Another day in Sisters....

A day of snow today with between 8" to 10" inches last night and more snow right now, it made for a great snow day.

We are thankful Christmas Break has arrived and looking forward to some XC skiing tomorrow.  Hope you enjoy the photos.  We still only take care of one dog, we were dog sitting for our good friends from Corvallis.

A lot of this...

It was a year ago this week when we decided to move away from this....

Our house in Mt. Baldy House

Our backyard in Mt. Baldy

 and we really missed this....

at the end of the day though it was really important to be closer to this....

before we moved we almost bought this....  for a ton of this $$$$$$$$!

so we came to Sisters and moved into this....

Ranch House

all we had to do was feed this...

and take care of this...

when we got here we were worried we wouldn't have any friends, but we of course met folks who like to do this...

and this...

of course we brought Mati and she did a lot of this....

and hung out more with this...

 and felt safer when she wore this... maybe... at least Ashley felt she was safer when she wore this....

now Ashley is pregnant so next year she won't win this...

but she is still thrilled to be sponsored by this...

so we decided to stay in Sisters, so we bought this...

but we didn't know we had to share it with this...

now that we are getting more of this...

I think it is safe to say we are happy with all this...

The MAC ATTACK!

Well, in the words of my loving wife, "Why do you always go straight to the front?  Maybe you should just go slower in the beginning."  This quote would obviously indicate I did not stay in the front of the Mac Forest 15k Sunday.

Pace yourself- what silly advice.

The Mac really capped off a great weekend.  First though, I went to my first Beaver football game with my favorite Father-in-Law!

Ashley's cousin Andy let us use his season tickets which happened, by coincidence, to be right next to Megan Schonecker whom I teach with at Sisters Middle School.  Small world.  Oregon State won 35-7 and were up 28-0 at the half.  Therefore, Peter (father-in-law) and I went to the student union and ate lunch missing the 3rd quarter.  We meandered back for the 4th quarter then left with 2:00 left and the score 35-0.  Lots of fun.

Sunday was Central Oregon day in the Mac as many of the folks we run with during the Tuesday night speed workouts invaded the Mac 15k.  The day was conquered by Mr. Sean Meissner who took a morning commute to Corvallis after winning the Sisters townie run Saturday that was suppose to be a 5k, however, in true Sisters form the 5k came in just above 3.8 miles.  Sunday belong to Meissner as well, beating all the Central Oregon folks finishing 5th with Browning, Moyer, myself and Teague Hatfield literally right behind.  Way to go speed Meissner dog!

Other than the fact they had a little trouble marking the course, the race was a blast.  The trails were in great shape.  I labored on the climbs and fell back there.  I will have to work on that.  Felt good the whole way and no tummy troubles.  So happy with the performance.  Peter (father-in-law) claimed another 15k finish making it well above 10 lifetime finishes.  The old boy can still kick it in!

Overall a great weekend and I am looking forward to doing the race again next year.  Hope you enjoy the album of Ash's photos.
http://picasaweb.google.com/joshnordell/Mac15k#

Start of a blog

Who knows when it is a good time to begin a blog. I guess there is truly never a great time, but I thought it might be fun to start one.

Hence, the first post. So I have gone through many possible backgrounds and finally decided on one of my favorite photos of Ashley running with the dog near Mt. Baldy. We were so excited to leave the house that morning after 2 days of rain and snow. It was great to see the sun again and just be outside. We bundled up and quickly realized we'd put on too many clothes, we quickly took off layers and stashed jackets in the bushes as we ran up. We stopped for this view at one of the first overlooks on our way up to Sunrise Peak. It was a perfect setting and we were able to get a great photo.

I remembered this photo yesterday running with Ashley up the road to Black Butte about 10 minutes from the house. We started low on the road and gradually climbed with the snow getting deeper as we went. I started out feeling sluggish, but as time went on I felt better and better.

There are so many times in life when running takes worries away. The run up Black Butte yesterday was one of those days. My insignificant concerns subsided and it was so much easier for relaxed joy to reenter my life.

So I guess running in fresh snow can feel like pure joy. I just have to remember that in January after three months of snow. Now off to run in the rain.

Quick video of Mati the dog playing with us as we ran up! Sorry it is sideways, but you get the point.