Plea for sidewalks where there clearly needs to be a sidewalk!

Please put a sidewalk all the way down 1450 South and all the way down River Rd to the jogging/bike path! Everyone that uses the path has to walk along this glass-ridden-zero-shoulder-55 mph-River Rd. to get to it! Thanks.

17.5 again today and it's getting easier. I just might be ready to run 26 in a month. No pains today at all.

17.5 friday (and a few more favorite things.)

I ran 17.5 today as an experiment. Just over a month to to the marathon and I have so many injuries going on right now I wasn't convinced I could even do it this year. I pushed through and by about mile 14 I felt fine. There's a few things that I will take with me on race day for sure.
If you get "jumper's knee" or patella tendonitis, it can feel like a stress fracture in your shin. The strangest pain I've ever felt. The tendon really wasn't where I was feeling the pain. It was sharp pains in my shin and up my femur. Someone suggested I try the knee band and sure enough... It was just tendonitis. It still can hurt a little running around a corner but the pain goes away after. Thank you $9.00 foam band thingy.

This stuff is magic, I swear. Anything is bugging me, I rub this on it before I run and within a few runs I have no more pain. It takes a few times using it. It isn't a pain cream. It really loosens things up and helps them heal somehow. You can get it at natural food stores. I haven't researched about it, so please no one tell me it's poisonous or something. I do know that it's the thing that Michelle Pfeiffer uses to kill her cheating boyfriend when she combines it with White Oleander in that movie. ("White Oleander is a Good movie, btw. Depressing, but good.)
Oh man, how did that picture of Mini Chi get there?! Oh well. She would tell you that the things you need to take along on a 17.5 mile run are a soft blankie, some animal crackers, and a baba.

More favorite things. For real.

My skin is horrible. I have BAD sun damage from years on a swim team, laying out, and now running every day. I also have worse acne now than I did when I was a teenager. What is UP with THAT?! My dermatologist calls it "the wall flower's revenge." Whatever. Anyway, this stuff twice a week is pretty awesome. I found it at Harmons in the Natural Foods section. It shrinks your pores and makes your skin really soft and tones down some of the bad color. Ryan took some pictures while it was on my face...


Sarah was scared of me and wouldn't look at me. Here she is bawling while mommy was a green monster!

More favorite things.

Ooooo, I'm angry at Blogger for not letting me post pictures right now! What's going on?! I simply can't write a story with no pictures so it will have to wait!

My favorite things of the week

The GU and the Perpetuem can keep you going for any distance if you can carry enough of it. Go easy on the chocolate Special K though. I made the mistake of eating three bowls before my run yesterday and was a little... slow.

If I were on Facebook...

...tonight I would remind everyone that it is Sarah's birthday tomorrow. ~Sigh~ but I am not, and that is a good thing. We attempted FHE tonight and it ended up as no dinner and eating popcorn on the trampoline. (basically, just let-the-kids-do-whatever-they-want night.) It was relaxing. One of those spontaneous bonding times that happen only when you just drop everything else and just let yourself be still.

"What's stuck to my foot?"




Chocolate eyes

Birthday Beauty. I can't believe you've been here for two years.

(My boys were there too. I promise.)

Monster Run

I went to the Rec Center today to run because it was supposed to be 110 degrees. I drop Sarah off at the cool daycare first. This is a picture of just a small corner of the room. There is bean bag chairs, flat screen tv, an outdoor playground. It's pretty posh. Then I head up to the treadmills, and on the way pick up a Monster drink. I've never had one before and don't normally drink caffeinated drinks at all, but I'm so sick of feeling like a slug. I'm trying to get my training mojo back. I decided I was just going to sip it a little and hopefully it would give me just a little energy to get some kind of run in. I sip, and sip, and sip sip sip.... 20 minutes into the "jog" I'm still not feeling anything from it. I end up drinking the whole thing over the course of my hour-long run and THEN I feel it. The shakes and jitters started, the headache hit, the crankies hit. It lasted most of the day and also started to feel nauseous by about 6:00 pm. It was horrible. Then we went to a pizza joint for dinner and I was thinking I felt to sick to eat anything, but then realize I'm famished by the time the pizza came, so I ended up eating almost an entire medium pizza. That was a terrible experiment that I will never repeat with a Monster stink-drink.

The running blog is quickly turning into an anything-but-running blog. I'm distracted by more important things. I did run today though, AFTER I cleaned the house and paid some bills and did a little planning. Which meant that it was 95 degrees and I almost didn't make it home because I was dying of heat stroke. I went 13.5 miles. I'm going to start TRYING really hard to get up before the kids and the heat for my runs. I'm not a fan of waking up early. But I'm going to TRY. Really hard. Seriously.

I've never heard of this album, Heatstroke, but it's such a cool cover I'm going to look it up.

My Reason to Be.

I love the way she says, "NO?" when she doesn't want to do something. (Not "NO!" but a sweet "No?") I love how she runs with her arms behind her like she's trying to take off in flight. I love the bounce in her step and her gorgeous brown eyes that remind my of my favorite thing to eat; dark chocolate. I love that she is the youngest and I get lots of personal alone time with her while the boys are doing their big boy stuff. I love that I was able to have a home birth with her. It made it really the most special day of my life and bonded us in a way that in indescribable. I love her femininity; the delicate way she holds her hands and brushes the hair out of her face, wipes her nose, eats, holds a crayon, walks. Every way she moves is feminine. I love that she usually wants me most but still calls me Daddy. I love buying her clothes, doing her hair, taking her shopping and watching her run away from me, but checking over her shoulder to make sure I'm still there. (If I'm not, she'll come back looking. So cute!) I love how when she sees strangers she'll freeze and move her eyes as far in another direction as possible, thinking that if they are out of her field of vision, they must not be able to see her either. All the while standing still directly in front of them. I love thinking about her as a baby, and at the same time getting excited to watch her grow up, be in school, make friends, fall in love. I'm going to love every minute of her life. I love imagining what things she might like to do. Will it be dance and gymnastics? Sports? Both? I LOVE HER and she's turning 2 in a week!

Bob and Kamikaze Kitty

Pictures of kayaking the Napali Coast

These were dolphins! We saw a sea turtle a few feet away too.



This wasn't a very well thought out picture.
Going in a sea cave.
Coming out of a sea cave.



Our guide using a flag as a sail.






Inside an open sea cave.

St. George is BIG TIME!

It's official. Allied Waste is offering curbside pickup of reyclables! I don't have to lug three bins of garbage to the recycling bins in the grocery store parking lot anymore. I still have to take glass though. I'm not sure why the list of things that can be recyled with them is different than the city's list. Oh well. This is a great start. I was surprised by the number of neighbors that had signed up for the service. quite a few blue garbage cans appeared in the neighborhood. That will add up to a lot of stuff not going in a hole somewhere and maybe save some trees. Good for us!

First Day of School Long Run/Turn Short Run.

My jogging path isn't much to look at, but I love it. I thought I'd celebrate the first day of school with a long run, but my knee started hurting today in a way that I've never felt before. It's got me a little worried. So the 17-miler turned into a 12, and alot of it was walking.

AND....

$20.00 if you can guess who this is.

First Day of School!!!

I was so excited to get them out the door, I forgot that they don't yet know who their teachers are or what rooms they're in. I hope someone helped them out once they got inside and realized they had no idea where to go.

Now, I've got time to begin the important work of going with Sarah to her tumbling class two times a week. We are getting ahead of the curve for BYU Cheerleading tryouts in 2025!!

Good news and bad news.

The bad news is that GI Joe has horrible language and a little too much sexy stuff for my pre-teen. Which is tragic, because he would love the gadgets and weapons and karate fighting and cool characters. By the cheesy dialogue it is clearly made for kids about 10-15, but they made me mad with the language and cleavage. He will have to wait for the clean-play version. I sat up and told him all about it when we got home.

The good news is that there was a preview before the movie that got me so excited for summer 2010!

YES! Can you get a combination than Avatar and M. Night Shyamalan? Guaranteed to be cool.

Going to preveiw GI Joe tonight

to see if it's okay for Ryan to see. I've only seen a trailer and I'm already thinking no.


Okay, and I have another reason for wanting to see the movie. You probably don't remember the movie "Step Up." I saw it and BOUGHT it. I'm a little dance-obsessed. Channing Tatum plays GI Joe.I don't think he's going to break dance in GI Joe though.

PS There was also a "Step Up 2" for those of you that just got excited about seeing the first one. Laugh at the acting and script. Respect the sport.

Mobile uploads of Hawaii trip

View from our back patio on a rainy morning, overlooking Hanalei Bay.

Napali Coast hike with Sarah.Sarah slept on the way up Napali, but screamed the whole way down because she was so terrified.

Ryan
My view while I was laying out at the Hilton in Vegas the night before leaving for Hawaii.


This is the best ice cream I or anyone in my family has ever eaten. The owner was also very excited about the ice cream, as he had a different "favorite flavor" for everyone that walked in the store. In case you are planning a trip to Kauai, this place is down the road to the lighthouse near Hanalei.
You can't tell how good this was from the picture. Macadamia nut, banana, coconut ice creams with oreo crust from Hanalei Dolphin restaurant.
Hanalei Dolphin sushi. The sushimi wasn't dolphin, obviously. That's just the name of the restaurant. The sashimi was the best I've ever had. We told the owner that it's even better than the best we've had in Vagas, where we have eaten really great sushi, and he just laughed and said, "Yeah, Vegas sushi... bleh." I guess it does sound comical to compare sushi in vegas to that in Hawaii where it is caught a few minutes before a few hundred yards away.

It should be said here that while Hanalei Dolphin had the best sushi we ate while we were there, Postcards (also in Hanalei) had the best entree and desert. I think I didn't remember to take pictures of it because I had been Kayaking for 7 hours that day and just wanted the food to get in my tummy.