Friends Come to Visit

We had some fun when some friends from California came to visit this summer.

In mid-July, our good friend and former across-the-street neighbor Melodi came to visit. She and her two children, Nehemiah and Adie were visiting her mom in Eugene, so they came up for dinner one Sunday afternoon. We met Melodi's mom and were able to catch up on what has happened in the year since we both moved from Lorelei Ave. The kids got to play Legos with Nehemiah (just like old times) and we were able to meet Adie for the first time. The only thing missing was Ken, who hadn't arrived in Oregon yet.

Then last week, Tom and Mindy and their three girls from good old Lakewood 3rd Ward came by. They were driving through Portland on their way to a family reunion on the coast. They stopped by to say hi. We ate pizza and the kids kept busy on the trampoline. I had wondered if the kids would be shy around each other, but after about 10 seconds of shyness, it was like they had all seen each other yesterday. Good times!

So if anyone out there is making travel plans, please note that if you come to the northwest, you can get a free dinner at our house! We love visitors!

Read more...

Hood to Coast

What Hood to Coast is NOT:
-A trail some tree hugger treks each year
-A rap song about the homeboy Richards clan (wouldn't even know where to start)
-Wearing a hoodie while you snorkle...
-The latest Oregon Rain gear (environmentally friendly of course)
-Something I want to do again in the next 350 days

What is it really?

A 197 mile relay race from Mt. Hood to the Oregon coast. Twelve people to a team and over 1000 teams participating. Imagine traffic jams, no sleep, sweaty runners, and way to many crazy people torturing themselves to finish the race.

But we had a blast....

Heddie, my sister, came up and showed us how the pros do it. At one point I even heard someone say, "Dang she's fast! She's even faster than when she started!"

Above you can see the cheering squad at the end of our first run. The whole family made it!

Below is our team. I'll tell you, by the end of this race I knew everyone very well...


What a great time...if you ever get a chance, I highly recommend it.

Read more...

Size

Amanda still seems like such a baby to us, but the difference in size amazes us.

Read more...

Amy Yoder Begley - Olympian

Today we drove by a local shopping center and saw a big crowd of people all waiting in line to meet and get their picture with Amy Yoder Begley. She is running the 5000 meters (10k) at the Olympics in a few weeks. She was super nice and signed pictures for the kids. She runs about 70 miles a week and cross trains a ton. Even more impressive...her mile pace is about 6 minutes. Geez I feel like a slug.



Go Amy!!!

Does anyone else have their kids pumped up about the Olympics?

Read more...

A Great Help

Grandma came to visit and was able to hold the baby and help out on a million other things.

Thanks Grandma!

Read more...

Summer Ann Richards Pictures

Read more...

Summer Ann Richards

Lisa and I finally got together for some time without the kids, but we were happily interrupted at 4:09 when Summer decided to visit.

The facts...
-She checked in at 9 lbs. 5 ounces. The largest of our four.
-She is 21 inches long which is the same length as Brendan, but his feet were much bigger.
-She sleeps a lot. Natalie, Brendan, and AJ were a bit noisy (or rather, they kept us up all night).
-Lisa is doing very well and will come home Monday morning. She was a true champ.
-Ezra barely made it.

Check back later for a few pictures.

Read more...

What's Happening this Summer?

Here is a quick summary of our summer thanks to Wordle.net
(Click the image to enlarge)

Read more...

More from the Backyard

Ezra has come up with some great ideas to keep the kids busy this summer. We call Tuesdays our "Creative Projects" day. On these days, Ezra sets up supplies and instructions with a few starter ideas. Then we turn them loose in the backyard.

Our first project back in June was pinatas. They had balloons, newspaper strips, and paper-mache paste. They needed some help to get doing, but seemed to enjoy the gooey mess. They finished the paper-mache part over three or four days, but they don't seem motivated to decorate the pinatas or break them (even though we already bought some candy to fill them). I think they just don't want to destroy their hard work.

The next project was "Fort Richards". They got old sheets, clothespins, blank t-shirts, markers, and anything they could scrounge out of our recycling bins. We thought that once they had their fort set up, they would happily play in it. It turns out that for them, all of the fun was in the building and they weren't quite sure what to do with it once it was built.

Presenting . . . "Fort Richards":
Soldiers guarding their fort:
Check out their t-shirts. You can tell from Brendan's upside-down name that they were colored while the soldiers were wearing them.

Read more...

What's happening in our backyard . . .

Our backyard is having a busy summer. It will take a few posts to get it all in. Let's start with our great up-close "nature experience".

In May, a robin started building a nest in the rafters on our covered deck. It was abandoned shortly after and the beginnings of the nest fell down. Then a couple of weeks later, the robin (or possibly another robin--they all look alike, you know!) returned, and she was serious this time. The nest was built in just a couple of days. Then two robins started hanging around. When they were gone, we checked the nest a few times to see if there were any eggs. We never saw any eggs in the nest. Now we know that we weren't looking deep enough into the nest. Then about two weeks later, the robin started flying back and forth with worms. We watched carefully and realized there were little tiny beaks pointing skyward to receive the worms. The eggs had been laid, kept warm, and hatched ten feet from our kitchen table and we were clueless!
After only a couple of days, the baby birds had grown enough to reach their necks up and be seen. We counted four. The kids really got into watching the nest. Even Amanda, sitting in her high chair would give a little yell when she saw the mother bird arriving at the nest.
It was amazing to watch the mother robin go back and forth and back and forth with worms ALL DAY LONG. I tried to think of a fitting analogy between bird mothers and human mothers. Here's what I came up with: robin mothers and human mothers stay really busy trying to feed their families. Observant, deep, and profound, I know. I should become a writer, don't you think? Ha!

Once we saw the mother come back with a frog (maybe an inch and a half long). The baby birds fought over it. We're still not sure how the winner choked it down.

Here they are, approximately two weeks after hatching. They left the nest within the next 48 hours.
We read on Wikipedia that only 25% of baby robins survive the first year. The day our robins left the nest, we found one of them dead near our fence. We hope that the three remaining robins fare a little better and maybe next spring one will come back to build their own nest in the same spot.

Read more...

Shoezy Suzy (aka Amanda)

Watch out Imelda Marcos--Amanda has a shoe infatuation! When she isn't wearing her own little pair of summer sandals, she's trying someone else's shoes on for size.

Daddy's shoes are a little hard to balance in:


Mommy's flip flops are way too big:

Natalie's sandals are smaller than Mom's, but are still tricky to stand up and walk in:


Brendan's fit a little better, she can actually walk around the house:


Amanda keeps us smiling!

Read more...

Competition in the Marriage

So we picked up a new game a few weeks ago and it has become quite a competition between the two of us. I won the first 3 games and Lisa thought about nothing except playing again. Now she has absolutely demoralized me twice in a row. Did anyone out there have a clue that Lisa has such a competitive steak? She doesn’t just win... she takes your shirt off and throws it out the door!

Lisa, I challenge you to a rematch to tie the score (3-3)!

BTW, our favorite game with the kids right now is Pictionary Junior. Who knew Brendan could draw like a little Picasso! He definitely has his mother’s competitive streak.

Read more...

Bookworms? Ya think??

It's a picture perfect summer evening, and this is how our kids are making the most of the gorgeous weather:

Read more...

At the Races

Ezra wasn't the only one to race last Saturday. The kids and I (Lisa) signed up for a 1K Hike 'n Bike. The idea was that we could cover the short course together with me pushing Amanda in the stroller. Yes, I am eight months pregnant, but one kilometer is practically NOTHING!
Here we are just after checking in. We still have fifteen minutes before our race starts.
Natalie and Brendan were bored, so they started running up and down the steps. Good warm up for their race muscles. Plus, it was chilly outside.


Here we are lined up at the starting line. When the kids heard "GO," they took off (Natalie running and Brendan on his bike) faster than I have ever seen either of them move. So much for staying together. Running is not option for someone in my condition. I didn't see the kids again until the finish line, where they had already finished their snacks and drink and had gotten tired of waiting for me.
And by the way, that race was at least two kilometers, probably more like 2.5. Even in my current state, I can walk a mile in twenty minutes. I was walking my very fastest and it took me thirty-five minutes to finish. That's a mean trick for Parks & Rec to play on a pregnant lady. All in all, a great first "race" experience for the kids. As for me, I should have just waited for them at the finish line and saved my energy.

After our race, we went to go meet Ezra at the half marathon.

My champion runners:

Read more...

Running!!!

On Saturday I, Ezra, ran the Helvetia Half Marathon for one of my New Years resolutions. You probably remember the post on my training log.

Let me just say that I had a blast and I’m already looking for another. Lisa thinks I’m crazy but I’d like to find a marathon sometime in September or October. Unfortunately, almost everything lands on a Sunday, unless I want to go race above the oxygen zone in Utah. If you know of a good one, let me know.

So how did I do?

I finished in 1:52:46. A 8.5 minute per mile pace throughout the 13.1 miles. I had done a very long training run (11 miles) the week before and then did a 4 mile sprint a few days later so unfortunately I was a bit sore during most of the run. Oh well. The race felt great and it was an awesome environment to be in. Even better, the race was very well organized and was actually quite peaceful—even with the scores of racers puffing up the hills.

Now if you really like math…stick around…

A short time after the race, I noticed that the times of all finishers and all kids of other data was posted to the website. So of course, the math geek in me was curious to know how well I really did. So I tabulated the frequency and created a distribution showing the finishing times of all runners.



What does this mean?

It shows the number of people that finished at any given time. My overall finishing place was 503rd out of 2607 runners. Or rather, my time fell in the column identified with the red arrow. The good news was that I was slightly better than average for the runners (assuming most of the finishers after 2:50:00 were walkers).

But wait!

Then I was looking at the data, I noticed a 66 year old guy and over 160 women beat me (no joke!). So as I was feeling washed up I noticed that the age groups were listed as well!



A few short clicks and I came up with the distribution above showing how well I did against the males in my age group. I still finished better than half of all runners in my age group who ran the race, but not by much. Again, the tail trailing to the right was most likely made up of walkers. Shaving just 15 seconds off each mile would easily take me into top 25% of runners.

What have I learned?

Buy new shoes and training makes all the difference. Also, next time I run a race I plan to have a goal to shoot for—not just a plan to finish the race.

If anyone is out there and wants to go for a run…just give me a call!

Read more...