Bella's 6th

This weekend we celebrated Bella's 6th birthday party! Every year Bella picks a theme for her party. This year she vacillated between Wonder Woman, Care Bears, Princess Tea Party, and Ninja Turtles. In the end she surprised me by picking "Chibi Knight."



Chibi Knight is a flash game Bella and I did together about a small knight with a cute voice who goes on an adventure to save her little town. I say Bella and I worked on it together because I had Bella do the voice-acting for the little knight. So as you play you can hear her cute voice say such things as: "Hi-yah!, Boo-Yah!, Spell Time!, Yatta!, Neat!, Never Mind!, etc."

Once again, Circle went all out on the party and made an ornate Chibi Castle cake and entertained 9 invited kids + 6 un-invited kids from the neighborhood with games like "Pin the sword on Chibi", "Wizard treasure hunt", "Magic Wand Cat-tail decorations" and, of course, the "Final Boss" pinata battle.





I was not un-involved though, and added a 3-d paper cut-out of Chibi Knight to the cake, did art for the party game supplies, painted the "Final Boss" pinata, and made a special Chibi Knight mask for Bella to wear at her party.



How much prouder can a dad feel than to have his daughter choose one of his creations as the theme for her party over all the other stuff competing for her attention?

Tour De Tahoe

I returned to beautiful Lake Tahoe this year for the Tour De Tahoe. This "ride" has you completely circumnavigate the lake for a total of 72 miles.

I did the ride with Circle's brother, Ethan, who hasn't ridden a bike for 2 years. I also slacked a bit and didn't train for the ride at all...in fact the last time I was on a bike was a month and a half ago for the Spudman.

Luckily, we took it nice and easy and just enjoyed the breathtaking scenery and enjoyed each rest stop until we were sure we were ready to keep going.

Spudman

Here I am in a foot race to finish the Spudman triathlon...I beat the guy by 0.2 seconds to come in...176th place.

The final push across the finish line cramped my hamstring big time, so I collapsed shortly after this photo with a much less content appearance on my face.

I had fun hanging out with my buddy Matt Cochran in Idaho. I still have a long way to go before I'm even an average runner and let's not even talk about swimming :)

The triathlon keepsake they gave us in our registration bags was a shrink-wrapped potato.

Herding cats at Scout Camp was enjoyable too ;)

Funny pictures

I was looking through someone's "Tumblr" account and the following pics really made me laugh...do they make YOU laugh too?






That last one makes me really grateful no one ever caught me on film when I dressed up exactly like that...I think I had a laser tag helmet on though.

Vineman

This is kind of old news, but Matt Cochran and I had a ton of fun doing the Vineman triathlon recently.

We took the swim easy, even talking and laughing while we were paddling away. The bike transition was a bit of a joke because they had you run about 200 yards up a hill with your bike in hand and clip-in pedals on foot, so I was slipping and sliding all over the place before I even mounted my bike at the top of the hill. Same story for the way back down the hill to transition to the run.

The run was the hardest part for me. Even though it was only a 5k, running after swimming and biking was pretty tough.

As you can see below, I was number 57...because I've got the special sauce. :)

I took a looong break from exercise after the tri, but now I'm picking things back up for the Spudman in July...it's more than DOUBLE the distance of the Vineman!

Here are some pics of the event:

Pyramid Lake Practice

Although it was very cold, I needed to test my new wetsuit in some real open water in preparation for my 1st triathlon (The Vineman) next Saturday. So today we headed to Pyramid Lake, the local saltwater lake with nice windblown waves.

My face, hands, and feet got numb from the cold, but the wetsuit kept the rest of me pretty warm. I think I may have bought too big a wetsuit as you can see from the rolled up legs and the wrinkling around the knees. I wonder if they'll take it back...no I didn't initiate it in the way you're wondering.

Yes, I did photoshop these pics a bit because I couldn't bear to make my belly flab public quite yet...I also sharpened up the colors a bit. :)

Bella and Circle had fun building sandcastles, but they left the ice-cold water swimming to me.

Christmas and 7th Anniversary

Last year we forgot our wedding anniversary entirely. It was only after a call from my mom on the next day that we realized our mistake.

This year, around 12:00 noon Circle remembered and reminded me. 7 years together, HOORAY! We agreed that, coming off of winter sicknesses and a recent visit from Mom, Allan, Ben, and Annette that we'd rather vegetate and catch up on season 5 of Lost rather than leaving the house.

In other news, the secret fireplace mantel project went over really well. Read up about it on Circle's Blog. I finished painting the armoir Circle picked up on craigslist (that she started painting a few weeks ago) and put all my goodies in it (tv, bluray player, surround sound system etc).



Additionally, we found a picture of Jesus we really liked on the BYU museum of art's website, ordered it, had it framed, and put it up above the mantel. It's a really interesting painting from the "Circle of Rembrandt" and isn't overly "Mc Mormon" which makes us both happy.

I also jury-rigged 2 curtain rods together into one looong one so Circle could hang the curtains she found at Ikea. She wanted one giant rod across the east wall of our living room...unfortunately no one makes a 15 ft curtain rod.

We pulled out the "Italy" shaped stockings Circle made a few Christmases ago and I was reminded again of how unique and cool they are. Hanging them from the new mantel was a really rewarding experience.

Having visitors for Christmas really spurred us on to finish up "My room" as it's come to be called. I like the room because it fulfills all my "Man Cave" needs and Circle likes it because it's stylish and classic at the same time. Oh, we also got a fake tree that is pretty indistinguishable from the real thing. Our desire for perfect tree symmetry and disdain for cold winter tree-hunting lead us to the decision :)

Merry Christmas!