May and June 2019

Here are some random pictures from May and June 2019!

For Mother's Day we went and visited my sweet grandma in her new place at Seasons.  Emmy and Xander were there too, so it was pretty loud.  (I'm writing this in June 2020 and I miss seeing my grandma!  She hasn't been allowed visitors since March because of the coronavirus pandemic).

Dax had a cute little program with his 5th grade class.  It was all about America and the founding fathers and stuff.  It was really cute!  Dax is on the back row, on the left.  He did great!

 Dax's good buddy Eli was "James" in James and the Giant Peach at the Utah Children's Theater, and he did amazing!  I made them get a picture after.

We went up to the cabin of course, and I did some runs.  This is a picture of beach in May, the calm before the storm!  Its so peaceful but soon it will be crowded.

 We were at the cabin for Dax's birthday, and had a cake in his 11-year old honor!  My baby boy is getting so big! 

One of Olive's favorite thing to do at the beach is to chase Preston's remote control boat.  She chases it all around and sometimes she catches it!  It is hilarious and always entertains everyone at the beach with her antics.

 With Dax turning 11, he graduated from Cub Scouts!  Here he is at his final pack meeting!

And here he is crossing the bridge from Cub Scouts to boy Scouts!  (Turns out his 11-year old scout leaders were kind of slackers and then in 2020 the church dropped the scouting program, so it is pretty much a picture of Dax walking over the bridge from Cub Scouts to...not scouts.  But I digress...) 

Dax had a birthday party with his friends.  I took them all to see "Detective Pikachu" (I can't say that I recommend it, but the boys seemed to like it) at the movie theater, and then back to our house for cake and ice cream.  Happy Birthday buddy boy!

My dog is a giant wussie.  It was thunderstorm season, and Olive does not enjoy loud noises like thunder, fireworks, hairdryers, etc.  I found her one day hiding in the bottom of the closet in the kids' bathroom.  Poor doggie.

Occasionally I make the kids go on hikes with me.  Here is Cora and Daxton at Paddy's mine in Farmington.  It is kind of a steep hike, and it took a lot of convincing to get Cora up that hill, but she looks happy as can be in this picture! 

If you keep going up past the mine about half a mile, you come to a flag.  The kids refused to come up to it, so I ran up there real quick as they started down the trail.  LOOK HOW AMAZING!  It is a steep hike though. 

Another favorite activity for us in the summer is going to the movies.  We got free tickets from somewhere and they upgraded us to the luxury loungers.  Hard to go back to regular seats after this:

Cora talked Preston into getting her another Beta Fish.  We have killed more than our fair share of goldfish and beta fish so I wasn't too excited to see this little guy.  But Cora was, and named him Griff, and took very good care of him!  (Until she didn't).

Cora and Dax wanted fun summer hair.  So I helped them dye their hair with temporary colors, and it was fun!  Dax had started growing out his hair (I think to be like his cousins), and it was getting pretty long! 

One of my favorite things to do in the non-winter time is to go on trail runs with my doggie!  I am lucky to have lots of beautiful trails near enough to my house that I can walk/run to the trailheads.  Here area few pictures of my adventures!

 Looks like I am going to run straight up into the sky, doesn't it?

I make the kids do fun stuff with me in the summer sometimes, even though as they get older it is harder and harder to find things that everyone thinks will be fun.  I somehow got them all to come mini golfing with some free passes we had, and look, they are all smiling!  

Cora did a week long camp at the local kids' theater.  It was a "Greatest Showman" camp, and she loves all the songs from that show so she enjoyed herself immensely.   Sing it, Corbs!

Our ward sometimes does "Fathers and Sons" camping weekend, and this year we decided to invite a family of girls up with us to the cabin.  Arden and Cora are friends with the two younger girls, and we let their older sister bring a friend, so between all those little girls and the two mommies there were a lot of girls in the cabin! 

Unfortunately Saturday was too cold to go to the beach.  We just hung out and then we went to the park, and all the girls played on this swinging thing for at least an hour, despite the fact that several of them are teenagers.  It was hilarious.  I think it was their favorite thing they did all weekend.

Sunday was warmer, and after church we had fun at the pool!  It was a really fun weekend, and I'm sure we had at least as much fun as the boys, and also got to sleep in real beds.  :)

 Our house is pretty in the summer too.  My favorite time of day is sunset time.

 I ran the Heber Half Marathon the last weekend in June.  It was so pretty right before the race!

I had a good race, and beat my course record!  But there are too many fast people out there so I only came in 5th in my age group.  But it was still a fun race!

I guess that is about it for May and June 2019!  

Boston Marathon Trip 2019

So, back to 2019...ah, simpler times.  So I had qualified for the 2019 Boston Marathon and made it in the race!  We had just spent lots of time (and $$) in Hawaii, but I figured it would probably be the last time I would ever run Boston, so I convinced Preston to make a long weekend of it and just him and me headed for Bean Town.  I was sad the kids wouldn't come, but they had missed enough school with Hawaii that we left them home with my parents.  

We (of course) took the red-eye flight because it is the cheapest, and so landed in Boston about 6 a.m. the day before the race, sooo tired.  I can't sleep on airplanes!  We got our luggage and headed for our hotel.  We decided to stay downtown this time to avoid long post-race journeys.  It was super nice to be close to all the action. We found some breakfast and then headed down to the race expo!  Here is the finish line!  See you tomorrow finish line (hopefully)!

Yipee!  It is such a fun atmosphere to just hang out downtown with all of the other racers.  The atmosphere is just electric, and it is fun to feel like a real "runner."  (Writing this in June 2020 I sure miss that feeling!)

Here is the front of the finish line.

I've always loved unicorns since I was a little girl, so it is nice that the symbol for the marathon is the unicorn.

I had two important goals for the Expo:  (1) get the Adidas Celebration Jacket (the jacket that pretty much everyone who runs Boston gets and wears around, and (2) find a 2019 version of Spike the Unicorn, so my Spike from my 2017 Boston Marathon who sits in my office at work can have a friend.  We headed to the HUGE Adidas shop at the expo, and there was not a single Spike to be found.  The Expo had already been going for three days, and it as the very last day.  I asked one of the workers, and he said they had completely run out of Spikes on Saturday afternoon.  I was so sad!

I thought I had seen a small Adidas pop-up store near the finish line, so I made Preston walk all the way back out there on the off-chance that there might be a Spike there.  It wasn't open yet (it was still before 10 a.m.) so we stalked around and waited, but my patience was rewarded!  There were a few Spikes hidden in a basket!  You guys, I know this sounds dumb, but I was so happy to see this little guy!

The whole city is decorated for the race, see this huge sign on the top of this building?

We hung out and had lunch near the finish line, and ate on the patio so we could people watch all the runners hanging around.  On our way back to the hotel we were wandering through Copley Square, and they were having a presentation with last year's winners.  2018 was the race with the horrible weather (I didn't run it that year) that Des Linden won.   I think she is the best, so I made Preston stop and listen.  It was really interesting, they talked about what motivates them, and even their favorite pre-race food.  The men's winner, Yuki Kawauchi, also was there, and he didn't speak English but had a translator.  He was really funny, and eats Japanese curry before every race!  It was fun for me as a fangirl, though I think Preston was getting kind of bored by then.

I had COMPULSIVELY been checking the weather for days and weeks, deathly afraid that it would be horrible like it had been in 2018.  I had brought tons of rain gear and started obsessing about what to wear to the race.  After a rest and short nap, we walked around Boston Common and Boston Public Gardens.  The blossoms were out and it was so pretty!

I checked the weather abut every four seconds at dinner (pasta!  Yum!), and woke up race morning to pouring rain and lightning.  YAAAY!  I got all suited up and tied plastic bags over my running shoes to try and keep them dry and headed to the buses.  I didn't bring my phone because I didn't want to carry the extra weight of it 26.2 miles, but I so much wish I had a picture of all of the crazy runners heading to the buses in ponchos and garbage bags and almost everyone looked hilarious with giant plastic bags tied over their feet. 

By the time we finished the long bus ride to Hopkinton, the rain had slowed down quite a bit.  The bus let us off between the start line and the athlete's village.  One of the volunteers told me the the athlete's village was a giant pit of mud, so I just hung out at the half-way point, got in a porta potty line, and waited for my wave. 

The rain had pretty much stopped so I took off all of my extra plastic outer layer and headed for the corrals when the called.  AAAH!  I was trying to hit 3:45 or less, so I wanted to keep my pace around 8:30.

The first few miles were really good!  I felt great, and was a little ahead of pace since the first few miles were downhill.  I didn't feel tired at all until mile 8, I started feeling it a little tired, and had a few seconds of panic that there were still 18.2 miles to go! 

The crowds were again amazing, despite the bad weather earlier in the morning!  I was so impressed by the sheer number of people cheering all along the course.  We hit Wellesley, which is the halfway point, and home of the famous scream tunnel.  I hit the halfway point at 1:51, and felt really good!  I knew the hills were coming though!  I felt like I was running within myself and saving some for the end so I was hopeful I could meet my goal.

I of course slowed down a little going up those dang Newton Hills, but I was pretty proud of myself for never stopping to walk at all, though Heartbreak was a lot longer than I remembered it being!  When I got to the top of Heartbreak Hill still on pace, I felt great!  The rain had never started up again, and the sun came out and I was actually pretty warm as it was very HUMID.  But I was ready to start pushing!   I ran down the other side of Heartbreak Hill as fast as I could....and promptly got a massive cramp in my right calf.  OHNOOOOO!

I slowed down and tried to stretch it out, and the cramp went away.  I started running again and it seemed okay, but as soon as I would try to increase my speed a little, it would come back!  ARRGGH!  Those last 5 miles, which were supposed to be my fastest, were a struggle to keep around a 9:00/mile pace.  I had to stop two or three times to try and stretch the cramp out, but nothing worked!  I was so bummed as not only was I going slow, but I was also suffering so much that I wasn't able to enjoy the atmosphere and the crowds, which are 3-4 rows thick those last few miles.  Those last 5 miles seemed to last forever, and I knew I'd never make my 3:45 time, and now it was just about making it to the finish line.

Preston was trying to watch for me, but here is the only picture he got of me, which was right in the middle of my struggles, and kind of blurry.  I'm that girl in the purple shirt and black shorts.

I FINALLY turned right on Hereford, and my hat blew off my head.  I didn't even think about turning around to look for it because I knew if I stopped I'd never get started again.  I turned left on Boyleston, gritted my teeth and tried to just hang in there until the finish line.  My official time was 3:53, which was disappointing!  But I guess I am not destined to run a fast race at Boston.  At least I hung in there to the finish!

As I was walking through the finisher's area, collecting my medal and my post-race snacks, it started POURING rain.  I was soooo happy that the hotel was close by.  I hobbled over there and squished my wet self into the elevator, and finally, blessedly sat down on a chair in my hotel room.

Is there any better feeling that sitting down when you are completely exhausted?  It is amazing. 

I enjoyed the sitting down immensely, but then I started getting really cold since I was soaking wet, so talked myself into getting up and into the shower.  A nice hot shower is a pretty good feeling too.

Preston eventually found his way to our hotel, and we headed back out to look around at the finish area.  It was really windy so we didn't last long.  We wandered around in search of food, but most things had a long wait, so we just got some takeout from somewhere and spent the rest of the evening enjoying sitting down wand watching TV in the hotel.

Here was the view out our hotel window.  Not great, but the hotel was really nice (Boston Park Plaza).  Someday I'd like to go back if I ever run Boston again. 

We were headed home the day after the race, but ran round the Freedom Trail a little before we headed for the airport.

Old North Church! 

I felt fine and wasn't too sore that day so it was nice to be able to walk around the city all day and enjoy ourselves.  We saw most of the sights but didn't take very many pictures for some reason.

After that it was back to the airport for our flight home.  Thanks Mom and Dad for watching the kids for us, it was a fun trip!!!