Lake Padden Triatholon

This past Saturday was the Lake Padden triatholon. Tommy came in first place!! He's doing another triatholon in Lake Stevens this next weekend that he said is a little more than 4 times as long as the Lake Padden one!! Lake Padden took him a little under an hour to complete. He expects the Lake Stevens triatholon to take him about 5 hours!! Yikes! I just hope he doesn't have a heart attack in the process!

Here are a couple "pre-game" shots at Lake Padden. Tommy was doing the triatholon along with his friend Peter (who technically came in first but chose not to take a place). Mom, Don, Mandy, Ryan, and I came to watch and have a picnic there. We were sitting at the finish line.

I don't know how to make my pictures smaller yet so that they will fit in the collage. Any Picasa users out there wanna give me some advice? : )

Tommy was the 4th out of the water, but quickly passed the girl infront of him as he ran up the grass. He picked up most of his time on the next event which was his strongest, cycling. That's Tommy in the longer wetsuit. The girl is infront with a short wetsuit.

Tommy came back from biking 2nd, just seconds after Peter. He quickly switched into his running shoes for a lap around the lake.

Almost at the finish line and talking with Peter afterwards.

We'd just eaten by the lake and were waiting for the awards to be given out.

It was a fun event. I wish that I could see his next one in Lake Stevens, but it starts at 6:30 in the morning and we have to teach Sunday school. Good luck Tommy!

Not in L.A. Anymore!

When I go to a tractor parade on a Friday night, it's just another reminder that I don't live in the greater Los Angeles area anymore!! : D This year with the rain, it was pretty short and uneventful. I enjoyed last year's tractor parade with the little tikes riding their plastic John Deers down the street right after the humongous tractors which were doing varied interesting stunts. This year's was mostly like this....
On Saturday morning, we watched the Berry Dairy Days parade. We enjoyed that with all the firetrucks, bands, nurses marching with bed-pans....also known as "The Bedpan Brigade", more tractors, etc. etc.

Afterwards, we went to Christianson's Nursery for their annual rose festival. This was our first time, and as you can see, we really enjoyed the beauty of the place! Warning, this will be a bit of an "Elizabeth overload" since there were so many great photo opps!

My Dad, Visiting from Texas

It's been busy around here as my dad was just visiting from Texas. We hadn't seen each other since Ryan's and my wedding close to two years ago. It was nice for him to be able to come for Father's Day weekend. In the above picture, we are at my brother and sister-in-law's house (Don & Mandy) for a BBQ with all the dads.

During the weekend, we all began working on a puzzle since it was a nice indoor activity with all the rain this past weekend.

Tommy & Dad left the party (in the kitchen) and took a nice, long nap!

A little update....Ryan's last day of active duty Navy was last Tuesday. He is now on terminal leave. That means that he has 30 days of leave (that he had saved up) until his last official day in the Navy on July 13th. He entered the civilian world as a full-time student at the college on Monday. There were MANY challenges that first day with classes, etc. With a few schedule/class changes, I think things will be going better now.

We are still praying about him doing the reserves. As of March 14, the Navy put out an "official" (I'm not sure how much is actually ever official in the Navy, but at least it's in black & white) document saying that someone just coming out of active duty and entering the reserves would not be deployed for 2 years. We're thinking about Ryan going into the reserves for just those two years. He could go to school full-time and then only go over to the base for 6 days a month. It's hard to find another part-time job that will work out time-wise and financially like that.

In the meantime, I just began teaching again for the summer on Monday. I have only 4 students registered right now. There are only two other day ESL teachers at the college. Two of us have very low numbers right now. If we don't get more students, they could cut our classes. Yikes! It is common that we have less students in the summers, but please pray for more to come!!

Fort Ebey

Ryan had a special liberty day on Tuesday (that's a day off for doing something good in civilian terms). He had a doctor's appointment at the base for his final physical before getting out of the Navy. Since we were going all the way to Oak Harbor for his appointment, we decided to enjoy something in that area since we don't usually go to Oak Harbor area much together. We decided to go to Fort Ebey to walk around a bit. Even though we didn't have much time to hike, it was nice to see the ocean, a pond, and many wild, pink rhododendrons all at one place.

Wild rhodies growing on either side of the trail.

Drift wood.

More natural rhododendrons. It was sprinkling a bit so there's a raindrop blurring the picture on the bottom right corner of this shot.

Fishing

Ryan, Tommy, our friend Wayne, and a guy that Ryan works with all went fishing on Saturday. Ryan taught Tommy and Wayne how to fly fish. They went to the Samish River and had a great time. These pictures are mostly of Tommy and Wayne since Ryan was the photographer, and he didn't get them to take any pictures of him. He brought home a trout that we'll probably be sauteing up tonight. Tommy and Wayne wanted to stay out longer, but Ryan and I wanted some time together too. Plus, Ryan got a little burnt even with his spf 30 on. So it was time to come home.

Tommy fly fishing and wild yellow irises

Tommy's catch and Wayne