Happy Birthday to our Flying Nanny

Today is our flying Nanny's birthday and we wanted to tell her how much we love and appreciate her. Seriously I couldn't ask for a better mom-in-law. She is such a great nanny,she plays barbies with Sydney, paints and play dough with Ashlee and her and Caleb have a pretty competitive UNO competition going on. We call her the flying nanny because she is so good about making trips to see the grand kids. Once a friend called that didn't know nan was British and Nan told them she was the nanny and could she take a message....well needless to say I had to explain to my friend that we aren't high rollers with an imported nanny to watch our kids. Nan, I love you so much, I love that we like the same movies and books and we can just hang out together. You are so beautiful and loving and you make me really feel like part of the family. Happy Birthday!!!!! P.S. Sorry about Joe's Crab Shack. (I will explain in a later post.)

You can tell they are related.

This awesome family is because of you.

Are you kidding me???

We finally ran our 1/2 Marathon today after 9 months of waiting for this day to come. Yeah, I probably could have waited a little longer. So here is some advice when signing up for a race....
When the race is called The Golden Gate Headlands TRAIL run, plan on running on a trail. Oh no don't be fooled by the pictures of last years race showing people smiling on a paved road. That paved road lasted about 2 of the 13 miles. Living in the valley where the only hill I have trained on is the slight slope over the railroad tracks in no way prepared me for yesterdays race. Here are some pictures of the great event so you can see for yourself that I am not kidding about the hills.


Before the race, when we were happy and blissfully naive. We pretty much rocked the cool factor with our tie dye.


The gang: me, misty, jared and stephen


Crazy rubber chicken guy.....he was in charge of this joke of a marathon and told everyone that the first person done would win a rubber chicken. Some inspiration huh?
But when I was getting ready to leave, my sweet kiddos yelled from the beach, "Win the rubber chicken mom!!!". Sorry guys, I am just glad I didn't die, I will buy you a rubber chicken.


jared and stephen at the top of the first of many hills. When these boys were behind me, I would remind them that I am 12 years older than they are.


This was when we were still having fun. jared's face is my favorite.


The trail got so steep here that there were wooden steps to help you climb.


This is not an optical illusion. The trail WAS that STEEP!


The girls at the top of the first hill. The view was amazing.


Carl took this one. You can see all the little people making their way up and up and up.


Wish I was here. The kids had a blast playing on the beach while I was running.

Me coming down the last the last hill, I could hear people cheering and the finish was so close, but still so far away.... some brainiac didn't double check with the park and come to find out one of the bridges was out, so we got to end the race by running the last mile on the beach. Okay, so a fun little stroll on the beach is nice in Hawaii, but come on people not after 12 miles of uphill trail running. I wanted to stop there and cry but Carl ran up and met me and got some pics, and Caleb ran the rest of the way with me to the finish line.

Me and Misty after the race. Luckily we could smile for this picture. Overall not my favorite, but I am so glad that I was able to finish my first 1/2. I set a goal to do it in under 2 hours. My time was exactly 3 hours. But I am taking 10 minutes off because I had to wait 10 minutes for Presidio Firemen to get a heat stroke victim off the trail. (Kind of freaked me out). Next time when I see the trail rated as difficult, I plan to believe it. Maybe in a few days when I can actually walk again, I will think about doing another one. Thanks Misty for inspiring me to run this. You are amazing!

A copy of the trail map and elevation changes.

Yosemite in Spring

After spending 2 days in San Francisco, we decided to show the Czechs Yosemite. My favorite time of year to go is in the spring because the waterfalls are full from the snowmelt. It was a beautiful day, a little cold but the sun was up and the scenery did not disappoint. I let the kiddos take charge of the camera again so we got lots of pictures of the ground, the sky, weeds and strange people that didn't know Syd was taking photos of them

Czech it out!!

Some friends that Carl made in the Czech Republic came into town to visit. We took the kiddos and went and met them in San Francisco for the weekend. We had a lot of fun showing them around, and since they don't have any kids we had fun watching them put up with the madness that is our lives. Actually the kids were great. Their favorite game was to ask them how to say stuff in Czech.

The next few photos were taken by Ashlee and Sydney. Carl, Caleb and the Czechs decided to walk across the bridge and the girls didn't want to, so we went back to the park at the beginning. They were kind of getting restless so I gave them my camera and told them to take pictures of whatever they thought was great.

Ashlee took this one of the flowers.

Sydney took these two. I think the amida light cart is my favorite. She is hilarious.

Caleb took these 2 of me and Carl and Ashlee by the tree.

Syd's work.

Ashlee's photog skills.

The fam by the Golden Gate Bridge

Ashlee, Zbynek, Caleb and Patrika

Riding on the cable cars

We took the kiddos and Czechs to the Aquarium too and they all loved it.