Tulip Festival Half Round II

My race this morning couldn't have had better weather!  After the 7 straight days of rain we've had, it was so nice to see blue skies and the warm sun!  This was my second time running this half, and it was dang hard.  Again.  I even spent time this time around training for those rollers on the golf course--laps on the overpass, trail running in the mountains--they were still tough.  I started out running 8 1/2 minute miles, then hit the rollers and slowed down to 10 1/2 minute miles, and dug into the deepest part of my legs to pick up the pace to a 9 1/2 minute mile for the last mile.  I finished at 2:09:41, beating last year's time by 7 minutes...which I know doesn't sound like a lot, but trust me, it was a lot.  

Here are my attempts at taking ugly selfies.  I keep telling David I'm just not photogenic.  

Where's a golf cart when you need one??!!  After that run, I needed some help walking back to my car...

Haha, I love seeing the photos the race personnel post.  I always feel like I'm racing like an Olympian when I cross the finish line, and then I see photographic evidence...of how I really look like a speed walker, at best...haha.

Starting strong...

Finishing hard...I was really working hard to sprint the last little stretch of the finish line, and I thought everyone was cheering for me...turns out they were cheering for the easy-going high-fivinf dude behind me.  Haha.

Whata??!!

Pace came racing up the other day carrying this enormous weed just about as tall as him, shouting very excitedly and very proudly, "Mommy!!  I found our Christmas tree!!"  He watered it and wanted me to find a pot for him to put it in.  I finally convinced him weeds weren't Christmas trees and I didn't have a pot for one, and his weed (that he miraculously pulled form the ground with his own brute strength) wouldn't last until Christmas, anyway.  He was sad, but understood in the end. 

The boys and I have been anxiously awaiting our jar beans to sprout.  This was out of our experiment book, we took some dried black eyed peas and garbanzo beans and soaked them overnight, then put them in a jar with wet paper towels.  They did, indeed, sprout!  The lesson was to learn that even though the beans weren't in dirt, they still grew roots, looking for light and to grow. 

And the boys discovered their rocket ship could moonlight as a flute.  

A Few Things the Boys Have Been Learning

When Pace finishes a Unit in Upstart, the program has a whole day of fun "games".  This one was writing a story.  Pace spelled out each of these words for a story!  He wrote: "Snake fly yum fox went for lunch the duck."  He told me the snake ate a fly and thought it was yummy, then the fox got a duck for lunch.  We need to work on the syntax, but for Pace's first story, I think it was pretty great!

We were reading some library books and Max saw a question mark.  He pointed at it and said, "Mommy, that mark says, 'Why?' "  I was so surprised!  I don't think we'd talked about question marks yet!  After I saw he thought question marks were pretty cool and knew what they said, the next time we went to the library I found a book about exclamation marks.  Max thought it was equally as cool, and loved shouting, "EXclamation marks are Excited!!"

Family Night:  Reenacting scripture stories with a little help from Star Wars.  The boys loved it, and even asked to do Family night again the next week!  

A Few Adventures

David took his mountain bike up to the top of West Mountain--what a great view!  The BYU observatory is at the top of the mountain, and there is apparently a couple that lives up there year-round maintaining the grounds. 

I raved about the Hot Pots trail enough that David decided to check it out himself.  The best part of the run was when he came home saying he was super-super-impressed that I ran up there, as it was "real trail running".  Well, I guess I'm a trail runner now! 

Another Hot Pots Trail Run...in fact, this might have been from the same Saturday!  I went up early morning, and David must have gone that afternoon.

Last Friday David had taken the day off work for a dr's appointment, but his appointment got moved, and he forgot to change the day off at work...so he got an extra fun day off!  We decided to go up Payson Canyon and check out the Grotto Hike.  We parked a couple miles down the road so we could RUN up to the road to the path.  I was training for a half, after all.  So I ran intervals with the jogging stroller, run fast up the switchbacks, then coming back and running slow with the stroller to recover, then hand the stroller off to David and go fast again.  David hid the jogger in the trees at the trailhead and the boys got out to find walking sticks and hike.  And after all that work--1.5-2 miles of uphill switchbacks--we get to the grotto trail and I run ahead of David and the boys and find STAIRS.  Phew!  The run was only 3.5 miles total, I think, but boy was it work!

This was a fun hike for the boys!  Short, fun bridges to cross, a waterfall at the end!  They loved it!  

Mineral Day Part II

David took the boys out into the boonies again for Mineral Day Part II.  This trip was looking for trilobites at a U-Dig site outside of Delta.  The boys went prepared with lots of tools.

Hold on tight!

David said there was a couple running the trilobite shack, they gave a really great demo to the boys when they first arrived, explaining what trilobites are and how to find them.  They also had a saw to cut the rocks for display.

Shining/buffing/checking out all the coolness the next day.  They found so many cool things, the couple were shocked!  Lots of trilobites, different varieties of trilobites, algae, etc.  The boys mostly love racing with the smaller pieces because they "look like boats", although they've made their rocket ship/spaceship flying noises, too.