No-So-Frozen Tundra

As luck would have it, the Internet was out at the hotel last night so I couldn't blog after the Lambeau Field excursion. Didn't want you to worry that maybe I was tarred and feathered for not being a Packer fan. I survived and, in fact, had a great time! I tried to document this all for the benefit of my sisters, the Green & Golden Girls!

So here goes a ton of pictures... like you were there with us!

Arriving in style? The Up North sisters met me in Shawano Thursday afternoon and from there we rode together to Lambeau.

We're here!

Reserved parking is awesome! Close to the stadium and right in the heart of tailgating land!

By Lombardi statue.... Romey is a "trophy" wife!

Renell with her Game Day program...

Raylene with hers...

Romey with hers...

And me with... another Vikings fan! Heck yeah! My sisters were seriously worried I would dress like that. I went with neutral black -- much to their relief!

Pregame fun in the Tundra Tailgate Zone. Renell doesn't bleed green and gold, but her hair does!

How do you like me now?

Oh no, I'm touching a Packer! Oh yes, I make an exception for the cute ones... And Chris Jacke has aged to perfection! (Like how the wind is blowing my hair like it's a photo shoot??)

The twins!

The almost twins!

Pregame nonsense!

The sign says: "She's a Viking fan but we still love her 'cause she got us in for free!"... Well we didn't make the JumboTron with our poster but we had fun with it.

Time to go in!

The Green & Golden girls! We got Club Seats so we each got our own seat and cupholder versus having to squeeze in on a bleacher bench... which would not have been fun on such a warm day.

Dream come true for Nell!

Aaron Rodgers greeting a young fan!

Not-so-frozen Tundra! Game time temp: 92 degrees. Uff da!

"Go Pack, Go!"

Flyover during National Anthem.

Some game action.

Not a problem.

Temporary tattoos... For NOW!

Wow. And 4 of those are Hedberg girls!

Bucket List!

Bucket List!

Game over, Packers win. Ironically, at home, hubby won both the half and final for our office Packer pool! Good game.

That's all, Folks! We went back to the hotel in Shawano, slept, enjoyed breakfast at Perkins together then I drove from there right to Iola for work. Those 3 hopefully took their time and had a great ride home, reliving their football fun!

A Fresh Man

Today was the first day of school -- HIGH SCHOOL -- for Carter. Now I know why they call them freshman. This is the age they get fresh with the girls and talk fresh to their parents... which means we could be in for a long year!

It started out OK, though. Today was a shortened day so Carter didn't have to start until 8:30 instead of 7:30. So, of course, that left plenty of time for the obligatory scrapbook photos!

A second-generation Austin is now at Assumption High School. Here Dad and Carter represent the classes of '81 and '16!

 No tippy toes! See that smirk on his face? He doesn't need to stand on tippy toes to be taller than Mom. Sigh.

There he goes, entering the halls of high school, getting a fresh start on a new year and new demands.

Tonight he was feeling pretty positive about the first day. There are several new teachers in the school -- well all the high school ones are new to him -- and he had good things to say about most of them. Ha. Probably all but I think he's reserving judgment on a few.

Otherwise it was good to get that first day over with and get back into the groove of seeing friends, I mean studying.

Did I cry? Nope. Came awfully close when we were driving away after dropping him off and hubby says, "I wonder where we'll be driving him 4 years from now when we take him to college."

Oh boy. One day at a time.

Loyal Fans

With all of Carter's cross country meets "away" and some "far away," hubby and I know we can't make it to all of them. But I am going to try my darndest to get to as many as I can.

Today's meet was in Loyal, an hour trek northwest of Rapids. It would have been like a 2-hour drive from Iola, so I worked from home so I could go. As it turned out, both Carter and I put on miles today. I had to go pick up the CRV from the shop so that was a 4.18-mile run/walk. (Loving my new Garmin watch!) I was happy with my average pace until I realized Carter still runs 2 minutes faster than me. Per mile! Oh well.

Got plenty of work done so that we could leave the house in mid-afternoon. I saw a few of the other CC moms at the bus dropoff area but none planned to go up to Loyal today. Since I wanted to be a "loyal" Royal fan, I made the trip myself. I was glad I went so I could cheer on the team. We were light on Assumptions fans.

The race did not go as well for Carter. It was super hot again and he got tuckered out and finished over a minute slower this time. Here's a few photo highlights...

Team prayer before the start.

Team huddle: Royals!

The Loyal invitational included 14 schools. Whoa.

And they're off! Can you see Carter? Yeah, me neither.

Still staying with the crowd at the first mile marker.

On the tail of a Regis runner.

Looking to make the pass.

Oops. Seeing Mom with the camera.

He passed him!

Part of their route took them through a corn field. Not kidding. Here he is coming out of the field and making the turn back on "normal" ground again.

The last mile.

Running out of steam.

But sprinting hard at the finish. Way to go, Carter!

Our boys team finished last again, I think. But our girls won again. Carter said despite his slower time, he felt better mentally. That's good. We told him he'd probably learn something every time -- and that's even before school has started. Wow.

Monday Make Believe

When life hands you a challenging Monday, the best thing to do is look at your calendar for something positive to look forward to. Then you can make believe it's a wonderful day -- or at least tolerable since it can't last forever, just 24 hours.

I was surprised to see that today is already Aug. 27. This means our annual sister adventure -- Wild Women's Weekend XIV -- is only a month away! Awesome. Can't wait to spend a long weekend with my sisters in the northwoods -- where we can hug like bears and howl like wolves and no one will be around to judge us. Ha.

The cool part is that before I even get to that weekend, I have so much going on in the next 30 days.

I only have to count down 3 days now until I take 3 of my sisters to their first Packer game at Lambeau Field. Oh yes, I am such a nice sister! And Renell, Romey and Raylene certainly deserve me. I mean deserve it!

Then in just over 3 weeks, I get to take off with my favorite Vikings fan and spend a week in Vermont and upstate New York, with a brief side trip into Canada. I can't wait for our second honeymoon! Jim doesn't know I'm calling it that, but he'll figure it out!

Of course, somewhere in there we (well, Carter) have 5 cross country meets. That's exciting, too. I look forward to seeing Carter's progress (hopefully) and how he adapts to different courses and different-sized meets. Tomorrow, for example, I think there will be a dozen schools participating. Uff da. Should be a crazy time.

And let's not forget someone will be starting high school in just 36 hours. Yikes. I'm pretty sure I'm not looking forward to that countdown.

I am, however, looking forward to next weekend (which is allowable on crappy Mondays) -- because it will be long and we get to do our Austin Fantasy Football draft with team owners Jim, Casey, Clay, Carter and Colin... oh, and me, the token butt kicker ... er, girl.

Good thing I looked at my calendar. Who cares if Monday sucks? From here on out, it looks good!

Visiting Hours

Amongst all our colorful fun the past few days, Carter has had some special visits.

On Thursday, he spent a few hours at his old babysitter's place, hanging out with the young kids still there -- who remember him and, for some reason, adore him. I appreciate that he took time out of his busy schedule to do that. They certainly enjoyed it, his babysitter loved seeing how much he has grown up and Carter liked seeing them, too. Glad he still does that once a summer.

Yesterday, Carter had one of his classmates/cross country buddies over. I've been chastised for saying they "played" together or he had a "slumber party" -- they "hung out" and he stayed the night. I'm not sure when they finally hit the hay last night, but they were still asleep when I got home from early church. I actually woke them up when it was almost 11 a.m. so they could have breakfast.

Ahh, breakfast.... Hubby brought home the bacon, I fried it up in a pan -- and two teenage boys devoured it! Nothing left for Dad when he got home from church! Good thing they can run it off later!

I ran off my one piece, too. I got my new Garmin GPS running watch delivered yesterday. This is for Carter and I to share. It works via satellite so it tracks your mileage and time and pace. Then you can upload it to your computer if you want and see your pace for each mile, etc. I figure this will be a great way for Carter to figure out if he's running his first mile too fast or in general, see how much he improves over the cross country season. Yes, I secretly have wanted one of these for years, but I needed a valid excuse!

So I tried it out on a run around Lake Wazeecha today. The path I took was 3.85 miles so I just kept going to make it an even 4. No I'm not in any shape to run all that. I did a combo where I ran 9 minutes, walked 1 and repeated throughout the course. Two weeks from today I have a 10K trail run I am doing with some friends. I am really not prepared but have accepted that I will have to do some walking in that. I'll still earn the cool t-shirt!

After I got back from the run, I told the boys visiting hours were over and it was time to shuttle Tyler home so Carter and I could do school supply shopping. A necessary evil. The great thing is that this year he just needed some notebooks and a few binders. Nothing major at all. Yet. We'll see if that changes when classes resume Wednesday!

After shopping, I took a few minutes to relax and read on the deck. Then Jim's sister came over for a brief visit, too.

What a great weekend. Between Friday night's scrapping and non-bonfire gathering to today's visitors, it was nice to not have plans so we could say "yes" and be available.

Just another reason to feel so blessed!

Color Me Happy

Despite little sleep, Carter and I got up and were pretty psyched about our Kolor Run for Kids 5K today at the nearby Grand Rapids Lions Club Park.

This new event replaces the hot air balloon rally they used to hold in August each year in Rapids to raise money for the Children's Miracle Network. I miss the balloon rally but this was pretty fun.

The way it works is simple. You start out with a plain white shirt on, then as you run or walk the course, you go through various "color stations" where they shower you with colored powder to decorate your shirt as you go. When you are done, you have a funky shirt -- and plenty of color in your hair and skin and shoes, too!

We created a team with the next-door neighbors, Niki, Mya and Madison. Since I signed up during the Olympics, I called us the "Fab Five." Not that a team means anything -- this was a non-timed event -- but it gave us a chance to wear groovy glasses (yes, mine are 20 years old) and matching headbands to protect our eyes and hair! This is obviously the BEFORE picture!

Mom and Carter looking cool and ready in our BEFORE photo! (And yes, I am looking short, too!)

Carter finished first among the Fab Five. He had planned to run it all and get a good time just for his own personal reference. But because it was so hot out, all of us ended up running and walking to get through it. Here he is going through the last color station! (My wonderful husband served as photographer!)

"Bring it on!" Yes, I'm having a BLAST... of yellow, that is! It was a lot of fun!

Mom and Carter looking groovy in our AFTER picture!

Next-door neighbor Madison finishing with a smile!

Some more of our neighbors who dressed in tutus. Love it! We had 9 runners and 1 photographer from Blue Jay Drive. We were well colored and well represented.

The Fab Five AFTER photo! Looking like a rockin' rainbow!

The only post-race challenging part is getting all the color out -- of clothes, shoes, hair and skin. My hair is fine but I have blotches of various colors on my legs, arms and neck. Carter's hair is clear, too, but he's got a purple right ear, inside and out!

We don't care. If people ask, it will be fun to explain what we did. For fun and a good cause, of course!