The Green Bag

Before the Race. Click for Gallery.

On Saturday, Marissa and Anna ran in the 30th Annual Crim Festival of Races in Flint. Anna ran in the one mile event, placing 368th in a field of 512 with her time of 12:01. Our friend Myrrh, who had already run in the 10 mile race, ran with her. Marissa ran in the quarter-mile "Teddy Bear Trot". We're quite proud of both of them!

Anna decided after watching our church friends running in the Frankenmuth Volksläufe that she wanted to do it, and that's when we first started talking about the Crim. Once Anna was committed, Marissa decided to go for it, too, and they both trained during the next two months to get ready. The training paid off, as both of our girls sailed through their events.

Waiting for the concert to start.

On July 4th, we went to Frankenmuth to watch some church friends, including our senior pastor and his wife, run in the Volksläufe. (There were two runners in the 10k and four in the 20k.) Anna took an interest in running, and has since been training to run in the 5k at the Crim in Flint later this month. Marissa also decided that she was interested, and both of our girls will participate in the quarter-mile "Teddy Bear Trot" at the event.

When Anna first said she wanted to run, I said I'd run with her. I have to admit, I didn't think she was serious, and I haven't been training. We started off our final Family Friday with a trip to the track at Holly High School, where the girls have been running, only this time I was running with Anna. Anna still can't run the full mile, (she walks part of the way) so I had hopes of keeping pace with her.

It's hard to believe how quickly our summer is passing! We only have one more Friday left before I go back to 5x8's for the rest of the year. This week, we got up and goofed around a bit in the morning, and then headed out for a couple of quick stops before finally getting to our first real event of the day.

For our first event, we battled for supremacy in eighteen grueling holes of... Putt Putt Golf. It was a rough and tumble match, mostly while everybody waited for me to be the one who had a really bad hole - which I eventually did - but I proved to be the steady hand and eye to make my way to victory! Marissa got a hole in one!

After lunch, where once again we rocked out to the juke box while dining at a combined A&W/KFC restaurant, and a couple more stops, it was off to Milan Dragway for the August installment of the Skinny Kid Race Cars Friday Night Heads-Up Racing Series.

Yes, I know, I'm almost a week late in updating our excursions from last Friday. It's been a very busy week...

Daisy and her family have a membership to The Henry Ford, and she emailed me a couple of weeks ago to see if we'd be interested in visiting Greenfield Village as a Family Friday activity. Her membership allowed us to get in, and to get wristbands for all of the extras for free!

The steep spiral staircase in the lighthouse at Iroquois Point has 72 steps. I climbed them. Twice.

I haven't blogged our Family Fridays in a couple of weeks, but we've still had them. Two Fridays ago, Teri and I geocached our way across Route 30 on our way to Orrville, then joined the girls, and the whole Johnson clan for Emily's Graduation Party and a whole Independence weekend of fun. Last Friday started out with more geocaching and a picnic lunch at Pontiac Lake, then we picked up Saturday afternoon with enough hours at our friends' pool to turn me into lobster man for most of last week.

This week, we started Family Friday a day early, with a drive to my inlaws' cabin in Grayling on Thursday evening. This gave us a good head start on our weekend trip to Sault Sainte Marie.

Del Taco

I love Del Taco. I really do. And the fact that this predominatly west-coast chain is soon opening their second Michigan location is good news to me. Unfortunately, after several months of really good service to go along with their excellent food, they've started hiring some real dingalings. It's probably even more frustrating when you go there often enough that you know what they're going to ask - in what order - so you try to save time by just putting all of the correct answers into your order:

"I'd like a number eight combo, medium, with a coffee. No cream. No sugar."

"What would you like to drink with that?"

I figured out how to get pictures onto the Gallery, so I made a new file (Fourth of July 20066). I am very proud of myself. Go look at the pictures!!

On Friday afternoon, we went to see Cars. This excellent movie gets its own entry as I've now added the Movie Review module to the web site. After the movie, and a trip to the grocery store, we went home for some outside play time, including our first round of wild rasberry picking for the season. We ended up the evening with an encore viewing of High School Musical on DVD. So this morning brings a short entr

This week we had a slightly abbreviated family day, as the kids' morning was taken up with the last day of Youth Summer Camp (aka VBS) at the church. When we picked the kids up from the bus stop, we were all ready with a picnic lunch and other necessities for an afternoon at Indian Springs Metropark. We had a picnic lunch, and then the kids played for a while in the water at the new spray park. The new playground area also has a short (about 10' or so) climbing wall, and Anna quickly discovered a new skill.

Then it was off to church again for the big closing program that always crowns VBS week. (The kids always put on a big production, which they've spent part of their week preparing, as a draw to get their parents into church as well.) After the program there were the usual inflatables and other carnival-like attractions, and the whole Ignited Center game area was also open, so both kids gave the 30 foot rock wall a try. Marissa did really well on her first climb, ascending until she couldn't figure out the next handhold, and then slipped and lost her grip. Anna zipped up the wall like an expert until she was almost halfway up, and then looked down. At that point, she was also having trouble locating the next handhold, and didn't really want to go any higher, either. She couldn't bring herself to let go and allow the belay to drop her safely back down, so she climbed most of the way back. Not bad for a seven-year-old, considering that some teens and adults (myself included) have found that letting go is an insurmountable challenge.

So Mike (or anyone) do you know anything about ipods (such as getting songs OFF). I had itunes all figured out on friday, but I went back on my comp today to get more songs from CDs onto the ipod, and itunes is gone! When I put in the disk nothing happens!! GRR!!