Weekend (& Monday) In Review.

Salutations from the beat up wanna be mountain biker. Seriously.

A little history: When Drew and I were dating, way back in the day, we used to mountain bike. Actually, the correct terminology was more like "Drew mountain biked and I came along for the ride." I enjoy mountain biking, but truth be told, I've never been phenomenal at it. After Drew was deployed back in 2005/2006, my bike sat lonely and alone in our garage, collecting dust and cobwebs. A deployment, a small bout of infertility, two babies in 2 years and a husband going back to grad school will do that to a girl and her bike.

Current day: I decided I wanted to get reaquainted with our old hobby, so Drew sent my bike to the shop to get a major tune up. The bike came back last week, and we circled this past Saturday as our morning of choice to go on our morning date bicycling event. In my mind I had pictures of us laughing jovially while breezing through the hills of the Ozark mountains and ending up at a cute patio restaurant downtown munching on brunch and sipping a nice cup of morning Joe. But as we all know, life rarely ever goes like the pictures that play out in our heads. Instead of jovially laughing, I'm pretty sure I became the laughing stock of all mountain bikers out on the trails, crashing not once, not twice, but three times. The first time was the hardest fall. It left me with a beautiful black bruise on my inner thigh. While I'm sure you'd all love to see that dooze, I'll not be putting it on here, as it's mildly inappropriate to photograph. I can show you the awesome shin scrapes I got.



it feels a lot worse than it looks
Did I mention this happened about 10 minutes in to our ride? I should've known this was a bad foreshadowing of things to come. Clearly I was bathing in a sea of ignorance.

Second crash... not really a crash per se so much as a, falling to the right, catching oneself while bruising my other shin, all before falling into a creek. By the second "crash" I was a bit flustered. This was before we headed UP a large hill, on a very narrow path, that looked over a ravene with a creek. Considering I was 0 for 2 on the crashing, I (wisely) walked most of the hill. I somehow made it down alive, but by that point I had made it known to Drew that I didn't think it had been a wise choice for him to bring me to such an advanced course after not being on a bike for over 5 years.

And then it happened. "Biker up" was yelled. On the narrow, don't fall over or you'll fall into a (a) ravene or (b) thickets or (c) all of the above, trail. My foot got stuck in the foot cup on my pedal. I tried to get out. I couldn't. And down I fell into a patch of blackberry bushes and thorny thickets. Let's just say that the biker who was up kept on riding, as my fury was letting out at massive rates. Looking back I feel sorry for Drew, who already felt bad enough for bringing me out to a hard course, and then on top of that having to brush me off while I was yelling at him to just sell the bloody bike. Bless you babe. You put up with too much sometimes. Our Saturday morning date did end on a good note as we strolled through our local farmer's market, but I was a bit hobbly to say the least.

Saturday afternoon we headed to Lowe's to pick up some stuff for a project I am working on. The project was inspired by some of the stacked oversized frames you see on Pinterest and Etsy right now. I was being cheap by thinking I could forego the $120 price tag and easily make my own. I'm in about 10 hours of my time and several dollars out of my wallet, and i'm here to say that saving $30 is not worth this stupid frame. If you get inspired, I have a few words of wisdom for you "step away from Pinterest and run to Etsy." Seriously. Also, I just realized I've said seriously more than once on the same post. I guess I'm California dreamin'.



These buggies are so awesome; the boys LOVE them

my frame partially finished. If I ever figure out the chevron print, I'll post pictures of the finished product, and tell you how I made it. All of the tutorials online make it seem like it's the easiest thing to tape off a chevron print. I'm here to tell you, it's not. And what's worse is that I think I'm losing my mind in the process.  Blah.
Today I brought Brayden to the dentist for his check up. He was cavity free, and got a "cool" toothbrush from the dentist. I've mentioned before that our pediatric dental office is like Disney world. I mean, I really would not mind having MY teeth cleaned there. Zebra glasses and Tiger ear phones all while watching Shrek? Does it get any better???

Brayden also was insistent on having his picture taken with the gorilla, which is hilarious considering he has nightmares about monkeys. Kids crack me up.



  Speaking of crack ups with kids, because this has no where else to go, I'll put it here. Last Friday we were headed to CFA to meet up my friend Jenna and her boys, and I had told B to go to his room and put on his shoes. I heard him clunking down the hall and then exclaim "I got my shoes on!" I looked up to see him in these:

I got a good laugh, but then had to explain that it was a bit too hot to wear our snow boots to CFA :)    Hope you have a great week!