3 Week Makeup-3 of 3

Okay Okay and to tack on just one more post since I've been slacking...
This one will just kind of recap all of the things that we've been doing over the past 3 weeks.

• Cyrus - We've taken this little guy into see the doctors & midwives for all of his regular visits. One of the most amazing things to me is his weight. Last week he weighed in at 9lbs 9oz. That's right, Cyrus has gained over 3 lbs within the first 3 weeks of his life. I'm thinking that he's gonna be a giant and that he'll surpass Arianna in size within a few months to a year. Photo Page.
  
• Arianna - Arianna is having a blast keeping us busy. She's been really into figuring out our buttons and how to push them. She too is growing like a sprout. I love coming home from work and being able to sit down with her and have her happily tell me all of the wonderful things she did that day with Mommy. She's not speaking in completely worded sentences but when she's starts talking you can't really stop her. And I know what she's trying to say usually. It's awesome. Photo Page.
  
• Susan - WOW, what a wonderful woman. I'm am seriously the luckiest man alive. I have a gorgeous wife (that somehow still find it in her to love me), a wonderful family and a wonderful set of friends. Lately Susan has been getting excited to be able to get back into shape. She's been thinking a lot about climbing and so I think we're gonna get her signed up with the Portland Rock Gym so that she can get some climbing hours in. And have a blast of course ROCKING OUT!!
  
• Friends - You guys continue to amaze each & every day. Our friends have brought us food on multiple occasions since Cyrus has been born, come over to help out with watching the kids, helped out with random errands and have been a tremendous backbone of support for us as we have entered the world of multiple children.
• School - Yep, I'm going back to school. There have been a few glitches getting things set up but I'm up & running with it all. I start classes next week. I'll be going back to school at Oregon Institute of Technology, after a 6 year hiatus from schooling, to get a bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering. I'm a bit nervous but I'm going to take it slowly at first by just taking one or two classes a week. Hopefully I can balance out family time, work, school and all of these damn hobbies I got going on.
• Work - Some good things have been happening since I've gone back to work. I've gotten the heads up that I'll be running this new New York project. It's a pretty big job and I hope that I do well with it. The job is 516 5th Avenue.
  
• Cycling - Right now is pretty much the beginning of my cycling season. I don't really race much during the summer but as soon as the fall season and the rains come, I'm all about racing every weekend. I'm so excited about this season Cross Crusade series. I'm also putting some time in on a few other random cross races.
  
• Patrol - Patrol will be minimal this year. Which is a bummer deal since the mountain is my true calling. I'm very proud to be part of the Mt. Hood Ski Patrol, the oldest ski patrol organization in the U.S.. I'm planning to patrol a few times, get some vouchers, and then bring the family up on a few weekends so that Sue can get some riding in. Snow and the mountain will always been Sue & I's heartfelt passion. It's where we fell in love. Well actually it's where I fell in love with Susan. It took more time for Sue to then realize me, hehehe.

Thank you all for reading our blog. We love each & everyone of you and hope to hear from you all soon.

Sincerely Yours,
-The Rodriguez Bunch-

3 Week Makeup-2 of 3

Aight, and now onto some other events...

CYCLOCROSS - CYCLOCROSS - CYCLOCROSS

Two weekends ago I got the entire family out to the first Cyclocross race of the season, Pain on the Peak. Firstly, I would like to thank Portland Velo & OBRA for putting on such an awesome event. The course was great and everything seemed to go great. I personally started the day of with some serious mechanical issues that were going to put me out of racing. Luckily for me though, cyclocross is filled with Amazing people. I had two different teams offer me a front wheel to race on. A HUGE thanks to teams Ironclad & Veloshop. I ended up riding on Brad Urban's (from the Veloshop) pit wheel. I know Brad through the ski patrol and he saved the race for me by allowing me to race on his only pit wheel. I did really good for myself at this race. I continue to learn new stuff and advance my skills every race. I got 11th, which has been my best rank in any cross race that I've done so far, & Laird did awesome getting 12th in his newly upgraded Category B race: Results.
Here are a few photos from OregonVelo. This guy is at all of the cycling events that I have raced in. He takes some awesome photos & here are some of them from the super dusty Pain on the Peak race:

From Cyclocross

Here's a shot of Brad (the guy who loaned me a front wheel for the race)

From Cyclocross

And here's Laird Novak representing Team Vista Ridge.

From Cyclocross

God damn do I ever love Cross!!! The Cross Crusade begins October 5th and I'm hoping to hit as many of the races as possible. I hope that the Cross bug hits you all this fall and I hope to see you guys out at some of the races! Here's a link to the cross web album online: Cyclocross Photos.

- Ski Patrol -

Along with the cross season starting, the snowy mountain season is also upon us. I woke up bright and early on a cloudy & raining Sunday morning yesterday to head up to the mountain for some training. We did our annual Chair Evacuation, Rope Rescue and Avalanche Transciever training up at Summit on the base of Mt. Hood. That's correct, the lowest in elevation resort at the base of the mountain is name Summit. The event went good and I got to see some friends that I haven't seen in awhile. I sadly had to let the Patrol Chief know about the fact that I won't be able to patrol as much this year. With the new addition to the family, work, going back to school, cyclocross and the other commitments that I have, the mountain time is going to have to decline a bit this season. I'll still patrol this season just not as often as I have the past few years. We have to keep our training up-to-date each year in the horrible case of a chair breaking down and us needing to evacuate everyone from it. Here's a shot of the prior weeks session of chair evac taken by my great pal, fellow patroller, fellow cyclocross racer & new parent Brian Barker:

From Blogger Pictures

That's been the past few weekends for us. I went to a Cyclocross Clinic during the week two weeks ago and that was great. I learned some great skills that I think are really going to help my cross season this year. So there's cross racing, patrolling, doctor's visits with Cyrus, a bunch of other random stuff and some random house work as well to tack onto our list of stuff. But I'll get into some more of that in the next post...

Sincerely Yours,
-The Rodriguez Bunch-

3 Week Makeup-1 of 3

Alright folks. I'm terribly sorry for the massive delay in response time here. It's been just under 3 weeks since our last post and so I'm going to try and cram your inboxes & your readers with a few posts to catch ya'lls up so that it's not one incredibly long post. Here goes...

Things have been good. We've been pretty darn busy keeping up with the little ones, first and foremost. Family is always our primary objective and we've been having a blast forming this one. But going back to work, figuring out some x-mas time traveling, getting my schooling started up again, working around the house, doctor's visits, bike racing, ski patrolling, and well a few other things that we tossed into the mix have surely been keeping us occupied as well.

The little ones!!
--Well, Cyrus ain't that little anymore. This guy has gained more weight than I've seen any baby gain. He weighed in at 6lbs 6oz at birth. Than one week later, hey weighed in at 7lbs 1oz. That means that he didn't loose any baby weight, which most babies do. Then the next we had to go into the doctors again and he weighed in at 7lbs 4oz. He gained 3oz. over night. Needless to say, Cyrus is feeding well and greatly enjoying his boob time (lucky little booger). We couldn't say enough good words about little Cyrus. He's super calm, super mellow, and rather quite. He generally only fusses at night time when mamma's ready to go to bed. Lately he's been acting as a night owl. He likes to get a few good hours of sleep late in the evening and then we everyone else is ready to go to bed, BAAM!, little man is wide-eyed and checking everything out. It's been playing a little havoc on our sleep schedules, but we're getting by. He also hasn't gotten fully used to his bath's yet, hehee...

From Cyrus Jose Rodriguez

--And Arianna... She is surely growing up to be the little pistol pete that she's meant to be. We think its a mix of her age, her having a new little brother and being a Puerto Rican female. We all know just how crazy them Puerto Rican woman can be. Well, that's Arianna in a nutshell and at the energetic & ripe age of 1.5. Arianna has surely been keeping us on our toes. In fact, as I am typing this message she just pushed over her rocking chair to the counter tops and is getting into all of the stuff on the counter tops. LOL! Arianna has been rather demanding and clingy lately. But I honestly think it has more to due with her age than any sort of jealousy towards her brother. Either way, I know that she has been a handful for mamma while I am at work. Luckily indoor park is only a few block away and happens 3 days a week. Ari loves playing at indoor park and it's a good event to tire her in the mornings.

Along with KoKo, we try to get her out walking as much as possibly. Especially since the rains are about to come!

From Ari B.

Ari & Cyrus are so fashionable:

From Ari B.

From Cyrus Jose Rodriguez

From Ari B.

From Cyrus Jose Rodriguez

Aight, that's the kids. Their awesome, their each their own person and even with the frustrations we're having a blast with them. Here are a few more photos. Click on any of the photos (or the link on the side) to be directed to the web albums of photos. We've added quite a bit to all of them.

Next, onto some other events that have been taking up our time, in the next post...

Sincerely Yours,
-The Rodriguez Bunch-

More Photos

Okay, so I just got around to uploading some more photos of Cyrus. You can find them on his album within our Picasa Web Albums.
Here's the link to the web albums:
Cyrus' Page
We've added a Family Photos page
the Entire Web Albums collection

So what do you guys think?
Do you think he bares any resemblance to his father???
hehee And check out the photos of Arianna checking out/poking her little brother. She's really excited to be a big sister. It's unfortunate that we're all sick right now. Because of that we haven't been letting Ari touch Cyrus too much.


The slide show continues to grow...






Sincerely Yours,
-The Rodriguez Bunch