Dam to Dam

Saturday marked the 30th running of the Dam to Dam race. One of Iowa's classic running events, it draws people from all over to run the 20k (12.4 miles). The race starts out at Saylorville dam and finishes downtown. It is always an early morning with the race starting at 7:00 am. Heather was able to cheer for me in 3 different spots! This first one just after mile 3. I am wearing the green jersey.
This was around mile 8, I passed those guys without shirts!

And the finish downtown! Several guys from Principal, who I run with over lunch, also ran the race.

All smiles with my hardware!

There were over 7,000 people running the 20k! It was a lot of fun and turned out to be a great day for a race. I finished in a time of 1:13.04 and I placed 37th overall and 15th in my age group. Here are the full results. All in all, I had a great day and felt good about my race.

Spring!

Spring is springing all over Beaverdale! With all the work in the kitchen, our flower beds have been a bit neglected. This past weekend, we were able to get outside and tidy up the plants. Heather does a great job with all her flowers!
The first round of our purple alliums have bloomed and the second round are getting ready to pop.

New this year to our garden is the addition of the yellow day lilies.

And our peonies are looking good! Unfortunately, they get so tall they start to fall over, I need to find something to help keep them standing up straight.

Music Wednesday

New music for this Wednesday is actually from a new TV show starting this fall...Glee. It's going to be on Fox and I will admit that I am looking forward to it and will watch. This is the song from the ending scene.

If you missed the pilot episode, you can catch it on Hulu.com. Basically, it is about a high school glee club (show choir) and if you knew me in high school (I will admit), I did my fair share of singing and dancing in show choir.

Memorial Day Fun

We had a lot of fun the Memorial Day weekend. We did the classic start to summer with a baseball game, a bbq and planted some flowers! We headed to Ankeny for brunch on Sunday with the Pella Vande Lune's and, as always, Nathan made us laugh. Heather taught Nathan how to smile with oranges and act like a monkey...
...he caught on pretty quickly.

After brunch we headed downtown to catch an I-Cubs game. A friend of ours, Mark, had tickets through his work for a sky box. Chad and I are all smiles sitting in the good seats!

Heather and Shay are smiles too, even though they didn't get a tan like Heather had hoped.

We also planted lots of flowers in our yard...more pictures to come!

Did you see...

...the rainbow that stretched across the sky Saturday evening? It went all the way across town. We played at church Saturday night and as we were heading home we saw the full double rainbow
It was so cool that we snapped a picture as we were heading down 235, it spanned both sides of the freeway.

It was amazing to walk out of church and see the rainbow, that nights sermon talked about how all of God's creation worships Him, not just people, but the trees, animals, rain and even rainbows! Coincidence...I don't think so.

Mother's Day

This year we were a little late celebrating Mother's Day, but you know the old saying "Better late than never!" Last week Thursday, Heather and I headed down to I-town to celebrate Mother's day over at my sister's house. She and her husband Wade cooked a great dinner and we had fun celebrating our mom. Morgan was so excited to have everyone over to show off her new tricks! She is walking now...kind of. To me it looks more like a drunken sailor, but I will admit that she is getting across the room on two feet!

First things first, open gifts!
We all chipped in and got her a bird bath for her garden.

Morgan was all smiles sitting on Grandpa's lap, but the flash on the camera was a little too bright.

That grandpa is soooo funny, expect when he gives wet willies!

We had a great time celebrating my mom, there was great food, great family and plenty of laughs with Morgan around to entertain us! Happy Mother's Day Mom!

Chair Covers

I haven't posted anything in a week, so I have a little catching up to do. First up...new chair covers for our dining room. As we are remodeling the kitchen, Heather found some fun fabric for a curtain in the dining room. She asked my mom for some help and while she was sewing the curtain if she could sew us some chair covers. My mom got them finished up and they turned out awesome!

They are a simple slip cover that goes over the back of the chairs and ties on the sides with brown ribbon. You can see in the picture below the coordinating valance above the sliding glass door. The kitchen and dining room are really starting to come together!
We are so pleased with how they turned out...Nice Work MOM!

Kitchen Update

The kitchen is getting closer to being finished, but we had a few things to return to IKEA. One of the cabinets didn't come with any hardware, one of our doors had a chip on the front and we needed to return two cabinets. Why return two cabinets you ask? Well, I miss measured on two cabinets, so they didn't fit. We ordered the correct ones on the internet and had them shipped to us, but we still had the leftovers. So, on Saturday, Heather and I loaded up the Mariner and headed north. I am a morning person, so we were on the road by 6:30 and to IKEA by 10:30. We didn't have any problems with the returns and exchanges and we were all set by 11:15, plenty of time to walk through the store...and we found some more fun things to bring home with us! As we were leaving we ran into our friends John & Haverlee, which keeps our streak alive of seeing someone we know every time we go to IKEA.
We got back home around 5:30 and I was excited to finish up the cabinets. I got all the parts installed, the toe kicks put on the bottom of the cabinets and the end pieces on the end.All we have left to do is finish painting the walls green...
...and finish the tile floor and figure out a back splash for the counter top.

We did put up two these two shelves above the stove for some extra storage.

I should be able to get the floor and paint finished this week!

Music Wednesday

OK, so I have missed a few Wednesday's but today is Wednesday and I have a new band that has caught my attention. This week's band is...Blind Pilot. This song was featured on NBC's TV show Chuck and I really like it.


From Wikipedia:
Blind Pilot is an American indie pop duo based in Portland, Oregon. The group's single, "Go On, Say It", was chosen to be a Single of the Week on July 7, 2008 on Apple Inc.'s iTunes Store, potentially yielding approximately 2 million downloads.[1] As of July 22, 2008, their debut album, 3 Rounds and a Sound, has reached number 13 on the Billboard Top Digital Albums chart.
The duo demonstrated impressive dedication to the Pacific Northwest's regional environmental ethic with its 2008 bicycle tour. The band members biked (with a van providing transportation of equipment) from Bellingham to San Diego, with more than two dozen stops along the way, including Port Townsend, Seattle, Olympia, Portland, Corvallis, Eugene, Coos Bay, Arcata and Santa Cruz.

They were recently featured on NPR, check out that story here: Hugging Highway 1

The Great Outdoors

Sunday evening our small group headed to the great outdoors. Josh and Kelly have some land in the middle of no where, they plan on building their dream home there some day. Currently, it is land for Josh to play with his lawn mower and a good place for a bonfire! All the ladies are having fun...

...and the guys are too!
It was a great spring evening, perfect weather for grilling some hot dogs and brats!

Hudson really likes playing outside, especially when his parents are the swing set.As the sun started going down, we lit the bonfire.

Heather and I chillin' in the hammock...

...enjoying the fire.

We had a lot of fun with our small group (we always do). We had plenty of laughs and plenty of fire wood. I forgot to mention, the one thing it doesn't have...a bathroom. Thankfully there are plenty of trees!

Weekend of Weddings

This past weekend, Heather and I went to two weddings. My friend from high school, Justin Davey got married Friday evening. They were married downtown in the Temple for Performing Arts. Unfortunately we didn't get any pictures. The ceremony was very nice and the setting was awesome. We had another wedding on Saturday for Heather's good friend Laura. We were asked to be greeters in the wedding, so we went to the ceremony Friday evening, but missed the reception to make it to the rehearsal dinner for Laura and Jared. It turned out to be a great day for the wedding on Saturday for Laura and Jared.
The wedding was in Ankeny and everything turned out great. The officiant was actually Jared's dad. It was really cool to see a father so proud of his son and who his son has become and to be able to tell him that on his wedding day.
Heather and Sarah are all smiles after the wedding.

It was fun to get all dressed up and spend a day with friends celebrating marriage, not to mention the food was great!

Tulip Time!

Heather and I took Thursday afternoon off of work and headed to Pella to check out Tulip Time. We met up with Shay and Nathan and spent the afternoon checking out the tulips. We got there in time to watch the parade. After the parade was over, we walked around the square and found some pretty flowers. Nathan wanted a close up look of the tulips!
Heather and Nathan pose in front of the flowers

Nathan and Shay are all smiles.

Shay and Heather are having fun enjoying the great weather.

I get my picture taken with my favorite Dutch girl!

...and Nathan wanted to be in the picture too!

After the photo shoot, we went to get some food. On the way, I stopped to take a picture of these monster tulips.

No festival is complete without tractors and Nathan can always find them, even if they are not John Deere green.

We stopped and picked up Nathan's fishing pole and headed to the pond to see if there were any fish to be found.

Nathan shows off his casting skills...

Heather and Nathan walk around the pond in search of fish.

We didn't find any fish...but we found a turtle!

Of course, Nathan wanted to touch it.

I held on to him to make sure he didn't end up in the pond with the turtle.

Nathan was so excited, he couldn't get enough of the turtle.

One last picture in front of the tulips to close out our 2009 Tulip Time experience!