MOVING

Chaos is reigning supreme here in the Otis household. Chris is cubmaster and him and Nathan have cub scout daycamp all week. The packers/movers are here Wed-Friday. And we are nowhere near prepared for this move. It seems like we just can't get our heads above water.

I ran another 1/2 marathon this last weekend. It was a lot of fun. I was worried about the heat but it wasn't so bad. I guess you get use to sweating so much. The worst part was the race finished about a mile from where I parked my car and I had to finish the race, run to my car (literally), and high tail it over to work cause I had to teach a kickboxing class. I made it w/3 minutes to spare. Just enough time to change clothes to get all sweaty again.

I am looking forward to being done with this move though I still don't have a job lined up in Louisiana. That's kind of buggin' me but nothing I can do. I've mailed resumes and contacted people but all we do is play phone tag. If all else fails and I'm not teaching classes I guess I'll start training for a full marathon.

So for Father's day this year Chris wanted an "experience". He decided upon dinner at Ruth's Chris steakhouse. Wow. What an experience it was. Chris, Nate, and I all dressed up in our finery and had a wonderful dinner. As Nathan kept saying the service is excellent. I can't ever finish my drink. He was also concerned about how expensive the steaks were and if we could "afford" them. As you can see I have been teaching my penny pinching son right.

Anyway, it was a great evening. Well worth the money. Chris and Nate also got to go to Schlitterbahn waterpark the next day. I stayed home due to a shoulder strain. I've been running a lot getting ready for my next 1/2 marathon this weekend. Yippy!!!!

Chris and Nathan on one of our many hikes through Big Bend National Park. It was really hot there but we climbed about 2,500 feet in elevation and it felt great up here. As you can see we had to dress in layers.
Okay so you can't really see Nathan and I but at the bottom of that cave is a small dark speck. That's me. Nathan thought it would be soooo easy to climb a sand dune. Having grown up on the Oregon coast I knew he had no idea what he was doing so I challenged him to a race. I won hands down. It had been about 12 years since I've last run up a sand dune for XC practice but I still had it in me. I did think my heart was going to jump out my chest by the time I reached the top. Chris was smart. He stayed at the bottom.
As you can see there's no shade anywhere. This was a fun hike cause you started at the top and then went down in elevation about 2,000 feet. Of course all I could think about was that a mountain lion had been spotted here the day before. I was making plenty of noise. No way that that lion going to come across me awares.
I don't think there's much you can say. This is just my life of raising a boy.
Can you see all that sand he's dumping out of his shoes. That's from climbing the sand dune.

First Timer

Okay so I'm still learning about rotating pictures BEFORE you save them. You should
just be happy I'm trying this out. I have to admit it's going to take me a while before I feel comfortable with any of this blogging thing. I kind of hate new technology.


Alright so here's the Otis family on our Mother's day Ziplining "adventure". The ziplining wasn't nearly as scary as the rope ladder we had to cross. Nate was a real trooper. He was a little nervous at first (so was I) but soon we were both yelling and having fun