Megan's 9th birthday party

Meghan has a "slight" obsession with the Titanic. She wants to paint her room black and put portholes on her wall. She is still trying to figure out how to make smoke stacks that come out of her ceiling. While this not going to happen, we did take six of her friends downtown to the Brown Palace for Sunday brunch at Ellington's. This was the closest thing I could think of to the Titanic, besides the Molly Brown house. It was great fun and all the girls dressed in Titanic attire!

Update

OK, so it's been a while since I updated my blog, seems like facebook has taken over my life...Racing season is in full swing and so far, things are going well. Nationals are in a few weeks and the girls and I will be headed off to Louisville, KY for a week. Doug has been racing really well, he should be upgraded soon.
Erin and Meghan finally finished school last week. They have an ultra busy summer planned. Meghan is going to DU for a gymnastics camp in a few weeks. She goes down and lives there for 5 days! She is very excited. Both girls are going back to camp Chief Ouray in July for a week of horse camp. Erin is really active in Lacrosse and just started a summer league.
I'll try to do a better job of updating the blog, but that's the news for now!

Women's Cycling Camp in Moab, UT

We had a blast in Moab with 23 ladies from all over the country coming together for the inaugural Women's Development Cycling Camp. We had a great group who came to learn, ride and just have some companionship with other women who love the sport of cycling and racing their bikes. T-Mobile and past World Champion's Mari Holden and Kimberly Baldwin spent time with the ladies, helping them with skills and sharing their knowledge of life as a professional bike racer. Corey Hart tested everyone for their power and Lactic Threshold, giving them important information to better train, along with training and tactical lectures. Nanna Meyer, PhD. did a in depth nutrition lecture for women cyclists. Leslie Cooper MD spent time giving us much needed women specific information for female athletes. We had a webinar with Kristin Dieffenbach PhD. on Sports psychology and how to deal with race day anxiety.

It was a star studded, jam packed week. Beautiful rides in the Moab area and great team dinners were an integral part of each day. I can't thank everyone enough for participating and making this a spectacular event. Looking forward to next year and catching up with these great ladies again.

BMC Pro Machine

I just received my new BMC Pro Machine last week and I absolutely love it. I owe a huge thank you to BMC and to John at Adventure Cycling for making this bike a possibility. I hope to have an awesome season in 2009 and making my new Pro machine and Time Machine an integral part of my success. This is cool!!

AZ Training Camp

It's been a while since I had an update. We had a training camp/race in Phoenix, AZ over Valentines Day weekend. We had a good time, had our "A" squad there to race at Valley of the Sun Stage Race. We were tested earlier in the week to get our teams overall Lactate Threshold numbers. This makes it possible to Corey and Barney to put our team "together" with each riders strengths and weaknesses. It was warm and sunny the entire time we were there.

The race was a crash fest. We started with the TT on Friday. We had 2 riders end up in the top 10. I was 9th going into the Road Race. During the RR, on the last lap and about 2.5 miles from the finish the rider in front of me went down for no apparent reason. I went down as well, managed to get up and tried like crazy to catch back onto the peloton, with no success. I finished about 1 min. back.

The crit was fun on Sunday, lots of hard work but worth it, as we developed a gap in the field of around 25 seconds. My teammate crashed and I stopped to help her, she was badly hurt, so we both dropped out of the race. Oh well, this is bike racing...

My birthday present

Thanks to my ever so cool husband, my awesome bike shop owner (John) and BMC, I am the proud owner of this speedy machine. I love it!

First Orchestra Concert

Erin had her first orchestra concert last night. I was really impressed how all the kids played together and in unison. It was great to hear the progress she has made. It's amazing how these kids can learn something so quickly. After only 4 months of playing, I was amazed.

ACA Awards Party

Last night was the ACA Year end awards party. It was held at Great Divide Brewery in Denver. We pictured a brewery type restaurant/bar with seating and food-right?? NO, it was literally a brewery where they make the beer. We walked in and it was like a huge garage, with the distilleries and it smelled bad-like a beer brewery would...Interesting, but we still had a good time. There were lots of people and free beer. The winners of each category were announced in a rather fast manner. Nobody was really paying attention to anything the announcers were saying. Did I mention that Doug was one of the announcers??? Needless to say, we picked up our awards, took some photo's, said hi to lots of our friends and headed off to dinner with some teammates. It was a fun evening all in all. However, I'm still trying to figure out why anyone would actually try to achieve any of these awards, they don't seem to mean much! Doug's team won the BAT or Best All Around Team and my ladies won the BAT for SW 1-2's. I took home the honor of Best All Around Rider for 2008 in the SW 1-2. Rachel was 2nd in the Best All Around CX Rider for the 35+ ladies! We had a good year over all, hopefully we can have another good one in 2009.

Cheerleading/Basketball Season

Cheerleading and basketball season have arrived. For 2 months out of the year, the girls add yet another sport into their already hectic lives, and make the days and week ever so exciting. Meghan loves to cheer on her sister and Erin loves to attempt the game of basketball. Actually Erin is really quick on her feet and loves to play defense. If we could just get her to realize that this is not football! Meghan loves to go out and do her round off back handsprings and wow the crowd. It's about the outfit for Meghan, and of course the pom poms!! It's fun to watch them both as they each love what they do.

New Years Day Resolution Ride

We had a great team ride on New Years Day that started in Parker with a core group. We rode to Cherry Creek Reservoir and met up with several other teammates. It was a gorgeous day for Jan. 1 and it was fun to see the group after a Christmas hiatus.

Skiing on Christmas Day

We spent the latter half of Christmas Day on the slopes of Sol Vista. Meghan decided to snow board and Erin decided it would be more fun to jump and tree ski. We had a great time, the weather and snow were perfect.

Christmas morning

The girls had a great Christmas, Erin got her i touch and Meghan got an ipod nano. They also got some cute clothes and of course the dollar bills from Grammy Kirk were a hit!

Christmas in the mountains

We had a fabulous time this year for Christmas. We rented a house in Sol Vista and were joined by my dad, his wife Sue and her daughter and husband-John and Jordan. My brother and his family joined us as well, but stayed in a different condo (thank goodness!). We had a blast skate skiing, snowmobiling, skiing and tubing at the Frazier tubing hill. It was great to be with family, however, 13 people in one house for too long a time can be a little trying! Sue and I got everyone these reindeer and Christmas pants to wear around the house. It was funny having all the guys wearing the same thing! Next year we are going someplace warm. I'm voting for Costa Rica and a surfing camp. We'll see how that goes!

Level 4 State Championships

Erin had a successful State Championship. This was her first year competing in gymnastics and she exceeded any and all expectations I had for her. She did great and got a little stronger as the season went on. It was fun to watch her entire team morph into little competitive gymnasts. We were so proud of her, and like Meghan, she had a personal best meet at State Finals. She started off her meet by scoring a 9.525 on vault! She had a great bar routine, landed her beam routine and ended her day with a 9.0 on floor exercise! She ended up with a 35.95 overall point average. Pretty good for a first year level 4 newbie! Her hope is to make the level 5 team with her sister for next year. This will take a lot of hard work, learning a bunch of new and harder skills, but she is up for the challenge and we are doing all we can do to help her make her goal.

Level 5 State Championships!

Meghan had the gymnastics meet of her life. Level 5 State Championship meet was held at Berthoud High School on Sat. the 6th. There were 9 girls from Apex in her age group and they all did great. Meghan started with her floor exercise, executing one of the best routines she has ever had. Then off to vault where she nailed her vault and received her first blue ribbon of the meet. Scoring at 9.15 she ended up the highest scoring vaulter on her team in her age group. Bar warm up's were great, as I have never seen her do such great sets, but in the actual competition she missed her squat on (bummer) and in disbelief, she continued with an almost flawless routine, finishing strong. The meet ended on beam, where she landed a great routine and her score represented all her hard work and effort.

She ended up placing 7th overall in vault for her age group and had one of the best all around scores of the season. A personal best meet! It was fun to watch all the girls, as they have all come a long way this season. Can hardly wait for next year! Way to go Meghan!!

Thanksgiving 2008

We had a great Thanksgiving Day. We started out the day with a mountain bike ride at Hidden Mesa. 12 brave souls from the team showed up to burn some pre-dinner calories. It was cold but we still had a blast.

Doug did the annual duty of turkey clean out. He named our turkey Hank and we decided that Hank was not having a good day. After clean out and dressing, in the oven he went and by the time we returned from our mountain bike ride, Hank was smelling the house with wonderful aromas. We made our way to Dick and Cindy's where we stuffed ourselves silly with way too much food. Good thing we burned a few extra calories on the mountain bike ride!

We made our way to the nursing home with a plate of food for mom. We visited for a while, ate some great pie and returned home exhausted but fulfilled.

A would say a great Thanksgiving this year. Lots to be thankful for!

Both girls Qualify for State Finals

Huge load off the Gordon plate, as Meghan finally qualified for level 5 state finals at Grand Junction. Erin qualified for level 4 state finals earlier in her season. The judging at level 5 is a little tougher and Meghan was finally able to pull it together and get her points. Not only did she qualify, but she was 4th overall on her team, helping them get 2nd place at the meet. It was a good day for all. Erin had a very successful meet as well. Both girls work so hard, they will do great at State.

After the Harvest, Before the Snow

Our supporting bike shop, Adventure Cycling, puts on this great mountain bike weekend in Fruita. This year we had to combine it with a gymnastics meet in Grand Junction so it worked out great. For a cheap price, Adventure buys all the food, Steamworks provides all the beer, Yeti and Intense brought up all the mountain bikes and we had a blast. They do such a great job, all the guys in the shop help with whatever is needed and provide great rides for all levels of mountain bikers.

This year to weather was spectacular and trails in great shape. This is such a beautiful area of Colorado. Almost as if you were somewhere else in the united states all together.

Thanks Adventure for the great weekend.