Familie Schmitt

I haven't exactly been feeling much like updating the blog lately, so two weekends have gone by without anything from me. Oops.



Mike and I spent a lovely weekend in downtown Minneapolis recently to see a concert of one of my favorite bands: The Swell Season. Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova were in the movie Once, which won an Academy Award for Best Song in 2008. You may remember that Marketa was played off my the orchestra at the awards show and didn't get to give her thank you speech so the host, Jon Stewart, brought her back on later in the show so she could speak. Their music is just so beautiful and Glen Hansard is one of the best live performers I have ever seen. I got our tickets during a presale, so we were lucky enough to sit in the fifth row in center seats at the State Theatre for the concert. It was amazing.

Benjamin spent that weekend with my parents and they had many adventures, which you can read about here.

We had a snow day last week due to a blizzard that gave us about 12 inches overnight.

This past Friday I was able to spend the day holiday shopping with my Mom, which was a treat, since for so many years they lived too far away to just spend a day with her. We also hosted Mike's parents on Saturday and they brought along a few surprise guests: Andy, Jennifer, Dan and Katie. Mike made everyone some awesome Greek soup and we spent the evening hanging out and playing some games. It was very nice.

I am happy to report that my Christmas shopping is nearly done. I only have one more present to buy and wrap, it feels great. We are very much looking forward to our Christmas Eve traditions of holiday lights, church, a special meal and early bedtimes. Before we know it, the big day will be here!

A relaxing Thanksgiving was spent with Grandma Chris and Grandpa Ed last week. The food was great and the company was wonderful. We even fit in a long walk after dinner - Mike was happy! On Friday we went to a Christmas parade/celebration in Excelsior, which was very quaint and cute.



On Wednesday night Mike and I acted like youngsters and went to a rock concert in Minneapolis. One of our new favorite bands, The Big Pink, played an AWESOME show! We had dinner together and then miraculously stayed awake long enough to see the performance. They ROCKED our favorite song, Dominos and even did a cover of a Beyonce song - it ruled!



The Christmas tree and decorations are up, the Christmas cards are ready to be mailed and we've started in on our shopping - the holiday is shaping up to be spectacular! Everyone at the Familie Schmitt Haus is EX-CI-TED!

As part of our birthday extravaganza/boys' time weekend Joe, Jen and the boys came down to Rochester for a visit. We took all 3 boys to our favorite park: "really fun park" aka Three Links Park and they played for hours. I brought my camera and tripod along and snapped some great pictures of them!




Those two big boys sure are growing up fast!

It was our plan to take this past Friday and use it to visit the Macy's Auditorium holiday display in Minneapolis as part of our annual tradition with Joe, Jen and the boys. However, Macy's decided to begin the display later in the month and also have the same display as last year, so we couldn't/didn't want to go. Benjamin already had the day off of school, so Mike too the day off of work and we made a kid's day out of it. We met Joe, Jen and the boys at the Minnesota Children's Museum where the kids spent hours exploring. It was fun to give them some freedom to run around in a kid-friendly atmosphere for a while and they had a great time. After they were sufficiently worn out, we took them out to lunch at the Java Train Cafe. The cafe had some great food and a really neat indoor train play area for the kids. We spent the rest of the weekend with Joe, Jen and the kids. I think Benjamin was able to get a good amount of cousin-time in. They all had a great time playing together and we all had a great time watching them play.

Benjamin and I decided to make the most out of the beautiful day we had yesterday (60 degrees and sunny in mid-November?!) by visiting Oxbow Park and Zollman Zoo, a favorite of our family. I snapped a few shots of him outside, but they were cut short and not great because he had to go to the bathroom badly, haha.

I also got this cool one of the turkeys...

We survived Halloween.
Benjamin was a robot this year. We were all going to dress up as a robot family, but it took a lot of work to just put together his costume and by the time that was done, I was burned out on robot-making. We attended two Halloween events before the big day: a community education party at the Plummer House and a Harvest Moon Festival at IBM. The costume was a big hit; everywhere we went, adults were complimenting it and kids were trying to push the "buttons."

Friday night we went up to Minneapolis so that Mike could pick up his race packet for the Monster Dash half marathon. We stayed the night at my parents' house because they were taking Benjamin to the HallZOOween event at the Minnesota Zoo. Mike and I were up very early Saturday morning to head out to the race site, Lake Harriet. I had volunteered for the race as a course marshal, so I had to set up some barricades at two intersections and make sure no cars got onto the course. Mike's brother, Andy, came out to watch the race with me. I blasted Thriller on my car radio with all of the doors open to give the runners some entertainment at what ended up being mile 6.5 of the half marathon and mile 3 of the 10 mile race. We got a lot of thumbs-ups and shout-outs for the music, which was fun. Mike had a good run, but he accidentally lost the chip that he had tied to his shoe, which electronically tracks his time. He has no official race time, but finished in about 1 hour, 41 minutes.

Mike and I had lunch with Andy and Jennifer and then we met up with Benjamin and my parents. Just the three of us then joined Joe, Jen and the kids at their house for trick-or-treating. Mike, Joe and I took AJ and Benjamin up and down a block near their house. The boys were very good and loved getting all of their candy. After we got back to the house, Mike and I got into our costumes (Miss Piggy and the Swedish Chef) and a bunch of friends came over for Joe and Jen's Halloween party. We had a fun time at the party and on Sunday we all got together to watch the Packers/Vikings game. Unfortunately, Minnesota won, but it was fun to watch. I still haven't taken down my indoor Halloween decorations. I think I am in denial about it being November now. There is one good thing about that though: my birthday is in a couple of weeks!

This weekend we took a trip east to Kellogg, Minnesota to meet Mike's parents at one of our favorite local places: Lark Toys. The visit was made even sweeter because of our recent reconnection with a college friend, Miranda, who just happens to now own the store along with her husband and parents! We've always enjoyed Lark and have visited many times in the past. For those of you who are unfamiliar with it, it is a toy store on steroids. There is an indoor Merry-Go-Round, a toy museum, candy store, fudge/ice cream/concessions, two separate toy stores, outdoor mini-golf and just generally really awesome stuff all around.

It was so fun to see Miranda and to catch up with her on the past ELEVEN years since she graduated from Winona State. She has a daughter who is also in a Montessori school so we talked about how much we are all loving school right now.

Benjamin went on the Merry-Go-Round twice, once with Grandma and once with Grandpa. We all enjoyed ice cream cones and we literally spent hours looking at the toys. We finished our visit with Grandma and Grandpa off with a meal at a restaurant in Wabasha that Miranda recommended to us: The Olde Triangle Pub. It is an Irish-themed pub that serves all typical Irish foods, which was perfect on a crisp fall day. Mike's parents had tickets to see a play in Red Wing, so they had to hurry off after dinner to make it to the show. We drove back to Rochester through the winding country roads, which allowed us to get the most out of one of the last days that the trees still had their colorful leaves. Many of them had already fallen thanks to an unseasonal snow storm we had experienced on Friday.


I was home alone on Friday and was downstairs in the basement with the blinds closed so I hadn't realized what was happening outside. When I came up to get ready to go pick up Benjamin from school, I realized that we had quite a Winter Wonderland already. Driving was horrible. The first couple of major snowfalls always seem to bring out the worst in drivers and if they're not tearing down the streets at speeds much too high for the conditions, they're driving way way waaaay under the speed limit and therefore putting everyone at risk for getting stuck in the snow. Benjamin's school sits atop a HUGE hill and the drive up is treacherous under normal circumstances. The person who does the plowing of that driveway hadn't even connected his shovel-thingy up to his truck yet, so they couldn't plow the snow. They instead layed sand down and people were getting stuck and sliding back down. It was my first experience of driving my Rondo on the snow and I am pleased to report it did splendidly. I made it up that hill and drove the both of us home with no problem. Benjamin and I spent some time playing in the snow when we got home. After we were sufficiently cold and tired we went inside to make some hot chocolate and warm up. When we got inside I was surprised to find that our power had gone off due to rolling black outs from our power company. I couldn't even close the garage door, the furnace was off and I wasn't going to be able to make hot chocolate in the microwave. We skipped the hot chocolate and instead cuddled under a blanket and read books until Mike got home. Luckily the power came back on a short while later and all was well.

On Sunday, Mike discovered that the Packers game was not going to be broadcast to Minnesota stations because the Vikings were playing at the same time, so he headed off to Whistle Binkies to watch the game. Benjamin and I did some Halloween costume shopping. After the game(s) were over, we met up with my friend Lora and her two girls for some laser tag and bouncing at House of Bounce. The four girls all played laser tag for two games and had an absolute blast. Benjamin and Mike did some bouncing on all of the slides and bouncy houses and when all was said and done, we were all pooped! It was a great afternoon.

I think we are all ready with our Halloween costumes. I have one more piece to find for my costume and then I am done! Benjamin and I have a Halloween event tonight at the Plummer House Mansion and then all three of us are going to an event at IBM on Thursday. We'll be up in the cities for the weekend for a half marathon, HallZOOween, a Halloween party and the Packers vs. Vikings game. We can't wait!

Autumn, our favorite time of year, is just blowing in. Temperatures are still well above average, but the leaves are falling and crunching under foot. Mike is hard at work preparing himself for the Twin Cities Marathon which is in 20 days. His long run this weekend was 20 miles and he said it felt great. Benjamin and I are so very excited to spectate at the big race!

We had a low key weekend. We started it off with a visit from Grandma Chris and Grandpa Ed who were stopping over on their way down to Chicago for the big U2 concert. They helped get Benjamin out of my hair while I made a friend's daughter her birthday cake on Friday. The cake was a success and it felt good to become acquainted (WELL acquainted) with powdered sugar again.





On Sunday we visited one of our favorite fall locations: Northwoods Orchard. I know what you're thinking: But it isn't even apple season yet! Oh yes, yes it is. Believe me, Mike is on top of these things! This orchard was a bit low on varieties to pick, but Honeycrisp and Chesnut apples were available. They stopped picking the Zestar! Regents (c'mon Jessica - get your varieties right) on Saturday, but we were still able to scrounge up a few apples off of the trees. We didn't do the corn maze this time or the hayride, but we did visit their animals. It was a lovely day. Now if only the temperature would drop a few degrees so we could pull out our sweaters and light jackets.

In 8 hours we hopefully will be departing for our adventure. Of course, the best part of not having to catch a plane is that if we leave at 7am instead of our planned 6:30am - WHO CARES! Haha. We have an approximately 8 hour drive (stops not included) ahead of us for our first day.



BUT - we are armed with new coloring books, cds, snacks, drinks and yes, even DVD's (to only be used as a last resort!). We are prepared - I think. I will be blogging along the way, so look for more frequent updates than usual in the next 7 days.

We knew we were walking into a situation that may not be ideal for watching Mike and Joe compete in the Turtleman Triathlon in Shoreview on Saturday. Jen and I decided that we'd do our best and if the weather turned sour, we'd watch from the safety of her car. Mom and Dad met us at the intersection of Churchill and Tanglewood, on both the bike and run courses, with their big golf umbrella. It was raining, but only a little on and off, so we unpacked all of the kids (AJ, Benjamin and John) and began cheering on the cyclists. Soon after we arrived, Joe cruised by. We all banged our thundersticks, waved our pom-poms and rang our cowbells. The athletes seemed very genuinely happy to have us there. Due to the weather and the nature of the race there were probably not many spectators out on the course, so many of them expressed heartfelt thanks for our cheering. A little while after Joe, Mike came by on his bike. He seemed very focused, which probably had something to do with the wet conditions and many, many turns along the course.



After all of the cyclists had gone past us, we all relaxed a bit, the boys ran around and we continued dodging raindrops. An Excel Energy truck pulled up near us and the guy inside told us that he was there to fix a transformer on the power lines across the street and that we should probably cover our ears when he fixes it because the noise can be quite loud. The boys were full of excitement and nerves at this site. He got out his long pole and replaced something on the electrical stuff at the top of the post. Sure enough it sounded like shotgun went off and a big spark popped out. It was actually pretty cool to watch. Funny thing is though that a little while later, the transformer blew AGAIN (this time we were not warned to cover our ears) and the guy had to come back for a second attempt at fixing it.



Runners soon started coming toward us and we all moved out of their way and began to cheer them on. A couple of minutes later, Mom noticed an ominous look to the skies both west and north of us. The clouds were literally rolling toward us and they were moving FAST! It is amazing how quickly you can pack up chairs, a stroller, misc. stuff, a 1 year old, two 4 year olds and 4 adults when it looks like danger is approaching. We managed to get everything and everyone in the car before the storm hit. After the worst went through, we took turns hopping in and out of the cars to watch the race. It was raining buckets. The points on the ground where the sidewalk slants into the street were HUGE puddles of rain. The poor runners had to run through this awful weather and here we were ringing our cowbells out in the same conditions. I thought they appreciated our cheering when they were on the bikes, but now the racers were stopping to thank us. We tried to lighten their spirits by telling them "Just a little rain, you can do it!" This brought out many smiles. It was great. We saw Joe run by and a while later Mike. At first I was concerned that he had not come by us as early as I had expected. I had no idea that they had canceled the race and was afraid something bad happened. I was relieved to finally see him and to see that he was pushing forward and having fun - in typical Mike style!

We had quite the adventure! And it was fun!

(Mike's race report is below...)

We had awful weather Saturday morning in Shoreview. My brother, Joe, and I were up at 6:15am in White Bear Lake to get ready for the race. We packed our gear and bikes the night before so we could take advantage of a little extra time in the morning to indulge in more sleep. Sadly, the weather, clouds, humidity and temperature surely did not make it look like a good day to compete. Nonetheless we set out to make the most of the day.



We showed up ready to compete in all three events - which wasn't meant to be. Everyone had their wetsuits on the bike racks in anticipation to swim a 1/2 mile. Unfortunately, lightning and bad weather forced the race director to cancel the swim all together in an attempt to get the bike and run legs in before the next storm front came through. So we ran through the shallow end of the beach with a record "swim" time of 37 seconds - though my knees never touched the water. Next we transitioned to the bike for a wet and wild bike ride. Everyone had to watch their turns to be sure not wipe out. As expected, it started raining about 2 miles into the bike ride. This made the already curvy course into a "mind the turns" kind of ride. We had no less than 13 turns during the 21.5 miles bike ride. One could barely get into their zone before slowing down for yet another turn. Though I don't fault the race directors, I would not say I enjoyed the topsy-turvy round-a-bouts we were forced to endure. In the end most finished the course without incident - though there was more than an usual number of people on the sidelines with flat tires. Thankfully it was no one I knew!



Next it was time for the run... I set out with an absolute downpour of rain in my face. I had to use my hands as wiper blades just to see what was coming next. It turns out due to in climate weather, (forecast for hail) the race directors decided to call the run off. Most everyone (besides myself) turned around after mile 1 to head for shelter. I decided a long time ago (about mile 12 of the bike ride) that if they canceled the official race, I was going to cross the finish line - race sanctioned or not. I did not train this much for this long to have it canceled on me. I kept running past the crowd of people who turned around so I flagged down a crew of volunteers who were under a bus shelter keeping dry. I told them I was going to finish the course and wanted to know where the next turn was. They told me to run to the next stop light, turn left and keep running until I saw the next set of volunteers. I made a B-Line!

In the end I caught the back end of the crowd who were "sanctioned" to finish the race...and even passed few along the way. Joe was cheering me on to push push push and run hard to the finish....which I appreciated. Of course it was my first and best time competing in an "Olympic" Triathlon race. Next time I hope I can actually put my face down in the water and make the race a 3 event sport.

We started off the birthday celebrations on Thursday at Benjamin's daycare. Mike and I brought in some Go-Gurts (yogurt in a tube) for the kids and all of his friends in the preschool and pre-K rooms sang Happy Birthday to him. He loved it. That evening Uncle Andy came down to spend some time with Benjamin and then he took us out to Dos Amigos Mexican Restaurant for a dinner on their patio.

We were supposed to go to the Rochesterfest parade Friday evening, but we decided to go a much less stressful route and watched on tv at home instead. Mike and I got the house ready for Saturday while Benjamin danced around to the marching bands.

Saturday morning we followed with our tradition of serving Benjamin breakfast in bed on his actual birthday. Lately he has been in love with instant oatmeal, so that was what he requested as his breakfast. Eating in his bed with a tray is something that he just thinks is so special, it is so cute! After breakfast we all continued with our preparations for visitors by cleaning and getting all of the provisions for our family BBQ.

Benjamin's party was at the House of Bounce this year. He invited a bunch of his friends, most of whom unfortunately were out of town this weekend, but we had a nice group of 5 kids. They bounced for an hour or so in the new facility that just opened earlier this month, which is awesome. The kids (along with Mike and I) were all tired, red-faced and sweaty by the end of our jumping time. It was just a joy to see them all having such a great time. The new party rooms are basically just little walled off areas with cubicle dividers separating each space. They provide plates, napkins, forks and ice cream while you can bring in your own cake or cupcakes. I made vegan cupcakes with icing so that Benjamin and AJ could both enjoy the treat. They actually tasted no different than a regular cupcake and I felt as though the icing was even better than standard buttercream (I used Palm Oil Shortening with powdered sugar mixed in). So delicious! Here is the cupcake recipe I made. I had to use corn oil because of AJ's allergy to soy.

I put a lot of effort into making the goodie bags for the kids this year. Benjamin's birthday party theme was Superheroes, so I bought plain gift bags and dressed them up with logos from his favorite superheroes. For the inside of the goodie bags, I compiled a bunch of Benjamin's favorite songs (Backyardigans, Muppets, his music class, etc) onto a cd with a label that I designed. I also filled the bags with superhero fruit snacks, a pack of crayons and a pack of little dinosaurs that grow in water. I had so much fun putting everything together!

Benjamin opened his gifts from his friends and then we went back to our house where we were having a small BBQ for grandparents and aunts/uncles. Andy, Jennifer and Jen came a little later and we all enjoyed a delicious Greek meal that Mike prepared. He made seasoned chicken with veggies and tzatziki sauce, an orzo, pea and pepper salad and a red pepper spread with pitas. So good. After dinner Benjamin opened even more presents, including the infamous drum set, and we once again enjoyed some of the cupcakes I made. It was a lovely day and lucky for us, the storms that were threatening to show up all day never did materialize.

Mike and I along with our friend Nate and Mike's brother Dan competed in the annual Amuzing Race, a fundraiser for the Rochester Public Library. This was the third year for Mike and I to participate in the race, which is very similar to the television show, Amazing Race. Teams of four are given clues which take them to different locations in and around the city of Rochester where they compete in challenges and race to get to the finish line first. We always have an awesome time doing the race and this year was no different. Here is our race report:

As always registration and the start of the race was at the library. We all gathered in the auditorium to review the rules and receive our first clue. In previous years we have tried to position ourselves near the door so we could be ready to run out and get a good start on the race, but in the past 2 years the first clue didn't involve needing to get out of the room quickly. So this year we didn't worry about where we were standing and wouldn't you know it, the first challenge had us all run upstairs with a definite advantage to those getting up there first. We had to locate two candy bars hidden somewhere on the second level of the library. Our team was one of the last teams up the narrow stairway and so we were left with locating the more cleverly hidden candy bars. We all felt very frustrated at first as we saw team after team completing the task while we were still wandering around aisles of books. It seemed like we were the last team to still be searching. Luckily, Nate had some keen eyesight, located both bars and notified the rest of our team. We ran downstairs and received our second clue which instructed us to travel to Peace Plaza on foot for the next challenge.

Nate and I decided to let our more athletic team members do the running, so Dan and Mike set off for Peace Plaza while we got the car and met them there. Once they arrived, they had to search through a Post Bulletin newspaper to find a message for the racers. After some searching, they finally located a Lost and Found ad that told us to drive to the Girl Scout camp within Rochester city limits. Luckily I was aware of the location, so we were fast to set off in the direction of the camp.

When we arrived there we were given the next clue - a Roadblock challenge, which meant that we had to choose between 2 challenges. We could either learn and sing two Girl Scout camp songs for judges or roast marshmallows to make and eat one S'more per team member. The singing challenge sounded like it would be faster, so we started with that one first. The two songs were the Brownie song ("There is something in my pocket which belongs across my face...") and "Make New Friends," which were two songs I know very well thanks to my many years as a Girl Scout. However, the boys on the team didn't know the songs and when we found out that we had to memorize them, we decided that making and eating S'mores would be easier and faster. It was a breeze for us and we quickly moved on to the next challenge on the clue we were given at the campfire. Next we had to locate 7 out of 11 trees within the Girl Scout camp that were listed on our clue and marked on the tree itself. We had to collect slips of paper with the tree names from a little pouch on each tree. This involved a lot of running around on very muddy trails, which was extremely tiring and even caused Nate to slip and sprain his ankle (poor guy!). We were able to make up some ground at this point because the guys realized that a whole group of trees were back in the campfire area from the S'mores challenge. Most of the other teams were still running around the trees when we finished and were given the next clue.

Next we had to locate the Bookmobile somewhere in the small town of Byron, which is not far from the camp. We drove around for only a short time before spotting the Bookmobile, getting another clue and moving onto the next challenge. At the Byron Links mini-golf course each team member had to take turns putting onto one of about 6 greens for a hole-in-one. One person from every team either had to get one hole-in-one or if they could not, the teams could move on after 25 minutes of trying. Our team came so close many times, but we were unable to get that allusive hole-in-one, so when the 25 minutes were up, we were able to get our next clue and leave the putting green behind.

From there we had to travel back to the library in Rochester. We got there quickly, snagged a parking spot from a friend and fellow racer out front and ran inside to find that a challenge was setup in the auditorium. A projector was showing images from movies and we had to guess the movie titles correctly. We only had one chance to do them correctly (it was at this point that I actually remember to take pictures during the race). There were 30 images and if you named 25-30 correctly, you could receive the next clue. If you scored less than 25, you had to incure a time penalty. The penalties were longer depending on how many you had incorrect. Thanks to our team's extensive knowledge of movies, we were able to get 26 correct and could proceed to the next challenge without a penalty. From the auditorium we then had to run upstairs to the library's parking ramp roof, which was about a 7 flight climb (more running!). Once up on the roof, we had to search the surrounding buildings and ground by sight for a race volunteer holding a bunch of balloons. Once again, Nate's keen eyesight helped us and we were quickly able to locate the balloons. Then we had to race by car to the location of the man holding the balloons and he would give us the next clue.

The clue from the balloon guy told us to go to the Silver Lake Boat Launch where team members were to canoe or kayak around Silver Lake looking for a volunteer on a bridge who would hand them the next clue. I was very excited for this challenge, because I adore kayaking! I decided to "take one for the team" and do the kayaking by myself. It felt so good to be out on the water and I found it easy to paddle quickly despite being very tired from previous challeges. I knew exactly what bridge to paddle to and made quick work of getting out there, getting the clue and paddling back to the boat launch. Other teams seemed impressed that I kayaked alone for the challenge and I have to say that I was extremely proud of myself; it was so much fun!

We ran back to the car and read the clue which instructed us to locate the Kutzky Park shelter. We had a vague idea of where the park was, but because Kutzky Park is split into two halves along a river, we unfortunately chose the incorrect location and had to turn around to get to the other side. Dan and Mike ran to the shelter to see if the challenge needed 2 people or 4. We all needed to do the challenge, so they waved us on. Nate and I drove the car over and hopped out to help with the challenge. We had to take uncooked pieces of dry spaghetti and gumdrops and create a structure that could stand 36 inches tall on its own for at least 30 seconds. We looked around and other teams were making cubes out of the materials, so we stupidly did the same thing. During our construction process, we realized that we shouldn't have worked so hard to make a cube, we could have achieved the needed results from a much simplier structure. So we modified it and quickly had our finished product. At this point in the race, we were pretty sure that we were ahead of most of the teams, but we didn't know how far ahead. We kind of pushed ourselves to beat this one team, "the green team" in particular who seemed to be pretty close to us throughout the whole race and so when we finished our spaghetti-gumdrop structure before them, we were pretty pumped! The next clue told us to locate and drive to the building under construction which is named for the first African American to travel to Antartica. At first we were all stumped, but after a few minutes of thinking, I remembered that the new elementary school on the northwest side of town is named after a notable black Rochesterian, but I wasn't exactly sure where the school is being built. Ironically, just as we were driving north on Highway 52 trying to figure out where to go, the "green team" passed us! We were pretty irked that they got ahead of us, until we realized that they knew where they were going! We followed them all the way to the new school, which was where we thought it was, but who knows where we would have ended up if it wasn't for them! A volunteer at the school gave us each a water bottle and another clue.

The clue told us to go to John Hardy's BBQ, but purposely didn't say which location (northside or southside) to go to. We hedged our bets and went to the northside since it was closer to the school. The lanes heading south on Highway 52 were down to one lane and we weren't sure for how long, but the traffic looked bad. We took a detour to avoid the traffic, but we soon realized that the backup wasn't as bad as it looked and we had lost some ground on beating the team ahead of us. We arrived at the northside John Hardy's restaurant only to receive a clue that said we had picked the wrong location and we should drive to the southside location. At this point we were all very bummed. We knew we were not in the top 10 (the lady at the restaurant told us we were the 12th team to check in there) and we didn't think we could catch up with the "green team." But we did our best to get to the restaurant as quickly as we could anyway. We were just a few blocks away from John Hardy's when we realized that the "green team" was only a few cars ahead of us. Mike avoided a red light by cutting through a gas station (illegal, we know) to get ahead of them. Suddenly the race was back on for us and our adrenaline was pumping again! Mike had enough forethought to turn a little before the restaurant, which is not accessible from the side of the street we were on. Amazingly, we got to the volunteer, got our clue and were back in the car before the "green team" even arrived!! The clue told us to head to the History Center of Olmsted County, which we knew was where the finish line was located.

Mike did some fancy driving to get us to the history center very quickly, we parked the car and we all ran like crazy people to the volunteers waiting outside of the building. We had one more challenge to complete - we had to correctly remember the sponsors of each leg of the race. Luckily we had been keeping all of the clues which had each sponsor name printed on them and we were able to quickly compile a list of enough sponsors to get the next clue, which told us to locate the picnic shelter and cross the finish line. We ran to the shelter just as other teams were arriving for the last challenge. We triumphantly crossed the finish line and learned that we were the ninth team to finish! Amazingly we DID finish within the top 10 AND we beat the "green team!" After a round of high-fives and a finish line photo, we "raced" over to the buffet table for a much deserved John Hardy's lunch!!!

We didn't beat our finish from last year (8th place), but we managed to stay in the top 10 even with this being a much more physical race, having a new team member and one person getting injured. We also had so much fun, as always!