Spring Break 2020

Spring Break pictures. We didn't know then that this would be our last week with friends for a long time due to COVID-19, social distancing, and quarantining. 

Football game

Bryson enjoyed playing with some clay he found

And a visit to Ariane's house for her birthday.

Austin loving on their guinea pig.

Unfortunately while the older boys went to explore the ditch, Caleb took off a flipflop because something was stuck on the bottom. When he set his bare foot down, it happened to be on a piece of glass. He sliced his foot pretty bad. Fortunately it wasn't deep, and he didn't end up needing stitches. He will have a bad scar though.

Half Marathon #10

I dreaded my race this year and didn't enjoy the training. Maybe it's the getting older and my metabolism changing, but even though I did my "tried and true" method of improving speed, it didn't help. During my training, I averaged 7:55-8 minute miles for my long runs. Over the summer of 2019, I trained with a sweet college girl who got a scholarship at BYU for her incredible long-distance running. She would run 3 miles with me on Thursdays and pace me at 7:20-7:30 miles for my tempo runs. While I'm sure it was difficult for her to go so slow, Thursday mornings were my nemesis because of how hard it was! She always stayed within in a body's distance in front of me, and if she ever saw the distance between us increasing, she would hold out her hand with the assumption that I was supposed to catch her and tag her hand. Every time she did that made me so angry! :) That's what I needed to improve my speed, however: someone to push me. Unfortunately for me, she took off to college, and while I still tried to push myself at 7:30 miles, the best I was doing on my own was 7:45. I did some hill training occasionally on a tread mill because I know that's another method of improving speed. I also continued my speed training on Tuesdays. What it came down to was my heart wasn't in it anymore. I no longer was willing to put the work in to try to improve my personal record of 7:45 miles for the half marathon distance. The thing that probably would have made a difference was changing and improving my eating habits. My mantra has always been that I run to eat though. I enjoy good food and use running to keep a balance. So I went into this half marathon knowing it was going to be last; my passion for the distance has just fizzled out. 12 long-distance races is a good number to round out 11 years of running distance though. I wanted to push myself hard for this race but knew it was highly unlikely that I would PR. I set a goal to keep my time under 8-minute miles.

Race morning I was up at 5:00 am. My sweet friend, Natalie, signed up for the race too. She also went through the same emotions of feeling burnt-out and done; she felt this was going to be her last race as well. We trained a little bit together, but our paces are different. It was fun to carpool to the race together and chat for over an hour until the race started.

Sunrise in the background

Minutes before the race started. It was 47 degrees and we were in shorts and t-shirts, so we were pretty chilly waiting like that for 45 minutes in our corral for the race to start.

I finished the race in 1 hour 44 minutes and 24 seconds at 7:58-minute miles. (My watch actually clocked me with a slightly faster finishing time and a 7:56 pace.) I was happy with the result, and so grateful that the race went well! Always a tender mercy.

It's crazy to look back over the last decade. I set a goal to run my first half marathon in 2009. Prior to that I had only run 3 miles 3-4 times per week to stay in shape. After I set the goal, I couldn't find a race anywhere near that wasn't on Sunday! Fortunately surrounding race sites started doing Saturday races the following year. My first race was a longer drive though and an earlier start for the whole family (only Caleb at the time) as there weren't any Saturday races locally. I finished the race in under 2 hours (pretty impressive for my first one!) and felt so invigorated. I still remember finishing that race alongside another woman around my age who had trained for 3 years to get the same time I got on my first race. It's fun to reflect back on each race and remember how tricky it was to run post-baby while nursing. Running during the breast-feeding stage adds a whole new set of complications that I had to work around during my training and races. My 2013 race was when Bryson was 4 months old. I remember being so grateful that he woke up at 4am that morning to nurse when he usually woke up around 6am. I was so stressed about whether I would be able to nurse him before my race or need to pump so I wouldn't be full with milk during my race. Issues that most people don't have to think about! After running my first marathon for 4 1/2 hours, the first thing I did after I finished? Go into the car (sweaty) and nurse Carter who was 9 months old. Maybe there might have been a few other women in my boat, but I always felt like I deserved an extra pat on the back for juggling that. Good memories and such great life lessons/applications! I'm excited to continue running, but I'll keep my long runs around 8 miles on Saturday. I'm ready to close this chapter and move onto a new adventure. My friend, Laisa, has put a bug in my ear the last few months about giving triathlons a try. We shall see!

Half Marathon #1 (2009) 1:58:45
Half Marathon #2 (2010) 1:57:47 (8 months post baby)
Half Marathon #3 (2011) 1:52:13
Marathon #1 (2011) 4:28:34
Half Marathon #4 (2012) 1:48:05 (5 weeks pregnant)
Half Marathon #5 (2013) 1:54:18 (4 months post baby)
Marathon #2 (2014) 3:58:08
Half Marathon #6 (2016) 1:49:32 (6 months post baby)
Half Marathon #7 (2017) 1:41:44 (7:46 pace)
Half Marathon #8 (2018) 1:41:26 (7:45 pace--personal record)
Half Marathon #9 (Jan. 2020) Disney Half--my worst time ever!
Half Marathon #10 (Mar. 2020) 1:44:24

Axe Throwing

We did a group date night that I wasn't too excited about initially but ended up loving! Who knew axe-throwing could be so much fun? I got a knack for it faster than the other girls, but then my aiming skills weren't on par for the last game we played and had trouble hitting the 4 and 6.

Here was my only bullseye.

 Matt loved it! We are looking forward to going back.

Disneyland Girls' Trip

Friends in my ward did a girls' trip again this year. Due to my Disney World trip in January, I told them I was out this year. But then we got the news that the friend, Emily, that hosts everyone in her family time share in CA is moving to Papua New Guinea. This trip turned into the last one for the next 3 years and a final hurrah with my friend, so I decided to jump on the bandwagon. 

A handful of women flew out Wednesday night; the rest of us flew out Thursday night. We did Disneyland on Friday all day till midnight. We got there 30 minutes before it opened so we could increase our chances of getting boarding passes on Rise of the Resistance, a new ride. The previous day the passes had all sold out 6 minutes after the park opened! The park was absolutely silent at 8am when the park officially opened as everyone was busily trying to secure boarding passes. Periodically a group of people would cheer and scream signaling their success. The seconds felt like minutes. But finally 2 minutes later we celebrated as our group secured passes for that afternoon, group 82. 

Our first ride of the day: Cars in California Adventure

Blurry Space Mountain pic

By the end of the night we did kiddie rides that people had never done before.

 Alice in Wonderland

Because one of our friends on the trip had just recently moved from Anaheim and was still technically a Disney Employee (she worked on the Splash Mountain ride), she was able to get us a few nice hook-ups in terms of extra fast passes and some discounts. We waited in line 30 minutes for a couple of rides, but everything else was shorter. We rode a ton of rides!

Saturday morning everyone slept in; we had stayed up talking for another hour after Disneyland. I ran 8 miles along the beach in preparation for my race the next weekend. My friend, Laisa, ran 4 of them with me. Some women did surfing lessons, hiking, pedicures/manicures. I chatted with friends, played games, and went to lunch with Emily and Laisa. We tried going to bed earlier on Saturday night, but still stayed up till almost midnight talking. We were up at 5:30 the next morning cleaning up and heading to the airport for our 8:30 flight. Not a lot of sleep on the trip, but it was fun to get to know new friends and acquaintances on a deeper level. Matt was so generous in pushing me to go and held up the fort just fine at home!

Family Update

Stocking up on Crispix while it's on sale. Our favorite family cereal!!

This sight made me so happy that I had to snap a picture! I have such a passion for reading, which none of my boys share (including my husband). But on the rare occasion, they have been sucked into a book. Carter is reading book 5 of Percy Jackson; he does a lot of reading at school (up to an hour), and one day last week he had to come home and dive into his book right away.

Baseball season has started for both Bryson and Carter. I was able to finagle a few boys in the neighborhood getting on Bryson's team so that we would have carpool help. Bryson is looking good, not as athletic as his older brothers, but fundamentally sound. Carter has finally figured out how to control his pitching (an assistant coach gave Carter some advice that helped), and it looks like Carter will be pitching this season! He's looking so strong in all areas. Matt is excited to coach his team again. This is the first year in 5 years that Caleb is taking off from baseball, and it could possibly be forever. He wants to try out for soccer and tennis at his junior high, and it will be too much to try to do baseball on top of those sports. In 9th grade, he'll have the option to do baseball through the high school, but with so much time off and his small stature, he likely won't make the team. We will see.

Bryson and Austin after B's baseball practice.

 The boys usually help Matt sweep up leaves in the front yard. One day after school, Carter saw it needed to be done and just started blowing the leaves off the driveway and out of the flower beds all by himself! One by one, the other brothers went out and helped. It was pretty incredible and that act of service set a wonderful tone for the rest of the night.

A few weeks ago, Caleb has his book 4 Suzuki Recital.

He knocked it out of the park! He played all the songs in book 4 plus Solfeggietto in C minor; they were all polished and played with minimal mistakes. This kid wows me, and it was such a proud Momma moment! He has a strong passion for piano, and it shows. He was so excited to be done, however, so that he could stop practicing those songs every day!

Aquarium Field Trip

We went to the Aquarium on Martin Luther King day as a preschool field trip + friends in the ward. 

On the ferris wheel

Bryson and Odette are good buddies

 Carousel with a preschool friend

Shark train ride with cousins

I failed to get a picture of Carter or Caleb (the ones above are courtesy of Grandma). They went around with friends/cousins and checked in on occasion. It was a chilly morning but warmed up in the afternoon. My boys enjoy the outing on their day off of school!

Disney Half Marathon

Matt graciously held up the fort last weekend at home so that I could cross something off the bucket list. I flew to Florida last weekend with 2 friends to run the Disney half marathon and do a few days at Disney World.

At the airport Thursday night meeting the bus to take us to our resort.

Friday we went to Animal kingdom to check out the new Avatar land and ride the 2 new rides. We went to Flight of Passage first thing and probably waited about 45 minutes (no fast passes available). It is very comparable to Soarin', but I really enjoyed the feel of flying on a dragon and feeling the dragon breathe against my knees. Really cool! Though it did make us all queasy.

On Na'vi River Journey, which is a boat ride through Avatar land

The Safari ride is always a favorite

After lunch and the Lion King show, which neither of my friends had ever seen, we went to Asia to ride Expedition Everest.

We did the single rider line

pic taken on the ride

Meeting Pluto after finishing the Dinosaur ride

This tree is so detailed!

We left Animal Kingdom around 4pm in order to make it over to the Expo and pick up our race bibs.

The race start time was 5:30am, which in itself was shocking, especially taking into account the different time zone. We assumed we would need to wake up at 4, catch the bus at 4:30, then have an hour till the race started. Basically, all our assumptions about the race were completely off!

We learned that we needed to get in line for the bus by 3:30 am since there would be a huge crowd. Once we saw the line at our resort (which we tried to capture in this picture...you can see the bus in the distance and the line went that far back), we understood the reason for the 3:30 call. It took about an hour waiting for a bus + drive time to the race. Although the starting line was near Epcot and not far away from our resort, the traffic was bumper to bumper. 

So our alarms were set at 3am. We made sure to go to bed as early as we could Friday night. We were in bed by 8:30 and asleep by 9pm. I'm a pretty light sleep though, and a consistent noise woke me up at 1:22am. I tried in vain to get back to sleep and finally just read my book until the alarm went off at 3. :o(

Snapping a picture around 4:30am and trying to look awake.

Waiting in our corral for the race to begin.

SO. The race. Let me back up by saying that when you sign up for the race, you have to prove your running pace by providing a finisher time from a race in the last 2 years. My friends haven't run a race in the last 2 years so they were put in corral H, the last corral. My last half marathon time, surprisingly, qualified me for the first corral, corral A. The plan was to run the first half of the race with my friends at their pace (8:45/9 min. pace) so that we could stop and take a few pictures together either with characters or any other picturesque spots. Then I was going to pick up my pace and run the last half on my own. I had no way to know then that this was a significant sacrifice.

We didn't quite realize the sheer number of people that were there. Turns out that getting 21,000 people across a starting line takes some time. Who knew? As the minutes continued to tick by, we were shocked when 30 minutes passed, then 45. An hour later, we finally started our race. By that point, we were tired of standing (especially after doing a lot of standing/walking the day before), cranky, and tired. Why don't they stagger the start time for that many people?!?

The race crossed back on itself so that as we were passing mile 2, corral A runners were passing mile 11. Gah!

The other thing I just can't wrap my head around is why would anyone pay $100 for a half marathon just to walk the whole time? Why not pick a shorter distance to walk? Why 13? Well it turns out, lots and lots of people paid that much money to walk. Being the last corral, we were stuck behind so. many. walkers. And for some reason there wasn't either a stated or understood rule that runners are on the left and walkers are on the right. Every half marathon race I've run, I have spent the first half mile or so weaving around people as it is so congested starting out. That frustrating weaving was THIS ENTIRE RACE!! We were surrounded by walkers and slow joggers and therefore couldn't run together and chat comfortably as someone was leading the way through the weaving. It was so frustrating. I especially felt bad for my friends who set a goal to run the race under 2 hours. Ain't no way that was going to happen! Honestly, I had higher expectations from Disney. Start times should have been staggered, all walkers should have been in the last corral, there should have been a rule stated about walkers to the right, and there were too many narrow running places that made it even more congested than it was.

Positives: It was fun to see so many runners (and walkers) dressed up for the race. There were some crazy costumes! There were about 6-7 characters along the race that you could stop and take pictures with, though Jack Sparrow was the only one I was tempted to stop for. (The rest were old Disney characters and no princesses.) The course was mostly flat--just a few hills.

#1 lesson learned: Don't sign up for a Disney race unless you have a previous race to prove your start time. We have a friend who has run it before in corral C who said she had a great experience. Walkers moved to the right, and she didn't have to do much weaving.

Stopping for a picture in front of the castle in Magic Kingdom around mile 5. It was neat to run through the castle. 

All done with the race!

This half marathon pace was my slowest ever. I averaged 10:08 minute miles. Different muscles hurt from all the weaving and running through grass/dirt trying to pass the walkers on the road. 

The weather was unusually warm for January in Florida. The starting temperature was 70 degrees and warmed up from there as the sun came up. I felt bad that my friend, Katie, had her leg seize up weirdly for the last mile or two. She said it hurt worse to walk, so she ran through the pain and immediately went to First Aid after crossing the finish line to get it looked at and iced up. Fortunately, the pain went away, and her leg didn't bother her the rest of the day.

Our agenda for the rest of the day was Hollywood Studios including our first fast pass window from 9:45 to 10:45am. We thought that was plenty of time to run the race from 5:30 to 7:30, go home and shower, eat breakfast, and then be at the park by 9:30. Considering we didn't finish the race until 9am, we missed our fast pass to Rockin' Rollercoaster and another fast pass was not available for the rest of the day. :(

After we showered and ate a few race snacks, we actually decided to take a nap. Our next fast pass wasn't until 12:30, so we figured we might as well get a nap in and then just stay until the park closed at 8pm. After an hour nap, we grabbed a real meal and then headed to the park.

Riding the new Skyliner transportation to Hollywood Studios

It was pretty cool!

Tower of Terror

Checking out the new Star Wars land. We were only able to ride 1 of the 2 new Star Wars rides. The passes were all gone for Millennium Falcon by the time we got to the park at 12:30. 

About to ride Slinky Dog Dash. Very smooth roller coaster and a lot of fun.

Visiting Olaf

We stayed for the fireworks show at the end, then headed back to our resort. 

The Disney Resort we stayed at was Pop Century. Our room was basic, but we loved all the fun decorations around the resort.

My legs were so tired after this weekend from the standing/running/walking. It was such a fun and memorable trip though, and I'm glad I got to hang out with these fun gals and get to know them better!