Lotsa Doggies

Buster came to stay for a week while Karissa was out of town. Bruiser and Chico came to stay for the next week while Chris' sister was out of town. Their visits overlapped by a day ...and this is what that day looked like:

Sayonara Sarah

My super-smart, super-pretty, super-talented and super-awesome friend, Sarah, moved away. This makes me sad.

Me and Sarah:
Sarah and I were both part of the old-school book club crowd. Why do my book club girls keep leaving me? (Lili and Grace - I'm giving you the evil eye right now!)

Book club girls wearing black in mourning for the loss of Sarah:
She moved to St. Louis to take a big, fat promotion. Hurray, Sarah! We are very proud of her.

Proud though we may be, we have not had a book club social event since she left! This is just wrong!! It's obvious that we need her here to rev us up and get us out. So sad. We are all going to turn into dullards without her around. (I've always wanted to use the word "dullard")

Wait! We did have one sort-of social event. We had a "Hazing Of The All-New Actual Lesbian" to find her replacement. The All-New Actual Lesbian is going to be a good addition to book club, but if she really wants to be Sarah's replacement, she'd better be scheduling a happy hour damn quick.

In memory of our dearly departed Sarah...some random pictures from the glory days...

At Frank and Albert's:

At Trader Vic's:At Kristen's house:
Thanksgiving at my house:

At Heather's Hazing night:

A few months ago, Kiri hosted what turned out to be the "Last Supper". I meant to blog about it at the time, but (no surprise) I never did. There was something about feral llamas that had Sarah laughing a lot...but the story escapes me. So instead of a story, you just get dinner pictures.

Pat and Wayne:
Robyn, Kiri, Mari:
Jimmy and Tom:
And the best for last...my friend Sarah. We are already planning book club reunion to get her back here!

3-Legged Agility

I'm taking Mo to her first agility trial over Labor Day. I'm not sure if she's ready to trial, but I guess we'll see.

It's been hard this summer because she really hates the heat. Frankie couldn't care less if it's hot...he'll play all day long. But Mo, she shuts down when it gets too hot. I was practicing with her on a course that went out and back and out again. Mo went out with me, she went back with me, but when I went out again, Mo ran right into her x-pen in the shade instead. :) I hope it's the heat and not a dislike of agility. I guess we'll see that, too. The trial is up north in Pinetop so it should be nice and cool.

She's already super-slow to begin with, but add in the heat and she slows down to barely a walk. However, last night we got to practice when it was fairly cool out and she did so well! She was almost running even. Check it out (I hope you've got some time because even at an almost-run, she is still Slo-Mo):




You can tell she is still afraid of the noise of the teeter. And I forgot in the middle of the run that she still doesn't do off-side weaves so I had to stop her so I could get on the right side. It sure is a different experience running Mo compared to Frankie!!

And here is Frankie doing the same course in half the time:

Happy Birthday, Amy!

On my 40th birthday, I plan on doing something amazing - something like zorbing in New Zealand or flirting with hot Aussie guys on the beaches of Australia. On my sister Amy's 40th birthday, she is doing something amazing, too. She is fighting cancer, dealing with chemotherapy and doing it all with a positive attitude! Happy Birthday Amy!!

Before the chemo started, Amy cut her hair short in hopes that when it started falling out, it wouldn't be quite so icky.

Despite the short-haired efforts, hair-loss was still pretty icky... especially when her son, while at a birthday party at California Pizza Kitchen, grabbed a clump of it right off her head to show off to the people at the party! After that, she gave in and asked Anne to shave her head. She debutted the cancer-chic look at the Twilight Town Trek.

And here is the best reason for her fight...2 lovely children who love their mama!

To keep you all in the loop as to how she's coping, I am copying in her latest email update. She's due for another one soon since this one is already 3 weeks old (hint, hint Amy!).

Well, hello to all.... Since my 3rd round of chemo was on Thursday July 1st and it is now July 7th, I bet you can figure out I didn't have the greatest reaction with my latest chemotherapy. The nausea is still an everyday battle-the patch I wear on my arm is helping, but it's worse than morning sickness, and now the fatigue has set in. My normal fast paced walk is now just a slow crawl- I actually had to have Aden hold my hand to keep my pace up while at the mall looking for big girl beds for Cerys!

For 4 days I slept probably 18 hours a day- which to many of you hard working people sounds like heaven- but for me, it caused my back to slip out and now I can't walk standing straight up! So I'm BALD, BENT over at the waist and shuffling my feet to walk- I look like a 90 year old man!!! I've been to the chiropractor (keep adding up those medical bills!) the past 3 days in a row, but the back is in alignment. Now i'm just dealing with muscle spasms from being in bed so much....gee, the days that I dreamed of staying in bed for the whole day are no longer - I miss being me.

I did take my kids to the pool- because they were really wanting mommy time (Cerys) and Aden wanted to play with the boys. Even though I kept my bald head covered and was sitting in the full shade with only my legs in the water, I had some British man come up to me and ask me about my cancer treatment, and why with my port and the patch, was I not covered up due to the hypersensitivity issues of the chemotherapy? He also asked me if the man playing with Aden and the other boys was my husband (i wonder now if he was hitting on me-naahhh) which it wasn't, Lane was working. I wanted to tell him to mind his own business, but instead I told him sometimes I have to be a mom first and put the cancer treatments on the back burner.

I only have one more treatment of the nauseous cocktail of cytoxin and adrinomy (spelling is now gone)....that will be on the 17th. On the 29th, I"ll start the taxol chemo treatment of which the side effects include muscle and bone pain, neuropathy (numbness) of fingers and toes and metal like tastes/food. I just hope the nausea really does subside....

Hope you all had fun on the 4th of July- our kids really liked setting off fireworks with Lane and hanging out with the grandparents. I was just so thankful for their help and some awesome Omaha steakburgers from the Hawkins and Mabb families!!! You guys rock!

I am starting to wear my wig a little more- just realized I don't have a picture of me in it yet- I'll add that next time! Love you all- sorry to bitch and moan about me- so please email or call and inform me and distract me with fun things (or even bad things) from your lives to keep me sane!

love again- amy

Keep fighting, Amy. We all love you!! And happy birthday!

St. Louis Twilight Town Treks

When Christy and I first talked about doing an urban adventure race gig, it was a given that we'd bring the race to St. Louis. My sister, Amy, lives in St. Louis. For a few years I've been telling her that we should do one of the races together. She was interested...but none of the races go to St. Louis! Wtf? So, MY race definitely would! And...it did!

From the very start of Twilight Town Treks, St. Louis was hoppin'. The minute I put our website up, we were getting hits from St. Louis. The only marketing we did was to post the race on various race calendars in our markets. Immediately, St. Louis made up 1/2 of our total webhits every day. We had teams register there before any teams registered here in Phoenix! And we KNOW people in Phoenix!! It was crazy.

I expected St. Louis would be great, and I was not at all surprised that the race was SO SUPER FUN!!

We had 38 teams register and 7 teams sign up at the event - a perfect amount of teams! The weather was really, really hot and really, really humid. There was a thunderstorm threatening at 5:30 when registration started. Luckily, it blew over and the weather behaved for the duration of the race. I was worried about my volunteers being out there in the rain all night. Rain is fun for racers, but not so much for people who have to stand out in it for 4 hours!

Let's talk about the race volunteers. Do these people look familiar to you? Yep, pretty much my whole family came to St. Louis to help! Pat flew in the day after we got there. Anne and my parents drove down from Springfield and Amy, of course, lives there. It was like a slumber party at her house that night! How cute does Amy look with her newly bald head? What a trooper she is...she had chemo on Thursday and on Saturday night she's staffing a checkpoint on my race for me. My family rocks!

And some more sisters:
Yes, I was in a sorority and these are my sorority sisters. The girl on the left is my college roommate, Jill. The girl on the right is Kristen, a friend of Jill's and a DG who came around after I slacked out of the sorority. Luckily Jill forgave me for being a DG flake and we've remained friends for 15 years! These girls are awesome!

More great friends:
There is Christy...and who's that in the background? It's our friend, Wayne, who flew in from Phoenix to take a mini-vacation and help us with the race. So nice!

I am so lucky to have such great friends and family. Without them I know that the St. Louis race would not have been the HUGE success it was. And, a HUGE success it was!! All the racers were enthusiastic about being there. They all had a ton of fun on the race, despite the 95 degree, 95 percent humidity that night. It was so hot and sweaty that at the puzzle challenge, we actually had to pull one of the puzzles out of use because the pieces were so soggy from people's sweat that they were losing their shape. Ew. :)

Pat keeping the sweaty puzzlers in line:
The Animal Protective Association was our charity recipient for the race and working with them was just as awesome as everything else in St. Louis. They were so eager to be a part of everything. They scoped out their location, they brought out their tent (but were asked to take it down by the park people), they even tried to bring their RV out for a better visual, but the parking was too difficult. I love them! The dogs they brought were Cooper and Lula. Lula is the black one. They were both sweet but Lula stole my heart. She did eventually get adopted, but sadly not by one of my racers. Last I checked Cooper was still waiting for a home (breaks my heart!!).

After the race, most of the racers stuck around the bar all night, talking about the race and making friends. It was incredible how good the mood was! Almost all of the teams told us how much fun they had and promised they'd be back next year. The facebook postings from the racers that night and the next day were all positive. One of my favorites: "This ranks up there as the funnest thing we have done as a couple." Some teams were even talking about road-tripping to Las Vegas to do our race there. I would love that! These people were so much fun! I can't wait to go back there again next year.