MUSH!!!!

You know when you're dating someone and you find out some totally weird and random fact about them?

Like when your date says, "Yeah, I love milkshakes. You know I drank only milkshakes for an entire month once when my mouth was wired shut"

or, "Yeah, sure I've helped castrate pigs before,"

or, "I got in a fight with a muskrat once ..."

or "Dude, I've won a dogsled race!"

Wha? Uhhh, okay, random ...

These examples are real. And all from the same guy.

Truly.

And I married him ...

Anyway, while I will not get into the other random stories referred to, I do want to tell you about how my hubby won a dogsled race. Pretty awesome I think.

Mike used to be a newspaper reporter back before we met (and made all his wildest dreams come true :) )

Every year Ashton hosts its American Dog Derby and Mike went to, well, report.

Besides watching and cheering for the racers there are tons of fun things for the spectators to do, including mutt races (household dogs pulling children on sleds), a weight pull, jamming to music, a junior musher's race, a snowshoe race, greasy (delicious) concession food and a celebrity dog sled race.

When the celebrity race was getting started, someone yelled over for Mike to get ready.

"I'm not a celebrity."

"Sure you are, you're with the paper right?"

"Uh, okay, why not?"

So Mike raced (against local channel reporters and such). And you can guess what happened ... he won!!

(And if you've ever heard him with his cowboy "Yeeeeeee-ew" you'll know why he won. Those poor dogs must have been terrified!)

And as proof. Here he is (2004):

We've made it a point to go when we can every year (when it's not too cold or canceled)

And this year we had my brother Devan come along for the fun.

Here we are bundled up and waiting for another sled to start going. Rina playing in the snow ...

Keeping baby nice and warm. (how many chins do I have--eesh!)

Excited daddy and a pretending to smile Danna.

And more waiting ...

And more playing with snow while we're waiting ...

And more cold not-smiley faces ...

The girls got cold pretty quick so we headed back to the car to watch in warmth instead.

Carina kept eating the snow. We warned her about yellow snow but apparently she didn't care about dirt covered street snow. Sick! (And Devan's face cracks me up too! Bah ha!)

Finally a happy Danna out of the cold.

A still mischievous Carina.

And a content Brynn. Hilarious picture but I love it!

Here's a smiling Mike even though he went to sign up for the 5K snowshoe race (that he'd been looking forward to) and found out that it wasn't being held because of new derby organizers.

Bummer.

And that was our Saturday morning. We didn't stay as long as other years cause it was COLD and we were slightly bummed about there not being a snowshoe race.

Till next year!