Next steps

First off, thank you for tolerating my super depressing post. And thank you for all your kind words. It really means so much and helped to put everything into perspective.

And now, for a way more fun post: how are Josh and Laura going to entertain themselves after their track withdrawal is over? I was kind of wondering that myself. When you think about the fact that we are gaining about 2 hours every evening by not running ourselves and then another 5-10 hours every week from the high schoolers being finished, that adds up to a lot of time on our hands. And if there’s one thing we don’t handle well, it’s idle time on our hands. (Can anyone say "binge watching of TV shows marketed at teenagers???")

Not every day you know someone 
who's had their neck slashed, huh!

First thing was first. With the end of the track season, it was time to take care of me. For the last decade or so, my doctors have been monitoring a benign tumor on each thyroid (aka cute little goiters). A few months back, I started noticing my voice was getting super hoarse and my throat was hurting more. They did some tests and found the one of my vocal chords wasn't working properly and it may have been from my tumor.

So they took it out! Just like that! It was by far the easiest surgery I have ever had. I was super nervous ahead of time (I mean, come on! They were cutting into my throat!) so I bought a ton of Ensure shakes, ice cream, and chocolate milk thinking I was going to have to sustain myself on soft foods and protein mix. Oh boy, what I wrong! That night I was eating solid foods and talking Josh's ear off... Doesn't mean we didn't spend the next 2 days watching all of the Harry Potter movies though!

Josh is amazing at handstands!!

Next up, we tried out for the US Bobsled Team! While at our last meet, we were talking to another competitors' boyfriend, who is a member of the Bobsled Team. He informed us that the team was having a combine (kinda like a try-out) at the end of June in San Mateo. We had to do a 45 meter dash, standing long jump, and between-leg shot put toss for points. Points were assigned similarly to how they're assigned in a multi: you get X number of points for Y results.

long jump!!!

We had so much fun! The weather was beautiful! The track was amazing. Heather came to watch the fun. It was great!!! The 45 went pretty well. The start was kinda awkward because you have to start from a standing start. But I still ran pretty well and almost got the maximum number of points. Next up was the standing long jump, which didn't go great. My feet landed about 3 meters out but my butt fell back to about 2.6 meters. Still got a decent amount of points. And it was just great landing in sand again! Last up was between-leg shot put toss. We had been practicing some but I had no idea what to expect.

Heather came to watch!

The first one went really well and landed about 11 meters. The next one slipped out my hands and went an amazing, like, 5 meters! Wahoo! (Here's the video to show you my awesomeness.) The other video is of Josh running the 45. I apologize ahead of time for the poor video quality. I'm definitely not a photographer!!!
So overall, it went pretty well. I scored high enough to get a call to be invited to the next round of tryouts, but unfortunately, we aren't going to be around for the next round of testing (which would include testing of Olympic lifts, squats, and learning to push a sled) so we'll have to wait until next year!

So glad to see Hannah there!

Me and Halsey at the
Driscoll family reunion

Our part of the Rombach family reunion

A summer wouldn't be complete without a few trips to Oregon, so we went twice for family reunions!

We also went to a wedding, where I didn't get any pictures, except of the stickers we secretly placed on Debbie's back. I also co-hosted a baby shower for the wonderful Parks'!! It was so much fun!!!

Don't let kids sit
behind you at a wedding...

The Baby Mama!!

Also, in case I didn't mention, we started doing demolition on our kitchen back in January. Well, without track to take our time, we finally finished a week ago!! Replaced the flooring, got new countertops, and put in backsplash. We did the majority of it ourselves, with a lot of help from my Dad in showing us how to put the hardwood floors in. (Well, let's not lie, it was really mostly Josh.) I am super impressed that we were able to do it!! And feel really accomplished that we were able to do it ourselves. :D

But the biggest news we have is that we:

- have quit our jobs,

- rented our house out,

- bought a 36' boat in the Carribbean,

and we're not coming back until February!!!!

Yippee!!!!

So crazy!!!!!! I'm kinda in shock about the whole thing. We're sitting in the airport as I type this. And it's kinda surreal. It's something we've been talking about for a really long time. We kept talking about it like something we'd do "after the kids are out of the house". At some point, we realized we didn't have any kids and the time to do it was now!!!

So, we're moving our blog to a new location:

www.seahorsecow.com

We'll be posting stories here and there about our adventures and about our beautiful boat. 

Have to sign off now to board. 

Thank you all for following us on our track journey. 

It's not over. Just on pause.