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!