Here I am getting on the bus to take us up the canyon.  This was taken a little before 8 a.m. even though the race didn’t start until 10 a.m.  The temperature wasn’t too bad, but the wind was blowing so hard.  It was freezing up there sitting on my cold rock waiting until the start.

I didn’t have high expectations for this race, being 16 weeks pregnant and having taken about six weeks off during what should have been training.  In fact I really didn’t start training until three weeks ago.  So, I decided to do a walk run combination and I ended up surprising myself in the end getting a time of 2:15:59.

It ended up being a great race.  The scenery was beautiful, I felt good, and it was so fun to have Scott run the last of it with me.

On the drive to our destination, they kept asking where we were going, but my lips were sealed.  When we got to the doors of the Energy Solutions Arena, the ticket man asked if they were there to see the monster truck rally – trying to throw them off a little.  They finally figured it out when we walked in and saw Disney paraphernalia everywhere.

I got the cheapest tickets possible which equals super high seats… I’m talking so high I felt dizzy for the first 15 minutes up there.  The arena wasn’t very full, so once it started the usher told us to move closer.  We ended up being able to see everything great!

The snow was packed really well, and the need for snowshoes was practically non-existent for most of the hike. That didn’t matter to us though. Occasionally, Adam and I would wander off the path just to feel the power of the snowshoes on the fluffy snow.

When we got up to the waterfall, it was almost completely frozen over. We have never been able to get this close. We walked right down to where the falls are and took some pictures.

Snowshoes have a claw positioned right under the ball of your feet to prevent sliding. I wanted to try skiing down to the waterfall area, so I had to lean back to keep the claw from digging into the snow.

Thanks Adam and Jamie for the fun day!

While we were visiting with him, Kate whispered to me, “I’ve never met the REAL Santa before.”

We visited Temple Square with Grandma Jean and Grandpa Gramps.

It was pretty cold, but so beautiful.

Kate was determined not to let go of Grandma and Grandpa’s hands – even when people got in the way.

We had our annual Christmas program

complete with Joseph, Mary, the donkey,

the angel,

and Baby Jesus.  Mary was nice enough to give up her spot on the donkey when Joseph got tired.

Christmas morning led to some fun surprises!

Simon spent all morning playing at that kitchen while the rest of us opened presents.

He broke away long enough to line up some new cars.

Scott and I (mostly Scott) made this awesome car town.  Scott added some Texas flare by putting a Rudy’s and an HEB on it.

After Christmas, we headed up to Brad and Chanda’s to have some fun on the wii, eat tons of good food (Brad is the best cook ever!), and get super addicted to American Ninja Warrior.  So awesome!

Then, we headed to Jodi’s to celebrate Grandma Baldwin’s birthday.

Everyone had fun with the cousins.

Audrey and Lily had some fun getting pulled on a sled behind the snowmobile.

Okay, by “nutshell”  I meant lots of things combined in one really long post.

The end.

We played in the snow!

I mean really!  What says sheer happiness more than smiling so big you can’t contain the spit from spilling out onto your lip!

Ready for some snow shoeing!

Unfortunately only three of us truly got to enjoy the snowshoeing.

For some reason we got on this crazy jumping kick and took TONS of pictures jumping but these three are some of my favorites.

The guys all went snowmobiling and got some awesome pictures of them jumping, but they’re all on Scott’s phone, so he’ll have to add them later.

We went on a hay ride,

singing Christmas carols,

got stuck, unloaded the kids, pushed until we were unstuck, ambushed the husbands – tackling them in the snow, but just like we knew we would, the wives all got the worst of it… except for maybe Jeff… I think he ended up the worst of all.

We warmed up with some hot chocolate and took a nice, big family picture.

It started out nice and cool and then as it warmed up, we had a few rain showers come down on us.  I don’t have any pictures of me in the rain but here’s one of Ben.  Hopefully he won’t be too mad at me for putting this picture in.  I’m still so proud of him for running the marathon.

Look how big those rain drops are.

I think this was around mile 16.  At this point in the run, I was doing awesome.  I was totally set to beat my PR.  I was feeling good.  Then, at mile 22, I hit the hill of doom.  EVERYONE  was taking walking breaks on this hill.   And then some major nausea hit me.  I don’t know why.  I’ve ran in much more humid weather, much hotter, much colder.  But for some reason, it hit hard and I had to walk.  I ended up getting five minutes slower than my PR, but I’m okay with it.  4:25:57.  That’s not bad considering how much I walked and how sick I felt.

Audrey and Kate ran out with me to cross the finish line.  It was really fun to have them with me.   I know the clock overhead says 4:35, but I started the run nine minutes late.  Not because there were so many runners… because I was in the line for the bathroom when the start gun went off.  It was a little stressful for me.

I bought this poster board the day before the marathon and then shamelessly hinted for my kids to make a poster for me while I was busy doing something in the other room.  If you look closely at it, you can see that Audrey drew a finish line with me running through and the clock time saying 5:60.  Apparently, she didn’t have a lot of faith in me.  I love how she drew me in a running skirt!

Jamie was so nice to drive Ben and me to our race early in the morning so our spouses wouldn’t have to get the kids up so early.  Then she stuck around until I was done.  In case you didn’t notice, my bib number was #6.  That’s is craziness.  Usually the really low numbers are reserved for the fastest runners.  It was kind of cool though.

This year we opted out of our normal summer trip to Utah and Idaho and after another year of daily reading, we set out for Port Aransas, Texas.

Our cottage was called the Dark Horse, and it was conveniently located only two blocks from the beach. It was a cozy little two bedroom place with no carpet. At first I thought that was odd. Maybe the flooring option is obvious to you, but it took me a visit to the beach and back to understand the wisdom of the vinyl flooring.

The first day of the beach was full of excitement and anticipation. After all, we had been waiting for this day for two years. The suspense built and built until Kate and her eczema skin touched the salt water. We quickly dropped our expectations and resigned ourselves to focusing on building a sand castle and other non-water activities.

After our first day (really only a few hours) at the beach we headed back to Dark Horse and attempted to clean the sand off of us. There was sand everywhere, and the grittiness on the bottom of my bare feet reminded me that I wouldn’t be clean until we returned home.

Somehow we got the kids to sleep all in the same room and then we got to bask in one of our favorite BBC-produced chick-flicks: North & South.

Day 2 began with the normal morning routine plus a helping of sunblock to prepare for the exposure. Simon smacked his face on the corner of the kitchen table and to soothe his pain he thought it would be a good idea to rub the sunblock in his eyes. That, coupled with the intense brightness of the sun, led to a morning of drooping his head, squinting his eyes, and struggling to see. Awesome. This day was going to be so fun!

Based on Day 1′s results with Kate’s sensitive skin, I knew that I couldn’t just take off running into the waves with her. Instead, we setup our gear close to the water, and eased into beach play. Little by little, we got in the water, and eventually Kate was playing in the water with Audrey. Surprisingly, she was enjoying it pretty much the whole time.

My time with Simon and Kate hanging out on the sand gave Jeana time to play on her own and to help Audrey try some new things on the boogie boards.

Kate was in heaven gathering sea shells and finding sand dollars. Simon did much better the second day keeping the sand out of his eyes and off his face. He (and I) hated the water in our eyes though. I took him out in the waves and he kept getting pummeled by the water and was going nuts with it in his eyes.

Audrey was a skimboard hog, but I enjoyed watching her trying to figure it out.

I think the best part of this trip to the beach was the sense of adventure that we got to share as an entire family. None of us had been here before so everything was new to each person and we each got to explore in some way. Jeana stayed in one afternoon while Simon took a nap, and I took the girls shopping for souvenirs. Ugh, it was so hot getting in and out of the car so much, but we found some fun t-shirts to come home with.

We held up our fingers to show which check point would have been at each location.

Right about the time this picture was taken, I was saying, “No, no.  I’ll get the bikes.  You go ahead and keep playing with your iphone.”  In his defense, we had found some really cool apps that would track our route and map it out for us.  Apparently, he just couldn’t wait to start checking it out, while I loaded BOTH bikes.

Scott: “No.”

Me: “Huh… well do you want to maybe just go look out  your window by the reflection pool and see if anything is going on?”

Scott: sigh… “Sure. Hang on.  Nope I don’t see anything.”

Me: “You don’t?!?”

Scott: “Oh – now I do!”

We wandered around taking pictures for a while and getting into trouble by security for taking said pictures.  Scott quickly got off his phone meeting and came down to go to lunch with us.

We went to Panera.  Mmmmm.

My birthday was on a Sunday this year.  When I was little I always hated it when my birthday was on a Sunday because, all you’d really do was go to church.  This year it rocked because then we had reason to do something fun the day before and a few days after.

The kids (with the help of Scott) all gave me some fun presents.

Audrey was so excited when I opened the one from her, she threw herself on me before I was even done unwrapping it.  And Scott, of course, made the traditional delicious trifle for me.

Our family has made up some pretty fun games with birthday streamers consisting of doing handstands and cartwheels to pull the streamers down with our feet, jumping to get the tape off the ceiling and then landing/rolling on the couch, stretching the streamers between two walls to be the finish line to run through, and now Kate has added a new one.

Modeling.  Audrey would yell out, “Presenting Kate!”  And then Kate would walk through strutting her stuff while I described her fashionable outfit.  I now hear them using the word fashionable all the time.

It kind of cracks me up how high my knees were coming and how much I was  pumping my arms in this clip.  I think it was my attempt to pretend I wasn’t in pain.  It would have been smarter to just propel myself forward with all that wasted energy, but at the end of 26.2 miles, you’re not really thinking all that clearly.

I realize that this won’t mean anything to most people, because let’s face it, who really cares about other people’s running stats.  You’ve been warned that this post is entirely for me.  That being said, here are my stats:

Distance: 26.2 miles
Time: 4:20:00
Average Pace: 9 min 55 sec

I was really hoping to get under four hours, but oh well.  By the time I got to the end I was just happy to have finished.

47 finishers behind. About 32% of finishers ahead.

Opposite Sex
For the record, you were ahead of about 52% of male finishers.

I wish I had some pictures of the race, but I guess managing three kids on the side of the road for three hours kept Scott otherwise occupied.  Go figure.  He told me that Adam was in charge of taking the pictures and he was in charge of taking video.  Scott also said that they were each playing to their own strengths.  So, I watched the video that Scott took of me and every clip is of my backside with him saying, “There goes Jeana.  We couldn’t get the camera out fast enough again.”  If Adam’s strengths are anything like Scott’s, I don’t have a lot of hope for the pictures.