{ heart race }

A few weekends ago we, along with the rest of the Christensen clan, laced up our running/walking shoes to participate in the HeartBeat 5000 race. This has been a longtime tradition to celebrate Anna and support the wonderful cardiac care program at Children's.

It was another fun morning that was kicked off by the kid's race. Oliver and Stella actually seemed to have some sort of understanding of what a "race" was.

Oliver was even more excited about the mascots that were at the race. Notice that a certain someone isn't pictured :).

After watching the runners take off for the 5k, we brought up the back and walked the 5k course through St. Anthony Main.

Here's to another year - We Heart you Anna!

{ fun for fifty }

Father's day weekend we packed up and hit the road for northern WI. Though this time a little further than usual to a town called St. Germain. All of the Krueger family (including all 6 kids, 13 grandkids, and 4 great grandkids) converged on Estrold Resort where we rented four cabins for the week. The occasion was to celebrate 50 years of marriage for Grandma and Grandpa K!

After getting settled into the cabins, it was time for some fishing.

And shenanigans with Grandpa.

The weather wavered all weekend between so-so, rainy, sunny, and cool. Unfortunately it seemed as though rainy and cool was most of what we had so there was a lot of time lounging and laughing inside.

But there was ONE nice afternoon and we took full advantage of the few hours of sunshine and headed out on Uncle Kurt's boat. Stella even volunteered herself for a tube ride behind the boat!

Then we attempted to set up the giant inflatable water slide, only to have the sun go away and clouds, wind and rain blow in. The kids did have fun going down a handful of times before their teeth started chattering!

After the small storm blew through, it was time to celebrate Grandma and Grandpa K with a steak cookout.

And then the real surprise, a mock wedding put on by the 6 kids. As you can see from the pics below, it was quite the show!

The little kids stayed busy when outside playing on the playground, biking, and running around.

O and S also discovered how fun a simple bar of soap can be in a bath tub and had lots of giggles over the "slippery soap".

And the hard labor of fisherman paid off on our last day there when they brought back enough to fill everyone's bellies with a fish fry.

It was a wonderful four days and fun for Oliver and Stella to get to spend time with their cousins (and second cousins!). Bonus was the beautiful WI scenery that we were treated to!

{ tiny dancer }

Stella has been begging for a "ballerina" class for months. There are a ton of options at different studios and dance centers in the Twin Cities and I finally made a decision and signed her up for one through Minneapolis Parks & Rec at one of the local parks.

She started last week and was SO excited! Here she is before heading to class.

It is the first class that her or Oliver have done without the other so I was curious to see how it went. They have done classes and activities without me before but it is often a little difficult the first time or two. But she did great the first class! The teacher came out to the lobby to get all 12 little girls and she turned and followed her right into the class. Grandma C came along as well and although we weren't allowed to watch because it would be distracting, we did peek a few times. If you've never watched a 3 year old ballet class before, let me be the one to tell you it is the cutest thing ever!

Already looking forward to her recital in August!

{ trinona }

Trinona tri weekend got kicked off the second Saturday of this month when Chop and I headed to Winona to pick up the race packet.

I should also rewind and say that I had no idea that Winona was 2.5 hours away! When I decided to register for this tri, it was an add-on to two others I was already doing. To complete the series and register for this one, it was only $30 more (and they are typically about triple that). I asked Chop how far Winona was and he said "I think about an hour and 15 min". And I clicked register.

A few weeks before the tri I was thinking I would just drive down that morning for the race. Then about a week out I realized that it was 2.5 hours away and I would be getting up at 3:00am to drive. Of course it was too late to book a hotel in Winona so I was able to score a Priceline hotel in Rochester (about 40 minutes away) for only $35. And Grandma and Grandpa C came to the rescue and said they would come stay with O and S so Chop and I could head down there Saturday. Whew!

So we loaded up and hit the road.

All week the forecast for Sunday was not looking good. And the meteorologists were right this time. We woke up at 4:45am in Rochester to pouring rain. I tried to ignore it and choke down my go-to pre workout meal......almond butter toast (Justin's almond butter is addicting!) and banana.

Thankfully as we headed into Winona an hour later it was just sprinkling. Though the clouds over the bluffs didn't look nice. 

First hiccup of the day came when I pulled my bike out of the car. Instead of using the bike rack we had put it in the back seat of the car to keep it dry. To do so we had to take the front tire off. Well, when I took the front wheel off at the hotel I must have loosened it too much and the spring and bolt cap fell off. We tore apart the backseat hoping it was there but no luck. I, of course, panicked and then headed to transition in hopes that there would be a bike mechanic. Gear West to the rescue as they had a van there and kindly gave me replacement parts. Whew!

Then it was off to get my transition area set up and ready to go.

As I headed down to where the swim start was, I was relieved to find that the setup allowed for being able to get in just minutes before my wave went so I wouldn't have to stand around freezing for long. And the bonus to a cold, windy, wet morning? At 65ish degrees, the water didn't feel "that" bad!

They announced just before my wave went off that several swimmers already had to be rescued/pulled from the water. They suspected it was because they were not accustomed to swimming through weeds. Eck!

Minutes later my wave was off into the water. I managed to stay calm through the swim, though I felt pretty restricted by the full sleeve wetsuit I was wearing (I think it was a smidge too small).

Running out of the water and up to transition, I knew I was in trouble. In the picture below I should already have my wetsuit down around my waist.

But after tugging and tugging on the cord, it wouldn't come down. Yup, it was stuck. Would. Not. Budge. Chop was thankfully standing on the other side of the fence from the transition area and I went over to him to see if he could get it. Nothing. Still stuck. At this point I was watching other women from my wave come in, grab their bikes, and ride away. I might have sworn a few times. The teeth on the zipper had separated towards the top and it wouldn't slide past that spot. With some luck, Chop got the zipper pull to come unattached and then he was able to just manually pull the zipper teeth apart all the way down.

I was a little shaky from that but hurriedly put on my helmet and off I went on the bike. It was windy and the course was mostly rolling hills.

Heading into transition from the bike to run, I had no idea where I was within my age group. I figured I had lost some time in my first transition and I needed to make up for it. Quick change into running gear and then off to run.

My toes were freezing from the bike which made running interesting but I reminded myself of my mantra "be comfortable with the uncomfortable". I didn't feel terrible but also not as good as I felt in some of my training runs. Regardless, I was super thankful to see the finish line!

After finishing I had no idea where my time put me within my age group or wave. We headed for the food tent - turns out a chocolate chip cookie and lay's potato chips are the perfect post race snack! We then headed to look at the results they had started posting. I found my name with a 1/20 next to it and turned to Chop and said "I think I got first place". There may have also been an f-bomb in there as well. I was doubting the place number though as I knew there were more than 20 women in my wave.

After checking back about 10 minutes later they had updated the sheets and it now accurately showed 1/34, meaning I really had gotten first place in my age group. I was super surprised and thrilled at the same time and even more so after realizing that I made the top 10 overall women's list for all of the age groups.

Not only did I get a very heavy pyramid with the Trinona logo in it, I also took home a bottle of wine!

1 tri down and 4 more to go this summer! My hip pain flared a little even before the tri so I'm hoping to get back to a pain free state but we'll see. This weekend on Sunday will be a good test at Graniteman St. Cloud!

Sorry for the lengthy post.......it wasn't particularly for any of you readers but more for my own race recap record purposes. Oh, and a huge thanks to Chop for being a race day sherpa and for putting up with me being gone for an hour or two in the mornings to train!

{ biker chick }

As you saw in a video a few posts ago, Stella has really taken to her Strider balance bike. That continues to remain the same and it has been so fun to see her get better and better on it!

Another consistent thing lately has been her requests every day to wear a dress. While this is fine, it doesn't prove to be such a great option for biking as it gets caught in the rear tire. So we have to put ladylike manners aside and improvise!

We were blessed two Mondays ago with a beautiful day. I took Stella and Oliver out on their bikes and Stella seemed frustrated by having to stop every 20 or 30 feet to wait for Oliver. I asked Stella if she wanted to go bike riding solo with me once daddy got home from work. She was super excited so we headed to Lake Harriet to test out her skills on the path.  

It was difficult to get her to understand she needed to try to stay on one side of the path but she tried her best. She said that she was "racing" and that I needed to run while she biked fast. 

Before I knew it, we got to the bandshell which meant we were about half way around. I was a little nervous about her being able to make it back to the car but we took a water break and soaked up some sun by the water to rest a little.

 We continued on and she lost some steam, saying a few times that her bike needed to be fixed.

And she did get off once to run her race. 

 

She ended up making it all 3 miles around the lake. Wow! Here is a more recent video of her riding in WI this past weekend (more on that in another post).

Thinking she might be ready for pedals by the end of summer!?

And in case you were wondering, we are still working on Oliver's bike riding. And don't worry, the screams make it sound worse than it was. He wasn't injured, except for maybe his ego :)!

{ extremes }

The month of June has proved to be a month of crazy weather extremes. I was looking through random pictures snapped so far this month......sweatshirts to tank tops to long sleeves to swimsuits!

{ wordless wednesday: rainbow }

{ bullseye hits the spot }

Chop made his Target Field debut as Bullseye last Friday night at the Twins vs. Mariners game. It all came about when an email was sent out to the Finance department saying that employees could submit their names if they wanted to be a part of the mascot race at a Twins game. He threw his name in the hat and actually got picked!

Despite the 5 minutes of rain showers that blew through just before the game, it ended up being a beautiful night for baseball. He and four other co-workers headed down to get prepped after the second inning.

And then after the fourth inning, came out looking like this.

Before watching the video, here is Chop's recap of what went down during the race:

An incompetent starter led to my two biggest competitors getting a 10-15 foot headstart on me.  You can tell from the very first turn of the dirt near centerfield (as I have to veer back to the right) that visibility was highly limited in my costume.  As it became clear to me that I wasn't going to win with a conservative approach, I upped the pace knowing it was the only way to pull out a win.  As I gained ground and eventually passed the Ox (knowing how silly that sounds!), I had to make my way back to the dirt from the outfield grass.  Unbeknownst to me, the last right hand turn was nearly upon me.  The last thing I saw was the foul line, allowing for a split second to at least put up my arms to brace for the impact.  I immediately hopped back up, made my way to the finish, and even posed for a picture with some ladies in the fancy seat concession stand underneath Target Field on our way out.  By the time I made it back to my phone, I was informed the jumbotron was repeatedly playing the collision with the wall.  While a bit humbling, I must say that it was an absolutely fantastic experience that I will never forget!  

And for a good laugh, watch the video for yourself.
http://mlb.mlb.com/video/play.jsp?content_id=27640369&topic_id=41596328&c_id=min&tcid=vpp_copy_27640369&v=3

What better way to be remembered by 30,000 cheering Twins fans?!