CO State Track Meet 2010!!

Last week Josh and I took a few days off work to watch my little sister Abby compete in the Colorado State Track Meet. She qualified for 4 events: 800 Sprint Medley Relay, 100m dash, 200m dash and 400m dash. She chose to run all but the 100m at the competition, since it was basically back to back with another race. Did I say she is a freshman?!

The entire weekend was very exciting!! I literally teared up a little bit when we got to the track the first day. All of the athletes were full of energy and hope. You could just feel it in the air. I know it sounds corny, but it is true. I was nervous and I wasn't even competing.

Abby and her teammates qualified for the finals in the 800 Sprint Medley Relay and the 400m dash. The relay team ended up taking 5th place and broke a Pueblo record. It was soooo exciting to watch. Abby started her 400m leg in 8th place and was able to pass 3 teams in the end! I was proud. In the 400m dash, Abby took 7th place over all and ran her PR. It was a great way to end the meet.

See pictures from the race in our Picasa Gallery. There is a link on the left side of the screen or you can click here.
P.S. My sister Anna and I made these signs for the girls. They were glittered.
P.S.S. I watched This Is It again tonight and I got a little emotional. I just can't help it.

Stars!

Stanley and Riley started going to a new doggy daycare a week ago. The main reason was to get them out of the house an let them play with other dogs. The second reason was to help Stan drop a few pounds. Little did I know, they would become stars. The owner of the daycare recently posted pictures of both Stan and Riley on the daycare blog, plus a video of Riley playing with her look-alike, Simon. Check out the post entitled "Welcome--Riley and Stanley" They are soooo cute!

Here is the video:

Ahhwoooo!

Remember a few years ago when I wrote about signing up to run a 10k in the Colfax Marathon Relay and I thought it was a big mistake? Well, somehow I managed to survive that first year and I have been continuing the tradition ever since. This year Josh and I both put together teams to run the Colfax Marathon Relay for the 3rd year in a row. The only difference was that we ran a 4.7 mile leg this year instead of the 10K leg (6.2 miles). We had a men's team: Safety First, Then Teamwork; and a women's team: Shewolves in Spandex. My team took the race very serious and carbo loaded the night before the race. We spotted a delicious cake shop on Colfax after we picked up our race packets. Check out what we brought home with us!!!

We also crafted our own costumes for the race. Pretty sweet, I know.

Overall, the team did great and we had a really good time (minus some race-day traffic). The ears stayed pointy and the tails looked good. The only disappointment was this ridiculous chihuahua beating Anna to the finish line. However, it did make us laugh.

Post race celebration!

Unbreakable?

Did you ever watch that movie Unbreakable? I think about it everytime I see a headline for a major accident with a sole survivor. I just thought of it again yesterday when I saw the headline about the Libyan plane crash where only an 8 year old Dutch boy survived. This is a list of similar accidents I saw on CNN today. Crazy right? Is it a miracle, fate, luck, physics, divine intervention, super powers???? Choose for yourself.
“Most of these escapes have been attributed to unique circumstances, in some cases the sheer resilience and determination of the individual involved. In many cases the survivors, though considered lucky by some, suffered horrific physical and psychological injuries.
Here are a selection of some of the sole survivors from the past five decades.

June 30, 2009 -- Bahia Bakari, a 13-year-old French national, was the only survivor when a Yemenia Airways Airbus A310 flight from Sanaa to Comoros missed the airport and crashed into the Indian Ocean killing 152 people. Bakari was ejected into the water where, barely able to swim, she clung on to a piece of plane wreckage for nine hours. She suffered a fractured collar bone and cuts to her face.

December 24, 2007 -- When a small Cessna plane carrying four Americans crashed in bad weather in high altitude remote jungle in Panama, Francesca Lewis, 13, was found alive two days later when rescuers finally reached the wreckage. Despite being pinned upside down in her seat and dressed only in shorts and a T-shirt, she endured hypothermia and a broken arm. Reports at the time credited her survival through freezing temperatures to piles of luggage that fell on top of her.

July 8, 2003 -- Mohammed el-Fateh Osman, a two-year-old Sudanese boy was reportedly hailed by the country's aviation minister as a "miracle dictated by God" after he survived a Boeing 737 crash in Port Sudan that killed 115 people. The boy, who suffered burns in the crash, was said to have been found lying on a fallen tree by a nomad.

January 11, 1995 -- Erika Delgado, nine, counted her parents and younger brother among the 51 victims of an Intercontinental Airlines DC-9 crash near Bogota, Colombia, but escaped largely unscathed after her fall was broken by a mound of seaweed. Found by a farmer, she said she had been told by God to stay where she was until help came. She became a national celebrity, hailed as Colombia's "Little Miss Miracle."

August 16, 1987 -- Shortly after takeoff in Detroit, Michigan, Northwest Airlines Flight 255 hit a light pole, crashing into the suburbs of Romulusa nd killing 156 people on board and two people on the ground. Cecelia Cichan, aged four, who had been traveling with her family, survived but with extensive burns. Cichan reportedly remembers little about the crash, but a message attributed to her on a memorial site for crash victims says: "I never go a day without thinking about the people on Flight 255."

January 26, 1972 -- Serbian flight attendant Vesna Vulovic survived a fall of 10,000 meters when the aircraft she was traveling in exploded in midair. Vulovic, whose plunge was logged in the Guinness Book of Records, became a Cold War heroine in the Soviet Bloc, although some have since claimed the feat was fabricated as part of an official cover up. Among the legends surrounding Vulovic was that her first words after being found were: "Can I have a cigarette?"

December 24, 1971 -- Juliane Koepcke was 17 when the Lockheed turboprop she was traveling in with her mother crashed in the Amazonian rainforest killing 91 people. Koepcke describes falling three kilometers strapped into a row of seats before crashing into the jungle canopy. Suffering a broken collarbone, concussion and severe lacerations, she endured a 10-day trek wading through piranha and crocodile-infested rivers to reach safety. She now works as a librarian in Munich, Germany.

December 16, 1960 -- Stephen Baltz, an 11-year-old from Illinois, was the only survivor when two passenger jets collided over New York. Six people were killed on the ground, 83 aboard a United Airline plane and a further 44 on a TWA flight all perished in the disaster. Baltz, who had been aboard the UA flight, suffered burns and smoke inhalation but was able to describe the crash before he died a day later.”