Birmingham Road Trip, Part 3 of 3

The Xterra 21K trail run at Oak Mountain State Park. This was the ultimate goal of our long drive to Birmingham. Anton had never done a trail run before, and since he is training for a 50 mile one in July, he figured he better try one out. This one was only 13 miles. Just a walk in the park for Anton.

Here's the crazy running fool all ready to go. I don't know how someone can get so excited about running 12 miles in 90 degree weather. It's beyond me.

But he pinned on his number,

and lined up at the starting line. I tried to explain to him the necessity of running on the side of the trail where I was standing, but he just didn't get it.

So some random stranger gets to be the highlight of Anton's starting picture. Oh well.

And he's off!! I wasn't able to get pictures of him out on the trails because, well, I had two kids and a stroller with me and it just wasn't happening. But at the halfway mark they resurfaced on the street for a moment. I did manage to snap some pictures then.

They gave everyone a really pretty blue bracelet to show that they had finished the first lap.

Here he is at the halfway point. Look at those crazy huge leg muscles!!! Also note that he is completely soaking wet. Just a little hot and sweaty.

Run, Anton, run!!

While Anton was off doing his thing, the kids got to play on a little obstacle course.

They swung on bars.

Climbed across ropes.

And scaled large towers. Both Ella and Alex scampered right up and over this this multiple times. The second time in two days my kids have surprised me with their abilities.

They also got to run their own little mini-race. Ella won in a last second surge at the finish line.

Alex carried up the rear. They had a lot of fun. Then it was time to go cheer daddy on at the finish line.

Here he comes. He looks much better than he did at the last race.

He looks like he's giving up, but really he has his hands in the air celebrating his finish. Hooray Anton!!! He did really good.

I don't know if you can read that, but it says he came in 18th out of 80 people with a time of 1:58:43. That's my crazy fast husband for you. He did great.

After a little post-race refreshments:

And some time in the water tent:

(There was water spraying down from the ceiling.) we headed over for a refreshing dip in the lake.

Actually, only daddy and the kids did. I was too hot and tired to bother changing into my swim suit.

But the kids had fun.

Hi Mommy!! Then five minutes later Alex tripped and fell and cut his hand on a rock. The fun ended there. With blood oozing everywhere, we headed back to the car. I wasn't too sad. I was hot and tired and ready to go. But we did wish we could have stayed in the park and played more. It was really beautiful there.

In fact, all of Birmingham was absolutely beautiful. We never expected that. We were actually sad to come back to this drab part of the world. If I had to choose between living where we are now and living in Birmingham, Birmingham wins hands down.

But other than the heat, we had a great time on our little trip.

Birmingham Road Trip, Part 2 of 3

After our stop at the Blue Bell creamery, we headed just up the road to De Soto Caverns. This was a random internet search discovery that I made, and it sounded like fun. So we decided to check it out.

They had both a cave you could tour, plus a bunch of activities you could do. We were a little early for the tour when we arrived, so we went over to check out the activities.

First, we decided to try our luck at panning for gemstones.

It's actually rigged (as if you couldn't guess that) and the kids didn't really quite get it.

We had quite the load of gemstones. Ella and Alex both think regular old rocks are the best things ever, so they didn't think much of these fancy gemstones.

I had to force Ella to pose with them and I don't think she's asked about them since. Maybe I can have one made into a necklace for her birthday or something. Oh well.

I've decided that we need to bring back a bit of the old fashion way of punishing people.

A set of these sure would come in handy at my house. Not so much for trapping Anton, but for making sure Alex doesn't escape the house while I'm taking a shower.

Here are my cute boys posing in front of a random water, rock, and eagle sculpture. ???

Then it was time for the cave tour.

We had to walk down a long, dark metal tunnel to get into the actual cave. Ella was all worried about there being bears in there. She watches too much TV.

Look at those perfectly natural cave walls! I have to say that I took all of these cave pictures with my camera hand-held. I do so love me some optical stabilizing in my lens. Not all the pictures came out great, but a lot better than they would have otherwise.

The cave was mainly one large room. It is 12 stories high and larger than a football field. It's hard to tell from the picture, but just so you can gauge the size, there are rows of benches on the floor in the middle. I was standing in the entrance looking out over the whole cave here.

The tour itself was a little bit hoaky. They told silly stories and the guide had a really sissy flashlight that did a terrible job pointing out the formations. Right in the middle of the tour they sit you down and make you watch a seriously cheesy light and water show. Yes, light and water show. In a cave. Who knew.

There were a few side rooms we got to go see. My favorite was this one:

The fake waterfall and green-lit pool. The waterfall didn't used to be fake, but last summer they had a drought and it dried up. And instead of losing the best feature of their cave, they decided to run the waterfall by pump. Why not? I didn't mind. It looked cool.

I snapped a million pictures of all the formations. But I didn't want to bore you with them all. Just a bunch of drippy-looking rocks.

Once back out in the hot summer sun, we needed some cooling off. Ella really wanted to ride the paddle boats, though I didn't think she'd be able to do them very well. They were hand powered.

But I got the shock of my life when she jumped right in there and took off like a pro. She was scooting all over that little pool.

I never thought I would see the day when my completely uncoordinated daughter would be doing something like this so easily.

She was rowing circles around this other girl.

Of course the other girl was taking on a bit of water which made it hard for her to get much of anywhere. Poor thing.

Alex really wanted to ride in the boats too, but we knew he was too little. So Anton took him over to a fountain to distract him.

He was really excited to come back. What a cutie.

After some more water fun and some bounce house fun, we ended up in an all-out war.

Girls against guys.

Winner takes all.

Fight to the death.

The girls won by a long shot. Thankfully they were just Nerf balls we were shooting at each other. But that finally did us in. We were hot and sweaty and ready to relax. We grabbed some treats from the shop and headed out to our hotel.

We grabbed some dinner at a really tasty Mexican place called Margarita Grill then went back to the hotel to swim in the pool. And that's that. We all crashed early since we were getting up early the next day for...

Part 3, coming up!!

Birmingham Road Trip, Part 1 of 3

On Friday we drove out to Birmingham so that Anton could run in a race there on Saturday. And since I am a bit of a picture-taking fanactic, I have far too many pictures to include in one post. So I have divided them up into 3 sections. I will be posting all 3 sections one after the other, rather than waiting a day in between, because my sister is coming tonight and I will have even more pictures to post after that. So here goes.

The first stop on our whirlwind road trip was at a particular ice cream factory. Now this isn't just any factory. This happens to be a factory that makes some of the best ice cream in the world. You know you are obsessed when you go out of your way driving just to see the factory. And to relieve your suspense as to what brand of ice cream can be causing such a sensation, I will now show you the sacred spot:

Ah, Blue Bell ice cream. I do so love you.

I resisted the Blue Bell trend for some time due to the cost. But one day it was on sale, and the rest is history.

You'd be amazed how easy it is to keep your kids behaving on a long drive by promising them ice cream at the end. My kids love ice cream as much as I do, though I don't think they are quite as much the connoisseur as me. They'll eat anything labeled ice cream that you might slap in front of them.

Now, you can actually take tours of the Blue Bell factory, but when I called to reserve a spot they were already full. I was super sad, but decided we'd stop by anyway. I was glad we did. You could see part of the factory floor from the gift shop area.

The kids were entranced. We had to drag Alex away from there. They would have stood there and watched the ice cream packaging process all day.

Look at all those pipes and vats full of ice creamy goodness. Yum.

That is where the ice cream is actually going into the buckets and getting their lids put on. I wonder if freshly packaged ice cream is any good? I bet it's a bit mushy.

They had a little cafe-like area where you could get little cups of Blue Bell for $.50 apiece. I chose the Triple Caramel.

There it is in all its fabulous glory. Mmmm.

Ella enjoyed eating and wearing her Triple Chocolate.

Alex enjoyed sampling both Daddy's Triple Caramel and his own Banana Pudding. Anton enjoyed both his and Alex's ice cream.

And the best part of all this, it has been over 90 degrees outside. How much more perfect can a cup of perfectly delectable ice cream get?

Up next, cave crawling and water play. Stay tuned!!