Montana and Glacier

We spent the first week of August in Kalispell, Montana with Ruh's family. My mother-in-law Bonita and Ruh's brother Rahmat hitched a ride with us. My sister-in-law Ruhiyyih and her husband Matt met us there. We stayed with Bonita's sister Bonnie and her husband Frank. We had a week full of visiting with family and hiking in Glacier National Park.
The most memorable hike was the Siyeh Pass hike. It is the highest maintained trail in the park at 7700 feet. The trail starts out in the woods then moves up to sub-alpine meadows complete with wildflowers and tiny little pine trees. Then switchbacks take you up to the pass and a ridge with some amazingly majestic views. We had to cut our break short at the top due to a thunderstorm closing in. We were caught in lightening, hail, thunder and wind! To make a long story short we all went as fast as we could to make it down to the treeline. We arrived a little exhausted and damp but safe at the cars after our 11 mile hike. Even though the storm dampened things a little bit we still enjoyed the back country of Glacier and can't wait to do more hiking in Glacier.


We also went to Many Glacier on our visit and did a nice short little hike to Apikuni Falls.


Many Glacier, Glacier National Park. Rahmat pretty much jumped into every body of water he could whether there was sunshine, thunder and lightening or rain. :)


Rocky Point, Lake MacDonald, Glacier National Park.

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=469295&id=784720337&l=cd4c5ce4ee

Here is the link to all of my photos of our trip on my Facebook page.

We have internet again!!!!!!!

My hubby bartered with the cable company to cut our bill in half and then added internet so our monthly bill has not changed! He is my hero! So be looking for me to start blogging again. I am very excited. There is a lot to post! :)

Gone for a little while...

Well, obviously I haven't posted in quite a while. We are once again without internet so when I am at my parents' I usually check my e-mail, facebook, and my bank account and that's about it. I am hoping to have a few posts up soon of the last few month's highlights. Daniel turned 1 today and of course we have lots of pictures and video. So I am not gone for good just for a little while and I promise to have some posts up in the next couple of weeks! :)

Newest Starbuck size drink...

Starbucks announced today two new sizes! The Plenta which is 128oz and the Micra which is an ounce. It takes us Starbucks baristas about 15 minutes to make a Plenta sized latte due to the amount of espresso shots we have to pull and the amount of milk we have to steam. So when ordering the Plenta please be patient! To find out more info go to Starbucks.com!

Let the training begin!

I just registered for the Sound to Narrows 12K on June 12th! I kept going back and forth over whether I should sign up and whether I would be ready in time. I asked my sis-in-law Ruhiyyih's advice and she told me I could do it and encouraged me to sign up. I feel the same nervousness I felt when I signed up for the 5K I just ran. But since I ran that and crossed the finish line I feel confident that with training I can run this race as well. Training starts tomorrow! :)

Daisy and Daniel

They sure do love each other and I love them! :)

Daniel's sock monkey...

When we got home from the race on Saturday Ruh had bought a sock monkey for Daniel and left it out for him to find when we got home. Whenever I ask Ruh to leave me a list of what groceries he wants me to get when I go grocery shopping a lot of times he would put "sock monkey" at the bottom just to be silly. Daniel sure does love his monkey! He giggles at it a lot! You can see he is wearing the pants I made for him and I will have to post about that later. :)

Daniel's first sucker...

Ruh gave Daniel a Dum Dum the other day. He definitely seemed to enjoy it! I only let him have it for about 5 minutes. I also took some video. :)

I did it!!!!

I did it! I ran a 5K this morning in 38 minutes. I ran the entire way! It was at Magnuson Park in Seattle on Lake Washington. I can't imagine a better day to run a race. The sun was out and the air was fresh and crisp. You could see Mt. Rainier and the Cascades from the park. I was a tiny bit nervous but it was just first-time-race-anticipation. As soon as the starting gun went off all butterflies disappeared and I focused on running. I had already run 3 miles a couple times without stopping so I knew I was very capable of doing this race. I always run with music but today I didn't. I was a little worried it would be really hard to run without music but it was actually no problem at all. It was amazing how clear my thoughts were and I thought about the most interesting things. My favorite thought was about how much I like the name Bode for a boy. The lead runner of the race name was Tahoma. I thought Bode Tahoma Dannells would be a very interesting name for a boy. Maybe the next race I run I will think of the rest of my kids' names! My parents watched Daniel for me and he was there waiting for me at the finish line.

















It was such a beautiful day we didn't want to head home just yet so my dad took us to a park on the Puget Sound where you could see the Olympic Mountains and all the sailboats out on the Sound. It was beautiful!


Isn't my mom looking GREAT! She has been working really hard to lose weight! Good job mom! :)I took this one of Daniel and my parents. :)


We had a wonderful day today and I am very excited about running. I can't wait to sign up for my next race! :)

Snowboarding...

Ruh and I headed up to Crystal Mountain near Mt. Rainier to do some snowboarding this past week. I have only been a couple times before this and I was determined to have a better trip than the last time which ended in Ruh and I not talking on the way home! Well, let me say this trip was a HUGE success and not only were Ruh and I talking but we were kissing and holding hands and telling each other how much fun we both had!

I looked up a bunch of online videos of how to snowboard. It's not the same as having an actual lesson but having someone explain how it's suppose to feel and what to do with your legs and body was really helpful. I was really excited to try out all the tips the videos gave. (Let's just say Ruh doesn't have the patience to be a teacher.) I mainly hung out on the bunny slope and Ruh went with me on a couple runs. I got the feel for what I was doing and even though I am in no way a pro it was going really well. I decided to go up with Ruh to one of the harder runs. It was hard and I fell a lot and even got stuck in one spot and had to remove my board and walk a little ways but I did a lot better than I did last time but was pretty pooped by the time I got back to the lodge. We ate lunch together and then I told Ruh to go and have some fun up on the slopes and I did some more runs on the bunny slope by myself which was nice because I didn't feel the pressure that I was going to slow for Ruh.

I eventually pooped out before Ruh and he went up and did more runs and I read a book for a little while. It started raining and I knew Ruh was going to be drenched when he got back. I went up by the lodge, stood under an eave and watched for my man to come down. The rain started to come down harder and it was COLD. Eventually I saw him coming down and we walked back to the car together. We had a really fun day and I am really glad Ruh had fun too. I think he was nervous about taking me up again. He even said he would take me up again! SUCCESS! :)

Here is a little video Ruh took of me snowboarding. Look out Shaun White! :)

Little creature in my laundry...

I think one of Ruh's favorite things to do to Daniel is bury him in laundry. Daniel tends to think it's pretty funny too. :) He turned 8 months old on the 12th.

Since I last posted I registered to run a 5K race on March 20th! This will be my first 5K and I am very excited (and nervous) about it. I have been training and working really hard to get myself in good shape. I look forward to each of my training runs. I always feel a little nervous before each new long run because it is longer than the one before. But I do it and each time I finish and am pleasantly surprised at how I am getting stronger and stronger. There is still a bit of extra weight on me and I always thought that I couldn't be in good shape if I was overweight but I was wrong. I am running longer and faster than I ran even when I was my thinnest! I am still working on losing weight and running is definitely helping me with that. I have to give a shout out to my sis-in-law Ruhiyyih. I don't know if I would be running like I am if I hadn't been inspired by her. She has been running for a couple years now and has run the New York and Boston Marathons and will be running the Missoula Marathon in Montana this summer with her hubby Matt. I am looking forward to going on a run with her the next time we get a chance (though my legs are a bit shorter than hers so I might be sprinting while she is doing a leisurely jog.)

Ruhiyyih asked me to take a picture of Daniel's new teeth. Well, I tried and it is blurry but you can see two little teeth, so here you go Ruhiyyih! :)

Miss Daisy came home from school on Thursday and announced that she is on the Honor Roll! The next day we got her report card in the mail and she has all A's and one B! As a reward Ruh let her open an account on Facebook. She is really excited. I thought I would share a random quote she made up as Daisy is the Queen-of-Randomness. "If one pickle is fundamental, imagine a whole jar!" :)

So tomorrow is Valentine's Day. Yes, Ruh and I are going to do the traditional dinner date but we are going to start off the day with a hike! It is suppose to rain tomorrow pretty much everywhere in Western Washington but we decided to take our ponchos and rain gear and enjoy the outdoors anyway. We will be heading up to Mt. Rainier but staying below the snow this time. There are a couple hikes near Longmire that we will choose from. I would like to do the Rampart Ridge Loop. It's a 4.5 mile loop and we could do it pretty quickly. On a clear day this hike is suppose to offer wonderful views of the mountain but I have resigned myself to the fact that I most likely won't be seeing the mountain tomorrow. The point is to go and do something we like doing together even if it is a little silly to do in the rain. We plan on going to the Copper Creek Inn for dinner on our way home. It is a lovely little Inn located just outside the park. I'm sure a bowl of their hot chili is going to be pretty inviting after a hike in the rain. Ruh also bought me a pair of nice hiking poles for Valentine's Day. I ordered them online so I won't have them for this hike. They are really going to help me on hikes when I am carrying Daniel on my back. I can't wait to try them out!


To end this post I will include some cute and funny pictures of Daniel I took the other day. :)

Snowshoeing at Mt. Rainier...

Ruh and I tried snowshoeing for the first time last week. We rented a couple pairs of snowshoes from REI and headed up to Paradise at Mt. Rainier.

The day started out cloudy and the mountain was hidden a little bit. As we went the clouds started to clear and the views were absolutely breathtaking. Snowshoeing is hard work and I was loving the vigourous effort I had to put into it. Ruh on the other hand didn't have much energy and wasn't enjoying it as much as I was. He eventually headed back to the car and I took a different trail back. There was a point when I was completely alone and I just stopped, looked at the mountain and took it all in. I could have snowshoed all day. I enjoyed my little trek back all by myself (the top picture I took when I was alone) and I wish it was safer for me to do things like this by myself but it really isn't smart. The only reason I was by myself this time was because Ruh knew exactly were I was and I was not far from the car.

I am looking forward to my next snowshoeing trip and I am hoping to go longer next time. Ruh says he will try it with me again.