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This last Wednesday was Britton's first and only home cross country meet of the season.  It was another Region meet and I think there were 8 teams participating.  It was kind of nice to have the race so close to home.

 

On your mark, get set, go!

In fact it was so close to our house that the course went up the big nasty hill that I have to bike up every time I go on a bike ride.  Yeah, the runners liked running up the hill about as much as I like biking it.  It is brutal and makes this 5K course the hardest high school XC course in the state.

 

Britton finished strong and high fived all of his teammates as they came in.

 

 

Ridgeline boys and girls won the meet by a large margin.  Grandma and Grandpa were able to see this one, but unfortunately Grandpa ran into a little trouble (no pun intended) when he injured his hamstring jumping over a ditch by the finish line.  He heard it rip, which is never good, but we were able to get him into the car easily so he could still watch a bit of the race.  We are wishing him a speedy recovery.

 

After the race I took the girls and Grandma over to my friend Stacie's house.  Stacie has an amazing raspberry patch and every year she lets anyone who wants to come pick as many raspberries as they would like.  She schedules a day for each picker and Wednesday was my night to come and pick the entire patch.

 

 

 

We got a LOT of raspberries.

 

9 batches of jam and 6 bags of individually frozen berries for smoothies came out of our efforts.

 

On Thursday night we headed up the canyon for family pictures.  Our photographer put a pin on google maps so we would know where to meet him, but unfortunately we lost reception a few miles before getting to the spot so we had no way to find the elusive location.  We waited where we thought we were supposed to be, but when he didn't come Adam decided to drive back to where he could get cell service and see if  he could call the photographer which didn't work because the photographer didn't have cell service either.  After coming back from a failed attempt to find the photographer or get a hold of him Adam said, "Um, did you realize that the van is out of gas?" What? I hadn't even looked at the gas gage for a few days, but it was now showing we only had 6 miles until we were completely out of gas. This is what you call being in a pickle.  It took me a long time to get everyone ready for pictures and now we were in danger of not only having to reschedule but of possibly running out of gas before we could even get out of the canyon.  I was just a wee bit frustrated with the situation.  We started driving back down the canyon when we saw a car in front of us pull over to the side of the road.  Adam looked at the driver as we passed and said, "That's him!" so we pulled over, too.  When we didn't show up the photographer decided to drive back to where he could get cell service and that is where we found him.  Since the shooting location was still a few miles back up the canyon and we didn't have the gas to spare we left our van at the side of the road and all piled into his little car to go back up the canyon. The good news is that we still had plenty of light to do the photo shoot. I'd say it was a miracle it all turned out in the end because for a few minutes there it wasn't looking good.

 

We won't get the pictures back until next week, but here are a few I took with my phone right before it ran out of battery.

Where's Jameson?

 

Jameson was trying this best to photo bomb the girls during their individual shots.

 

 

 

I really liked this photographer.  He is part of Adam's BNI group and is more expensive than photographers we've used in the past, but I could tell he knew what he was doing and he kept us all laughing.

 

So the big question is did we make it out of the canyon and to a gas station before running out of gas?? Spoiler alert- the car will still go a few miles after reaching "0 miles until empty" on the gas gage.  We made it to a gas station, but were on 0 for at least a mile or 2 before doing so.

 

 

We have a 20 gallon tank in the van and put in 19.88 gallons.  It's nice to know the car people put in a little buffer for us, but we don't plan on pushing our limits like that again.

 

Friday night we went to a BBQ at the home of our friends and neighbors Dave and Lacie.  Britton is usually the oldest kid at these social events, but I appreciate the fact that instead of sitting around and being bored Britton will go and play with the little kids.  Here he is taking on a trio of little boys in badminton.  They love it when a big kid takes time to play with them.

 

Of course both Britton and Jenna left before the end of the BBQ for other social engagements with their friends.  That's the other part of having older kids, it's less about getting them home early to go to bed and more about the 11 p.m. phone calls to come and pick them up from a friend's house. 

 

Yesterday morning I got up to go on a bike ride before the first session of conference and saw these amazing balls of light in the sky.  Of course the pictures don't do them justice, but I have never seen anything like it.

 

Just one small portion of a bright rainbow was visible so it looked like a brilliant ball of light in a cloudy sky.  We love conference weekend around here so it was a great beginning to a great conference.