Coronado Weekend

We spent this past weekend in Coronado for Dan's half Iron Man race. Sadly Morgan had to stay behind with my mom because she had Nutcracker rehearsals and an Octoberfest performance. It's this weird season of life for us where we are starting to have to conquer and divide sometimes because our kids activity's conflict with other things. The fact that we even have a teenager is mind boggling to say the least. Ryanne missed her sister but managed to have fun with us anyway. We stayed at Lowe's on Coronade and it was BEAUTIFUL!! Ryanne loved this birdcage filled with little finch.

Even though we were here for business we still took time to put our toes in the sand and enjoy the sunsets...

I love watching my kids play on the beach. They are carefree and just run for hours.

I saw all these birds settling in for the night and thought to myself, "I wonder if I gave Ryanne a dollar if she would run through the middle of that flock of birds?" She did it for free. ha! 

4:30am came VERY early the morning of the race......

But we always try to have a good attitude since we are not the ones about to dive into the freezing ocean and swim over a mile....

This particular race Dan does is  the Navy Seal half Iron Man so it is on the base on Coronado and some of the military guys do it with them.....

This yellow cap group was Dan's wave of the race.....

Because it is a Navy Seal challenge they have the racers swim out and then they have to run along the beach and do the swim again...it's very difficult and tons of people either couldn't do the second lap or got rescued....Dan was hurting but he would drown before he quit....

After the swim they head out on their bikes....

All around the finish line they had signs up to pay tribute to S.E.A.L.S who have died serving our country....very moving.

The sun came out and it was a beautiful day on Coronado island....

For the run they do a half marathon and again because it is the S.E.A.L.S they have them run on hard ground then sand, then hard ground then sand.....running in sand is hard. I walk in sand and my legs are dying.

We spend about 8 hours total on the beach...we start to go CRAY-CRAY (Don't tell my teenager I said that)

We lounge.....

We try to pretend we are still in our comfy hotel room, we visit with people who are also cheering on their loved ones. We bring lots and lots of snacks because there is no food at this race and snacks make everything tolerable.

Dan on the final stretch....

Good job honey! He beat his time and is getting super excited for the full Iron Man in Florida November 1st! Wish him luck!

I wanted to take a second and ask everyone that reads this to please be praying for Morgan & I and the rest of our team as we head out on a missions trip to Machaca in the southern most part of Belize. We know God has called us to go on this trip and I have felt for some time God calling me to live out His word through making disciples of all nations. But it is very difficult for me to leave Dan & Ryanne behind for 9 days. Please pray specifically for health and safety. Pray for us to be a light and of great encouragement to the full time missionary's we will be staying with. Oh and if you want to pray no BIG spiders get inside my bug net that would be awesome too! Lots of pictures when we get back. Blessings!