs to warm up and stop feeling awful. I was so excited to finish! It felt like such an accomplishment. The guys all did great in their race. JC finished first (in under 4 hours I believe) of our guys. Then Eric, Jeff, Mike and Scott. I crossed the finish line between Mike and Scott. I was glad that Mike got to see me finish because I got to see him finish last year. Kristin (JC's girlfriend) and Rhonda (Jeff's wife) were our photographers since I was racing. So glad they got lots of pictures for me...scrapbook pages to come. Since the weather was so nice this year we all got to hang out after the race at the start/finish area. We hung out and just relaxed, recapped about the race and drank beer. Saturday night we all went out to eat at a great Mexican place. Sunday morning we just headed home. We would have done some sight seeing with the fall leaves and everything but our truck was having issues so we thought we should just get home. Some other time we will go back to just sight see and hang out. The area is so beautiful!
In other news, we put our house on the market last week. We are just going to see what happens since the market is so crappy. But I just want to be able to sell it so that we have the freedom to buy a bigger house before the market goes too high again. Now that everything is finished it's really nice. Kind of sad to see the realty sign in the front yard. Lots of memories and hard work have gone into this house. Patience with be the key...
Saturday we leave for Rocky Point with JC and Kristin for 4 days. Then back for a little over a week and then off to Cabo!!! Hoping to get a tan started in Rocky Point so that I don't get too fried in Cabo.
Here are some pictures from last weekend. I also put them in Picasa so they are on the link on the sidebar where our pictures are. I also took a disposable camera that I haven't gotten developed yet that I think will have some good pics on it so I will add those later.


Scott, Mike and Eric ready to start the 37 mile race

Steph waiting to start the 16 mile race

Mike coming in to aid station 3. Only 11 miles to go...

JC crosses the finish line

Mike crosses the finish line

Mike, Eric, JC and Jeff after the race

Steph crosses the finish line

So happy to be done and so proud of each other!

Haning out after the race

And some pictures of the awesome sunset we had back at home Sunday night...

PROGRESS

Well, we are getting closer to finishing all the projects on the house so that we can put it up for sale. I'm kind of sad that we are doing all this hard work and making the house nicer and then we will be selling it (hopefully). But I really hope that we can sell it and find something bigger and better. Last weekend we put rock in the backyard. Most of the yard was dirt and it was really too much dirt to do much landscaping with it. So we did rock were all the dirt was. Plus we have a little section of fake grass at the edge of the patio. We rented a Bobcat through my dad's work and it made the job so incredibly fast. We moved 10 tons of rock in just a couple of hours. I don't really have any "before" pictures of the yard, but you can see all the dirt area in the pictures of Mike in the Bobcat.



Here are a few pictures of the yard now.

We built this shed and did the tree wells to match the patio/porch. The small brown thing is the dog house. The small patch of grass right in front of the shed is just temporary. The dogs like to lay there so we are leaving there until we list the house.
There used to be a chain link fence in the back and we had the wall put in. Mike built the gates for the yard. One big one for the back (seen here) that leads to the alley and two small gates on either side of the house facing the front yard.
We built this porch and patio. There used to be 2 sliding glass doors on the back and we made the one into a window (on the right) and put a new slider on the left (did all that a couple years ago). Mike built all the wrought iron for the windows and doors. The big water tank on the left is our make shift pond where our goldfish and koi are until we get a big house and can build a pond.


Wednesday we are going to stucco the garage. Then all that will be left is to put rock in the front yard and Mike wants to pull up the asphalt driveway and pour concrete. Everything is looking nice around here. The end is finally in sight. In other news, we went for a mountain bike ride on Saturday and I wrecked and got a big bruise on my hip. My new bike has clip-in pedals and I didn't get unclipped in time and fell over. Luckily it was in a nice dirt spot with no cactus or rocks. Then we went again today and rode 13.3 miles. That is the most I have ever ridden. We are trying to get ready for the mountain bike race in October. My race is 16.2 miles long and it will be way harder than the trails I ride here. I'm just hoping to finish the race. Mike is doing the 35 mile race again and a bunch of the guys from his work are doing it this year.

What's up with us

Our kitchen is finally done. Actually, it's been done at least a week but I haven't updated it to the blog yet. Mike did a great job on the backsplash. It is travertine tile with accent tiles that are the same granite as the countertops. It looks really nice. In the pictures we didn't have all the outlet covers yet (they are travertine also) but they are all on there now.




In other exciting news, we have decided on Cabo San Lucas for our anniversary trip this year. We are going October 22-28 and staying at the Riu all-inclusive hotel. We plan on doing some deep sea fishing and maybe some diving and lots of relaxing by the beach and pools. And my cousin and her husband might come, too. We are really looking forward to it. October will be very busy for us. We are going to the White Mountains for a mountain bike race the first weekend, Rocky Point the second weekend and then to Cabo. Here is a picture of the hotel:
Can't wait....

Pround new owners of a motorhome

Well, we had thought about buying a new toy hauler for quite a while. But we decided a motorhome would make more sense for us. When we get a boat someday, we can haul it with the motorhome and camp at the lake. And we can take it to the dunes and haul our quads/bike on our flat trailer. We looked at some in Phoenix and were quite disappointed at the condition they were in. We had to get something older so that the price was decent, but we still wanted it to be in good condition. The minute we walked into this one we were really excited about how nice it was inside and how well it had been taken care of. It is smaller than what we were originally looking at but it was also cheaper and in good condition. We wanted something that would sleep "6" (which is really more like 4 adults or 2 adults and 4 kids). But it's just the two of us for now so this is plenty big for us. It has a walk around double or queen (not sure) in the back bedroom part and the dinette folds down into a bed which supposedly sleeps 2 people but really more like 1 adult or 2 kids. We are already thinking of lots of different places we want to go in our motorhome. Here are a few pictures. I don't think they do it justice but you can see what it's like inside.

San Diego

Well, I would post about Rocky Point too, but we lost the pictures. I didn't take very many since each day was full of laying on the beach or standing in the ocean (perfect way to spend 4 days). But, we had them saved on our external hard drive but I didn't burn a CD yet and now our external hard drive died. We have the worst luck with computer stuff. It won't turn on at all so we don't know if the company is going to be able to save our stuff off of it. We'll see. But Mike was able to recover my favorite Vegas pictures that got erased from our memory stick somehow (threw that one away and had to get a new one). But anyways, we visited Angie and Lonnie in San Diego over the 4th of July weekend and we had a great time. We didn't do the big stuff like Sea World, zoo, etc because I knew it would be crazy on a holiday weekend. Plus, we did those last time we went to San Diego. We wanted to just hang out, catch up and relax. And that's exactly what we did. We got there Friday and grabbed lunch. Then Mike and I took a nap since we had been up since 4am and I had worked the night before. That night Lonnie and Angie made a delicious dinner. Saturday Angie and I checked out the scrapbook store and the guys killed some time while we were there. After shopping, we went to a lighthouse (can't remember the name) up on the hill and went to a cool military cemetery there. Then we hung out at the house until the afternoon and we headed toward downtown. We had some great seafood at a restaurant and then went to a park down by the water. We spread out some blankets and hung out until the fireworks started. The fireworks were really cool. There were 4 different barges with fireworks and they were all going simultaneously. It was neat to see them all going off. Sunday Angie and I scrapbooked. Mike and Lonnie went a couple places, including the fire station so Mike could trade some shirts. Then that night we went on a dinner cruise around the harbor. It was very nice. The food was soooo good, plus cheesecake for dessert. The view of downtown at night was pretty. We really enjoyed the cruise. It was a perfect way to end our time there. Monday morning we got up, packed our things and headed home. And of course, here are some pictures.