A Year with Flat Daddy

This week has been INSANE!
Training to be a screener at the airport is SO much harder than you’d think and I have been busy busy busy. Between 9 hour days and all the stuff at home poor FJ hasn’t seen too much time out of the car this week. We did have fun in Seattle though.
Here are some pictures from our Memorial Day weekend:

look who was spotted in Okinawa!

Everything is happening at once around here.
Soccer ended for Joel this weekend, and while I’m glad he had fun I’m also glad I won’t be driving to the other side of town every weekend.

Might not be too much this week. Lots of last minute preparation for my new job and such, but we’re taking a little trip over to Seattle for the holiday weekend, so we’ll probably have some fun pictures from that. Unfortunately, after 10 months with FJ there’s not too much we haven’t taken pictures of yet! But I’m sure we’ll be able to find some sort of shenanigans to capture for posterity!

We were invited to a friends house for Mothers Day dinner. It’s a little farm and everyone had a great time feeding cows and chasing cats. The little tan cow by FJ is named Hot Dog, no joke. The cows they keep get regular names (there’s Thelma and Louise) and the ones who will stock the freezer get food names.

FJ isn’t really of much use.
We like sports radio in our family and there is a really good local show we’ve been listening to for years. I had the kids in the car and I heard that they were set up down at the mall that has the kids museum, so we drove on down for a quick photo op. RJ was the recruiter for the guys son, who will be headed to Iraq a second time soon, keep them in your thoughts. Anyway, during a break they were kind enough to let FJ get in there for a picture. It’s fuzzy, but I only had time for one shot so it’ll have to do, sorry!

We have some fun stuff downtown here. There’s a big park from when the Worlds Fair was here ages ago, and it’s nice to walk and lounge in. We snapped a couple pictured while hanging out with Uncle Jordan…
This is astronaut Michael Anderson. He was one of the crew killed in the 2003 Columbia accident.

This is, well, a big red wagon.

We got some ice cream and walked around a little. The boys wanted a picture, and who am I to argue?

FJ is in this picture, so I’m including it because I really like the falls. There’s a much bigger drop off to the right side that is pretty cool.

we finished, no more running!

More Army people:

Every year there is a new finisher shirt for the race. It’s kind of a big deal, there’s a lot of speculation and analyzing the previous years shirts. They even pile the shirts face down at the finish so people can’t see them until they cross, it’s pretty fun.
Anyway, there is a series of statues of runners downtown and every year they put all the previous shirts on them.

The other funny thing about these shirts is that pretty much everyone who gets one wears it the next day. It’s some sort of Bloomsday tradition. People in this town love their event T-shirts.

And of course everyone is critiquing the shirts the next day and there’s always some lively discussion. Over a shirt! A guy on sports radio said they get a box of 64 crayons and everyone reaches in a bag and grabs one. Then they put it on a board and whoever has the color of/closest to the shirt wins. Everyone puts in 2 dollars and then half the pot goes to a charity and half goes to the winner. It sounds like a fun way to really get involved in Bloomsday!

Jordan sent me quite a few, so I’ll be posting them over the next few days…

This is the starting area. Unless you’re up by the faster runners it can take a few minutes before you see the actual starting line itself. That’s what happens when you try to shove 50,000 people into downtown. See all the clothes up in that tree? That’s a tradition here. People toss jackets/ sweatshirts/extra shirts in the trees before the race and they’re collected for  local charities afterwards.  Hey there Mr.7520, you stay classy, ya hear?

This is The Buzzard. He stands at the top of Doomsday Hill every year waiting to pick off the ones who didn’t make it. The hill itself is about a 150 foot altitude gain, but it’s spread over almost 3/4 of a mile. If you try to run it unprepared you will discover it’s steeper and longer than it looks. Or so I hear anyways…

It’s usually fairly warm for the race and I really feel for the person in that costume with the sun beating down on them for hours and hours, but this year was pretty cool and windy.

Bands play all along the route, helping to keep people pepped and moving. This one just happens to be an Army band.