The Syring Family Blog

Tough Mudders!

2012-01-29T20:37:00.000-07:00

I apologize for this taking so long to get updated, but we've just been buy...no more than usual...maybe we've just been lazy...:)

Anyway...The adventure week we had a couple weeks ago was EPIC in my book! First I climbed Pinnacle Peak with some friends, then Mara and I skydived, then the next weekend we did the Tough Mudder! It really was one of the toughest things we've done. 12.5mi and 29 obstacles was pretty intense! We ran with a GREAT group of friends and had some of their girlfriends hop around the desert taking picture of us. I had a small camera that took crappy pictures along the way, but thanks to them we have TONS of pictures. I stole some of them from Facebook, but if you want more you can go to my account and see more; I added some of the better ones here.
Overall the course was tough (duh), but for me the toughest part was the running in the desert sand part. My calves definitely did not enjoy that! By mile 8 I was cramping and getting OTM treatments from Mara (& Angleika) the rest of the time. One of the more breathtaking obstacles was the "Arctic Enema". Pretty much a tub of water and you had to swim under a thin board to cross...easy, right? What you can't see is the 5" of ice cubes on the other side of the wall... When you come up into them they wrap around your chest and it is incredibly hard to catch a breath!
The last obstacle was the one the race is known for..."Electroshock Therapy". 10,000 volts and mud...who could want more?! The hardest part about this obstacle was starting it. You had to stand in front of it, waiting your turn, and watching people get electrocuted right in front of your eyes! Eventually we headed on through. We started running, but as soon as we got electrocuted, you tense up and hit the mud and crawl. While I was crawling I got hit again, then the next thing I knew I opened my eyes under the mud (not a good idea by the way). Thing is I had NO idea where I was. One of the shocks must have made me blackout for a few seconds. The rest of the crawl I was barely able to see, but I made it through after a couple for shocks.It really was a great time! The shocks were tough, but it was all worth the challenge and the people we ran with couldn't have been better!

Other than that, we really have just been up to our same old routine of climbing, running and just flat out enjoying the upper 60s & low 70s we have been having! The bikes have gotten a TON of miles put on them over the last couple weeks!I'll put some videos from other people who taped the Tough Mudder from either the sideline or by running with a tiny GoPro camera attached to them...we WILL be doing it next year, so start prepping yourself for joining us, Michelle! :)

Here is one of the first person perspective videos...

Here is a taste of the Electroshock Therapy obstacle...

Rohan playing baseball. He is getting pretty good too! The first hit is weak, but the next two are awesome to watch!

More baseball:

Rohan’s Birthday Week

2012-01-09T15:44:00.000-07:00

Well…our little man is 3 years old now! Crazy how time has flown, but we hope we’ve filled his life to date with some pretty awesome experiences…:)

We’ll start off with the Hawkeyes being in town for the Insight Bowl the week before last. Greg & Nico got me tickets and it was a good time tailgating, and watching the game…even though the Hawks lost…:) Rohan had a blast at the Hawkeye Huddle where the fans in town all meet at the convention center and prep for the game. Rohan kept calling it the Hawkeye Puddle…:

We celebrated New Years with friends and had a great time with the host (Kim’s) Nerf gun. He had bought it for whatever reason, but we took it to another level by throwing the Nerf darts since we only had one gun. It was decided we would have a future Nerf War with more guns and more people.

Rohan’s birthday week was pretty spread out and has essentially lasted from the end of Xmas until this last weekend. He had been looking forward to his birthday for weeks now and had been telling everyone how old he will be/is. We had a small celebration on his actual birthday, but Mara had to work that night so we postponed the actual party until a couple days later when we had a BBQ with “his people” as he calls our friends (mostly climbers from the gym). Rohan received 3 Nerf guns as presents from his friends, plus tons of Lightning McQueen cars/gear. We played several rounds of “Storm The Castle” with one group protecting the upstairs, and one infiltrating from downstairs. It was an absolute blast! There will be many more Nerf wars to come! We took time to sing happy birthday to Rohan, and of course spoil him with more presents. One of his favorites was a double sided light saber that he would charge upstairs with while we were playing our Nerf games…hilarious to see…he even had a war cry…:)

The Saturday after his BBQ we meet up with some friends at Pinnacle Peak Mountain to climb a bit. It’s a different type of climbing (traditional) than we are used to (sport), but one of our friends lead the way and took 3 of us through 3 pitches and ~200 vertical feet to the summit of Pinnacle Peak. One of the coolest climbs I have ever done…and very rewarding to summit something like that!

Afterwards we met Heather, John, Nelly, Matt, Don and Mary at Spinato’s Pizza. Nelly and Don had graciously offered their skydiving vouchers to Mara and I, so we paid them back in food…:) Heather and John were nice enough to take Rohan overnight so Mara and I could get up early and jump out of an airplane…and that’s just what we did! We got to the Casa Grande airport at 8am and were on our way up to ~10,000ft to jump in about 30min. It was awesome! Be sure to check out the video below!

All in all an AMAZING couple weeks, even after the whirlwind of Xmas and New Years when most people are slowing down a bit. We don’t even stop there…next weekend we are running the Tough Mudder race which was recently increased to 12.5mi and 29 obstacles! We have a great group of people to run with so it should be a blast! Can’t wait to post pictures of it! In the meantime enjoy what we have here:

My skydiving video (skip to 2:00 for the jump...):

Irena & Jen Walk Into A Nerf War Zone:

Singing Happy Birthday (I was REALLY late getting the camera start so I only caught the end...):

"I'm So Happy"

2011-12-28T10:16:00.000-07:00

I’ll get to the week synopsis in a minute, but first my favorite thing from the last week (other than having the Stokes’ here) was Rohan’s off the cuff comment. While we were standing on the rim of the Grand Canyon he looks over at Mara and said “I’m so happy” with a giant smile and then hugged us both. Seriously the cutest thing I have ever seen.
This last week started off with a couple of days of work for Mara and I, then the Stokes’ landed and the non-stop party between Rohan and Jackson erupted. We meet back at our house and Rohan and Jackson were instant friends, sharing a hug, then Rohan showed Jackson his toys and they were off playing. We gave Chris & Michelle a tour of the house, went and got our rental van, then caught up on a walk around our neighborhood. It was great to have them here.
We set out for the Grand Canyon pretty early, and the 5hr drive felt like less than an hour with all the talking and joking around. The canyon was spectacular, and even the boys seemed amazed by it…its hard not to be. We stopped along several overlooks over the next couple of hours before heading to our hotel (only about 5mi South of the canyon). We checked in and had an awesome hour long impromptu pillow fight with the boys (and girls). Afterwards we hit the pool so the boys could swim off some energy. Jackson is awesome in the water, and really made Rohan want to swim more. They shared a swim cube life vest (have to get one of those!) and did a ton of laughing and splashing.
After the pool we hit up the canyon again to see it at dusk, and even caught a few pictures of the stars. I wish we had stayed longer to take more, but I am not real quick with all the camera settings yet, so it takes a while and the boys were getting hungry! The boys played a little more after supper and then everyone crashed.
We got up early enough that we got to the canyon around sunrise, and that was gorgeous! The winter sun is a little off the canyon, but sent some beautiful shadows across the canyon walls. I found a cool pillar to climb out on to. It took a little bit of climbing/scurrying around some boulders, but the view was fantastic. I felt isolated. On our way out of the park we saw some huge elk and tried to snap a couple of picture of them from the van…still not sure if we have some good ones or not…:)
We swung by Flagstaff on the way back and hit up a couple of parks for the boys to get out. One was crazy windy, but one was well sheltered. We also stopped by a train café that Chris & Michelle had been to before (a couple years ago). That really kept the boys’ interest!After we returned the van the boys helped Mara and Michelle make cookies for Santa and the reindeer, with me taste testing to ensure quality, then we went for another walk around our neighborhood to see all the Xmas lights. Since it was Xmas eve, the boys were chatting about Santa and we looked him up on the NORAD Santa tracking site when we got back.
After they went to bed, Santa came and went just like that…:)To kick off Xmas right, Michelle was the driving force at getting us up at 4am for a 7.1mi run. We were all decked out in our running gloves/hats/headlamps and sleeves. Considering it was 34°F, about 10°F warmer than WI, we all stayed warm, and it was really fun to start the Xmas day like that. We got home and showered then woke up Rohan & Jackson. The boys were CRAZY excited to see what Santa had brought. After getting everyone toileted and woken up, we headed downstairs for the insanity. Jackson gave Rohan some tips to open presents and they were both tearing them apart in no time. It was fairly subdued, but we had to referee to keep them from opening everyone’s presents. Rohan says THANK YOU for all of the awesome gifts!
After the gifts were done and everyone had some breakfast we hit up Granada Park near Piestewa Peak and fed some ducks/geese, played on the playground, and then played soccer & football before climbing some trees and heading back home for lunch/naps. After that we all watched the Packers win over the Bears (my parent s had tickets to that game too!). It was a really great/fun day.
The day after Xmas, we all walked to our favorite coffee shop, Matador, and relaxed a bit. After caffeinating ourselves we headed to the McDowell Mountains and went on a 3+mi trail run. The boys played in the rocks near one of the trailheads and Mara and I took turns with Chris & Michelle running up and down some loop trials. It felt awesome! The sun was shining and no breeze, plus awesome views and 60°F is hard to beat! We grabbed a quick picnic salad lunch from Trader Joe's and ate near a playground at the Scottsdale Sports Complex near where we used to live. To completely wear the boys out we headed to AZR and got everyone climbing! Michelle liked it just as much as she did last time she was here, and Chris did awesome for his first time as well, even trying some of the harder routes and shredding some skin off his fingers…:) Rohan and Jackson played great. Jackson got pretty high up one route, and Rohan got higher than he has ever gotten before (on his own or otherwise!). They mostly played on some bouldering routes that Rohan likes to climb. Jackson did get to the top of that one, and even jumped to the mats below…pretty impressive…:) We capped off the day with some shopping (where Shell got some awesome running gloves for her winter running…:P), and of course a trip to REI. After we chilled out at home we relaxed and had some wine and cheese and chatted some more since the Stokes’ had to leave the next day…:(
What better way to kick off the last day of AZ weather than with another early morning run…this time at 6am. Mara and Michelle had gotten up, but I was boycotting in favor of my warm bed. After hearing them getting ready I was regretting my decision and decided to join them. As always, I was glad I did. The run felt great, and a great way to stretch our legs after the trail runs the day before. We grabbed a bite to eat with the boys, then headed back to the duck park to feed them more before heading to the airport. Rohan was sad, but gave everyone a big hug and waved goodbye. Later that day he wanted to go see Jackson at the airport (I think he thinks they live there). They had a blast together, and we can’t wait to get them together again!
Thanks again Chris & Michelle & Jackson for making it an awesome Xmas!!! Enjoyt the pics and vids...there's a TON!

Put the Panoramas in a separate slideshow. Doesn't do it justice, but the views were AMAZING!Rohan & Jackson in the snow:

Xmas morning...Syring's view:

Xmas morning...Stokes' View:

Playing Soccer:

Staycation

2011-12-19T10:20:00.000-07:00

Didn't have a post last week, so there is come catchup to do! :)
These last couple weeks we have spent A TON of time outside. We kicked off the end of last week with a birthday party for one of Rohan's friends. Rohan had fun, and it was cool to see him interact with kids he is comfortable around and ones he talks about outside daycare. He played hard for over 2hrs on the slide, games, tree house, and bounce house.
We also hit up Zoo Lights with some friends at the Phoenix Zoo. 3.5 million lights make the zoo light up awesome!
Mara had off this last week, which was a well-deserved vacation given her last 6 weeks of nights! I took most of the week off as well and we spent 80% of the waking hours outdoors, and 90% doing some sort of activity. We hit up the climbing gym and climbed a couple times without Rohan, which was nice. We hit up our favorite city trail (The Greenbelt/Camelback Walk) for an awesome 22.2mi bike ride with a Thai lunch halfway.

We also did the summit trail of Squaw Peak (AKA: Piestewa Peak). It was a lot easier than the last time we did it (when we hiked ~6mi before we found the summit trail!), but it was still a gasser. We had some time to chill at the top and relax a bit without Rohan. We also spotted a park nearby that had 2 ponds so we checked it out. Turns out it has an awesome playground as well and a ton of ducks & geese in the ponds. We brought Rohan there twice this last weekend, and he loved feeding the birds!

We bought Rohan a kids (lefty) golf club this last week and took him to the driving range. He has so much fun hitting it, he probably went through 20-25 balls pretty much on his own.

Sunday we were happy to be a part of Heather & John's Santa Express tradition of handing out toys & candy in less fortunate areas. They really go all out, and had lots of help this year. The kids all loved Santa, and even a couple of adults did too...:)

Another busy week of 2 days of work for me this week, and 3 for Mara before her XMas break...:) Looking forward to Chris & Shell & Jackson's visit! Rohan can't stop talking about all the stuff he and Jackson are going to do!

Words can't express the fun we had the last 2 weeks so here are a boatload of pics & vids...:)

Zoo Lights & Music:

Rohan & His National Geographic Kids:

Feeding The Ducks:

Be Nice Birds!:

The Beginning (before the lefty club):

Another Busy Weekend!

2011-12-05T20:39:00.001-07:00

With Mara finishing up her month of working nights, we again took full advantage of the weekend's gorgeous weather. Friday we had some friends over for a BBQ and had a blast. It's been fun to get together at least once a week outside the gym with our climbing friends, and Rohan even got a surprise visit from Mila and her family. Not a lot of pictures, but there was one we wish we had. Linus fell into the cold pool and Mara found him when she went out to check the grill...poor guy was shivering from the ~65F water and ~50F temps. He dried off in the garage the rest of the night
Saturday we headed out on another bike ride on the trail by our house, then hit up the climbing gym. Rohan ended up climbing his highest so far, and even showed some inkling of wanting to go higher. Can't wait for that! :)After the gym we grabbed some Thai (since Rohan requested tofu & edamame for lunch).
Afterwards we hit up a nursery and picked out our first real Xmas tree! Rohan was excited to do it, but fell asleep just before we got there. He woke up when they were chainsawing the base of our tree. He was really excited to get a little piece of the tree and even more excited when we got it home. It fit great in our front room and Rohan had a lot of fun decorating with lights and tree balls.Later we went back to AZR for a showing of the Reel Rock Film 2011. LOTS of awesome climbing and some crazy people! :) After that, and after Rohan crashed, Mara had the bright idea of making a wreath from the branches of our tree so at 11:30 at night we started that. It actually turned out pretty good!
Sunday we went back to the park and climbed some trees in search of pine cones to make bird feeders eventually add them to the wreath. Rohan had a blast in the trees and catching pine cones! After making the bird feeders and cookies, Mara headed to work, and Rohan and I crashed after a long, fun weekend.
It's getting colder now, but still nothing like we're used to...:) Hope everyone had a great weekend too!
There are LOTS of pictures and videos...enjoy...:)

Rohan Climbing Like A Rock Star!:

Rohan Decends:

Crossing The Swing Things:

Tree Climbing:

Tossing Pine Cones Down To Rohan:

Teaching Rohan To Climb:

Happy Thanksgiving!

2011-11-28T22:07:00.001-07:00

This last week was a short one for me (only 2 days of work), but Mara had to work her normal shifts as usual...:( We did make the most of the time though.
Thursday we met up with friends at our friend Kim's house for a n awesome potluck. Rohan has such a blast playing with all of "his people". Rohan was going strong all night, and ended up still running around our house when we got back at 11:30! He has some epic endurance!
Friday we met up with everyone at the gym the next day for several hours of climbing. Rohan was still exhausted from the night before and napped for almost 2hrs at the gym. Since he's been mobile, he's never napped longer than 20min at the gym, so he was pooped! We met up with everyone at Four Peaks to bid our friend Ed good luck. It was his last day working at the gym. He'll still be around, so hopefully we'll still get to see him.
After we left Four Peaks we put Rohan to bed, then started our newest project, replacing our kitchen sink! My parents gave us a gift card to Home Depot when we moved and this sink has been sitting in our front room ever since...:) It was pretty easy to install, and the black resin sink now matched our black faucet, and black appliances...including our dishwasher which we found this week at a garage sale for super cheap...:)
Saturday we wrapped up the sink project and headed out for a long bike ride up and down the canal near our house. We ended up hitting the Reach 11 Sports Complex where a lacrosse tourney was going on. Rohan didn't really seem that interested until a bunch of girls in skirt uniforms practiced nearby...:) We met Kim and Angelika at IKEA for some knick nacks before crashing when we got home...:)
Sunday we spent the day wrapping up little projects, catching up on laundry and dishes, and started putting up Xmas lights. I havn't done Xmas lights since I was little, and even then it was mostly Dad, so it was a lot of fun to do on our own. We didn't go nuts (like Dad did...:P), but we had a nice outline of the house and garage. Rohan's toy room got our 4' tree and he LOVES to turn it on.
Mara took Rohan to the library for the first time today and he absolutely LOVED it. He came home with 7 books ranging from baseball to dragons, to Chinese dragons and cookies...:)
Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving!!!

Enjoying The Weather

2011-11-21T22:32:00.001-07:00

This last weekend we took FULL advantage of the mid- to upper-70F temps in the Valley of the Sun.
Friday we took the oppurtinity to hit a park with Rohan and soak up some sun after a long week.
Saturday we started off by exploring the canal near our house and found it's an awesome bike trail that hooks up to a hore park and soccer complex! We'll be hitting that up for trial rides and trial runs...:) We also came across an Australian Shepard Club's agility competition. Rohan was having a blast watching the dogs run up and over A-frames and through tunnels. After the bike ride we met up with friends at AZR and climbed for quite a while, getting some pretty good routes in considering we've been hit and miss lately with Mara working nights. Saturday night we met with friends who are moving to New Mexico after some military and professional promotions...wish them the best!
Sunday we actually slpet in a little (8:30am) which felt great. We then hit up another park, then met some friends at Lookout Mountain to climb. We got on a couple good routes, and the weather, with partly sunny skies, was perfect! Man, do we love fall/winter in AZ!
Looking forward to a short week this week; for me at least, Mara has to work every day...:( But we'll find some things to do while she's available.
Enjoy the pics & vids!

Rohan hoisted up at the gym was having a blast with Taylor trying to get his legs:

Rohan ran almost a half mile after these birds...:)

The Most Funnest 4-Day Holiday Weekend

2011-11-13T21:09:00.001-07:00

You know that feeling where work is actually a break from your normal, exhausting life? Well...that is what most of our work weeks feel like, and this one is no different!We started Thursday when I got off a little early and we had a lot of time before we had to pick Rohan up from daycare so we decided to bike there to pick him up. Mara looked up a route and it turns out that there is some GREAT bike trails that cover 99% of the 6.2mi from our house to his daycare...yes, coincidentally it's a 10K...:) The bike trail took us past some parks we surely need to check out (especially when Chris & Shell come in December!), and also took us over several pedestrian bridges which Rohan would LOVE on the way back. About half way we realized I had run over a nail at some point and was leaking air slowly. We stopped a couple times and filled the tire up (luckily we always bring a pump!), but didn't take the nail out for fear of a full on flat tire. We picked up Rohan and he was SUPER excited to get picked up with the bike stroller; he talked about it the rest of the weekend. A mile from daycare my tire lost air really quickly. We decided to pull the nail out and hope the tire slime would plug the hole, and luckily it did! If you are unfamiliar with tire slime, we are huge proponents of it's use, especially with all the thorny trees and shrubs around AZ! All in all we ended up going about 13mi, with some exploring we did, and Rohan had a blast travelling in style. My legs were a little sore with pulling his chariot, with a low pressure tire (more drag), and to cap it off a swirling wind which felt like it was uphill both ways...:)Friday, Veteran's Day, I had to run into work quick, but afterwards Mara and I got in some climbing at AZR, which we usually never get to do by ourselves. Afterwards we picked up Rohan and headed to Lee Lee's Oriental Market in Glendale. It's a drive for us, but always worth the trip. This time we were on a mission to experiment with Thai food, which we have been eating out quite a bit, but really haven't been able to find all the right ingredients at the local chain supermarkets. We found all we were looking for, and even stuff we weren't! :) We ended up making an AWESOME Tofu Panang with rice noodles and Tom Ka Ga soup. We might have to stock up on Thai ingredients!We capped the night off with a good long walk with Rohan and the dogs. We came to a small community park around 10pm, and let the dogs run around. Rohan was still a little antsy and asked to get out. He preceeded to run for about 30min, non-stop, at full speed, and even a little faster! We must not have wore him out that day, but he definitely showed us how much energy he had!Saturday was a pretty awesome day as well, and the best/busiest day of the holiday weekend. We got up early and made some waffles and turkey bacon (the key is to microwave it!). After a filling breakfast we hit up the Gateway Trailhead in the McDowell mountains. We LOVE the trails out of this trailhead, but haven't been there since we moved. Rohan hiked about 1/3 of a mile before we put him in the backpack and headed up to Bell Pass. It's a trail we hadn't been on before, and gave us an elevation gain of over 1500ft! Rohan was asking all sorts of questions about what rocks, trees and plants were so that was pretty fun. We even got to see our first tarantula...lots of pictures...:) When we got to the top of Bell Pass we had an awesome view. To the SW we had the views we usually see from the McDowell's, but since Bell Pass is a saddle, we had an awesome view to the NE of the Mazatzal Mountains and Four Peaks range...very cool. We had a nice picnic lunch at the pass, then headed back down the mountain.After we picked up some fruit to get back some of that energy we just burned we headed WAY South to a petty zoo, called Marley Farms. It was one of those areas where you take as far South as it goes and ends...and there's the farm. Rohan was geeked up by the horses they had near the ticket booth before we even parked, so we knew this was going to be a good trip. The ticket booth person told us of a couple unique animals they had there too...we'll get to them. We started off by feeding the goats, which Rohan liked a lot now that he's about their size. There was one in particular that kept hanging around Rohan and us. After the goats we saw some llamas, kangaroos, a duck, a peacock, chickens, roosters, turtles and cows. The we saw the Zonkey...Donkey Mom/Zebra Dad...called Ms. Pippy...as in Pippy Longstockings due to her zebra stripped legs...pretty cute. Rohan liked feeding her, and never shied away from feeding any of the animals. The big test was when we met James the Camel. He was massive, probably about 7ft tall, and very friendly. Rohan leaned back at first, then smiled and held his hand out to touch him. After the camel we fed some horses and a deer followed by another trip in to the goat pen to pet them some more and say goodbye to Rohan's goat buddy.After driving back to civilization, we picked up some well deserved kabobs and steak and beer and headed to our friend Kim's house. We spent the rest of the night grilling out, watching climbing/skiing/Epic Mealtime videos, and of course, several rounds of the Mike Tyson Quotes song...:)Sunday was our "slowest day" which we spent climbing for a couple hours, eating Thai leftovers, and switching Rohan's room with the guest bedroom. Rohan showed us he needed to burn more energy off by taking his bike around our block, which we do often, but then Mara and I each took turns running around the block again, with very little rest...this kid had some endurance!!! We are so happy our bed is so comfortable...:) Hope everyone else had a great weekend, and remembered to thank a veteran, not just on Veteran's Day, but everyday we enjoy our freedom.Halfway up Bell Pass Trail:

Tufa Fest

2011-11-08T22:03:00.000-07:00

This last weekend we had the awesome pleasure of a Rohan-free weekend! A HUGE thanks to Heater & John for taking the little guy for the weekend! Mara and I attended Tufa Fest (a climbing festival) and the weather & climbing location wasn't really "kid friendly".
We got to the area (Oak Flat Campground) Friday afternoon and hung out with a couple friends who were brave enough to camp with wind & rain the forecast. When it did start to rain we headed to our tent and found it was leaking...shitty. We grabbed what wasn't wet and slept in the RAV4...which wasn't very comfortable. Neither of us slept well given the rain, hail, strong winds and eventual flurrues in the morning...yeah, it was 34°F in the morning. We checked on the tent and one of the poles had shattered during the wind storm! Glad it was leaking otherwise we would have been in there! :) The only reason our tent stuck around was because I had tied it to a tree...fun!
We warmed up with some coffee and oatmeal, then met up with some friends from my work (Kim & Aaron) who we were taking outdoor climbing for the first time. We scrambled up about 150ft above the highway to some awesome climbing areas. We all climbed several routes, and I got up a 5.10c which is the highest rated outdoor climb I've done.
We capped the night off with about 150 other climbers with a huge bonfire, a burn bar, potluck, drunken climbing games, and a raffle. We came out pretty good in the raffle winning a shirt, chalk, climbing gear, headlamp, and guide book!
Again, a hhuge thanks to Heather & John for entertaining Rohan! He got to go to his first movie (Puss In Boots, which he LOVED!), and got to watch some horse racing with John. He was almost sad to see us! :P Rohan as been accelerating in his biking abilities since he can practice indoor on our tile whenever he wants. He now goes around the block without help, when just a month ago he was stuggleing to peddle. Awesome to see how excited he gets to ride outside!
We are hoping to be able to get out again this weekend, but the forecast is for rain, so we'll have to see! Hope everyone is getting some solid outdoor time before winter is upon us!

He can do this, and has done this, for hours...:

Happy Halloween!

2011-10-31T07:56:00.000-07:00

This weekend we celebrated Halloween with friends and tried to spend as much time outside as possible!!!
Friday night we headed to our friend Irena's house for a party. Rohan got to dress as a pirate at daycare, and pretty much wore the costume all weekend. He's been practicing his pirate ever since we saw the Treasure Island pirate show in Las Vegas last weekend (see video!). Irena's was a blast. Mara and I coped out and went as a Researcher and a Dr...I know...I know...but not many people were drinking from a beaker like me, so it was somewhat original...:) Rohan had a lot of fun with the pumpkin this year, and really like the scooping guts part.
Saturday Mara had to work all day (her last shift on Well Baby) so Rohan and I watched some football and played at the park by our house. Rohan has also been loving the prism that I found. I've had it for probably 20yrs and we set it high on our windows in our living room and he chases the spectrum is casts around the room as it moves with the day...pretty fun to watch. After Mara got home we went on a bike ride and ended the long day with some fresh, desert night aire!
Sunday we all slept in until 10am..yep...10am. Haven't done that since Rohan has been around! We made up for the lazyness by going for a 15mi bike ride to Jeanette's and met her for lunch at Pei Wei before biking back. Found some cool areas and Rohan loved the pedestrian bridge that goes over Greenway Blvd.
After the bike ride we rested for an hour or so, then headed to AZR for about 3hrs of climbing. Rohan showed off his costume to more people and afterwards we cameback and perfected our basil/cilantro, tomato, motzerella cheese, basalmic vinegar homemade grilled pizza...MAN was that good! Capped it off with a bottle of wine and capped off a great weekend of getting outdoors!
Hope everyone is enjoying the fall weather as much as we are!

Pirates Have To Practice:

Vegas!

2011-10-25T10:22:00.000-07:00

This last weekend we had the chance to use some free hotel nights we earned before they expire, and since we can't really afford to jet set anywhere for just the weekend, we decided to drive up to Las Vegas. Mara had never been there, and I have some fuzzy recollections of being there, but nothing I can clearly remember...:)
We drove up Friday night (through some cool Joshua Tree preserves), and got to our hotel around 8 or so. Low and behold it was right next to the Hofbräuhaus Las Vegas! There were plenty of pretzels & Oktoberfestbierin our future...:)
We were about a mile from the strip (which was nice with a 2.5yr old!). The walk was nice to stretch our legs and take in the city from afar. We walked up and down the strip over the next several hours. Rohan was enthralled with everything! He was so tired, but had his eyes peeled open the entire time, not wanting to miss a thing. Walking with a stroller through the Las Vegas strip was a challange, but we are professionals, so it worked out just fine. We made a trip to the Bellagio fountains thinking Rohan would like it. The second the water cannons went off he curled up on Mom's shoulder and could barely look. After the show was done he snapped up and said "Where'd the water go?". He made it seem the whole time like he didn't like it. He did like it when we saw it later, from across the street and the cannon noise wasn't so loud and echoing off the hotel. We capped the night off with some wine back at the hotel, and nice way to start our Vegas trip.
Saturday we spent most of the day outside since it was gorgeous! Mid-80s and mostly sunny, you can't beat that! We hit up 2 parks in the morning. The first had some baseball fields that Rohan ran around on, and the second had a playground and some other fun stuff. The second one had the finish of the ~200 mile Ragnar Relay Series (looking to do one in Colorado next July if anyone wants to join us!), and what turned out to be Rohan's favorite pastime...leaves. There were several leaf piles that we scraped into one and let him run and jump into. A couple of kids joined in too, and there was about an hour of leafing. Afterwards we checked out some of the vendor booths at the Ragnar and came across the Rage Mud Run booth that had kiddie pools of mud for people to play in...Rohan had a blast...:)
After that busy morning we met up with Mara's cousin Steve & his wife Erin who live in Vegas. It was really nice to catch up with them. We might even be able to get them to do the Tough Mudder with us...:) We hit up their favorite Thai place (and ours now), called Archi's Thai Cafe. Rohan showed off his ability to scarf down everything in site! He cleaned up our soup, pad thai, tofu, and some of Erin's pinapple fried rice. No idea where he put it all!
After lunch Steve made some calls and made Rohan's year...he called up a fire station. Steve is a fireman...and also Rohan's new idol. We went to Station 47 where Steve, and the station Captain, gave us a VIP tour of the ladder truck and rescue vehicle. Rohan even got to drink water from a REAL firetruck, something he is still talking about! It was from a water cooler on the truck, not the tanker...:) The Captain also showed Rohan their Desert Turtles they have, and we may end up getting Rohan one...maybe... Rohan came away with a new fireman's hat and some wooden trucks from the Captain as well...what a great time! Thanks again for making that happen Steve! Rohan lasted about a block before passing out HARD for the drive back to the hotel...the picture says it all.
After all that, we still found a chance to check out a rock gym, Red Rock Climbing Center, which was nice, and a lot of fun to check out. They had some really interesting routes and wall features that we didn't have at AZR. It was also a great way to almost completely wear us out...and it was only 4:30...

I needed my Bavarian Pretzel fix so we swung by the Hofbräuhaus for pretzels the size of toilet seats, some Käsespätzle, Münchner Weisswürste, and of course a liter of Oktoberfestbierin. It all really brought us back to what a GREAT, GREAT, GREAT time we had in Germany last xmas! (did I mention it was great?) Rohan, once again, showed his ability to eat everything in site, and even got compliments from the waitress about his pretzel eating ability...:) We saw some sweet Lederhosen for Rohan that we might have to get him for the next Oktoberfest...:) After the pretzel gorge we met up with Steve & Erin at Treasure Island for their pirate show. It was the same deal as the Bellagio, where Rohan wouldn't leave Mara's shoulder, but as soon as it was done he was asking where they went...:)

On Sunday we hit up one more park before heading back to Phoenix. We had such a good time, and would love to go back for some real outdoor climbing, and maybe hit up The Strip sans-kids.
Oh, we also started our first (of I'm sure, many) painting projects. We are livening up our laundry room with a deep red color. It's a small job, that will help us get our painting prowess back for some bigger jobs we have planned.

Playing in the leaves:

Climbing Season Is Upon Us!!!

2011-10-18T08:32:00.000-07:00

With the weather starting to get awesome here, it marks the beginning of the fall climbing season. That, and since the Brewers are out of the playoffs, what else is there to do!?!? :)We met up with some friends at Phoenix's Oktoberfest for some good food and great beer. Rohan had an absolute blast running around with everyone and dancing to polkas and the German Horn (alpenhorn). Our friend, Angelika is a first generation from Germany so she was working the festival. Sean, Shannon, Audrey, Ryan and Mackenzie all joined us as well. Rohan even got a drinking bracelet...:)Sunday we got a babysitter for the morning, while Mara was at work, and I met up with some friends to go climbing up near Pine, AZ. The area, Isolation Canyon, is fairly new, and mostly set by one guy who's friends with AZR. He did an amazing job with the routes and there are even several multi-pitch climbs over 200'! We also found some cool places to rappel down from the top and have some awesome plans for the next time go there. There were hundreds of routes so there wasn't much crowding. The ledge is pretty narrow at times, and your looking down a 200' drop...pretty fun...:) All in all and awesome day (11hrs!) of climbing.Hope everyone is getting a chance to enjoy the outdoors as well!

Postseason Baseball!!!

2011-10-10T09:56:00.001-07:00

The Brewers are kicking butt in the playoffs, and we were so glad we could go to a game (even though they lost that one)! Heather & John got tickets through a lottery and John offered them to Mara and I, and since Rohan is still a "lap child" he was able to come too. The game was great for the D-Backs, and the crowd of 48,312 went nuts for a grand slam they hit...it was crazy! Rohan had a blast eating popcorn from his glove and chowing on some cotton candy. Around the 7th inning it was out of hand so we went to the kids play area so he could run off some of his sugar high.Friday the Brewers & D-Backs faced off for Game 5 and I skipped out of work a little early with some friends and watched 9 1/2 inning of the 10 inning game before I had to leave to go get Rohan. Luckily John DVR'd the game and replayed the final at-bat to send the Brewers to the NLCS against St. Louis. Rohan had a blast hanging out with Heather, John, Grandma Bacon, Great-Grandma, and Krista. They hit up parks, and Rohan even got a Ryan Braun #8 shirt from Grandma...his new favorite shirt!After I picked up Rohan we met up with friends at La Condesa Gourmet Taco Shop for our friend Sean's birthday. Mara had to work late, but after dinner she was able to meet up with us and we all walked around First Friday and checked out some art and crafts from local vendors. It's not super stoller friendly, but very fun non-the-less.Saturday Mara had to work in the morning so Rohan and I took the oppurtunity to hit up 2 parks before she got home. Before we could get him a nap we hit up the rock gym and grabbed some awesome Thai Tom Ka Gai soup from Thai House...best we've had! After the gym we got a call from one of Mara's mentors from her rotations and he remembered about 2 years ago, Mara was an active person and offered up his bike trailer for us tp pull Rohan! We drove out to Avondale and picked it up, and even got Rohan to play some hockey with his kids. It was great to meet him and his family. Since we were out that far, we swung over to Greg & Nico's for a quick visit. As busy as they/we are, it's hard to get together these days!After there we had some time to kill before supper so we took Rohan to yet another park (3rd of the day), this time we went to the Margaret T. Hance Park near downtown. Rohan had a blast running around and even found some friends to ride an alligotor toy with. Rohan had a funny thing happen too. He walked up to some random kid and tried playing with him by kicking sand at him...the kid was not amused and came running after Rohan with a cup of sand. Rohan took off running (and crying). He was able to out run the older boy so that's something...:) We met the family at the AZ Center by TGen at Sam's Cafe for a great meal and some nice relaxing convo. They even made fresh guacomole at our table...which tasted great!Sunday we took advantage of the day and got the bikes and trailer ready for the maiden voyage...problem was we had 2 flats...one on the trailer and one on my bike...so after an early trip to WalMart and some greasy hands, we were ready to go! We ended up going for about 7mi around our neightborhood and out to a park before ending up at Matador Coffee for some well deserved coffee! :) After that Mara and Rohan ran to IKEA and I got some work done in the garage making space for the bike trailer and watching some more Brewer baseball. Mara found a desk for some of her dictations and other things she has to do/look-up after work so we got that set up and hopefully start organizing our front room around a bit. After the game we got some food ready for Jeanette, and the family who came over, and bought Spinato's pizza, to watch the Packer game. It was great to entertain since we haven't had much of that yet, and also great to show the family around the house since they had not seen it yet. It was fun to relax and catch up after such a long, fun weekend!Hope everyone got a chance to enjoy the Fall weather! It's been GORGEOUS here!!!!

Ahhh...The Fresh Mountain Aire

2011-10-03T08:33:00.000-07:00

This last week conlcuded Mara's 13 straight days of working in the pediatric wards. 13 straight days of 12hr+ days requires that we get out of Phoenix and relax! Of course she had to work on Sunday, so it was only an overnight trip, but as soon as she was off on Friday we scurried up to the Mogollon Rim north of us.
We talked with some friends who had a really cool site they were going to Saturday night. We got to the site Friday night and found there was an area that was washed out from the rain that day and we didn't want to chance getting stuck since we don't have 4WD, and it 10 o'clock at night and about 13mi back in the middle of nowhere. We decided to camp at a more accesable site. It was dark when we set up so we had no idea of our view. We stargazed and got a good fire going (even with the wet wood, thank you very much! :P).
The next day we were greeted with a pretty sweet view of the valley below...:) We found some awesome rocky points to explore. Words are hard to describe the vastness and depth, but the pictures do a decent job, but nothing beats being there and taking it in.
We met up with the rest of the group at the site that we couldn't get to the night before. We hung out a bit before heading back. They had a pretty sweet site as well, and we'll definitely have to check that out sometime! Our site had better veiws I thought, but we were close to the forest road, so when we did see vehicles it was a little annoying, but we didn't seem to mind too much...:)
Sunday Mara had to work (14hrs on her birthday!), so Rohan and I watched some of the Brewers game, Badger game, and Packer game...AWESOME weekend for WI sports! :) When Mara got home I had dinner ready and then we went on a walk before crashing. Mara starts her newborn nursery month today which will have it's long days, but nothing like peds wards, so just about anything will seem less hectic than last month...:)
Hope everyone is enjoying the cooler fall weather!

We saw a cool phenomenon when we made our last batch of Frappuccinos. The bubbles made by the blender went down instead of up...reminded me of Guinness Beer...and some physics...:)

Busy Week!

2011-09-26T08:11:00.002-07:00

Well...not for everyone...mostly Mara. Mara is in the middle of her 13 straight days of work on the inpatient wards, so she's ready for this month to be over! She likes the work, just lack of days off isn't much fun...:)
With Mara working so much lately Rohan has had some full days of Dad-Time. I still am amazed at the stuff he learns and the things he puts together in his mind. We caught him a couple of times playing with his trains and letting his imagination run wild...pretty fun to see...:) There are a couple videos on our YouTube page, and I posted one of them below. It's 4 minutes long, but he did this for over an hour. Rohan has also been learning to pedal his bike so that's been interesting. He hasn't quite caught on yet, but there are flashes where it looks like he know what to do.
Wednesday we met Heather & John and some friends for John's birthday (& Mary's). We had a great dinner at Golden Budda before heading to our softball game this week. I am still "D League MVP"...:) In a related note, we are super excited that the Brewers clinched the NL Central division! There is a chance, if the Cardinals take the wild card, that Arizona would play 2 games in in Milwaukee and then the Brewers would come here! John said he has tickets to the first game in AZ, so it should be pretty awesome if Milwaukee is here! If not we'll see the Phillies destroy everything in their path...
Saturday (Mara had to work all day) I went over to Greg & Nico's to let Rohan spend some time with Mila and we all watched the Hawkeyes beat up on ULM. Afterwards Rohan took a near 5hr nap and I got some yard work and house stuff done in the meantime. Sunday was more of the same...Mara worked and Rohan and I watched football, played outside, and caught a little baseball in there too.
All in all a good week, but an exhausting one for everyone! :) The weather is getting pretty nice out and we can't wait to be outside all the time on the weekends and explore more of the parks in our new area!

Rohan Playing With His Trains:

Rohan Counting:

Indoor bike riding lessons:

Rohan has some words of cation for the puppies....

Cave Creek Trail #4

2011-09-19T10:06:00.002-07:00

Not much going on this last week for us. With Mara working so hard at the hospital,our weeks are usually pretty consumed with softball, climbing, and resting whenshe can. This last week Mara was the scheduledlate person Monday AND Friday, so she didn’t have much free time. Rohan and I got to spend the evenings withsome fire truck races, baseball and football games, yard/house work, and some bikeriding…pretty exhausting, but so fun to watch Rohan learn, adapt, and apply.

Saturday Mara had to work a few hours (only 10! :P), soRohan and I did tons of work outside while it was still cool and nice before weheaded inside and watched a thrilling Hawkeye game! Rohan fell asleep at halftime and proceededto take a 5hr nap! Can you say growthspurt!? After Mara got home we had anice dinner at one of our favorite Chinese restaurants (Flo's Asian Kitchen) before running some errands and having a drink by the pool to relax.

Sunday started early at 5:30 (although to Mara it wassleeping in!). We got the car packed up,picked up Jeanette, and headed to Carefree to hike the Cave Creek Trail #4. We had an awesome group for this hike…15 peopleincluding Rohan & 6 dogs! The hikeis pretty easy, with tons of water along the way to cool the dogs and hikersoff in. The temps weren’t too bad,probably mid 90°’s, but it was nice too to have the shade from the creekthat ran along most of the canyon trail. We found 2 areas to cool everyone off, and one even was deep enough forsome 15-20’ rock jumping. It was a lotof fun! I think this trail is going to get some use this fall with some of us planning a couple backpacking trip to explore this Sonoran Desert area! Afterwards we all headed back toJeanette’s for some “brunch” even though it was now 3:00 in the afternoon…:) It was complete with waffles, mimosas, watermelon, grapes, bagels, bread, and lots of biochemistry (what?!?)...:)

Later that night we grilled some brats and went on a nicewalk in the cooler night air to cap off a busy, good weekend. Hope everyone else had a goodweek/weekend! Get out and enjoy the fallweather!!!!

More Outdoor Time!

2011-09-12T08:25:00.000-07:00

The weather has been absolutely gorgeous this last weekend, and looking to hover around 100°F the rest of the week! It feels awesome after the 115+°F we had recently!Friday we did some things around the house (like trying to fix the ceiling fan in our room...no luck yet...). We had a pretty laid back night
Saturday we got up early and met Greg & Nico at the Sandbar to watch the IA game. It was a VERY good game, just not the outcome we were hoping for. Father of the year...Me...left Roahn's shoes on top of the car (a pair of Thomas the Train Crocs that he LOVED), but now they are somewhere along Tatum Blvd...oops...:( We continued back at our place with some grilling, then headed to Greg & Nico's for more grilling and a horse/dice game Nico's Grandpa made. Pretty fun day!
Sunday we met up with friends and hiked around Lookout Mountain. It's not a huge mountain, but the circumference trail is about 3mi long, and pretty nice. Michelle will definitely love to do some trail runs with us when she comes in December! :) We went back to our friend Jen's place for a cookout (we skipped this time), then hit up Home Depot for some house necessities (like a ladder!). We then picked up some ingredient for Connecticut Beef (something I've been craving for a while!) The recipe usually takes about 4hrs, so starting at ~6pm...we had somewhat of a late supper...:) There were some nice adaptations we made like cooking the steak in the soup mixure for 2hrs at 300°F, that made this one of the best reditions of Conn. Beef yet! While some of the ingredients were cooking we got some yardwork done with the low-voltage lighting in our yard that doesn't work. We replaced it with solar LED lights so we wouldn't have to re-wire our yard...:) We also replaced our front porch light which was not pretty...it was gold and glass, and not very attractive.
We are looking forward to some more outdoor time while the temps are getting cooler! We wish we had more pictures, but it hard to take pictures when you don't slow down...:)

Awesome Labor Day Weekend

2011-09-06T08:33:00.001-07:00

This weekend we celebrated Labor Day by getting the hell out of Phoenix! :) TGen let me out at 2pm, so I was able to go get the car packed and pick up Rohan and Mara when she was done with clinic. It took us over an hour to get out of Phoenix (normally 20min) with all the traffic, and there was a lot of it! We headed about 5500 vertical feet (~140 linear miles North) to Flagstaff. You will never hear Mara and I complain about the heat in Phoenix. It's just one of those things you deal with while you wait for the awesome other 9-10 months of the year. But this August was brutal. We set several heat records, and it just sounded like a great idea to get out and cool off a bit...:) Schroeder did not enjoy the ride so much, and we also found out a little secret of his. Apparently he's been eating poop in the backyard (hopefully just his and Linus'!) because about halfway to Flagstaff he threw up in the back seat and it smelled horrendous!!! We drove on, and Mara cleaned up what she could while we had the windows open on the interstate going 80mph. We hit a rest area and rinsed off the floor mat and tried to get as much of that smell out as possible..we'll spare you the pictures... One thing that probably helped ease the smell is I left the floor mat (we think) on the roof of the RAV4 and it probably blew off on the interstate...oops...:) The smell never went away and we've been airing the RAV out since...We made it to Flagstaff and eventually drove down some random forest fire access road and came across a campsite with a fire ring and set up camp. It turned out to be a VERY isolated area, given that on Labor Day weekend we only saw ONE other car come down that road, and they camped somewhere else, so we didn't even see another person! I think we've found a pretty sweet camping spot...:) Rohan had a blast running at 7000ft above sea level...didn't seem to slow him down a bit! He eventually crashed in his camp chair and then found a more comfortable spot laying with Mom. We spent the rest of the evening watching stars and chatting next to the fire since there was a slight chill in the air...hadn't had one of those in a while...:)Since Mara had to work early on Sunday, we only stayed one night, but we had a whole day left in Flagstaff. We hit up a new coffee shop (again, new to us) called Macy’s. Very good coffee, awesome people, and we got to enjoy our french press outside, which was awesome! We love sipping coffee outside and relaxing! Afterwards we hit up a park in Flagstaff called Thorpe Park. Rohan had a blast playing on their giant playground equipment, firetruck, and enjoying real grass (as did Mara). After the park we met up with friends from AZR (Kim, Angelica, Jeremy, Shantelle, and Melissa) and hit up a new climbing spot (new to us anyway) just outside Flagstaff called The Pit. It was awesome climbing rock (limestone) and we could not have asked for a better day! The sun was intermittent, and mostly behind huge clouds, so we all stayed nice and cool on the wall. We got to lead a couple longer routes and explore some awesome canyon walls. It's great to have explorer friends that can introduce us to places like this! We climbed for almost 6 hours before everyone got all their energy out. Mara and I had to head back to PHX eventually so we grabbed a bit to eat at an awesome restaurant called Salsa Bravea. Awesome salsa bar, and really good food. Turns out I think I also left the leftovers on the roof and it blew off somewhere in Flagstaff...not a good weekend for me...:) We got back to PHX and crashedSunday was pretty laid back for me and Rohan. Mara had to work 10hrs in the Peds ER. We all were pretty tired from the trip. Monday I got up and golfed with John (and his buddies Mike & Bud) at Desert Canyon in Fountain Hills. The 6:45am tee time made for some spectacular scenic views of the sunrise and surrounding mountains. I shot pretty good until I imploded on the last 2 holes, but a bad day of golf is still better than working, and nothing an ice cold beer can't help erase...:)Greg, Nico, and Mila came over in the afternoon to grill out. It was Greg's birthday, so we sang and danced for him...at least Rohan did... It was great catching up with them too. Greg has been crazy busy with school and extra curricular studies that his time is pretty precious. Mara was able to pass on some of her COMLEX study guide to Greg to help him bone up for the MCAT and eventually Med School.We spent the rest of the night replacing a ceiling fan since the fan quite working (but the lights still worked). Unfortunately the new fan worked, but the lights didn't... It's still up now, but we'll have to take it back to get a new one sometime this week...ahh the joys of a house...:)Enjoy the pictures, there are a ton of them! :) I do have a couple videos to add, so check back later tonight or tomorrow and I'll have them added (maybe)...

Updated with some videos...Rohan singing about Monkeys (sorry for the road noise...):Rohan Counting to 14:Fun little tool within Picasa's program. You can tag faces (and have it try to recognize and group them for you). You can then make a movie out of it centering on the face in the picture. Pretty cool. Could be fun with a small subset of good pictures, or time lapse over a few years. Here is Rohan over the last 32 months or so. The pics are not in any order, and it runs through them pretty quick...enjoy!:

First House Party

2011-08-29T10:43:00.000-07:00

This last week Mara had a well deserved week off from the long days of residency...although she is having a blast...:) The first couple days she relaxed, the only way she know how, by keeping busy. She worked out, did tons of house projects, and found a few minutes to relax by the pool. Wednesday she kept Rohan home and took him to the Phoenix Children's Museum for several hours. Awesome way to beat the heat, and Rohan got to explore and run around. It's funny how different he is from the first time we went last year.Thursday and Friday I took off and we had some time together to work on the house, and just enjoy some time together! :) We both went and got our official AZ driver's licenses as well...:) Awesome to have the Grand Canyon on the license! They are good until 2043, so that's nice. Hopefully we'll be here that long! We had tons of yard work to do. We did lots of pruning, weed pulling, watering, pool cleaning, organizing and a host of other stuff. It was mostly little things we've been wanting to do since we moved in, just not a ton of time to do it until now. Unfortunately it was 115°F outside, so we were pretty wiped out when we were done, but the everything looked great, and we even found some energy to climb at AZR.Friday night we were out grocery shopping and running little errands when we came home to a surprise. A guy walked off our front porch and said "Is this where the party is?". It was my Dad! He came to crash our housewarming party! It was a really nice surprise...:) We gave him a tour and chatted until about midnight his time, then he crashed. Saturday we got up early and went and played some baseball at the park with Rohan (since it was only 95°F at 10am). Then walked to our favorite coffee house, Matador, before heading home to relax before our party.The party was pretty solid from ~2pm to the end, I think around 11pm. We had a great mix of people from TGEN, PCH, and AZR, and tons of kids to keep the dogs busy playing fetch. We had the grill going for several hours for lunch, supper, and later supper. We had tons of food since everyone brought something, and of course some adult beverages. We broke in our new volleyball net. Ringo the dog broke in our new volleyball...good thing we had a spare...and we had a great time with some great friends! Can't wait to do it again!Hope everyone had a great week, and stayed cooler than we were! Thanks again for coming Dad!!!

Yardwork!!!

2011-08-22T10:10:00.000-07:00

It's funny that we are excited about doing yard work, but having a house again has reinvigorated us to work outside, even when it's 110°F! Friday night we hit AZR since we have been neglecting our climbing gym! It felt good, and we both were checking out some new routes they put up and doing pretty good on them too! :) One of our friends from AZR came over and helped us un-install a stubborn faucet we had. The faucet was very corroded and was unusable, so we haven't used our kitchen sink since we moved in! We could not get ONE bolt undone since it was so rusted, but Chris came over with his tools and got it taken care of. We installed our new faucet, and have been LOVING the opportunity to use our sink! Saturday we borrowed another friends truck and hauled A TON of yard waste from our yard. When we moved in 3 weeks ago we took down a HUGE vine that was taking over our back yard, as well as trimmed some palms that hadn't been trimmed in probably a year, and also removed some thorny shrubs we hated. We also got rid of the old gas stove from the previous owners...all in 2 trips! It all made the yard look SO much better though. Mara had to cross cover in the ER that night until 2am, so she was one tired girl! Good think she has a week off now! Sunday was more of the same, but this time it was our anniversary! :) We started off with some tee-ball with Rohan at the school park by our house. We got out super early so we could beat most of the heat. Afterwards we walked to our coffee shop, Matador for some iced coffees and bagels. While Rohan napped we did some more yard work in the front yard, pulling weeds, removing more vines, and cleaning up after our cactus. The cactus is HUGE and has some really big, pretty white flowers that bloom every night. Unfortunately they die that next day, fall off, and rot on our lawn. It does this every night... The cactus is due for a hacking, but that will probably wait until later this week... We spent the rest of the night celebrating our anniversary. We went swimming for a while with Rohan, then hit our new favorite sushi place, Sushi Brokers. After filling up on sushi, we went to the batting cages at Crackerjax to prep for our upcoming softball league. After thoroughly wearing Rohan out, he crashed and we had our dessert. Mara had made some tofu chocolate/espresso mousse earlier, and it was AMAZING! Highly recommend this recipe...i'ts from a chocolate company (SCHARFFEN BERGER), so you KNOW it's good!! :)Hope everyone had a great week! We are looking forward to our open house party this weekend! Can't wait to break the house in! :)

Rohan Rar-ing...Be ready for a good "RAR!" to start and end the video:

San Diego (Sans Rohan!)

2011-08-17T12:21:00.000-07:00

Last week I presented a poster at a conference (Mechanisms & Models of Cancer) at the prestigious Salk Institute. It was a really cool conference, albeit long. It was 8am-10pm every night from Wednesday through Saturday, but VERY informative and lots of great science being done.

The best part, is since TGEN was paying for my ticket and hotel, we got Heather & John to watch Rohan and Mara was able to come and stay the weekend with me! It's been a while since we've done something like that, and especially since we needed a break after finally getting the house, Mara's busy schedule, and just needing a break from the heat. We definitely got a break from the heat. It was ~110°F in Phoenix, and the first couple days in San Diego, it never got above 70°F! We have been to San Diego a couple times, but there were things we still wanted to see. We finally got to a rock gym we've seen before, Solid Rock Gym, near the airport. We also got to fit in a couple runs. I ran a couple times around my hotel in Del Mar, and Mara and I both got runs in around Torrey Pines park. We both ran on the Broken Hill Trail, which ends at a breathtaking point! Highly recommended!

Friday night when Mara got in we hit up a cool restaurant called Crepes and Corks in Del Mar, then hit another place to relax by a fire pit at Zel's. We had to head back fairly early since I had one more day at the conference...:(

Saturday., after my conference, we hit up an AMAZING sushi place, Sushi Ota, in Del Mar. The only way to say it, was it was awesome, period. Afterwards we hit the boardwalk and saw some awesome ships and art along the way. We've always driven by the boardwalk, but it was great to see close up! We also hit up Little Italy area for some dessert before calling it a late night after walking several hours around town.

Sunday we got up early and hit a coffee shop before heading to the Gas Lamp district, and one more coffee shop...called The Village Coffee & Wine Bar. Very good lunch there, then headed to Coronado Island and walked around Spreckels Park, and then the beach where we saw some pelicans diving and even some dolphins! One last stop before we headed to the airport was a stop at our favorite coffee shop in Pacific Beach...Cafe By The Bay. A really cool end to our trip!

We have been working on the house little by little, and hope to have a little shindig for those who can make it! :)

Dolphins at Coronado Beach:Bird diving (really just the first 3 seconds of video...the rest is waves and wind...):

Getting Settled

2011-08-08T13:06:00.001-07:00

We reached a pretty awesome milestone for moving in...we got to the point we could get both cars in the garage! :) It just means there are more boxes inside, but we are making headway trying to figure out where everything goes. Rohan is already loving the space! He runs around the kitchen/living room/front room/hallway track several times a day, usually we are chasing or being chased. The dogs have adapted VERY well to the new house, I think they enjoy the room too.
We have already started some projects (like replacing some leaky faucets, light fixtures, door knobs, etc), and we are also getting reminded how big of a pain in the ass that can be too. We are having a lot of fun though, and it's been a good weekend. Putting things away and innumerable trips to Home Depot & Lowes are taking up most of our time, although we did get a run and stroll in through the new neighborhoods. It will take a while getting used to the new terrain since we usually ran through less populated areas, but we're getting some good routes down. We have also started traingin for the Tough Mudder race in January. 11 miles, 23 obstacles...10,000 volt electrocution at the end...should be fun...:) It all supports the Wounded Warrior Project, so that's a great thing to be a part of. There is time if you want to join us too...:)
Saturday, Greg and Nico came over for a bit and we caught up and grilled out chicken & brats, then hit the pool to cool off. It will be a lot of fun to have a house warming party when we finally get settled! Mila and Rohan were fast friends again. I think she is really interested in what he's doing, and vice-versa.
Not much else to report other than getting settled and figuring out where to put everything and all the little nuances of the new place. I have a Mechanisms & Models of Cancer conference at the Salk Institute in San Diego this week, so I fly out Tuesday night and attend Wednesday through Sunday. Mara is going to join me on the weekend while Heather watches Rohan. It will be a REALLY nice break for us (and Rohan). It will be nice to get to SD without Rohan and find some fun things to do outside the conference. We found a rock gym to check out too...:) Should be fun!
We'll send out some more pictures of the house when it's not just boxes and tools sitting out everywhere...:) Here are some pics from the last week, and some videos from the last month or so. We had packed our camera, so the video is from our cell phones...not great, but better than nothing!

Rohan running the bases at Chase Field during the Brewer's extra innings win...:)
Rohan getting his exercise running around the house:

WHAT A RIDE!!!

2011-08-04T07:58:00.000-07:00

YES! We are still here! We have been consumed by the home buying roller coaster that we have been riding since we put our first offer in on Valentines Day, 2011.
Long story short, banks suck, and they've been stalling this process, which took little more than 2 weeks to actually close.
Want the long story? Here ya' go...Bank of America (BoA) was the primary lender for the seller, who bought the house for $350,000 in 2007, and Wells Fargo (WF) was the lender for the second mortgage of around $50,000. The house was worth $400,000 at some point! The guy defaulted (after a divorce) in August 2010, and the house sat empty for 6 months before we saw it. The pool was clear, but lots of leave and such on the bottom, the yard was a mess, but Mara loved the house. We put an offer in on VD Day (:P) and then waited for nearly 3 months before we heard anything back from the banks.
In the meantime I started taking care of the pool. Our realtors were great and had the water and power put in their names so we could run the pump and get it cleaned up. Everyone thought the sale was right around the corner... The pool ended up being a disaster. Nothing structural, just dirty! There was a HUGE algae problem, and the organic material from the leaves wasn't helping. We drained the pool and refilled it with clean water, then fought algae for the next couple months. In this interim Mara became a D.O., I had a birthday, and our lease ran out on our apartment so we were renting week-to-week for an obscene amount of money...it's only going to be a few more weeks, right?!?!
Wrong. We closed, once on the house on July 11th...then got an e-mail right in the middle of signing documents. It stated that the banks could not agree on the monies doe to them at closing...grrr... The way it usually works is the 2nd mortgage (WF) get's $3,000, and the primary (BofA) gets the rest. Kind of a "you shouldn't have given this guy any more money" to the 2nd lender. WF wanted $5,100 instead of the $3,000, essentially 10% of the defaulted 2nd mortgage. BofA said "No". We talked it over, and we said we would pay the $2,100 to close this deal out. WF said, fine, but it has to say "$5,100" on the paperwork...BofA said it had to say "$3,000". Then the stalemate began. The two banks were having a pissing contest, and essentially holding our house hostage.

Then the next stage of our saga began... Our apartment complex didn't like us renting for an indefinite amount of time, and we sure as hell didn't like paying $400/week to stay there, so we moved out...but where? Heather & John offered, but Rohan's daycare was about 30min past downtown (where we were both going to be), so it would have been a hassle that way. We ended up crashing at our friend Jeanette's place. Single, lives in a 3br home, and close to the house we are trying to buy. She was such an awesome host!!! She made a little bed for Rohan out of a futon mattress, and took us, our dogs, and a rambunctious 2 1/2 year old in without blinking an eye. Truely a great person in every sense. Thank you SO much Jeanette!
We stayed there for about 3 weeks before the good new came that WF finally accepted the $3,000...now we wait for paperwork...they had to get new HUD documents and new offer acceptance letters in. Just in time for one guy to take a vacation and not tell anyone. Our realtors, title company, and lender all tried contacting him, but he never responded (no "out of office rely" either). Finally someone contact his supervisor, and within a week we had the new documents, and then we could start the closing process all over again. Locking in rates (which went up almost a percent from when we started this deal!!!), credit checks, bank statements, the works.
FINALLY...we closed on the house, and we can start the next chapter in this saga...

For those interested, here are some pics of the house from when we toured it with my parents, back in MARCH! :) We've already started some projects so look out for those pics. We'll also be updating the last month or so of being "homeless"...:)

Happy 4th of July!!!

2011-07-06T07:19:00.000-07:00

This last weekend Mara had to be on most days, but that's the nature of the beast now...:) We took full advantage of the time off though, getting some great climbing in, hitting some parties and enjoying the A/C since it was 118°F outside!
Saturday we headed to Heather & John's for their 4th of July party. As always, it was full of food and pool volleyball. They had a really good turnout too.
Sunday we helped our friend Kim break in his new house (AKA Ninja Base Camp). It was also a ton of fun, and we even got some pretty hardcore storms that night.
Monday we headed to Mark & Vicki's (friends through Heather & John) and essencially reapeated what we did at H&J's...food...pool...volleyball. Mark had some fireworks we lit off, and Rohan got to hold his first sparkler! He had no idea it was 1000°F, but he didn't do anything too crazy with it. We were all hovering just in case...:)
Last night we had Mara & I's first haboob (sandstorm). It was pretty weird how dark it got, and now everything has a fine layer of red dust on it. Check out the video below for a cool time lapse of someone driving into it...
Hope everyone had a great 4th weekend!

Haboob:

More Hiking & Pool Time!

2011-06-27T09:22:00.000-07:00

With the temps hitting 110°F+ regularly, we have been spending a lot more time poolside with Rohan. He has so much energy, it's impossible to keep him confined indoors. The pool definitely does the trick! He is always sacked out on pool nights. He's having a lot more fun running and jumping into the pool (after he saw me do it), so now we spend 10-15 min just doing that! He's trying to swim a lot more as well, mostly flailing now, but he tried hard, so that's whats important. He also likes going underwater too...or maybe he just tolerates us dunking him...:)
Last weekend we headed North to an area called Fossil Springs Wilderness, which is just between Camp Verde, AZ and Strawberry, AZ, on a very slow travelling forest road. It took almost an hour on the rough road, but it was worth it! We stopped at the bridge (where a lot of people stop) since it's shallow and the water is amazingly clear just out of the mountain! Rohan had a blast in the water, especially watching the fish! The water is really unique and drops off from 4' to about 25' just after some rapids, so that was cool to swim around in. We don't have many pics, because we weren't sure if we should bring the camera. You'll just have to come visit and we'll take you out there...:)
We had planned on camping and meeting up with some friends at a trail nearby, but because of the massive fires raging in AZ, they've shut down a lot of the forest roads and restricted a lot of the camping we usually do...:( We drove around for almost 3 hours trying to find an isolated spot, but everything was packed. Not to say there wasn't spots, but camping immediately close to drunken hillbillies on quads didn't sound like fun. We found one site that we got Rohan and the dogs out at and let everyone stretch their legs and run around. Turns out the reason the site was vacant was because it was overrun with huge black ants...not really an appealing site for Rohan and the dogs. I did manage to take lots of any pictures though...:)
We ended up grabbing a bit to eat in Payson and heading back to PHX and spent the rest of the weekend climbing. We'll get back up to that trail in a while when Mara has another weekend off.
Other than that, we've been adjusting to Mara's schedule, and meeting up with other residents at a DBacks game and an ICU physician's house for an awesome cookout. All good ways to stay cool!
Hope the weather back home is warming up! Sounds like it's been cool and rainy there!

Running & Jumping Into The Pool:

Running & Jumping Into The Pool With Dad:

Rohan Reading (we were standing under the A/C vent...so it's a little noisy):

Rohan Discovers The CD At The Back of His Book:

Here is some video from Rohan's 0.33mi run last week. It was shot on my phone (decent quality, low frame rate), choppy (sounds gets off a few seconds at the end) and shot at night (phone has weak light sensor), so it's sub-par, but still pretty cool to see him powering through and having fun...:)

Oak Creek Canyon Hiking

2011-06-13T14:11:00.000-07:00

This last week was mostly normal for us. Running, climbing, late night walks, etc. With Mara starting her residency orientation this week we decided to get out and hike in Sedona. We don't make it as much as we'd like, but it's ALWAYS beautiful! The brilliant red rocks and stark contrasting green pines make for awesome pictures. If it's a clear blue sky (like when we went), it's even more stunning.
We hiked a little area called Oak Creek Canyon just North of Sedona. It's crowded (took us an hour to get into the parking lot!), but well worth the hike. It's a 3mi trail, followed by an 11mi additional trial which we'd like to check out sometime. We just did the 3mi trail, but stopped at a creek area and hiked in a little off the path. We had a GREAT spot for a picnic and hung out there almost 2hrs! The water was shallow and the dogs had a blast exploring. Schroeder turned out to LOVE the water and even snorkeled a bit...the video is hilarious...:) Rohan was able to run around with Schroeder in the water and brush, and we got to sit back and enjoy them having so much fun.
It was nice to escape the heat too since the weather is getting warmer in PHX. It's supposed to hit 106°F this week...:) We are already planning our next trip when we can backpack and do some overnight, deep woods, canyon camping!
Hope everyone had a great week!

A 8.5min Peak Into Life With Rohan:

Schroeder Bobbing For Chickpeas:

Rohan Tromping Through Oak Creek:

Rohan Fishing:

Mom & Rohan Time While Mike's Vacationing In MI...:)

2011-06-07T07:39:00.000-07:00

This last week I was out of town for a retreat with TGen & VARI (our partner in research). The VAR Institute has quite an impressive operation and Grand Rapids was actually a pretty awesome town! The retreat took us to the North woods of Michigan to Chrystal Mountain Resort. It was a lot of fun, and a lot of cool science is being done! Pretty much it was talk science for 12-14 hours, then socialize for 2 hours (sampling some of the local brews...:P), before crashing into bed. It was nice though, I managed to get in a couple run in Grand Rapids (near SteamPig!), and even ran up the ski hill at the resort. All in all a good week for networking, learning, and showing off my "on-the-fly image analysis" to a couple investigators...:)
Mara and Rohan got some good one-on-one time before she starts residency next week. Nothing too hard then, just orientation. They hit up a bunch of parks, the Children's Museum, and of course a couple splash pads! Rohan has been awesome with potty training too. He went for almost a week without an accident (day or night!). One of Mara's goals was to get him trained for when she starts residency, and she has done and awesome job with it! He pretty much has to go at all the most inopportune times. Last night he peed next to the car in the Wal-Mart parking lot...:)
Not too much planned this week, just enjoying one more week before Mara starts again, enjoying the heat (hit 105°F yesterday), but it's not too bad. Still haven't turned on the A/C, and hope to hold off on that for a while. Eventually we'll probably just turn it on at night.
Hope everyone had a good week/weekend and got outside to enjoy the weather (or escaped somewhere that had nice temps!).

Fun Memorial Day Weekend!

2011-05-31T21:19:00.001-07:00

The weather this last weekend was PERFECT for spending time outdoors! Friday we helped some friends work on their pool by draining and refilling it. We rented a sump pump from Home Depot and drained it down to a few inches before scrubbing the sides and filling it back up over the weekend.
Saturday we headed to Avondale to hang with Greg & Nico and some friends. It was great to hit the grill and play in their salt water pool for the afternoon. It was nice to see them while Greg had a brief break between spring/summer semesters! We capped off the night with a solid round of bags and some good chats...:)
Sunday we hung out with some climbing friends in Phoenix at our friend Sean's house. Rohan had a blast with their dogs and picking up the ping pong ball after beer pong...:) Sean christened his new grill with tons of burgers, brats, etc, and we got some great recipes for foods we normally wouldn't have thought of! Really fun night.
Monday we hit up the gym for some climbing with Jeanette and her friend Jen, followed by some awesome corn on the cob on the grill, along with some steaks and pork burgers.
Rohan has been doing awesome with potty training, and from what I heard, went the whole day at daycare without an accident!!! He has been so excited to tell people when he goes. Although we don't have a potty dance like Jackson did (:P), we have one full poster of reward stickers and another on started already. That has definitely been a motivator for him. He even does great out in public and on the go.
This week I'll be in Grand Rapids & Thompsonville, MI for a Van Andel Research Institute (VARI)/Translational Genomics (TGen) retreat. Should be a lot of fun to hear some of the research going on at our sister company (VARI)! I'll be heading home on June 3rd (my birthday) and I am looking forward to some hugs and kisses from Mara & Rohan.
Enjoy the pics!

Thawing out

2011-05-24T11:42:00.000-07:00

I think we are just not thawing out from our trip to IA last weekend! The weather here has been great, and we've been taking advantage of it. It even rained a little here, but it was a warm rain, with a warm breeze, not at all like what we had for Mara's graduation party! :)

We are getting to the time we have to start saying goodbye to friends who have been rotating in Phoenix, but have residency elsewhere. Last week we met up with Chris & Janae, and their kids Kasen & Carter at the rock gym. The kids were very eager to climb, and they both made it to the top of the routes! Chris got a great workout belaying the boys and finding time to climb. He'll probably be rappelling into volcanoes over the next 4 years while he's in Hawai'i...:)

We also found a chance to catch up with Greg, Nico, & Mila, as well as meet Sasha & Tim before their trip to Puerto Rico, and then Sasha moves to San Antonio. We met up at Delhi Palace and had a great time catching up!

Other than that, not much else happened last week. We were all recovering from our whirlwind trip, and happy to be back in the warm AZ sun! :)

Rohan loves the video Jeanette Posted (Baby Monkey...):

Rohan still having troubles winking one eye...especially after eating strawberries:

WE HAVE A DR.!!!!

2011-05-18T14:52:00.001-07:00

The last couple weeks have been an absolute blur for us. Between prepping to buy a house to prepping for graduation, we've neglected the blog a little, opting for mostly Facebook posts and pictures.
Long story short...WE HAVE A DR.! Mara graduated May 14th, and we couldn't be more proud of her! Our trip started with some turbulent flights from AZ to Denver to IA, flying into tornado warnings in Des Moines. Rohan didn't even seem phased by it, just chanting "Bump, Bump" every time we hit turbulence. He even asked to use the potty in the middle of some nasty turbulence, but you can't tell a boy "No" when he's potty training. Our week with Tim, Allison, Nate & Cameron was mostly centered around getting the boys together (which they played awesome!), occasionally getting out between raindrops for some golf and relaxing, and sampling drinks from Tim's vast liquor cabinet...:) Tim & Allison bought Mara a massage on Friday from a friend of theirs so we babysat her kid, Wyatt. All the boys played great together (not that Tim would know...lol).
Saturday we headed to Kirksville bright and early (THANKS FOR THE CAR NATE!), and met the Syring, Stokes, Bacon, & Aho families, with a surprise visit from Mara's brother, Josh, from Germany. It was great that everyone was able to come support Mara. The ceremony was nice, followed by some quick pictures outside before the rain came back, and we were headed back to Des Moines for the party.
The party was at a GREAT park, Village Park, in Altoona. We didn't know it ahead of time, but it had a 3 story playground, which was great for the kids! The weather wasn't so nice. It was a high of 50°F, with winds at 15 MPH, and gusts up to 30 MPH! Not really picnic weather, but we had a good turnout of family and friends who braved the weather. It was great to see everyone, and of course, there's never enough time together...:( We capped Saturday off bar hopping across Des Moines with Tim, Nate, Josh, Sally, & Scott. G&G Bacon watched all the boys that night (THANK YOU!!!), and from the looks of Grandma in the morning...it was a long night...:)
Sunday we met up with the Stokes & Syrings in Newton and ate breakfast before they headed back to WI. Rohan and Jackson played awesome together as usual, and we ended the visit with a pretty ruckus game of Duck Duck Goose...:)
The trip home was long, but uneventful. We were exhausted from the trip, but it was worth it to see many of the family and friends who have supported Mara over the last 4 years. We are always grateful for their support and forgiving us when we fall out of touch for months at a time...:)
Prior to our travelling we headed up North to Jack's Canyon to camp and climb with Sasha & Tim. It was great to spend time with them since Sasha is leaving soon for San Antonio...:( Climbing was a BLAST and Rohan did so good (as usual!). Can't wait to get back up there when the heat hits PHX this summer.
I love that our "Countdown to Dr. Mara", on the upper left of the blog says "Now!". When we started that 4 years ago, it was over 1300 days! Another testament to the long road Mara has endured to reach her goal!
Thanks again to everyone who helped us out this last weekend, made the trip down, and supported us over the last couple years! We really appreciated everything that everyone has done for us, and we sincerely mean that.

Mara's Hooding:

The CamRoh Experience:

Playing Catch-Up

2011-05-02T11:59:00.000-07:00

So I missed a post last week...oops...:) We've actually been very busy, which is funny since Mara is done with rotations until June. We've been getting outside a lot and enjoying the days the most we can with the looming summer scorch on the horizon. We're usually pretty exhausted at night so the blog kept getting pushed until "the next day".
We've pretty much been doing the same things as always; running, climbing, baseball games, house stuff, and packing a little. Last week we hit our first Diamondback's game (against the Cubs). Rohan was pretty in to it the whole time. They had fireworks afterwards which he was a little freaked out by. He usually LOVES them, but it was almost 10pm and he was pretty tired. After they were done he cried a little because they were gone...go figure!
Saturday was the highlight since our last post. We met Heather, and John, and their friends Brad & Debbie for the Warrior Dash in Florance, AZ. It was a 3.4mi run with several obstacles throughout. It was an absolute BLAST! The mud pit at the end was epic! We didn't get as many pics as we'd like, but there are some good ones, and maybe some race-photo people got some along the way, we'll find out later. We tailgated with the crew and made a nice day of it (and got a great tan too!).
I took advantage of our free FlipVideo camera I got from work and took it along on our race. I wanted to get video of us doing the obstacles. The video is a little choppy, but it gives a first person perspective...also...it was a lot of fun...:) I really like the end where I jump over the fire and then enter the mud. We watched a few people, waiting for Heather to finish, and some entered very weakly. I felt I needed to enter with style. The girls in front of me were taking there time getting in, so I picked up the speed and jumped over them (and the first set of flags!) and cannonballed into the mud; I caught some awesome air...:) The video shows the pit, the sky, then the mud...pretty awesome fun...:) The 6min video is at the bottom of the post.
Not much else planned this week other than the normal stuff we mentioned above. In less than 2 weeks we'll be in IA/MO for Mara's graduation! We are crazy excite to see all our friends and family!!! Not so excited about the trip to MO, but the few days at T-N-A's will be awesome! We can't wait to get Cam-Ro reunited!
Enjoy the plethora of pics & vids from the last 2 weeks!:

Rohan Bouldering:

Rohan being 2...or something...

Rohan reading Mom to sleep:

Rohan & Mom playing with chair...easy entertainment:

Warrior Dash Videos!
1.) Pre-Race & The 11:30 Wave:

2.) Our race video of all the obstacles...good times!!!

Almost Done!!!!

2011-04-19T11:49:00.000-07:00

Mara has less than 30 days until graduation and Dr. MARA! :) She has one last rotation in the ER tonight and then she'll be preparing for step 3 boards and starting at Phoenix Children's the end of June!
With Mara still on the afternoon shift, Rohan and I have been watching baseball, building forts, and getting outside to enjoy the parks & pools.
Last weekend we went to our friends' house who have a pool and a giant backyard. We grilled, chilled in the pool (literally since it wasn't heated!), played some beer pong, and enjoyed the day. There was a good turnout for a last minute party, and the dogs they were dogsitting for had a blast jumping in the pool with everyone. I actually rode Jack into the pool since he was standing under me on the diving board! What a fun dog!
Afterwards we went to another friends house who has a cousin that Mara will be working with at PCH so it was a great chance to meet him and his family, as well as see Chris & Janae one last time before they head to Hawai'i for residency. Rohan even made and decorated cookies that morning at the bright and early time of 6am. I guess he was just excited.
Mara also had the distinction of expressing Linus' anal gland...a pleasure I had when we were in Kirksville. Luckily it was draining pretty good when she started so it didn't take too long. Good times...

Rohan LOVES to be tossed in his "boat":

Rohan declaring "I'm on a boat!":

For the complete "I'm On A Boat" experience...watch this video...http://youtu.be/avaSdC0QOUM

Lots of Dad Time

2011-04-13T09:02:00.001-07:00

This month Mara is on her FINAL rotation of medical school in the Pediatric Emergency Department. She loves it so far, and it's a great into to all the residents and attendings she'll be working with next year. She's already made great impressions on everyone! The only part she isn't super fond of is the 12pm-8pm shifts since it kind of throes a wrench in our routine, but we are always flexible. It's been great for me to pick up Rohan and spend a few hours alone with him watching/playing baseball, building forts, and just running around like crazy people. One thing that came of the new schedule for me is figuring out a place to run near Rohan's daycare. It's really been nice to fit in a nice 30min 5K before I pick him up. The weather has been VERY nice (except for one nearing 100F!), so the runs have felt awesome! They take me along some busier roads which I don't like, but they also go through a golf course and back into some neightborhoods, so it's a good balance overall.
This Saturday was spent mostly inside since it we had "measurable rain" which is AZ code for drizzle, but everyone stays inside. There was a short break in the afternoon we got out and ran around a little. Inside we watched LOTS of baseball on MLB.TV and also watched tons of golf with The Masters on.
Sunday was more Baseball/Golf, but with the nicer weather we hit up the parks and wore Rohan out. He even took a 3hr nap on Sunday, which is about 45min longer than normal! Glad we can still wear the little guy out!
Last week we also got a chance to hike Piestewa Peak in the Phoenix Mountain Preserve. The hike was long (4 hours total) because we hiked from a different trailhead, not the one at the base. Rohan stayed at daycare so it was just Mara and I, which was a nice change of pace...:) The views were a little better than Camelback Mountain, I thought. A really nice hike on a day off...:)
We heard the weather back in the Midwest was pretty nice (warmer than here even!), so we hope everyone got out an enjoyed the day and cure that cabin fever!

Rohan counting & building with blocks

Jumping in the "rain":

Rohan's new favorite past time...couch jumping:

Sushi, Pool, Parks, & Hikes!

2011-04-05T08:41:00.000-07:00

Not a whole lot happening this last week, but we did find PLENTY of time to be outdoors enjoying the absolutely gorgeous weather! Temps almost hit 100F, but for the most part it was upper 80's, low 90's.
We continued our obsession with sushi and Rohan even helped Mara roll and stuff one. He did really good, and taste tested most of the veggies before putting them in...:)
Saturday was our big day. We got up super early and went for a walk around one of the neighborhoods we are looking to buy in and hit up a park about 2 blocks from the house we liked. Afterwards we went to a splash pad at Desert Ridge for the first time this year. Rohan was insatiable! The temp was warm, but the water was freezing, but it didn't stop him from playing for almost an hour! He was literally shivering when we drug him away. In the video you can see his hand shaking while he's holding a toy...:(
Sunday Mara went with Heather and hiked the Hobart South Mountain summit trail while I golfed with John, his brother Joe, and his son Matt at Mountain Shadows par-3 course. It was another gorgeous day to be out and about!!! We had an awesome lunch back at Heather's, watched more golf and headed home to relax.
Not a lot else to say, just an awesome time to be outdoors! Hope everyone had a chance to catch some outdoor time too!

Rohan being a cheeseball (as usual):

He's not hurt...it's his soccer flop thing he does where he grabs his hamstring and goes down...lol

Rohan punching the water at the splash pad:

Loosing steam and freezing (watch his hands 6 seconds in):

G&G Syring Escape The Cold

2011-03-28T11:21:00.000-07:00

G&G headed to Tuscon to see some friends of theirs Friday through Monday, then came back Monday afternoon. After I got off work, we headed to Bourbon Steak for an absolutely awesome meal complete with a trio of Kobe Beef medallions...yum!
We spent most of the week wearing Rohan down, and relaxing at night. Rohan got plenty of baseball batting practice in with G&G, as well as bath, puzzles, and goofing around with train, cars, and firetrucks. Wore the kid out!
Friday night we meet up with Jeanette, Sasha & Tim for a sushi party. My dad even ate some, and we have picture to prove it! :) The sushi was a lot of fun to make with the group, and we can't wait to do it again!
Mara and my Mom went on a shopping spree and Mom got Mara to pick out a graduation dress and a couple pairs of shoes all in the same day! :) Mara (of course) looks great in the dress!
Saturday we hit the YMCA with the family and Dad & I played racquetball, Mara did weights, and Mom walked on the treadmill & rode the bike, it was a blast! Rohan had a fun with racquetball, so we might have to get a small racket for him to play with too.
After the Y, Dad and I went to the Festival of Speed Car Show again (he was here last year when it was going on too). They had a lot of the same cars, but they had one AMAZING addition...a 2010 Bugatti Veyron...worth about $1.7 million...damn that was nice to see! They also had a couple Ferrari race cars which they fired up for us...very cool.
Later on Saturday we colored Easter Eggs with Rohan. He was very interested in it, and took it very seriously too. They turned out good, and Schroeder even got a little color too...:)
We capped a busy Saturday off with some awesomely grilled steaks, pork chops, and asparagus on the grill (thank you...:P), a trip to the park across the street, and a FroYo treat at Golden Spoon.
We dropped G&G off at the airport on Sunday morning, and we were really glad they could come and visit, especially since we found out we are staying, and looking for houses...very exciting times for us! Rohan is still talking about Grandma & Grandpa, and we're pretty sure he named one of his train Grandpa...:)

Festival of Speed Car Show:

Ferrari Indy Car:

Another Ferrari Race Car...Sounds AWESOME!

We found out...

2011-03-21T10:12:00.001-07:00

...Mara matched in AZ!!! She'll be a part of the joint Phoenix Children's Hospital/St. Joe's Medical Center Pediatrics Program! All her hard work and dedication really paid off! Now we are planning the next stages of house hunting...:) We had a get together with some of the program directors and current residents & interns at Aunt Chilada’s (say it all together...:P) Mexican Restaurant. It was nice to meet some of the people Mara worked with, and they (of course) had nothing but good things to say about her. Several of the other people that matched were there as well, and it looks like Mara will have a good crew to work with starting in July!
Heather & John were nice enough to take Rohan the same night we found out, which happened to be St. Patrick's Day. Mara and I took full advantage and went rock climbing at AZR for almost 3 hours! We normally only get 1-2 (tops) with Rohan along, so 3 was a real treat! We got to climb with several different people and even met a couple new people. Afterwards we hit up Four Peaks Brewery for some Kiltlifters and Raj IPAs with some AZR friends. It was nice to hang out with all "adults" for once!
Friday we picked up Rohan from Heather's (THANKS AGAIN!!!) and dropped him off at daycare, then had the rest of the day to ourselves. We tried going to the Brewers/Rockies game, but it was sold out (who'da thought that!?!?!). We ended up wondering around some Goodwill's and driving by some houses of interest before picking up Rohan. We ate some quick dinner, then headed to the gym again before heading the airport to pick up Grandma & Grandpa Syring! Rohan was super excited to see them (even though he was exhausted!). Rohan showed Grandpa the airplanes taking off and landing before we headed out. We drove by some houses to show them and then headed home for some wine and lemons...:)
G&G headed to Tuscon early Saturday morning to see some friends. Actually they left around 4am their time since Grandpa forgot to set his clock to AZ time...oops...:) We headed down to Greg & Nico's to meet up and go to Luke Air Force Base's Luke Day's celebrating "70 years of Thunder". They didn't disappoint. They had some awesome shows done by F-18s, F-22s, A-10s, and a stunt helicopter show that made me question all I know about helicopter aerodynamics. The F-22 (Raptor) was by far my favorite, and the exhaust flames gave me goose bumps! I think I had just as much fun as Rohan...who had fun until the F-18 buzzed the crowd and woke him up. He eventually got used to the noise, but he was pretty pissed off for a while. After the airshow we headed back to Greg's for some BBQ and Root Beer Floats. An awesome end to a long, awesome day!
On Sunday we met up with Jeanette and a friend from AZR, Irena, at Mountain View Park and Irena led a 75 minute outdoor yoga class along the Greenbelt Trail. It was such a nice experiance, and Rohan was so well behaved (his second group yoga class). He spent most of the time climbing on Mara or I, or climbing his stroller in search of animal crackers. A couple times he even ran up to Irena and walked around with her while she instructed...it was really cute. We can't wait to meet up again for more outdoor yoga! We finished Sunday off with some more climbing (we're both making awesome gains, and it's feeling great!), followed by some R&R for our tired bones. We wouldn't have it any other way...:)
Hope everyone had a chance to enjoy the Spring weather and spend some time outdoors!

F-22 Raptor...Awesome Every Time:

Rohan dancing on the table:

86%

2011-03-14T11:03:00.001-07:00

86%. That's the amount of time we were outdoors this last weekend...:)
We took a trip out to Superior, AZ to camp, climb, and enjoy the amazing weather. We headed out Friday night, then hiked a canyon in the morning before meeting up with Sasha & Tim in the afternoon for some climbing. It was Tim's first time outdoors, and Sasha's second after last weekend, so we had a lot of fun exploring the rock. Everyone had fun as usual...:) Rohan had a blast bouldering and playing in the sand. He absolutely LOVES the outdoors.
We capped the night with some spirits and chillin' by the campfire. Can't wait to plan another trip soon!
The pictures an video pretty much tell the story of this last week:

Schroeder learning how much fun water can be:

Followed by sand...very similar to Lucy:

Rohan explaining how much fun he had camping/climbing:

Outdoor Weekend!

2011-03-07T09:40:00.000-07:00

The weather has been absolutely awesome lately! It's almost ambient temperature all day, where you don't even feel the air, it just envelopes you!
We spent most of the week climbing at AZR, running around some of our favorite neighborhoods, and wearing the dogs & Rohan out at the dog park. We made sushi again one night, and crockpot Chana Masala another, and been enjoying salads and other "summer foods" the others. We also had some friends, Stephanie & Andrew, in town from Milwaukee to catch a couple Brewer spring training day game so we caught up with them at Bombay Spice.
Saturday we got up and headed to the RR park where they were having an "Under 6" celebration with petting zoos, trains and inflatable bounce houses. Rohan had a BLAST with the petting zoo, with the bunnies being his favorite. We have a bunny that lives by our place that he looks for every time we go outside and we feed him carrots and other veggies. One of the oddest moments was when we were watching the train go by and a lady in an electric wheelchair (with he grandkid on her lap) was racing the train. The train won, but she won coolest Grandma of the day...:) We ended Saturday with some climbing and R&R with a fire.
Sunday we met up with Sasha and headed to Lookout Mountain and did some climbing. Sasha had never been outdoors, and we haven't been for a while. Lookout has a decent landing area so Rohan could get out without too much danger (just a little)...:) It was SUCH awesome weather, and the views were nice and clear all the way to the White Tank Mountains and Estrella Mountains. We climbed in the shadow for a while before the sun came around the mountain and warmed us up before we headed out. We had a lot of fun, and maybe even a camping/climbing trip planned for next weekend!
We met Jeanette out at AZR for a bit of a workout. Rohan learned the fun of the rings, so we might have to set something like that up soon...:) At the end of the night we went for a nice long walk before crashing when we got home! We love physically exhausting weekends as a nice start to the week!
We spent almost 24 hours outdoors this weekend! We hope everyone else got a chance to alleviate Cabin Fever too!

One More Mountain Summited!

2011-03-01T09:09:00.000-07:00

This last Monday, TGen gave me an "unplugged" day off so I scheduled a trip to conquer Picketpost Mountain. Last time, with Mara, Michelle, & Rohan, we made it about 3/4 of the way up before it got too tretcherous for Rohan. It turns out that was the easy 3/4... Mara had to work in the clinic, so Jeanette cleared her calendar and came with. There aren't many pictures since we took enough when we went 2 weeks ago, but the scramble to the top was crazy. The verticality of the climb was touch, but the hopping from boulder to boulder was exhausting! We finally made it to the top of the mesa and the views were amazing! 360° views of the desert were worth the effort! The mailbox at the top was cool too, as is the story that goes with it. We capped of the day with homemade sushi with Jeanette, and a little wine too...:)
Last week, we spent almost every night at the rock gym, getting in some really fun climbing. Rohan has been more willing to put the harness on, and has even started swinging on the ropes while hooked in! He seems to have a blast for about 5min before his "pukey cheeks" come out. We are looking forward to when he starts climbing while strapped in. He's almost able to do a pullup with his strong little hands and fingers...:)
Saturday we hit up the new spring training park, Salt River Fields, for the Diamondbacks and Rockies. It was a very well thought out park, with TONS of family activities and things for kids. Definitely one of the best parks in the spring training leagues! Rohan did great on the practice field too. We got in line and the kids have to field 1st, 2nd, and 3rd bases before they bat. Rohan had balls hit at him at 1st and 3rd base and hustled after them (after some encouragement). His throws were really good too! He's got a pretty strong arm already. His turn to bat was really cute too. The instructor got him into place (something Rohan usually doesn't let us do), and hit 5 straight balls. Then he got to run the bases. He ran down to 1st still carrying the bat, and ran all the way to 2nd base before stopping. I carried him to 3rd (to keep things moving) and he ran all the way home and high fived the instructor...we all were smiling at that point...:)
After the game we hit up the rock gym for an hour or so, then took Rohan on a trail run to see the sunset. He ended up running the while 0.5mi trail on his own! Amazing for the day that kid had! The sunset was nice, but Rohan really enjoyed the trail, and never fell once. He stumbled A LOT, but kept his balance and recovered every time (an it's a rocky trail!).
Sunday we headed to Heather's since Holly was in town to take Mara's grandparents back to WI. We skipped out on their hike since it was still pretty chilly in the AM, and we didn't want Rohan getting too cold. Looks like they had a great hike though! We had a sight we hadn't seen before...snow on the McDowell Mountains by our house! WTF?! It was pretty, but disturbing at the same time...:) We had a great visit with the family over tomato soup for lunch and kabobs for dinner! After dinner we hit up a park. I think the adults had as much fun as Rohan did...:) We hope everyone has a great flight back tomorrow!
Hope everyone else had an active weekend!

Rohan Swingin' At The Rock Gym:

Rohan dancing to his toy:

Mara, Holly, & Heather duke it out on the balance war machine:

Holly & Heather race down the slide:

The Trail Bites Back

2011-02-21T08:57:00.004-07:00

This week we have had some awesome weather, and we've taken advantage of it by getting some trail runs in as well as just getting outdoors! Unfortunately this weekend was raining, which was still fun since we don't get much, but limited us to what we could do outdoors.

Monday's trail run went great. I left first and then Mara and Rohan met me at the trailhead after about 45min. I took Rohan back home and Mara went on her run. When she got back she showed us that the trail had gotten her a little. She was stretching at a sign (and admiring the sunset) when she fell over into a bush. She ran the rest of the route and came home to show us the damages. It looked AWFUL! The scratches all bleed more than usual since she was working out, They were all superficial scratches, but there were A LOT of them! We spent 5-10 min picking thorns out of her legs and shins. Would have been funny to see he tip over though (knowing she's OK of course)...:)

Friday we met Heather and Grandma (with Rebekka and Marisa) at Enchanted Island for a charity night. Wrist bands were $3 and free rides. Rohan was a lot more outgoing and adventurous that we thought he'd be. He rode the cars by himself (first time on a ride by himself!) and just seemed to enjoy the ride...with little emotion. He rode with Rebekka on a helicopter ride in the air...he thought it was OK, but very little emotion. Next we hit up the Tea Cup ride where you try and make yourself dizzy. He was excited to ride, but as soon as it started spinning he made the "pukey cheeks" face, but never actually barfed. He sunk back into Mara and rode the ride out. When it stopped he sat up, smiled and gave us high fives. We were a little shocked he was happy. Next we hit the train ride (always a hit!) and then Mara took him on to the cars again. Just as we were leaving it started to sprinkle so we got everything do just in time! On the way out we also had to stop and see the Firetruck they had at the entrance. Rohan actually got inside this time and didn't seems so freaked out by the size of the truck.

Saturday we tooled around PHX, visited Greg, Nico & Mila, then heading over to Heather's(while they were out of town) and visited with Grandma & Grandpa Hansen. With the cooler weather it was nice Mara made grilled cheese and soup for everyone! It really hit the spot on a dreary day!

Sunday, our favorite yogi, Jeanette, invited us to a private yoga class at her studio and said it was OK to bring Rohan. He had just woken up from a nap, and after an initial meltdown at the start of the class, he was great! He mostly walked around checking out the fitness equipment, and also traversing the banister they have (something he's been doing A LOT more of lately). At a couple points he was walking around hand-in-hand with Jeanette while she instructed us...it was pretty adorable. He even had a hand in his pocket, and followed her everywhere.

The rest of Sunday we grilled some marinated steaks that had been stewing all day (the secret is homemade yogurt!). Mara was also feeling nostalgic for the English crumpets we had in London. We found them here, at only a few, expensive, places so she decided to try and make her own. We only had wheat flour and Bisquick but she tried it anyway. We also only had christmas cookie cutter metal shapes instead of round, as well as the double open ended soup can. As ghetto as it looked, they actually tasted REALLY good. I even made a pankcake sized crumpet for myself...:)
Enjoy pics & vids!

Rohan talking on the phone. I love his pose at about 24 seconds in....

Rohan loves Firetrucks! Not sure what the voodoo thing is in the beginning:

Rohan rides solo for the first time:

FINALLY got Rohan to make a duck sound on camera. It's not a "quack"...more of a "balk"...cracks me up every time! He says it only once at about 27 seconds in:

Michelle Comes To "Relax"

2011-02-14T11:31:00.000-07:00

We'll just say it...Michelle, Mara and I relax the same way...by punishing ourselves phycically so we can enjoy the rest...:) Michelle made her annual trek out to the desert to escape the cabin fever awaiting her in mid-winter Wisconsin. It started out a little sketchy on Wednesday when she showed up. I got off work and waited for her in the cell phone lot of PHX. When she called I went to start the car and...nothing...the battery was toasted (luckily that and nothing expensive!). Fortuitously, Mara was off her rotation early and came to the rescue. After a quick jump start and a stop by our favorite German bakery (Old Heidelberg German Bakery), we continied to one of our favorite restaurants, That's A Wrap. We hit up an Autozone for a new battery and then dropped Michelle off for a massage with our favorite RMT...Jeanette @ The Little Bohemian. While Michelle got a 1hr+ deep tissue massage, Mara and I climbed at AZR across the street. After climbing we grilled a pesto chicken & pine nut pizza and went for a long walk around a very affluent area near Camleback Mountain. Not a bad way to introduce Michelle to AZ! We all slept like rocks that night!
Thursday morning Mara ran Rohan into daycare and Michelle and I went and watched the sun rise over the McDowell's. When Mara returned we headed up to the 104th St. trail in the McDowell's and went for a 5mi trail run! It felt awesome, and we all had a lot of fun exploring the preserve! Afterwards we met Greg & our favorite yogi, Jeanette again, back at our place and had a private yoga session. The session was AWESOME! We all had a great time, and even earned a few nicknames...:) After everyone disbanded, we soaked our calves in the hot tub and then headed to Tempe and ate at California Pizza Kitchen before we grabbed Rohan and took him to a park for a long run/soccer session. We capped the day off with some more grilling (portobellos and sweet potatoes) and some well deserved wine and beer!
Before the beer & wine we had to do some micro-surgery on Rohan's hand. He had a HUGE sliver from the mulch playground at school in his palm which was starting to get irritated and we wanted to remove it before it got infected. We got the tweezers and showed them to him, let him play with them, he seemed pretty OK with the instrument. As soon as we started to operate on his hand he flipped. We felt awful, but we had to hold him down and Mara did an awesome job getting in and out, with no blood, but 3 big pieces of mulch extracted. Rohan calmed down well, and eventually started showing off his "battle scar". Such a little trooper!
Friday I had a "Sequencing the Genome" lecture for work I wanted to attend, so I dropped Mara and Michelle at the Cholla Trail of Camelback Mountain where they traversed it, and came down the Echo Canyon Trail where their car was parked. After their hike they hit up a YMCA to try and completely exhaust themselves! They came and picked me up from the seminar and we headed to Greg & Nico's to BBQ and see baby Mila again. It was great to see them all doing so well, and Mila is such a cutie! We picked up Rohan and grabbed a quick bite before we hit up AZR again. Michelle showed off her athleticism and totally scaled the walls at AZR. Not even doing "beginner" routes, she took right to the 5.8s and had no problem! Too bad they don't have a gym in GB, I think she would really like it!
Saturday we tested Michelle's nerves by heading to Superior, AZ and hiking a lone mountain called Picket Post Mountain. It's a pretty shear cliff at some points, and Michelle can have a sometimes debilitating fear of heights. We had some fun finding the trail, but eventually we made it about 3/4 of the way up, across some pretty sketchy areas, before we thought it'd be best to turn around. Rohan was with us as usual, but his backpack was starting to get in the way, so we turned back. It was an amazing view, and now we have an excuse to hike it again and get to the top! :) Michelle did surprisingly well on some of the outcrops and scrambles given her fear. We even got her to pose on the point of an edge for a pick...very proud of her...:)
We stopped by Triple C Coffee House in Superior for lunch and brought it to a train park so Rohan could get out and play since he was such a trooper on the hike. We headed home and hit the hot tub again before Michelle took us to dinner at Bombay Spice (one of Mara and I's favorites!). We capped of the night with a long walk with the dogs and enjoyed the last bit of warmth Michelle gets before heaeding back to WI.
We dropped Michelle off at 5:30 and then headed to Tempe Town Lake to watch the sun rise (which was gorgeous). We spend Sunday cleaning, airing out the house since it was mid-70s, and playing baseball with Rohan. While we were playing baseball, the sunset was so nice, we hopped in the car and drove to the TPC Scottsdale Golf Course next door to snap some pics and they turned out amazing! What a great way to cap off an awesome visit and fun-filled week! This week we probably won't be able to match the level of intensity of this last week, but we'll try! :)
Hope everyone had an active week, and enjoy the pics...the are a lot of them...

Rohan getting his kick in the tub...I think he splashed out a gallon of water:

We LOVE Busy Weekends!

2011-02-07T13:57:00.003-07:00

This week was crammed full of stuff. We did the usual things during the work week (running, climbing, & yoga), but also got to have 400,000 of our fellow Americans (at least most are) come into our neighborhood and attend the Phoenix Open. It was nice to get through everything with our resident pass, and Waste Management (the title sponsor) did a great job setting it up and running it smoothly. We'll be glad to get our park back though. It's been a staging area for vendors and parking lot for guests, and fenced off for almost 2 weeks (with Barrett-Jackson here before them)!
Friday, Mara got off a little early and tried trail running in the McDowell Mountains. Michelle comes out this week and wanted to try it, so Mara was testing out a trail to see if it would work. Mara had a blast! I think we'll have to do some more of that in the future! Friday night we headed out to the other side of the McDowell's and stargazed at one of our favorite spots. There was some clouds that reflected the city lights, but those went away eventually, and we got some GREAT shots with out new camera. Lots of fun to play around with! Even borrowed some techniques of foreground lighting that made for some really cool cactus/star shots.
Saturday morning ran some errands and then took off to Suerpior, AZ to find a bouldering spot. Unfortunately it was blocked by some road construction, but we ended up hiking for almost 5 hours. We stopped a couple times to explore some rocks, and let Rohan out to play too. He started climbing the rocks like nothing and was totally fearless! He's going to be a great climber. We found a really cool place to camp sometime too...and the best part...we didn't see a single person the whole time! Can't wait to explore that area more! We capped of Saturday with some steaks on the grill and some nice barely sodas...:)
Sunday we got up early and I checked out the trail Mara had run Friday. It was a blast! Trail running adds such a different twist to running, and I even found some cool trails to check out another time. After the run I met Mara and Rohan (who ran from our house) at AZR and got some more climbing in. Rohan napped almost the whole time too, even with the gym noise! Afterwards we hit up a shoe store to look for some new running shoes for Mara and also checked out some trail shoes, but they didn't seem to be too different. After that we hit up a Dave & Busters to watch the Green Bay Packers win Superbowl XLV!!! One of the downsides of not having a TV at home is missing major sporting events unless we go somewhere. It was fun to be at a place where Rohan could run around with games and not be "that kid". They even had a pretzel bite appetizer, so the whole family was happy! :)
This week we are getting ready for Michelle's visit. Not really doing much for it, just resting because we're going to run her ragged..:) We have trail running, road running, hikes, walks, yoga and climbing all on the agenda, so we'll need to be well rested for all the outdoor time & activity!
Hope everyone had a great/active weekend!!!

Rohan Bouldering:

Rohan Rar'ing:

103 Days Until Dr. Mara!

2011-01-31T22:08:00.002-07:00

We've almost hit the home stretch. Roughly 100 days until Dr. Mara Syring! We were talking about what she'd want as a graduation gift and she decided on a nicer camera (a DSLR). Allison had gotten one she did the research on, and Mara really liked the picutres it took, as well as the ease of use and automatic settings (since we are pretty green in the area of photography). We picked up a Nikon D3100 and have been filling up the SD card on a regular basis...:) A lot of the pictures are random...mostly us playing with apeture, shutter speed, f-stop, etc. We have also taken a TON of Rohan; as if his life wasn't well documented already. We've been really happy with the pictures, and can't wait to take it outside, into the mountains!
Speaking of mountains, we capped of this weekend with a hike in South Mountain. Mara's Uncle Mike, and cousin Steve were in town to visit Mara's grandpa (who had a stroke last week, but is doing AWESOME now!). It was a nice way to cap off a weekend of hiking, climbing, running, working out, raquetball, and friends having babies!
The latter was due to BOTH the Caldwell's and the Fritz's having babies. Pete and Beth had a boy (Chayton Richard Fritz), and Greg and Nicole had a girl (Mila Emmaline Caldwell). Both parents sound like their doing great. We did get to meet baby Mila, and Rohan has her name down pat now. He was really curious about her and like to poke her and say "Baby". We can't wait to meet Chayton too!

Mila Emmaline

Chayton Richard

Not much happening this week. We have the PGA tournement (Phoenix Open) next door, so that's always fun...:) Next week Michelle comes out, so we'll have some great hikes and runs planned for then.
Not a TON of pictures since we sucked at getting any with our camera and Mila, and the new camera has been used mostly experimentally...there will be more, I promise!

Rohan playing with a flashlight when he supposed to be taking a nap...:

Rohan Climbing At Amberwood Park before we met the family for supper:

Marathon Recovery, Climbing, Body Worlds & Enjoying The Weather!

2011-01-24T21:49:00.000-07:00

This last week was fairly low key. We've been invaded by all the auto-philes in town for the Barrett-Jackson car show. I helped out the TGen Foundation last year when they started a colon cancer fund with Craig Jackson, but I was unable to go this year. The cars parked on our soccer fields across the street so we couldn't run around there too much with Rohan and the dogs. It will be even crazier next week when the PGA's Phoenix Open is here, and right next to our place. They are already blocking/fencing things off in preparation. I'll be working the world famous 16th hole Tuesday and Saturday, and hopefully going with Mara on Sunday next week (sans Rohan).
Rohan has been loving the tee ball set Sasha got for him (much to my delight!). He asks to play almost every night and he really smacks it well. Mara got tons of cool pictures last weekend too.
We haven't been running since the marathon, just to let our muscles heal a little. My foot is still sore (probably tendinitis), but we've been walking almost every night we don't climb.
Saturday I had a symposium to attend with TGen at the Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale. It was more of an attempt to spur more collaboration between the two institutes, but it was really pretty interesting. I had two posters to present on proteomics and epigenomics which drew some interest from researchers, so it wasn't a total waste of a Saturday morning! :)
After the symposium I meet Mara, Heather, Grandma Hansen, and Rebekah (who Heather mentors) at AZR and climbed. Heather & Rebekah did great for their first time climbing! They both made it to the top of a route or two, and Rebekah really seemed to like it! Hopefully they'll be back soon!
Sunday Mara, Rohan and I went to the Phoenix Science Center for their Body Worlds exhibit. It's the 4th time we've been to it since our honeymoon in 2005, and it still is absolutely amazing. We see something new and cool each time (especially with Mara learning more everyday and me picking some of that up too). We REALLY encourage anyone and everyone to go, at least once, to get an up close view of the human body in it's most exposed and vivid presentation.
The rest of Sunday was spent watching the Packers and Steelers win their conference championship games to go play each other in the Super Bowl. Should be a great game! Mara spent some time at Starbucks writing a paper and studying, then we went for a good walk to get us and the dogs some outside time. With the weather being absolutely gorgeous, at 75°F and sunny, we can't pass up the chance to enjoy it!
Hope everyone had a great & active week/weekend!

Rohan...Yoga Master:

Rohan's New Pen From G&G Syring:

Our Little Godzilla:

Marathon Complete!!!

2011-01-18T12:35:00.000-07:00

When Mara and I set out running almost 3 years ago we never thought we'd run a half marathon (13.1 miles). We've run 3 halves, and now the unthinkable. We thought 13.1 was long, but not unreasonable anymore. We started training for the full marathon back in July (in the desert heat!), and did very well in training until we hit our 3 week European vacation. We ran ~18mi over those 3 weeks and ~30mi in the ~2 weeks after we got back and before the marathon. Sunday we set out on a 26.2mi journey. The route took us from Downtown, North to Camelback Rd, East to Camelback Mountain, and South to ASU's Sun Devil Stadium. We were doing awesome, running about a 5hr marathon pace, until around mile 17 my right knee started locking up. It had bothered a little for the last few miles, but after a water station it hurt bad. I got some ice and tried running a little more, but the knee said "No". Mara was nice enough to hang back with me, and I really appreciated it. From the beginning we've run together, and our goal is to finish and feel good, not focused on times. We tried jogging a little bit here and there, but ended up walking it in most of the last 10mi. But coming around the corner and seeing the finish about 50yds ahead, I jogged through the pain and we finished (at 6hrs 18min). After we stopped running and got back to the car and sat for a bit my knee felt fine. Must have just been irritated running. My left foot hurt a little from compensating for the knee, but other than that we both feel GREAT! We feel like we did after our longest run (18mi prior to the marathon). We are very thankful to Heather & John for taking Rohan Sat night & Sun day. Rohan has also been a big part of our training, putting in over 1000 miles since we've been in Phoenix!
Last weekend we also celebrated Rohan's 2nd birthday with a small party at the Stillman Railroad Park in Scottsdale. Rohan got some awesome gifts including a noise cube and a tee ball set. He has always watched baseball, but never really played with a bat and ball, but he took to it like he was a pro! He plays outside with it about every other day now and can really smack the ball! So fun to watch! Thanks to everyone who came and celebrated with us!
Rohan has also had some additions to his climbing wall. We go stickers from all the country's he's been too, as well as some running/climbing ones as well. We have a few more to get too since we weren't in Luxembourg long enough to get a sticker, but he's got a stamp in his passport!...:)
We had some time to watch the BCS game with Rohan last Monday. We got him a cupcake for his late birthday gift which he devoured in typical Rohan fashion. He also entertained us with some sweet dance moves during the singing of God Bless America and the Star Spangled Banner...never a dull moment with that kid...:)
We are VERY proud of ourselves for accomplishing our marathon. We really had to fight some demons to attempt it (especially after our training fell off in Europe!). To think about a marathon 3yrs ago was a joke, even 5 miles was a HUGE feat when we did it without stopping. It's been nice to have Nike+ too so we can track our progress. We'll look back someday and see how insane we were...or still are! We'll probably take a short hiatus from running to recover, and fill the void with climbing instead. We'll get back into it soon. One thing we've set out to do is make running enjoyable. By running slower, talking, and running in new and beautiful places, we've made less of a chore and more of a exciting adventure!
Hope everyone had a great 3-day weekend!

Rohan's Birthday Cupcake:

Super Rohan!:

Rohan's Interpretive Dance:

Rohan Plays Baseball:

OK...FINAL Final post...

2011-01-13T16:02:00.000-07:00

Here are some cool panoramas we took along our way...Enjoy!

The Last Europe Post...Paris

2011-01-13T15:59:00.000-07:00

Paris is gorgeous. It has all the history, all the mystique, and all the traffic you can imagine. We took of early from Bechhofen and headed across the German/French countryside, taking course through the Champagne region of France. We arrived at our hotel (Holiday Inn) in Bougival, a Western suburb of Paris. We got the kids ready and headed out in search of Paris. We hiked along the Le Parc Naturel Urbain in Rueil-Malmaison. After about 2mi we hopped on the underground and took a "bullet train" to the heart of Paris. We grabbed Lunch/supper at the Hippopotamus Hippo Club before we began our epic night in Paris. The journey to the bathroom of the Hippo Club was something else. 3 flights of stairs below street level and you enter a hallway that resembles the Catacombs of Paris...really cold and really cool...
We began by walking towards The Louvre we had some neat view of Saint Eustache, Saint-Germain, and countless other attractions. The Louvre was breathtaking in size and architecture. We took in all we could of the former Palace and upgrades such as the giant glass pyramid. Heading out of The Louvre we got to see the Obélisque de Louxor, as well as La Grande Roue ferris wheel. We walked along the Seine River to Pont Neuf, the oldest bridge in Paris (1578!), and across to Notre Dame, which is also pretty old; 1160! We really with the Crypte Archéologique would have been open!
We walked a little bit further and caught another underground train this time to the Parc du Champs de Mars and the
Eiffel Tower! The grandness of the tower was pretty impressive, more-so than I was expecting. The trinket peddlers were a little annoying, but eventually we learned to ignore them. Debora did manage to get the boys a helicopter to play with...:) We crossed over to the Trocadéro, through the Palais de Chaillot, before heading North to the most amazing roundabout I've ever seen...Place de l'Étoile. 12 roads converge on the Arc de Triomphe! An amazing site. We walked under the Place de l'Étoile to check out the Arc de Triomphe. It was an awesome structure and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier was very cool to see as well.
After an exhausting 6 hour hike around BEAUTIFUL Paris at night we hopped on a rail to La Défense then catching a bus back to our hotel. What a night! But it wasn't over yet. Mara and I wanted to do a run, and even though it was 1am, Holly looked after Rohan and we took off into Bougival. We ran a long a really cool, and all uphill, street past another Notre Dame...very cool views of the valley to the North. We ran back a street called Rue de la Croix aux Vents that was INSANELY steep and icy...lots of fun at 2am. Actually, it was fun since we were on vacation in Paris! :)
The next morning, Dan & Holly took Rohan while Mara and I went on a walk (the other direction this time). After walking the rain for a while, we finally found a somewhat ghetto coffee/lotto cafe called Bar Brasserie Les Ecus. We were really wanting to find a nice area to walk, but really didn't find much. Then the adventuresome Mara took a turn down a cool street and we found one of the coolest Farmer's Market we've ever seen (and we've seen a lot!). It was centered around the Paroisse Saint-Pierre Saint-Paul church and had dozens of tents and tons of vendors. We found a great cheese tent and picked up some Camembert to bring back to Germany. We also found a brownie for Thomas since it was his 3rd birthday that day! It took us forever to get a toy from another cake put on his cupcake (language barrier), but we finally got the little red axe. After everyone got moving we headed South to the Château de Versailles. First we ate at an awesome crepe place called (ironically) La Place Creperie. The Palace at Versailles was absolutely stunning in its immense size. Seriously cannot convey the grandeur, inside or out, effectively, you just have to see it. The painting, the statues, the rooms...everything was done bigger than anything else in the world. Just amazing. Because of the fog we couldn't get a taste of the immense 3 sq miles of gardens behind the Palace (there are 2 other palaces back there too!!!). The grounds should be on the list of modern wonder.
The drive home was a little interesting...:) We got off the highway at the worst possible spot...Champs-Élysées...at rush hour (4:30)...with no way out. We drive right at the Arc de Triomphe de l'Étoile, and our drivers, Mara & Josh, can say they've conquered the 12 road Place de l'Étoile! Unfortunately the only "easy way out" was to traverse Paris, driving along the Seine River for about 2 hours to reach the other side of Paris. Made for a long trip home, but wouldn't have traded the trip for anything!

Neuschwanstein Castle

2011-01-13T13:21:00.000-07:00

While everyone was recoving from our epic trip to Paris (post coming soon!), Mara, Rohan and I borrowed Josh's car (THANKS!!!) and headed out on a 5hr, one-way, roadtrip to Schwangau, Germany. Schwangau is the location of Neuschwanstein Castle, which was the model for Disneyland's Sleeping Beauty Castle. We got some great tips from Josh about driving on the German Autobahn. It really is very nice to drive. Some drive very fast, but we usually sat at around 130 KM/Hr (~82 MPH). It was a nice trip through other larger towns such as Mannheim, Heilbronn, Stuttgart. We didn't get to explore those cities, but it was nice to see them, as well as more of the German countryside. On a side note...we stopped at what we thought was a rest area, but there were no bathrooms at this one, just a wayside. What was there was a couple getting "frisky" in the car...ahhh, the allure of the Autobahn...:)
To get to Schwangau, we had a breif stint through Austria, but were quickly back in Germany. The Alps really started to jump up around the area too...part of what gives Neuschwanstein Castle it's appeal. We ate at Hotel Müller Cafe before we got in line for the horse carriage to take us up the 1mi, very steep, road. After waiting in line for almost 30min it was clear we'd be late for our tour start time so we hauled ass up the hill with Rohan in tow. We made it with about 20min to spare...and didn't have a single horse carriage pass us! We took some time to explore the courtyard and entrance before our tour. The castle was smaller than I expected, but it also was only about 20% finished before the king died under mysterious circumstances. It was also VERY foggy which kept us from seeing the surrounding hills, waterfalls, and bridges (which we heard are beautiful!), but the fog did add some mystique to the castle...very creepy. Pictures weren't allowed inside, but I did my best to keep it nonchalant...what are they going to do? Deport me? :)
After the tour we stopped at the Hofbräuhaus (original is in Munich) for some Belgian Snowballs and a nice cold beer. The mug somehow made it home with us...strange. We had a blast on our road trip, and a HUGE thanks again to J&D for the use of the car!

Heidelberg & Bernkastel-Kües

2011-01-10T15:20:00.000-07:00

When we picked up the Bacon/Aho clans from the Frankfurt am Main airport we piled everyone and their luggage (literally) into the rental van and met Mara, Debora, Rohan, and Lucas in Heidelberg. Heidelberg is a very old city (traced back to 400 AD!), and the acrictecture and design is very interesting.
We strolled down the main road (Hauptstraße) checking out all the little shops and taking in all the new sites. We ate lunch (for Josh's birthday) at Zum Weissen Schwanen for some excellent German food and a little bit of bier too. We continued down the street until we came to a square below the Heidelberg Castle. After tons of pictures, and a couple of Schneeballen from Diller's we drove up into the foggy mountain to the castle. It was in relatively good shape for being ~800 years old. It was really cool to look down from the castle wall and see the city below!
Later in the week we went to Bernkastel-Kües, a town on the Moselle River. It's very similar to Heidelberg in architecture, but was smack dab in the middle of wine country. The vineyards on the hillsides were awesome to see. We parked by the flooding Moselle and ate another great meal at the Altes Brauhaüs before walking around the quaint, and very slippery, streets.

Pictures from Heidelberg:

Pictures from Bernkastel-Kües:

Family Time In Germany!

2011-01-09T18:36:00.001-07:00

We had awesome hosts while were were in Germany. Josh and Debora (and Thomas & Lucas) did a great job with food, entertainment, tours, and pretty much every other facet of hosting 6 adults and 3 boys!
We took tour to Heidelberg, Bernkastel-Kues in Germany, and Paris in France, but we'll save those pictures for another post.
Bechhofen is a quaint town in SW Germany and served for many quite midnight walks and a few late snowy jogs. It was great to have xmas with all the boys. There was sledding, climbing, outdoor fires, birthday parties (Josh, Thomas, & Scott), snowmen making, and TONS of playing with the boys!
After the Bacon/Aho's left for the states, we celebrated New Years with Josh & Debora's friends Peter & Ana Maria.
We had a blast with everyone, and hopefully, maybe, make it back before they leave. Thanks again!!!

Snowmen:

Sledding:

The London Impromptu Vacation

2011-01-06T12:09:00.001-07:00

Our European trip got started off great on the 16th of December! Rohan slept the WHOLE 9 hours to London, waking up just on landing. We had a great couple next to us from Northern UK and their sons Oliver & David. We slept almost as much as Rohan and we were ready to go when we landed on the 17th at London's Heathrow Airport. Due to somewhat icy conditions we were on the tarmac for almost 2 hours. The pilot was great and let us roam and snack while we were in line (AKA queue), we were the 15th, and last plane that was in line and allowed to land. They opened up the cockpit for tours and Rohan loved the lights and buttons (so did Dad!). Oliver was very nice and shared a lot of his toys with Rohan. They had a whole airport map and setup for him and Rohan loved it. We'll definitely have to get something like that, although Rohan is content with Dad's shitty drawings of train tracks and road on napkins for now.

Since we were only supposed to be in London for 90 min, we missed our connecting flight, which turns out, was grounded anyway. Then the fun started. We waited in line for our bags for almost 2 hours. The signs didn't list our flight for which bag area to go to, but most people were at carousels 8 & 9. Mara walked around with Rohan (now in his backpack) and saw carousel 5 had our flight listed, but there were only 4 bags on it...all from different flights. We waited there, then started walking around. Mara happened to notice a passenger from our flight with his bag, and he told us our bags were at carousel 10, and sure enough they were! We got them, passed through customs (which was just a hallway that said customs...no agents, no stamp...just a hallway). British Airways (BA) told us to get a hotel for the night by using the terminal's hotel booking kiosk, adn they would reimburse us £200 (about $300 US). We waited in line for 3hrs before we found out they only had hotels for £400-600! Bullshit. We hit up the Marks & Spencer Simply Food and got a fairly healthy snack of peas, cheese, pineapple and mango, and whole wheat bread. It was pushing midnight so we just found a nice cozy spot of tile and crashed. I got about 3hrs sleep, Mara about 2, and Rohan also about 2. We got in the rebooking line around 2:30am on the 18th, which opened at 5:00am. They did bring us some blankets (which we used throughout the trip to keep Rohan warm in the backpack), and also some water. There were even clowns at some terminals...yeah...

I should preface this next part by saying the BA staff was VERY nice and friendly. There wasn't a single person that was crude or mean for our entire ordeal, even with the more irate customers. We waited in line until 5:00am...then 5:30...finally 6:00am they opened the rebooking lines. The only problem is only 3 people showed up for work that day. Keep in mind, there are ~70,000 people in our terminal alone (Terminal 5). I talked to an agent who said they were either not coming in for the weather (more on that in a sec), or they just didn't want to deal with people yelling at them all day. I can't blame them. 99% of the people were annoyed, but dealt with the delays well. 1% however were yelling and being generally pissed off. Around 10:30am (8hrs in line) they shut the lines down, and told everyone to "Go home". That's when they brought out the armed security. Like I said, most were fine, but some were a little on "edge". Surprisingly, we were in great moods, just happy to be on "vacation", and the experience was something we'll learn from for sure.

Josh, our proxy tour guide, set us up in a hotel in London. The reviews weren't great, but the price was right, so we hopped on the train to Paddington Station, which was about a mile from our hotel. We hiked, while dragging our luggage through the snow, with no map, or phone, but a rough idea of where the hotel was. Mara spotted a nice Indian Restaurant, Flavors of India, so we stopped in for some awesome food. Rohan even got some Xmas chocolates from the owner...:) We continued down a really beautiful street, lined with old townhouse mansions, and ended up taking the long way to the hotel, but that seems to be our mantra. We got to our hotel, Hyde Park Towers, and the staff was great. The room was a little small, but overall, we were just glad to be out of Heathrow! We wanted to call Josh from the hotel, but our phone didn't work for outside call, so I went to the pay phone downstairs. I tried using Josh's calling card, but it was a rotory phone, so it wouldn't take it, and I didn't have any UK Pounds on me, since we were only going to be in London for an hour or so! I headed out and found a currency exchange place and headed back to our hotel and called Josh. We spent most of the night on our phones using WiFi to try and rebook a flight, but we also looked at renting a car, taking a train, or even a bus. We found a train ride that would take us from London, to Paris, to Saarbrücken (near Josh), but it was filled in the short time it took me to fill out my info. On a side note that turned out to be a good thing. St. Pancras Station, where we would have left from, had a 5 hour line wrapped around the outside of the building. It made BBC... We took a walk to find some food and ended up at a pub called The King's Head for a Guinness for me and a glass of wine for Mara. We check fares when we got back and FINALLY we found a ticket from London City Airport, flying into Frankfurt the next day on Lufthansa Airlines.

By the time we woke up the next day (December 19th) our flight was already cancelled...FFS. We talked to Josh and he tried calling BA to rebook and the queue was 630min, 10 HOURS! We found another flight, leaving the next day from London City, but we had the whole day to explore London. We headed out to Paddington Station and while we were in line for train passes 2 women came up to us and gave us their all day passes! We headed out to the Museum of London, free of charge that day! I forget that the USA is a relatively new country, and seeing the vast history of London was amazing! We hit up the Pret A Manger across the street for Lunch, and they gave Rohan a balloon for being so cute (which he quickly lost down the subway tunnel)...:) After lunch we walked down to St. Paul's Cathedral, which was amazing in it's size and architecture. We strolled around inside and saw a pretty weird manger scene (see pics). Afterwards we walked down to the Millennium Bridge and got great views of the Thames, the London Eye, and the Tower of London up and down the river. While we were waiting for a train, Mara was studying the London Underground map and saw that there was a train station (Bayswater) less than a block from our hotel! It beats walking the mile to Paddington! Turns out it was right next to the currency exchange place I hit the first night but my blind butt didn't see it... On a side note, what I did happen to see was a plaque on our hotel that stated it was Jimmy Hendrix's first London home, called Stone Free...:) We made frequent trips to a mall called Whiteleys near our hotel for coffee breaks at Café Rouge, to warm up, and to check in with Josh periodically. We capped off the night like most Londoners...with tea and crumpets from Tesco or M&S Markets

We slept like rocks until 9am on the 20th. Josh had us flying out at 7:10pm, so we had the whole day to check out London! We mapped out Buckingham Palace, The Tower of London, London Bridge, and the V&A Museum of Childhood, walking a lot of it, and really enjoying taking in the city. It was really cool for us to see these sites we've only read about, and to get a little bit more of an idea of layouts and the areas surrounding them. We thought we'd do something for Rohan since he was a super rock star this entire trip! The Museum of Childhood was fun for him, although he wanted to play with all the antique trains and toys. Luckily they had some out for kids so he was really happy to run around (and we were more than happy to accommodate!). Before leaving, we hit up a tavern called Taylor Walker and got some fish & chips and a Guinness. We checked out of Stone Free and headed out to London City Airport. Long story short...Flight was pushed back further and further, and eventually cancelled at 9:30pm, after we had been at the airport for about 5 hours (trivial compared to our ~48hrs at Heathrow). Rohan did play really well on a table with his trucks and planes, and when we got our bags back, the armed guards were back out to restore order (this being the 3rd day most people were stuck). We talked to a couple gun toters and they were super nice again, even joking around with us. We headed back to London after Josh found us another hotel, a Comfort Inn, right next to Victoria Station, on Buckingham Palace Rd. A Very nice area. We lucked out again and 2 police officers pointed us in the right direction since we started heading the wrong way. Our room was very nice, but we were hungry, so we headed out to find a pub or grocery, but it was 11:00pm, and Europe shuts down early. We ended up getting a Chicken Tikka sandwich at a train station kiosk called Upper Crust...it was surprisingly good, but at 12:30am anything would have been...:) Mara even found a balloon on the ground for Rohan (best parents ever, we know). Josh, being our saviour again, was able to rebook us to the country of Luxembourg (since Frankfurt was shut down until the 27th!!!). Both are about 90 min from his house so it worked either way. This time we were flying our of our 3rd airport, Gatwick, which was ~45 miles south of London. We took a shower in the awesome shower at our hotel, and got a great nights sleep!
December 21st brought rain, but no snow! We didn't fly out until 6:30pm so we had the whole day again, and the rain wasn't going to stop us! We grabbed some continental breakfast and headed out to explore the Westminster/Belgravia neighborhoods of London. We first hit up a coffee shop (of course) which we found the previous night scouring for food. The Belgravia Sandwich Bar loved Rohan too, and he was charming them the whole time. We ended up walking ALL over Lower Westminster, past quaint parks and townhouse mansions, and even through a UN Embassy/Consulate row. Before we left we ate at one more Indian restaurant called Spicy World. We caught a 30min train ride to London Gatwick Airport, through the UK countryside. We had a sick feeling when our plane was delayed a couple times, even though the weather was fine, just raining, but only slightly above freezing. Most flights were leaving, but some were cancelled, so it left us uneasy. Amazingly, we were able to take off and land in Luxembourg less than an hour later...that's right...4 days in London waiting for a flight that took less than an hour.
Josh was awesome and drove in dense fog to come pick us up. Rohan DOVE at him as soon as Josh was close. I think 4 days with M&D were enough... We got back around 12:00am on Dec. 21st and ate like kings at their place. Debora had chili and tons of other food for us. We stayed up until almost 6:00am catching up and recanting the blog post above. Hope you enjoyed this part of the journey...there is still a TON more to come...:)
While we weren't anticipating a 4 day layover in London, we felt like we explored the city as more than just tourists. We were really happy to have the time to dive into cafés and pubs off the beaten path.

Rohan being a trooper while waiting in line for 12 hours:

Rohan's Gift From The Indian Restaurant:

Rohan showing off his talking skills:

Rohan giving money to the orchestra trio at Whitley's:

Rohan following the model train at the Museum of Childhood:

European Vacation

2011-01-05T11:03:00.000-07:00

It's going to be a bit before pictures are up, but we had an ABSOLUTE BLAST in Europe.
We had ~1500 pictures and 40+ videos of our trip, so those are being weeded out and organized so we can do real posts rather than saying "Here's 1500 pictures, enjoy!".
We are all recovering fine, just a little tired. Actually feeling better than expected. I'm sure we'll be back to "normal" by this weekend.
I'll try and get some of the pics and videos up of our London excursion by this weekend, and maybe Paris too, but just be patient and we'll get there...:)
Hope everyone had a great New Year/Xmas!!!

Happy 2nd Birthday Rohan!

2011-01-04T09:05:00.000-07:00

It's amazing how quickly 2 years has passed and how much he's constantly changing, growing, and learning!

For fun we added up a few things he's done:

Countries he's been to: 7 (US, Great Britain, Luxembourg, Germany, France, Austria)

US States he's been to: 12, lived in 2

Airports he's been in : 13 in 4 countries

Trains he's been on: a lot, as much as he loves them he normally sleeps through it

Buses he's been on: 2

Years he's been walking: 1+

Mountains he's hiked in a backpack: 8

Words he can say: >100 and adding more by the minute

Timeouts he's had: 100's :)

Climbing routes he's done: none yet, but oh so close!

Times he's hit his head: no idea, but a lot! (3 times yesterday, hard)

Miles he's jogged in a stroller: well over 1000

Amount of cuteness: immeasurable

Trips to the ER: 6

Med school attended: 3 weeks

Rohan has been loving trains lately, especially since we bought him one for the trip to Europe (which we then left on a plane on the way home...bad parents) and then when we got to Josh & Debora's and he got to play with all of Thomas' trains. We bought him a small trainset with a figure 8 track and a few train cars. He LOVES them, it was so cute to see his face light up when he saw them. Also for Rohan's birthday Mike & I treated ourselves to a beautiful 10 mile run while Ro was at daycare:) We're sure Rohan approves.

Rohan Gets His Train Set:

Rohan's Latest Words

2010-12-12T22:50:00.000-07:00

We were sitting down this afternoon asking Rohan to say different words and I realized how much more he can talk/imitate than even just a few weeks ago, he even surprises us and names animals, etc in books that we didn't know he knew. It is so awesome to watch how his brain is developing:)

Here is a partial list of words he can say (mind you, we may be the only ones who understand him):

Mom, Dad, Linus, Schroeder, Hi/Bye, Please, Stroller, Water, Apple juice, Milk, Banana (my personal favorite), Tortellini, Cookie, Cracker, Pretzel, Cheese, Bath, Car, Truck, Ball, Soccer, Baseball, Football, Zebra, Lion (Rar!), Kitty (meow), Cow (moo), Dog (woof), Duck, Bird, Airplane (zzzzz---apparently the sound an airplane makes), Stop, Book, Bear, Train. I'm sure there are more, but these are the most common. He'll usually try to say most things we ask him to.

He also has said a few 2-3 word sentences with/without prompting; his first unprompted 2 word phrase makes me laugh: Mom, STOP! (I can't even recall what I was doing, but he was pretty adamant about it:) )

Busy weekend always seem longer!

2010-12-12T22:19:00.036-07:00

We turned a normal 2 day weekend into what felt like a 4 day weekend...which is good, and bad. Good because you feel like you accomplished a lot, bad because it wears you out, but the good FAR outweighs the bad!
Other than our normal running and climbing this last week, we met up with Sasha & Tim for happy hour sushi at Ra, followed by a Starbucks run, and followed that by a trip to the climbing gym. Tim had never been, and he only got 2nd degree burns on this hand (don't grab the rope when you fall...). He was fine, and he actually wants to climb again! Rohan was a trooper that night. We had never really watched much TV with him (aside from sports) so we put on Shrek and watch him space out for almost the whole movie! He was watching, pointing out birds & trees (see above post) and dancing to all the music. I think we found our destractor for the flight to London/Germany...:)
Saturday Mara had to work, but they ended up letting her go before Noon (because she's a rockstar!) so we had the whole day open. We spent as much time outside as possible as well. While Mara was working, I took Rohan and the dogs to the park and watched soccer for almost 2hrs. Rohan was having a blast outside. Mara found a chance to chop her hair too (something she's been talking about for a while now). I think it looks awesome! I got to be the catalyst, thanks to Michelle's idea. She said I should cut a big chunk of Mara's hair off so she'd have no choice, and Mara said DO IT! We took a little video, but for some reason there is no sound, but you get the idea...:)
Sunday was equally gorgeous (80F & sunny!), so we took the dogs to the dog park, hit up some thrift stores for warmer clothes for Germany, and capped off the night with a nice 6+mi run. We hit up a new coffee shop Mara had wanted to try out (Copper Star Coffee). They had really strong coffee (a good thing!) and even had a band playing called Dirt Music Express. They were a really bluesy band, and had some really fun guys. The music wasn't crazy loud and Rohan was dancing for most of the songs. I think we'll definitely hit that up next time we are on that side of town. It's good to have a "go to" coffee place in different parts of the city...:) Mara and Rohan found some time to bake some more cookies to use up some of the items in our fridge that would spoil otherwise...can't argue with that logic!
Not a ton of pics & videos, but it was a great weekend! Hope everyone is done digging out! :P

This First Chop:

Pet Expo, Climbing, Parade & Haricut...Oh, And It's Gorgeous Weather Here...:)

2010-12-06T13:51:00.001-07:00

This last work week was pretty low key (as usual). Mara had a couple short on-call nights, but was home early enough to get some sleep. We had a couple runs, and found time to climb. Climbing as been good to get back into, but we are having to retrain ourselve again since we had a couple weeks off. We're getting back into it though. Rohan has been wearing a harness and be suspended from a rope a couple times, so hopefully he'll be ready to climb for real this winter sometime!
This weekend we did quite a bit of running around. It has been gorgeous this week (75°F & sunny vs. 55°F last week) so we took advantage of that. Saturday we hit up the Holiday Pet Festival at WestWorld. It was fun, but my god people are insane about their pets, even offering pictures with Santa! Some vendors even offer clergy services for per funerals...too much damn money in Scottsdale. Others just offered insanely expensive pet pampering services. We brought our dogs and they had a blast sniffing and smelling their way though the expo. Rohan even got a couple of stuffed animals (moose & elephant). They were meant to be dog toys but Rohan claimed them for himself. Later Saturday we met up with Heather & John (and friends) for the Electric Light Parade. We went last year, and Rohan had fun, but fell asleep in his warm cozy blanket. This year was MUCH warmer and Rohan had a blast, especially with the marching bands and mucial float. He was bee boppin' most of the time and kept waving to everything too. It was a blast to see him so enthralled.
Sunday was pretty low key. We finished off one of our better crock pot chili dinners and watched some football and relaxed. We found a few hours to climb and work out. The gym was pretty dead, so Rohan was all over the place jumping off mats and squealing. We capped of Sunday with some more cookie decorating which Rohan is a pro at now. We did however transfer them to other containers, which turned out to be too large of holes for the decorations. It led to Rohan burying a cookie in jingle balls...:) The cookie survived, and we salvaged most of the balls, but we ended up taping some of the holes up for the other ones. Mara also gave Rohan another haircut. He wasn't as cooperative this time, but it went well and he doesn't look quite as homeless...:)
The next few weeks will be VERY exciting since we will be headed to Germany for almost 3 weeks! With less than 2 weeks before we leave we got Rohan stocked up on gloves/hats, sweaters, and warmer PJs since the temps in Zweibrücken are MUCH cooler than Scottsdale...:) We came across an awesome ugly sweater for Rohan too. Hand knit, great quality, with mushrooms and 3D gnomes...hilarious...:)
Mara also found a GREAT backpack for Rohan while we are in Germany (For about 1/10 the cost!) on Craigslist. Our current backpack (compliments of Cari & Rob!) is great, but when Rohan falls asleep there isn't much padding and his face can chafe on the front. This one had a "pillowey" area which will be perfect! We've tried it out a couple of times and he loves it. He even pulls it out just to get into. We've checked the mail with him in the backpack quite a few times this last week.
Not much planned this week, just planning for Germany and sorting out all the minor details. We are so incredibly excited for this trip! :D
We have tons of video from the parade, but not lots of pics, but enjoy!:

Rohan Listens To A Waltz (Great-Grandma would've loved this!):

Rohan Dances To Tim & Allison's Song (Moondance). Everyone Else Sings SpongeBob Squarepants:

Rohan LOVED the train floats:

Santa Rides A Firetruck!:

2 Week Catchup (WI, Camping, Hiking, Thanksgiving, More Camping, More Hiking, Then More Hiking)

2010-11-29T11:32:00.002-07:00

Sorry for the lack of posting, we've been all over the place, and mostly without a PC to type up a blog post.
Last week Mara and Rohan headed back to WI for a residency interview, and while Mara went there, Rohan hung out with the Syring family (since the Bacon's will see him in Germany in <3 weeks!). Aunt Shelly took him to a wildlife sanctuary and then he hung out an played with G&G, Chris, & Jackson. Mara came back after her overnight & interview (which went great!). After more playing they woke up at 4am for Rohan's breathing and took him to the ER. It was most likely croup, so they gave him a steroid (which he reacts really well to). That didn't slow them down though, they hit up a parade where Rohan got so cold his lips were blue and his teeth were chattering. That's an AZ boy for ya...:) They also played at Michelle's friend Lisa's with her kids. They slept well that night! Michelle and Mara also found time to workout a couple times that day too, so they slept just fine also. After breakfast the next day, Mara and Rohan were headed back to warmer climates, but they had a blast. Thanks for all the hospitality from both Syring's and Bacons!While Mara and Rohan were gone, I had the house to my self. I spent most of the time keeping busy with running, climbing, and cleaning (so easy to do without Rohan!). Saturday I meet up with Jeanette and we headed out to Superior, AZ for TufaFest. Tufa is a climbing pro shop in the 4 indoor climbing gyms around Phoenix (it's also a type of rock). Scott, the owner, put on a festival for all the patrons of the gyms. There were probably 100+ people who got their early and climbed. We didn't get there in time to climb, but we got some great chili (and other food), and got an outdoor movie (Reel Rock Tour). One cool thing they did was build a bar that afternoon from scratch. They had tons of spare wood and fence parts. It turned out awesome, and was a blast to watch them work. They named it "Burn Bar", more on that later. After keeping warm by the fire, and meeting tons of new people, we went midnight bouldering at around 1am. We used headlamps and small lanterns donated by Black Diamond. It was a lot of fun, and I even got a couple routes in myself (not too bad for my weak bouldering skills coupled with m the cold!). We came back around 3am and the bar lived up to it's name, and we burned it. We did remove the liquor first though...:) The next day we had planned on climbing and desert yoga, but the wind and rain put a damper on that so we had to call it off...:(
After Mara and Rohan got readjusted to AZ warmth and time, it was just in time for Thanksgiving. We started off the day by hiking up to Tom's Thumb in the McDowell Mountains near our place. It's a great hike, with awesome views, and some climbing areas to check out. Rohan loved the hike, and was out with in 20 min. Linus was, as usual, cactus prone, and within 8 second of being on the trail, we had to pick a large chunk out of his paw. By the time we got to the top he was really chewing at his paw and not using it. Upon further inspection, we found a HUGE ant that he picked up and must have been biting his paw (see pics of the ant below). He was fine after that, besides a few burrs here and there. The views back across the valley were awesome, and we could see all the way to South Mountain, Estrella Mountain and the White Tanks. Now that we know our way around PHX better, it was a lot easier to pick out landmarks.
After the hike we cleaned up and headed to Sasha's for Thanksgiving. We also had an invite from Greg & Nico, but we had already committed to Sasha's. If they were closer we would have hit both for sure! Sasha had about 25 people, and TONS of food. Her family (sans brother) were in from Miami, FL, so it was good to see her Mom again, and finally meet her sister. Rohan loved crawling under the tables and charming everyone he met. Somehow he got a nice red wine stain on his shirt...:)
Friday after Thanksgiving we skipped the Black Friday crap, and headed back out to Superior for an overnight camping trip. I had been out there a couple times to climb and camp, but Mara was always busy or out of town, and she wanted to see the area. The temps were chilly (about 68°F) but also pretty windy. We found a GREAT site with an area we could put the tent to be protected from the wind. The fire-pit, however, was pretty exposed. We decided to hike a little to warm up, and due to lack of trails, we just hiked out into the desert boulder field and went from boulder pile to boulder pile. It was fun climbing on stuff and exploring. Rohan loved the ride too...:) We got back to camp, ate something quick, then headed out on another hike to the rock climbing/bouldering area I had visited last weekend. It was a lot different in the daytime, but glad we could see our way this time without headlamps! We found a couple people bouldering and talked to them a while. Turns out they were at TufaFest as well. They told us of some cool places we'll have to check out when we don't have Rohan & the dogs in tow (and when we get a crash pad!). After the hike Rohan crashed for a while, and we warmed up by the fire, made some coffee and enjoyed the outdoors. Rohan did fine at night, but I think was a little weirded out at first by the darkness and the eerie light cast by the fire. He did fine though and had a blast power lifting logs and drawing in the sand.
After some chilly temps in the morning (low of 33°F, car said 39°F), we headed back home and relaxed a bit. We did have to make our second stop by Triple C Coffee House in Superior. If you get a chance, they make an AWESOME chai, homemade bagles, and the granola is the best I've ever had. They also support the CUE program for kids. I wish they were closer!!! After we got home Mara and Rohan made some xmas cookies for a party Jeanette was throwing. Rohan had a blast decorating, and clearly showed his preference for decorating with his left hand. No one at the party seemed to mind the extra sprinkles...:)
Sunday was pretty low key. Football, running, and crockpot chili pretty much sums it up. We have to start running with gloves and hat now...:( We also took some time to go through all the pics & videos from WI & AZ over the last 2 weeks, so enjoy the bonanza!

What blog post would be complete without a jumping video? A failed jump this time...:

Rohan playing in the desert dirt:

Rohan decorating cookies for Jeanette's party:

The Siege of The Pillow Tower

2010-11-15T12:17:00.001-07:00

Not a whole lot new this week. Mara was on call twice this week, so most of the week was spent with Mara recovering post call, and Dad trying to wear Rohan out. That is becoming increasingly difficult.
Mara being on call usually means we get to meet for lunch the next day since she is usually off around 11am. It's been nice to have the break in the day too, and walk around downtown PHX without Rohan. When she is on call I usually follow our normal routine of taking him to the park across the street and kick the soccer ball around. From last week's post you can see how much he loves to run! This week there was a huge tournament there, and all the fields were taken. There is plenty of room on the sidelines so we can still kick it around. Rohan usually just watches everyone else play though. This last time a ball went out of bounce came right over to us and he ran up to it and kicked it about 15 feet back towards the field. Everyone around us clapped and was pretty impressed that a 20 mo-old was that coordinated. Rohan was pretty proud of his achievement...:) The rest of Saturday morning was spent watching/playing football, and building a kick ass fort. We used his tent from his room as a bedroom, the mattress from our hide-a-way as a hallway, and all the cushions and blankets we could find. It reminded me a lot of when we used to build forts at G&G's farm using the spare mattress on the stairs in the breezeway...good memories...:) The dogs eventually got curious and Schroeder got a little rowdy and knocked most of it down. Rohan didn't seem to mind and kept jumping on everything and tearing the rest down. Greg swung by and grabbed Chipotle with us. He's been working and studying so much it was nice to catch up with him a little as we he was on his way to a clinical rotation in the ER. FUN!
Sunday, after Mara got off work, we grabbed some picnic items and hit up a park Mara came across on one of her Peds rotations called Desert Horizon Park. It was an awesome park with tons of play equipment, swings, open spaces, and Rohan's favorite, a baseball game! There was a game between two Hispanic League teams. We watched 4-5 innings of it before Rohan started passing out on his way home on his soccer ball.
We spent the rest of Sunday grocery shopping for cookie ingredients and other essentials. Mara and Rohan made cookies (with toffee!!!) while I watched football and ate cookie dough. After supper and relaxing we reserected an old favorite of Rohan's, the pillow tower. He attacked the tower with ferocity for over an hour. Mara and I even got in the action and wore our selves out in the process...:)
Hope everyone had a great weekend. I heard it snowed in WI...that's a shame...:P

Turn your back for one second and Rohan does this:

Rohan still LOVES to attack the pillow tower:

Mom's turn to lead the charge:

Dad's turn!:

For those who want to the experience of the pillow attack, here is a first person view:

Week of jumping, playing and baths!

2010-11-08T20:32:00.000-07:00

This week we continued our habit of wearing Rohan out at the Scottsdale Sports Complex across the street. It REALLY gets him running and working on his coordination by kicking the soccer ball. His stamina has been increasing every time, and now he's running 3 and 4 lengths of the field, all while dribbling the soccer ball, as well as falling and being generally distracted by almost everything...:)
Mara has been working hard in the Pediatric ICU, and I have been hitting a crunch at work trying to get lots of experiments done at work before we go to Germany. I can't believe it's only 5 1/2 weeks away!!! We are insanely excited, an have already started planning and working out logistical issues. We can't wait to to meet our newest nephew, Lucas too! One thing I do want to accomplish is finding out where my Syring family came from. I haven't had too much luck tracking down a town of origin. Sadly, many of people who knew the genealogy have passed away. Hopefully I'll be able to get some info so I can take advantage of the 19 days we'll have in Europe.
The weekends have pretty much revolved around watching the Hawkeyes, followed by finding a park or area for Rohan to run. He's gotten a TON of baths recently since he usually finds an area that has been recently watered, or picks up grass or sand/dirt and dumps it on his head...:) We've been adding bubble bath to the mix, and he loves bathtime even more now!
One thing we realized this week is how much Rohan's daycare has been incorporating music and dancing into his curriculum. Mara found a channel on Pandora Radio called "Toddler Radio" and Rohan knew almost all the songs, and even had a couple of dance moves within the songs. We had no idea he knew so much. It was a great way to get him tired for bed, and by the end, he was just staring at the computer and listening to the songs.
We've also been letting him jump off almost everything. He's been piling the pillows up by the couch and jumping on his own. As you can see from the photos and video, his form is coming along well also. We've even started tossing the football to him mid-air for an added measure of difficulty. He'll have the best hands on his Pop Warner team...:)
Sunday we took some time in the morning to check out a new coffee shop called Dazbog. Their slogan is "I like my coffee tall, dark and Russian"...:) We loved the coffee, and it was a lot less like Starbucks than...well...Starbucks. Afterwards we caught Tim, Allison, & Cameron on webcam. Cam was adorable, and he kept saying "Hi Rohan!". Rohan was completely speechless and really just stared at the TV screen. I think he recognized everyone, but wasn't sure how they were interacting with him. It was great to catch up with them and see how much Cam has grown and become a big boy rather than just a big baby. I think we'll find more time to catch up that way, especially since they are no longer just a short drive away!
Not much else to report. We've scaled back our running a tad to adjust to our busier schedules as well as the small fact we won't be running much while we are in Germany, then have the full marathon less than 2 weeks later...should be a lot of walking, but we'll still have fun with it...:)
We hope everyone back in the Midwest is enjoying the last throws of Fall. Mara said it snowed in Amherst today...it was 75°F and beautiful here. We don't mind if people live vicariously through us...:)
Enjoy the pics and tons of video!

ShapeShifter Fun!:

Rohan Explores The Webcam Before Our Visit With Tim & Allison:

Stifling The Screams:

Jumping & Catching:

Dad's Sandals Are Better Than Mom's Heels...:):

Airplane Soccer

Rohan Runs The Pitch & Scores A Goal:

Jumping Practice:

Testing The Cookie Dough:

Pandora Toddler Channel:

Happy Halloween!

2010-11-01T09:20:00.000-07:00

Rohan has a BLAST trick-or-treating this year. Last year he hit up 2 houses before losing interest, but this year we went around Heather & John's neighborhood and Rohan walked the whole time! Mara put together a bucket for him to use using some of his artwork from daycare, it looked really cute! Who knew Mara had a crafty side!?!? :) Rohan was a little hesitant trick-or-treating at first since he's never really had to walk up to strangers and ask for things before. Once he realized they were putting things in his bucket, he was all about it. By the end of the hour he was walking up to houses on his own and holding out his bucket, then waving bye as he walked away. It was adorable...:) Everyone loved his glow-in-the-dark skeleton outfit from Grandma Syring. Afterwards we had pizza, and watched the rest of the Sunday Night Football game then watched Scared Shrekless. Rohan was super-hopped up on sugar and was running all over the place like a crazy kid. All he had was a few pieces of candy, but it was more than he's used to. He didn't put up a fight in the car and was asleep in no time. We think he had a great Halloween...:)
Friday night we had a nice little picnic at a park near us where Rohan was showing off his soccer skills, and also showing us how fast he is. He's no longer running like an infant with straight legs, he's running with bent knees and kicking his heels up. It's fun to see him have so much fun playing! He also showed us his climbing on the playground and climbed up a 6' wall (designed for 5 year olds) all by himself! Wish he would tolerate a harness so we can get him climbing at AZR!
Saturday we met Jeanette out for a bite to eat for breakfast. We hadn't been to the gym this week (with all the running we have been doing), so it was good to see her and Rohan LOVED to feed her strawberries...:) Afterwards we watched the #15 Hawkeye's (should be higher!) stomp the #5 (overrated) Spartans. An awesome makeup for last weekends missteps. We spent the rest of the day hanging out and playing.
Sunday we took the dogs to the dog park in the morning and enjoyed some outside time where Rohan could play with the dogs and the dogs could play with the dogs. Rohan wanted to watch football so we ended up at a new sports bar near us (Amore Sports Grill). Afterwards he took a great nap while we did some more running around and shopping before heading to Heather & John's for the night.
It was a great weekend! Hope everyone had a great Halloween weekend!

Rohan & Dad Trick-or-Treating:

Rohan Waits Patiently For Someone To Open The Door:

We Miss You Grandma!

2010-10-27T09:02:00.000-07:00

Anyone that knew her is a better person for it, she was just that awesome...:)

More running, more parks and more gorgeous weather!

2010-10-25T19:28:00.000-07:00

Most of our week is consumed by our three 6mi runs we do during the week, then one day of our weekend is tabbed for out longer runs. Right now its 18mi, but we aren't there yet. We can run most of it, but we at least run/walk the whole thing. Rohan does great on the longer runs, but sometimes when he's really tired he wants to sleep on his stomach, but the jogging stroller doesn't allow that so we usually have to put up with some whining, but it usually isn't too bad.
This last week, with all the running, we were only able to go climbing one night. This will probably continue while we are training for the marathon, but we'll keep our fingers and forearms in decent condition with once a week. Maybe we'll be able to sneak off for a climbing trip once, depending on Mara's schedule.
Speaking of, Mara just finished up her 2wk Hospice & 2wk Allergy/Immunology rotations and is now in her Pediatric ICU (PICU) rotation. It's a busy one for her again, with overnight call every 4th night, but she REALLY likes the people she works with, and she's interested in PICU, so it will be a good chance to see what it's all about.
Friday night we were graced by my Mom who was in Tuscon (about 1.5 hrs South), visiting a friend. they came up and met us at the McCormick Train Park to let Rohan run around. It was just after his nap and he wasn't really in a playing mood. However, as soon as we got to Buca di Beppo's he perked up and was quite a ham. We had a great time visiting with Mom, and she enjoyed seeing Rohan again. Maybe they'll be back this winter and escape the WI winter. After supper we went for a nice walk through the Scottsdale Civic Center Mall (since we ate SO MUCH at Buca's!). Rohan had a blast playing in their dozens of fountains and water features. We also found the LOVE statue we've seen in so many other pictures. The family one we had didn't turn out great, but Rohan had a BLAST climbing all over it. Afterwards we were still feeling full and we went and walked for a few hours after we got home. It was goreous outside, maybe even a little chilly at 65°F...:) Mom is in Tuscon, soaking up the sun until she has to go back on Friday. It was great to see her again!
Saturday hit up the dog park early then we met up with some friends at The Sandbar in Paradise Valley. Greg had always said it was a great Iowa Hawkeye bar...I had no idea they were so hard core. They have a club called the PHX I-Club! It was a blast, even though they lost to WI on some really bad coach/QB decisions...:( Afterwards we ran off our frustrations at the park with Rohan. He's having so much fun kicking a soccer ball. He's dribbled it 10-12 times in a row so far, and getting more coordinated every day. It's a lot of fun to watch. Hopefully soccer will be a gateway to "real" sports like baseball & football...:)
Sunday we did some running around, and hit the dog park again. It's great to wear Rohan and the dogs out at the same time! Rohan has so much fun watching the dogs, and really likes the Golden Retrievers and similarly sized dogs. He's in awe of the Great Danes and Mastiffs, and just stares at them. They are like little horses! After watching a little football we headed out for our long, 18mi run. it felt good, and the hot tub afterwards REALLY helped loosed our hips and calves which aren't used to 18+ miles.
While we recover, enjoy the pics & vids!:

Rohan showing off his swimming skillz:

Rohan throughly enjoys his pasta:

Last 2 weeks in a nutshell...Running, Baseball, & Viruses.

2010-10-18T10:54:00.001-07:00

This post will encompass the last couple weeks. We were pretty busy, and I had a work function to prepare for so we didn't get a post in last week.
The weather has been absolutely gorgeous these last two weeks, and we're remembering why we liked Phoenix so much! We've been able to work back into a more rigorous running schedule as well, and try to catch up on our marathon training (without getting injured!).
Last week we did some of our usual routes for our 6-7 mile runs. Mara had the great idea to utilize one of Phoenix's lesser known park systems, the Scottsdale Greenbelt. It's a 25mi trail running from near our house to the NW edge of Tempe. We did a really nice LSD run (Long Slow Distance)from Tempe to Shea hospital, a total of 13+ mi. It was long, but the parks and such were really nice to go though, especially the ones with water. We found a couple new parks to take Rohan to also. We went the next day and hit up one with an awesome play area and TONS of ducks to feed. Rohan is getting pretty good at throwing so most of his bread pieces even make it to the water.
The highlight for me last week was our TGEN retreat with our research partner group Van Andel Research Institute. VARI is out of Grand Rapids, MI so they come here once a year and we go there once a year to help stimulate research and update everyone on current advances in our labs. This year TGEN (somehow) organized a TGEN/VARI softball game at Chase Field, where the AZ Diamondbacks play! We've gone to several games, so it was awesome be able to be on the field. Everyone had a huge smile on their face for the privilege to be playing on a major league field! It was a really fun time too. They played George Carlin's skit on Baseball vs. Football, and gave us drink tickets as well, and rented out the Strike Zone Lounge (a bar usually reserved for VIPs) so it was a very casual atmosphere. That being said, TGEN whooped VARI with a 6 run 5th inning to win 10-8...:) I played pretty good as well. I was 1 for 1 (we had 30 people playing) with an infield hit (see video), and a run scored. I also had 2 catches in left-center and an outfield assist by throwing someone out at 2nd. All in all an awesome night!
Last week we also gave Rohan another haircut. He was in desperate need of one, and in most of our pictures in WI he looked like a little dutch girl with his hair flipped out to the side. We got TONS of ammo before we started. Coloring books, food, drinks, and books. Mara did the cutting and I did the distractions. He did pretty good, and Mara did an awesome job with the haircut too. Saved us $15 if we took him to one of those specialty kids haircut places! He looks like such a little man now...:)
Saturday we took Rohan to a health fair at Scottsdale Shea Hospital (one Mara has rotated through). They had a sweet petting zoo, firetrucks, bounce houses, food, and police cars. Rohan was completely geeked the whole time. He LOVED his fireman's hat, which is almost identical to the one Jackson has at G&G's that Rohan wouldn't leave alone. Rohan also got to take a teddy bear through the Teddy Bear Clinic in the children's ER. He was getting pretty tired at that point, but he did seem to enjoy it by the end. His bear got a band-aid, some medicine, and some TLC. We skipped the Electrocardiogram due to the line and Rohan's need to nap, but we had fun. Afterwards we relaxed and watched IA whoop on MI. GO HAWKS!
Later Saturday we went on another longer run (just 10mi this time). It felt good, and we used the Greenbelt Trail again. We really enjoy running on that with all the parks and water, and a trail that has very few bumps in it. It really is a lot of fun to run on . This time we just went from Shea hospital to the dog park and back. It's also a neat way to see parts of Scottsdale and Paradise Valley we are familiar with in a car, but now we see them from a pedestrian view.
Sunday was spent in a achy, virus (we think) laden haze. Whether it was something we ate, or a 24hr virus, but we spent most of the day taking turns napping, trying to keep up with Rohan, and trying to eat something. I think we had a few spoons of yogurt & applesauce, part of a candy bar, and a 1/2 bowl of cereal all day. We feel a little better today, but still feeling the effects from yesterday. Rohan seems to be doing just fine and he ate most of what we ate, so we are leaning towards a virus he didn't get. Hopefully it won't interfere with our training too much this week, especially since we have an 18mi run scheduled for Saturday...we'll see about that...:)
Hope everyone had a great week. Enjoy the pics & vids:

My base hit at Chase Field!:

How to wear out Rohan:

Rohan Dancing to a Hispanic dance group:

A Break In The Heat & Nate Swings Through

2010-10-05T09:28:00.003-07:00

After setting a week's worth of record highs (which says something in the desert!), the temps finally broke and we are living comfortably in the mid-80s. After our trip to WI, then 110F we had was a little much. Streptococcus was also a little much for me, and I got taken down Monday. Tuesday, Nate came through after his golf week with some Nebraska buddies in UT & NV. We hit up Papago Park Golf Course while he was here. It was friggin' hot, but the fluids were replaced with plenty of Gatorade & beer.
John & Heather were kind enough to take Rohan Friday night & Saturday while we climbing and caught up with Nate. We REALLY appreciate them being so close to do that! That and Rohan loves the break from Mom & Dad too! :)
We hung out at Greg & Nico's a couple nights, and then Saturday we celbrated Mara's birthday and headed back to Jack's Canyon for some climbing. It had been a while (~6 yrs) since Greg & Nate had been out, so they had a lot of fun getting back into it. It rained on us a little, but not too awful. We're tough mid-westerners who can take a little rain. They bugs were a little much, but we toughed it out as well. We all got to lead & top-rope at least 2 routes, and Mara got to practice cleaning the wall and self-belaying down. All in all a great trip.
We had to cut climbing short a little since we had a going away party for a friend, Heidi, from AZR. Nate came back, but unfortunately Greg & Nico didn't make it. We headed to Jeanette's house for cake, apps, and of course, beer pong. Nate & Mara dominated! It was a LONG day, lasting until 3am. Add in climbing and it was exhausting. Rohan didn't help us too much, and slept until about 5am. I let the birthday girl sleep it off...:) We wish Heidi the best in NV. Rohan will miss his babysitter!
We hit up The Good Egg with Nate and he headed back on his long drive to Des Moines. We were REALLY glad be made the time to stop by PHX. It was great to see him.
We capped off the weekend with dinner at Ruby Tuesdays with Heather & John for Heather & Mara's birthdays. It was great to catch up with them, and thank them again for taking Rohan, who by the way, charmed every damn waitress in the restaurant, and even a couple of customers. He was playing hide & seek over the booth and being about a cute as he can be...:)
Not much planned this week. Just getting back into running and climbing. With WI, strep & Nate, we neglected our running a little, but if we don't get back into it now, then when? :)
Hope everyone had a great weekend. Stay warm Midwest!!

Nate warms up & NASCAR yells in the canyon:

Nate climbs the aptly named "Jack Off" route:

A view from the top of "Jack Pot" courtesy of our free Flip cam:

One more look over the edge for Michelle...:)

Mara's Post Climb Birthday shot of Jack Daniels:

Rohan Enjoys listening to 50 Cent & playing with light saber apps:

This Week In WI Brought To You By Coffee & Outside Time

2010-09-28T08:37:00.000-07:00

Wow, can't believe we're already back in AZ, our trip went WAY to fast!

Our vacation started on Friday by both of us getting off of work a bit early, picking Ro up from daycare then hitting the pool since it was 110°F. Then we packed up the dogs and headed over to Sasha's to drop the dogs off for the week, THANK YOU Sasha! We had Indian for dinner then enjoyed some wine and old school Karate Kid (wow, hadn't seen that in almost 20 years!) before crashing for a few hours. Sasha dropped us off at the airport at 5am and we were on our way!

Despite an extended layover in Chicago due to some thunderstorms, we were ready to go when we landed in Green Bay. We were greeted by an AWESOME welcoming crowd, complete with posters! It was so nice to see Larry, Deb, Jen, Taylor, Kaylee, Chris, Shell, and Jackson, we definitely had the biggest group waiting for our plane! Once we got back to Chris, Shell, and Jackson's we got a tour of their beautiful home (seriously jealous of ALL the space) complete with decorations for Larry & Deb's 40th Anniversary. After the tour we hit the backyard for some outdoor time and to wear the kids out, we succeeded, but only temporarily. We then enjoyed a wonderful meal put together by everyone but us:) It was delicious! We prepared some "accessories" for the honorees and then made them wear them while we watched a slide show of pictures over the last 40 years, there were some fantastic pictures! We completed the evening with lots of running around by the kids, s'mores by the fireplace, wonderful cake, and IOWA football.

Sunday we got up, had breakfast courtesy of Deb (mmm--monkey bread and breakfast casserole), and hung out with Jen and the girls before they headed back to IA. Shell, Mike & I went on a quick 6.4 mile run before the Packer game, it was a beautiful 65°F fall day and a great run, can't wait for more weather like that here in AZ. Our friends Pete & Beth Fritz drove up from Milwaukee to watch the Packer game, it was really great to see them and the next time we see them there will be another Fritz Packer Fan! The rest of the day was spent running around inside and outside as long as the mosquitoes would leave us alone, definitely don't miss that!!!

Monday, Jackson went to daycare and Chris had to work, so Shell, Mike, and I hit they YMCA for some weightlifting while Rohan enjoyed the kiddie play area. After the Y we headed over to Amherst to have lunch with my family. Shell, Larry, and Deb joined the Bacon crew of Dan, Holly, Roger, John, Grandma and Grandpa Hansen, and of course us! We can't forget Lucy, she seemed to remember us and didn't hold a grudge against Rohan. We had another wonderful meal and Rohan got a chance to get reacquainted with the Bacons. We even took him to the Farm to see the calves/cows, climb on the tractors, trucks, and anything else he could get a hold of. We headed back to Appleton to hit the mall with Chris and Jackson before meeting up with Larry & Deb for Jimmy Johns! Rohan took his first nap in 3 days--a whole 20 minutes on the way to Green Bay.

Tuesday Jackson stayed home from daycare so we could head up to Door County and get the boys some more outside time. They had a blast at the Dunes in Sturgeon Bay, Rohan's first time playing in Lake Michigan. We found sand EVERYWHERE, should have taken a picture of the tub after the boys were done with it! After "the waves" as Jackson calls it we decided to grab some lunch, unfortunately PC Junction was closed, next time. We ended up in Egg Harbor at Shipwrecked, a micro-brewery/diner with a naked Mermaid that kept Jackson's attention for quite a while. Rohan was so exhausted from the waves that he slept through most of lunch but woke up in time to have a picnic of leftovers at a little park on the water in Egg Harbor. Then we headed to a coffee place and in search of an apple orchard, we had success in finding coffee, not so much on the orchard, oh well, we had fun looking for one:) We got back to Green Bay in time for Jackson to go to swim lessons, Shell got a workout in, Mike & I did a 9.5 mile run, while Chris & Rohan watched Jackson swim. Thanks for watching him Chris, we had a great run and the swarms of mosquito's encouraged us to keep moving and not slow down for long!

Wednesday we woke up to a very sick Jackson, he had Strep throat and felt/looked miserable. Shell was able to get him into the doctor but he pretty much slept the day away. Larry & Deb came up to Green Bay and picked up Mike, Ro, & I to hit an apple orchard and petting zoo. Rohan enjoyed all of that but I think the highlight of the morning was being able to go on a real school bus, he loved it, and the driver even let him sit in the drivers seat! We picked up pumpkins to carve but Jackson slept the rest of the afternoon and Rohan ended up taking a nearly 3 hour nap too, so we didn't get to them. Thankfully the antibiotics and Tylenol/ibuprofen had kicked in and Jackson woke up from his nap feeling much better, just in time to go to the NEW Zoo, free on Wednesdays from 4-6pm! We all loved the zoo, it was awesome that we could feed the giraffes, Rohan wasn't so sure that was a good idea. Ro also tried very hard to get as close to the animals as possible, even going so far as to put his head through the railing and briefly getting it stuck on his ears. He was NOT happy! Jackson did great at the Zoo especially considering how crappy he had been feeling. When we got back from the zoo Larry & Deb volunteered to watch the boys so we all could go to the gym. Mike & Chris played a mean game of racquetball while Shell & I did some weights, cardio, then a 45 minute pilates class, it was awesome!! Mike & I even did a cool down run on the 2 miles back to Chris & Shells. I think we all slept well that night.

Thursday Shell had a work meeting in Peewaukee and we tagged along, dropped her off, and went to see some old familiar sights and to visit some good friends in Milwaukee. We, of course, headed right down to Alterra and enjoyed a cup of coffee and some breakfast out on their patio, it was another beautiful day, although a bit mugger than we are currently used to. We had some time to kill so we walked down to the docks to admire the yachts and Rohan had the chance to climb in and check out a firetruck, he loved it! Then we met up with Mike's old boss and some co-workers from MCW, it was great to see Nikki, Crawford, Tina, Christy, PJ, and Paul and to enjoy some delicious Indian food and one of our old favorites. After lunch we grabbed a quick treat at City Market and met up with some of our old co-workers from the BRI (where we met 8 years ago!), I haven't been back in 3 years and it was great catching up with Corbett, Hope, Brad, and Shawn. They were all excited to see Rohan, but he was exhausted and insisted on sleeping through our visit:) After all of our running we made it back in time to pick up Shell and her co-worker just as their meeting ended. We grabbed Jimmy Johns on the way home and spent the evening relaxing and letting the boys chase each other around.

Friday, Chris & Shell let us borrow their car and we headed back over to Amherst to stay at my parents with my sister and her family for a couple days. It was so awesome, when we got there, Sam came running out of the house, ran up to Rohan and gave him such a big hug his feet came off the ground! Too bad none of us got that on video! It was extremely windy (gusts to 40mph) and drizzly most of the day but we played outside with the boys, went down to see the cows and equipment and Mike & I even squeezed in a short 4 mile run in the hills with the wind/rain. It was a fun run, especially since it isn't weather we deal with much these days:) When the boys got up from their naps we ran into Waupaca to go to a park with lots of water, it was quite the challenge keeping the boys out of the water, including Mike! Then we picked up some supplies for a family get together that was to include a bonfire, but concerns over the Bacon's and their pyro side we decided to hold off with the high winds. It was really great to see more family and to watch Rohan interact with everyone, he is one super-social child! We had a lot of fun trying to perfect our indoor s'mores making via the microwave or directly over the flat top stove, mom wasn't a huge fan of the stove's use:) I think Rohan, Sam & Wyatt ran at least a mile worth of laps around my parents house, so fun to watch them chase and squeal!

Saturday involved more outside play, another trip to the farm and a visit to the cows/equipment. By the third visit Rohan was running at the cows and trying to touch them, he really warmed up to them, the cows were curious about him but wouldn't let him get to close. We were glad he had a chance to see some more animals. We had plans to visit JR's Petting Zoo in Waupaca, but it turns out I can't read and didn't realize Hours: 9-5 MD-LD meant they were closed Labor Day to Memorial Day, I am bit slow:) They offered to let us look at a few deer but we opted to head over to Turner's Market and do their Corn Maze. It was a lot of fun, not only is it a maze, they have a question/answer game that you have to find all of the stations for. Rohan once again, couldn't contain his excitement and fell asleep on Grandpa and was then transferred between Grandma/pa for the rest of the maze(don't think they minded). Sam had a great time leading us through and was quick to point out if we hit a dead end! After a lunch of Chinese we headed home where the big boys enjoyed some college football and we played outside some more, even had snack time outside. All 3 boys loved all the outdoor time! The wind died down enough in the evening that we could have a bonfire complete with s'mores and wine! I love a good bonfire on a chilly fall evening!

Sunday morning we got up early and packed up everything to head to Appleton and meet up with some of Mike's extended family that were in town for the weekend. We had a great breakfast and caught up, if briefly, with all of them. After breakfast we took Rohan to the VFW Legion nearby since they have 2 tanks, a WWII aircraft, and 2 giant anchors. He LOVED them and loved playing on them! We met up with Chris, Shell, and Jackson and went for coffee and to another great park. The boys and the rest of us had a blast climbing, running, playing on all of the equipment. When we got back to Larry & Deb's we took the boys over to play on all the diggers, bulldozers, and dump trucks. I think they had almost as much fun as Mike:) We enjoyed a dinner of salad and pizza, watched some football, and let the boys play until it was time to head to the airport.

We got back to PHX at about 1030pm Sunday and were home, passed out in bed by 1130pm. Rohan, unfortunately is on Central time still and got up at 4am ready for breakfast, I woke up to him sitting in his high chair, trying to get the tray attached:) Mike woke to a temp of 102°F and whopping case of Strep throat complete with exhaustion and body aches! We heard Chris is also a confirmed Strep victim, lets hope the rest of us are able to avoid that!

We had a wonderful, but too short, visit! Thank you to all for taking the time to see we really appreciate being able to see so many people in such a short amount of time! Thanks again to The Stokes & The Bacons for their hospitality! We really look forward to seeing family & friends, anyone is welcome to come to AZ anytime:)

Enjoy the AV smörgåsbord:
Our Time with The Bacon/Aho Families:

Our time with the Syring & Stokes Clans (including the night before we left):

AND NOW FOR THE VIDEO PORTION OF OUR SMÖRGÅSBORD!
If you want to see ALL the videos (we had almost 50!), goto my YouTube Channel.

Rolling Down The Hill

The Happy Couple Cut The Cake

Jackson Giving Rohan A Trike Tour

Rohan & Jackson Beat Back The Waves

Rohan The Bus Drivin' Man

Rohan & his giraffe friend

Lions Playing

Climbing on rice bags at the Indian market

Imagine 2hrs of this going to Milwaukee

Finally getting tired of it

Rohan & Sam Drive The Cart

Rohan, Sam & Wyatt Running Laps

Strongbaby

Superstar Michelle

Rohan & Jackson Being Boys

Rohan Knocks 'em Down

Trying To Wear Rohan Down

2010-09-14T13:05:00.000-07:00

Last week was pretty low key for us. Mara was fighting off a minor strep throat infection and Rohan and I were getting over some viral thing that wore us out too.
Dispite being sniffly and wheezy, Rohan has been getting so much more active lately. It's been a lot of fun to see him recognize different sports and their equipment. We live next to a large soccer complex and we've checked out some of the games last weekend. He follows the ball and the players for quite a while before he gets bored (longer than me!). We also took the time to hit the driving range, playground and dog park all trying to wear him out. He just keeps going! :)
Rohan has been jumping off the couches onto a pile of pillows & blankets and when he's bored with what we're doing (cleaning or finishing supper) he'll just go over and start diving off the couch. It's pretty funny to watch him do his own thing, and even more fun to don a cape and jump with him...:)
Saturday Mara was on call so Sasha came over and brought Abbey and our friend, Rickie's dog, Jack Bauer. They all played well together, especially Jack & Schroeder (see video). We hit up Horizon Dog Park for a bit, then I headed to Jimmy Johns to pick up subs for Mara and I. She had a short break and was able to come eat with us. Rohan was pretty geeked to see her too, and went running as soon as he saw her. Mara has just this week left on this rotation before a week off in WI, and then Allergy/Immunology and Hospice next month (2 wks each).
Not much else this week. We are CRAZY excited to head to WI for a week+ next week. There will be PLENTY of picture and TONS of videos when we get back from there. The cooler weather will be a nice break. It will be great to see friends & family we haven't see for while!
Enjoy the pics & vids from this last week!:

Schroeder & Jack Play:

Rohan's StongBaby:

Jumping Fools:

Awesome 3-Day Weekend!

2010-09-06T17:16:00.000-07:00

This week Mara was on call on Friday meaning she was in the hospital at 5:30am Friday, and didn't leave until Noon on Saturday. It meant some more Dad & Rohan bonding time, which we took full advantage of. We ran all over the place. From playing catch, to chasing the dogs, and learning to jump off the furniture. All the good stuff Dad's teach boys...:)
Friday night we also put together a crock pot of Beef Machaca for a Hawkeye party at Greg & Nico's. So Saturday morning we packed up and headed over to Avondale. IA played N. Illinois, and made the fans proud by smoking the D-II team 37-7! A great start to the college football season! We were also celebrating Greg's birthday (a day early).
Mara was able to join us after her shift and we hung out for a while before touring Nico's parent's gorgeous new house. We headed back home for a nap and some relazation. We took the dogs to the Horizon Dog Park by our place, and otherwise had a nice relaxing evening.
Sunday we had an unexpected, but awesome, invite to climb with some friends from AZR. Jeanette called us Saturday night and said some of them had decided to head up north to climb last minute. We headed up to Jacks Canyon where we had hiked before, but never climbed. The group we went with was awesome! Very encouraging for outdoor rookies like us. Mara and I both lead climbed a 5.8, and climbed a couple 5.9s and a 5.10! I got to "clean" a 5.10 (where you take all the hardware off the wall), and at the top got to self-repel down. It was a rush! Now we have a little more experience under our belts, and can't wait to get back there to try our more routes! Rohan did great as usual, and once he got his rock legs back, he was bouldering and running all over the place.
After a long day of climbing we were rewarded with an amazing sunset over the canyon that looks like something our of the Serengeti Plains. We were also "rewarded" with a dinner stop at the Strawberry Lodge in the tiny town of Strawberry, AZ. It was a little on the podunk side, but the Fat Tire tasted good and at that point I would have eaten whatever they put in front of us, which we did...:) There was some nice photographs from a local photographer who only charges $2.00 for an 8"x10". Who can resist an 8"x10" of 2 deers mating in her front yard?!? Seriously, I couldn't make that up if I tried...:)
Monday (Labor Day) was spent with a trip to REI for some more (small) climbing gear and a trip to the Chapperal Dog Park to thoroughly wear out the dogs and Rohan.
Enjoy the A/V frenzy!:

Rohan learning to jump off the furniture:

Rohan enjoys the bumpy ride back to Jacks Canyon:

Mike climbing and repelling a 5.10:

Mara climbing a 5.10:

Happy 7th Anniversary Chris & Shell!!!

2010-09-06T15:27:00.000-07:00

Good Friends, Good Runs, Bad Viruses

2010-08-31T22:05:00.001-07:00

This last week was fairly uneventful. Mara has started her "audition rotation" at Maricopa Hospital. Essentially, it's where she wants to do her residency, and this way they can see her in action and then they interview her in the end. She's been doing great, and has gotten a ton of excellent feedback. Last Tuesday, and Sunday she was on call overnight at the hospital. It was pretty slow on Tuesday, but she had 6 admits on Sunday, so it kept her busy until 2:30am. Rohan and I got to hang out and enjoy some father/son time...:)
Friday we met up with Sasha, Xiomy, Jeanette, and Marc for dinner/drinks at Daily Dose. Sasha had just returned from her rotations in OH & TX the last few months so we got to catch up with her. It will be good to have our climbing/yoga partner back!
Saturday we headed out to Cosmo Dog Park in Chandler because they have a lake for dogs to swim in. Turns out it was closed until Sept. 1st, but they dogs still go to run around and got soaked with a hose they had out. Afterwards we took Rohan to the Fountain Hills fountain which also has a wicked splash pad. I think I would have enjoyed it! There were tons of water features, and the temps were just about perfect (~95F). We also took some time to feed the ducks some of Rohan's crackers. Rohan got the hang of it pretty quickly, and really liked feeding them. Schroeder kept inching closer trying to inquire about the ducks, but they would scoot away every time he started getting close. Not sure if he'd like the water as much as Lucy did, but he does seem to get a little deeper every time we take him somewhere.
Saturday we also had a long run for our marathon training. We were scheduled to run 14mi, but ended up only getting ~12mi in before walking the last 2.5mi in. Once it cools down a bit more, it will be easier to do those longer runs...we hope...
Sunday Mara went into work around 6am so Rohan and I got to spend the whole day together. We ran into TGEN so I could add an enzyme to my DNA extractions and embed some tissue samples. He seemed pretty enthralled with the whole process. Afterwards we headed to Greg & Nico's where they gave me their old grill since they got the Cadillac of grills. It took a bit to disassemble the grill, but it fit in the RAV eventually. Rohan and I headed home and watched some football and baseball on top of playing around with the dogs. Rohan was wore out by 7:45 (usually goes to bed at 8:30 or 9), and I was recovering from some virus so I was down by 8:30. Rohan was up briefly at 10, but then slept through the night until 5:30. We both needed the rest!
Mara was off around Noon Monday, and we met for coffee before she headed home for a nap. Overall a good relaxing weekend!

The Fountain Hills fountain:

Rohan learning to catch (needs a lot of work...):

Rohan shows off his "Tired Dance":

Rohan finds the little things to entertain him:

Recovery Week

2010-08-23T16:37:00.000-07:00

After Tim & Allison's visit last weekend we've slowly been recovering. We either caught a virus from them, Rohan, or one of Mara's peds patients, but it took us down a notch. My liver also had to recover since I am not used to drinking Jack Daniels 4 days straight with no sleep and a crazy high activity level. But we'll do it again when they come back out! Most of this week was spent vegging and recovering. We skipped climbing & yoga as well as 2 runs, but we fit in a third and still got most of our 10 miler in later in the week.
Thursday we ran our 3mi recovery run, then Friday night we ran our 10mi long run. It was brutal, and slow, but it still felt good in the end. We did happen upon some more wildlife as well. We were running along the base of the McDowell Mountains when we heard a rustling in the brush between us and a gated community. Then we heard the antlers scraping the wall and trees, then the hooves, then the galloping. The, either small Elk, or large deer, ran along side us for a few feet before shooting ahead and across the road in front of us. It wasn't real well lit, but you could tell it was big, plus the hooves on the concrete sounded pretty heavy.. It definitely got our hearts pumping! Add that to the javelina, rattlesnake, kingsnake, coyotes, and countless bunnies, lizards, spiders and ants, its like we're running through a friggin' zoo!
Saturday (our 5 year anniversary, as well as both our parents') we took advantage of the cooler weather (from a storm Friday night) and took the dogs to the dog park. By the time we got there the sun had begun to UV irradiate everything, making it pretty muggy and uncomfortable. We lasted about 45 min before heading out. We took Rohan to the DC Ranch splashpad to cool off though, and that felt awesome. It was good to cool him down and wear him out at the same time, although he only got an hour long nap in before heading to Heather & John's for a pool volleyball party. We had 3 teams of 5, and they were all pretty closely matched so it was a lot of fun. We crashed hard Sat. night after almost 6 hours of pool, sun, & volleyball time. As always, the Schmit's hospitality was awesome! The sunset when we left was really intense, lighting up the thunderhead clouds on the other side of the mountain.
Sunday was pretty laid back in the morning. We played with Rohan and then hit up a Diamondbacks game at 1:00. We only stayed through the 7th inning since it was one of the most boring games we've been to (and we've been to a lot!). It was a classic pitchers duel, with the DBacks losing 0-1. We did see some awesome defense, but the lack of crown enthusiasm made it boring. They said 30,000 people were there, but it seriously seemed like a high school girls tennis match. We got out and bummed around Scottsdale a little that afternoon, then relaxed until the evening. We met our friend, Jeanette, out in Fountain Hills at a little creamery called La Scala. They have a meeting there every full moon and just chat. It's very casual, the food is awesome, and Rohan loved the fountain that Fountain Hills is famous for (sprays 560 ft in the air!). On our way over we had to stop twice to get pictures of another gorgeous sunset, with crepuscular rays that were stretching across the whole sky and even giving a glow to the full moon! Rohan was sleeping when we got there, but he woke up and MAN was he hungry! We think he's going through another growth spurt because he ate tons of veggie pizza at the Schmit's plus a whole waffle, tons of fruit, and 5 or 6 agar berries. He was charming everyone and doing yoga poses and flashing some smiles. We'll definitely be going back. The owners of La Scala were the ones who put on the gathering, and they could not have been nicer!!! Seriously reminded me of Grandma's house. "Are you hungry?" "No." "Have a seat. Here's waffles, fruit, sides, wine..." etc...etc...
Rohan has been talking A LOT more, using his phone toy and chatting at his books. We can't wait until he starts talking more. He's got More (Mah) & Please (Pa), Car (Ca) & Truck (Ck). Hard to distinguish car & truck sometimes, but he gets super excited every time. On our way to the DBacks game Mara had him on her back and all the sudden he just started squealing and hitting her shoulders. Turns out a bus was stopping at the bus stop right next to us and he thought it was the coolest thing EVER! The bus was more exciting than the game...:)
Most of our videos are of Rohan entertaining us, but we also have lots pics of him on top of that. None from Heather & John's, but we'll add them when we steal them from her blog...:) Enjoy!

Fun With Bubbles!:

Dad Teaching Rohan His Animal Sounds:

Rohan Reads "The Pokey Puppy" To Mom:

Rohan Has A Funny Conversation With Himself On The Phone:

Happy Birthday Jennifer!

2010-08-22T11:01:00.000-07:00

Happy birthday Jennifer!!! Hope you are feeling better, and get well soon!!!

Happy Anniversaries!!!

2010-08-21T10:36:00.009-07:00

A Happy 5th Anniversary to my lovely wife Mara!

From All Pics

A Happy 40th to my parents, Larry & Deb (Love this picture!):

From 08.21.2010 - Anniversaries & birthdays

A Happy 34th to Mara's parents, Dan & Holly:

From 04.05.2010

Adult Weekend!

2010-08-18T07:44:00.000-07:00

This last week/weekend Tim & Allison came to visit the Syring household. Allison has an (almost) 2yr old and was in need of a much deserved break. Her parents were able to watch them and on Friday the 13th they flew into the Phoenix-Mesa Gateway airport. It was pretty great from the beginning because the Mesa airport is so small and under construction, they only have one terminal and the baggage claim is outside! It's like we were back in Kirksville! [shudder] One bonus is that this airport has somewhat cheaper flights than Sky Harbor, so check it out if you want to come visit us!
From the second they set foot on AZ soil, it was just like old times. We had blast catching up on the ride back to Phoenix. I gave them a tour of TGEN, followed by Starbucks (of course) and relaxing at the grotto at the AZ Center. We headed and picked up Rohan at daycare and went out to our favorite Sushi restaurant, RA. We ate enough sushi to feed a village, then headed to S. Phoenix to drop Rohan off at Heather & John's. They were awesome to take Rohan for the next couple days, so we could all enjoy a little adult getaway/stay-cation. We took full advantage of our time away from the kiddos. We capped Friday off with some Two Buck Chuck wine for Mara & Allison, and Beer & Jack Daniels for Tim and I. We hit the pool for almost an hour before watching several episodes of Three Sheets & Archer, and calling it a night around 1 a.m. (3 a.m. T&A's time!).
We were up surprisingly early on Saturday morning...:) We bummed around in the morning, then hit up AZR to climb. It had been since college that Tim or Allison had climbed, so it was fun to relive those days, and also realize why they hadn't climbed since...:) They both did awesome for not climbing in almost 10 years (both made it up routes), and like all fresh climbers, their forearms were aching by the end of the first hour. After climbing we headed over to Greg & Nico's to cool off in their salt water pool. It was 110°F in Phoenix this last weekend, but without the humidity, T&A thought it felt awesome. They prepared for the worst, and it was not near the blast furnace they were expecting. Allison did mention it was really hot a couple of times though... The pool got a great workout with 5 grown adults acting like they were 13 again. Greg probably has to add 4,000 gallons of water back into his pool after we splashed so much out of it! Good times though...and the pics will show that. We also were able to see Nico's parents and celebrate their anniversary with tons of meat on the grill and copious amounts of adult beverages.
Sunday was very much subdued. Wait...no it wasn't. We were REALLY honored by having our climbing, massage, and yoga instructor friend, Jeanette, teach us a private yoga class! We all felt like crap going in after a long Saturday night, but afterwards we were all feeling great and ready for our next adventure...hiking Devil's Bridge in Sedona. With Me, Mara, Tim, Allison, & Jeanette the drive up and back was a riot, and the car was never quite the whole trip. The hike was awesome as usual. Mara and I had only done it once last year, so it was great to get back to the area (Sedona is gorgeous!). The hike was well worth the drive, and we had some fun on the bridge too. We all hiked up food and had an awesome picnic, with a view that's hard to beat! Jeanette hiked up watermelon and the rest of us brought supplies for ham and swiss sourdough sandwiches, along with several types of hummus and pretzels. After the hike we took a bit and walked through Tlaquepaque, an art colony in downtown Sedona. Perfect cap to a great hike.
When we got back to Phoenix, we had a late grilling session (supper around 9:30 p.m.) and Rohan rejoined the fracas. He obviously had a blast at Heather & John's, and after saying "Hi" to everyone, crashed hard for the rest of the night. We stayed up until around Midnight, chatting and drinking. Jeanette worked on Allison's tight muscle, and in turn, Mara worked on Jeanette's back. Tim & I brought nothing to the table, so we just B.S.'d and drank.
Monday Tim and I got up early and hit up the TPC Scottsdale for some world class golf. It's the same place the Phoenix Open is held (which I worked this last February), and has some famous holes and history. When I made the reservation a month ago, I was concerned what the weather in Phoenix would be in Mid-August. It turned out to be one of the nicer days of T&A's visit. Mostly cloudy, a slight breeze, and awesome course conditions! Tim and I got paired with a Canadian and New York pair that were visiting AZ. They were great to play a round of golf with. Tim played with his old clubs he gave Mara a while back, and ended up losing to me by one stroke...something I will never let him live down. I had several pars and even a birdie on the course, so I was really happy with that; especially since I haven only played one other time since last October. After a couple beers in the clubhouse and soaking it all in, we went to Ketzal for some great Mexican food and salsa. After lunch we hit up MoJo before picking up Rohan and kabob supplies. Greg & Nico came over and we hung out for the rest of the night.
4:45 a.m came early Tuesday morning and I took T&A back to the tiny airport. We had an absolute blast with them, and can't wait to see the whole Peet family next time! We all needed the break from everything, and I think we succeeded in completely wearing everyone out to the point of total exhaustion, which will take a couple of days to recover from, if not longer for any vital organs that were affected (i.e. the liver)...:)
There are tons of pictures (but not a lot of video for lots of reasons). Enjoy!

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The most greatest achievement in auto engineering...the perfectly sync'd blinker:

More Good Weather, More Baseball, & More Snakes!

2010-08-08T21:22:00.000-07:00

The weather has broke a little bit here in PHX. The temps have been in the low to mid 100's, but the humidity has bottomed out quite a bit. We went from 60% to 20%, and that made a HUGE difference. We took advantage of better weather and hit up First Friday with Xiomy, but first we made a stop at the Children's Museum, which is free on First Friday. Needless to say, it was packed! Rohan was all over the place (which is the point). He was touching everything, climbing on everything, and wearing himself down. His favorite installation was the Noodle Forest. It was thousands of swim noodles suspended from the ceiling. He warmed up to it after a few minutes, and then couldn't get enough. After everything he crashed hard. We met up with Xiomy and walked around a tweeker art fest with loud bands right next to the sidewalk and tons of bumps and curbs. He never even flinched. Can't wait until next month to do it again!
Saturday we started picking up and getting things somewhat ready for Tim & Allison's visit. Tim can be very diva~ish so we have to make sure our place is spotless...:P Rohan has been watching videos and such on our iPods, but now he's taken to playing the games. One in particular, Glass Tower 2, involve breaking blocks and the sounds get him all geeked up. We were able to break him away in order to go see a Diamondbacks game. We had won free tickets through our climbing gym, AZR. We didn't know it was the night Luis Gonzalez's #20 was being retired. He had their World Series winning hit in 2001, and has been a God here in AZ ever since. He's a great ballplayer and a great guy. It was the first number this young franchise has retired, so the people came out in droves. All in all, 48,946 fans showed up. It was fun to see that many people there, since they usually had about 20,000 fans show up. The shear number of fans kept Rohan's interest, and he was dancing and clapping the whole night. He even had a 4 year old girlfriend to entertain him too. The night was capped of with a blown save, followed by a walk-off home run, so it was a really exciting game. Afterwards we watched a storm from the roof of the parking garage, and Rohan saw a ton of planes and Police cars. He slept good again that night...:)
Sunday we spent most of the day giving the dogs a haircut. It was slightly breezy and warm. Sweat & fine dog hair don't mix well... We had to take a couple of breaks to cool off in the pool and all in all it took almost 5 hours to cut them! Saved us over $100, so it was worth the effort! The dogs are going to love the shorter hair!
We capped the weekend off, and started the week with, a nice long 12mi run. The temp was a nice 90F, with a very light breeze. We again came across a snake, this time no rattle, no venom. It was a baby Kingsnake, about a foot long, and as wide a a pencil. Somehow we attract snakes...or maybe it's because we are running through the desert...:)
It was a good weekend, and Rohan had some great all out play days that wore him out into taking good naps (except Sunday, which was a bit of a chore). We are really looking forward to Tim & Allison coming out and have some good plans to hike, climb, and a personal yoga session by our friend Jeanette. Should be a great time! Heather is going to watch Rohan Sat & Sun so we can enjoy their visit a little more without being tied to a sleep schedule or drinking age...:)
Hope everyone had a great week too!

One Of MANY Trips Through The Noodle Forest:

Rohan Playing Games On The iPod (And Trying To Buy Stuff!):

Rohan Is Doing Great At Putting His Puzzles Together:

Camping In Cloud City (Not The Only Star Wars Reference In This Post!)

2010-08-02T02:05:00.000-07:00

A few weeks back we realized with Mara studying for exams and getting application stuff ready, we really hadn't taken advantage of the cooler mountains to escape the heat of the desert. About the time we thought of heading up to Payson the temps in the valley started dropping (below 100°F today!). Then we checked the weather and it was forecast for rain pretty much all over AZ. We decided we might as well go for one night. At worst we spend it in the tent and Mara could regale us with stories about her patients. I took off from work after lunch and we picked up Rohan and the dogs and headed North. Since most of the time the weather in AZ is fairly predictable (Phoenix especially), we were glad to see lots of cool cloud formations and even a little rain on the way up.
We navigated our Rav4 through some pretty sketchy areas in terms of washouts and wet sand, but we only almost got stuck once, and got to see some of Coconino Forest's back country areas. When we finally found a spot to camp it was amazing! The clouds were about 200 feet below us, and we could see probably close to 50 miles, back towards Phoenix. The view from our site was amazing, and if there wasn't the rain, someone probably would have snagged it before us. We had lots of cool storm clouds in the distance and fast moving low clouds scrambling up the mountain all around us. We got some cool videos of the clouds attacking. One storm cloud in particular looked a lot like a Star Destroyer Battleship from Star Wars (See the pics for a comparison).
The forest was pretty damp, so firewood was scarce, but we were able to make a small one. We found a nice area to cook our supper at, with views of the valley and sunset. It couldn't have been much better (well...minus the rain). We got rained out right around Rohan's bedtime, so that worked out pretty good. He was so exhaisted that he didn't mind us chatting, or the dogs snoring or barking at forest noises. We had a couple of June bugs attack our lantern light, but they eventually left us alone.
Saturday morning we checked the forecast and decided to bail instead of sitting in a tent with a 19mo old all day, and two wet dogs. Instead of heading straight home we took a slightly longer route home through Winslow and Flagstaff. On the way we swung by a climbing area called Jack's Canyon we had heard some friends talk about. It turned out to be a gorgeous day (at least while we were in the canyon), and we were suprised how great the clmibing was. We didn't have gear with us, but as soon as we get some rope, we are going to head back there and do some serious all-weekend climbing. As we hiked out of the canyon we came across a HUGE snake. Mara had seen it, but I almost stepped on it. Not sure what kind it was, but it was about 3 1/2 to 4 feet long. Maybe Chris, or one of our other nature nerd friends, can identify it in our pictures.
We got home Saturday afternoon (after hitting REI to browse). The night was pretty low key, and Sunday was a lot of the same. With Tim & Allison coming in 2 weeks, and Tim and I playing the TPC, I need to get working on my golf game a little so Tim doesn't make too much fun of me! We capped Sunday off with a nice cool run, and some pool/hot tub time.
Hope everyone had a great weekend too!!!

Cloud City Campsite:

The clouds attack our campsite:

Rohan Laughing At Pine Trees:

Rohan Bouldering:

Rohan & Mara Do Some Yoga Before Getting Back In The Car (Sorry For The Wind Noise!:

One Last Run Before Heading Home! (Sorry, More Wind!):

Happy Birthday Mom!!!

2010-08-02T01:47:00.000-07:00

Rattlesnake 10K

2010-07-26T10:14:00.002-07:00

We are CRAZY EXCITED to let everyone know (who doesn't already) that we are going to Germany over xmas this year!!! Thanks to some help from Mara's parents and Mara's brother Josh, who lives there! We are planning to stay out for almost 2 weeks (maybe a couple days more). Mara has the time off school, and I'll have vacation to burn. With some of our friends (Greg & Nico and Nate & Kara) just getting back from European vacations, we have some good ideas of places to see and visit. Can't wait to get all the cousins together as well! Rohan, Thomas, Sam, Ryan, and Thomas-yet-to-be-determined sibling, will be a blast! We already got Rohan's passport photo and application sent off. Rohan was hilarious for his photo. It took 1 shot to get him, and he looks like a German officer. Straight lipped, blank stare, with no expression. The photographer said it usually takes 10 pictures for kids that small...:)
This week was pretty much our usual week. With the heat subsiding a bit, we were able to ramp our running back up a little. The temp at 9:00 was hitting in the cool mid-90s, WAY better than the mid 100s! We were able to hit up Jeanette's yoga class twice this week (Tues/Thurs), and also got about 90 minutes of climbing in beforehand. It's great to be able to workout before Jeanette kicks our butt (it's been harder, and feeling awesome!).
Thursday, we got a great workout in. We climbed for 90 min, then Mara did yoga while I put Rohan down. After Mara got back, we sat for a while, then around 10:30 decided we still had some energy, and went for a run. We wanted to just go at least 3-4mi, but ended up doing a 10K (6.2mi) since it felt so good. At mile 5 or so, we were greeted by the rattling of an assumed large rattlesnake. We didn't see it, but it was close, and you could hear there were 5-6 rattles, so it was older. Good thing it was off the sidewalk! Got our hearts going for that last 1.2mi push! That route is now known as our Rattlesnake 10K route...:)
Saturday we got Rohan's passport taken care of, and then hit a play area in the mall so he could wear himself out. Afterwards he took an good nap for us. Greg came up and we went to AZR and climbed for 2 1/2 hours. We were both climbing really strong, and Greg is getting his old form back.
Rohan was in desperate need of a bath Saturday morning. While Mara and I were sleeping in, Rohan decided to sneak into the fireplace and see what soot tasted and felt like. Apparently he loved it. Mara rushed him to the tub, and got him mostly cleaned before I got the camera. It was a cue for us to vacuum out the fireplace from this winter's fires. Good times...
Sunday was pretty low key again. We hit up Jimmy Johns for lunch then the Mesa Contemporary Art Museum in the afternoon. It was a small museum, but had some cool items. Most of the art is actually installation pieces outside, but they almost all have water, and they apparently don't run them in the summer. We saw them last winter, and we'll have to check them out again when it cools off. After that, and only 30 minutes of nap for Rohan, we hit the pool to completely wear him out. We were out for almost an hour, and he is getting really good in the pool. We mostly play on the steps so he can touch, but he's getting braver and trying to walk after us. He's only fallen in the deeper end a dozen or so times...:) Maybe it's time for water wings?
We capped the weekend off with breaded chicken & pepper kabobs and a 7.5mi run, what an awesome combo! We are slowly getting back into our training for the Marathon in January...yeah...less than 2 weeks after our return from Germany... We are going to try and get some runs in over there, but who knows how that'll go. Oh well. All we want to do is finish. No matter what it will be a personal record...:)
Hope everyone had a good week, dried out, and got out to enjoy the weekend!

Rohan Can't Sleep, Read & Drink At The Same Time:

Rohan LOVES Avril Lavigne...:(

Rohan Spots The Playground And Starts Running With Dad:

Riding The Dad:

Forgot to add a video...

2010-07-20T08:40:00.000-07:00

I had added this video to Facebook, but forgot to add it to the blog (for those without FB accounts).
Rohan was being a goof-ball and showing off his new spitting skills, and also throwing in his "Strongman" pose for kicks. Needless to say, we had a blast with this...:)

What We Did Instead of Help The Stokes' Move...:)

2010-07-18T23:21:00.000-07:00

This last week was pretty uneventful, which was nice, because it gave us a chance to workout more...:) We climbed a couple nights, and did yoga at AZR, as well as at home. We also ran a couple nights and even lifted afterwards (not something we usually do).
Rohan was being a goofball most of the weekend, and practically dances to anything with a beat, even commercials and TV ads. He's getting so much smarter too and helping with little chores with the dogs (like feeding & kenneling) as well as setting up his tray for himself.
We've stayed inside mostly to avoid the heat, but we took him (and the dogs) to the dog park. Rohan has been so much more interactive with the dogs, and has a couple favorite ones (like Twinkie). Most of the young puppies flock to him since he is about their size, and that usually ends up with Rohan getting knocked down and licked silly. He laughs it off and runs along, it's a lot of fun to watch...:) We also got a cool lighting show over the mountains on our way back. It's exciting to us since we don't get many lighting shows here...:(
Anyway, here are some pics of us goofing off this week. We also posted some pics from last week on the next post (below) so be sure to check those out too.

Chasing Down Rohan (HE'S GETTING FAST!):

An Odd Place To Practice His Piano:

Cool Lighting Strike (See Stills In The Slideshow):

Holy Shit They Found Our Camera!!!

2010-07-18T22:23:00.001-07:00

Somehow, we lost a sweet camera at Chase Field, and the Lost & Found system got it back to us! We are geeked to have it back (hence the 1000 pictures we took this last week).
Here are some pics from the week before that we didn't get downloaded while our camera was in limbo...

Rohan Tub Time:

Get Well Dad!!!!

2010-07-12T12:25:00.002-07:00

As almost everyone knows, my Dad had a surgery to remove a benign salivary tumor on his left jaw (under his ear). He had the surgery Thursday and has been doing great since! There was not intervention with the nerve, so no paralysis which is common when the nerve is involved. We hope he has a great week with Taylor & Kaylee! Nothing mends like grandkids...:)
With the heat ratcheting up, Mara and I have taken a small "break" from training for our full marathon. We haven't been following our training schedule much, rather just running 15 miles or so per week just to keep our legs fresh. Rohan, of course, has been logging the miles with us, and luckily we have found some Nike DriFit shirts for him at TJ Max. He stays REALLY cool and dry even on warm runs, like the 103°F one with did last night (Sunday).
This last week we did a lot of rearranging of our apartment to make it seem a little more spacious. We do miss the luxury of a house with lots of space room for Rohan to run. With the heat being so oppressive during the day we are limited to hitting splash pads and the pool, which Rohan loves. Rohan has been running so much more lately. Actual running, not just trying to run. He's gotten faster too! He was running around Target the other day and surprised us how easily he can get away. I understand what I used to do to my parents when I would hid in the clothing racks...:)
Friday night we had the opportunity to go to a DBack's game through TGEN. TGEN rented out a couple party suites in right field for mentors and interns for TGEN's Helios Scholarship program. I, believe it or not, am a mentor and we got tickets for me and him. One of the other mentors couldn't go so she gave me her ticket for Mara & Rohan was free. It was a lot of fun, and a great view of the game. We took Rohan to a play area a couple of times to ensure he was wiped out completely. Unfortunately we may have lost our camera at the game; as is evident by the lack of pictures on this post...:( We really hope it turns up at lost & found, but we're not holding our breathes. We will have to figure out a way to get another camera (since we don't have a digital camera fund). We liked the one we had, but it's still $180. We'd have to go to an older model and we'd lose our most favorite feature, the HD video. Until we figure out what to do, we'll only have our cell phone cameras and video (which suck, but it's all we got).
Saturday we got up early and hit Pinnacle Peak Park and did a nice easy family hike (Sorry, no pics...:(). Rohan loved his backpack, and still fits great in it. He was pointing at a lot of things and we were explaining them as we went. He even noticed the climbers at the peak too. He, of course, fell asleep, and took a good long nap afterwards.
Greg had some cousins in town this weekend and thought it would be a great idea to bring them to AZR. They had a blast! Again...no pics... We climbed for almost 3 hours and worked up a good appetite for FroYo...:) We hit up Yougurtology near the gym and replenished all those calories we burned climbing. Afterwards we took the time to hit the pool and cool off before and nice supper of salmon and saffron scallops (on super sale at Wally World!).
Sunday we slept in until almost 7am and made sure we got out of the house early to beat some of the heat. We hit up a splashpad for an hour or so, then walked around some outside malls with mister systems so it was tolerable.
We capped off Sunday with a nice 10K. It was crazy warm still at 8:30 (103°F) and cooled down to a not-so-cool 98°F by the time we finished. Rohan did great as usual, and his new DriFit shirt kept him comfortable enough to sleep the whole time. He did wake up at the end of the run, so we made sure he was well hydrated (us as well). The extended forcast is calling for 119°F by Sunday...Brrrrrrrr...:)
Well...enjoy the pics from this week. They are weak since we didn't download any from the camera before we lost it...:((( <---Super sad face