Arianna's B-Day

Whooohhooo!!! Arianna's 2nd birthday is today. We're so lucky to have such an awesomely wonderful little girl. She sure is a firecracker but a gorgeous one at that. We've been blessed with great kids and I can't wait to post some photos of her party tonight. Hopefully they'll get posted sooner rather than later. We're having a get together tonight at our place to throw some cake in her face and let her run around with all the other youngens. It's gonna be a hoot. Sorry for those that don't live here and can't make it. Ari misses you and wishes that you can be here to celebrate with her.

Happy Birthday Beautiful Little
Arianna Brooklyn Rodriguez

Tah Tah for now,
-The Rodriguez Bunch-

Please accept my apologies

Long story short: I'm a douche bag that can't keep up with all the facets of our busy life, hehee.

Sorry for not posting in A LONG TIME on here. I don't have an excuse except for times are busy. We also don't have the internet at our house anymore and that cuts our interweb time down drastically.

Either way, we're all still here and doing well. - You should hear more about our lives soon -

Tah Tah for now,
-The Rodriguez Bunch-

Pat's only getting younger.

Right after starting class @ OIT on Friday, I rode over to Lara & Pat's place to meet the rest of the Rodriguez bunch & help celebrate Pat's birthday with some friends. It was the first time Angela got to see Cyrus & the first time Greg & Ethan got to see him awake, hehe. It was so great to see everyone again that we hadn't seen in a little while. We all enjoyed some of the delicious flavor of different types of Saki from the world market & rocked out to a greatly random collection of sweet rock & metal songs, provided to us by YouTube and Pat's collection of digital music. Padilac also got himself some sweet new ink! I'll get some pics posted of that soon enough.

Have you seen these great vids:
A orchastrated cello cover of The Final Countdown

& Mike Patton ( of Faith No More, Fantomas, Mr. Bungle, Tomahawk, Peeping Tom & the Dillinja Escape Plan fame) singing opera with the Metropole Orchestra

Tah Tah for now,

-The Rodriguez Bunch-

Photos Galore

Along with all of these sweet posts that the Rodriguez Bunch sends your way, please remember that there are always more photos to check out on our

Online Photo Gallery.

I always add more photos to the albums when I make posts on here. So take a look into all the different photo albums on there. Also just like the posts on this site, you can get RSS feeds of when I upload photos to our photo albums.

Here's the link to do that:
http://picasaweb.google.com/data/feed/base/user/joserodriguez3?alt=rss&kind=album&hl=en_US&access=public

Tah Tah for now,
-The Rodriguez Bunch-

More & More Cross!

...
* Once again let me say that Cyclocross is in FULL effect!!!

Man this cross thing is addicting. Every weekend we get together and race around on our bikes in some mud. We push ourselves till we're ready to explode and we're loving every moment of it. It's hard to explain because everything about sounds so wrong. We love rainy, muddy days, we race as hard as we can for 45 minutes straight, we have to lug our bikes around on our shoulders to run up hills & stairs and over barriers & rocks, and there's a million and one things that could possibly go wrong with every race we do. But its an AMAZING amount of fun. I could only hope that everyone reading this gets the chance and takes the opportunity to get out to a Cross race of any kind.
I've raced in 3 cross races since the last post.

+++

the Rickreall Rampage down past Salem


the Battle at Barlow out in Gresham



Those two races, along with Pain on the Peak, were all considered pre-season races.
+++
The Cross Crusade series started this past Sunday at the Alpenrose Diary

I've been having a lot of fun this cross season. Last year I was riding on a pieced together shin-dig that held it's ground for me during the end of the Cross Crusade Series. This year, though, I've been spoiled with my Cross & Commuter bike that has been treating me very well: the San Jose. Yeah yeah I know: Jose rides a San Jose. I've been staying at least mid-pack of the SingleSpeed category during these fast races through...

the mud (when we're lucky enough to get rain)

& dirt (when it's dry out),



up some insanely huge rail road tie barriers,

photo from pdxcross.com

down some sloppy off-chamber hills,
(this is a sequence shot. That hot pink leg in the bottom right of the first photo is me going down into the mud & the second photo is me trying to recover quickly)



through the woods,

photo from pdxcross.com

and pretty much everything else you could think of.

photo by John Dorfer

Check out all of the pictures & let me know which races you'll be at!!!

Here's the slideshow:

-The Rodriguez Bunch-

Oh the Fun we're having!

Busy we have been & here's the update.

*Cyrus just refuses to stop growing so much. This little man has grown 2" in his first month & a half of life and is already over half the weight of Arianna. That's right folks, Cyrus weighs in a at lean & hefty 11lbs. 9oz. as of today! Little man is feeding well, growing like a sprout & doing great.

*Arianna is doing wonderful as well. She's been loving to color lately and has enjoyed coloring the wood floors many different colors of the Crayola crayon set.

Here's some video of Arianna having fun & cleaning up & indoor park:

*Sue's most definitely had her hands full with keeping up with Arianna and taking such great care of our big ol' boy Cyrus. She'll also be heading back to work next week and so that'll be another item thrown into the mix.

*I've started classes, well a class, at the Oregon Institute of Technology. I'm going back to school to get my Bachelor's in Mechanical Engineering. I'm starting this term off with only one class to get me started. Which is nice since we've got a lot going on.

*Works work.

*While I was at a cyclocross race, the rest of the Rodriguez Bunch headed down to Oaks Bottom park to have fun with the Lux & Whalstrom families. D. Lux was in town having enjoying her vacation with kids & grand kids.

*And Cyclocross is in FULL effect!!! This topic is gonna require it's own post.

So with that being said...

-The Rodriguez Bunch-

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-