El Tour de Tucson

For documentation purposes of our lives for family and all other blog stalkers out there, here's my story of El Tour de Tucson. El Tour de Tucson is a 100-mile bike race that is held in late November every year that is rumored to be one of the easiest Century Rides in the country and generally yields around 9000 riders. It starts downtown early in the morning and the participants ride to the East side of the city, then up through the foothills finally riding down the long frontage road ending up back downtown. If you find yourself needing to cross the race route at any point, plan an extra 15 minutes to your trip; the entire city bends to the riders. The police force is all along the route managing traffic and completely shutting down the race route to auto traffic. Its quite a spectacle.

I think Elizabeth started talking about riding in the Tour in our first year here, but I (wisely) made sure her bike stayed in the corner in a pile of bent spokes and flat tires from her previous accident while she was pregnant. Shortly after Harper was born I took her bike to the shop down the road for repair and she was quickly training again.

The first funny/awesome part of this story is Elizabeth's hesitancy to sign up for the race. She waited and waited, all the while osculating because she was still nursing Harper at the time and didn't want to miss any feedings. Finally the night before the race came and she had decided not to ride, what a great mom. Our neighbor came over to say hello and talked Elizabeth into riding with her the next day. So, on a whim, my wife rode 65 miles in the Tour with some of our good friends/neighbors. (Here's the second funny/awesome part of the story) True to her desire to not miss a feeding, we coordinated to meet somewhere along the race route so she could feed Harper.

waiting for mommy at the finish line

The two of us stood on the corner of the street waiting for her to come around and cheering on all the other riders. She finally showed up and fed Harper and I refilled her water bottles and gave her my half-eaten sandwich. That's a top notch support crew folks.

Here are some pictures of the occasion. Do enjoy. 

the finish line sequence

  

 

 

post race snack

staying warm, mid-November Arizona style

Way to go Mommy!

nine months

I have been so busy since we got back from being in Utah for Christmas break with photography jobs that I haven't done all the blog posts I have wanted to.  I want to catch up on the last couple of months and all that has been going on.  Stay tuned and I will do my best.  But I wanted to share a few pictures of our baby girl who is suddenly nine months old.  Harper got a set of classic, wood blocks from her Grammy and Papa and I got some great shots of her with them that I wanted to share.

 

 I love when she catches her reflection in the little mirror above her carseat 

and smiles and then makes herself laugh.

 

 I love that she wants to crawl so bad and practices a lot.  

She spins 360s on our tile floor over and over and explores everything she can.

 

 Harper likes to give big, fat, wet kisses to her mama.

  

Oh and how I LOVE her little birthmark on the back of her arm!

 

 And those huge blue eyes are pretty much the cutest thing in the world.