California Adventures

This might be a really long post, mostly because so much awesomeness happened in the last few days, it's hard to contain it all! We flew down to LA Thursday night with a group of 9 crossfitters from our gym. The purpose of the trip was to attend the Crossfit Games which is like the World Cup of Crossfit. There are teams and individuals that qualify from all over the world to compete in the games, so we were watching the best of the best. We got in pretty late Thursday night and made it to a house we had all rented together and crashed so we could be up bright and early.

Part of our group at the airport ready to go!

In the car on the way to the first day!

Friday morning we were off to watch the games! I'm sure a lot of this won't make sense to most of you, but here's a schedule of all of the events the individual athletes and teams had to complete...it's intense:

There are several events each day to watch. When we first got there we actually ran into the individual women on a run which was part of the 'burden run' workout that consisted of running 2.1 miles, flipping a giant piece of metal shaped like an 'I' down a field, then carrying a 70lb log on their shoulder for 600m into the stadium where they had to pull a heavy sled down the field. Each workout seems somewhat doable (although I could never do the weights they were doing) but when you think about doing 3 of those a day for 3 days straight, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be able to move at all, so it becomes all the more impressive to watch these athletes rock one after another. One cool part about this first workout we watched is that during the first running part, you could actually get pretty close to the athletes, so I snapped a few good pictures of the top competitors. These people are Crossfit celebrities!

The teams with their log worm and the sled.

Rich Froning in the 2.1 mile run (he went on to win the whole thing!)

Watching the men run by in the 2.1 mile run

The woman who won the whole thing pulling the sled down the field!

The next event for the individuals was a zig zag sprint. This was really run to watch because it was pure running. Most people who can pull heavy sleds and throw giant logs over their shoulders aren't good at running, which is why Crossfit is so awesome. It is such a variety of events that you can't just be good at one thing.

Each day they also announced the final event of the day around midday. That means the athletes don't even know what they their competition is until hours before they have to complete it, so there is no way to specifically prepare for the events. The final event for Friday involved rope climbs and thrusters. I just recently mastered the rope climbing, so of course for these elite athletes, they had to make it a little harder...legless rope climbs. Holy cow, these people had to climb up a rope using only their arms...10 times...with a lot of thrusters in-between. That is ridiculous.

My crossfit ladies! Love them!

These ladies competing are so awesome. Straight up that rope using just their arms!

It's so inspiring watching these athletes! In between events we were also able to walk around the stadium grounds where all kinds of vendors were set up with great fitness and health paraphernalia. I love being around such a fitness minded crowd!

I think I'll end this post here and write other posts for the other 2 days of Crossfit games...plus a post for our Disneyland day!!

Whistler Weekends

I've been slacking a little on the weekly blog posts, but for good reason, I swear! For one, I started a new job several weeks ago at a small architecture firm. Between that and trying to hit up as many crossfit classes and runs as I can get in, my weekdays have become pretty packed! The past two weekends have been pretty packed too with trips up to Whistler, BC and back.

Ryan really wanted to go meet up with some friends to go mountain biking the Fourth of July weekend, so that's what got it all started. We even took Ben up with us for his first international trip! I did a little biking the first trip, but mostly I just relaxed and hiked. I took the ski lifts up to the top of the mountains and got some great views all around!

There was a group of several other couples that we were hanging out with who all mountain biked and the kept talking about this great camp that I could take to get into biking and how the one they offered at Whistler was the best one (they have locations around the US and Canada). Finally right before we headed home we looked up the camp and found out that the Whistler one was the next weekend! Yikes, I was not planning on going to Whistler two weekends in a row!! As soon as we got home I decided to sign up for the camp and go for it. Unfortunately it was full, so I signed up for the wait list and figured it probably wasn't going to happen. A couple days later, I was in and we frantically made plans to spend another weekend in Whistler!

The camp was two days of 9-5 biking with a great group of ladies. The camp was huge, but we broke down into groups of about 5 or 6 to practice skills all morning then go for a ride on the mountains for the afternoon. I definitely did a lot more than I ever thought I could! Although it was an exhausting weekend, I learned a lot and hopefully will be able to keep practicing the test of the summer. It's and awesome sport to be outside and see the mountains while biking!

Busy Weekend Fun!

I probably have a lot more that I should be catching up on on this blog, but for now, I'll just go with all the fun we had this weekend! It started out with a little birthday party for our favorite little two year old, Maddox!

Saturday morning we got up bright and early to head out to Mercer Island to help out at a Crossfit competition. Two of our friends own the Mercer Island Crossfit gym and they were hosting a 5k competition which involved running a 5k and doing a series of crossfit movements after every 800m. We didn't compete at all, but got to watch and help run the competition. Several people from our gym were competing though so we got to cheer them on!

Saturday afternoon/evening I got an awesome surprise, my high school BFF, Jeannie was in town for a conference, so we got to hang out for a few hours! I hadn't actually seen her since our wedding, so we had lots of catching up to do. Since it was such a nice day out, we spent the afternoon bar hopping and eating ice cream, perfect Seattle day ;)

Sunday, Ryan decided to go out mountain biking with some buddies, so I grabbed ben and went out to the mountains with them and found a hike to do to. It was super hot out, so it started out a little rough and I got a little nervous we weren't going to find any water for Ben on the trail. Finally we made it up where the snow was and found some snow melt rivers and Ben got to play around and lay in the water to cool off.

Sunny Sister Time!

Last week i had an awesome impromptu vacation to visit my big sister in California! At the last minute, she had decided to take a week off of work and do some relaxing, so I got a text from her Monday late morning about coming down to keep her company in the sun for a few days. A few hours later I was on a plane to SF! 

My Plane Ride

I got in late Monday night, so we started our girls night out right with some wine, cheese, cookies (thanks to her mother-in-law who mailed a giant tin of delicious just in time for my visit!), and girl talk! Tuesday morning we slept in a little and spent some time in the gym before heading up to Napa for a day of wine tasting!

Cakebread Cellars

Napa Cellars

Goosecross Cellars

Trefethen Vineyards

We hit up 4 different wineries. We started at Cakebread Cellars where we were taken on a little tour of the grounds while sipping wine. Next up was Napa Cellars where Kimberly and Jason are wine club members, which meant free wine tasting for us ;) They also had a shipment of wine to pick up while we were there. Next was Goosecross Cellars. We went there to check it out because our little brother is a wine club member there. We mentioned that while they were giving us a tasting, and at the end they surprised us by saying we could have the tasting for free since he was a member there...yay more free wine! We finished off at Kimberly's other wine club winery, Trefethen Vineyards. After all our tastings, we hit up the outlet mall on the way home. At home we picked up some sushi and chick flicks for another super girly night!

Wednesday after a morning run, we did some more relaxing...this time by the pool! Ahhh, it felt so good to lay out in the sunshine.

Wednesday night we went into Oakland to hang out with the rest of the family! We picked up Lauren from work and hit up a tiki bar for happy hour! Jordan met us there too as soon as he got back from work. 

For dinner we tried out a super cute little mac and cheese place. It's probably a good thing that this place is no where near me because I loooove mac and cheese a little too much. This place was amazing with so many different options and add ins. I think I'm getting hungry just thinking about it now...mmmmm.

After dinner we headed near where Lauren and Lance live and went out for some post dinner drinks, and Kimberly happened to have some cupcakes that needed consuming...yummmm.

Thursday afternoon I had to head back up to Seattle. I always have so much fun hanging out with the siblings in the bay area...hopefully it can happen again soon!

Pete Lake

This is a pretty short post, but super pretty! It's been soooo nice in Seattle lately that we've been getting ramped up for a pretty awesome hiking season! We went on a gorgeous day hike with Ben out to Pete Lake about an hour east of Seattle. Enjoy some pretty pictures!

Memorial Day Weekend

Yes, I am fully aware that I haven't posted anything in several weeks. I have been quite busy, so now I have several fun posts to catch up on! Let's start with Memorial Day Weekend! Just a few days after we got back from Florida, we got visitors in Seattle! My little brother, Jordan, and his wife, Kristen came up from San Francisco to visit for the weekend! We started out on Friday with a few stops around downtown Seattle including lunch in the market, then a stop by the aquarium!

Later Friday night we met up with Kristen's sister and brother in law, who also happen to be architects in Seattle ;)

Saturday we had a big day ahead of us with a lot of hiking! Unfortunately it was a little snowier and wet than we were hoping so we just wandered the trail as long as we could without losing sight of it in snow.

After our hike we were all quite famished, so we headed over to Leavenworth to get some margaritas and mexican food....yum!

Monday, we all met up again for some boating on Lake Union! This was the first time I've tried the electric boats you can rent on there. We had it for 2 hours and could bring food and drinks on board, so that's what we did, a little picnic lunch while we boated around the lake!

After the boat ride, it was time for Jordan and Kristen to head back down south, but I'm super excited they could have a fun little weekend here!!