Happy 60th Birthady Dad z!

Happy 60th Birthday Dad z! We celebrated my dad's 60th birthday last Tuesday (6/19) in Duluth. Our nieces Haley and Emily came with my parents for a quick visit.
We explored J Cooke State Park , just south of Duluth. It was a beautiful day.

Emily, Haley and copper on the swinging bridge over the St. Louis River
Copper - Smiling as always, and of course - happy for another beautiful day outside!

We Finished!!!!!

My first 1/2 Marathon experience is over! It was great! I did better than I expected, finishing in 2 hours 6 min. and 52 seconds! I finished 2350th out of 5261 overall, 948th out of 2934 female runners! Nick didn't get any photos of me running, but there are some online at marathonfoto.com just look up the Grandmas Marathon& Half 2007, last name Shilman and race # F3530. We boarded buses at the UMD campus to take us to the starting line at around 5am

It was a beautiful day! About 65 degrees at the start of the race and 75 by 9:00, they said it was the second hottest race in Grandmas Marathon history. This is just a picture of the crowd in the downtown area, about 2 miles from the finish.

Since Nick missed taking a photo of either of us running, we posed for the camera, post race.

Maggie and Me with our medals.....

And our sunburns! Ooops - forgot the sunscreen! I forgot to pack some sunscreen for post race, big mistake!

Copper was just happy that it was a nice weekend and he could be outside to play.

Here are a few pictures from our "mountain" bike ride on Memorial Day with Jeff and Erica. This park is a few miles down the road from our house. In the winter the trails are for x-country skiing. Pretty cool! Very muddy!

Lots of puddles!

No mosquitos yet!

Jeff and Erica

Nick and Sarah

Thanks Brian and Melissa Koning for inspiring us to create our own blog site! We want to let our friends and family know what we have been up too lately, so we will give it a shot!

We have had a beautiful, but cool spring in Duluth this year. It has been raining quite a lot, and the last few days we got a dose of Lake Superior fog! Really cool, especially when we are at home and hear the bellowing of a ships fog horn as it navigates through the harbor.

Nick and I recently purchased mountain bikes. Our good friends from the Cities, Erica and Jeff, came up last weekend and we took them out for their first ride. We had a blast - mud all over, but so worth it. We both think that it was one of the most fun outdoor adventures we have had in a while. We will try to get some pictures from them to post.

We have also signed up to play softball for our Church team - the First Lutheran Flyers! Go Team! Our first game is next Tuesday, but have not met any of our team members yet, or been able to get together for a practice!

I am attempting to run my first 1/2 marathon in about two weeks. Its a big race, about 4,500 runners in the Gary Bjorklund 1/2 marathon and 9,500 runners in Grandmas Marathon. Its a huge weekend for Duluth, it brings in a lot of tourism, and elite runners from around the world. It should be pretty exciting, but I am a little nervous since I am not a "runner." I prefer to walk!!! I'll be running with my good friend Maggie Peterson and our goal was to run the entire race without walking, however we may have to adjust our goal, training these last few weeks has not been up to par for either of us. Oh well, just something to work towards for the next race - if I ever choose to run a race again!

That's about all for now, hope you all enjoy reading our blog, and we hope we can keep it updated as much as possible. Take care!

Nick and Sarah Shilman (and Copper)