Picture Monday

I got mail this week! Aunt Sue sent me a post card. It was pretty exciting to get mail especially from someone other than my Mom (that's not to say I don't love your post cards Mom). 

Triathalon

    On Sunday I did a triathlon. I did the sprint distance which is 500m swim, 20 km bike and a 5 km run. The weather was horrible when we were driving to the tri. There was lots of rain and wind. The water looked very choppy when we got there. It was still sprinkling when we got in the water. The water was the choppiest that I have ever swam in. It was hard to sight and figure out where I was going. I swam the 500m 4 minutes faster than I swam in the last triathlon I did. The bike was difficult because the ground was still quite wet. There were some hills that I liked because I get a bit bored on just flats. The run went all right. By the time we were running the sun had come out and it was really nice.
     Overall I am pretty happy with how I did. I finished in 1:32. I was 64th over all. I was 10th out of my age group of 15th but I was only 37 seconds from the 9th place in my group. I have another triathlon coming up soon and I am hoping to go slightly faster.

St. Patricks Day!!!

Indie making the trap. 

   

Tally being silly with her head band. 

Green mac and cheese

   













   




            This year over St. Patricks day the big kids (Kaiya and Jack) were away on school camp so it seemed like a good time to make St. Patrick's Day a big deal for the little girls. The day before St. Patrick's Day we read some stories about leprechauns and made a leprechaun trap.  I got some cool headbands for St. Patrick's Day. The girls stacked two pots and covered the handles with tape so that the leprechaun would get stuck. They then filled the pots with every green thing they could find including, grass, a seashell colored green and beads. They then covered the pots with a paper tent to keep the leprechaun in if the tape didn't work.  I was very impressed that they were so independent in building their trap. Overnight a leprechaun went into the trap and took the treats we had left to lure it in and exchanged it for some chocolate gold coins! Tally and Indie both had a gold coin with breakfast.The leprechaun had also got into the breakfast smoothie and turned it green! The girls had a St. Patricks Day themed lunch box with shamrock sandwiches, green grapes, a clover cookie and a few green m&ms. I had to throw in some not themed things because I didn't have enough green things for them to not be starving. For dinner we had green mac and cheese that I colored with spinach in the cheese sauce. They were initially very skeptical of their dinner but after a few bites they warmed up to it.

Indie and Tally with their trap. They were having a laugh
about what a leprechaun might look like 

Photo of the Week (Feb 29-March 6)

EDIT: I tried to publish this from my phone but it didn't work for some reason. I've only just realized so I am publishing it now.

I am copying a good friends idea by doing a photo of the week. There are lots of silly/cool things I see that aren't worthy of a whole blog post but are still worth sharing.

I saw this car in the library parking lot and had a good chuckle at it

Weekly Photo March 7-13

This photo is really exciting to me because it is the preliminary data for my thesis. I could go explain the data but I don't think that many people will be overly interested in it. I was really excited to start getting data. Even though the data probably won't make it into my thesis and the data is not overly interesting. Ideally the two groups would have very very different bar heights but oh well. Such is the way of the world I suppose

Busy Busy Saturday

      Saturday (March 5th) was a crazy busy day. I cycled down the shore and took the ferry over to the CBD. Then I cycled to swim squad. I had given my friend Fiona my swim stuff the night before so when I got there we went for a quick run and then we did swim squad. I sure have a lot of work to do on my pull. We were doing a set where you count how many times you stroked between two buoys. Everyone else had numbers that were about half of what I have showing that while I move my arms with good technique I don't move a lot of water with them.

Funny Coffee Cup from
Shakey Isles

Fu    After the swim Bevan picked me and my bike up. We had brunch in St. Hellier's. It was an alright meal. I find that the cafes in the bays are often not as nice as the ones on the shore. They seem to charge the same price but not produce the same quality of food. So after our semi disappointing brunch we headed to Hyper Ride. Hyper Ride is a shop that sells discounted snow board/skate board/surf board stuff. Bevan's birthday is next week and he needed to go try on some things so his parents knew what to get him.
     After Hyper Ride we raced back into the city to go to the Coffee Festival. It was in Shed 10 on the water front. The festival had a very hipster feel to it. There were tons of different coffee roasters most of which I had never heard of before. We got free coffee from one called Shaky Isles. They have hilarious coffee cups and packaging. We also got free coffee from another place called Flight something. It wasn't great. We tried coffee from Spaceman but I didn't like it so I didn't get a full coffee. We also tried the most delicious hot chocolate. It was just like melted chocolate. It reminded me of the Bernard Calibu hot chocolate I used to get in Calgary when I visited the Mitchelle's. I also tried some stuff from a place called True Food. They were making really nice almond milk from home made almond butter and water. It was tasty. Their food was over priced though.
    After the Coffee Festival we went to Bevan's house then my house to get ready for the evening. We went to a friends party/casino night. It was fancy dress which was fun. I wore my favorite Federation dress which is awesome. We had some Indian food before heading down the my friends house. Then everyone headed to the casino at Sky City. It is one of two casinos in New Zealand. I didn't gamble because it doesn't seem like a good idea on tight finances.
     It was a super fun yet exhausting day. Luckily today I got to have a lazy day to calm down from it all.