Pink Shamrock 5k and Horseback Riding

On Saturday afternoon awe ran in the Pink Shamrock 5k race, sponsored by The Hibernian Irish Pub in downtown Raleigh in the South Glenwood Avenue area.  It was also put on by 1in9 which is a foundation dedicated to easing burdens for those women diagnosed with breast cancer (Hence the Pink for breast cancer and Shamrock for the Irish Pub).

Here we are ready to race!

We ran together and Colleen knocked almost a minute and a half of her 5k time from her last race...and the course was really hilly!

Our cousins Christine and Charlene signed up as volunteers for the race and joined us for the after party...the Hibernian set up a beer tent with free beer and free food (Bangers & Mash and Shepard's Pie) plus a band playing.

They didn't have free Guiness at the post-race party outside so we went in to get a Guiness before we headed out.

Sunday we drove up to Triton Stables in rural Durham County for Colleen to get her first of two horseback riding lessons.  (The two riding lessons were actually Jim's birthday gift to Colleen last November)  Before the lesson started Avery went and petted some of the horses

Here is Colleen walking the horse out of the stable and to the field

And here she is riding

Afterwards Avery helped Colleen feed the horse.

We capped off the afternoon Sunday by donig a 9 mile jog around the park and neighborhood as part of Colleen's half marathon training!

Weekend in the mountains

Last weekend we rented a cabin for the weekend up in the mountains near Grandfather Mountain in Linville, NC.  It was a nice two bed, two bath mountain-top cabin with a great view from the back deck.  We went up there with Colleen's cousins Christine and Charlene who live near us in Cary.  It was a dog friendly cabin too so Kylie joined us on the trip!  Avery got to visit Tennessee for the first time ever on this trip too!

Here is the great view from our back deck (where there was a hot tub too!)

Kylie enjoyed the view too!

The cabin was great, it was all hardwood with huge windows out back overlooking the mountains

 The first day we went apple picking at an orchard name Alta Pass which was on top of a mountain with a great view!

Avery rode with mommy in the backpack while Kylie ate cores off the ground! We gave Avery an apple and she loved eating them fresh off the tree, just like us!

 Here are the cousins, Christine and Charlene enjoying the apple picking

After we went picking we drove the Blue Ridge Parkway and enjoyed some great views before the sun set.  We then put Avery to bed and we all enjoyed some relaxing time in the hot tub on the deck with some beer and wine.

The next day we went first drove a few miles to hike to a waterfall called Elk Falls right near the TN/NC border.  It was in US Forest Service property a few miles off of US-19E.  What a great waterfall, listed by the USFS at 45' high, with a great clear swimming pool at the bottom!!!  (In the summer it will be great to come back when the water isn't so cold)

Not one to be afraid of the cold water, Kylie loved playing in the water and chasing her water toy, litterally bounding in and splashing into the water each time!

Jim played around with different shutter speeds to try and get different effects from the waterfall.  As mentioned in a photography guide book, this water is beautiful but hard to photograph because it is open/exposed and it is impossible to eliminate the sky in the background.  Oh well, it was still fun for him to photograph:

 We then hiked just a very short distance downstream to a set of smaller pools and rapids.  Avery loved playing the little pools (She had her cool Keene's on of course), and didn't mind that her feet were in chilly cold water.   She loved picking up rocks and throwing them into the water and saying SPLASH!

We were so close to Tennessee that we drove across the state line so Avery could pick up another state on her list of states she's been to:

Then we got a great photo on the reverse side, AVERY COUNTY NC!

Then we ate lunch at a patio in a really neat little mountain town called Banner Elk at a place called Bayou Smokehouse.  They are dog friendly, have a great patio, and the staff even gave Kylie bowls of water and lots of petting.  Oh, and the biscuits are amazing there too!

After lunch we went to another waterfall located at a really out-of-the-way spot!  We drove 8 miles on a gravel road through the mountains (In thick fog too!) to a waterfall near a little town called Globe, NC.  It was a thin peacefull fall with a little ankle deep wading pool at the bottom that of course Kylie got soaked in!

Then we drove back up 3000 vertical feet on another 8 mile gravel foggy road to probably the neatest town in the region called Blowing Rock.  It was so foggy we couldn't even got a good picture of it, but it is a real artsy town and almost all the shops are all pretty stone buildings and tons of art galleries, cafes, craft shops, etc.  We ate pizza in town for dinner and headed back up the winding private road in the fog to our cabin.  We then enjoyed another night sitting on the hot tub on our deck enjoying some relaxing beers.

The next day we ate lunch in blowing rock at a restaurant called Canyons which normally has an expansive view, but was socked in with fog!  Dang.  If you go there, the Buffalo Shrimp was a very unique item and was very good!  It has quite a history, it's been a speakeasy, a brothel, a casino, a grocery store, and now a restaurant and bar.  This is the best photo we could get with our iPhone, the peaks of the taller mountains were hidden by the clouds.

Then we hit the outlets near Blowing Rock before we headed back home.  It was a quick weekend trip but very fun and relaxing!

NC Aquarium, Kure Beach, 5k Run

Sunday was a geat all-around day, we started by running in the Friesen Run With the 'Canes 5k race in Raleigh.  It is a 5k race put on by the Carolina Hurricanes NHL team (The equipment manager is Peter Friesen, and when they won the Stanly Cup 5 years ago his day with the cup he organized this race to benefit Leukemia and Lymphoma research and he continues it each year).  During the pre-race ceremonies, the entire team was there getting introduced:

Jim said he realized he's becoming an old man when the players were announced.  He said at first he didn't realize that were the players because they looked too young.  Then it hit him, half the team is between 20-25 years old, or 10-15 years younger than him, so of course they look like they are almost kids to him!

Each race we've been running races, we alternate every other race who pushes the stroller and who runs without it to try and allow each of us to get a good personal times.  This time Colleen ran with the stroller.  Here they are ready for the race

Jim did good, he got 33rd place out of the 500+/- people who ran with timing chips and got 3rd in his age group (males 30-35 years old) out of 22.

After the race, there were a number of events including a double-dutch team.  They invited Colleen to join in and she did great!

Then we drove out to the beach and first visited the NC Aquarium.  There are 3 of them at the coast, we went to the one at Ft Fisher.  It was very neat and we all enjoyed it a lot.

 Avery eyed up an alligator a few inches away

She loved looking at sting rays up close too!

They had a neat 3-story exhibit and while we were there they had scuba divers in there.  2 divers were cleaning the tank and spotting the presenter (from sharks and eels) who had a mic hooked up to the speakers in the public viewing area.  The presenter was giving out great details on all the sea life swimming around her.  Here is one where a young hammerhead shark was swimming near the bottom

 And another were a giant ray was swimming up against the glass showing off its smile:

Here was a giant bull shark, the divers said they keep them well fed so they don't bother them.  We wouldn't want to be in there even with that knowledge!

One of the divers came up to the glass and gave Avery a wave:

Here was a life-size jaw from a now-extinct shark from a few million years ago.  It was crazy to think sharks with jaws this size were swimming around the ocean!

Outside they have a tall pole with levels of the storm surge from previous hurricanes, out of view up above at 18 feet high was Hurricane Hazel in 1954.  Crazy to know that water was that high during that storm, nobody would have a chance to survive that!

After the aquarium we went out to the beach in the town of Kure Beach right up the road, to enjoy the great weather that day.  Avery loved her beach toys, and loved digging with the shovels and mixing water and sand in the buckets

She also loved chasing the gulls and other smaller birds around which was comical!

We also enjoyed a nice picnic and lounging around to relax after the race we'd had that morning

We finished the day by having dinner on the water in Wrightsville Beach, NC at a great restaurant called Bluewater Grill.  We sat on the patio overlooking the boast on the Intercoastal Waterway.

Avery jammed to all the songs the band was playing and cheered and clapped loudly when each song was done!  (We also highly recommend the coconut shrimp if you decide to go there!)

The sunset was beautiful over the water scene.  We drove back to Raleigh after a terrific Sunday!