Cougar Crush

Chris says I'm not old enough to be a cougar but compared to this little hottie I am. I have developed a celebrity crush on Taylor Lautner. OMGsh.

The Big Event Shirt

Chris and I have been noticing a pattern forming. Shaun wears this shirt for every big event that does not require a tie. Where will we see it next? :)

Love it!

In my attempt to be healthy I bought some apples today. But if you are going to by apples, you have to buy caramel. I highly recommend Litehouse Caramel Dip - Low Fat. It is amazing!

FYI

Brittany is in labor! I think we'll have a new nephew in the morning!

FAMILY

So I'm very late with my posting but better late than never. Plus I have the excuse that I was exhausted after and I'm just now recovering:)

Chris finished his last final on Wednesday (the 10th) and we loaded up the car and left at 6am Thursday morning for Idaho. With a few stops along the way we drove to Boise and picked up Janae and her girls at the airport. We squeezed them into the Escape with us and we drove another 3 hrs to Stanley ID.

We had the next day to enjoy the family and watch the kids play. They all get along great and help each other out. We went to Redfish Lake and had a picnic and posed for pictures.

The girls, I wish I had a picture of all of us on my camera.

After lunch we explored some of the hot springs in the area.

Then we went back to the cabins and took a much needed nap. I slept, I'm guessing, from about 3pm til 7pm (Friday). I didn't sleep again until about 10pm on Saturday night. In the mean time I was running. I don't have any pictures of this part because I didn't have my camera and a lot of it was in the dark.

The relay race was "very challenging". I think I said this at least 8 times throughout the event. We started at 1:30am and took till about 2pm to make it the 61.9 miles from Stanley to Ketchum. This gives you an idea of the way the day went.

elevation loss/gain

Leg 1: 5.96 miles - 170ft/300ft -Jeffrey *fast

Leg 2: 5.83 miles - 20ft/190ft - Jocelyn *"challenging"

Leg 3: 5.03 miles - 30ft/240ft - Juliana *rocking it to Black Eyed Peas

Leg 4: 4.43 miles - 10ft/190ft - Mom *the sun came up... kind of

Leg 5: 5.83 miles - 0 ft/310ft - Jeffrey *run/ speed walk like Pat Beretta:)

Leg 6: 5.35 miles - 0 ft/1,331 ft UP - Janae * in a blizzard

Leg 7: 6.02 miles - 1,411 ft/0 ft - Jocelyn *wishing I hadn't given up on training for this

Leg 8: 5.09 miles - 360 ft/0 ft - Juliana *portapotty

Leg 9: 4.64 miles - 350 ft/10ft - Janae *didn't have much of a break

Leg 10: 6.13 miles - 410 ft/40ft - Jocelyn * a long "4 miles"

Leg 11: 4.97 miles - 290 ft/10ft - Mom *spilled gatorade on her white shirt

Leg 12: 2.63 miles - 150 ft/10 ft - Janae *wishing Joel were here

So, we started off by having a hard time finding where the race even began. We figured in a town with the population of 100 we'd just see it, eventually we found it. The packet we did get didn't have much information, like how long each leg was, luckily we remembered most of it pretty well. We weren't the very slowest runners but they did give us plenty of time to finish by 5pm considering they had us start at 1:30am. So, once Jeffrey got the right pair of running shoes on he started a few seconds after everyone else. It was a great ego booster because he got to pass almost all of them in his 5.96 miles that he ran in about 45 minutes. I haven't mentioned that he was injured to begin with, which is one of the reasons why we shuffled what legs we were running so much.

Leg 2: me! 5.83 miles. Humm, I remember thinking, "what am I learning?" "what am I going to blog about for this leg?". Well, this leg was "challenging" because we were in the dark. i had a head lamp on and felt like I had tunnel vision and a hard time pacing myself. Every step was challenging even though I felt like I couldn't push myself to move any faster. I missed Janae telling me I had a mile and a half left so when I got to the finish line I didn't realize my chance to shine was over for that leg. So I sprinted the last little bit to the exchange zone and Juliana wasn't there yet because they couldn't hear the announcement that I was coming. I ended up running a 10min mile which is ok for me but not great. Ug, didn't really like this leg but I got to hand off to Nana and I liked that. Once I stopped running I realized I was sweating, a lot, I stretched a little bit and hurried into the car so we could go cheer on Juliana. By the time we caught her at about a mile and a half in I was shivering because I was so cold. We didn't think to gas up before we left so we had to keep the car off at all stops and exchanges which equaled all of us freezing, then trying to run, then freezing again. I didn't like that part much either.

Anyway, Nana did great with her 5 miles and handed off to Mom.

Mom ran 4.43 miles and felt the hill more than usual. We started around 6,000ft elevation and we all felt it. The sun started to brighten the sky at the end of Mom's run but hid behind rain clouds all day. Mom handed off to Jeffrey.

This would have been Joel's leg but he chose to not come at the last minute. This brought on a whole new challenge trying to cover for him. So Jeffrey, who was already injured took this leg. He ended up running/ speed walking it because of his knees and thinking that he had another leg coming. I was really glad when he asked me to take the third leg. Nana kept laughing because when we would catch sight of him he was walking like Pat Beretta, apparently the only other person she has witnessed speed walking, and even while walking was faster than her jog.

Jeffrey handed off to Janae and she started running straight up the side of this mountain pass. It also started to rain. She gained 1,331 feet in 5.35 miles. She ran most of it with some walking. Even while she was walking she was passing people. One of the times we were driving by her and she was passing an older gentleman. I naturally yelled out, "YOUR AN ANIMAL!" and definitely caught the attention of the man too. :) She did great.

Janae handed off to me and I ran down the other side of the mountain pass. It was much more enjoyable to run in the daylight. The first part of this leg was pretty steep down hill but the last mile or so seemed pretty flat. At this point I knew I would be taking another leg so I was trying to pace myself but still felt slower than I wanted to be moving. I never could time myself on this leg because I could never remember the time I had read a mile ago, plus at this point I don't think any of us really cared, I think we just wanted to make it out alive. I finished strong on this leg and that's what mattered to me. I handed off to Juliana.

They didn't get a lot of time at the exchange before I got there so once I handed off to Nana she ran straight to the portapotty then back on to the route. She got a few laughs with that one. Once she got going she did great. She did mention that she didn't like being passed by a girl with a giggly butt and in my next leg I experienced the same thing, it's a bit degrading:) Nana passed off to Janae.

Janae hadn't had much of a break at this point because we had been switching who was running what legs. But she enjoys physical challenges and did very well. I believe I was hitting a wall at this point because I don't remember much of it. But I do know that she handed off to me.

Jeffrey had asked if I could speed walk this leg (would have been Joel's) and I was excited to do so. The only problem is I can't walk very fast so I started by jogging with the idea of it being ok to walk if I needed to. I liked this leg the best. It was my slowest leg but I had the attitude that I had done my legs of the race and this one was just for fun. I walked a good part of it (my legs/knees were shot at this point) and had a great time cheering on everyone who passed me. There were some really nice people who cheered me on too. When I began the leg we thought it was around 4 miles, as I kept going and going we found it was closer to 6miles. When I was about 1 mile out I saw Chris pass, he didn't see me, and it was a big motivator. He had slept at the cabin that night and was bringing Mason, Bailey and Olivia with him to cheer and was just catching up. At the very end (about 100 yards left) there was a lady who was going to pass me and I said something encouraging and she told me to just keep going, and I did. I ended up sprinting and finishing in front of her. That felt good. But Mom was the only one to see my amazing finish. Oh well, I still did it.

I handed off to Mom and went to ride in the car with Chris, Mason and Bailey. Mom ran a quick 4.97 miles and liked the added cheer squad. She handed off to Janae.

With this leg we were able to follow Janae for the first mile and a half on the road then the path she was on veered off and we tried to hurry to find the finish line. The rest of the runners were in the Explorer and doing the same. It ended up that Janae ran through the finish line while I was hobbling across the field to try to get there and the rest of the family hadn't caught up yet. Apparently we were all supposed to finish together but we didn't get that memo.

All of us were glad to be done. Most of us are glad we did it. None of us want to do this run again.

Considering it was the 18th annual run it was not well marked or organized. But it did provide an opportunity for almost all of our family to get together and have a great time.

We headed back to Boise, (I lied, I slept on the way there), got to the hotel and ate pizza and soaked in the hot tub. It was a good night.

I loved being with my family and I loved the experiences that we shared. I feel like I learned more about my siblings and can't wait to do a different run next year. :)

House Update

It isn't that we haven't been doing anything interesting it's that we've been so busy being interesting that we haven't had time to blog. Here is a little update of what we've been up to.

Our land lord has been great and lets us do updates to the house and then take the difference of what the project costs off our rent. Our latest was putting gravel in the driveway. Chris worked on it all day while I was at work. When I got home I went out to help along with our friend Nic and our home teacher as well. Here are the guys working hard.

Our friend Tim has a plane and is always looking for a reason to go flying. He took us up on Sunday we loved it. This was my first time flying in a small plane and Chris's first time since High School. We both had a fantastic time enjoying the view, company, and the food. We flew over to Medford, had breakfast at Sonic and flew back just in time to miss a thunderstorm. Chris can't stop talking about it and thinks he found his distraction from school work.

A little bit of Klamath Falls.

Klamath Lake

Mt. McLoughlin - The 4th year girls will be hiking this in a few months! (Girls Camp)

Mt. Shasta

Me! On the way back I sat in the front. It was a little bumpy but still tons of fun. The only thing that had me worried was thinking about having the mouth piece tuching my lips. The last time Demi flew she got pretty sick. I just hope she moved the mouth piece first ;)

Thank you for the ride! We had a great time.