people i want to hang out with

Barney from How I Met Your Mother
House from House
Wilson from House
Willie Wonka - the Johnny Depp one
Captain Jack Sparrow - the Johnny Depp one
Johnny Depp, but WW and CJS need to be there, too, as their own people
Ed Deline from Las Vegas
- I would actually like to work at the Montecito with all those people except for Mary because she is gross
Will Farrell as himeself and probably as Buddy, too

i hope my gut instinct is wrong this time

so, i had some eggs for lunch today and i have a feeling that maybe they were old and bad. they tasted fine so lets keep our fingers crossed.

i also got a free treadmill and sold a bunch of crap!

when i am good, i am so good

lets see. i went to california last week. it was so warm and sunny that i almost started to cry when i first stepped out of my hotel. i am so sun deprived it is rediculous. i went swimming at the club next to the hotel on wednesday evening. pool swimming is so nice. the water is clear, there isn't any poo on the bottom, but i have noticed the occasional ball of hair that floats by which is gross but not quite grosser then gross. wednesday night i had asparagus, snow peas and cheesecake for dinner. can't beat that.
thursday morning i went to the club next to the hotel and ran on the treadmill. treadmill running is now one of my favorite things. ok, that is pushing it, but it is fun because I can watch my progress some.
no comment about being in the office. i will do that some other time but it was good to see everyone.
we all went out to dinner and i got relatively hammered. i haven't done that in a long time. i even did a shot which i really haven't done in a really long time.
i had to get up at 530 to get to the airport to catch my flight. i felt a little dizzy but not bad. once i got home though i realized that felt dizzy simply because i was still drunk and once i got home the hangover was taking over. splitting headache and just all around not feeling good plus i was exhausted. seamus was so cute though because she told me over and over again that she missed me. that made my day! mom stopped by late that evening because eric was going to take her to the airport to pick up rick and his girlfriend. i passed out.
on saturday, i woke up at 530 again to head out to triathlon #2. I was no longer drunk or hung over but i dind't want to do the race. like really really didn't want to do it. i was totally freaked out about the swim since the last one was so horrible. i kept telling charity that i didn't think i was going to do it and i was trying to find some way to bail on it. next think ya know, its 10 minutes to start time, i am in my wetsuit and at the start. the guy running it was so awesome in that he asked who wasn't a very good swimmer and then suggested to all those who raised their hands to move to the back and to just let the others head out a little bit before going out. this helped so much! and combined that with that the water was so much more calm then lake washington has been i actually had fun on the swim! only once did i start to think about the possiblity of their being horrible things on the bottom and that was only a very quick thought. i came out of the swim and was able to actually prance my way up onto the beach and run to the transition area - something i was not able to do last time. i jumped on my bike and was on my way. the bike ride was fun, it was a two lap course and i was only caught by two of the guys who had started 5 minutes ahead of my field. eric installed a computer for me so i was able to keep track of time and speed and all of that. then it was off on the run. i started out slooooow. like - was i really running? but then after probably 10 minutes i started to pick it up. since i was going so slow i had decided that the 3 miles would likely take me over 30 minutes and i told myself that any time over 30 i would go as fast as i possibly could. i wound up rounding the corner and heading toward the finish only to see eric, seamus and sirus by the fence with seamus jumping up and down yelling "run mommy run" and i was totally inspired. she is so amazing and to see her so excited to see me running like that made me so happy! i picked up the pace and finished! I finished the run in 26 minutes which was amazing to me! i was so happy to see seamus and eric and sirus and i felt so good. hooray! to top it off, i came in 3rd in my age group and they announced my name and gave me a little trophy which i now have sitting on my desk at work. I think now that maybe i will take it home and give it to seamus.
after the race we came home, eric went for a bike ride and run, the kids took a nap, i layed on the deck and then took a nap. when eric came home he and seamus cleaned out seamus's pool and even though the water was so cold and the air was kind of cold too, seamus splashed around in there.
sunday we went for a short family jog and then did some shopping. then everyone came over for a BBQ - christie and jon, mom and rick and his gf. seamus wanted her "wet suit" on so she could go in the pool, so even though we were all in sweatshirts there she was splashing around having a great time. it was so fun to hang out with everyone!

they are GONE

we went swimming in lake washington yesterday after work. it was eric, charity, lindsey and me. it was kind of cold but much better then last time. it was pretty wavey, too, but with all of us there it was pretty fun. i didn't panic at all and we swam in deeper water this time and it was ok. we talked to some guy who was also out there. it was funny because he was foreign but was telling us the distances in yards and we were trying to convert them to meters. he asked what we were training for and i said the 5 mile lake triathlon and he thought i said the 5 mile leg of a triathlon. he was all impressed with us for about 1/2 a second and the we got it all figured it out. i hope we can all go out again sometime soon!
so after the swim we went home, played with the kids some, put them to bed, watched some reality show team fear factor which was actually pretty entertaining and then i took a shower. this is when i noticed that my boobs were totally gone. where did they go? they were GONE. i showed them to eric, much to his delight, and he said they were still there but they are not even close to being there the way they have been in recent months. luckily this morning, i woke up and at least my right one deicded to come back. i don't know how i feel about all of that.
the other issue i am having right now is my mustache. people keep telling me it is all in my head and i keep saying, no its right there on my face. its not a hair mustache but more a skin discoloration mustache. they talk of the mask of pregnancy which can cause some stuff like that, but ya know, i am so not pregnant right now and i didn't have it when i was pregnant. dude, it is so not cool. i am wondering if the small amount of sun that i have been exposed to could be making it stick out?
i am headed to LA here in about 5 minutes. ok, so i am headed to the airport so i can go to LA in about 5 minutes. i come back on friday. my brother is coming for a visit on friday! horray! but i will be arricing at the airport about 12 hours before he does.

that was my pitty party, but here are the photos

i tried to email myself

27 megs worth of photos but it didn't work. it was full of giant photos that i wanted to post here. i will try again tonight or tomorrow or somehow i will get them posted.
i can't remember friday night other then that eric went and got us a cheesecake. ugh he is intsistent on sabotaging all of my weight loss efforts.
on saturday jenifer was in town from colorado (formerly of CA, formerly of Seattle) and some of the girls met up for brunch at the hi-life. it was damn tasty. eric went and ran the cougar mountain trail run. it was the 2nd race in the series and was 7.5 miles. eric came in 10th overall and 5th in his age group. he had only run 7.6 miles once before and that was on wednesday so it was pretty impressive. we are now seriously considering bagging the xterra on july 9th all together and doing the 10 miler that is july 8th. we will have to see for sure but it is pretty impressive and he had a lot of fun.
saturday afternoon lindsey, mo and amelia come for a visit. seamus wasn't so sure about having another baby in the house but amelia and sirus seemed very interested in each other. amelia is so cute with big hazel eyes! so fun and it was great to see mo and lindsey as always!
sunday morning i woke up in a big old funk and cried and cried about how i am worthless and incompetant, and the best i will ever be at anything is bad to mediocre. eric tried to cheer me up by telling me how i do such a good job keeping the house all together and everything and i had to ask him when the last time anyone ever stopped by to tell me how i did such a great job on that last load of laundry. i am old and flabby, i can't lose the last 5 pounds, i don't make enough money, i have no real job skills and all in all i just suck.
to that, eric told me to get out of bed, we loaded up the kids and we went for a jog. we ran to greenlake and around the lake for a total of 6 miles then we stopped at the park and let seamus play for a while. it was fun and i felt better but i am still feeling pretty damn inadequate as a mother, a wife, an employee and person in general. i hate being so damn mediocre.

genius child

here i am getting out of the water at the triathlon. now do you beleive me that the swim was terrible? at least i am still ahead of that guy that started 3 minutes after me! charity and i went swimming in lake washington last night and it actually went pretty well. it was very cold at first but then it got better. i got over some of the things that were causing me issues. i realized that part of why i didn't want to put my face in the water was because i just didn't really want to see what was in there. we swam in some really shallow water so i do wonder what will happen with i get to a part where i can't see the bottom. the water was pretty choppy so i decided it simulated a race quite well. charity and i did keep crashing into each other which was pretty funny - we think her left arm is stronger and my right arm is stronger but we figured it out eventually. i was totally dizzy when i got out of the water and kept falling over when i was taking off the wetsuit. i also found out that my car has an alarm and i had no idea how to turn it off. cool but not cool at the same time since i was standing there on the side of a busy street in a dripping wet bathing suit with the horn of my car going crazy.





so here i am during the run. this is the one i was talking about where i was trying to not have a double chin. no double chin! but apparently while concentrating so hard on that i totally spaced on what to do with my arms. what is going on there?? pretty funny if you ask me. also, i was wearing the cliff bar jersey that eric wore when he and his team of 3 other guys won the 24 hour national championships a few years back. maybe that is why I was so fast? my knee doesn't really hurt any more so i probably don't need the brace but i keep it on there just in case.








seamus is a genius! check out this drawing she did! it pretty funny because all of those mouth lines are actually mouth parts. if you ask her she will tell you, mouth, teeth and more teeth. she is amazing. i watched her make another drawing and she says all the parts as she draws them. later she went back and colored a bit more on it and i asked her what the new thing was - "another nose" is what she told me. of course! what was i thinking? one day she was drawing circles and when i asked what she drew she looked at me like i was a total idiot for not knowing it was a circle and said matter of factly what it was. sometimes she draws ovals though.
she told me this morning that she had the hiccups. apparently she told eric several times yesterday that she farted. she told me that there was a pencil stuck in the drawer. she is talking in total sentences now. it is amazing. for some reason though she sleeps with 4 blankets in her bed. 4. that is a lot of blankets especially since she has about 2792375 stuffed animals, 45235235 books, a mirror and who knows what else in there with her. her bed is very small. what will she do when she gets a normal sized bed someday? sirus is on his way. he is starting to be very mischevious. he gets really pissed off if we put up the baby gates. if we don't have the gate up to the kitchen he will slowly make his way over there, go into the kitchen and kind of head towards you until he has determined that you might not be paying attention then he quickly turns and make a run for the cat food. if he is downstairs and sees that the gate to our bedroom is not up he makes a b-line right for it. yesterday eric even caught him going UP the stairs. he was all the way on the first step and trying to make it onto the second. that is no good. seamus is going to be so mad when we gate off the stairs and she doesn't have as much freedom any longer!

try tri

eric says that the only reason people do triathlons is that they aren't very good in any sport so that do one that consisits of muiltiples. he says this in jest, for the most part.
i did my first triathlon today and it kicked my arse. it was fun but maybe i should have listened a little more to some of the advice i had been given about the swim. my friend charity did it too. this was her 11th triathlon so she helped keep me under control before the race.
the wetsuit was great. it kept me warm and it helped keep my arse up. too back i had such a terrible swim. i made it to the first marker in crawl when i realized i was pushing too hard and needed to back off so i switched to breast stroke. big mistake. my crawl technique was terrible - for some reason i wouldn't put my face in the water. was it because i was afriad of the goose terd? was it because i was afriad i wouldn't be able to tell where i was going? whatever it was, it totally contributed to me getting too tired too soon. breast stroke was no better in that i still couldn't put my face in the water. this was terrible. i rounded the second marker and thank goodness i was as slow was i was because the front group of women totally missed the 3rd marker and headed straight for the 4th. they all had to swim back up and around. by the time i got to the 3rd maker the 35-40 men started mixing in. this did not help my situation because they started grabbing at my legs and splashing me in the face. on no! my face was getting wet!! what the hell? i finally made it to the shore and was totally spent. what a mess. the beach was totally rocky and i had no idea i had such delicate feet! once i made it to the grass i was able to sort of start running. sort of.
i made it to the transition area and remembered to take my time with the wetsuit. it came off fine. i dried my feet, put on my socks and shoes and my jersey, helmet, gloves and sunglasses and headed out. once on the bike i had so much fun! the ride was a blast! i was crusing along. i don't know how fast i was going or what what going on, but i was having fun. i had ridden this route before a long time ago and passed through the intersection that i totally plowed over this guy on my old mtn bike team. no one had gotten hurt so i had a little chuckle. i passed people on the hills and then some of the would pass me on the down hills. it was so fun. until the last two miles or so when my foot started cramping. i haven't ever had that happen on the bike. it has cramped during the swim, and it cramps during most swims, but i have never had it happen while on the bike. so i lost time there in an effort to constantly stretch it out to aviod major distaster.
once i was off the bike, running into transition the foot was fine. i changed my shoes, put on my knee brace and headed back out for the run. i had been told that my legs would feel like bricks and i never did any of the brick work outs because i had a three week taper which consisted of not exercising, but i think my foot issue and the fact that my run was starting out so mellow, my legs felt fine. most of the run was on a grassy trail which was a lot of fun. when we did hit the pavement it was so awesome to feel how easy it felt. i had told myself at the begining of the run that i would run the first 20 minutes and then re-access the situation. after 20 minutes i was feeling good so i think i even managed to pick up the pace a little, but that might just be me thinking that. i was slow but i ran the whole thing! i finshed the whole triathlon!! i am so proud of myself and i am looking forward to my next one. ok, actually, no im not because the next one has a swim that is twice as long, in salt water. i have some work to do. i will now take the advice that was given to me and i will, i have to, go for some open water swims in a non-stress environment. i have to get that under control! my new goal is to complete the whole swim in crawl. ok, well, maybe i will start with completing the swim with mostly crawl, or how about without panicking and without hyperventilating? ok, thats a good goal.
results aren't posted yet and neither are photos. i saw them with the cameras and i tried to stretch my neck so that maybe i won't have a double chin in them. we will have to see what that is all about. i am so vain, but i am ok with that.
all in all, it was totally fun and a great experience! i can't beleive i did it! eric came out to watch and to cheer me and charity on. he managed to be in several places along the course and i saw him in each leg! it was so great to have him there and that he was so supportive of my race!

clothing

i had a conversation with a co-worker in which we discussed thongs. he made the good point that thongs are the only article of clothing that are specifically designed to touch the pooper. that is a good point. i love my VPL and will not wear a thong even before this conversation.

the story behind the photo

back in 2000 i worked at a company for a short time that was run by "co-presidents". one of these presidents had a side project called MetroManUSA
of course i went to the site to check it out, had many, many laughs and then sent the link to everyone i knew. it was just way too funny to keep to myself.
i shared the link with eric and together we laughed and laughed. we laughed at the mitch , we laughed at the rocky, the jason and well, you get the picture. we liked that each one had its own name and we looked up everyone we knew. we especially laughed when we saw the dale and how patriotic it was (and currently sold out!). eric races with a guy named dale and it instantly became a big joke with us that we would get the dale and give it to him. it was just something we only talked about, until ERIC ORDERED IT!!!
it showed up at the house, from snohommish, they hand signed the packing slip with a little smiley face. eric took it to south seatac park for the wednesday night races there and put it up as the prize to whoever happened to win that night.
mid race eric was too anxious, stopped in the middle of the woods somewhere, stripped down and tossed on the dale. apparently when the real dale pedaled past erics clothes in the woods he said in his very dale voice "atwood's naked" which wasn't 100% true - he had on the dale. he did a few laps, had a great time and discovered that mountain biking in a g-string is not comfortable at all. he then poseded for a few photos and then put his clothes back on. he tied the soiled dale to the real dale's seat post and we have never seen it since.
i, of course was at home, probably pregnant and miserable. as soon as he walked in the house he said to me "before you hear it from someone else...." and then told me about his stellar race. its all in good fun. i can't remeber though if this was before or after he had his picture taken while posing like a sports illustrated swimsuit model in his pink speedo.
really, he is very manly.

random photos and stuff

my husband at one of his finer moments.












i am very tall. why is everyone so short?

there are funny things happnening in this photo
my new car!


my old car if it were covered in snow in wisconsin.

bye bye sunfire

so i am dropping the sunfire off today to its new owners. its an end of an era and i am kind of sad. i took some photos so i will post them when i can get around to it. eric took the bike rack off the roof and now the car looks all nekkid. so sad, i hope i don't cry!

diaper free weekend

but first, we had date night last night. highlights include:
the fancy hotel downtown
the stick on bra i wore under my dress
the look eric gave when he saw me all dressed up - one i had always wanted to see but he had never given, although he claims he has that look every time he looks at me, whatever
dinner. this is what we had
smokey met martini
dirty russian martini - tasted like butter, the olives were stuffed with blue cheese!
yellowfin ahi poke salad with whipped avocado
huckleberry blood orange barbeque prawns
spinach salad
tomatoe, sweet onion & blue cheese salad
a glass of red wine each
prime new york peppercorn steak - served with fries
filet mignon & premium australian lobster - served with garlic mashed potatoes
chocolate lava
five layer carrot cake with vanilla carrot cake - our server was all amazed by us. not just because of the phat tip he was going to get but because we ate everything
the table of prom kids next to us
a king sized bed
the trashy super model shows on cable tv
walking around downtown before everything opened
going shopping and getting stuff for the kids before heading home

then we came home and started diaper free weekend for seamus. in the 5 hours of diaper free weekend that we had before she went to bed, she went through 6 pairs of underpants, she peed on me, she peed on eric and peed once in the "oval on the potty" and she pooped in her underpants but then went and took it over to the potty only to tell us about how big her poopy really was. the whole time we had to try to keep sirus away from the potty because he was so interested in it the whole time. tomorrow is going to be a loooong day. i was so worn out from today that i had to take a nap and i went on a little jog - the first exercise i have done since the trail run. i am so happy that i can go out for 1/2 and hour and not feel like i am going to die.

now it is raining so hard that the sewer lines are backing up! oh no!

sleeping through the night...

results in growing teeth! i came home from work yesterday and sirus had a tooth! this morning he was cuddling in bed with me and eric and i wanted to cry. he is growing up way too fast!

ah....

happieness is sleeping through the night. not sure if sirus has been doing it, but i sure have been. tuesday night he woke up once, well, i think only once and cried for just a little, well, i think for just a little. last night he didn't wake up at all, at least i don't think her did. seamus woke up though - yelling "bottle time!" over and over. but then she stopped. seamus doesn't get bottles any more. she is a big girl, and sirus is learning to sleep through the night because he is a big boy. and wow, i feel quite well rested after these two nights. i have been exhausted!!

someone at work was giving away some cross country skis, so i picked them up for eric. they are on the floor in the living room and this morning seamus was standing on them doing funny things with her knees and arms - like she was really skiing. she is a natural! those skis are pretty long for her but never underestimate the seamus!

other exiciting news, i bot my car! finally - new car on the way. it is coming from idaho so i don't get it until tuesday. damn - that was some process and i have had a headache over the whole thing. i talked to one of the meanest audi sales people ever. he was mean, he was condesceding and he even insulted me! what is that about! i guess it was good he was such an arse because the audi was just too expensive and not the right choice for us right now, so i went with the passat. still a very nice car and i think it will work better with our life style. once i made that decision my headache went away most of the way. the passat guy has been so nice and so helpful, i have actually been dealing with him since february so i imagine he is ready to be done with me and is probably just as excited that i will have my car on tuesday as i am! hooray!

do you want to buy the sunfire? i can make you a good deal!

rainbow blankie

seamus and sirus like to be rolled up in the rainbow blanket. its really a big giant beach towel but seamus has adopted it has her rainbow blanket. she LOOOOOVES it.





Sirus had some run ins with some pee. i went to go change him before i went to work and he was totally drenched. i couldn't just put him in some clean clothes so i tossed him in the sink for a little quicky bath. how cute is he??

whoohoo!

look at me! i ran a trail run race this weekend and it was so awesome except for my double chin! it was so fun we are evening thinking about doing the next one which is 7.5miles! eric did really well and i came in right at my goal so i was pretty happy. what a great experience!! the one thing that was a little strange was that for the 250 ppl there they had only one porta potty. 25 minutes before the start we got in our car and went in search of someplace to go. we found a park that had the nicest puclib park restrooms ever. they had two options for flushing - low flow and high flow. because it was race day, we both took advantage of the high flow. aunt christie hung out with the babies!
saturday evening my mom took christie and i out to celebrate both of our birthdays and mothers day. the food was amazing and i ate a ton of it. after dinner mom wanted to go and drive by the ocean and take some photos. so christie and i acted like we were 10 and posed for the photos.









my work is sponsoring a Second Chance Prom in the bay area in which Rick Springfield will be playing. my work is going to send one employee and their date to the prom but to be eligible you have to submit a prom photo. the one with bill hanlon is from freshman year home coming the one with kirk hendrickson is from my sophomore year but his senior year. i want to go to thr prom with eric, that would be so much fun!

so much

lots going on. sort of. well, so much that i made my self a little outline of things to write about. ok, its not an outline, its a list and it will disapear as i write about each.

first off, i feel extra special this week because not only was sunday mothers day but i was mentioned in two blogs this week! that is always a treat! TWO! i am practically famous. that makes me happy!

seamus is so amazing. she is so so smart, its almost scary. for quite some time now she has known all of her letters and numbers and can count things and tell you their shape and their color. all of that is totally amazing. the new thing that is amazing is her memory. she has a stack of 52 cards that have different animals on them. there are mammals, amphibians, birds, reptiles and one other? what is that 5th one? fish, maybe? anyway, she loves to look at these cards and she knows what each of them is. if you put them on the floor and then ask her to find the mudd puppy she will find it for you. if you ask her for the red spotted newt she will find it. she can tell the difference between a canary and an american robin, a sea turtle and a giant tortiose, the tree frog and some other variety of frog that i can't remember now. she knows all of them. it is so cute to watch her while she thinks. she is amazing.

the other day eric and i were eating dinner. seamus and sirus were done so they were on the floor playing. seamus got down on her tummy just like sirus and they sat there looking eye to eye. seamus thought this was very neat and would laugh because sirus would reach out to touch her face or her hair. she would say "sirus touch the nose" and then just laugh and laugh. last night in the car they were playing together too. seamus would make sirus laugh and that in turn would make seamus laugh. there is nothing greater then hearing two laughing babies!

last night i went on my very first trail run. it was so fun. i went out for 40 minutes and the time totally flew by. i had decided it might be a good idea to try it out before we go this weekend to do the cougar mountain trail run. its supposedly 5 miles although the map on the website says it is 5.9. i won't do it if its is 5.9 but i will try it out if it is 5. who knows how far i went in 40 minutes but i felt like i could have gone longer. i would hope that i could finish the 5 miles in an hour but we will see!

on the hunt for a new car. looks like in the next two weeks! whoopee!

brick workouts

so, allie suggested i start doing some brick work outs. these work outs are when you go straight from on the bike to a run to get used to the transition and used to your legs feeling like bricks. i have not done one of these yet and i will tell you why. last week i rode my bike home from work. i did not ride it into work the next day and i didn't do anything the whole week until saturday because that ride took it out of me. sooo lame. i also seem to have some sort of weird connection between my right ear and running. my right ear has always caused some issues for me. i don't hear very well out of it and then when i got the vertigo and told my doctor about that he said, oh, that is interesting, and that maybe i should get that checked out, which i never did. anyway, at about the 30 minute mark it seems that my right ear starts to totally plug up and i can't hear anything out of it. not totally deaf just mutted and weird. is that normal?

tequila

so, for dinner tonight eric made tequila lime chicken without the lime. it is always very tasty but also always creates a lot of smoke in the kitchen and the rest of the house. so much smoke that this evening, seamus went running through the living room commenting on all of the clouds! she is getting to be very funny.