Tough Mudder

October 11th was our anniversary so we decided to sign up for the Tough Mudder with friends for that weekend. The Tough Mudder is an 11 mile race with obstacles. We signed up before I broke my arm but it was expensive so of course I was going to still do it and do as many obstacles as I could with one arm. Kelly's mom came down for the weekend to watch the boys and Kelly and I headed to Austin on Friday afternoon. On Friday night, we camped out with friends. Saturday we headed to the course and started our race around noon. Here's a quick shot of Kelly and I right before we started.



These pictures are bad quality because I downloaded them from facebook but they can give you an idea of some of the obstacles. This one was called Mount Everest and we had to run up the incline and grab the ledge.



Crawling under barbed wire was the first obstacle and it got us nice and muddy.



Meagan, Rob, and myself pretty early in the race. Meagan's dad came to take pictures and he took hundreds.



This one was fun. We had to climb up the back side of that wall and then jump into the muddy pond and swim across. That's me in the middle of the water.



Carrying a log for a 1/4 mile or so. Kind of dumb.



This was a stretch of having to climb up muddy hills and then slide down into a pit of mud. Over and over and over again.



The group we ran with. Most of us are from the gym and then Meagan's brother and his friend.



Those were just a few of the obstacles. We also had to scale 9-10 foot walls, dive into an ice cold pond and go under water, swim under barrels in a pond filled with dead fish, walk across a balance beam suspended over a 20 foot drop into water, crawl across sharp rocks under barbed wire, climb over hay bales, and run through an electroshock thing with 10,000 volts of electricity just to name a few. I was able to do every obstacle except for the monkey bars. It was fun but the obstacles weren't that hard. Our friends, who have done the same Tough Mudder course before, told us it took them just over 2.5 hours last time. So we had 2.5-3 hours in mind. Well the obstacles got pretty backed up and we had to wait in line for several of them and there were just tons of people around most of the time so it ended up taking closer to 5 hours to finish. By the end, we were tired and hungry. So it was a good thing Kelly and I had planned on visiting The Salt Lick that night.

The Salt Lick was featured on an episode of Man vs Food and we had been wanting to try it ever since. It is an awesome BBQ place on the west side of Austin. Here is the open meat pit inside the restaurant. Kelly got the all you can eat platter and I got the pulled beef sandwich. The food was really great, best BBQ we've had down here.



On Sunday morning, we had to head back to Fort Worth, but not before stopping at another Man vs Food locale, Round Rock Donuts.



I wanted a small cream filled chocolate bismark. Kelly wanted the Texas sized glazed donut they were famous for. My bismark was incredible. The Texas sized glazed was pretty good but they only glazed the top so we just kind of picked the top off and tossed the bottom. We brought back some sprinkle donuts for the boys.



We had a great weekend away, thanks Grandma for watching the boys for us!

Blogging hiatus

It's been a long time since I posted anything so I'll try to sum up our last few months and get caught up. Cason no longer naps and I have physical therapy to do twice a day so I find myself with less time to do things like blog.

August 13th, was one of the highlights of my summer. We had the Life AsRx Tour at the Dallas Convention Center. It was a big CrossFit competition that drew athletes from all over Texas and Oklahoma. Kelly and I were on a team with Cesa, James, and Amy. There were three wods and Kelly, Cesa, and I did the 2nd wod that consisted of box jumps, double unders, and handstand push ups. We crushed that wod, it was so fun. Our team did well enough to make it to the 4th and final wod. We ended up placing 10th out of 50-60 teams in the end.





A few days later on Aug 17th, we were finding our max height box jump at the gym. I had a plyo box with a bunch of weights stacked on top of it, like we usually do. I broke my record and got 42.75 inches and threw one more 10 pound plate on top to see if I could get another inch or so. On my final jump, I got my toes up on the top but the plates shifted so I fell straight back and caught myself with my left hand. I shattered my radius in several pieces and dislocated my ulna. 8 hours later, I had surgery and my wonderful surgeon placed a metal plate and 8 pins in my wrist. I had to take 2 weeks off from working out and then I was back in the gym 5 days a week. My coach programs modified wods for me. It has now been almost three months and I can do deadlifts, pull ups, push ups with pain, rowing with two arms again, and 15 pounds in my left hand for things like thrusters, bench press, push press, etc. Looking forward to the coming month where I won't have to scale and can get back to normal wods.









That pretty much sums up August. September was full of working out, physical therapy, Cason started school, etc. Nothing too exciting.

Cason reads

Last spring Cason started sounding out short words and trying to spell words with fridge magnets so I decided to see if I could teach him how to read. We started in May but slacked off when we were on vacation. He is doing great, I'm really proud of him. I'm also proud of myself because I'm not a very patient person, ha ha. Here is just a short clip for the grandparents. It's kind of boring but hopefully you can hear him reading.

First day of preschool

Tuesday was Cason's first day of preschool. His Meet the Teacher went well the week before and he seemed excited to go back to school. On Tuesday morning we surprised him by taking him out to IHOP for breakfast, which he was thrilled about. Nothing like loading him up with a sugary breakfast and sending him off!



The weird look on his face is because I told him to smile, ha ha!



When we got to school, he was excited but I couldn't get a good picture because he was ready to go in and play.









Cason had a great first week of preschool. He likes his teachers and there are several kids in his class that he knows from last year. Whenever someone asks him how school was he replies "it was great!" or "it was fun!"

Rycie silliness

Two weeks ago we cut Rycie's hair short. I just woke up one day and decided he needed a change and was able to convince Kelly to let me get it cut pretty short. I love it and I think he's cooler now, which is important because it's been over 100 degrees here every day for weeks.

When we were in Iowa, we went to a splash park and Rycie didn't like the water. No surprise there. So he headed over to the little playground that was right next to it and Kelly went with him. He crawled into a little tunnel, lay down, stuck his hand out a little window, and said "paci me Daddy."

Even though he had been potty trained for a few months before we left for vacation, we decided to wean him off the potty seat while we were there. This involved the use of Skittles every time he went potty on the big potty without the insert. One day he was sitting next to me and randomly said "Skittle me Mommy."

One morning last week, Bryce saw a Cherokee airplane take off from a small strip by our house. He got excited, pointed to it, and said, "fly with Daddy, right seat!"

Last Sunday I went to his classroom at church to pick him up and he did not want to leave. So the girls in there were telling me how much they love him. They told me that the following conversation took place that morning.
Rycie (to a teenage girl): Hi.
Girl: Hi!
Rycie: I just said that!

Bryce never took toys to bed with him before, just his pacifiers and a few stuffed animals. But now all of the sudden, he wants to take everything in sight to bed with him. The last few nights he even slept with his baseball bat, among other things. The night I took this picture, he was sleeping with a soccer ball, F-16 jet, and a toy ice cream cone. I love this kid!

I forgot some pictures from vacation

The last Saturday we were in Iowa, we didn't really have any plans so we went out to Vinton to the dropzone where we met and used to skydive (and where Kelly used to work). We knew most of our friends wouldn't be there because Doc John and Mike Hoy were riding on Ragbrai and Briggs and Brother John were out in the fields leading detassling crews. But we wanted to see Jay and anyone else who might be there. We made the mistake of telling Cason that maybe he could sit in the airplane but they didn't shut down the Caravan the whole time we were there and we had to leave to get the kids lunch and get Bryce down for a nap. Cason was very disappointed that he didn't get to sit in the plane. But the boys did have fun spinning around on the creepers, doing a dirt dive.





Our consolation to Cason for not getting to sit in the Caravan was to let him look at this random plane in a nearby hangar.



That night, Alissa and Dave watched the boys for us so we could go to Holli and Brian's wedding reception. Dave took a couple cute pictures for us.



Rycie loves basketball and anytime he sees a hoop he yells "throw it in a hoop!"



Wresting I guess?

Cason's joke

Translation: Never invite a zero to a party. They're always late and add nothing to the conversation.