Baby Shower

On Saturday I threw a baby shower for friend, Julie, who is due November 20. Julie is a member of our church and has become a wonderful friend. I'm so excited to meet her little one! Boy or girl...we don't know!

Celebrating Birthdays

We celebrated birthdays for my dad and niece this weekend. We met up at a great new restaurant in a nearby town. We decided since we were all together, we'd take a few family photos. Happy Birthday Dad and Brie!

GNIRRRR

Last weekend I participated in an event referred to as the GNIRRRR (Great Northern Iowa Radical River Run Race). Co-ed teams of 3 participated in this event consisting of running, canoeing, portaging, and mystery events. The race started out with a mystery event of answering 6 questions about the state and about our local university. We turned our answer sheets in, they were scored and given back to us and we were told to start running down the nearby trail. Upon reaching a parking lot, our team was told to select 2 pumpkins (we estimated at 8 pounds each) and continue running down the trail (two pumpkins because we'd gotten 2 questions wrong on our quiz). Well, let's just say the run was at least 3 miles and we had some tired arms! My teammate, Heather, decided to devise a type of sling out of teammate Scott's shirt. We put the pumpkins into the shirts and carried them between us-a huge improvement!

When the 3 mile run was done, we got to leave the pumpkins behind and portage our canoe 1/2 mile to a boat dock. Once on the lake, we paddled to 3 locations. At the first, we got a...pumpkin...and continued paddling. At spot 2, we had to get 3 ringers while playing horseshoes from 10, 20, and 30 feet. Let's just say horseshoes were not our strong suit. We had been leading and quickly fell behind as we were at the horseshoe event 17 minutes! Once we got our ringers, we were back in the canoe paddling to spot 3.

At the final spot, we got out of the canoe and were told to carve our pumpkin who had been hitching a ride on the lake. Once the orange friend was carved, we paddled back to the dock, portaged our canoe to the canoe trailer, ran back and took our jack-o-lantern to a nearby shelter and had to light it. Once lit, the time stopped. We ended up in 2nd place out of 6. What an awesome event!

Purple Pride

It was purple pride around town this weekend with Homecoming taking stage. We enjoyed a pancake breakfast, parade, and tailgating with friends before the big win. It's great to be a panther!