My IRONMAN

We spent the past weekend in Boise, Id for the half triathlon Ironman race.  Aaron and 2 of his brothers, Nick and Bob, were in it.  For those of you who don't know, a half triathlon consists of a 1.2 mile swim in a lake (first), then a 56 mile bike ride (second), and last a 13.1 mile run.  Unfortunately, it rained for much of the race but at least it wasn't too hot or cold even with the rain.  All three brothers finished - which was quite an accomplishment in itself.  GO Balsmeier Boys!  I was really proud of Aaron.  I was only able to go to the finish because of the yucky weather and the 2 kids, we spent most of the rest of the trip in a hotel room.  Aaron was pretty beat afterwords, as you can imagine, but by the next morning he was already thinking of doing it again next year.  Go figure!  What is it about men and liking to get the crap kicked out of them.  Anyway here are a couple of pictures.

Here is a cute picture I got of the kiddos in the tub together at the hotel.

Abigail was 11 months old on Monday (6/15/09).  I usually take a picture of her every month to compare how much she is changing so here is her 11 month pic.

vacation

We recently went on a vacation to San Diego. Originally, I was suppose to be going to a PA convention but I ended up not going because Abigail is such a momma's girl right now that I don't think she would have done very well without me.  Also, she won't take a bottle anymore. So we decided to go just for fun since it had been a few years since we have been on a real vacation. We were able to stay with Aaron's sister-in-law and kids.

Here is a picture of Abigail with her 2 cousins, Nick and Gracie.  They really liked playing with her while we were there.

We went to the zoo and the wild animal park which had a new dinosaur mountain exhibit.  Jackson is really into dinosaurs so we thought he would really like this but he was actually a little scare of seeing really big dinosaurs that moved and made noise.  He really like seeing all the animals at the zoo and kept asking if he could ride the real ones like he was able to ride the statues.

Someone was nice enough to take a family picture ( Abigail was sleeping in the stroller).

Jackson and Aaron with T-rex!

We also went to Sea World.  Jackson liked the sharks and Shamu.  When we first showed him Shamu he kept calling it "Shampoo."  We told him the whale's name was Sham-oo and so then he said "Shampoomoo."  By the end of the show he was saying "Shamoo."

We went to the beach on Memorial Day.  Abigail liked feeling the sand.  She actually didn't mind the ocean ( I put her legs in) either until she got tired.

Jackson loved the beach!  Here are a few pics.

We had a lot of fun and it was a nice break from reality - which is actually the whole point of a vacation anyway.