Happy Third Birthday, Chip!

Harmony

We Did It!

Happy Independence Day, everyone! For us, (okay, for P,) it's the most eagerly anticipated day of the year. We ran our fifth straight Peachtree Road Race. We will never ever get to say this again, so here it goes: "We SMOKED Jack!" But let's explain. Laura is a super-athlete, so she of course left us all behind at the starting line. We worked really, really, hard to outrun the JK/JK team. We intended to stick with them the whole way, but then Matthew became a world class runner out of nowhere and pushed me harder than I thought I could go, considering I had major thigh rash after a couple of miles from my new shorts that had become wet ("What's that vaseline for?" I asked at the starting line) and was in considerable pain. I was also fighting off back spasms and had, ahem, estrogen-related fatigue. Oh, and did I mention that I was coming down with a cold but didn't know it at the time? It was like the Calvin and Hobbes cartoon when a man is in his house happily cooking with a runaway train, a plane, and a meteor all headed toward his house.

I don't think I could have been more off my game. The Mangler, on the other hand, shrugged off a frustrating lack of training and proceeded to school my butt. We decided to go for the "run 'til it hurts, then walk a block, then run 'til it really hurts." Repeat for 6.2 miles. I accidentally paused my iPod for almost a mile, but I'm pretty sure we beat our PR by one or two minutes.

Then there were the fireworks in the square. We had a great setup:

and some good eats:

Chip was a little scared at first and decided that fireworks are bad because they sound like guns:

...but he acted his fear out through his cars, driving them into Mommy's shirt sleeve until they were ready to come out and watch the show:

Let's Go Tigers!

It's late, so just a quick post...

Today was the official end of my birthday (which started on 15 April for those of you keeping track at home). We went to the second Tigers-Braves game of the series and had a blast. Today, we brought along a couple more generations and sat at the very top of the stadium behind home plate. It was a fantastic view - we could call the balls and strikes, but we could also see the Capitol Building, the IBM Building, the Olympic torch (from '96), and the rest of downtown. At least a third of the crowd was dressed in orange, so when the "Let's Go Tigers" chant started, it was pretty darn loud. We sat above the players' parking lot after the game and saw Brian McCann, Jeff Francour, and Warren MI native John Smoltz get in their rides. The strange thing was that when we got on the road, there were several players next to us driving home, two of them in Bentleys. We figured they'd just take a secret Bat-Tunnel or something directly to their manses.

Yesterday the two of us sat in primo seats down by third base, so we could be on the Tigs side of the building. A couple of foul balls and the Jumbotron camera were all very close to us, but no cigar in either case.

Combined with tee ball this morning, it's been a baseballerific weekend. We will probably not attend the Tigers game tomorrow because it's a late one (8:05? We're on the east coast, people!), but hey, we got to see Verlander pitch today and Bobby Cox tie the major league all-time record for game ejections. We saw Ordonez and Pudge get hit by balls, and we got to see a little bit of the city. Good stuff.

Jack and Jen have been Georgia residents for 2 days but we haven't seen them yet. Cartersville isn't exactly a stone's throw away, although it really isn't all that far. Hopefully, we'll see them tomorrow.

TTFN, Mr. Wizard

Bummer alert - Mr. Wizard has gone to the great lab in the sky. He is probably one of the biggest reasons that we both got into science, which is how we met, which is why Gabriel exists. Hmmm... come to think of it, he's basically responsible for our entire lives, hee hee. link