Woohoo!  I’ve finally got internet… not a good enough connection in our condo, so I drove around the parking lot, then around the block, then across the street, all with "connectivity" but not enough to pull anything up.  But here I am, in the parking space outside our condo and I’ve got a connection.  WOOHOO!

Crazy morning, but so fun!  I missed Brian’s first lap of the swim but our friends saw him and he was feeling good and said a few words to them.  His first lap was about 10 minutes faster than he expected!  His total swim was 1:28, which was 15 minutes fast than he really thought he’d do, so that’s great.  He’s just relieved to be done with the swim, I’m sure, as that was the part he felt least prepared for.  We saw him head out on his bike.  He looked good and I know he’s blazing his way through right now.  You can go to probably check in on him directly here, and his bib number is 306.  If that doesn’t work you can go to www.Ironmanlive.com, click on the Athlete Split page on the right under Ironman Florida and look him up by # or name.  I’ll try to keep you posted!  My kiddos are inside resting so we can be ready to be on the run course.  It goes right outside our condo, and it’s a 2 lap out-and-back course, so we can see him 4 times right here outside our place! 

Check back soon!  I might go inside and upload a couple pictures from this morning!

We’re on our Ironman Adventure!  It’s been a long week, and it took a lot of work to get here, but we finally made it yesterday afternoon. 

We’ve had a sliding set of plans for when we were going to head down to Panama City.  1st: Brian was only going to miss class on Friday, so we’d stay through the end of his Thursday class (2:50) and then drive the 4.5-5 hours.  2nd:  The inauguration of the new president of Samford was set for this morning from 10-12, and Brian was going to participate in the event in his UC Davis cap/gown.  We found out that there was a "mandatory" athlete meeting at 7:30pm, so we thought it would be best if we left at noon, and he left an assignment for his class.  3rd:  We found out that no one else could pick up Brian’s race packet, which supposedly could only be picked up until 4pm today.  We decided that it’d be best if he missed the inauguration event and left by 10am.  4th:  I got to campus at 10 to pick him up, and we left at 10:30, with a "whoops-forgot-something" trip at home.  After that, we finally left at 11am. 

Analise got to ride down with her Grandma and Grandpa, in the car with DVD player.  I had looked up directions on Google Maps and we set out with a full car, and a sleeping Josiah, much to our joy.  We made great progress for a couple hours.  We followed the Google Maps directions, even though Brian thought about another way (that his dad -who left an hour before us) ended up taking.  Poor choice.  We watched the time tick by and got more and more stressed as 4pm came and went.  We finally pulled up and dropped Brian off at 4:20.  He’d missed packet picked up.  Thankfully, graciously, they opened again for "latecomers" this morning.  He did make it to the mandatory meeting though. 

Yesterday was an exhausting day, especially since we hardly slept the night before.  We’re in a nice 4 bedroom condo with Brian’s parents and our friends, Tim and Lindsay and their son, Bryant.  Tonight, more friends are joining us, Bryant and Lauren.  Today, Brian’s gotten do a little swimming in the ocean and bike the run course, get all his gear ready, and drop off his bags and relax a bit, before the 7am start on tomorrow.  Then, just a reminder – it’ll be a 2.4 mile (2 lap course) swim in the ocean (which is surprisingly warm!), a 112 mile bike ride that he’ll fly through, and a 26.2 mile (2 lap- out and back course) marathon.  Whew!  I’m tired just typing it all.  I’ll post again tomorrow with a few more details, but if you’re interested, you can follow his progress and check to see his results LIVE on the Ironman website.  How cool is that?!?   We’ll check back in tomorrow! Post your comments here on this page to cheer Brian along. We’ll check back in tonight and then again tomorrow night after the race.

(From Brian) – For those of you who want to follow along live, check out:  http://www.ironmanlive.com  Click on Athlete Split Time on the right side of the page underneath Ford Ironman Florida. Then type in my name into the search box and there you should be able to see my splits after I finish each event. The race starts at 7AM and I should be out of the ocean by 8:30AM. Then I should be finished the bike by 1:30PM and finally be through with the run by 6PM hopefully at the latest.

It’s been a good week, but Analise has been a little sick.  Yesterday, I’d been preparing for us to have our family photos taken, and I was excited to get some of Analise and Josiah.  We had cute outfits, I got my hair cut and some new clothes that fit, and we were READY.  Except… Josiah only napped for 20 minutes and so he was tired and non-smiley when we got there.  Analise wasn’t feeling well, and everything at the photo place was reducing her to tears, and she had red eyes and a drippy nose that I had to keep trying to fix.  She would hardly smile.  It was miserable.  I couldn’t believe what a terrible time we had.  I’m glad we got a couple pictures, but it was quite a disappointment.  I even had a great matching set of outfits for them to get some other pictures taken, but we didn’t get that far.  I ended up taking Analise into the doctors later in the afternoon to see if she had another ear infection like last time but it was just a cold.  Anyway, here’s pretty much the only good pictures we got.  (See pictures below)

Then we had home church to get ready for (I made an awesome spinach artichoke dip – I’ll have to post the recipe soon).  It was a great night of being together with our friends.  But after everyone left, we had to get the house back in order, and start packing.  I was moving laundry through the washer and dryer and packing from the growing pile of clean clothes on the couch.  Brian’s had tons of work to do this week, and instead of getting a good night’s rest, he was up working until 2 and up at 5.  I stayed up getting stuff done until about 1:30, and luckily got to sleep until 7. 

Continuing another blog with the Ironman Adventure, but first our professional pics: