FIVE!

It's happened. I am the mother of a five year old.

It's crazy that Charlie is now five years old. I'm pretty sure that he was just 5.5 pounds a year or so ago.

This morning to celebrate we attempted a photo shoot. As you can see from the photo below, Charlie was not very on board with that and opted to start shredding the newspaper instead.

We attempted again during my lunch break after a long birthday walk.

Things went much better.

Until Charlie discovered that my "5" was made up of chewable cardboard.

The shoot quickly derailed.

 

 

Happy 5th Birthday Charlie! We are the luckiest people in the world to have such a wonderful pup.

Dear 1st Work Week of 2012,

Please be nice.

Your friend,
Ashley

Twinsies

Christmas Eve 2011 brought us twins in the form of my dad and Eric. Playful posing quickly went from this:

to this: 

I still am unsure about what happened here, but it gives me a good laugh.
Dan also joined the white T trend on his own terms

Obviously it's been a very good year. Happy New Year to all! Hopefully regular posting will begin again soon :)

Getting excited!

So many good things are coming up including 3 glorious days off of work!!! I heart government holidays. Especially this one, because it's the official kickoff to Summer!

Besides that, Dan and I have plans to catch the Hangover 2 in the next day or so. We're also going to head up to Boulder on Sunday so that bright and early Monday morning we can run the Bolder Boulder!

It's pretty munch the biggest race that I've ever participated in and I've wanted to run it for the past 2 years. It's a 10K and over 50,000 people are signed up to run it this year! It's the biggest 10K in the US.

Besides being in one of our favorite Colorado towns, we'll know a bunch of people running it this year, so it should be a great time!

Even though my training since the Colfax half has gone a bit down hill over the past few weeks, I am still hoping that I can PR in this race. I never was able to write a post on my first 10K back in April, but I'll try to get to that before this race happens. I also have a 5K to write about, so I'm a bit behind.

Basically though, in order to PR I have to run this puppy in less than 57:46 (a 9:19 pace). Dan is also going to run it, so I'll keep you posted on how he does :) I'm sure well, because his training has pretty much consisted of yoga classes, swimming and an occasional light quarter mile jog with the dog!

On the agenda today: Work, 5K treadmill run, BodyPUMP, then perhaps a movie date!

Also: Happy Last Day of School Dan!! (I'm just slightly jealous, but when you're on your 8th summer of this, it gets a bit easier) :)

Do you have any plans for the upcoming holiday weekend?

Ode to 2010

Thought I would do one more 2010 recap in photos to capture the year in one post (last 2010 post, I promise). It was really a fun year all together and seeing all of these photos in one place, reminds me that I should really blog more throughout the year to capture all of these events.

Nor'easter 2010

One of the best parts about being on the East coast for Christmas was that we got to experience a huge Nor'easter while we were there. Even though we have lived at 6,000 feet for 5 years, we just don't see this kind of snow out here.

My Aunt B woke the boys up early the next morning to help with the shoveling. Greg had to borrow clothes from Paul. He looked awesome!

It pretty much made Dan's day to wake up and shovel. But all in all the boys were good sports about it.

I spent the morning wrangling my Grandpa to make sure that he didn't head out there with them, which may have been the toughest job of them all.  :)

Thanks Grandma and Grandpa!

We're back from spending Christmas in New York and slowly getting back into the swing of things. We're happy to have this guy back with us every day!

We brought with us a gift for Charlie from Grandma and Grandpa, which he has has been thoroughly enjoying.

I actually woke up to him squeaking it this morning. We had such a great time in New York and I miss spending time with my family already.

Thanksgiving 2010

I was pretty ambitious this Turkey day! Not only did I participate in a Turkey Trot that morning, but we hosted Thanksgiving at our house this year. Our friends that Bivens came over and we held up our yearly tradition of feasting together. This was actually our 4th Thanksgiving together and the first one held at my house.

The food was great! But all in all, it was a really chaotic experience for me. I think I ended up taking on way to much of the cooking myself.

Don't mind Eric, he's trying to be creepy here!

Here's my plate! Filled with sweet potato casserole, a cranberry glazed turkey, mashed potatoes, mac & cheese, green bean casserole, cranberry sauce, gravy and a bread role!  Oh, and stuffing, which I almost forgot to make entirely!

Next year, I will seriously consider having Whole Foods make most of the meal for us so I can focus more on wine and socializing and less on recipes and ingredient lists!Hope your Thanksgiving was a great one!

The 5K That Wasn't

On Thanksgiving morning I participated in my first Turkey Trot. It was a 5K to benefit one of the local YMCAs in town and my first 5K! My friend Randi and I both participated and Randi's husband Ryan cheered us on and even better, held our stuff :)

The race started at 9a and the temp was 12 degrees so I decided that layering was extremely necessary. I think I ended up with 2 bottom layers and 6 layers on top along with gloves and one of those hat bands. I actually think I over did it with the top layers and could have stuck with 4-5 and been fine. Plus, by the end of the race I fully hated the gloves I was wearing and thought about throwing them off. They were just $1 target gloves and not fancy running gloves so that might be why.

Here's Randi and I at the start (I'm pretty sure the better picture is on her camera). We decided to line up with the 10 minute mile pace group. 

We started out strong and spent the first few minutes winding around and passing people. I thought we were going to do awesome, but then Randi started to have some breathing issues (most likely because she didn't train outside). I hung out with her for the first mile or so  and then decided to just go at my own pace in an effort to get a sub 30 minute time. After that I was pretty touch and go. The only mile marker I was able to see was the 3rd one, so for most of the race I had no idea how I was pacing myself. My best bet is that I started out way too fast because during the 2nd mile (or what I think the 2nd mile was) I kept on having to stop to walk.

I'm glad I was able to see the 3rd mile marker though because I totally picked it up after that in an effort to make up for some of the walking. I ended up crossing the finish under the 30 minute mark, so I was really excited!

Here I am walking through the shoot to drop off my time tag.

After that I walked back to the finish to see Randi cross. I managed to see her but wasn't able to get a finish line photo.

After a while of waiting around the results posted and I came in at 29:24! I was really excited that I actually met goal and came in under 30 minutes. 

That was until I checked the official race results online the next day and saw the following:

Briargate YMCA/Kaiser Permanente Turkey Trot 2.8M 2.82 Miles November 25, 2010 in Colorado Springs, CO As you may already be aware, the course was inadvertently cut short during the race which made the course 2.8 instead of 3.1 miles (the outlined course is marked off as a 5K). The YMCA and Colorado Springs Police Department apologize for this error and will be sure to correct it for next year.

2.82 miles!!! What a rip off! So basically what I thought was a really awesome time actually wasn't that great after all. My overall pace was 10:26, so I was pretty bummed. However, looking at the bright side, I came in 60th in my age group of 25-29 out of 121 women. 1,744 people participated and I was 931 overall and 391 out of the 919 females that participated. Plus my time beat the average pace of 31:28.

All in all I am still a bit bummed out about it though and am thinking about finding another true 5K to run in the next few weeks. It was a really fun experience though and gave me a good taste of what races are like. I think in the future, pacing myself and not letting the race pace me is going to be my biggest challenge. And, even though the race didn't really end up being the 5K that was promoted, I still want to participate again next year :)

It's a Bird... It's a Plane...

It's SUPER CHARLIE!

I woke up on Halloween and decided that Charlie needed a costume. So I spent the better part of the day making him a cape.

And a mask... which didn't work out very well.

His special power was extreme guarding, which he proudly displayed by looking out the front window for the better part of the night and appearing ferocious to all neighborhood children.

His friend Jake stopped by dressed as a bumble bee. This was of course the best photo I could get of the two of them.

I dressed up as an 80s Prom Queen for passing out candy, which was a big hit with the tweens that came to the door.

It was a much nicer look than the Zombie Audrey Hepburn get up I had to wear at work on Friday.

Yes, that's a mimosa in my hand. And yes, it was 10 in the morning. You'd drink too if you had to act like a zombie in front of your clients and colleagues :)

Happy Father's Day Dad!

Love you :)

Merry Christmas....

from all of us here at 315... especially Charlie!!



Can you tell that he's not to fond of that bow :)