No Where to Go But Up!

Woo-hoo! We are on vacation in our house! We don't go back to school/work until November 30th. How awesome is that?!

This weekend was the annual El Tour de Tucson. It is a huge race with over 8000 riders entered this year. It goes around the perimeter of Tucson for 109 miles. Dad has ridden in it for 3 of the past 4 years and has done better and better every year. Well this year....let me tell ya! With minimal training this year and a pre-race, day before diet of chicken nuggets and ice cream, dad finished in 89th place out of 4000 riders entered in the 109 mile category! He finished in 4 hours and 31 minutes, just 14 minutes behind the leaders who were pro riders from Mexico. The best part was he wasn't exhausted after and was actually able to make dinner for mom that night because she WAS exhausted. Way to go dad! We are so proud of you!

I also had a big weekend in that I made my race debut at the Tour this year in the 1/4 miles kids ride. I spent the whole week trash talking about how I was going to beat everyone and ride really fast. Weeelll, the actual race part was a bit more intimidating than I thought it would be. Mom and I got there around 8:30 for my 9:00 AM start, so I had lots of time to warm up and get my game on. Unfortunately, we were a little bit late lining up at the start, so I wasn't one of first in line. You wouldn't think it would matter with only 15 kids riding, but every second counts. Also, I was busy eating my goldfish crackers when the race started, so I had to put those away before I could start pedaling. Then, I guess I wasn't really clear on the concept that was an actual race, so I just kind of lollygagged until I crashed. I didn't run into anything. In fact I was just in the middle of the street and kind of fell over. Mom picked me up, dusted me off and set me on my way. I spent the whole rest of the race looking over my shoulder, making sure mom was there. Mom knew we were in bad shape when the stroller past us. I was actually going to cross the finish line in second to last place but I stopped peddaling just before the end and another girl clipped me at the line. Soooo- I ended up in last place. Oh well. It will make a good back story when I make my Olympic debut.

Sunday was spent recovering and packing for our Thanksgiving trip to Dallas to visit Uncle Tim, Aunt Dana, Brooke and Faith. We are very excited about that and can't wait to see the havoc us cousins can wreck!

I'm not actually this far behind. This was me just warming up before the big race.