Time to run!?

 Alas, as spring settles upon us we come to the realization that even though it's still snowing every other day, it will be 95 degrees soon and we should get out and run while we have the chance!  With that in mind I ran my first half of the year.  I decided to do Salt Lake because I have done the bike tour several years and thought it would be a fun course to run.  The quarter of a mile uphill (seems so insignificant before and after) at mile 12 seems a bit sadistic (poor marathoners at mile 25), but I suppose somewhere in the world there are runners who don't get to choose from hundreds of courses that are all mostly downhill.  But are there really runners in Nebraska?  I'll probably never know.

Lindsey was kind enough to snap a few pictures even though she had to be left out of the running...apparently discouraged at 8.5 months pregnant.

With the child in tow she did still actually run all the way across Liberty Park so that she could see me on both sides.  This probably was more work than my whole half marathon, kudos to any woman out there who has ever been pregnant!

Brent and Ashley showed their support by wearing fluorescents and spandex, or they may have done the bike tour that morning...I'm not sure which.

Happy Running!

He's a fighter!

We haven't been awesome at taking photo's of my growing belly but we do have a few. This first one is from week 20. We had just found out that we were having a boy and Jace's first words were "Yes! We can get dirt bikes!" I started showing at the very first of December - this picture is from Christmas time.


This picture is a couple weeks after the last one - at 22 weeks. By this time he was starting to move so that Jace could feel him. That was fun.


Then I missed a couple weeks - ok maybe 10 and I became huge:).

This is today. If you are asking yourself - "Does she only have 1 kid in there?" I wouldn't be suprised - some people are bold enough to ask me that - ok alot of people. Don't you worry I make sure to let them know that at my appointment on Monday I was 31.5 weeks and I measured 31.5 cm.

Maybe it has something to do with the fact that I only have 1 pair of Maternity dress pants so I wear a lot of dresses to work and this is what I look like in a dress - oh well. The funny thing about wearing a dress is that he moves ALL THE TIME!! but when I am standing the bottom of my dress will ripple as he is moving around. Funny!

Like I said he is a fighter - we watched a 2.5 hr movie on Friday night and he moved the entire duration of it. He was moving like crazy before hand and then for like an hour afterwards. It could have been longer but I won't let him steal my sleep from me yet. Although he does have a tendency to wake Jace up at night!

Our emergency trip to Puerto Rico

 Our emergency trip to Puerto Rico started about a month ago when Lindsey suddenly came to the realization that our lives were about to end.    It went something like this... "We're going to have a baby and we are never ever going to be able to go anywhere ever again!!!"  So, 3 days later we had rounded up our friends Ryan and Melissa and hammered out a battle plan to get us to somewhere with warm temperatures, good beaches, and sunny skies.  Fortunately we enjoyed wild success with all 3 criteria. 

Our first stop of the trip (after a brief respite on the sunny beach at the hotel) was the El Yunque rain forest.  The only rain forest in the US National Forest system for those of you interested in random trivia.

 This really sums up our entire trip:

 La Coca falls near the entrance of El Yunque.

 The view of  Old San Juan from the observation tower of San Cristobal fort.

 I think someone was shooting at me while I was in the turret.

 Someone had to keep the place from falling down, I mean, it's like 600 years old.

 Eating in the streets of Old San Juan while Ryan and Melissa were art shopping.  I guess somebody had to be cultured...

 Passion fruit and coconut ice cream.  It was more like a sherbet, but it was really good.  And, as Lindsey pointed out, it had way less fat than normal ice cream!:)

Our favorite evening pass-time was hanging out on the deck, the room was kind of cold because the air conditioning was set at 72. :)

 A friend we found outside the hotel room during a walk.

 Our sand castle.  Thank you KFC chicken buckets!  We got a few funny looks and people asking where the kids were...

Carlos Rosario beach on Culebra island.  This was our best snorkeling of the trip.  We saw a ray and tons of different kinds of fish.  Ryan and Melissa thought they saw a whale, but it turned out to be a turtle.

 Okay, I have to admit I'm kind of a sucker when it comes to buying things for kids.  I had fairly successfully kicked the habit after an intervention years ago, but it just became too much.  I figured I did pretty well since I only bought one thing and it was something practical. 

We couldn't have asked for a better vacation.  Even though I'm pretty sure we'll still be able to make it farther than the grocery store with only one kid, it was a lot of fun.  We decided it should be mandatory to take at least a week on a tropical island when the temperature in Utah drops below 0.

Boston

The Massachussetts coast from the ferry on the way to Salem.  We decided we would love to move here and live in one of these houses.  Does anyone have several million dollars they would like to chip in?  You could come stay any time you wanted.

 A small lighthouse on the now defunct port at Salem. 

 I don't think we quite caught the height of the colors, but there were still a lot of them around as you can see.  This is the graveyard in Salem with some important people, right next to where they erected a monument to the vicitms of the witch trials.

 We did a candlelight tour with the towns historian.  It was really interesting.  He also pointed out to us after the tour the house where Brigham Young's daughter was staying when they received news that Joseph Smith had been martyred.  In case you were wondering, only one person lit their cup on fire during the tour.

 The Green Monstuh (the tour guide made sure we were pronouncing it correctly, you don't pronounce R's in Boston he insisted.)

 Boston from our Charles River cruise.

 We walked passed the TD Garden quite a few times.  The building was really ugly so I thought I would just take a picture of the nice Celtics sign out front.

 The Bunker Hill monument.  It's actually on Breeds Hill in case you haven't been exposed to too much Boston History.  They're doing some restoration work (thus the scaffolding) so we couldn't actually go inside.

 A sample of the Boston scenery with the bridge modeled after the Bunker Hill monument showing in the background.

 The finish for the Boston Marathon in case you couldn't read it.  I was trying to take the picture without getting hit by a car...

Layton Half

Well, not much to report, but since I've decided to be better about blogging I decided our half this weekend was blog worthy. It was the first year for this half so they struggled a bit doing things like having water to drink. You know, just the minor things... :) There was a girls brunch at I-Hop afterwards with Lindsey, her mom, and Camie and Laurel, some friends who were in the race as well. Not as good as the breakfast burritos I made at home for myself I'm sure.


Lindsey at the finish line.




It was perfect weather for a race. A bit overcast and about 58 degrees by the time we finished.

A hiking we will go...

Okay, I don't know that it was really a hike, more like a Sunday afternoon stroll. We went up to the Ogden overlook up near Snowbasin ski resort. While not as vibrant as during the motorcycle ride last week, the colors were still pretty cool. We kind of felt like we should have brought the whole family along for pictures since that's what everyone else was doing. Too late, just the four of us...

Ogden and the Great Salt Lake in the background.

Our family picture. It took forever to get a picture where Lindsey wasn't screaming or trying to run away. :)

A proud moment for me. Our little watermelon which I had nurtured so carefully finally ripened. I'm sure there's a better way to know, but I ended up having to pick it when one end just popped open. There's one more we are hoping will ripen before it gets too cold.

Today's Ride

It was decided that we needed one last hurrah before the riding season was over this year. We have put a lot more miles on our bicycles this year than we have the motorcycle so maybe this was the first and last hurrah. Either way, it was a nice day ride. The colors have started to change and we couldn't have asked for better weather. We are pleased to report that at no time during this ride did Chad or his motorcycle break down. I wasn't quite so lucky, but that's another story...

These were taken on the fly, as you can tell I'm sure, but hopefully you get an idea of some of the changing colors.

We met up with Mom and Dad near the start of the Mirror Lake highway(coming from Wyoming.) I think everyone had a great time, despite some hind end aches.

Lindsey's view of the road.