Back Home in Indiana

June has certainly been different than the first 5 months of this year for all of us. The standard routine
typically includes waking up earlier than any of us want, oatmeal pancakes for breakfast, Kevin taking B to school, Holly staying home to get K and N on the bus and then off to work for both of us. The afternoons and evenings are filled with playing, dinner, some schoolwork/learning opportunities (you can guess who obliges with the two), showers and a little TV/movie time before bed.

Well, the Ragnar road trip started the month off with new adventures. Both kids spent four days in Glen
Ellyn with Grandmo and Grandpo while we ran. They had lots of fun, as usual, but the most talked about portion of the trip was getting to see a raccoon. It was near the garage then in and out from underneath the deck with four babies.  Eeek!

New pink cowboy boots that light up!

Visiting Amy's girls

When that weekend ended, B returned home for two weeks of being an only child, while K stayed in
Chicago. This was actually a fun time for all involved. B got the chance to get lots of our attention and
we thoroughly enjoyed that. He actually behaves better when the focus is on him, plus he’s less wound
up. K got to spend more time in Glen Ellyn playing with the neighbor kids Travis and Elanor. She also
attended a camp at the Morton Arboretum with Travis.

Travis had his birthday party at the bowling alley

Day camps at the Arboretum.  Kari and Travis were happy to have each other there.

For a couple nights she ventured off to Riverside for some time with Grammy Pammy. This is always
exciting as K loves to see Samuel the cat, even though it sounds like he wasn’t himself on this particular
visit.

Spending time at our favorite place, Prophetstown

While it was a lot of fun for K to be away, I can honestly say it was much tougher on me than I thought. This is bar none the longest I’ve gone without seeing my little girl since she came into our lives roughly 6.5 years ago. Thankfully we were able to stay in touch via e-mail.  I’ve been traveling back and forth to North Carolina the past two weeks for work, too, so I would shoot fun messages and sometimes even pictures to Kari (through Grandmo’s email). K is an excellent reader so I enjoyed being able to write her knowing she could sit at the computer and read most of everything I would write.

RAGNAR Relay 2013 Chicago

Another successful Ragnar is officially in the books for the Keckler Family. You know about it by now, 195 miles from Madison to Chicago. Doesn’t sound that bad, right, maybe 3 hours depending on traffic? Well, that’s what it would be like to virtually every friend or family member we know who reads this blog. Instead, for Holly, Kevin and six other friends it took us 34.5 hours to leave the land of Cheese and Beer to the Windy City.

Getting to know our new teammates by playing Cards Against Humanity

That’s not a typo! 34.5 hours. Sounds crazy considering we had no car troubles and traffic couldn’t have been any better. The problem is we RUN those 195 miles (or 198.8 if our new friend Karil is counting). And this year was particularly interesting since Kevin turned in his driving gloves and caffeine for running shoes and Gatorade.

As difficult to figure out as a magic show, but I was able to make it through my portion – 28.9 miles.
With the support of a great team and some occasional pre-race training, I successfully completed six legs ranging from 2.9 miles up to 6.2 (I still hate you leg 5!). It was definitely a challenge, but really satisfying, as well.

Holly finished her third Ragnar and came away injury free. She was my “tag” partner taking runner number 3’s position. The weather was great topping out in the mid 70’s and even getting down to the mid 40’s on Friday night. The Squirrel Van (most appropriate name considering our team name) was guided by my sales rep – Quentin – and once again navigated beautifully through multiple tiny towns and the big city by neighbor Amy!

Our van drew quite a bit of attention this year.  More than once people stopped to take pictures.

Eating Denny's Pizza at our favorite exchange in Dousman, WI

Running mates this year were veterans Tom, Matt and Taryn. Our newcomer was Karil, who was a
particularly super sport and as close to the Energizer Bunny as we could have requested.  The immediate reaction after you complete a Ragnar is a mixed bag of pride, exhaustion and “why the
hell did I just do that to my body?” And no sooner than we all agreed this was likely the last Ragnar for
our Ultra group, somehow Tom was asking for volunteers to run another in August. That won’t happen
in 2013, but as this year did prove, anything is possible!

And the best news yet, we just found out late last week that we placed 2nd in the Ultra Mixed Submasters!

May wrap up

We've had a busy May and the last two weeks were no exception.  Here's what we've been doing.

We met Grammy Pammy and Dale in Merrillville for dinner.  Once again it was too cold and windy to play at a park, so we settled for our second favorite activity and rode the merry-go-round at the mall.

Kari's last day of Kindergarten was Friday.  Here's a picture from the first day and then the last day.  I suppose she does look a bit older!

Purdue Area Track Club started Memorial Day.  Kari was excited to give running a try.

PATC is a four day camp consisting of two days of practice and two days of meets.  Field events were day three and track events were day four.  It was also fun knowing this is one of Kevin's clients.

Turbo Jab- 6th place

400 M- 2nd place

Hurdles- 3rd place

200 M- awaiting results