Little Red 2009

I love cycling!  Thanks to the generosity of my brother and sister I have taken up road biking.  It has become my preferred means of exercise and, probably more importantly, my escape.  Not that a Relief Society president and mother of two needs an escape, but I certainly look forward to being on my own for a few minutes each day.

For the last few months Shannon, my sister-in-law, and I have been training to do a century ride.  A 100 mile bike ride is sort of a rite of passage for a cyclist.  So as much as weather and children permitted we followed our training schedule and prepared for this event.  On June 6th we joined 2,600 other women in the Little Red Riding Hood event through Cache Valley.  We had a grand time.  The scenery was beautiful.  The weather was great.  And we were awesome! 

Josh and Greg came up to cheer us on.  We looked forward to seeing them in their little red car at random places on the course.  As I told Shannon, I have never done anything as crazy as this without my brothers or Josh.  It was nice to have them around now and then to remind us that we were the tough ones this time.  Other than a little head wind that seemed to be blowing in the opposite direction we were riding now matter what direction we were riding, everything went very smoothly.  We even beat our goal for average speed.

Here we are at the finish line!  The ride ended up being 105 miles.  I'm not sure whose idea it was to add an extra five miles.  Obviously someone who was not riding--maybe the big bad wolf!

We are looking for a couple more people to ride with us next year.  We decided in the wind it would have been much nicer to have a group of at least four, so let me know if you are interested.

What Would We Do Without Google

I was going to go to bed early last night.  The girls were down and Josh was out, so I headed up to bed around 9:30 hoping to be asleep by 10:00.  As I finished washing my face I noticed the light was on in the girls' room.  I opened the door and saw that Kate was not in her bed.  I turned around and saw her standing on top of my cedar chest coloring with a Sharpie on the top of the dresser.  "Kate!," I exclaimed.  Then the extent of the damage started to register and all I could say was, "Oh....oh.....oh..!".  The top of the dresser, the side of the dresser, every single drawer of the dresser, the top of my cedar chest the front of the cedar chest, the night stand, the little TV, the quilt on the bed, the pillow cases, every slat on the crib, and last of all a two square foot area of the wall were all covered with sharpie!  I just about died.  So instead of going to bed early I spent the next three hours scrubbing sharpie off of every surface in the bedroom.  I googled "remove sharpie" and found out that you use a baking soda mixture to get it off wood, ethanol to get it off cloth, and, best of all, brake fluid to get it off paint.  It worked!

p.s. My daughter is still alive!