More Life in Sabino Canyon

We had a ton (relatively speaking for a desert) of rain last week. It rained for almost 24 hours straight! Ha ha! So Saturday we took advantage of all that water running out of the mountains and went to the Sabina Canyon dam for some cooling off.


It was a pretty short trip because we were going to a wedding later that day. On the way back we saw some more wild life. God protected our young'ens this time. One of our group walked right over a rattler sleeping on some stone stairs. Sleeping snake pictures aren't as cute as sleeping child pictures.

Good times!

Sunday we took some time to hike around at our favorite Tucson spot - Sabino Canyon. There isn't a lot of water flowing in the canyon but it was enough to wade in and cool off.

When we arrived in Tucson in 2005 we would often see animal life - desert tortoise, rattle snakes, deer. If fact, that summer the only thing I didn't see there was a mountain lion. In 2007 we had such bad flooding that the Canyon was destroyed and closed to the public. Tucson was actually declared a national emergency area that summer.

I mentioned my disappointment in the lack of animal life to my wife as we walked. On the way back Christian stepped right over this guy. Sweet! He must have just eaten because he was moving very, very slowly. His eyes were just slits. I don't think that was related to his eating, but sometimes I look like that after swallowing food whole!

God is an impressive Creator, I think.

Don't go angry - just go.

Mrs. Pipes and the kids took Pork Chop back to his native country last Thursday. They told me they caught one of his brothers to look at for a while. When they put him back in the little pond he was in he attacked the tadpoles that were nearby. Evidently he destroyed about four or five tadpoles in 30 seconds. They said it was obscenely violent.

Now we're all nervous to go wading in the Sabino waters.

While they were doing that, I was doing a run that has become a great weekly event for me. I've been running on the Phone Line trail. The whole trail is eight miles round trip; I've only completed 5.5 of it. The first half goes through some steep up and down sections - mostly up though. My goal is to run about 30 minutes out and 20 back. The best pace I can keep on the first half is 11-13 mpm with one two minute break.

I shoot for 20 back because it becomes almost a sprint on the way down (that is, if I still have enough stamina and strength to move my feet that fast). It is quite a rush sprinting down a 5% declined trail which is only about 3 ft. wide and has a 30 to 40 foot drop on one side. It's really a blast. It's nice to have the time away, an hour each week where I'm not thinking about anything but not face-planting on the rocks, and the fresh air.

By the way, we now have six or seven tadpoles in our backyard. Always an adventure over here.

Thank you to everyone that paid their respects to Lani last week. The ice cream was great!

These are some pictures taken on the trail when we hiked it with my dad last summer.

Sabino sunset run pictures

Here's a few pictures of Candi and I during the run.

Me in the white shirt, blue shorts.
Candi in the front there.
Candi in more water.

Sabino Canyon Sunset run

Candi and I ran in the Sabino Canyon 6.4-mile race Saturday night. It started at 5:30 pm and it was gorgeous out. I was a little nervous because I have never ran a 10k race (it was just a little more than that) on my own pace (usually Candi and I just run together). Anyway, it was my first 10k race and my first time racing in Sabino. I didn't know what my pace would be or how to set a goal time. Plus, they really ramped up the publicity this year (registration was almost 400) and there were some fast people racing (check the complete results here). Here are our stats:

............Overall
..............Place....Age Group.....A/G Place.....Time...........Pace
Dale........31...........30-39...............11...........43:32.7......6:48/M
Candice..62..........20-29................2.............46:34.3.......7:17/M

That's right! Candi got 2nd place. Candi takin' home the trophy! That was awesome to hear. She ran over a minute and half faster than last year - that's a huge gain. Over all it was fun and it's a great experience to push myself that hard. I don't think I could do it that fast without competition; the sound of the footsteps behind me and the guy 20 ft in front of me. I'm pretty sure I could have ran it faster because I tried to conserve energy for the last mile (it really gets steep there). Next year I'll be under 40 minutes.

A huge thank you to the Dusek Duo for watching the kids so we could go goof off! You guys are the best!

Long time, no talk...

Well, it's been well over a month since my last blog. Of course, I just chose not to blog even though I wanted to. A quick recap - I am finishing Theological Survey 201 and start 202 next week sometime.

Candi's ankle is somewhat healed. Her ligament is not healed and sometimes looks like it is dangling under her ankle bone. Plus there's overall mild swelling constantly. However, don't cry for her too much; we are running the Sabino Canyon 10k this Saturday at 5pm (come on out and root us on if you're not going to Beginning's instead!). She is getting on swell with school, too.

The kids are doing great. At the beginning of our school year, Nori and Bubba both had their strengths and weaknesses. The strengths were pretty strong and the weaknesses were the fear of the day (when getting to those subjects). Now, the strengths are even stronger and God's grace has given us the wisdom to teach to their styles and see what prevents them from excelling at those, too. Nori is getting math quite well now (even though she says differently) and Christian is really picking up his reading ability (even though he says differently). It's great to see progress; it's amazing to see the change since we started homeschooling!

Wyatt is a smart little bugger. We took proactive steps to teach Nori and Christian the basic stuff (letters, colors, shapes). We don't have much time to do that with Wyatt, but he spends so much time around the others that he's just picking it up. It's funny how much he's learned from toys too. He has learned blue, green, and red from his Cars toys (blue - Mr. The King, green - Chick Hicks, red - Lightning McQueen). Wyatt also loves to get out and "go bye-bye". He loves playing in the dirt and roughing up the dogs. He's getting further into his ability to express lack of appreciation for naps, eating yucky food, and his parents not focusing on him. That boy can scream! Funny thing is we can see right through it and getting him smiling pretty quick, too.

Really cool news - A couple of weeks ago, while on a hiking trip with our friends, the Harts (and their tribe), and the new music leader at Beginnings, Seth, Candi reminded me that Nori and Christian wanted to be baptized. There is a ton of water in the river right now. Nori went for it; Christian didn't want to deal with the cold (all the water is coming from melted snow off of the Catalina Mountains). It was an awesome experience to baptize my own kid! I love seeing them grow in their faith and knowledge of our Lord Jesus; this was just another step. There were a lot of other people there outside of our little group and I'm so, so proud that they both were "not ashamed of the gospel of Christ". Christian really wanted to do it, but he's never been one for cold water. I know he'll get his chance as the temperatures get into the hundreds.

There's a ton other stuff that happened but I don't have time now.