Friday, August 5, 2011

Summer 2011


The girls:  Hazel, Iris, Gertrude, Pearl, Beatrice and Harriet are doing great! No eggs yet, but we are having a great time watching them scratch around, doing their chicken thing.


The boys have been having a great summer!  Lots of beach trips and hanging out with their buddies and cousins!



I can't believe that Tristan will be in 7th grade next year and Nathan is entering his last year of elementary school!  Time is flying way too fast! 

Both the boys have been racing their mountain bikes this season and doing very well.  We are very proud of them!



Sean has also joined in the fun and started racing his mountain bike this season with the boys.  He's doing pretty good at it too! 


Along with racing, Sean has been having a blast as a coach of the San Gabriel Valley Composite High School Mountain Bike Team. At the end of the season they were in first place in Southern California! Not bad for a first year team! Sean's goal is to be coaching a Monrovia High School Mountain Bike team by the time Tristan is there. 


And as if Sean weren't busy enough, he and his co-coaches have joined forces with our local Boys and Girls Club to start a mountain biking program for the kids that are enrolled at Boys and Girls Club.  They are currently starting their second session of the program and I think it has worked out beautifully as kind of a sister program with the high school mountain bike team, as the team members do their part and volunteer at the Boys and Girls Club twice a week to help teach kids how to ride bikes. 
It's a WIN-WIN!

For me, I'm busy trying to come to terms with not having my thyroid!  I'm not trying to sound overly dramatic.  But, I have to be honest and say that it has been difficult!  My energy level is WAY down and I've gained 13 pounds since April!  Coming to terms with being on meds for the rest of my life has been somewhat shattering to me.  I DO NOT like the thought of that in the LEAST!  So come to terms with it I must, but honestly, I'm not quit there yet!

I'm trying to be patient with myself and focus on other things that I am passionate about.  The biggest of which is supporting my husband and kids as they race their mountain bikes and help the Pablove Foundation fight childhood cancer with LOVE!  With the help of the Pablove Foundation, we are currently in the process of  growing our team, Mountain Biking for Pablove  and working on getting solid sponsorships. 

In early June, Nathan submitted this video and entered the Farm Rich Kids Who Give  contest. 

We found out just today that he is one of the finalists. This is the video we will submit so that they can make the final decision. Keep your fingers crossed.


They will be announcing the winner on August 15th. If Nathan wins, he could win, among other things, $2,500 to go to the Pablove Foundation and an all expenses paid trip to New York this fall to attend the Kids Who Give awards dinner!

Among our Mountain Biking for Pablove activities, Sean and the boys were featured as part of  The People's Fleet  contest that the Pablove Foundation entered this summer in the hopes of winning a $5,000 empowerment grant.

I continue to be inspired by my husband and my boys and hope that it lifts me and brings me to a point where I will participate in my own athletic endeavor.  I am very proud of our work with the Pablove Foundation!  They are doing such wonderful things for kids and families living with pediatric cancer!  I know that our efforts go towards something very positive and loving and it feels good to know that my boys can do somethinig they love and give back at the same time.   We are helping the Pablove Foundation fight childhood cancer with LOVE!  We've set a very big goal for our team this year of $5,000.  We have a ways to go to reach our goal by the end of October.  October 2nd the boys will participate in the California State MTB Championships and October 6th Pablove Across America  begins their over 1,400 mile ride from Milwaukee to New Orleans. We would love to have your support!

Please click on the link below to visit our team page.  You can donate to one of us, all of us, or the team.  Either way, you will be helping the Pablove Foundation fight childhood cancer with LOVE and that is AWESOME!

                         MOUNTAIN BIKING FOR PABLOVE

Love,
Lisa

Sunday, February 20, 2011

2011 Full Speed Ahead


Our family is charging into 2011!

Both the boys will be racing mountain bikes for Team Pablove this season and their first race of 2011 is Sunday, February 27th in San Diego. We couldn't be more thrilled that both boys are going for it this season.  Here's the race schedule, in case you want to come cheer them on!


Nathan will be working hard at raising money for the Pablove Foundation again this season. With all of your help, Nathan raised close to $2,000 last season and had a thrilling time keeping up with the Pablove Across America peloton, for the last 20 miles of their 1,452 mile journey from Seattle to Silverlake. It has been a tradition for Nathan and Sean to ride the last 20 miles of Pablove Across America for the last two seasons. However, 2011 takes Pablove Across America from Milwaukee to New Orleans. Nathan's goal this year will be to raise $5,000 with his campaign Mountain Biking for Pablove, with the "HIGH" hopes that we can all make it to New Orleans next October, so that he and Sean can ride the last 20 miles with the peloton.


                         MOUNTAIN BIKING FOR PABLOVE
                                  CLICK HERE TO DONATE


Soccer is Tristan's first love and he had a rough 2010 season playing for an older club team. It was hard on all of us watching him struggle through the season. Thankfully, that is past us now and we are totally stoked that Tristan has made the Clifton Middle School Soccer Team. One of only 3 6th graders chosen! He really, really needed that boost of confidence and I'm looking totally forward to taking lots of pics and sharing them here! Sports aside, Tristan really shines academically! He as been a consistent 4.0, Honor Roll student all year! We are very, very proud of him!


Sean has been busy helping to form a high school mountain bike team and acting as one of the team's coaches. Our hope is that we can establish a mountain bike team at Monrovia High School by the time Tristan enters high school and then obviously grow it and have it going strong by the time Nathan gets there. That's the plan, anyway! Right now the team is the San Gabriel Valley Composite Team, with kids from all over the San Gabriel Valley. Mountain biking has been a passion of Sean's for close to 30 years now, so I'm thrilled that he is able to give back and help kids establish a love of the sport that he has loved for so many years.





As for me, I'm the person that tries to hold it all together on the homefront.  How well? I'm not really sure, at times! I love my boys and I would do anything in the world for them at any time. However, this year I will be doing a bit more concentrating on ME! We've been through some doozies since 2011 began, trust me! And all those "little" happenings, plus finding a lump on your neck kinda puts things in major prospective! I'm not panicking yet...well I did at first, but now I've had the biopsy and I'm feeling pretty sure it's a cyst on my thyroid (get biopsy results in mid March). Anyway, all that said, it's way past time for me to spend a bit more time making me HAPPY.  There's a big part of me that wants to be "on the farm!"  So, this Spring I'm plotting out a spot for my organic veggie garden and Nate Dog and I are building a chicken coop big enough for 5 or 6 laying hens.  I'm so excited!  I have all my hens named already:  Florence, Betty, Marge, Ida, Penny & Ruby.  How many animals will we have then?????  2 dogs, 4 cats, 19 fish in our pond, 6 hens? 

Exercise used to be a big priority for me before kids.  Believe it or not, I used to be Sean's favorite mountain biking partner!  That's what he says!  So now,  I'm making it a priority again!  Yoga is a must 3 times a week; and I'm enforcing my old rule of no "house work gets done today, until I've gotten outside for some exercise." This rule worked really well when the boys were little....so I'm enforcing it again.

I'm learning alot from my boys right now and one of the biggest lessons is: I need to have my own thang! So, one of my things this April is joining Team Pablove to help Children's Hospital of Los Angeles TURN ON THE LIGHTS of the new hospital building! This project was in full swing while I was working at CHLA and it is so gratifying to see the day finally approaching when the lights of that building will be turned on! My friends and past co-workers have worked tirelessly for this day to arrive! It will be a very emotional and exciting day! Nathan is an ongoing patient at the Genetics Dept. at CHLA, so I know how important this building is for children and families throughout California. If you can, PLEASE HELP ME TURN ON THE LIGHTS of this amazing facility!


                 CLICK HERE TO HELP ME TURN ON THE LIGHTS

Love,  Lisa