summer event pics

this is a picture of me and my grandma helen (mom's mom, me, my gma jackie and gpa bill (dad's parents) who came to support me at my first triathlon at eagle creek state park, Indiana.

i am about to begin! the swim caps are color coded depending on certain age and group factors.












this is all of the women about to start swimming...the men just went...and everyone swims by waves...the waves are usually 2-5 minutes apart















here is my wave beginning...you will see me in the blue suit waiting to go because i didnt want to get kicked a lot...

















this is a blurry pic of me starting the 3 mile run...which is the last part of the race









at the end of july, one of my great friends, whitney, wanted to come to chicago to attend the annual Filene's Basement bridal sale. at this sale, you can find great designer dresses for 200-599 dollars...which is a great deal...i had no problem with this, and i was excited to be apart of this famous event. i casually asked whitney what time we needed to be there, and she said around 2:45 am...which i thought she was kidding...come to find out, it was true! that morning, we woke up at 2:45 and got to the downtown location at around 3:45 am...when we parked and got there, there were already people in line! some people had been camping out, with chairs, blankets and all....we were very unprepared, but we made do...suprisingly, the 4 hour wait didnt seem that long...considering we were sitting on concrete :)

this is a crazy event...people come in teams and have matching shirt and signs with what size dresses they need. when the doors open, you are supposed to run in and grab as many dresses as you can, and even though you may not like the dresses, someone else will...so you should keep it to trade and bargin...so..we had the mindset of grabbing as many dresses as we could hold and run into a corner and find eachother...luckily, we were only the 5th group from the beginning of the line, so we knew we would get some dresses...the people at the end might walk into the store and not find any dresses.




so...the time finally came. there were news reporters and radio stations there to keep chicago updated on all the happenings :) they finally did the countdown and everyone ran down the escalator (it was turned off for safety reasons :)) and i grabbed as many dresses as i could...(wedding dresses are heavy!! as i told that to the camera man who was filming me!) we ran to a corner and met up with whitney as she looked at the dresses...it was kind of difficult to find a dress that she liked, because she already knew what kind of dress she wanted, so she didnt even want to try on dresses that she didnt think were pretty....so from all the dresses we grabbed, she didnt like any...but kept a couple she thought would be good trades...after about 30 minutes, you would hear groups of girls scream loudly...this meant that the bride to be found the dress of her dreams...these screams added to the pressure, because you wanted to be the one sceaming with the perfect dress.

so we split up and walked around looking at dresses girls were trying on..if we thought whitney might like one, we would stand around, see if they wanted to keep it...ask them...or stalk them out and keep asking them...i did this a couple of times, but even if the girl thinks the dress is average, she will keep it just in case...finally, we talked whitney into trying on the dresses she had in her hand from the beginning...come to find out, she LOVED the dress she grabbed from the start...and it looked amazing! you know a dress looks great when the other girls in the store walking around are complementing you on how great the dress looks...because there are a lot of girls trying on dresses that look pretty bad...so we knew it was a keeper! and yes, we all screamed to celebrate our success :) believe it or not, it only took us one hour to find the dress...that she had since the very beginning!!!

here is a pic of whit and trishelle waiting to go in the doors..it was pretty exciting...im just glad we found a dress...too bad i cant post a picture of it... :)