Surf Trip

Brent and Brad

Brent

Brad

Kyle

Kyle and Brad were out of school on Thursday and Friday so Brent decided it was time for a surf trip.  They went down to San Onofre on Thursday, Craig and I went down on Friday to hang out with them for awhile.  Now Kyle and Brad are getting cleaned up for an Assisteens dance and I think we have a mom and dad date with Brent!

Brent is Home

Brent at our front door before leaving for the airport for his NOLS semester.

First section was sea kayaking, looks pretty calm here.

Rock Climbing--Squamish

Backpacking-Pasayten Wilderness

Sailing-Desolation Sound, Sunshine Coast, Strait of Georgia and the Gulf Islands

Home again, to spend a few weeks with the little bros.  Check out Brent's Facebook page for some incredible pictures of his NOLS experience.

Beach Babies

Congratulations to Brian and Sarah!

Bri got the internship with Price Waterhouse Coopers.  They will be in Irvine for the summer.

Happy Halloween

Happy Halloween!

My friend Cathy A. had a post this week on FB about making pumpkin burgers.  Pumpkin Burgers you might ask, what are pumpkin burgers?  Exactly what I asked Cathy today.  Cathy happily shared with me the recipe for her family's traditional pumpkin burgers.  Brad decided we needed to try these for dinner. Are you ready for the directions?
Flatten one refrigerator biscuit (I used the Grand size ones) top with crumbled, cooked hamburger with barbque sauce, shredded cheese and another flattened refrigerator biscuit "carved" anyway you desire. Bake and there you go Halloween dinner. If that's not filling enough add a side of Halloween candy from that bowl by your front door. This is not a dish to add a side of veggies to, at least not today.

 

Halloween Mystery!

Guess who--

RHS Homecoming 2010

RHS Homecoming 2010
Kyle and Brad

The Freshman party bus

Brad and the gang

We had lots of fun taking pictures, Brad didn't think it was so fun and Kyle escaped with his friends before we could get more than one or two.  Craig thought the best shot was of all the families torturing the boys with "just a few more".  Thanks to Julia and Kasey for providing the "party bus" we appreciate your part in the fun time the boys had.

2nd Annual Temple to Temple

2nd annual Redlands to Newport Beach temple to temple ride.  Picture look blurry?  Yeah, well it's rain, the ride started with rain through Riverside then became a beautiful day.  Julia and I were sag again which I really enjoyed, especially those through Riverside miles!  Last year rolled fairly smooth, not even a flat--this year four flats, two riders down, a ripped tire, complete change of clothes to ward off hypothermia for one rider, but they all made it.

At Newport--(my group picture turned out to be a video) Did I mention two riders went down, check out Craig's leg, he went down and Merrill went over the top of him. Oh the glory of a little road rash!

Breakfast in Irvine

Brian is in Irvine interviewing for internships, Craig and I got a
chance to see him this morning and have breakfast with him.
Good luck with the rest of your interviews son!  We love you.

Update on Brent

Brent is at base camp in Mount Vernon, Washington after 26 days of adventure backpacking in the Pasayten Wilderness.  This is what he said on his Facebook status update:

"Pasayten me and you are done.... good times... sailing in Canada    Friday!!!"

It's been fun to talk to him, he leaves at 3:00 am tomorrow for British Columbia, he has two weeks of sailing the Straits of Georgia.  It sounds like it is quite the adventure just to get there.  Ferries, shuttles, more shuttles, etc.

 Note the new look, what do you think?  I think security might just escort him out of the MTC parking lot when he shows up.  Maybe an extreme makeover will be in order when he gets home.  He comes home on a Saturday night, do you think we can clean him up before Bishop H. sees him on Sunday morning?

He does clean up rather well don't you think?  

Big Rock Tri

I had a good race today, thanks to Redlands Tri Club and Big Rock for the entry.

Craig was my schlepper (he said he wasn't a sherpa today because he didn't race) I appreciate all the support.  First in my age group again, I guess you gotta love getting old!  Oh and I lost my Pure Energy bracelet, probably after the swim, maybe it came off with the wetsuit, probably why the bike wasn't as fast as I wished, darn I'm sure it worked.

Brian and Sarah the Famous

Hey, look who's in this video!  Cute you guys!
http://photo.byu.edu/video.php?cat1=Slide%20Shows&cat2=General&cat3=2010&cat4=First%20Day%20Of%20Class

Cupcakes and Oxygen Debt

I have done a lot of dumb things this week.  It's ok I say to myself, I have "post race stupidity syndrome".  PRSS a legitimate medical ailment first coined I believe by Jayne Williams of "Slow Fat Triathlete" fame.  If I recall correctly from Jayne's description this condition it should disappear shortly after your race.  Well, since I am aged, I believe it takes longer to dissipate like here it is almost a week later and I am still deep in PRSS or oxygen debt or something.
An example:  Heading to the gym to swim laps before water aerobics starts at exactly the same time water aerobics starts.  Wait....in order to avoid water aerobics I know the water aerobics schedule better than the ladies who do water aerobics.
Just now, I thought I'm going to make some cupcakes for Kyle and Brad before they get home from school, I grab a box of cake mix, mix it up, pour it into the cupcake pan thinking, hmmm... it's a little thick. I look on the box for how long to cook cupcakes--no cupcake directions--that's weird.  Check the sides of the box, check the back again, still no cupcake directions.  I finally look at the front of the box--oops brownie mix.  I now have brownies baking in a paper lined cupcake pan.  I'll guess I'll have to wait and see if brownies will come out of cupcake papers.  I even got out the food coloring (so domestic today) to make orange frosting (about as far as I go decorating for Halloween).  Maybe we'll just have to have orange frosted brownie cupcakes.  Maybe they'll be good, I'll let you know.

Well, they came out of the paper ok.

Craig agreed to be the guinea pig and try out my cupcake brownies, but he had a better idea than orange frosting!

The Verdict: Even better than cupcakes!

The boys wanted to point out to me....

How dad looks after a marathon....this was last year when he qualified for Boston.

And how mom looks after a marathon....this year when I PR"d. With the implication being, "mom you don't work hard enough".  OK, I'll work on working harder, tomorrow.

It Seemed Like a Good Idea Three Months Ago

The title of this post was probably my favorite sign on the course today.  It was a good day, Craig was my sherpa extraordinaire and I smashed my last St. George time by about 45 minutes.  Needless to say I am happy.  I told Craig afterwards my secret goal was 9 minutes faster than what I did, he said I should have told him and we could've done it.  Maybe, but I was tired the last mile.  The wise advice for running St. George is to hold back on the top half and negative split the second half.  Last time I threw the advice out the window, ran the top half 30 minutes faster than I ran it today and died on the bottom half.  Today Craig held me back, paced me on the top, set a lofty (for me) pace on the second half and it worked, that's all I can say, hold back on the top and you will get amazing results.

Kevin and me after the St. George Marathon
Kev ran a 3:24, amazing, can you imagine what would happen if this boy actually trained!  Great job son.

Running.......tomorrow!

So here lies glory, the blue shirt I earned from doing the St. George runners series, thereby guaranteeing my place in the marathon. The red shirt is as of this moment unearned glory, it is my marathon shirt. Wish me luck tomorrow as I set out to earn it.  I am running for Susie and Mitch, their road is much tougher than mine, and I will remember that with every mile.  Go Mitch, Go Susie.
Sent from my iPod

Aunt Betty's Wedding

Glenda Lytal Gustafson, Virgil Lee Lytal, Melinda Lytal Wright, Robert Bruce Lytal



So now I know exactly what I was doing June 30, 1962.  I was a flower girl for my Aunt Betty's wedding.  I still remember the day.  I remember that it was at the Baptist Church and the other flower girl was much taller than me and was supposed to stand in back of me, but I refused, I wanted to stand in back.  I'm not sure whether or not I finally cooperated.  I am also not sure how many pictures there are of me with my grandfather so this is an important picture to me.  Big Kyle covered up my hair in this picture and said, Mom you look just like little Kyle, Kerri had also made the same comment when she saw the picture.

Just Experimenting

Just playing with my new toy, Craig got me an iPod touch to take pictures, videos, etc. It has always been frustrating having to edit the video format and try to get it to load on blogger. This will be very cool for the boys races, and cute Kyle and Kael videos.

Next Adventure

A month backpacking in the Pasayten Wilderness. We should get one more phone call tomorrow and then not until he's on his way back to BC for sailing. I guess this is preparing me for twice yearly phone calls on his mission. Have fun Brent, we miss you.

A few pictures from Brent

We'll have to wait until he's home for a little more elaboration, but he loved British Columbia. He is now back in Washington to do his wilderness first aid class and then leaves for a month of backpacking. Following that he goes back to British Columbia for sailing.

Brent and the Chief

This is our last day in Squamish and its raining so we can't climb which is a super bummer, but I should be able to call you tomorrrow as we are traveling back to base camp. Climbing camp has been super fun the climbing has been amazing and I got really lucky and got to go multipitch on the Chief. 15 Pitches! We climbed from 8 in the morning until 6:30 that night and actually summited the Chief. Me and one other person were the only ones to get to summit so it was really cool and really scary. Anyways talk to you tomorrow. love you mom

(note I got on Facebook from Brent)

Me Lifesaving?! Help!

I had my last longish run before the St. George Marathon yesterday, but longish was only 12, nice after 17, 18, 19 and 20. Craig and I both felt good after the run so we decided to head out to Lake Perris to try out my new wetsuit. (Blue Seventy Axis, cute blue daisy on it!) I really like my new wetsuit, there is definitely a difference between my old suit suits and this one. This one is not the pro model, it is one step down, it makes your butt float more than the pro model and we all know I need a floaty butt! Actually the whole suit is just a giant floaty thing, but can it get me through the swim----we'll see, all I can say is I'm doing the work. I'm tired, swim, bike, run, swim, bike run mornings start at 4:00 am and if I'm lucky (and I have all of my geometry and Spanish homework done) I'm in bed at 8:30. I now truly appreciate Sunday as a day of rest.

Oh back to the title of this post, when Craig and I were out at Perris we were swimming in the swim area but there was no one else there and no lifeguards on duty. I wasn't worried about safety there were two of us and we were basically swimming the perimeter of buoy line, if there was a problem the buoys aren't that far apart. We were heading back to the shore and all of a sudden there's a voice saying, "hey, can you help me, I'm having trouble can you help me?!" There were three teenage boys who had appeared out of nowhere, two were pretty far out and this one seemed to be treading water. We started talking to him, just keeping him calm and got him to flip over on his back, once he did that he was ok, luckily we weren't too far from the shore. The scary part is questioning your own abilities had the situation been as bad as he thought it was. I am just grateful that all turned out well.

We Won!

Craig and I went to the Redlands Tri Club Meeting tonight, I really enjoyed hearing the Ironman Canada and Ironman Kentucky race reports. Craig won an entry to the In The Dirt trail run, it's Nov. 6 at Vail Lake in Temecula. I won an entry to the Big Rock Tri on October 16. Hmmm....were we really lucky?

Brent called.............

He has been circumnavigating Nootka Island, he has loved this section, he has had awesome instructors, one is old ("you know maybe dad's age"). This instructor is a world famous kayaker and is teaching NOLS as his retirement job. Brent has really liked him and the other instructor. He said they got to surf their kayaks at the end which was pretty fun.
They are now travelling to their rock climbing base. Their climbing instructors said of all of the NOLS climbing locations they are the luckiest to get Squamish.

Squamish

So they will be climbing there for their next unit he can hardly wait. He is having an amazing time. He is going to call us back tonight when he can talk longer.

And now to answer the long, long awaited question, Brent is going to the Phnom Penh, Cambodia mission, Cambodian speaking (his mission also includes all of Viet Nam). He is really excited about his call, Cambodia was completely off the radar. He goes into the MTC on January 5, which is perfect for us to get all the premission "stuff" done when he gets home and squeeze in a cabin trip before he leaves. His farewell is December 26, we understand it's not a convenient date but welcome all who can come.

UPDATE: Another phone call, I have one happy boy. Between his incredible NOLS experiences so far and his mission call he is very excited about all that he is learning now, especially his leadership experiences, and all that he has to look forward to on his mission. One of his instructors has travelled extensively and told him how fabulous and kind the people of Cambodia are.
We will probably get one more phone call tomorrow morning and then he will be incommunicado again for a few weeks.