Sunday, April 24, 2011

It's Gone!!

All twenty plus inches of it!!!

A couple of quick shots of my hair before I chopped it off...Yikes am I really willing to part with this hair I have been growing since Drew was a baby?!!
I really have loved having it long...


The braid

My favorite stylist!


The new Doo!  I'm loving it!!

Salt Lake Half Marathon With The Girls!

We started the afternoon of picking up packets with lunch at my most favorite soup restaurant Zuppa's!!  I am seriously wishing we had one here in St. Georgie.  After lunch we headed to the expo to pick up our packets and to stock up on cheap running clothes...
Which would include our matchie outfits;)



  
Jess was kind enough to host us for the night so we could all carpool over to the race.  She kicked Danz and Claire out for the evening.  I ended up driving separate due to a jam packed weekend full of going to and fro.


Pre race pics




Aims in action 
Me right before my finish

We were running late...as usual.  We didn't start the race until 21 minutes after the gun.  You can see me as I am crossing the finish line(I'm the one with the white racer back and red shorts).  My time says 2hrs 8min 10 sec.  Translated to my actual time considering our actual start time at 1 hour 47 min and some change! A new personal record...only by a like 25 seconds, but it's a PR!! Woot!








Sissy was right by my side first thing.  She seriously just makes me smile.  I hope one day we can run one together:)

Poor Aims...there was a huge divet in the road and her foot twisted and sent her a tumbling down which left her with some pretty skinned up knees and a sore ankle.  She was one tough girl though...she got right up and it didn't even phase her.  She ran like a stallion that girl!!

proof of her toughness!!

After the race Dave, the kids and I met up and talked for a bit.  The kids were getting restless, so Dave headed for home with some of my crap and Aimee and I were on the lookout for Jess.  Little did we know Jess was enjoying  herself a lovely massage!  Dang...I missed out on the free masseuse this year...but oh don't you worry I will be all over that one next year! We headed back to the car and immediately I realized some of that crap I gave to Dave nearly a half an hour before had my car keys in it.  So the poor guy had to turn around and come back to let me in my car.  That man did some serious running around for me this weekend and I love him for it.  While we were waiting for my keys we chatted about the race and how we felt about it.  Initially Aimee's time was posted as quite a bit slower than we thought we had run.  My time wasn't even posted.  So we were kind of bummed at our performance initially until we checked our results online and we went right around the same time as last year.  I was happy with that!

After the race I totally forgot to get more pics of all of us together in our cute matchie outfits.  We all had a white racer back with the same brand of shorts, just different colors and headbands.  It was so much fun matching it up and doing this race together!

Monday, April 18, 2011

A Good Read...


My rating: 5 of 5 stars


FYI  Contains a few spoilers...



Wow!



This is a survical story about a Bombedier whose plane went down in the Pacific ocean. He survived many days a drift on the sea until he was found by Japanese soldiers. At that point he became a POW. He was a particulary special POW... He had been an olympic runner prior to the war. This ultimately helped him survive not only for his stature of body, but because of who he was to the American people.



I liked hearing about his running career, as running interest me these days. There were parts of his survival on his raft that testified to me that he was being watched over by God.



It was hard hearing of the cruelties of men. So, so, SOOOOO inhumane... It made me angry at first. Then when the writer continues Louie's story of how he overcomes his own anger towards the men who took him into the darkest hours of his life. I understood and remembered those men are men.



What a great man Louie Zamperini is. My favorite part was when he remembers his promise he made to God on the raft. He remembers and then the rain starts to fall again as it did when he nearly died of thirst. Chills I tell you!



Definitely a great read! A friend of mine brought out this good point: The other thing to take home from this book is to REMEMBER this story and others like it. To remember how this man was tortured, teased, dehumanized...There is never a time to put any human being through something like this. Not even if our national security depends on it.