WICKED

After a TWO YEAR countdown the day

 F I N A L L Y arrived for us to take the girls to the Broadway production of WICKED!

After I taught my Saturday morning classes at the gym and Daddy assisted with and checked off all Saturday chores, we were off to the theater!

 

 I am not sure if the girls were more excited to see the show or 

their parents to watch the girls faces as they watched the show!

  Because they know every word to every song we had to have a manners discussion in the car on the way and remind them that  

singing along was not an option during the play.

Checking out the pit before the show started.

A little known secret in the theater world is waiting 

by the back stage entrance to the theater after the show. 

Well, we waited and waited and were able to meet and get autographs from  

Fiyero (upper left), 

Nessarose (upper right), Boq (lower left) and Glinda (lower right). 

Unfortunately Elphaba was sick and needed to rest in between shows.

Cody and I were often fixated on watching the girls 

plastered smiles and frequent bursts of laughter.

After the show the girls enthusiastically exclaimed that it was 

"Even better than they had imagined it would be!"

What a special memory we made that day!

 

Although Reese was not able to join us for the show, she was pretty much just as thrilled with her chance to "drive" home after we picked her up at our friends house.

EMPOWER 2013

As of the beginning of June I began teaching for a new club called Lifetime Fitness.

I am still teaching three classes a week at my previous club as well.

Lifetime is incredible and I am looking forward to continuing 

my learning and growth as an instructor on the team there. 

Here is a picture of the Lifetime club that I work at. 
You can see more pictures of the club HERE.

I spent last weekend at and instructor training, held at Lifetime, called EMPOWER.

 This is a unique training where World class fitness icons gather to provide instructors with all of the latest and greatest that the ever changing industry has to offer!

 Day number one was spent with LESLEE BENDER certifying in the new, and much more functionally sound and scientifically based Barre method.
In her mid fifties Leslee has brought her new method 

to over 20 countries! I am looking forward to teaching this course in the near future.

Day number two was spent with Robert Sherman, seen here in his earlier days. Robert started his fitness career in 1982 and has been a part of developing many of the techniques and equipment that most gym goers are familiar with, like the BOSU. 

He is now a master trainer for the new STEP 360
and currently travels throughout the country training instructors on how to effectively utilize it.

After spending two training sessions working with with the STEP 360

I can't wait for our club to buy them and offer this format!

It was SO neat to spend time with these totally inspiring and 

incredibly educated master instructors. 

I felt like a kid meeting her idol as I was able to talk to both of them after the trainings.

After the first full day of training I headed down the road to Whole Foods for a little fuel. 

I LOVE mixing all the scrumptious offerings, just like on Thanksgiving!

I am now in my 12th year of teaching group fitness
and continue to find much joy and satisfaction in doing so!

Wrap Up

We are a biking family!

We love to bike and a little rain did not stop us from doing so on our vacation.

One afternoon we biked quite a distance in the continuous rain fall.
Check out this awesome sign!

Don't blink, we actually did capture a photo with sun!!  

On the afternoon of our final day the sun came out and it was beautiful. 

We thoroughly relished playing at the beach during those few hours.

On Saturday we packed up and headed to Charleston, NC  

to visit with friends from residency.

We stayed with Jeff, Liz and their son Jacob at their home near downtown, but luckily our other friends Brian and Jessica ended up in the 

same group and live in Charleston as well.

We were even able to see Dan, another residency friend, 

and his wife Angel because they too were visiting from out of town. 

We all enjoyed an evening BBQ together at the Conley's new home.

The next morning it was time to hit the road again for our final leg of the journey home, but before we left Jeff and Liz kept with the Young family tradition by making us a lovely "special" Sunday morning breakfast!

After arriving home we discovered these pictures 

Brinley took during our drive 

while "listening to music" on Dad's phone.

Here is what was awesome about our trip:

 *Consuming only ONE fast food meal and ONE restaurant 

the entire time, including during the three days of driving.

*Biking

*Family time

*Beach time

*Reading time

*Pool time

*Spending time on a beautiful, very green, island

*Renting a VRBO instead of staying at a hotel

Here is what was not awesome:

*Sunburns

*The weather

Hilton Head Continued

 

The day after the terrible night and with my legs still feeling very much as if  

they were on fire, 

I set out to find the girls and myself board shorts that would cover up our most severely burned areas.

The girls mostly laid on the floor in misery throughout day two.

The following day we suited up in our even more protective attire, lathered massive amounts of sunscreen on top of our burned skin (even though there was ZERO sun in sight)

 and headed out to the beach in spite of the chilly temperature.

Even while playing on the sand, far away from the water,  

Aspen chose to wear her goggles.

 Good lookin' out my sweet girl!

We spotted a variety of creatures during our time on the beach. 

Lots of these huge crabs were washed up on the shore, 

perhaps because of the tropical storm that was going on.

One morning I took a long ride down the beach on my rented beach cruiser, Reese in tow, and we spotted a baby shark in the very shallow water. I stopped, along with several other onlookers, and it swam for quite some time right near where we were standing.

Meanwhile Cody...I mean the kids, created this sand castle city. It was too cold to play in the water that day and soon kids were whining to go back to the condo. 

Once the castle city was completed we headed back to the condo and arrived

 just in time for the rain to start pouring down.

We made the most of the tropical storm weather and  

still really enjoyed our time to just be together!

We were able to use the time inside to create individual summer goals, we continued our work on learning about and creating our family mission statement, 

we watched a movie and even had root beer floats which was a first for Aspen!

First Beach Day

Day one on the beach began as picturesque as we could have hoped for. 

We came prepared with a new beach tent for shade, a cooler packed with lunch and snacks and lots of sheer joy to be at the beach as a family.

The girls were giddy and enjoying every moment of splashing in the waves!

Reese bounced from tide pool to tide pool laughing as she plopped her bottom down in the very warm water creating mini explosions each time. She was perfectly delighted and enjoying every moment of this new experience. 

It was also Aspen's first time to be at the beach and she was in it to win it,

 often with only her little head bobbing above the water.

Soon it was time for mommy and Reese to walk back to the condo for nap time. 

After I got Reese to sleep the most incredible storm hit complete with torrential rain, cracking lightening and booming thunder.

 

I could not reach Cody on his cell and was having visions of him trying to gather all of our beach gear AND tent AND frightened children. I finally decided to leave Reese for a moment to hop in the car and race to the beach to try and rescue them. But by the time I got there they had arrived back at the condo.

The girls, especially Avery, were all shook up because a bolt of lightening had struck very close to where they were. 

Little did we know at that moment that the storm was the very least of our worries.

 (a picture of Brinley's leg before the entire burn set in. We have other pics. of the full blown burns, but they are not appropriate to post because we wore our birthday suits for a while after)

As the moments passed our legs began to reveal a horrific reality. 

Although we had used 50 and 70 SPF and reapplied it seemed as though we had been sitting in the sun for days with no sun screen whatsoever. What we later learned is that spray sunscreen is not sufficient for fair skinned people on the beach. Fortunately we used cream on Reese, who for the most part was spared, thank heavens!

(My legs, ZERO color editing!)

The following 24 hours were the most heart wrenching moments 
of mothering that I hope to ever face.

Although my legs were on fire my heart ached so badly for the pain of my children and all I wished for in those dreadful hours was to be able to take their burns away.

  They cried and writhed in pain for hours as we went from store to store buying every sun burn relief treatment we thought might help the pain.

A couple of creams we used stung and burned them even more, which induced more whaling and soon enough we were all crying. It was certainly NOT a happy beginning to our trip.

After a long wakeful night we spent the following day indoors doing our best to be happy amidst the pain of the sunburns and wasting a day of our vacation indoors...little did we know that a tropical storm was headed our way!

Headed to Hilton Head

  Last Saturday morning I taught my two classes at the gym and then we loaded up the the car with children and luggage for our 12 hour drive to Hilton Head Island.

On the way our GPS guided us to this "park" which ended up being on the property of a country home, not a park.

Because we were in no shape to reroute, we parked the van and proceeded to eat our packed dinner.

Soon enough the property owner showed up on a four-wheeler wondering what the heck we were doing there. We explained our situation and she was gracious enough to let us finish eating on her property.

Close to 2 am we finally arrived at our VRBO. The girls quickly woke up and were soon running around excitedly checking out every crack and cranny of our 3 bedroom condo for the week.

 On day one we mostly prepared for the week by getting groceries, renting bikes and giving the girls substantial naps to recover from the previous late night.