2005 Seattle Half Marathon

This year Alayne and I decided to run in the Seattle Half Marathon. While we both enjoy running as a workout neither one of us had ever competed or ran this far before preparing for the race. Heck, even while preparing we didn't go 13.1 miles, I believe the longest we both ran was just over 11 miles.

Well this weekend was the weekend. We woke up this morning to find it was snowing but as we left the house it quickly dissipated. By the time we got down to Seattle the rain had stopped and it was turning out to be a nice day. Overall it was a cool day but since it wasn't raining you didn't hear too many people complaining.

While the race results aren't "Official" yet we came in as follows; Alayne 1:51:37 (8.47 mi/hr)and Alex 1:47:58 (8.24 mi/hr). Alayne absolutely ROCKED!!!! She was aiming to beat the 2 hour mark and BLEW it away. I was trying to do somewhere around 1:40 and left room to improve. Not sure how I picked 1:40, but it was what I had in my head.

We both had a great time and are looking forward to doing some more races down the road. Not sure which one will be next, I am thinking it needs to warm up before we race again!

No pictures yet, we'll upload them as soon as we can get some from the website.

Great job ALAYNE I am very proud of you!!!

Cougars WIN APPLE CUP 2005

Another year in the books, and it couldn't have come any sooner for Cougar Fans! With our first and only Pac-10 win coming in the Apple Cup, it was definitely a tough year to be a COUGAR! Granted, if you are only going to get one win this is the win all Cougar Fans want, even if it is against a horrible Husky team. We now have a Apple Cup winning streak, hard to believe since it is the first one we've had since 1982/1983 were we got back to back wins. With such a promising begining and so much speculation that the Cougars would be Bowl bound come December it was a very disappointing season for Cougar Fans.

One bright point was having the Space Needle painted in the wonderful colors of CRIMSON & GRAY! As part of a fundraising competition the Cougar Faithful came through and donated over $97,000 and won the rights to have the top of the Space Needle painted with the Cougar Logo for the week leading up to Apple Cup along with the Apple Cup weekend. Of course the weather did not cooperate, the fog was so thick you could'nt see 200 ft up. Oh well, we know we won and that's what matters!!!

The WSU Logo painted atop of the Space Needle in Seattle for Apple Cup week.

Tia and Dylan's Playhouse

Tia and Dylan, recently got a cedar play house. Well its Tia's to use for a while as Dylan is still a little small... One of Alex's co-workers recently moved into a new house and when they moved the new home owners did not want this playhouse and their kids have out grown it. So thank you very much to the Kraushaar's for giving Tia and Dylan this wonderful play house. Tia is already having a lot of fun in it.



Here is the playhouse on our deck (temporarily)
come spring we'll move it to a better location


Tia on her front porch


Tia inside sitting at her table having a snack