Fall Running

Now that my marathon was over, I was free to run however much (or however little) I wanted, as fast (or as slow) as I wanted.  I went on a few fall time runs, which are pretty much my most favorite kind of run.  It was nice to be able to stop and take a picture or two (or twenty) and not be worried that I was messing up my average pace of the run or anything like that.  Here are some of my favorite pictures from my fall runs:

Bear Lake running (Fish Haven Canyon):

Mueller Park Canyon (Bountiful, Utah):

The leaves were so beautiful this year!!  I think they were brighter than any year I can remember.  Now that it has been a couple of months since the leaves were bright, I miss them!  

Family pictures!

We were overdue for a family picture, so I finally bit the bullet and scheduled one for fall.  Here are some of my favorites (notice Olive came with us too!):

Aren't we pretty?

Soccer and Pelicans

Dax played soccer in the fall.  He is pretty fast and improved thorough the season.  Here he is on his way down the sideline one game:

At one game, we were setting up our camp chairs, when we noticed a big flock of birds flying above us.  They seemed larger than seagulls, and after they got closer we figured out they were pelicans.  Like, hundreds of pelicans.  Flying around Bountiful?

I had never seen so many pelicans flying around together!  So, I watched some soccer,

 And I watched some pelicans. 

Dax had a good season and will get to stay with his same team in the spring.  They were pretty good and won most of their games, which Dax always enjoys.  I will admit as a parent it is more fun to watch winning games also :)

Slime!

One of Arden's favorite activities this summer/fall was making slime.  Yes, SLIME.  Apparently it's a thing.  She tried several recipes for slime, including such ingredients as shaving cream, contact solution, lotion, glitter, and lots and lots of Elmer's glue.  She wasn't the only one on this slime kick, because several local stores started selling large containers of Elmer's and placing them near the cash registers so little kids could be sure to spot it and beg their moms to buy more glue to support their slime habits.  

Arden used up a lot of glue and monopolized a lot of my tupperwares storing various colors and textures of slime.  Here is Arden and her buddy A with their latest slime creation they made one random September day:

I will admit, I won't be sorry to see this particular fad go away.  Much messier than fidget spinners!

Huntsville Marathon

After I ran Boston in April, I was less than thrilled with my time for that race.  I decided that I would run maybe one more marathon and try to go faster.  I didn't want to be hobbling around for a week like I was after the Big Cottonwood Marathon and its huge downhill, so I decided on a race that had less downhill, but let's face it, I still like running down hills.  So, I chose the Huntsville Marathon.  Still downhill, but not as steep and not as much.  The race was in mid-September.

The weather was clear, but cold at the top.  It is a small race, and they had a heated tent at the start, which was AWESOME!  My training had gone well and I was ready to kick this thing's butt.

The race started out great!  I was cruising along feeling great!  I was keeping myself on a PR pace, and my splits were all pretty even.  I did the half right at 1:40, which was on pace to break my previous PR of 3:34.  I was feeling great!  One of my songs for this race was called "Invincible" from Skillet, and that is how I was feeling!

Right up until mile 19.  At mile 19 one of my knees started to hurt.  It wasn't too terrible, but just a twinge with every step.  I hadn't had any trouble with it on any of my training runs, so I just tried to push through it, but it threw me off a little and slowed me down.  The knee pain kind of came and went for the rest of the race.

Also right about the same time (mile 18 or 19) the course turns from mostly south direction (with not much noticeable wind) to a mostly westerly direction, with an EVIL horrible headwind.  My spirits were already dropping because of my knee, and this didn't help my situation.  I put my head down and kept going, but I was no longer having any kind of fun.  I felt very...vincible.  (Is that the opposite of In-vincible?).  Vinced, even.

The last 6 or 7 miles were a slow slog and seemed to last twice as long as the first 20.  The race organizers tried to keep it interesting for us, and even had musicians along the course those last few miles, including bagpipers, karaoke singers, trumpet players, etc., which was kind of fun.  But the wind was louder in my ears that most anything else, and the balloons someone had put along the course were flying practically horizontally and made me feel worse instead of better :).

FINALLY (finally finally) the finish line was in sight and I did my best to push hard to the finish, but I was disappointed in my time, which was 3:38 officially (I forgot to turn off my watch at the finish for a minute or so).  So happy to be done!  I didn't meet my goal of a PR, so that was a bummer, but oh well. 

I hobbled over and grabbed all the snacks I could carry and headed for a patch of grass to refuel myself.  After I ate and drank everything I could get my hands on and had been resting for a while, I started feeling better.  I headed over to my car, passing by the results tent.  I decided to get my printout, since my race was still a qualifying time for Boston (my BQ time was 3:45 instead of 3:40 now that I am 40 whole years old).  The lady who handed me my printout pointed out that I had placed third in my division so I should stick around for the awards ceremony.  

Wait, what?  This race was smaller than I thought!  Since the awards were only about 15 minutes away, I went and got more food and sat back down to wait.  Behold!  I get a medal and a little plastic thingie that I now have no idea what to do with!

This race was right during registration for Boston 2018, so I could have signed up for the upcoming Boston marathon.  However, we don't have the money to go to Boston every year, so I let it go by.  This race also qualifies for Boston 2019, so I have until this September to decide if I might want to do that one. 

Or maybe I'll never run a full marathon again. 

Still haven't decided :)

Dog Fish Breath

So, my dog is a dog.  She eats weird stuff.  

But one day I came home from work to find her with this weird pinkish gunk all around her mouth, which SMELLED AWFUL:

It took me a minute to figure out what happened, but once I went in the playroom (where she takes naughty things to eat), I found a now-empty can of goldfish food. 

What?  What kind of crazy dog would think that eating goldfish food is a good idea. 

Mine, I guess. 

She had fish breath for a week.

Moose on the Beach

We took a trip to the cabin the weekend after Labor Day, and on the way back from the beach we spotted this:

Its a moose at the beach!  Oh, okay, he is technically in the water, but still.  The water was so smooth he had a reflection. 

We pulled over, waverunners and all, and snapped quite a few pictures.  He was nice and gave us quite a few poses:

 Say cheese!

I love mooses! 

I won't tell you how right after this, our car overheated.  Which wouldn't be too big a deal except we had just spent like $1500 bucks fixing an overheating problem (replacing the head gasket) THE WEEK BEFORE.  And that was its second repair to fix the overheating problem.  It was pretty much a disaster and a huge pain in our butts. 

But hey, the moose was pretty cool, right??

Pinewood Derby

Hey there, blogosphere!  Wow, where were we?  Late summer/early fall?  Okay, then.  Dax has been in scouts for a year now, and finally had his very first official pinewood derby.  Him and his dad got his car ready (Preston helped shape it, Dax did the decorating solo).  He wanted a red car, but his decorating was kind of last-minute and the only red paint we had was washable kids paint...which didn't cover very well and ended up looking kind of pink....but he put a bunch of dinosaur stickers on it to make it more manly and off they went!

I had to drop off Cora at soccer and pick up the gymnastics car pool, so I missed the fun, but Preston took pictures.  Here is Dax with the car:

 Before the racing started, they handed out awards.  Here is Dax, showing off his many shiny belt loops.  Oooooh!

 Dax and the other scouts were juuuust a little excited:

 Dax's car actually did pretty well.  He won a couple of his races and came in second a lot.  He ended up taking home an award for the "Most Dinorific" car.  He seems happy about it.

All I can say is, hooray for the cub scout leaders!  They are awesome.  They put up with noise levels that should not be allowed and have to listen to way too many jokes relating to body functions, but somehow they keep showing up with smiles on their faces, and they do a great job of making things fun for the boys.  Mansions in heaven for each of them! 

First Day of School 2017

The great and terrible day that has been eagerly awaited or dreaded with fear had finally arrived.

No, not judgement day.  The first day of school.

The kids were ready for it, even if they said they weren't.  It was time.  As much as I enjoyed the no-actual-homework and loosey-goosey schedules, some structure was needed.  

Cora, for one, was actually really excited to go back to school.  And my Corbiecakes loves to strike a pose:

Dax was less excited for school to start, but he still liked his new shark backpack:

Arden was kinda half-and-half excited and dreading.  I can't believe it is her last year of elementary school!

 And here we all go!

Happy First Day of School!  Everyone found their classrooms okay, they are pros at this by now after all. 

Onward and upward!!

Summer Blitz

I seem to be falling farther and farther behind, so here comes a BIG SUMMER BLITZ to try and help me catch up.  Random pictures, ahoy.

I try to take the kids and do fun stuff every summer.  Once a couple of summers ago I took them mini golfing at Cherry Hill, and now they expect a trip every year.  It is always fun, though my kids are giant mini-golf CHEATERS.  Cora pretty much just puts her club on the ball and walks it to the hole.

Somewhere in the summer was the 4th of July!  We did the usual stuff...fireworks at the golf course, then the Riverdale Parade.  Here is a shot of the parade crew this year:

The kids were happy to "help" their cousin Emmy to get candy (except Dax.  Dax is all about getting candy for Dax and Dax alone).   Cora was very patriotic, and even went a step further and spilled this very red Otter Pop all over her blue and white shirt to make it red, white and blue!

Another essential summer day trip is to the planetarium.  The kids loved trying out the various exhibits, and especially liked to do the weather report from one of Saturn's moons and also liked to drive around the moon rover A/C cars. 

We of course made some more cabin trips.  We met some cousins there for a long weekend.  Cousins are the best!!

LaBeau's shakes aren't bad either.

My kids liked having their little baby cousin around.  She was just learning to walk, and the girls especially loved sitting in a circle and seeing who she would walk to.  Cora usually won, but Arden won this round:

We also love the aquarium!  I tried so hard to get a picture of a penguin swimming by, but I couldn't do it...it is right between the girls' legs.  Those penguins are speedy!

One day the kids got ambitious and decided to have a lemonade stand.  Only their mom is lame and had no lemonade mix.  So they had a treat stand instead.  They were out there for longer than i thought they would be, and made a few dollars thanks to nice neighbors!

 We also made a trip to the zoo.  Dax and this lion looked at each other for a while, but by the time I took a picture the lion had drifted back to sleep.  Still cool being so close to him. 

 This summer they had some scary visitors at the zoo, like this humongous tarantula.  Yuck.

One of Arden's favorite things to do over the summer was go to get shave ice at Bahama Bucks, a new place near us.  I like their Caribbean Cola (with Diet Coke of course). 

 We missed the demolition derby at the Weber County fair for some reason this year (was it earlier than normal?  It completely flew by me), so I took the kids to the Davis County fair to try and make amends.  There was no car crashing, but there was a little circus the kids liked, with trick ponies and a dog act and even a camel.

 They especially liked the sea lion show they had there.  Fun stuff!

 Over the summer Dax watched a lot of Youtube videos of kids who made movies with their toy dinosaurs, pretending they were real dinosaurs.  They often had their dinosaurs in "rivers" or other bodies of water.  Dax liked to play with his dinosaurs the same way, and dug a big hole and a river in our front yard and liked to go out and run the hose down it and pretend his dinosaurs were doing dinosaur stuff (pretty much eating each other) near/in a river.  Preston wasn't too happy about it.

On a later trip to the cabin we finally made it to the cave!  Still fun for me even though I have been in there so many times. 

We tried a new hike near Laketown that was supposed to lead to some springs.  We walked and walked and walked but didn't make it to the springs before we gave up and turned around.  We got to cross the stream a few times though, which was fun.  Maybe we will try again next year.

 What summer at the lake would be complete without one trip to see our favorite Spanglish thief?  We love Juanito Bandito!

 This year's show had new fancy TVs for backdrops for the first time.  They were fun to see. 

 And, in a move I will probably always regret, we stayed home to watch the eclipse.  It was going to be over 90% eclipse at our house, which I thought would be pretty much as good as a total eclipse. (94% is an "A," right?).  We went outside and saw the cool shadows on the sidewalk from the trees, all in the crescent shape of the eclipse:

 We made cereal box eclipse viewers to protect our little eyeballs from the sun:

And after it was over we went inside and watched CNN, where they had reporters in the "zone of totality."  I didn't realize how much cooler totality would be!  If I had known how much darker it got and the 360 degree sunset and all of that, I would have made the effort to drive a few hours and face the massive eclipse traffic jam!  Oh well, I hear there is another one coming to Utah in like 40 years.  Haha.