St. Patrick's Day

Some friends from our new church invited us over for a St. Patrick's day party.  They played some themed games, had green food and went swimming.  The water was pretty cold, but that didn't stop them.  Notice the other mom in jeans and a sweater?  That's what people here wear when it's in the 70's...I was wearing shorts and a t-shirt and was HOT.

That evening, we went to Gateway Park, off the Colorado River.

 

Ben ran a local 5K race, while the kids and I played at the park.  This is what a small town race looks like:

The race started about 10 minutes late (most things here are super casual), so Alison took that time to coach Ben on the race.

 

She lives through him...if he wins, she wins.

 

 

It wasn't hard to pick Ben out of the crowd, because there wasn't a crowd!  He was so far ahead of everyone that he was running all by himself!  

 You can see Colin's head at the bottom of the picture...I had to hold him back from jumping onto the sidewalk.  First he wanted a high-five and then he wanted to run with Ben and then we started shouting, "I'm going to get you!".

Ben became a local hero that night.  He finished first in 19 minutes and the director, in awe, said, "We don't see people run like that here."

Getting his 1st place prize, a t-shirt

The race may have been low key, but they did get family friendly right.  They handed out hats to all the kids and invited us to stay for dinner.

  

 We have learned that in the desert, pretty much everything happens in the evening.  We are trying to adjust to staying up later and Colin has been taking naps again.  This night was a great example.  After the race, they had music playing and people eating and playing in the sand and some even swimming in the river.

We drove across that bridge afterwards, just to say that we've been to California and then drove through downtown.  It was a fun day and nice to get out of the house and not look at projects that need to get done for awhile.