Jay Cooke

Ever since I began posting about topics other than Anja (see some of my posts in June about Mark in China, Hannah's rugby game, hail at the lake, etc.), Shana has been giving me grief about losing sight of the obvious focus of this blog. Recently, classmates of mine echoed these concerns and after Shana gave me even more grief over my last 3 posts, none of which focused on Anja, I bent to the pressure. While I still intend to post about random topics, here are a number of photos highlighting Anja and our trip to Jay Cooke. The photo above is a personal favorite of mine. It is always wonderful to come home to those bright blue eyes.
The kids pack is truly a great invention and Anja really seems to enjoy the ride. We hiked for over an hour before she started to get the slightest bit fussy. We definitely have an active child and she was keen to do a bit of exploring for herself. It's great fun to watch her facial expressions as she feels things for the first time. The pine needles and pine cones were some of her favorites at our lunch stop.Anja has also becoming much more expressive and is giving us some great big smiles. Still no teeth, but we can see a number of them right below the surface of her gums. Here she is truly enjoying the ride!

In a bizarre coincidence, a trail marathon was in progress as we hiked along. The 26.2 mile event was actually a warm-up to the 50 mile trail marathon to be held later this summer. We cheered the runners as we hiked along and even ran into Tim Stoddart, one of the many brave souls to tackle the event. I worked for the Stoddarts during a summer in college - what a small world. Who knows, perhaps we'll be running in that marathon next summer!

Here's a link to the half (26.2 mile) event: http://mvtu.slovis.com/
Here's a link to the full (50 mile) event: http://www.voyageurtrailrun.com/