Happy Birthday Little Man!

Tomorrow morning at 4:04 a.m. (4 is my favorite number by the way) Ashton was born. My life as I knew it was forever changed. He is truly the light of my life. He doesn't know it but he has taught me how to appreciate how fleeting moments, hours, days, weeks, and now years are.

As I write this it is 9:47pm. A year ago right now Ty and I were about to get into the car to drive up to the hospital. The hospital is only a minute drives from our house and we made it in between contractions. So many memories of this day! The next few are blurry - probably because of pain and lack of sleep.

The day before Ashton's arrival I watched the old movie Guess Who's Coming to Dinner on TMC while I chatted with Anna. I made chicken fingers (over cooked my heart wasn't in it) for dinner. After dinner I talked with Liz while I began timing my contractions. Then I called mom and told her what I was experiencing. She strongly recommended that I call my midwife. I was hesitant, I wanted to make sure it was the real thing. In all the excitement I forgot to call my poor mom back and tell her I was in labor and would be having a baby very soon. She didn't hear from me again until about 5 the next morning.

Ty and I have been reminiscing about the past year all day today. It's not even his birthday yet! We are so sappy!! We just love him more than anything and are so blessed to have him in our lives.

"Making the decision to have a baby is momentous. It is to decide to forever have you heart go walking around outside your body."

Elizabeth Stone

"A baby will make love stronger, days longer, nights shorter, the past forgotten, and the future worth living for"

And something to look forward to:

"Having a toddler is like having a blender but you don't have a top for it."

I think Jerry Seinfeld.


Oh and on another less emotional note....
You may be wondering what sled dogs do on their days off. Well, Bomber has been eating grilled cheese sandwiches and sweet potato fries along with mashed bananas and yogurt. He is continuing his cross training of dodge the baby but lick his ear with Ashton at all times. As a result Ashton has very clean ears. Unfortunately the training is cancelled out by animal cracker and mum mums. It is a hard life. No really he has it really bad.

Oh one more quote of the day.

"Just think Jen, this time last year you were a glowing house. Now you're all normal sized.... I meant it as a compliment, I mean house as in your belly was big. I mean you look great now...I mean you did have a huge belly"

By Tyrell Moulton my loving husband who is enjoying the taste of that foot in his mouth. How did I get to be so lucky? Really Ty you should have stopped after the word glowing. That is where it all went wrong.

The dogs have a few days off to rest and eat the left over baby food.

So here is a look at the lingo of dog sledding.

I wrote this out on a website I am building and I don't know how to get it to copy and paste. I don't want to write it all out again. :)

Hello my name is Suka.

I am very cute and just 7 months old.

I am FREE!!!

Just say no to the free husky....ahhhh it's so hard!

Bomber thinks he has died and gone to heaven. Someone will play with him and not get cold paws.

She is just as fast and energetic, ok sorry Bomber more energetic, than he is.

In fact she is so energetic that she was in the hot tub, bouncing off the back door screen, and in the garden within two minutes of being let out in the backyard. Oh, and I have been putting ice-cream on my BBQ because I ran out of freezer space. I decided to use the artic temperatures as an outdoor freezer. She stole my vanilla ice-cream so I am pretty sure she went home with a suger high. Hehehe

These are the dogs on the trail today. They were faster than yesterday which is always a good thing.
We were going to catch Craig's 6 dog team but Yamik decided she wanted to go right when I wanted to go left. Our discussion about who was in charge led to me not being able to catch up.

Thanks Yamik! Bomber finally helped me out and pulled Yamik back on the trail. He is learning to lead and is doing great.

Morning Stretches... We had a LONG run today.
On the trail
The 'wheel' dogs (the ones in back) are Silver on the left and Niko on the right.
My leaders are Bomber on the left and Yamik on the right.
Bomber and Niko are best buds! The dogs worked hard today.

This is Tonto he is georgeous! As you can see in the picture he has one green eye and one blue eye. He is one stubborn dog! Redheads you know... His sister Fox is also a spitfire. He is a tank and does best in the wheel position.


This is me backwards on my sled. I really shouldn't be doing things like this - dangerous and all but I love a photo op. It all turned out ok I didn't fall of my sled at all today.

My official training for Elkford has begun. We went about 3 miles today but there was a lot of hard uphills. The trails were not packed well so the dogs had to work harder. They did great! I went with my friends Craig and Sian and their daughter Morgan. Craig had a 6 dog team, Sian had 4 dogs, and Morgan had 2. My team was pretty quick and could keep up with Craig's team no problem. I was overall happy with their performance. Bomber and Yamik definitely need some more long distance runs but I should have enough time.

I am supposed to run the same team again tomorrow. My hands stayed nice an toasty today. I was so scared of getting frostbite again (I had a close call earlier this week). I wore cheapo cotten gloves with nice warm mits over top. And my secret weapon.... hand warmers in the mitten. I am hoping to use this system in Elkford if it is super cold. I just shake up the hand warmers and put them in the mits about 10 minutes before I take off. So far so good. Ty was threatening to call me Nubby if I lost my fingers. I think he just wants me to let him race my team. :) If I keep my fingers tomorrow and have anything interesting to say I will blog again. See I'm on a blogging roll.

New Years Eve Sunset

So Beautiful!!

Two Days of Training!!

My run yesterday with the two dog team went great as far as the dogs are concerned. It was -16c outside and my hands were not happy with me. I need to figure out a better system of keeping my hands warm.

When you are sledding your hands stay pretty still similiar to snow mobiling. It is hard to keep them warm. The rest of your body you can warm up by running beside or in unfortunate times after your sled.

The dogs as I said were awesome. They love to run. Since I only have two dogs pulling and wanted to keep it fun, most of my trail was flat and downhill. I completed my run in ten minutes.

Ty took the dogs out this morning (it's -18c way to cold for me) and had a lot of fun. He did almost the same run and also completed it in ten minutes. He took one spill. Some of the trail has been washed out after the crazy amount of rain we had this summer. There is a ravine about two to three feet deep that you have to navigate. The trail has also been washed away so it's mostly creek bed - read rocky. Anyway, he was trying to stay on the high side of the ravine and leaned a bit to far, over corrected, and down he went. It wasn't a big deal he got right back up and kept on going. One thing that's good about it being so cold is you don't feel much seeing as you're numb.

His hands were a bit cold when he got back so he had to jump in the car and warm them up. But all in all it was a great run. An amazing way to start a day!

On another note I am still waiting in high anticipation to hear if I will have two more dogs to run for the Elkford race. With out two more dogs I can't compete. And that will make me very sad.