We've moved!

No, not houses, don't worry.

Instead, we've moved blogging homes. I'd promise we'll post more, but, well, you know how that goes.

We'll just have to tempt you there with a video! Mmmmmmm, video. Just follow me this way: http://sandjarmstrong.spaces.live.com

Once there, please bookmark it, as we'll be retiring this blog and using the new one.

Scott

Catchin' up

Alright, well, 2008 is now here, so I thought I might try to get back on this thing again. Should be useful at least for posting the big baby updates and pregnant woman pictures! Who doesn't love that?

Speaking of, just how is Jamie doing? Well, she's doing good. Starting to get a little bigger now, and broke out some maternity jeans for the first time this past Saturday.

Here's a pic from just before the new year:



The big news of course is that we have the ultrasound on Jan 28th, so watch for an update with news on what flavor of baby we're having then. I've heard there are only two choices, we'll see about that.

With 2008 looking to be such a big year for the Armstrong's, we decided to kick it off in style with a little gathering at our house - featuring the crowd favorite latest and greatest game, Rock Band. For those who haven't seen it, Rock Band is a music rhythm video game for the Xbox 360, where you and your band mates play guitars, drums, and sing along to some rock favorites ranging from the Rolling Stones to Radiohead.

We ended up with a group of about 20 over at our place to rock in the New Year, and we had a great time.

Girl band in action! From the left, Jamie's friend Cindy, Jamie on drums, our friend Heidi singing, and Jamie's friend Elaine on guitar.



The boys had a chance to rock as well. From the left, Jonas on the guitar, Pat on the drums, Jason on the other guitar, and of course a handsome lead singer on the far right.



Good times were had, and we'll be looking forward to our next party.

That's all for now, we'll get another picture of Jamie up soon so we can show off her belly progress!

Marathon man

Throughout life you undoubtably end up doing some crazy things. But I have to say, out of everything crazy I've done, running a marathon is certainly up there on the list. Seriously, why do people willingly decide to run 26 miles in a row? The really scary part is, once you're done, you want to do it again.

OK, maybe not that same DAY or anything, but you get the idea.

Yes, I've had that crazy thought after completing my first marathon this past weekend, the Portland Marathon. 26.2 miles of fun!

I've posted a bit about the marathon idea on this blog in the past. Last January, I barely survived running one mile around the track for Al Bonney's 60th birthday, so I certainly feel proud about the fact I managed to run a marathon 10 months later. And I'm really proud that I'm able to keep up the tradition of marathon runners in the family, with my Grandpa Shafer, of course dad and mom, and some uncles and cousins on that list. No pressure though, future offspring!

Anyway, Jamie was there to cheer me on this past weekend and take some pictures. She was also toting a special sign, created for me by good old Uncle Buck. Many thanks to him too - the sign helped me pick Jamie out of the crowd as I went!

Here I am, around mile 12 or so. I felt really good during this part of the run. Little did I know.



Took a quick break to snap a picture with Jamie.



Things were going pretty well until mile 16 or so. Right before I stopped to make a planned walking break, I noticed my left calf cramp up a little. Hmm, not good. By the time I started running again after my short walk, the cramping got a little worse, so over the last 9 miles or so, I had to resort to stopping once in a while to stretch and walk.

But, I mustered up some energy to look excited when I saw Jamie again around mile 21!



The last 4 miles or so my legs were pretty sore. But, I can certainly say that all of those feelings vanish when you cross the finish line! Finishing the race was a great feeling, and my time of about 4:19 was very close to what I had predicted for myself.

Jamie and I after the race!



Only question now is, when's the next one?

Hello from Italy!

Been a while since I've updated this thing, so why not travel to Italy first to do so? Guess we were waiting for some really big event to happen before posting again. At some point I will catch up with everything from the last couple of months.

But for now, a quick recap of our trip so far! We're currently in Siena, which is about 2 or 3 hours north of Rome. We flew into Rome on the 9th, and spent our first couple of days there. Next we're on to Florence tomorrow.

Some quick thoughts/tidbits on the trip so far:

- Been taking plenty of photos, so we'll be sure to get pics posted up to this site as soon as we can.
- Keyboards over here are different - things like the apostraphe key are in different spots, which makes typing a challenge!
- Jamie is enjoying the fashion over here, we need a separate camera just so she can take pictures of some of the outfits we've seen. Next trip to Italy I guess.
- The history of everything is pretty amazing. Throw a rock in any direction and it's amazing to think that you'll probably hit a building or structure that's older than ANYTHING in the US.
- The Borghese Gallery in Rome is our new favorite art museum. New appreciation for sculpters, that's for sure. The Bellini sculptures there are incredible, and have us looking forward to seeing others like the statue of David in Florence.
- Food is as expected so far, excellent, which is balanced by the, um, inconsistent service. Last night we had a fantastic meal with some of the worst service - usually the two parallel each other I think!

Well, I'll be sure to write more later. Time for some more gelato!

Time

"And you run and you run to catch up with the sun, but it's sinking
And racing around to come up behind you again"
- Pink Floyd, Time


Listened to this lyric on the way to work the other day, and it's a nice summary of how things feel right now. Run hard all day and time just keeps slipping by. I knew I hadn't updated this for a while, but jeez, since Bloomsday? Really?

Now the summer is here, and things aren't going to slow down any time soon I guess. We'll try to update this a little more often over the next couple of months, since we have some trips planned.

So for now, some recaps of the last month or so. With pictures of course!

One nice thing about having the house is the fact it gives us a place to actually entertain people. I mean, otherwise, if we don't invite people over, we'd never clean the place. Not that we, uh, wouldn't invite people over anyway.

Anyway, one recent gathering celebrated Jamie's Dad's birthday. Dick and Marcia, and Kelly, Beth and Parker came over for some copper river salmon and other dishes.



Grandpa Dick with a crazy grandson.



A few weeks ago, we ventured out to take part in a new sporting activity for the Armstrongs. Something has to put the "adventure" into this blog, right? My friend Kathleen from work invited us to join her and some friends for a birthday celebration, and a rousing game of WhirlyBall.

What is WhirlyBall? Think of a basketball game, 5-on-5, with a basket/target at each end. Only, you're not running or walking - you're driving around these bumper car things. And, you have a jai-ali scoop thing with a wiffleball you're trying to throw into the basket. All-in-all, it was a blast! We got in 4 games in the 90 minutes we were there.

One of the twists we discovered was that Kathleen's friends required costumes for the game. Here are Jamie and I dressed to play - I particularly liked my crown/cat ears combo.



Even the referee was forced to wear a costume before starting the game.



WhirlyBall'ers in action!



So, yeah, that was exactly as fun as it looks. Hopefully we'll get a chance to go back again.

Another thing we've been up to lately is attending graduation parties. We've been through the wedding phase, and certainly have plenty of friends with kids to go through the newborn phase, and now I guess with all of the cousins out there we're kicking off the graduation phase. First up this year was Jamie's cousin Alex, and we followed that up last weekend with a visit to the Bonney household to celebrate Brendan's graduation from Lynnwood High School.

It was great to see Al and Regina, Brendan and his girlfriend, and some of the other usual Bonney suspects. The graduate was getting ready to take a two week trip to Bulgaria with his girlfriend and her family, but we were able to get a picture taken before he took off.



Last but not least, we found some time to catch the Washington Dinner Train with our friends Pat and Heidi Brown. The Dinner Train is just what it sounds, a train you take from Renton up to the Columbia Winery in Woodinville and then back again. The deal is a pretty well-oiled machine (pun intended, haha). Have a nice meal and wine on the train, then a quick tour of the winery. We had a great time with Pat and Heidi, and enjoyed the scenery. I think it was the first time I had ever been on a real train, if you throw out monorails, or subways. Good times.

Jamie and I enjoying the night.



So, that's just a little of what we've been up to. Other spare time is filled with things like whipping the garden into shape, running, and oh, work as well.

This next week will be another busy one - I have the Seattle Mariners Cystic Fibrosis golf tournament on Thursday, then we catch a red eye to Florida to visit Grandma Shafer and some of the other Shafer family! More pictures to come.

That brings the end to another blog post. And as the song says...

The time has gone, the song is over, thought I'd something more to say

Bloomsday weekend

Howdy all,

Yep, I'm back to give you a recap of this past weekend's activities, which included a trek to Spokane to take part in the annual Bloomsday road race. I mean, I would have posted this yesterday, but I only today have been able to get up our stairs to the 2nd floor to the computer.

I kid, I kid. But seriously, nothing like a nice 7.46 mile (12k for you metric lovers) run to remind me I'm not a high school cross country runner anymore. In fact, this was certainly the first time in about 13 years that I've run that far at one time.

Jamie and I have walked/jogged the course before, but this was my first time really running it, and running it with a goal. To get into the first wave of runners, you have to run faster than 1 hour and 12 minutes sometime in the last 4 years of the race. So for next year, I had that as a goal. Although my longest training run to this point was about 5.5 miles, I felt like I could run quick enough to get under the necessary bar.

Of course I forgot the difficulty of the course.

Check out the graphic below for effect. Basically it starts out flat, and after the one mile mark drops downhill for the 2nd mile. That lulls you into thinking you're going fast. Then you hit the hills. The 3rd mile is basically all uphill. Then of course after another downhill, you hit Doomsday Hill. Fun.



So in the end I ran a good race. I started off slow intentionally, trying to save some energy for the hills. Especially on the downhill parts - I was getting passed left and right, but would blow past a lot of people on the uphills. That included Doomsday Hill, which was a killer, but I didn't stop or walk. I managed to slug through mile markers 6 and 7, and finished at about 1:06. 8:53/mile pace, so for my first long run in 13 years I was pretty happy!

Now, lest you think I left my wife in the dust....well, I did, but she wasn't alone. No, the other fun of the weekend was travelling to Spokane with our nephew Markus, and Jamie's brother Kelly and his son Parker. Yes, the mom's in question here (Lindsay and Beth), stayed home and we took the 3-year-olds on the road!

Jamie and her mom decided to walk the race, and push the little guys in strollers. They had some other family along as well. While I was clearly too fast for my image to be captured on film, Jamie snapped some pics to share.



Here's everyone at the start line. In the back, Jamie's cousin-in-law Shandra and Mary's sister and Jamie's Aunt Sandy. And of course Mary and Jamie. Shandra and Sandy had 3 kids to track - Molly, Abby and Jake. Finally, Parker and Markus, in their stylish visors.



The two boys test out their legs on the course. Running in the street is fun!



Post race stretching. I mean, you gotta stretch after you run! Have to teach them while they're young, right?



The gang after collecting their Bloomsday finisher T-Shirts. It took about 2 and a half hours, but they made it.

So it was a fun weekend, which I celebrated with a softball double-header last night. Kelly and I of course had our best hitting performances of the year, which meant lots of running the bases. Go figure.

Alright, time to head off and ice my legs...

I'm a travellin' man...

...made a lot of stops...all over the world.

OK, so the rest of the song doesn't apply, but the travelling part does. Jamie and I are sketching out our summer and fall, and it looks like we'll be on the road a bit.

The big news is that we've booked our tickets to Italy. This is a trip we had originally planned to take last year, but put off for a year after we bought our house. But the trip is now ON!! The big itinerary so far - fly into Rome on September 9th, fly back to Seattle from Milan on September 21. And in between? Well, we have some time to figure that out.

We're certainly open to suggestions from the world travellers in our wide reading audience. The current plan right now is to spend 2-3 days in Rome, and then work in a trip to Florence/Tuscany, possibly Venice, and a few other stops as we head NW toward Milan.

With that trip on the books, we're also looking toward some other trips this summer including:

- A possible visit to Grandma Shafer in early July to coincide with the visit of Scott's cousins. Grandma Shafer turned 90 this past January, so we've been planning to make a visit to Florida for a while.

- Scott's return to Florida in late July for a Microsoft conference. Yes, Florida, twice, in July. Plenty of sticky humidness for everyone!

- A visit to the Bay Area and Napa Valley for Jamie's cousin's wedding in August. This will likely be a fast trip, but hopefully we'll be able to work in a night in San Fran for dinner to visit with some friends.

- A TBD Lake Chelan weekend with college friends. Yes, after 10 or so years, we've finally decided that with all of the kids around that the old Yakima river float might finally merit retirement.

Of course we'll be sprinking in a few Spokane visits I'm sure as well, starting with next weekend for Bloomsday.

It'll be a busy summer again, as we balance being out of town, and hosting in town folks as well. Where does the time go?