School of Mud

For my friend Brandi and I the Lake Irvine Mud Run was the School of Mud! We learned a lot of great lessons this weekend... 

First lesson was that 12:30 is not early enough to leave home and miss that crazy LA traffic! What should have been a 4 hour drive took us almost 7!  

Even mini cadburry eggs were not enough of a distraction to keep us from wanting to climb out the windows.  As the freeway was doubling as a parking lot, we did a chinese fire drill and swapped drivers, from the middle lane no less! Brandi was impressed my aggressive driving and multi map tasking skills!!

We were good little students and went to bed before midnight. Of course Brandi was out a bit before this night owl, but who's keeping track?

As with a lot of schools you have to pay to go to, the uniforms are important. A last minute change in the weather prompted a quick trip to Target. After 20 minutes in the hotel lobby borrowing scissors and a little creativity, we sucessfully dismantled our cute short sleeve tops and had come up with these.   We weren't envious at all of the guys who's ENTIRE uniform solely consisted of duct tape! I don't even want to consider the process of removing it! 

Luckily our only textbook was this map!

It was easy to tell where our class was

Some lessons were learned the hard way, like don't be the first one through an obstacle unless you don't mind being the groups guinea pig! That lesson was taken in by Brandi with a super graceful face plant into the deep hole in the middle of our first mud puddle! 

Still she couldn't be any cuter, even covered in mud!

After that we weren't in too much of a hurry, and stopped for pictures along the way.

We were glad we remembered the lesson every little girl learns in elementary school, that shorts are always recommended under your skirts if you wanna play on the playground!

I learned that its harder than you think to get a mud fight started!  The only thing I ended up with were a few smears of mud on my face compliments of some new friends we made!

While water slide tunnels are tons of fun, landing in pool of muddy water thats over your head, well that part might be a little overrated...just sayin'!

Oh and so was scrambling up the slippery sides in sopping wet clothes...

Brandi was just glad that our shirts were closer to the same color again!

I learned that I might have some mud snob tendencies, I only like certain kinds.  For example the watery mud...I'm not a huge fan of it, and it smells.  Really, really, bad!

We learned great techniques for getting through the swampy mud parts, and how to get unstuck without loosing a shoe!  The guy to the left of us actually lost both shoes in the muck mid stride.  About 100 yards further along I saw a big guy trying to finish out the course in just socks!

This was a test to see if Brandi had learned anything in our first exam.  She got an A for letting someone else blaze the trail.

And by the end of our 3 mile class, she also got an A in climbing super slippery mud mountains!

I got an A in running down them without falling!

One of the most fun lessons we learned was that even a 5 foot tall bubble bath can't get you clean after the kind of mud we'd been through! Even our poor camera lens had seen cleaner days by this point, and we had nothing clean to wipe it with!

When class was out we were still smiling!

We learned not to underestimate the power of laundry detergent! Believe it or not, the white shoes and skirt look as good as new, but the socks and shirt were casualties of the day.  

But the lessons didn't end with the mud.  I learned that dreams really do come true. I actually found a Cafe Rio for lunch!! Brandi said my excitement at seeing it was almost embarrassing to watch, but whatever! I've only seen them in Utah and their salads are my absolute favorite!

I learned that I am not alone in my OCD tendencies.  Our next stop was for my first ever trip to Ikea.  The organization ideas there had my head spinning with possibilities for hours! Next up, South Coast Plaza Mall....We learned there are perks not to having too many friends in our car,  there was just enough room in the Jeep for all our finds!

Wandering aimlessly though the gas station collecting little snacks for the drive home confirmed my weakness for sweets.  If this weekend class was on being healthy I had just failed. But lucky for me it was the school of mud so I was completely entitled to be a pig if I wanted!!