bucket list item #8

The Marine Mud run: Salem, VA 9-18-2010: I met my dad in Salem along with a few friends for the annual marine mud run that raises money for toys for tots... Great charity, great fun! Today was also my dads 60th birthday so I made him a special shirt to celebrate! We got there EARLY (745) and picked up our packets then waited, and waited, and waited... the race is a 5k with part of the race taking place in a river, (maybe 200m??) that is waist deep and 2 huge mud pits, one you kinda swim through. If you werent dirty, the marines chased after you to encourage you to fall into the mud amd swim through it.... After the race... dad took 2nd in his age group and placed overall around 230. I finshed at 252 out of 810... not to bad!

Beautiful group pic in front of port a potties... We girls got CLASS

I ran in my chucks because my racing shoes are like embarrasingly ortopedic and I didnt want to throw them away because they took 3 hours to find (the running store guy made me try on almost every pair of shoes and kept making me run up and down an alley while he watched... while i realize that sounds sketchy, it was much more boring then anything.) and i didnt want to go through that again... I am a little sad to have thrown them away but they were sooooo gross... (and I do have 4 other pairs of chucks, and now have an exucse to replace them, right??)

the kids were A-May-Zing!!! i was so proud of their patience, they were hoping we would let them roll through the mud as well afterwards so we threw them in the river instead:

oh look, all cleaned up now! Anna and I went back to the river we ran through and laid down in it to get clean. Such a refreshing numbing clean...

The Blacksburg Bucket List

When we realized our days here in the burg were becoming seriously numbered, the kids and i sat down and created a bucket list of things we really wanted to do before we moved away. The list grew as we approached the start of our 1 year. John will graduate June 4th and we anticipate moving early that next week. The list we made covered everything from June 4th 2010 until July 1, 2011... Several of these items have been done already and I have been so far behind journaling that I will have to catch it up later but I wanted to post the list and then go back and catch it up... since we will prob. not live in va, the list has also grown to cover some random va activities as well... we prob wont get to everything on the list but we thought it would be fun to see how many we can knock out!

The LIST (in no particular order)
1.bike the whole huckelberry
2. hike the cascades when there is ice on it
3. 4th july parade*
4. one more stepping out*
5. run the whole huckelberry
6.hike the cascades and swim
7. hokie football game
8. marine mud run *
9.va 10 miler
10.night at english fields
11.international fair
12.summer musical one last time*
13.tech hockey game
14.huge going away party for the kids at nellies cave
15.pay off all credit card debt
16.get picture taken at the vt on airport and vcom
17.retake as many of the hokie bird statues now that they've moved into the permanent location (like 4 years ago...)
18.buy a house
19.tay- get his weebolos
20.baptize m
21.jo- get his bear
22.camp at white rock
23.camp at claytor
24.one more amazement square
25.skate park day
26.blueberry pciking in the valley
27.Christmas parade
28.joes tree farm
29.service Christmas project
30.volunteer at Christmas store
31.india garden--1-more-time
32.Christmas eve at kabuki and then henderson hill
33. tubing on new river
34. chemistry magic show
35. go see the cow w. hole in stomach
36. 2 more semesters of bcs
37. Christmas concert
38. Burruss hall photo
39. April 16th fun run and visit memorial
40. Spring game and tailgating
41. Turkey leg
42. movie at lyric
43. celebrate match day with kids

-and then we have the things that will be done more then 1 time, playing at our favorite parks, seeing friends, and my orchestra group, etc. I know this year will be hard for us and the kids since this is all we've known... John has been here since he was on 5th grade and i came 12 years ago... I am so excited to have a list of things that my kis felt were important (and some of them me and John) to set a guideline for what we will be doing this year!