Happy Bday Kate!

This past weekend was Kate's official birthday weekend. A small gaggle of us went out for some thai food to start the celebration but the real party began when we met up with the whole flock at Charlie Peppers later on. The Miller Lite Crew came out to celebrate Kate's birthday too! They brought tons of crap and I got at least one of each, my favorites being my new Miller Lite hat and armband.









She got a lot of cool gifts like: an awesome tshirt and garden gnome doormat (that'd be me), a bunch of flamingo Christmas ornaments (Holly), a bunch of beer and wine (that'd be mom and Lisa), and a bunch of other cool stuff but I think her favorite had to be her cool new camera (Spencer).


We all went down to Chattanooga Saturday and the whole fam came over for Kate's bday and bbq. Dad got Kate a really great cake!

Cousins get to play

This past Saturday we headed down to Chatt-town for a little family bonding. Mom made a HUGE spread of food (that I did not stop eating all day, oh and the cornbread was my favorite). Dad had the game on the radio, since for some reason it wasn't on TV. Andy and Allison came and brought Owen and Kate drove down and eventually Spencer. Mike had to stay in Knoxville and work the shuttle train.

Kate and I also spent a good deal of time trying to teach Simon to walk, using wheat thins as bait. He can stand, he can cruise, and I am pretty sure that if he felt like it he could walk, he just chooses not to. Anyways, our little trick didn't work.

Boot Camp Month One, Over!

I officially survived my first month of Boot camp! That means, for exactly one month I dragged myself out of bed, drove 20 minutes across town and did a lot of exercise at 5:45 am. That's big-time, so obviously we needed to celebrate. We had a little graduation party at Tai restaurant.
My food came in a pineapple! How special is that?!

After my delicious pineapple dinner, and sharing 3 tequila shots with the boot camp girls, and a couple of glasses of wine, three of us hotties made out way out to Cotton Eyed Joes to start the real celebration. Cow roping and bull-riding were involved but mostly dancing for me. After a few long sweaty hours at the Joe, we headed out to go home. When we got outside we remembered that we actually didn't drive there, we took a cab, so we were temporarily stuck. Luckily we befriended a limo driver whose client was in the Joe, indefinitely. Through my powers of persuasion I convinced him to let us come play in this birthday girl's limo. Then I convinced him to let us drink her beer. Then, the four of us girls convinced him to drive us to waffle house.

It was a most excellent time!

Halloween was so much fun!

Halloween started for me at 5:45 am this year. I went to bootcamp and worked my butt off, IN COSTUME! I was a football player that morning, and all of the instructors dressed up like Richard Simmons.

During the day Mike, Simon and I went to pick out pumpkins. Simon wasn't really that interested in the pumpkins but we were really interested in how cute he looked amongst them.


Later in the day on Halloween I headed down to the Runner's Market for the track club's Wednesday Night HALLOWEEN run! Great fun!

I dressed Mike up like a Leprechaun! He loved it, and was so excited about his costume....NOT! HHAHAHAHAHAAHA

After a long fun day I think we were a pretty crazy looking family...but wouldn't you expect that?

Oh, and Simon was more interested in a banana than any of the candy.

South Carolina Tailgate

Simon got to come tailgate for the South Carolina game! He got to play on dad's train, SO COOL!

October update . . .

The newest thing in my life this month, is Boot camp. Yes, Boot camp. I have been getting up at 4:45 am every weekday morning and dragging my sleepy ass to Lakeshore park, only to have it kicked by 5 perky skinny girls demanding I perform push-ups, sit-ups etc. Oh, and I have to write down everything I eat in this little red book and turn it in every morning for one of these gals to read. Sounds horrible doesn't it? Actually I love it! I am obsessed and I feel great and so strong. My new goal is to become one of the instructors and put others through what I have been through this month.

OK let me back track a bit. Oct. 1st I went to the Bengals game in Cincinatti with Queen Holly. I had a most excellent time and I have decided that NFL football is as much fun (if not moreso) than college. I loved it! The Bengals do happen to be the absolute worst team in the NFL right now but I don't care. I am a fan for life.


That next week or so we hit the Skybox again for the Georgia game. Mr. Claussen invited us to come along and we had a GREAT time up there. Plus, the Schoenbergers were in town so they kept Simon! Mike and I got to hang out ALL night it was so much fun. I love sitting in the Skybox now. I took my own whiskey and people just kept bringing me diet cokes to mix it in, what a grand situation.



My mom came and spent the night with me one night while Mike was out of town and we had a great time and she brought Simon a MONKEY SUIT! WHOOHOO



The first session of my competitive swim clinic at Ft. Sanders West concluded this month and I got a picture on the last day of all of the cute kiddies.


Oh, we had our first swim meet this month. Farragut vs. Science Hill. We got our butts absolutely handed to us. Yeah, they whipped us. I have some opinions regarding why this happened and if you ask I will tell you later. Here Boogie and I are, looking defeated:

Also, we took all 50 kids on a big bus up to Johnson city and on the way back we stopped at McDonalds and this kid made a huge hamburger, look:



One beautiful thing about October, is Brewers Jam. A day of beer drinking, and, well, that is all you do. Simon spent the night in Chattanooga with his grandparents while Mike and I sampled every beer in sight. It was a most excellent time!


Mike has been doing the Pumpkin trains this month with his job and Simon got to go with him all day one day. He even got to ride on the golf cart.


OK, as the new social chair of the Knoxville track club, it is my duty to attend certain social events, such as, the Halloween Pub RUN!!!! See if you can spot me...


Those are the most interesting things about October so far. This update dedicated to Kristin Luna, who also contributed to the wonderfulness of October by visiting Knoxville.

Simon drives

I let Simon drive today!

Tailgate 2

Chiefed by Wes Bennett, Amazing food Cheffed by Holly Hambright, parking space and generator provided by Boogie, golf cart, badminton and flair by Cheryl and Mike, Heine-keg by Megan and Rachael, tequila in a water-bottle by Kate, and beer by everyone. This weeks tailgate was the best we have ever done it. It was twice as good as tailgate 1, and will only be exceeded by tailgate 3. We are getting good at tailgating. I can only credit our practice at Buffett shows for our preparedness at the UT tailgate.

Cornhole will be provided by the Captain (Eli) and apparently we have commandeered some bean bags thanks to Wes for Georgia game.

All, in all it was a great tailgate!

Secret Pool

I have a random new gig lifeguarding a water aerobics class 3 times a week for an hour. Today as I was driving to this class I started wondering if anyone else downtown realizes that every day they are walking by a secret underground pool. People downtown breeze by up on the street with no idea.
Meanwhile, below the street, on a completely different wavelength, 5 old ladies are doing water aerobics, in the middle of downtown, in the middle of the day.
This secret pool has inspired me to create a new blog where I find every pool in Knoxville. I want to know where they all are. Crazy? Yes.

My awesome Nemo swim cap

OK, so I am still teaching 75 year old Bob to swim twice a week and I love my 2 hours a week with him, a lot. In fact, I will be pretty sad when he decides he has learned enough and we stop having lessons but maybe we can still do lunch.

Thursday I put flippers on Bob and it was like a miracle. The extra momentum he was getting from the fins gave him the ability to really get his arm stroke down. He was SO excited and so was I!!! He swam halfway across the pool by himself (he stopped at the deep-end line of course because he is still terrified).

After we finished a great lesson Bob wanted to take me to lunch, which of course, I was for. We went to Gourmet Market, which I suggested because I knew Chef Holly would make him feel special. After lunch I follwed him over to Swim and Tri to get his own flippers. He spent forever trying them on and finding the perfect fit and while we were checking out at the register i was talking to Patrice about how cool the Nemo swimcaps are and he insisted on buying me one. So, now I am showing it to everyone!

I put it on Simon and he didn't quite know what to think.


Oh, by the way, the cap also has a fin, and a tail.

Simon eats food now!

Today at lunch, I was dreading the normal routine of trying to trick my son into eating real food when I was pleasantly surprised. He wanted to!
It has been such a battle for the longest time but over the past couple of weeks I think he has decided that maybe I am not trying to poison him with the horrible things I try to put into his mouth and possibly they are even tasty.

Today at lunch he ate: vegetable soup!!! Strawberries!!! Cheerios and baby cheese curls(of course). The kicker was, he drank juice from a juice box through a straw!!!!!!!

I have never been so proud. Now, let's just see if we can keep this momentum going through to dinner.

The Yoga Experiment

OK, so yesterday I decided to do my 45 minute power yoga video. While doing the video I thought many times, "this is pretty easy". About 3 hours later I was at the Y teaching people how to swim, when I realized that every muscle in my body was sore and tired. This made me think, "hey maybe yoga actually does work!"
This realization is coming at quite a convenient time because my knee has been bothering me a lot lately when I run. Thus I have decided to try the "YOGA EXPERIMENT".
I will do nothing but yoga everyday for like a week and see what happens. Celebrities swear by yoga and say it keeps them thin so I am going to test that theory. If I don't notice any results for a week, it will be back to running.

Floating Plate of Enchiladas...

Among all of my coaching activities I am teaching a level 4 swim lesson group. It's a lot of fun which is the reason I do it. I get in with the kids and level four means they should pretty much do swim team next summer. They are good little swimmers.
Well, there is a teeny, tiny little kid in my class named Roger. He is the smallest one by far but he is an awesome swimmer and more importantly he is a funny little critter.
Yesterday I was trying to correct their freestyle and I was explaining that I wanted them to reach out really far when they swim freestyle as if they were reaching for something they want badly, like maybe chocolate. Then I got distracted and started saying,
"Unless of course you don't like chocolate and you can pick something else like pixie sticks, or skittles, or...."

"Enchiladas!" Roger screamed this.

"Ok, or enchiladas," I said, "Reach out really far like you are reaching for enchiladas.."

Sometimes I kind of think out loud with the kids and I sort of mumbled,
"but enchiladas would disintegrate and fall apart if they really were in a pool"

Then Roger chimed in, "Not if they are on a floating plate."

Then Andy added, "and you would need a floating cup of milk if they are spicy to cool off your mouth."

Then I realized how far we had gotten off of swimming and turned the conversation around so we could get moving but I will tell you my mouth watered for enchiladas for the rest of the night.

T-shirt Update! NEW COLORS!

Guess what!? Sunsphere T's are now available in a variety of colors!!! Hooray for variety is the spice of life.
We now have a baby blue,

royal blue

and slate blue.

We also have gray

and Volunteer orange.

The website is up and running and shirts are easy to purchase, you can just pay right there on the website.
www.sunsphereknoxville.com
Oh, and these shirts can also be purchased at the Knoxville downtown visitors center. That's right, we are big-time now.

Mike wore his shirt when he was on the radio

SkyBox

Mike and I were invited to watch the game in a Sky Box tonight. I must say, you feel pretty special when you are up there. They have a menu for before the game, half-time and after the game. The food is endless. That was cool.
Sitting in a skybox is cool too. It is air-conditioned with an un-obstructed view, etc.
I don't think it is for me though. I had a really good time but I kind of had to behave more than I am used to at games. I kind of like the loud, crazy, messy student section. When the wave was going around tonight in the stands I stood up and cheered in the skybox and got some strange looks. They are not used to people hootin' and hollerin' I guess.

I did sit behind former lady Vol national champion Sidney Spencer. That was very cool. She was very nice and not stuck up at all about her celebrity status. In fact, she was getting drinks for other people in the box and picking up other people's trash.
Oh, and Mayor Ragsdale was on the elevator with us on the way out of the skybox. There were actually about 50 people on the elevator, or maybe 30 but it was packed. We were on there for about 10 minutes and someone most certainly farted. I don't think it was the mayor and it definitely was not me.

All in all it was quite fun and I felt like a total VIP. Oh, and did I mention that Mike commandeered a golf cart from the Rambler and we drove it from tailgate to tailgate and we pulled right up to the skybox elevators and parked it. That was door to door service baby!!!

My running buddy

I am back into the running thing again. I have been going pretty much every day. I can tell I am getting back in shape because Wednesday when I went to run with the track club, I was planning on running 3 miles but I ran with this chick Julie and she wanted to do 5, so we did and it rocked. I am going to try to do the upcoming Wears Valley 15k this month and then the Cross Knox 15k in October I think and then Autumnfest 8k on Thanksgiving. Then I am going to do Strawberry Plains half-marathon in February, Knoxville half-marathon in April and Cincinnati Flying Pig Marathon in May. That is a lot, I know, but if I don't have training goals I lose interest.

My new running buddy is Simon. He has been coming with me a lot lately and is almost too big for the baby jogger.

This past week I was asked to take over the position of Knoxville Track Club Social Chair. I am really excited about this. I get to plan group runs, PUB RUNS, and most importantly I get to plan the huge track club Christmas Party and Summer Party. I will get a budget that I get to spend on these parties and if you know me, you know I LOVE party planning!

Coaching Bob

I have just started back coaching again after a month of nothingness.
August is kind of a boring month because July is insane with swim activity and then August just stops and is the slowest most boring month for me (except for my anniversary and Simon's bday), but as far as jobs go I do nothing.
In fact, I received a paycheck from the Y for $8.31. That is for half an hour, which is how much I worked in August I think. I had it on the fridge because I thought it was so hilarious but Mike took it and deposited it.


September has hit now and boom! I am coaching and teaching all over the place again. I coach kids at Ft. Sanders West, which is a lot of fun. It is a really nice facility and I have a bunch of cute kids who swim on summer league teams and are swimming with me throughout the year to stay in shape. I pretty much get to do whatever I want with this group and they pay me a lot for doing what I love.



I am also coaching swim clinic at West-Side Y and teaching lessons there.

Bob

I am teaching lessons right now to a sweet 75 year old man named Bob who has never learned to swim in his life. He is great. He booked an hour lesson with me twice a week. At first I thought this was a lot of time, but I realized on our first day that about 30 minutes of the hour is spent just chatting with Bob. Bob was in the NAVY!!! Can you believe that? In the Navy and never learned to swim. He told me that every time they would have swim tests he would get a doctors note so he wouldn't have to do it. He just kept slipping through the cracks and never actually learned. Oh and listen to this, of all of his many doctors excuses he used to get out of swim tests, one doctor wrote him a not that said he couldn't swim because he had too much earwax. AND IT WORKED!!! How crazy is that? In the United Stated Navy that excuse worked.

So anyway, now I am teaching Bob to swim and I love him. He rides a scooter to the Y from Farragut! He goes hiking all the time and he water skis. That's right, the man cannot swim, but he can water ski. What a character.
Anyway, I was pretty nervous when I decided I would teach a 75 year old to swim but it turns out he is so wonderful and interesting and is brightening my Tuesday and Thursday mornings. I wish I had a picture of him to put on here because he is a stud.

Simon's Dad is sooo funny!

Mike was throwing the soccer ball at the front door and Simon thought it was hilarious. I have no idea why.

Simon is NOT crazy!

This video below proves that Simon is most definitely not crazy.

T-shirts for sale!

Last spring I was driving down Neyland drive on a perfect, clear, glistening March day. I was so happy as I drove that I thought, "I love living in Knoxville!"
Sometimes when I am driving I get really good inspired ideas. That day I decided I would like a t-shirt that said "I heart Knoxville", because I love living in K-town so much.
Then I thought, "that wouldn't be very original," and right as that thought passed through my brain I had a eureka!


I Sunsphere Knoxville! I could put a Sunsphere in place of the heart.
Well, I never honestly thought this idea would amount to anything, but it seems it has and now Mike and I are in the T-shirt business.


The shirts look great. We have a white, orange and soon a gray and blue option. The shirts can be ordered on our website at www.sunsphereknoxville.com. They are $14.99. Kids sizes are available too.