Tide pool day

We’re in New Hampshire for Barry’s Dad’s memorial service and to spend time with family.
We’ve had a beautiful, peaceful time- spending as much time as we could at the shore.

10 months and on the move

I missed making 8 and 9 month posts for our little princess. Now she’s a full fledged big 10 month old baby on the move. Click on the picture above for a video from the last week of May– her first intentional forward movement. She’s super busy and into everything.

She also talks! Well, babbles and waves and says MOM or Mama, Bah for Brenna, Dadadada or Daddy for Dad, dod for dog, nana for banana. Super, super, super cute.

HUNDO!!

So, we had a little campout this weekend. Barry raced the Bailey Hundo, which is a hundred mile MOUNTAIN bike race in the Colorado mountains. We set up our camper near the finish area Friday night, ate some tacos, played some Blink!, and went to bed. As far as camping sleeping goes, it wasn’t bad. Barry and I made our bed like a bed instead of using sleeping bags– sheets and a down comforter. It was super comfy except for the little girl who decided she needed to snuggle in it too and nurse all night long. Eva and I slept pretty well once Barry got up a little after 4 to get ready for his 6:00 start.

(photo by a photographer camped out on the side of the trail.)

He did awesome! We loaded up in the van to drive to the half way point and cheer him on. I missed my a turn, so we ended up getting to see him cross the highway after I realized my mistake and we turned around. He gave us a beauty queen wave as we passed. I was worried that we’d miss him at the aid station, but when we got there only 6 pros had come through. We took our time getting our chairs and camera out of the van. I was loading my arms up in the back of the van a second time when I glanced over to the food and water bottle table and thought, “That guy looks like Barry, but he wouldn’t be here yet.” Then I noticed his yellow shoes and screamed and ran over. He hugged and kissed all of us, but I didn’t get a single picture. He was too far ahead of schedule.

It was an hour drive back to camp. We got back in the camper, ate some lunch, and the sky started to rumble and rain. Then in REALLY rained– torrents accompanied with pea to marble sized hail. (My seams got put to the test! They dripped a little, so I need to do some seam sealing, but the entire tops were water tight and that was the big problem before.) When it let up I went to get my rain coat and park myself at the finish line so I could get a good picture of our muddy hero.

Then he rode up. He was done! 2nd place in the 30-39 category! Last year he did it in over 9 hours. This year–

7 hours and 37 minutes!!!

I really am married to a super hero.

ok, so I’m pretty proud of my sewing skills…

A couple of summers ago we bought a used tent trailer we found on craigslist. It has been fun to camp in, but needed a little help. I recovered all the cushions with cute new fabric and still need to work on the curtains. But what it really needed was help with the tent roofs. The vinyl was brittle and discolored and CRACKED in a bazillion places. Not so good in rain storms. (There were only 2 small cracks when we bought it, but they spread and multiplied with each use.)

I looked into getting the vinyl/canvas replaced, but it was going to cost nearly $1000. So, we held our breath, ordered some Temper Tent Vinyl tarps from none other than tarps.com and sewed in new roofs ourselves.

My sewing machine wasn’t too excited about it, but we made it. The tension was all wonky and I couldn’t ever get it perfect, but we weren’t going for pretty– just functional. It was HUGE and HEAVY and really hard to maneuver. I had to keep telling Barry, “We can do it! We can do this.” Of course the second one went better than the first.

Things I learned– use a walking foot, and a jeans 100/16 needle is better than a leather/vinyl needle. We used bulldog and binder clips to hold everything together so we didn’t make holes with pins. Not that pins would have ever gone through without getting all bent.

We used a mix of new binding made from tarp scraps and the old original binding. You can see that sometimes my tension was a little loopy, especially over the curves, but the seams are still strong and hold up to being stretched. Phew!