Holiday Spirits :)

So I don't know what struck up a cord in me this evening but I decided to grab a pumpkin and start carving. Now I really don't have much experience other than your generic face but for some reason I decided the basics wouldn't cut it. I decided at this point to find something difficult to do, of course it had to say geek.

After some thought I decided on tux. It seemed about the most recognizable geek symbol. So with nothing but your normal knife and no experience I set out to cut him out. I was quite impressed with my first try especially without any special pumpkin carving tools. What do you guys think?

Site Change

Decided to keep with those updates I promised. Another update, was I changed the site so Shannon posts directly to our main site. I also pulled over all her older posts so feel free to dig back, you will notice a mug shot next to everyone's post to easily identify who is talking.

Falling apart at the ripe age of....

As many of you know, I play hockey anywhere from one to three times a week, and I consider myself a pretty active person. For years I have been blaming my issues with breathing during exercise on "just being out of shape." Well I had a particularity bad episode a month back, where I played a game and we were unusually short handed. I was already having shortness of breath and coughing by the end of the first period, but I pushed on. By the time the game was over my chest hurt, I felt like I had water in my lungs, it was hard to breath and I had a wheeze that sounded terrible. The tight chest and wheezing lasted for a few days. At this point, I went into the docs, and they decided I had exercise induced asthma. This was quite a shock to me because I have been dealing with this since before high school. I always just thought I was out of shape and that is why my chest hurt.

I then ended up going to the allergist for further testing, and although I don't have allergies, (contrary to past diagnoses) he agreed that I do most likely have exercise induced asthma. They gave me a breathing test and my normal breathing volumes are more then they expect for someone my size, therefore, I don't show any signs of chronic asthma. This is the good news. The bad news is I have non-allergic rhinitis. No big deal, got some drugs that are helping with that. So I feel like a walking pharmacy with all of the new drugs I am on to deal with my lack of allergies but hypersensitive system, and the inhaler I take so I don't have an asthma attack when I am playing sports.

I can't believe the difference the inhaler makes I mean it is literally day and night between when I take it and when I don't. It makes me feel really dumb for not going in and dealing with it in high school when I started really being hadicaped by it. I just never imagined that my issues running and playing sports could possibly be because of asthma. You live you learn.

Jasmine's First Time Skating

For three years Jasmine has watched both Shannon and I play hockey, sometimes five or more nights a week. You could easily say she loves the sport, and has been wanting to play herself for sometime now.

Sunday was that day. We took her out to open skate and had her try on her first pair of skates ever. I was quite surprised how well she did, not only was she able to walk on her skates before we got on the ice. No mean feat for a three year old to balance on two thin blades about 3/8 of inch wide. She was also able to stand up on the ice as well. Though that was about the extent of it, the rest was a bunch of smiles and giggles as dad carried her around, or pulled her along.

The hard part was taking her off the ice, as soon as I took her off the ice she started crying that she wanted to skate. Kind of broke my heart to take her back off the ice. I am definately glad she enjoyed herself. Whether or not she decides to stick with hockey or skating Shannon and I will be happy to see her enjoying more outdoor activities.

Here are the pictures :)

Fall Hike at Parfrey Glen

The last few weeks have been cold and rainy, so when this last weekend was in the 80s we decided to enjoy one of our last few nice weekends before winter. Our friend Renea had never been out to Parfrey before so we decided it would be a great place to do a hike. The day was wonderful and we definitely had a good time hiking. Check out the pictures here.

Results are In

MACAA finally updated their site and now the results are finally available. Though this was a "fun run", I was impressed with myself being 17 of 25. I know that doesn't sound so impressive but I was expecting that my first run would land me close to last.

My overall time was 27.53, which if I calculated correct puts me just a hair below a 9 minute mile. I was quite surprised with the results. I haven't run seriously since high school days and with only a month of training and still 40lbs overweight, I was quite surprised with the results.

For more details you can get the results of the race here.