2011 Daytona 500

Oh yes, its that time again!

The last several years we have watched the opening race of the season with our friends... this year was no different.  We start talking about it in January.  By then we have had two full months without any Nascar festivities and we are ready for a little racing action.

I never seems to fail though that about... oh, say 50 laps in... we start saying "Wow, this race is taking forever".  And besides chatting, we start looking for other things to occupy our attention.  Yes, even steadfast racing fans like us can get a little bored when our drivers have hit the wall and have to spend several laps in the garage.  Of course we always have plenty of food to occupy some of the time.  This year I made tacos and Rachel brought her yummy guacamole and chips!!  They both hit the spot!!

Rachel took pictures of each of us to show how we spent our time watching the race.  They made me laugh...

According to Chad, Rachel and I talk too much and too loud so he had to lay down in front of the TV
away from our yapping...

Curt watches with my computer in his lap so he can see online what is happening when the race coverage 

goes to commercial...

Rachel watches while she reads the latest scrapbooking magazines looking for ideas and inspiration... 

p.s. I love her jacket!!

I watch with my phone in hand.  My nephew introduced me to a most addicting game.... Can't. Stop. Playing.

By the end of the race all of our drivers had somehow managed to get out of contention to win... mostly through wrecks.... most of which were not their fault...  Frustrating!!  Throughout the race we kept hearing the name of one rookie driver, Trevor Bayne.  He had a fast car, seemed to work well with other drivers, and seemed respected by the other drivers because he wasn't out there making a mess of things like some others (I will refrain from naming names).  Nobody knew anything about this kid except that he had turned 20 on Saturday, even Dale Waltrip, one of the commentators, said his bio sheet on this kid was empty.  Well, this kid that nobody had ever heard of before didn't have a scratch on his car, he had been in the top 10 pretty much all day, and was about to lead the race... so, we decided to cheer for him.

My favorite part of the day came when Trevor took the lead for the last two laps and all of us were jumping up and down screaming "GO TREVOR!!!".  

I just love being able to say my driver won! Here's to wishing you all a very happy Nascar season... with many burnouts to come!

Wow... So Much Going On, So Little Time To Blog...

I hope that you all are having a great summer. Ours is going by at the speed of light and I am starting to get a little bit worn out. We always start the summer with few if any weekends booked up. There are always the family reunions and what-not that we know are going to be coming up, but other than that we really try to keep the weekends open... well, here it is July 27th and the rest of the weekends -- straight through until Labor Day are busy... and I don't think we've actually had an off weekend since the summer started and all our family reunions were cancelled.

I don't know how it happens it just does. Our weeks are filled with Doctor, Dentist, Optometrist and Car Maintenance appointments along with trips to here or there for this or that.... Oh, and I try to get our laundry done and some food stashed in the refrigerator (for those rare times that we are home) and make sure that the bills get paid (Since I'm not working on a regular schedule, these things sorta go by the way-side. Fortunately, we haven't had any debacles... yet!)

Once the weekend arrives we are usually packing to go away to visit with family that live a couple hours away or taking a short weekend trip with our friends... I'm not going to lie and say that I don't love it because I do and I know we are very fortunate to be able to spend our summer gallivanting around and having a grand ol' time... but I do get tired. I'm sure the 2am bedtime that we seem to fall into doesn't help much. I am actually working on getting that bit back under control, it puts a bit of a crimp on my 7am workout time. Anywhoo... we've been having such great fun and I have been terribly remiss in sharing it all with you.

I don't think I could possibly put it all on one post and not put you to sleep so I'll just give you a little bit here and hopefully I'll be able to blog a little bit more later this week... or whenever... I really shouldn't promise anything.

The day after school let out (approximately 6 weeks ago) Curt and I headed out to MIS for Sprint Cup practice and qualifying. It was a lot of fun just hanging out with hubby and the boys spent their first weekend 5 days or their summer with their grandparents. Curt's parents and my parents took turns over those 5 days so they could each have a turn. Fortunately they live about 10 minutes apart and just made the swaps themselves because we live about 45 minutes away from all of them. It was great. I don't think Curt and I have been alone for 5 straight days since Jacob was born. I appreciated every minute.

On Saturday our church was a Big Top in the Park. We spent the day there playing games with the kids, handing out water to runners in the park, enjoying worship services and hearing our Associate Pastor preach twice. It was a great day!

On Sunday we were back to the track for race day! Seriously, I love Nascar... I just can't help it. I love that Curt and I actually have that in common because he is such a big sports fan and quite frankly... I'm not... But Nascar, I can get behind that! We had a great time there but we were so tired when it was over. Don't think that stopped us from heading over to Chad and Rachel's afterwards. We sat around outside with Brad and Rachel and talked while watching Chad clean the air filter in his car. It was really exciting stuff. OK, maybe not exciting but it was funny to be sitting around doing nothing while he worked on his car.



On Monday we headed up to the Soaring Eagle Casino in Mt. Pleasant with 20+ friends and acquaintances for an all-you-can-eat seafood buffet. Seriously, if you love seafood and you don't care that the restaurant is in a casino you should go... I think its around $20 per person but as a special treat you cannot beat it. And they have soooo much more than just seafood. I'd pay $20 just for the salad bar... I'm not even going to talk about the dessert bar.... FYI -- the seafood buffet is only offered on Monday nights.

Tuesday we got our kids back and they started VBS.

We cut off their Mohawks and started eating our fair share of Popsicles (our share isn't done yet).





We've played with worms...





and sprinklers...





When we are home and the sun is out I lay outside in the sun and read, the boys often join me and Jacob even brings his own book. Ethan just wants to talk... so napping in the sun isn't a viable option. I do laundry and fiddle around on Facebook (which my husband just joined last week and has now become slightly obsessed with), I've been Twittering and texting. I know, I have finally joined the Text Messaging Revolution (it's not a real revolution... I was being facetious). I workout at least 3 days a week, but usually 5. I still work at the church, but only on Thursdays.

This week we are going to be looking for a second car. I'm hoping that the whole car shopping thing goes smoothly. I'll try to post some more pictures from our summer because I have some really, really good ones. And we have been doing a lot of things that I just have to share with you.

This last picture is my favorite of Jacob, I think its his eyes. They look just like his daddy's.

The Annual Daytona 500 Extravaganza

Every year our friends Brad and Rachel host a Daytona 500 party to kick off the Nascar season. I was really looking forward to it because I had been cooped up all week with the boys (and if you wait until the end, I'll fill you in on my not so fabulous Valentine's Day). As always it was bunches of fun with great friends and some great food. The race itself was a little bit of a disappointment because it ended up being called early due to rain, whatever, the good news is that Curt won his Daytona 500 pool at work! He's excited about that, he rarely wins anything unless its a t-shirt, he wins those all the time... Here are a few pictures of the day.

This is the entire group, I'm pretty sure that this will be the new picture that Curt displays on his blog.

This is Brad checking out how far and how fast the rain was coming into Daytona. This is important stuff...

This is me being ridiculously excited about a plastic tiara. I just need to say that I've always wanted one and although I really had hoped it would be made out of platinum and gemstones and of course come with a fabulous title, a prince in disguise, a castle and a whole bunch of servants that would just love me to pieces I am not at all disappointed by this one. I love it. You may actually see me wearing it, proudly and outside of the house in public!

As for Valentine's Day... I woke up in the morning, looked in the mirror and what did I see? A giant red eyeball... apparently it decided to accessorize for the holiday. I have pink eye. So this time instead of taking one of the boys to the Urgent Care... it was me, yippy! And to top off the Fabulous Day of Love... Auntie Flow decided to pop in for her monthly visit. The end.

Off to the Races

We always try to do something the day after school lets out to signify that it is the beginning of our summer break. In years past we have taken trips to Binder Park Zoo, this year we decided to take the boys to the track. MIS (Michigan International Speedway) is hosting the Nascar Sprint Cup race this Sunday and today was practice and qualifying. We thought it would be great fun to take the boys out there and give them their first little taste of what its like at the track.

I was pleasantly surprised at the number of kids we saw. I hadn't expected today to be such a family day, but it was great. There weren't too many people, although the crowd was decent, and that made it easy to maneuver around with the boys. They did such a good job of holding hands and following directions (It was the car ride home that got tricky).



We walked around outside the track for a while looking at all the trucks. I love seeing things through the eyes of children. The boys were in awe of all the stuff we saw. Ethan was able to get his picture taken in a Tony Stewart car and we got another bag of free stuff (different stuff) from the Sprint/Nextel truck. Ethan kept asking when we were going to see the cars so eventually we just had to give up the search for the DLP truck (at Lowe's Motor Speedway we saw a 3-D movie trailer and were hoping the boys could see it) and take them into the stands.


It ended up being perfect because we only had to wait about 10 minutes for the qualifying laps to start. We were able to watch the crews push the cars out of the garage area and line them up on pit road. We were also able to watch some of the drivers come out to do their qualifying laps.








This is Kyle Busch heading out to his car.









This is Mark Martin climbing out of the #8 after his qualifying run.

Chad, Brad, these pics are for you!!

This is Kurt Busch talking to some of his crew after he finished his laps.

This is Ryan Newman heading out to his car.

Unfortunately, the rain that had been predicted showed up after only 11 drivers qualified. We decided to head out and come home. We were disappointed that we didn't see Jimmie do his thing and we missed seeing the ARCA race, but we were grateful that we left when we did. The closer we got to home the worse the skies looked and by the time we made it to Albion the downpour was in full swing.

(Just a quick note - if you click on the above pictures your browser should open them up so you can see them better.)

The Rest of Nascar Weekend (part 2)

OK, so do any of you know what HOV is?? No, well I do. We saw these HOV signs all over the highway in Charlotte and couldn't figure out what they were about. You had to have a HOV vehicle to drive in a certain lane and if you didn't, well then, you were fined. We were afraid that we weren't part of that HOV group so we didn't drive in that "special" lane. Our best guess as to what HOV meant was "Hatians on Vicodin". Although that was the best we could come up with we were pretty certain (and definately hopeful) that we were wrong. It wasn't until a few days after coming home that Rachel looked it up online and was able to tell me what it meant. Do you have any guesses?? I will give the answer next time I post (whenever that may be).

Anyway, onto Sunday of the Nascar Vacation Saga....

We had planned to meet with Chad and Rachel in the hallway of our hotel at 9:45am. Curt woke me up at 6:40am. I tried to get him to go back to sleep, but he was pacing at the foot of the bed and was just plain too full of excitement to sit still one more minute. I did my best to settle him down, but it was race day and it just wasn't going to happen. It turned out OK because Chad and Rachel were ready early too. After a fabulous and leasurely breakfast (I might be joking here) we left the hotel and headed for the track.

I think we got there about 10:00 and started looking at all the trailers. I can't say that I enjoyed the trailers that were just selling stuff, but there were a lot of trailers that had stuff for us to do. We played plinko, we did a race simulation (and although Chad was listed ahead of me if you look closely at our printout it shows that my time was the fastest, but I'm not competitive at all so it really doesn't matter :->), the guys got to work a impact drill, and we got some free potato chips and Heluva Good dip. After doing all the play stuff we went back to the van and had some lunch.

Then, it was off to the races.

I need to be clear with all of you reading this. I love Nascar. I love the smell, I love the noise (for about 2 laps and then I have to cover my ears), I love having fun with my husband and sharing this time with him, I love seeing him so happy and excited, I love the competition, I just love it.

So, here is a little video of the start of the race. It gets a little shaky because they were going faster and faster and I was having a hard time keeping up. Enjoy!!

If you want to see more of our adventure you can check out Rachel's blog and here you can see the boys on go-carts and here you can learn about Nascar style people watching and here you can see the last little bit of our saga. She has a lot of pictures posted (most of the ones of me are really goofy)!!

The Rest of Nascar Weekend

So, I am sure that you have been hanging by the seat of your pants wondering what was so wonderful about our Nascar weekend. Well, here is the thing.... everything was wonderful about the weekend. I loved it. I had so much fun with our friends and I did a lot of laughing.


Saturday morning we got up and headed out to visit all of the race shops. We started at Penske and although the store wasn't loaded with goods we were able to get into the garage (via a upper level walkway) so we could see what goes on very well. The only draw back to visiting these places on Saturday before race day is that not much was going on. I was really amazed at how clean it was. When I think of garages and working on cars, I think oil, grease, not very clean. This place sparkled.

After Penske we went to Joe Gibbs racing (home of Tony Stewart, Kyle Busch, Denny Hamlin and Joey Logano) then on to Hendrick Motorsports (home of Jimmie Johnson, Jeff Gordon, Dale Earnhart Jr. and Casey Mears). Hendrick was part Nascar superstore and part museum. I loved visiting all the shops, but Hendrick was definately the better shop to visit.

We were able to squeeze ourselves into a racing seat (those guys obviously don't have any thighs).

As I said before the Hendrick store had a bit of a museum running through it. We saw lots of stuff including....

Jimmie Johnson's Daytona winning car. I love that it still has the confetti stuck to the paint. Very authentic!!

And, "The Claw" that is used to make sure all the new cars are built to the same specifications. Altering the shape of the car can influence the speed by causing downforce or more aerodynamics. This is used to keep everyone on an even playing field (when it comes to the building of the car anyway).

We also had a quick (and very funny) pitstop at Sonic for some lunch. I must say I had the biggest burger I've ever had at a fast food restaurant. Thank you Rachel for suggesting it.

After all the garage fun we decided to go off to a movie. We saw Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull. I loved it. I am a big fan of the funny action adventure with a little romance thrown in kind of movies. I thought that it kept well with Harrison Ford's age and didn't try to turn him into another over the hill action star. I laughed out loud several times.

After the movie we were still trying to kill time (we really didn't want to spend any more time than we had to at our hotel) so we went into a Bass Pro Shops for a little while. I found a hat that I really liked and I should have bought, but didn't. Then we noticed that the Bass Pro Shop was attached to a HUGE mall. We went for a short walk around the mall and I ended up buying two pair of shoes, the guys went go-cart racing and we had a late dinner at Chili's. 5 1/2 hours later we practically ran back to our car so that we wouldn't be locked in. There was a lot of laughing over that too. I did a lot of laughing.

What a Weekend!!!

I know that the story of the Nascar Weekend is going to take several posts to get through. I hope that you don't get too bored by it, but it was sooo much fun. I don't even know where to begin with the story. I guess I will start by saying it was 4 of the best days I have ever had. I missed my boys, but didn't worry about them. I called to talk to them and Ethan would chatter away, but all I heard from Jacob was "I DON'T WANT TO TALK ON THE PHONE". Anyway, I don't think I have ever laughed so hard, except for maybe when we went to see Tim Hawkins, but that was 2 hours worth of laughing and this was 4 days. My abs should be rock hard now. The drive was looonnggg, but we made it (barely -- twice we narrowly escaped being involved in multicar accidents. That we weren't is testimony of God's grace and goodness. That no one else actually collided was an absolute Miracle). I have determined that I am not going to be traveling to California in a minivan at any time during my life. So, if Curt ever wants to go to the California race, he is going to be splurging on airline tickets. However, it was beautiful when we reached the mountains in West Virginia.

This picture was taken out my window somewhere in West Virginia.

When we got to the hotel on Friday night I think I was too tired to really notice how bad it was, but I noticed on Saturday morning (I almost wore my flip-flops in the shower). Curt went down to get a "Continental" breakfast and came back with a rotten and smooshed banana and 2 Oatmeal Creme Pies. I am glad that we brought bagels and cereal. We pretty much stayed out of the hotel unless we were there to sleep. Rachel has also posted about the state of the hotel and she even has a very clever picture if you'd like to check it out. In my defense, when booking the hotel my primary objective was the affordability. In that respect, I did succeed!!

Race Weekend

Finally, race weekend has arrived. Curt has waited for this for 363 days and it was a difficult wait. Chad, Brad and Curt decided that this year they were going to go out for qualifying and practice on Friday. It was a great day for them to go; it was cool and sunny, just what they had hoped for.

Right when they walked in they saw a huge Lowe's Chevy display that had Jimmie Johnson's car as the centerpiece. Curt was able to have his picture taken with it. Pretty cool.



While they were walking around they happened to see Rusty Wallace signing autographs for fans. Chad was able to snap this picture with our camera.



This is turn four at MIS, close to where Curt, Chad, and Brad sat.



Saturday night we went over to Doc and Georgia's house for a Sunday School Reunion party and Georgia decided since it was race weekend, the party would be race themed. This picture is of our closest friends. On the left are Stan and Sue, Curt and I, Chad and Rachel Green, and Brad and Rachel Hunt. It was a good time. Afterwards, the boys went out for their annual shopping trip for race food.

The race was rain delayed on Sunday and then postponed until Monday at noon. Unfortunately, the rain didn't stop so they postponed it again until Tuesday at 10am. That means that the guys were at the track Sunday, Monday and Tuesday. It was a good race once it finally ran. Kurt Busch, Brad's driver, ended up in Victory Lane and Jimmie Johnson, Curt's driver, had a solid top 5 finish at 3rd place. YEAH!!