Books, Books and more Books

This is the pile of books on our piano, well half the pile.

Matthews Elementary School does a summer reading challenge every year and this year is no exception. They even invited the incoming kindergarteners to join them. Hannah is suppose to read 100 books this summer. Well she can't read but, I am allowed to read to her. We have been going to the library a couple days a week for the past couple of weeks so we can get this challenge done. I think we will probably continue even once we've reached our 100 books. It's been pretty fun. We've found some cute books and we've found some not so cute books.

One I particularly like was this one:

It is a cute little story about a little girl getting ready to go to school. I probably enjoyed it because of Hannah's coming entrance into the world of formal education. It was a good little book and this has been a pretty fun challenge. We're halfway through.

Friday Walk

Friday, we decided to walk around the lake with some friends. Walking with six kids is not a speedy process especially when we only had four seats. We also started out with two bikes. We only have a trike for our kids so after about 5 minutes I quickly ran it back to the car. It didn't work very well.


The kids walked quite a bit and followed Ben as he rode his bike. It was fun. Reianna and I got to talk a little bit bit there were a lot of people on the trail. We stopped for a bit and fed the turtles, grackles, and pigeons. There weren't any ducks until we left and there were only two. Maybe they don't like the heat either.

We saw this turtle on the edge of the trail. It was fun to watch the kids get really excited. I don't the turtle was too excited to be the center of attention.

Charlotte and Sam were good sports just hanging out the strollers.

Day with Dad

Last Week Hannah asked if we could go up and see Hyrum on campus. We finally decided that Thursday was the day.


We rode the bus from our apartment through the city to campus. The kids had a blast. They don't have to be buckled in and Jonathan was so happy not to have to sit on my lap. They enjoyed looking out the windows, counting flags they saw and seeing the capitol building which they remembered visiting with Grandma and Grandpa H.

We got to campus and enjoyed our picnic in the lounge near Hyrum's office. I was so happy Hannah consented to an indoor picnic. It's hot and humid here right now, not exactly wonderful picnic weather.


We then made our routine stop to the turtle pond. There was so much algae that the turtles just swam through, under and around it. I even saw a few take a bite and enjoy it for lunch. There were tons of turtles and they came right over to where we were standing watching them. Hannah and Jonathan just loved it.


We then headed back to the bus and we were homeward bound. It was a fun activity and it's always nice to have lunch with Dad.

Untitled

I don't really have a very good title for this so I'm just going to fore go it.

We are finally feeling better after over two weeks of sickness. It wasn't the flu (I almost wish it had been then I would have know it would been 7-10 days) but instead a cold that just went on and on. I started feeling sick over two weeks ago and then Father's Day Hyrum wasn't feeling well. Wednesday we went to his parent's and he had a 103 temp by that afternoon. He was the only one with a fever but over the course of the past two weeks, we have all had a terrible cough, Jonathan is taking antibiotics for an ear infection and I am still battling a sore throat. Apparently Charlotte has gotten through this unscathed and we hope it stays that way.

I have lost one of my dearest friends this past week. Their family moved away after finishing their doctoral work. It's wonderful to see them moving on and accomplishing this dream that we all share but I will miss Editt and all the things that her friendship meant to me. I am so thankful for telephones and skype. It will be great to see them again when we drive to my parent's house again because they are on the way. Look out, we're coming : )

It has been a rough couple of weeks but hopefully soon things will calm down and get back to some measure of normal.

More Data Please

Ever since I've been riding my bike, I've been obsessed with collecting data about those rides. For many years, I've had a cyclometer, usually a Cateye Mity 3, and most recently the wireless version of the same. They are great little devices, and do a wonderful job of tracking horizontal distance.

However, recently, I've been riding a lot of hills, and have been interested in other parameters. How much vertical climbing am I doing? What is my cadence like? How steady is my heart rate? What's the profile of the ride?

To really answer these questions, I needed a new solution, and so after several months of wishing, I finally broke down and used our REI dividend to fund the purchase of a Garmin Edge 500, including the ANT+ heart rate monitor and cadence sensors. While I haven't yet figured out all the functions, it is fun to track all kinds of data and learn more about my riding style and the terrain I ride over. Using Garmin's software makes visualizing the data pretty easy, and as I do longer rides, I'm hoping to use the data to actually improve, rather than just describe the kinds of riding I do.

Below is a ride I did Saturday evening down Loop 360. It actually turned out quite eventful, as I got a flat at mile 11.6, and didn't have any inflator cartridges to pump up my new tire. Through the kindness of strangers, I eventually got it inflated and got going again, but by that time it was dark, and I accidentally turned the GPS off during the biggest hill on the climb. Argh!

Hopefully future rides are just as data rich, but much less exciting.