Happy Memorial Day

We had a pretty low key Memorial day this year. Jeff has been busy studying for his oral boards that are this week, so he spent most of the day studying while the kids and I did yard work and chores. Monday night Jeff took a break and set-up our little fire pit. We roasted hot dogs and made s'mores. The kids thought it was awesome and some of our neighbor friends joined us. It was a beautiful evening to sit outside together enjoying the weather and reflecting on the blessings we have thanks to so many who have given their lives for our country and freedom.

 Jacob and Luke

This is one of Emily's very favorite friends, Sasha. They have so much fun together.

Emily was dressed cute until she spilled her drink on her dress and changed herself into one of Matthew's pajama shirts. At that point I just wasn't going to bother.

Baseball Girl

For all the time this little girl has spent at baseball games, she's been a great little supporter. We've had games 5-6 days a week, starting anywhere from 5:30-7:30pm. We've driven around all over the place and our dinner schedule has been less than ideal, but Emily has been such a great little trooper and has loved almost every minute of it.

 She often gets pretty into the games and I loved hearing her sweet little voice yell, "Go Jacob! Go Caleb!" She's made good use of the boys' baseball equipment too. I have a feeling she'll be a pretty good little softball player someday.

 While she likes watching the games, an hour is a long time, so she's also spent a lot of time doing other things as well. Luckily, most of the parks have playgrounds and that's provided a lot of entertainment for the kids who aren't currently playing a game. She loves to run around...a lot.

 And I have lots of blurry pictures to prove it...

 Emily's made some cute little friends that love to play with her. Emily and Claire have spent a lot of time together at Caleb's games. It's been fun for her to have other girls to play with.

 Emily and Matthew love to collect things- whether it's rocks, or sticks, etc. They'll run around a lot together too. Emily has also loved just playing on our chairs, having snacks, playing in the dirt and being silly. I'm sure grateful for this sweet, cute little princess and I'm grateful she's been such a great sport through baseball season!

Matthew's Baseball

 Matthew has been so excited to play baseball ever since he started watching his older brothers. He would ask me every day how many days until it was his turn. The 'Rookie' division is a little different than the other divisions. They do have teams, but they only have baseball one night a week for about 5 weeks. Each week they meet together and practice hitting, throwing, catching, base running, etc.  It worked out perfectly for us and gave the kids a lot more time to actually 'play' than if they were playing actual games. Plus, having two other boys in baseball, it got a little tricky to manage the schedule and we usually had to split up on the nights that Matthew played.

 Matthew was such a crack-up to watch. Matthew is hands-down our most competitive child (maybe it's being the youngest of 3 boys) and seems to find a way to make a competition out of everything. Even when they were practicing throwing and catching, he would keep track of how many times he caught the ball vs. his partner. The little stinker started throwing bad throws just so his partner wouldn't catch the ball and he would have more catches. We had to have a little talk about that one.

 In the base-running drills he was determined to be first every time. I'm hoping with experience, he'll learn that he can't always be the fastest, first, and best. Mainly, I'm hoping we can channel that competitiveness into good directions! Helping him to just be competitive with himself and wanting to improve himself against his own self.

 The baseball has been so fun for Matthew, he's really had a great time. It was fun for him to play with his teammates and work on his baseball skills. It was also nice to make some new friends that he'll probably see in preschool and kindergarten.

 Matthew especially loved having siblings there to watch and cheer him on. Jacob has been a great friend and coach for Matthew. I just can't believe how much my little guys are all growing up. I have a feeling we have many more years of sports ahead of us and I just hope they all have fun doing it together!

Caleb's Baseball

 It's been fun watching Caleb play baseball this year. Because of moving, traveling, financial situations etc. it's his very first year to play and I'm most happy about the fact that he's really enjoyed it. It's been so fun to watch him really start to 'get' the game and watch his skills improve. He's pretty serious when he gets up to bat, but I love seeing his cute, lighthearted, happy personality show through too. I'm glad he's had such a fun experience.

 The games for these younger age teams can be pretty entertaining at times. Often the kids aren't playing real great attention. They'll be picking flowers or playing with bugs out in the outfield, and when a ball comes their direction it's the yelling of all the coaches that finally gets their attention as they scramble to find the ball and throw it where it needs to go. The kids hitting the ball do their best and have fun running around the bases. I love watching the kids cheer as each runner makes it to home plate. I'm really grateful for the wonderful, patient coaches that really make it fun for the boys.

Jacob's Baseball

 We've sure enjoyed watching Jacob's baseball games this year. By the time the boys hit 7-8 they're really starting to play well and we've watched some pretty awesome plays. I've been so impressed with how well Jacob has improved throughout the season. He was lucky enough to be on a team with quite a few of his friends and that really made the season fun. This will be his last year of coach-pitch, next year the boys will be pitching themselves. Jacob has had a lot of fun, and although I won't be sad to say goodbye to having games 5-6 nights a week, we will miss the baseball.

Emily's Pet

 Emily found a little inchworm/caterpillar and decided it was a great pet. She carried that little thing around for a quite a while. I was worried it wouldn't last long, but she was surprisingly gentle with it. She loved to pet it and watch it crawl around. I thought it was so cute! It's probably due in part to having three older brothers, but this girl sure isn't scared of bugs.

Fargo Marathon

Last fall I started thinking about races for the following year. One marathon I had seen and taken some interest in was the Fargo Marathon that would be held on May 19th, exactly one week after the Brookings Half Marathon. Well the cold winter weather kind of killed my motivation to train during the colder months. I didn't start running again until the end of March and decided that I just wasn't prepared and wouldn't run it this year. As the time got closer I started to regret my decision. I kept hearing how great the race was and had a couple people from my ward who were running the full and the half. I started to feel sad about missing out. After doing a couple half marathons and feeling pretty good, I got a crazy last minute idea to just sign up anyway and run Fargo despite my lack of training. The online registration was closed since it was only about 10 days before the race, but I emailed the race director and begged to get in. He was SO nice and let me fill out a form, send it 2-day mail and got me into the race.

After getting in to the race, I started to feel a little nervous about the decision. I'd done quite a few 13 mile runs, one 16 mile run in early April, but I had only done one 20 mile run, and it wasn't even a true 20 mile run. I had run the River Rat half marathon then added 7 more miles later in the day, and that was back in April. I decided that I would just slow my pace down, try to make it the full 26.2 miles, and enjoy the experience.

The next trick was finding a hotel room. I started calling around and could almost hear the hotel employees laughing when I told them the dates I wanted. The Fargo Marathon draws over 25,000 people between all the events and the whole city is packed. No one had anything. I finally found a couple places that had one smoking room left but who wants to stay in a smoking room?! I was so grateful to finally find a room online. We ended up having to pay $130, but it was a really nice King suite with a sofa bed in new hotel that was also only about a mile from the shuttle area so I could just walk over without waking Jeff or the kids. I was just so grateful to find an open room!

We made it to Fargo about 8pm on Friday night. Our first stop was to the expo/packet pick up. It was huge and awesome. The excitement in the air was palpable. I would have loved to spend more time walking around looking at everything, but after a long day of travel and everyone waiting in the car, I just quickly picked up my packet. 

After picking up a few things at the store, we finally got to our hotel and took the kids swimming. Even I was pretty excited when I saw the awesome pool. They had all sorts of fun slides, water spouts, and activities. We told the kids we could only stay for an hour, but ended up staying a little longer. We would go back just for the indoor water park.

 I'm pretty sure Matthew's favorite part was shooting everyone with the water blasters.

I don't think anyone sleeps well the night before a race. I finally went to bed at 11:30, but was up at 1:30, 3:30, and 4:30 before I finally had to get up for good at 5:15. The marathon didn't start until 8:10, but I had to take the shuttle to the starting line and the last one left at 6:30. I was ready and out the door at 6am, and walked a mile over to the mall where the shuttles were. On my ride over I met Lynda. She and I ended up being fast friends and spent the morning together while we waited for the race. She's 25 marathons into her 50 states and we're planning to meet up again for a race someday. It was so nice to have someone to hang out with. You don't feel so nervous when you've got someone to talk with and take your mind off the race. I will also say how much I loved the Fargo dome! Not only did we have a nice warm place to wait for our race, but there are tons and tons of flushing toilets. No porta-potties, and no lines. It was awesome.

 Finally it was race time. We dropped the rest of our stuff off and Lynda helped us both work our way up through the crowds. Friday night it had been 93 degrees in Fargo and we were prepping for some hot weather, but prayers must have been answered because a big storm system moved in and we had cloudy, overcast skies. It was a little windy-I about lost my hat a few times, but even the rain held off until later on.

As I mentioned before, I was a little nervous about the race because I knew my training wasn't that great. I figured I would just go out a little slower and see how I felt at the halfway point. There were about 2000 people running the full marathon, so it was a pretty good crowd. I actually ran into my friend from our ward, Rick Jensen, around mile 2. We ran together for a while, then he ran just ahead of me with the 3:35 pace group. The Fargo Marathon has been voted as one of the top 10 marathons in the US and it's pretty easy to see why. The course isn't necessarily known for it's amazing scenery- you pretty much just run through winding neighborhoods, but the crowd support is pretty amazing. There are people lining almost the entire course, and lots of cheering, music, bands playing, etc. My favorite were the people handing out ice pops-those are amazing during a race! It's also nice that Fargo is one of the flattest places you'll find- the entire course is between 900-950 feet in elevation. They also have free runner tracking so Jeff was able to see exactly where I was on his phone.

 I really felt great during the race. I started to feel a little tired about mile 9-11, but not too bad. I crossed the half way point at 1:48:20 and was still feeling pretty good. I started to think if I could keep it up, it would be a really great race for me. I actually started to feel my energy level pick up about 14-16 miles, and just kept running. I passed by both Rick & Lynda at a turn-around section, and it's always fun to see friends. I hit mile 18 at 2:28, and mile 20 at 2:45. At mile 22 I started to feel a little more tired, but at that point the end is so close that you just keep pushing on. I felt like mile 22 dragged on forever, I kept looking for that mile 23 marker, then all of a sudden I saw the mile 24 marker- somehow I missed 23, that's always a great feeling! Those last two miles were probably the most painful, your legs are aching and begging to be done. I noticed a little cramping in my quads just above my knees, but I think my body was in cruise control and I just kept running. Another victory in my mind was feeling like I had to use the bathroom right from the start- I would see a porta-potty and want to stop, but I just kept telling myself that I would stop at the next one. By the time I hit mile 24, I knew I was NOT stopping for a bathroom break. I was feeling pretty proud of holding out for 26.2 miles! (Especially because I knew a certain time of the month was near. I decided to take precautions, and found out after I finished that it was indeed that day! That could have been a disaster.)

I was so excited when I finally saw that Fargo Dome in the distance and really picked it up. I actually caught Rick right before mile 26, I gave him a big pat on the back and cheered him on. At that point we turned some corners and headed into the Fargo Dome. It was such a great moment to see that finish line! I crossed it at 3:36:40 and actually broke into tears right then- it was such an amazing experience for me. It almost felt like a dream. I had such low expectations going into the race, and almost couldn't believe that I had been able to push myself to run so well. After the Bismarck Marathon last year- when I finished in 3:36, but didn't feel like I had truly earned it- it was such a great feeling to know that I had run hard and really earned that 3:36! Luckily, there are all sorts of emotions going on at the finish line of a marathon, and I'm sure I wasn't the only one crying tears of gratitude and joy.

 Thanks to the runner tracking system, Jeff knew about when I was going to finish and met me right after I finished. It was so fun to see him and the kids. He pointed out to me, and I thought it was pretty amazing that my first and second half's of the marathon were the exact same down to the seconds! They were both 1:48:20. That's pretty unusual. I was pretty happy that I had been consistent throughout the race and finished it with an 8:17 average pace.

 Rick ended up finishing just 18 seconds after me. It was fun to meet up with him and Mindy to swap race stories, take pictures, etc. Rick is actually pretty amazing. He is an ER doctor, member of the bishopric, and just a couple years ago was pretty overweight. He decided he wanted to make some changes and started running. Over the past couple years he's lost over 100 pounds. He ran his first marathon last fall and finished just under 4. He has been so diligent with his training, running all through the winter, running five 20-milers, and really earned his 3:36:58 time. I think we were both just excited to be done at this point!

  
I'm especially grateful for a supportive husband and family. I'm grateful they're willing to come along for the fun. It will be nice to take a break on weekend trips for a while though!

The Fargo Marathon was such an amazing experience. I was so glad I decided crazy last minute to sign up. It's so gratifying when you can push yourself beyond what you think is possible and have such a great experience. It's such a mental boost- like you can do anything. I have more races in the future and I know they won't all turn out just the way you'd like, but it sure makes you grateful for the times that the stars do align and things turn out great. Fargo was awesome and I hope to be back again someday.