The Next Valley of Death

I was so haunted by Death Valley that we had to go back. Putzing around at a one year olds pace was fun, but.... since the longest run that first weekend in Death Valley was 2.something, done with my six year old, I needed a little more burn. I have to admit that those two miles were some of the best I've ever done but what good is a run if you can't feel the muscle pain 3 days later?

Lacking a holiday weekend this trip would have to be fast. That meant arriving late.

I (this is Keith, by the way) had lots of great ideas of how to mix some family fun with a long run. Andrea was not too crazy about most of them. We finally agreed on a plan. We would leave after I finished work at 5:00 PM and drive to the start of the Titus canyon road. Andrea would drop me off in the desert for some illegal camping while she took the kids back into Beatty Nevada to what one of her friends described as the dumpiest hotel the friend ever hopes to stay in. Andrea and the kiddo trifecta could sleep in, go to Denny's for baseball pancakes and come pick me up after I finished running around in the desert.

We arrived at 11:00 PM on a dark moonless night in a raging windstorm at the start of the Titus canyon road. We located an obvious bend in the road that Andrea could recognize the next morning. I told her to walk for 60 seconds directly towards a radio/cell antenna visible on a peak off to the North. I would there cache my camping gear early the next morning when I started to run. She would retrieve the gear then drive into Death Valley where I hoped to arrive some time "around noon" the next day. Some of our biggest family strife recently has involved rendezvous times and locations after long runs such as this so I was more than a little apprehensive about pulling this whole thing off.

They say stolen waters are sweet, but illegal camping is less so when you are fairly close to a well traveled road. Between the buffeting wind and cars on the highway I did not enjoy any sweet sleep. Fortunately I had the alarm set for 3 AM so I did not have to toss and turn for long. I procrastinated getting out of the tent as long as I dared as I only had enough clothing to stay warm while running. I froze as I put away the tent and tried to eat and hydrate. The gear was cached behind some grease wood and I hoped Andrea and the kids could easily find it yet remain hidden from anyone else.

I started running due west at 4:00 AM. It was dark, really dark. I try to run with a headlamp on as little as possible because the big world gets narrowed down to that small beam of weirdly blue LED light. On this morning, Mars was directly in front of me on an arrow straight road and I chased him towards the horizon before he beat me soundly while silently slipping behind a craggy limestone ridge just before sunrise. With my light on I could only see a small colorless area of gravel road twenty feet in front of me but nothing else. If I switched it off I could see the stars and the faint glow of stars above the jagged mountain horizon. I could not see any detail of the rough road I was traveling without the headlight...but those stars!! A sprained ankle would be worse than bad all alone on a cold night when I was dependent upon running to stay warm. I have heard it said that cops think everyone is a criminal but my job makes me think that injuring a foot or ankle is an everyday occurrence. I uneasily decided to trust dumb luck and run lightless while trying to sense the big ankle busting rocks so to enjoy the full beauty of a deep dark winter night. I allowed Mars to guide me while the Milky Way and not infrequent asteroids made enough light to at least stay on the road, oh and totally blow my mind! A cold clear desert winter sky with no light pollution was not to be missed!

I pushed the worries of covering the distance in the appropriate time, Andrea finding my camping gear, sprained ankles, having enough water, finding the correct route, and mountain lions out of my mind and just focused on moving.

The first portion of this run is straight up an alluvial fan for several miles before entering a canyon that crosses the Funeral Mountains over a pass into Titus Canyon that descends to Death Valley proper. I was finally into the canyon when the sun decided to join me on my journey. Inserting yourself into a rugged unknown landscape and then letting the sun reveal the detail of the place is worth the 3 AM start. Better than surprise presents! I was not disappointed! The multicolored strata was amazing in the early morning glow. A geologists dream. A bad runners dream. I could easily keep my mind off the pain of running as I oogled the geological display that only the desert can give with none of that pesky greenery to hide the dirt and rocks. Truth be told, I'm really not much of a runner. Put me on a treadmill and about 0.91 miles is all I can do before I have to stop from exertion. I can manage 3 or 4 miles on a paved road before my body gives up. Here I had been running 10 miles all uphill and hit the top of the first pass feeling really good. If I get out in the woods or on a trail with good scenery it gets all transcendental and weird and I can run for hours. Its not that I really enjoy the running but more that I enjoy moving through the landscape.  I'm something like a hiker with ADD. I don't even have to think about the running part. My mind and body are doing totally separate things. I was so wrapped up in the panorama that I hardly noticed the long, steady uphill section.

I was carrying a gallon of water (Death Valley is supposed to be hot you know) and enough food for all day. Too bad I was freezing.

And.....this is where Keith got bored and stopped the blog entry.  So, I'll finish it up with a few pics of his journey.

 Other highlights of the trip included:

• A sweet hotel room in Beatty, NV
• The ever exciting baseball pancakes from Denny's
• Finding Keith's gear without a hitch
• Poking around a mining ghost town while we waited for Keith
• Finding Keith at our appointed time sitting on the side of the road, enjoying the slim shade of a road sign
• Enjoying the beauty of Dante's View where you are perched high above Badwater (the lowest point in the US) and can see the tips of the Sierra's--including Mt. Whitney (the highest peak in the continental US)
• Losing the kids in the sand dunes and finding them at dusk--thanks to a scout troop that happened upon two dirty little kids and brought them back our way.  (whew!)
• The most ridiculous Park Ranger that, when we arrived to our campsite after dark with a three hungry and tired little kids, made us take down our tent and move it 5 feet.  I have so many four letter words that could pepper this story....

Good times, I tell ya.  Good times.  This is a LONG overdue blog post.  Now that I finally have this out of the way, I can blog about some of our more recent adventures.  It's practically a party a minute for the Card Family! (as Keith sits next to me after yet another late night of work and an hours-long session of catching up on charts.  In case you wondered, that's what our real lives are all about.)

The Valley of Death

We had a three day weekend. And if you know me at all, you know we couldn't spend it at home.

The weather wasn't exactly on our side. It was February, after all. We also didn't intend to stay in a little hotel room for the weekend. Because honestly, we JUST moved out of an apartment the size of a hotel room. We couldn't stomach the thought of spending a few days cooped up in a room together. Even staying home sounded better than that!

And then, we discovered yet another reason why it is SO FREAKING AWESOME to live in Carson City. Not only are we minutes away from the beaches, slopes, and trails of Lake Tahoe...not only are we an afternoon's drive away from the Pacific Ocean, redwood forests, San Francisco (and my SISTER!)....not only can we enjoy any number of amazing destinations up and down the Sierra mountain range....(I really could go on and on and on)...

We can also escape the cold and snow and drive 5 hours to the hottest place in America. Death Valley. Hellllloooooo new favorite winter spot!

We were lucky enough to convince my sister and her kids to come with us. (See her trip recap here. Her pictures are as always way cooler than mine.) Her husband was in China, her kids had the week off school and she was feeling like she needed a change of pace. Totally bueno.

Since none of us had ever been to Death Valley before and we were going to be arriving late, we didn't want to mess with tents. We picked a little speck of a town from a map on the edge of Death Valley and reserved rooms for us and Shannon. Turns out, we booked the entire motel.



It was seriously rustic. Camping without tents. It was FREEZING inside. The room was heated with a tiny space heater that seemed to turn off automatically. The shower had a trickle of water that after about 20 minutes turned lukewarm and sent out about as much water as you might get through a syringe. Very awesome. We actually happen to love a good, memorable hotel. Remember our favorite Double wide trailer?

This kid...needs a haircut.


Turns out, Death Valley is a pretty stunning place. The campsite we found, on the other hand....not so much.

I strategically took this photo. True, it has a stunning view. What you can't see is that we were sandwiched between two land whales (RV's) in a big dirt parking lot, which on a holiday weekend was also loaded with more land whales and scout troops. Also turns out that there aren't a lot of things like TREES in Death Valley that might offer a little privacy.

But that's ok. Nothing a little jaunt to the mountains can't fix. We hiked Mosaic Canyon, an awesome, narrow slot canyon shortly after setting up our tents in dirt city.




The sunset at Zabriskie Point was amazing.



The next morning we woke up to a pretty stiff wind. That happened to not be ideal since we were within view of the sand dunes. Pelting sand isn't my favorite weather. So, we went to Scotty's castle which was on the other side of said sand dunes.

Turns out I'm a cheapskate though (shocking, no?) and didn't end up paying for the tour. I have a feeling we'll be going back again before long so stay tuned for an eventual Scotty's Castle recap.

Then we spent the rest of the day at the Ubehebe Crater. The crazy wind died off almost instantly as we were packing up our picnic lunch and we spent a few hours hiking around the rim of the crater.





After our final night in the dirt lot, we spent the morning hiking down Gold Canyon, another really cool hike through slim canyons and awesome moon-like dirt hills.



And then....It SNOWED!!! Can you believe it???

Just kidding. That's the salt flat of Badwater, 282 feet below sea level. This was our last stop before heading home.


And there you have it. The Card Family (plus Shannon and kids) first camping trip of the year! In the middle of February.

I have a feeling this year is going to be a good one for us.

A kitchen disaster

I think I'm a pretty decent cook. It took me a few years to really "get it" though. Hamburger Helper used to be my best friend--a real 'homemade' meal. Company worthy too!

I really turned the page a few years ago when Keith declared a new years resolution to not cook for the entire year. I admit, he knows (knew?) his way around the kitchen pretty well. And I still harbor a little bit of resentment towards that resolution (I worked full-time and traveled a lot so cooking fabulous meals didn't really work out for me all that often) but let's leave the details for another story, shall we?

Anyway, I do love making yummy things in the kitchen. I haven't wiped store bought bread from my sandwich lineup and I don't really plan to, but there is nothing better than a batch of fresh rolls for dinner or mixing up cookies and yummy treats with my little 'helpers'. Asian food with fresh ingredients is so. much. better. than what you can usually get at a restaurant. And we all know I love me some homemade pizza.

The other day I thought I would be super mom and whip up some waffles for breakfast. Keith had left for work super early so I was just feeding my littles. In my baking drawer, I had a bag of pancake mix that I had dumped into a gallon sized ziploc bag and I figured it would be easy to whip up a batch of waffles with that.

I didn't even use a recipe. A little of this, a little of that, and wallah! waffles made with love. I was feeling like a rockstar mom.

For some reason the waffles didn't get nice and brown like they normally do. But whatever. Dump some syrup on there, the school bus won't wait! Bennett took a bite and asked for more syrup. He took another bite and said "Mom, these taste a little different".

Leah, on the other hand, just came right out and said "Mom, these are gross."

How could I screw up waffles from a mix? I can make an amazing caramel cake from scratch! I took a better look at my waffle mix and realized I had confused it with a bag of flour.

Flour plus water.....equals glue.

Paper mache pancakes anyone?

Happy Valentines Day!

I woke up to this today:


For reals!!! I totally adore this man. Further proof that my husband is the BEST.

And after my last post, I totally deserve this one...



Pure awesomeness. Happy Valentines Day!

Man Fail

I am seriously convinced that I have the most AMAZING husband in the world. He is incredibly kind, loving, thoughtful, helpful around the house, compliments me regularly, thinks I'm beautiful, etc, etc, ETC!

For reals, he is the bomb.

So his Man Fail today DOES NOT reflect his normal character. But it cracked me up so much that I can't resist laughing publicly about it.

So, Sunday mornings. They're crazy right? We have church at 9:00 am and it's always a mad house getting out the door in time. This morning, being the AMAZING and THOUGHTFUL husband that he is, Keith let me sleep in. He got up with the kids and played with them quietly so I could snooze a little longer. See people? I am the luckiest girl in the world--times ten.

So I lazily roll out of bed at 7:45 and look at the clock. Yikes!!! We had one hour to be out the door. And so the mad rush begins. I got one kid in the shower, fed breakfast to the others, got clothes laid out, baby changed, and jumped in the shower myself. I was rushing to dry my hair and put on a mess of makeup while Keith was casually finishing up with his tie. He looked at me and this conversation ensued:

Keith: "Can I do anything for you?"
Me: "I'm starving."
Keith: "Let me fix you breakfast."
Me: "No, it's ok. I'll grab something before we leave."
Keith: "This isn't about what you can do. It's about letting me do something nice for YOU. I want to show you how much I appreciate you." (for reals, he said this--my heart melts for this man.)
Me: "Awww, thanks! How about a bowl of granola?"
Keith: "Sure thing."

I continue getting ready. Minutes pass and my stomach growls. "Keith!" I call from the bathroom, my hair connected to a curling device. I imagined a bowl of granola and milk sitting on the table getting soggy from minutes of waiting.

I hear kids playing and realize Keith probably can't hear my plea for breakfast. He must have thought I would come eat in the kitchen, but I don't have time. I need to eat while I'm getting ready.

I rush out to the kitchen anticipating my soggy bowl of granola.

When I get to the kitchen, I see Keith sitting at the computer with a tall glass of soda on ice next to him. He's all ready for church and just chillin'.

Me: "Where's that bowl of cereal?"
Keith: "Oh, it's on the counter."

I look on the counter and see two bags of unopened granola sitting there.

Me: "Huh?"
Keith casually looks up from the computer. "I didn't know what you wanted."

He was stumped by the two different flavors of granola and gave up.

So his genuine concern and "wanting to show much he appreciates me" was taking two bags of granola out of the cupboard and setting them on the counter.

Man Fail!

Perhaps there is an underlying message about how he really feels....but I'm going with it's the thought that counts.

(Happy Valentines Week, Keith! I love you more than rocks! xoxo)

Princess Party

A little girl in our house has been looking forward to her friend's dress up party for weeks!

Liberated

Freedom feels so so SO good.

We sold our house in Kentucky last month. It took 1.5 years and every last dollar we've ever known but it's GONE! I literally lost a few tons of weight off my shoulders. What a relief!

AND, to add to the fun....2 days after we signed the papers on the house, we moved. After 6 months of living in a two-bedroom, 800 square foot, so-ridiculously-small-with-3-kids apartment, we were able to bust outta there and move on. SO LIBERATING!!

We had to move to the apartment last summer after our house, which was under contract, fell through at the last minute. When we got that offer last summer, it seemed like perfect timing. Our lease was up on the house we were renting and we could seamlessly move on with our lives. We had our eye on a fantastic house in Incline Village with a view of Lake Tahoe on one side and Diamond Peak ski resort on the other. We were so excited to experience the life of the Tahoe ski bum for a year or so before we came back to the valley and settled down for good. I had actually hired a babysitter and was driving to sign the contract to rent that house when we got a call from our realtor. The buyer backed out at the last minute. The info we had was that she decided to move to Africa. WHA....? Who does that? And how she wouldn't have known that a month prior when she made the offer, I'll never understand.

We called our landlord right away to find out if we could keep renting the house we were in. Unfortunately, he had already signed a contract to rent it to someone else. Total Bummer. So, with only days before we had to move, we frantically found our tiny townhouse. It was clean, although small, and we could rent it on a monthly basis without signing a lease. "The house will sell soon. I'm sure we won't be here long"

A few weeks turned into a month. A month turned into six. We were all going crazy--especially once winter hit. Our backyard was a concrete pad--not even big enough to set up our patio table and chairs. Our front yard was the parking lot. Our one-car garage was packed literally to the hilt with everything we owned. We put only the bare minimum inside the house so we could at least move around. Beds, clothes, only a few toys, our table and a loveseat. The kitchen was so small that there wasn't enough cabinet space for food. Our food was in plastic bins on top of our washer and dryer. It was a struggle. But the house will sell soon. It HAS too.

We thought we hit the jackpot when, in a desperate move, I sent an email to the TODAY show to try to get our house featured in their real estate segment. I'm not joking when I say this house was awesome. It was beyond awesome! A total dream house. So when I got a response the very next day, I knew this was our ticket out. We had to go back and forth with some info but they said our house would be featured in mid-November. I told everyone I knew and my realtor made fliers which she sent to hundreds of people. The morning of the show...some stupid celebrity couple breaks up and the segment isn't on. I got calls and emails all day. What happened??

According to the show, our segment was bumped due to "breaking news" but we were put back into the lineup a couple weeks down the road. Cautiously optimistic, we told everyone to watch and our realtor again plugged it far and wide. When we tuned in that morning....it wasn't us. They had a real estate segment but it wasn't our house.

Totally deflated this time, we gave up. I called my realtor and said we were done. After a year and a half of making a substantial mortgage payment and living a life elsewhere, we were sinking. We were going to find a renter and move on. It was that or just quit paying the mortgage and foreclose. We were desperate to get on with our lives and get that burden off our backs.

My realtor panicked when I told her this. After all the work she had done, she did not want our house to go off the market for a year or more since it would mean she would never make a dime. She contacted everyone that had ever been interested in the house and told them it was time to make a move or kiss it goodbye.

A few days later, we had an offer. It was the worst offer we had ever imagined. We never EVER would have thought we would have to sink so low. It meant a total loss. Every last dime we had ever made and saved in the last decade would be on the table with this offer. It would obliterate us. But it also meant no more mortgage payment every month. No extra set of utility bills every month. No more paying for lawn care or a cleaning lady for a house I didn't live in. No more trips to Kentucky every few months to check on the pipes or the yard or the roof or all those things a responsible homeowner needs to care about.

We took the offer.

A week before closing, I got an email from the Today Show. Our house was getting featured--5 days before closing. What timing. The segment aired and Al Roker was oohing and ahhing over our house. My realtors phone rang off the hook that day. A painfully classic case of "a day late and a dollar short."

Two days after closing, we moved out of our tiny apartment. We are renting again and are much more comfortable in our new house. Plenty of space, a nice backyard, a normal kitchen, my kitchen appliances and the kids toys are all enjoying daylight again. Renting is pretty nice. When something doesn't work, we make a phone call and it's someone else's problem. Although I expect this experience to be something like childbirth. Once the pain of our last house wears off, we'll be anxious to own a home again but for now, we're in recovery.

If you felt a crazy wind lately, that was just me breathing many, many sighs of relief.

The Second Most Ghetto Christmas Tree Ever

The very most ghetto tree ever? Christmas 2001. It was way before kids and we had only a month before bought our house in the Philadelphia suburb of Lansdowne, PA. That September I had been laid off from my HR job with an airline and Keith was in his second year of med school. I'm sure we were broke and I'm fairly certain that was the first Christmas that I didn't get to be with family. We were just not feeling a lot of Christmas spirit because we had decided not to bother getting a tree that year. Sad, no?

Well, my dear friend Michelle (love ya M!) would have none of that Grinch-ness. She was determined that we would have a tree in our new house. She worked magic only like Michelle can do and--sure enough--found us a tree! We resisted but a day or two later, we found a big tattered box with green plastic "branches" sticking out from various holes. This tree was donated to us by our bishop's wife--and I'm sure we saved it from a Christmas at the garbage dump as she had recently upgraded her own tree and this was her castoff. Which probably means that this particular tree had been saved from more than one garbage dump encounter--considering half of the things anyone (including the bishop's wife) owned in Lansdowne, PA had been pulled off from someones curb waiting for a bulk trash pickup.

This, I must say, was the first FAKE tree in my life. I'm a tree snob when it comes to Christmas. I want the real smell, the needles all over the floor, the bonfire afterwards, etc. So when this tree arrived on my doorstep, I was totally offended by it's "fakeness". But we reluctantly set it up in our empty dining room. Michelle came over later with a bag of Christmas lights--another save from the garbage dump on our part. There were probably 6 or 7 strings of lights--a total of maybe 500 bulbs. I'm pretty sure only about 100 actually worked. This tree started out ghetto and was going downhill fast. We took out the tangled mass of lights and stuck them on the tree in the same tangled mass. We tried to stretch them around a bit for full coverage but it was mostly just a garland of electrical cords and burned out lights. Later I popped a bag of microwave popcorn and found a needle and thread to add to the ghetto-ness. After I munched on some of the popcorn, I ended up with about a 3 foot section of strung popcorn. That ended up as our only decoration draped on the pathetic tree. It was absolutely a Christmas tree tragedy. In the end, we spent Christmas morning at Michelle's anyway so the plastic tree-shaped-object never hosted our Christmas joy.

That was one pathetic, super ghetto tree. We threw it out to the curb as soon as possible. Maybe even Christmas night? It really was begging for the garbage dump (although, I wouldn't be surprised if someone else "discovered" it from our trash pile).

Fast forward a decade or so. We have had so many fantastic Christmas trees over the years. Some bought from grocery store parking lots, others hacked down with a saw in the forest. I'm no Grinch--Christmas is absolutely a magical time and I haul out our Christmas decorations the day after Thanksgiving every year and deck the halls with as many lights, ribbons and bells as I can manage.

But this year.....oh gosh, where do I start?

It's a long story and most of it can be blamed on our house in Kentucky that hasn't sold. The short version is that we have found ourselves living in a 2-bedroom townhouse, hoping, expecting, praying that our house will sell. We moved here in August thinking we would tough it out for a month or two MAX but it's clean and we didn't have to sign a long-term lease (because, you know, "as soon as the house sells"..........).

Five months later, here we are. All three kids share one bedroom and SO MANY of our things are deep, deep, deep down in our garage, never to be seen again until we move. Of course, when we moved here, Christmas seemed like a lifetime away so all the decorations were stored as far back as possible. Which, it turns out, means no Christmas decorations for us this year.

But I would not, could not be without a tree! We paid our $10 for a permit to find one in the forest. We hauled all the kids into the mountains and went in search of the best Charlie Brown sized Christmas tree we could find. Seriously, I was thinking maybe a table top tree would be all we could squeeze into our front room. We looked around for a while and found one that seemed ok (for a Charlie Brown tree, that is). Keith was just about to start sawing when at his feet he noticed a tree, already cut, laying on the ground. He picked it up and we all decided, what the heck? Let's save ourselves the trouble and just take it. (Notice a pattern here? Taking people's castoffs for Christmas trees never ends well for us.)

We tied the poor thing to our car and brought it home. Of course, we couldn't find our fancy Christmas tree stand to save our lives so Keith had to prop it upright with some nails and a couple scraps of wood. There's no way that poor thing will ever see a drop of water again. We brought the tree inside and scooted a couple of things aside to make room for it. It is literally squeezed next to the couch and it's choking out our beloved house plant (which, I'm just sayin, has been alive and well for 12 years!! TWELVE!!! Green. Thumb.).

Of course the dozen or so strings of lights we own will never see the light of this Christmas so I had to run to Target for help. I bought a measly two strings of lights--just so my kids would have enough to stoke their little imaginations. Then I told my kids to go nuts and decorate it however they wanted. We ended up with a couple of paper stars and a couple of little drawings that we put on strings and hung, plus a little box of bells that we ended up with at an ornament exchange recently. That's it. So. Pathetic.





Despite our ghetto tree, Santa is planning a nice stop at our house. Although, since we don't have a chimney, it's been determined that the fat man will be using our dryer vent.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!

A few recent happenings

November was busy. Crazy busy. In the beginning of the month, I took the two littles to Utah for nearly two weeks and left Keith and Bennett at home. I got to have an amazing few days (kid free!!) with some of my dear friends on my first weekend there and spent the following weekend in St. George with my mom/sisters at Time Out For Women. Oh. My. Goodness.....having a few days (or in my case, eight) without kids is sort of make-your-head-explode awesome. I LOVED it! Thanks mom and dad for taking care of my kids while I played! In so many ways, it recharged me. What a blast.

Here's what else we've been up to:

The kids had fun with Grandpa while I was out partying:


My brother won the election and is now the mayor of Ogden:


After I got home from my trip, Keith left for Kentucky to work on the house (again--enough already!!!). But he did fit in a trail marathon with a good friend:


And to top off the month, we had the greatest Thanksgiving EVER. Thanks to my sister, she hooked us up with an amazing beach house. Enjoying a few days with my sister, eating turkey, pie and looking at this view gives feelings of Thanksgiving like I've never known:



And now, is it Christmas already???

Before I'm an entire holiday behind....

Happy Thanksgiving from Captain America, Purple Butterfly, and Dr. Card!

Bizz Johnson

Who/what/where is Bizz Johnson? So glad you asked.

It starts here:

Home of Paul Bunyan and Babe the Big Blue Ox. The real deal.

The Bizz Johnson trail is an unfortunate name for an absolutely fantastic rail trail near Susanville, CA (a quick two hour jaunt from our casa). Someone had given Keith the lowdown on it and we decided to try it out for ourselves last weekend. We've done a couple of rail trails and we LOVE them. Since they are old rail beds converted to hiking/biking trails, they are nice and wide with a max 3% grade and when you get a good trail starting in the mountains, they are pretty much downhill the whole way. Beyond cool.

This trail is slightly less traveled than others we have done where you can hire a shuttle to take you to the top and you ride to your car. In this case, we found that a city bus would get us pretty close and for $6 in bus fare, ended up working out perfectly. We got dropped off at a gas station across the street from Paul and Babe and rode a couple miles of pavement to get us to the start of the trail. Bennett rode his own bike and we pulled the two littles in the trailer.

The trail is about 27 miles and we enjoyed every minute of it. And here's the awesomest part--my little six year old Bennett rode all 27 miles by himself! My knees were feeling a little creaky the next day and it didn't phase him one bit. What a champ!



Then we turned onto the dirt and into the trees. The fall colors were AMAZING.


We crossed a ton of bridges and went through a couple of dark tunnels.






It was an absolutely perfect day.

You know we're obsessed with real estate when....

The other day I was riding my bike with the kids in the trailer on our way to the park. I took a little detour past a house Keith and I had been drooling over online. When we got to the house, I asked Leah to jump out of the bike trailer and get one of the sales flyers.

She grabbed a flyer out of the box, took a minute looking it over and exclaimed, "Two kitchens, one bath!"