Track Meet!

All of John's family except his sister Natalie, who tried to make it but couldn't!

As you can see from the picture, Bonnie (John's sister) is wearing two metals around her neck (well, it looks like one, but she really has two!).  She did so awesome!  She was 4th place in the 800m and 1st in her 4 x 400 relay race, go Bonnie!  The metals go to show Bonnie runs like a Cheetah!  

Like I said in previous post, running is not my thing.  I'd rather do the long or high jump, anything that requires the least amount of running as possible!  Though I love to play sports and be active, if I'm going to run I need to be chasing after something, like a ball or a frisbee.  I have tremendous respect for people like Bonnie (and like John) who run because they love to run.  John has the Cheetah blood too, he ran a marathon in 2 hours and 49 minutes!  I dug out this picture from the photo album, this was taken right after the St. George marathon, almost 7 years ago!  I would be exhausted too!

Running a mile is even torture for me.  When I ran in a triathlon, it was the first time I had run 4.5 miles ever (and I haven't come close to that since!)!  It was the hardest thing to keep going.  I only did because a old man passed me up and I thought, if a 70 year old can run this race, so can I!  I ended up running and talking with him the rest of the way, I would have started to walk if it wasn't for him!   I tried to find the picture of the two of us, but couldn't.  If I locate it with all the packing I'm doing, I'll update with the picture!

A big congrats to Bonnie for doing so well and a big thank you to John's family who made the weekend so much fun.  We all stayed together overnight, watching a movie, eating pizza and having a great time together. Thank you Terri and Dave for planning such a great trip, we love you!  

Caleb running the 10 yd dash 

1st Place!

Beach fun and the Aquarium

Even though I'm going crazy with all the things I need to do right now with packing, showing the house (our land lord passed away and now the house we're renting is up for sale on the market!) and having some activity/function almost every night of the week (no kidding!), I'm on this desperate attempt to still have fun and enjoy Seattle for the last three weeks we'll be here.  Yesterday we took the bus down to the Aquarium and then the water taxi back.  I wish I could say it was worth the effort.  Caleb was NOT a good little boy!  Below is a depiction of what most of my day was with Caleb:  Running Away.

He ran away whenever he got the chance and took a horrible tantrum every time I tried to pick him up and bring him back, not fun.  

On the water taxi all he did was climb up the stairs to the top deck, run across, I'd pick him up and take him down the stairs (b/c they were too steep), then he'd run across the lower deck to climb the stairs again.   We did this the whole ride over, which was (I counted) 20 times.  The people watching us thought it was hilarious, I had at least 5 people tell me I must be exhausted at the end of each day--- yes, I am!  You would have thought he would have gone to bed early last night, nope!   It was really difficult to sneak in this picture...

While we were waiting for John to pick us up, we decided to throw rocks in the water by the taxi dock.  I turned my back for two seconds to get the camera, when all of the sudden Caleb was in the water, completely drenched from head to foot.  He had gotten too close and fallen in. I had to strip him of all his clothes, luckily it was a warm day and I had come prepared with an extra diaper and onesie!  

And with the extra onesie:

This morning I decided to be adventurous once again and take him to Alki beach.  The temperature is in the 80's today so I thought it would be a perfect day to go.  It's going to be so crazy this weekend with a track meet tonight to see John's sister run (she runs the 800m in 2min. 18 sec., incredible!), a garage sale I'm manning all by myself with Caleb tomorrow, (because John is aerating for a little extra moving cash), then tomorrow night I'm going to the ballet with tickets I won from a radio station, and Sunday is the Settler's of Cataan tournament with some of John's friends from the dental school.  So many things to do, but at least we had fun at the beach today!!!

Digging for Razor Clams!

Digging for clams has been one thing I've always wanted to do while we've lived here in Seattle, but we haven't been able to go until this year.  I am soooooo happy we went, it was so much fun!  The clam digging season is only open certain times, yesterday (Tuesday) was one of the last days of the year we'd be able to go.   We went knowing it was our last chance before we left Seattle (4 more weeks left)!  We drove down to Long Beach (about 3 hours away) and stayed in a hotel/resort right on the beach.  It was great since they had a pool and park with swings and slides, a must to help keep Caleb entertained!   We arrived at Long beach Monday afternoon, played down by the water, toured the little town (including seeing a Gray Whale skeleton that had washed up on the beach a few years earlier), ate some seafood at a way overly priced restaurant, went swimming and stayed up to watch a movie (Caleb would not go to bed early for us, the little stinker!), knowing we had to get up at 5:30 the next morning!  

The best time to dig for clams is an hour or two before low tide.  We weren't sure what to do with Caleb when we woke up that morning.  We tried putting my cell phone next to him while he was sleeping and bring John's cell phone which was on speaker, to act as a monitor.  Once we got to the beach the cell phone turned off (probably because no one was speaking!) so John went back, woke him up, and bundled him up in the BOB with his bottle.  I love that stroller, it would be a hummer if it was a car!  We took him out with us right out on the beach while we dug for clams.  Caleb slept the whole time, it was perfect!  We found 6 clams, not too many, but being amateurs, we were happy to have found any!  We realized later after speaking to several people, that the stretch of beach we were on did not have as many clams as farther up north.  I guess everyone catches their limit up there, but we didn't know until after, good information for when we come back in a few years!  It was so much fun digging for the clams, though they could be kind of hard to spot.  You look for a doughnut, dimple or key hole, place the clam shovel 6 inches below towards the water and start digging!  You have to be careful not to break the shell, but you also don't want to be too slow for the clam to dig themselves out of sight.  John had to be back that afternoon for a rotation in Oral Surgery so we had to leave just when the digging was the hottest!  

Caleb was an angel the whole trip, including the drive over and home, thank goodness, otherwise it would have been rather miserable driving 3 hours with a fussy toddler!  As you can see if the pictures below, we cleaned the clams and fried them up for dinner that night, wow did they taste mmmm good!  Although I did feel rather lardy after eating so many.  Clam digging ranks way high on my list, I think it will become a yearly Young family tradition!   

The Clams...

All nicely cleaned up...

And ready to eat!!!