Weekend roundup: carnival and splashing around

Days are long, nights are short, and the boys are running wild and having a great time doing it!  Friday was carnival at the boys' pre-school - a time to eat ice cream, jump in the bouncy house, watch magic tricks including balancing spoons on noses, and face painting (that's impossible to get off). 

Yes, Wilson is wearing an aloha shirt and camo shorts with pink hearts on his face. 

 
 Saturday was a mellow day in the house with the boys painting trim for our basement, and me doing laundry.  Very domestic bliss ... and I loved it.  Today we woke up to a somewhat sunny morning and decided it was time to start tri prepping ... the problem is my ankle is still blue and green and not functioning quite right.  We made our way to Green Lake where I attempted laps with arms only.  Many things wrong with this scenario; namely: (a) the sleeves on my wetsuite are baggy - weird, yes? (b) the water is nasty, (c). it's REALLY hard to swim without legs if there's nothing binding your feet.  They just have a mind of their own and want to kick!  After a failed attempt at laps between buoys,  I met up with the boys at the playground where I found Cole looking longingly at the boats.  Matt decided to rent a sailboat and I nabbed a kayak and we made our way around the lake.  Great times! 

Ankle sprain from trail race

I haven't twisted my ankle since highschool - and that was too long ago to put numbers in a blog counting the years.  This weekend I did the second in the Cougar Mt. trail race series - an 8mi run through the hills.  Cougar Mt. is one of my favorite NW trail races with a beautiful forest, steep rooty hills, an

d birds that seem to chirp constantly from hiding (I always hear them, never see them).  This race I started out OK - I was in 2nd place for the women by about mile 5 and had just decided to kill my music in favor of listening to the birds ... when it happened.  I was on a downward slope rounding a turn when my ankle rounded the turn more than my body - in other words, major twist.  I fell the the ground yelling cuss words (F word in the interest of full transparency) - I've never felt such immediate searing pain.  Then a minute or so later people behind me caught up and stopped - at that point is was embarrassment + pain + I just wanted to get out of the way (a single track trail race course is not the ideal place to get hurt). 

Two women stopped completely and made me sit - one of them was like Wonder Woman - with full strength she picked me up and said "can you stand?"  Sobbing I nodded yes.  As the women held me and helped me hobble a bit along the trail, in the span of 10min as I stood on the side of the course, 4 different people ran by and asked "Amber?  Amazon?"  I really hope they didn't hear my profanities earlier - it seems a lot of Amazonians run the trails around Seattle.  I told the women to go on ahead - partially because I didn't want to be the hurt one on the trail and partially because I wanted to hobble faster than someone with a fresh sprain probably should, and I didn't want anyone telling me to stop.  A lanky recent college grad and trail volunteer then came running up, "Amber?"  He asked.  Another person to hobble with me.  His first statement as we walked along the trail was, "you're pretty competitive, eh?"  I nodded yes.  Not sure if he asked this because (a) of how upset I was to get hurt mid-race, or (b) because of how fast I insisted on getting off the course.

After getting off the trail finally (a 3mi walk back to my car), I drove home to meet the boys who were helping build a play set at their school (seriously).  The rest of the weekend was spent with arnica and ice - and a lot of "I can't believe I did that" statements.

Spring garden fun

We're just on the cusp of summer and in these final days of spring I am loving our garden.  As soon as the days peak in length, and the rain really stops (believe it or not, it's supposed to rain all weekend after a sunny week), our garden will dry out.  For now, though, it's perfect.

Artichokes and tomatoes:

 Figs:

 Flowers, flowers, flowers!!!

Real athlete?

I haven't been running as much as I'd love.  Last weekend I went to get a pedicure with a girlfriend who commented "wow, your feet look great."  The funny thing was this made me feel awful!  I miss the day of 9 toenails and giant blisters. Good thing I have a trail race this weekend.