The big Race day!

This is the start of the race. I had just gone over the big mat, that activated the chip on my shoe to keep track of my progress during the race. I am in ORANGE, but not for long!!
This is at the 6 mile mark. Sister and the gang saw me here and I stopped for a quick drink, and chat.



Then I had to get back at it, because I was not even half way done. I also gave sister and them my long sleeve shirt, I warmed up rather quickly considering the 40 degree temps.

Here is the 12 mile mark. I was still smiling even though the last 4 miles were all up hill.......CRAZY. I waved, but kept going. At that point if I stopped, my body would have given out. I was starting to hurt in places that I would have never fathomed. How on earth was I to know that the tops of my feet would be so sore?

Here I am coming into the last 1/2 mile. Still running, although I do not know how. I am guessing adrenaline. The crowd was yelling and cheering, the music was loud, and I had a cheering section of 8 right in the corner. How could you not run after that?

I saw Traci first thing after I crossed and picked up my loot. Check out that medal! I am so excited about that especially. I was starting to feel the race as soon as I stopped. You can so see it in my face, I was starting to get stiff. (did not stretch like I should have after the fact)



Chase finally found me in this one. I was so glad to be done, and I was ready to go home.
Another picture, where I am clearly in pain! Haha But so happy to see Jonathan Anderson! He came to the race to cheer us on, such a good friend. We had not seen him in 10 years.




Cason came to the race to cheer too. This is a great picture of us. I was glad to see him, but he did not talk much. Sister said that he was overwhelmed by the huge volume of people that were there. Did I tell you that there were 13,000 that ran the race? Um, yeah massive amounts of people were cheering on friends and family too.



A better picture with Chase.
Me and sista.
Traci and I in the parking lot, right before we went back to the hotel. So proud and happy with our awesome medals! I was just actually happy to still be standing, and moving. I am glad to say that for my first 1/2 marathon, this was a wonderful experience. Will I run Austin again? Probably not, those hills were killers. But for my first time 3:13 was not bad. I am happy with my time, but the next one will be under 3 hours.

I did it!! Or We did it!!

Traci and I are back from our trip to Austin. WE had so much fun, a ton of good food, a lot of good visiting, and inside jokes now, and of course the RACE!! And let me say that the greatest guy in the entire world, drove us down and back. I will post pictures in a day or two, or as soon as I get them from my sister and Traci. It was an experience, that I will never forget, and I am so glad that I did it with Traci.

Prayer

I have been thinking a lot about prayer lately. I am not good at it. I am really good at staying in touch with all of my friends, a little too good, but cannot find the time to remember to pray. I know that at some point everyone goes through this and now it is my turn. I am just hoping to choose the right path, the one that leads me closer to God, and eternal life. I am not one to be preachy about things, because I do not see myself as being a great Christian influence, but I need to be. I am raising my children to spend their eternity with God, but I do not feel like I am a good influence. There is something wrong with that. I read the book "The Power of a Praying Wife"
and loved it. For a little while I was able to say the prayers and live the book, but then life got busy. So now with all of the complications of life, shouldn't I be more focused on prayer? The answer is yes, but how? A new challenge..........

Can you believe there are only 2 weeks left?

Well, I cannot believe it. Or maybe I just do not want to believe it, but here it is. I have been working my tail off with my trainer, who I love, but she has taken a day job now, so I am switching.
I am now going to start training with the owner, Haley. I have no doubt that she is great at what she does, but the fear of the unknown gets me every time. I have made a lot of progress, one of my goals was to be able to see my collar bones, and now I can. It is a small victory, but a victory none the less. None of my clothes fit......YAY! It is a good day when your sweats are too big. But now, I face the problem of buy new stuff or wait until I get all the way down to my "perfect" size. I guess it is a good problem to have. We are gonna have one of those weeks, you know the one. One or more of the kids is sick, there is nothing for dinner, and the laundry keeps adding up. We have already got the kid being sick, Emma has come down with the seasonal allergy stuff for like the third time in the past month, and the laundry is never finished around here. Tonight she got sick and now there is more laundry. Never ending cycle. It is funny, when I wanted to be a stay at home mom, I never thought about the sick times. And here we are again with Emma and her sickness. I am starting to think that we may need to head back up to the allergy doctor for a reevaluation of her diagnosis. More of that later.

I signed Abbi Grace up for preschool on Friday. I am a little sad, but I know she wants to go. I have been telling her that she will be going to Em's old school, but she does not believe me. She just laughs and says "momma this is Emma's school, not Abbi's" We will see what that will be like next year. I am nervous for her, I keep thinking of her as being this tiny little girl, and not my big 3 year old girl. I never knew it would be so hard to let my "baby" grow up. I did not intend to over baby her, it just sort of happened I guess. I have gotten better lately, but deep down, I miss her being a baby. I miss it with both of them. That new baby smell, the way they stretch, the sweet kisses, the noises they make when they sleep, all of it. I however do NOT, I repeat, do NOT want to have another baby. I just cannot commit to having 3 kids. And quoting Melanie "if you have 3, you really need to go ahead and have 4 kids. Keeps it all fair." So to that I say nope. We are good with the 2.


I never knew that my nervous rambling would be evident in a blog format, so for all of you reading this, I am sorry for the jumping all over the place. But if you know me, then you should have expected me to be nervous and rambly.

Changing the Outside

A picture of me and Erin from the George Strait concert


So for the past two weeks, I have been working out like crazy to get ready for the half. I signed up for 6 weeks with a personal trainer, thinking that after that time frame, I would be done. NOPE, I just love going up there and working out. It is funny how something you avoid for so long, can become a passion. The results are already noticeable, and of course once you make progress it is hard to stop.

The half is a month away. Oh yeah, One full month. I still cannot fathom running 13.1 miles in a huge crowd of others doing the same thing. I am excited because Chase is going to go with me, and Melissa and James and the kiddos are going to meet us there too. Which is alot of pressure, but it will be fun. I am trying to take more pictures to post on here. I just have not been in the picture taking mood lately.

A new Year

So hear we are, January 14, 2008. I have already decided that this year is going to be great. My race is getting closer, and that scares me to death, but I am now going to a personal trainer to get in top condition. I am not sure how well it will go, but so far after 2 sessions, things are looking good. We have had a busy few weeks in January. School started back up last Monday, and honestly, I was starting to think that we needed to move to wherever they have year round school. I love my girls so much, but wow 2 weeks is a long time, especially since Emma loves school so much. There was one day where she sat on the sofa and cried, because she was missing PE. I felt badly for her, but she soon admitted that she really was all of her buddies at school. I was missing cleaning the house without the girls fighting the entire time.

This past weekend was awesome. I have now been 33 for 3 full days, and it is not too bad. Friday (the actual day) started off nice, I went and ate lunch with Emma at school. Which was so cool, because the whole class knew it was my birthday, and when I went into the room, everyone yelled "Happy Birthday Emma's mom" I of course loved it. After that I took Abbi to play with Austin, so that I could take my Friend Carol to Walmart. I know that sounds odd, but Carol has progressive MS, and is confined to a wheel chair. She is basically a shut in, with some small trips out. So anyway, then I had to go to Kroger to pick up stuff to make dinner. This is where my day just went thru the roof. All of our kiddos were here for dinner. All 5 of them. Brandon had told me earlier that he would cook dinner(best gift ever) so I let him. Erin brought gifts for the kids(big hit) and Tommy played with the kids the entire night(big job) Then after dinner, they cleaned up the kitchen. Can you say Best Birthday ever? Chase got the best cake, but of course it is not on my lean out plan, so it was just a small piece for me. After we got stuff put up, we headed over to Glowgolf, to play miniature glow in the dark golf. So much fun. I have the greatest family. We spent the whole night just laughing and having fun.

Saturday night Erin and her roomie Allison took me to see George Strait for my birthday. I do not think I stopped smiling the entire night. It was so fun. I think that this years birthday will be so hard to top. But what a great start to a new year, I only wish that every year started off like this one.

Happy 2008

I cannot believe that the year is already over. We have had a rough couple of weeks, the girls have been sick since before Christmas. The nurse said that there is a viral cold going around, and the symptoms are fever for 3-5 days, and a cough for 2 weeks. Well, of course we got the full force of this one. Emma started off with it on the 22nd, and then Abbi came down with it last Thursday. The biggest deal of it though was that we were unable to go to mom and dad's for our family christmas. This is the first time EVER that we did not go to Texas for christmas. To say the least, I was bummed. Luckily my wonderful cousin and her husband live down the road, so we took them our gifts, and they drove them to Texas for us. They also brought ours back from Texas, and so we had christmas again at our house. Emma and Abbi got a WAD of cash from Vava, and Emma was very proud of it. She took that money today, and got her ears pierced. I was so proud of my sweet girl. She got up there and they double gunned her. She did not whimper or cry. She was so excited. She told me today that she wanted to do this so badly, that she would never ask for anything again. That lasted of course, about 10 minutes. We fully intended to buy Abbi a toy, since sis was getting earrings, so Emma(the one who never wanted anything else) decided that we should buy Squawkers Macal. That silly talking bird, which I was against before chirstmas(price tag of $60) but today at $15, it was a go. It is really cool, but I am glad that we will not be bringing anymore toys in this house until birthday time. Speaking of, I have 9 more days at my wonderful age of 32. I honestly think that I am going thru a mid 30's crisis. I just do not want to get old and older looking. So, what do you do? I got my hair high lighted to look younger, and of course I HATE IT! Why do I think that I can change the outside to make the inside feel younger? That is a good question, maybe some of you can answer that for me. So, Jodi take a stab at that one for me!