Nine months

Clark is looking less babyish and more and more little boy every day. He is everywhere all the time. He is crawling everywhere, climbing everything, and cruising along all of the furniture. I feel like I'm sweeping and cleaning all the time, but the tops of his feet still end up black and dirty from all the activity. He chases his sisters around squealing while they run and shout "Clark!! No!!" He is still very much a Mama's boy, though Dad can be fun sometimes. Still no teeth. When he gets tired he sticks his tongue out. He enjoys self feeding himself puffs and yogurt bites and little bites from our food, but it is still mostly just practice as opposed to filling his belly. Clark certainly keeps us on our toes.

Warrior Dash 2014

We went, we conquered, and we got dirty.

Two years ago we ran the Warrior Dash and had a blast. We took a break last summer, and dove back in again this year. Our training included watching lots and lots of Buffy and Angel while eating ice cream almost every night. It was a pretty tough schedule, but stuck with it.

We left early that morning, dropped the kids off at a friends house, and made our way to the battlefield. After our nice warm up 5K hiking in from where we had to park the car, we checked in, got our numbers, dropped our gear, and got ready to go.

Trail running really isn't our thing. I don't know how people do it without turning an ankle every few steps. Despite that, we managed to keep up a good pace as we made our way through. There were 12 obstacles (and two small creeks) to get through, and we tried to conserve our energy for the last mile that had most of them. It seemed like this year the main focus of the obstacles was climbing. There were a few trenches to crawl through, but it felt like most of them was some form of wall with ladder rungs or ropes to climb. I experienced a few vertigo moments, but we successfully made it over everything. There was the pond to swim across, and the big mud hills to make it up and over. All of the photographers were near the end of the race catching the last few big obstacles.

The big, new attraction was call the Goliath. Almost at the finish line was a monster of a contraption to get over. First was a big cargo net climbing to the first platform. Then we had to walk across a slippery plank about 20 feet above a pool of water all the while being sprayed with muddy water.

A short ladder climb took us to the top, about 30 feet in the air. The only way to get down was to slide down into a pool of muddy water. That slide was fast! It was a good drop from the end of the slide to the water, and we hit the water HARD.

Around the corner was the last mud pit to crawl through to make it to the end. If I look like I'm in pain, it's because my tailbone was still feeling the effects of sliding off of the Goliath.

While the last two pictures were posed after we crossed the finish line, these next two were totally candid. I really love this guy, and I'm glad he's always on my team.

We made it through the finish line and have our medals to prove it.

We headed down to the Warrior Wash (another pond) to wash off as much as we could before grabbing our gear and heading back home to pick up the kids.