Tennessee Ragnar Relay

On November 9-10th I participated in the Ragnar Relay in Tennessee. It was a 194 mile team relay race from Chattanooga to Nashville Tennessee. My friend Lindsey put our team together. Six of us lived on base, four of us went to church together and the others were friends/family of our team captain, Lindsey. I had one of the shortest sets at 14 miles. It was a beautiful run and I'm glad we did hills training, because Tennessee is full of lovely rolling hills.

Before signing up for the race I wasn't much of a runner, (I'm still not) but I welcomed the challenge. I soon found out another wonderful thing about Mississippi...LOW ALTITUDE! I knew it was lower here, but I didn't realize how well my body would respond to it. I can run. Longer than two miles. And not die. MIRACLE! Seriously, I used to run two 5k's/year and last year I ran one 10K. I could run for 30 minutes and I'd be sucking air. Down here it's my body that needs me to slow down sometimes.

Anyways, the training began and we had fun. We ran together, we did hills together and I finally started to enjoy running. I ran before as a form of exercise, but I actually enjoy it now. (go figure)

Lindsey took care of all the planning. Our team was split into two groups of six and we had two minivans. When we arrived in Chattannooga we settled in and decorated the vans. Vikki had hung two posters on the garages of those of us that lived on base, so we took a picture with the posters.

Then went out to dinner at an Italian restaurant. 

The other team started before us, so we went got to sleep in a little. Here are the runners in van two before we started the race. Josh, Grant, Lindsey, Me, Melinda and Rachel.

Miranda was the first runner in our van, so here she is getting the hand off from Megan starting our first of three legs. The running order was Melinda, Josh, Grant, Lindsey, Me and Rachel.

We took pictures before and after each leg. Here is my leg one, 5.3 miles in the early afternoon. For my own record, I'm going to include my time. (since I don't journal) :) My time was 46 minutes.

We had to be escorted across the road with flags by a teammate. 

 Handing off to Rachel. 

Leg one done! 

Leg two was in the middle of the night. I think I ran around 2 AM. Running in the dark on a road with practically no shoulder is good motivation to run a little faster. My leg was 4.2 miles and I ran it in 38:16. I only have an after picture of this leg. Do I look tired enough?

Leg three was fun and challenging. It was running through a city with street lights and stop signs, so I'd run and then have to stop, run, stop, run, stop. :) It was exciting almost being done. 4.2 miles 35:53. Here I am before.

 In case you were wondering, Mike did not appreciate my cool tattoo. ;)

And the after shot

Here is our team after the race. Good job team "Certifiably Insane"!

Here is our team t-shirt we wore to cross the finish line. (modeled by the lovely Miss Starley)

The best part of the race was the team aspect. We all had a lot of fun supporting each other. Grant brought a cow bell, so we could always know when our van was approaching. Lots of noise, lots of yelling, and lots of arms waving. 

Grants wife and newborn

 Melinda carried on Vikki's tradition of push-ups after running, so she dropped and did 50 after running ~7 miles. (or more, I forget)

There are a lot more pictures I plan on adding when I have time, but I have to download them first. I wanted to get this posted so I can move on to other posts in my quest to catch up. :)

Halloween part II

Apparently I hit my 1 GB of storage space on the same day as a number of friends, so I'm trying to see if using my other google account will postpone having to pay for a little while longer.

Our playgroup had a Halloween party at a park the day before. The two ladies in charge put a lot of work into decorations and crafts for the kids, but the weather was not on our side so the kids just ran around most of the time.

When Halloween finally arrived I surprisingly didn't take a lot of pictures. Mike and the kids before they went trick or treating.

This is the finished product on our decorations. I decided to try dry ice, but a fog machine would have been a much better idea. :)

We are one of the first houses on the first street in our neighborhood so I stayed behind to hand out the candy.

After trick or treating the kids wanted to hand out candy. They had so much fun doing it that they gave  out their own candy and had a couple parents tell them they'd given their kids enough. They really enjoyed it.

After that we went to our neighbors and joined their driveway party.

Adam fought with a skeleton in a bush...

...and won. :)

Steven got a hold of my camera and took some pictures of himself while strapped into his car seat. My kids crack me up.

Happy Halloween!

Have I ever mentioned on here that I love Halloween? If not, let me tell you now, I love Halloween! I don't care how it started or what it might mean to some people, for me it's all about costumes, candy and fun. For the past few years we have allowed the kids to select our costumes. I say kids, but Sarah has selected them the past three years. This year it was Stevens turn. He was leaning towards Star Wars for a while and then he decided we would be ninjas. (his new future profession)

Before the big day we had to prepare. Sarah announced that we were in competition with our neighbors to have the best decorations. Think "Christmas Vacation" Halloween style. I couldn't keep up with her demands, but we had fun decorating. Next up were the pumpkins. The base had a pumpkin carving contest, so we created a "vampire pumpkin" that had eaten a couple smaller pumpkins.

Here are Mike and the kids carving...

Adam had fun painting himself, I mean the pumpkin, and then "carving" it.

Here is the finished product. We won "best family pumpkin".

Against all odds, we also managed to carve our "big Max". Had I made the hole on top bigger Adam could have sat down, which would have made for a cute picture. He didn't even want to stand in it though. 

The Saturday before Thanksgiving we had our ward (congregation) fall festival. Good food, friends and fun games.

Another child, another penny.

Do any of you remember when Sarah swallowed a penny? That wonderful picture of it lodged in her throat? The multiple trips to the Dr. and eventual trip to the hospital are fresh in my mind. I thought those days were behind me. Guess the weren't!

A few weeks ago I was doing laundry when I heard Adam say, "Look mom, a penny" followed by a few coughs and swallowing. Great! I asked him where the penny was and he said, " I don't know". When I asked if he swallowed it he said yes. Since Sarah's got stuck in her throat I didn't want to take any chances. Thankfully he happened to have his 2 yr check up that same morning (I was a LITTLE late making the appointment) so we were already headed to the Doctor.

They sent us over to radiology nearby and sure enough, there's the penny.

They said to wait and see if it passed. Adam has been using the big boy potty, so we can't be sure that it passed, but I don't think it's in there anymore. I'm knocking on wood as I write this, but it's almost humorous when knowing my children that Steven is the only one that hasn't swallowed a penny. I guess he learned from his sisters mistake.

Hopefully this is the last penny x-ray you'll see on here. :)