18 Years and it's still INTERESTING!

We have made it to 18 years of marriage as of July 28th

This is what we have been through:

7 Moves--Rexburg to Pocatello, Pocatello 2 bedroom apartment to a 3 bedroom apartment, 3 bedroom apartment to a rental house, rental house to a duplex in Iowa for 2 days, Duplex in Iowa to a rental house, rental house to our first home, first home to our 2nd home.
6 Children
10 years of Jason in school--Ricks College for 2 years, Idaho State University for 5 years, University of Iowa for 3 years.
3 basement floods --different homes
a few loss of jobs
5 surgeries --Michelle twice, Alyssa once, Scott once, Jason once
5 broken bones--Jason's arm, Alyssa's wrist, Caleb's arm and shoulder, Daniel's leg
1 bird, 1 ferret, 4 dogs, 5 cats, 1 frog, and multiple fish (all of which are gone now) (we obviously aren't pet people) Now this is a sad story, The bird was given to us and he was a great parrot, however he turned super mean, one day he turned out to be a she and laid an egg and started biting everyone all the time. A co-worker friend said she could turn our he/she bird around and get it to be nice again, so she took the bird.

The ferret, who I can't even remember his name, bit me in a bad place while I was nursing a baby, yes you can only guess as much and that was the end of the ferret. We advertized him in the paper and within a few days was in a new home.

Dogs--First there was Lucky. I loved this dog. She was a lab/pitbull mix and we all got along great. However we had to move across the country and our new Duplex wouldn't accept pets so we had to find her a new home. Super sad moment for us.
2nd Dog, Hobbes. A pure bread yellow Lab who was Physcho to the extreme. This dog needed more attention, love, obedience school, and yard then we could give him, so we found him a new home after 5 years of trying.
3rd Dog, Lucy. Mutt mix, not even sure what type of dog she was. Nice dog given to us, but she had major issues and bit Jason, so she was gone to the pound.
4th Dog, Sadie. Again, nice dog given to us, she was a Yo-Chon. Yorkie/Bichon mix. She ended up biting 2 of my children and me. She liked to protect whoever's lap she was on and if you came near her she bit you. She also bit the neighbor so she went to the pound after that. Sad story there.
1st Cat, Tigger, was very ill and had to be put down.
2nd Cat we loved named Calvin and would still have to this day, but Caleb has severe cat allergies and we had to recently get rid of all cats. We had Calvin 8 years.
3rd Cat, Cinnamon, nice cat, but didn't get a long with Calvin so the neighbor wanted him and got him.
4th Cat, Gizmo, given to us, but he ended up being a super sick cat and had to be put down.
5th Cat, Big Mac, also given to us and we had Big Mac for about 3 years and both Big Mac and Calvin got along great, however when Caleb started getting sick all the time and we figured out from the allergist that his #1 allergy was cats, Big Mac went when Calvin did. Still sad over that.
As far as Frogs and fish go, well they don't live long no matter what you do.

4 minor car wrecks 3 in Idaho, 1 in Iowa
1 major car wreck In Idaho
2 Major National Disasters both in Iowa, major flood and tornado. Thank goodness our home was saved from both.
hundreds of bad mornings because I'm mean --enough said there.
learned and taught over 700 sets of choreography multiple times for our classes (Zumba, Step, Pump, Attack)
1013 Pampered Chef shows
656 donations of Plasma --I have the scar to prove it.10 vehicles--5 of them because of the wrecks listed above.3 Triathlons and 7 running races
7 major trips all by ourselves without children--Cancun, California, Utah, Caribbean Cruise, Alaskan Cruise, Hawaii, London
Visited 29 of the United States and 3 foreign countries
And we still like each other most of the time.

Alyssa is 11 and the BIX 7 race in Davenport, Iowa

Alyssa got up super early today to take a shower before anyone else. In her words, "I want to get the hot water before the boys take it since it's my birthday."Then after her shower she wanted me to do her hair. On the left is the before picture. On the right is after I french braided it. Below is the back of her hair to show how thick it is. So funny to think that I worried when she was 3 that her hair would always be thin and now it's so thick that it's hard to get all your fingers around it. I can't believe she is 11 today. Thank you to Aunt Bobbie &Uncle Larry, Phyllis Vernon and my parents for sending her cards, she loved getting mail!

In Davenport, Iowa yesterday I ran the famous BIX 7 race. This is the largest and most famous race in Iowa. There were 11,439 people. It was extremely crowded. I have NEVER seen so many people in my entire life. It was raining the entire race. I was so soaked when we were finished that every part of me was wet. My socks were soaked and weighed at least a pound when I took them off.

In the picture below is my friend Denise Whiting. I met her at North Dodge Athletic Club. Sometimes she takes my workout classes. She runs marathons all the time 26 to date, and in her lifetime has ran so many races that she has lost count. Her time for 7 miles was an impressive 55:42 so her mile pace was 7.92 minute mile. She placed 119th out of 561 in her age group of 50-59.
Then there's me. A Non-runner. Ok NOT true, a beginner runner. My time was 1:17:30 so my mile pace was 11.04 minute mile. I placed 452 out of 856 in my age group of 30-39. Out of the entire race I was place 7500th out of 11,439
So to not be last and to finish is the best!!!!

Even though I look whiter than a piece of paper, I am actually light tan and have tan lines to prove it (how I don't know since I wear 50 SPF sunscreen when I'm outside) but I am tan. Denise is just extremely tan.

2010 Okoboji Half Marathon and Triathlon Race--Okoboji, IA

On Friday July 16th we went to Okoboji, Iowa to run a couple races.

Below is us taking a picture of ourselves. We are adorable!

We ate at a restaurant named Tweeter's. It had all kinds of yummy food. I chose Coconut Shrimp which was good, but not quite as fabulous as Red Lobster makes them. Jason had Steak!

Notice my bib number for the race. #472 Now this may not mean anything to you, but to me it's the perfect number for two reasons.

1. My birthday is the 4th day of September in 1972

2. When you add all those numbers together 4 plus 7 plus 2 you will get 13. 13 is my most favorite number ever.

The number 13 came up 3 times. Once for the number of miles I was running, twice for my bib number and the third time for our room number on our hotel room, see below.

Here is Jason, so cute in his Triathlon shorts. Do you notice those muscular legs? His race had a .6 mile swim, 18 mile bike ride and then a 5.5 mile run.

It was 96 degrees out and we were both in complete misery.

This race was a race we will NEVER do again. Here are the reasons why

1. Part of the bike portion of the race was on the main street of Okoboji without any traffic control so it was dangerous.

2. The race needed more people on the course for safety reasons.

3. When Michelle finished her race they had ran out of food, so there was NONE. And they only had bananas to begin with. This was unexceptable for a race of this size.

4. This race was 4 1/2 hours from our house. Way too far away to travel for a dumb race. We only did this for the experience of the races and it's our anniersary in 1 week so it was our weekend getaway.

This is a picture of a completely exhausted ME. After the race I couldn't wear my shoes anymore because I have a massive blister on the bottom of my 4th toe on my right foot. So I walked barefoot in the grass and that felt wonderful.

Tiffin, Iowa 5K race

Another small race completed.

This time in Tiffin, Iowa. That's a town right next door to Iowa City. Today it was a 5K and it was a rolling hill course.

When I read the pamphlet for this race it said that you would come to appreciate the rolling hills of Iowa after this race. They weren't kidding. One hill after another. It was hard. I found it to be a real challenge.

My time was 31:00 on the dot. This means I ran a 10 minute mile since a 5K is 3.1 miles.

I felt like I was running fast at some points of the race, so I was super surprised by my time, but maybe the hills have something to do with that.

Either way I finished and I'm closer to my goal of running a marathon someday!