Freeze Fest 5K Race, Marion, Iowa

Friday morning I woke up to this outside. I was a bit disappointed since we had a tease of Spring just a week earlier with temps in the 60's so having snow again isn't fun. Plus I knew I had a race the next day and didn't want to be too cold.

Saturday morning, February 26th, woke up to more snow and it was spitting snow outside so I was still a bit bummed out, but knew being February that I took that chance when I registered for this race.

The race is called Freeze Fest, so basically if you don't want to be freezing you shouldn't register for such race.

Brenden was super excited and asked me to sign him up also. My friend Stephany and my friend Tracy also both signed up so they were there too! We all rode together!


All of us together before the race. Tracy, Stephany, Brenden, and Me

Brenden and I getting ready for the race, just getting our race numbers on.






















Tons and tons of COOKIES!!! I love cookies and there were all kinds. I was so looking forward to all of them!

Tracy, Stephany and me taking a picture of ourselves. We had such a great time and laughed a lot. We are looking forward to our trip to Columbus for our Half Marathon on May 7th together!

Brenden won 3rd place in his age group. I am so proud of him for finishing the race. At around 1 mile and a half, Brenden's calf in his left leg was hurting so he stopped along side of the road and he was so upset that it was hurting so bad that he starting crying and then he had an asthma attack, so he walked for a while. I came up beside him and walked with him for around 3-4 minutes. He finally told me to "Just go so I wouldn't lose the race." He did end up finishing the race and I'm glad he did. He told me it was hard to finish with his legs hurting, but he wanted to show he could still do it. At the end of the race they gave away some really awesome door prizes. Brenden won a $70 running jacket. He was thrilled.
Here's all of us at the end with our race shirts on that we were given. This race was neat because they did the race shirts in all kinds of different colors.

He's not the Daddy's boy he used to be.

5 minutes after not getting what he wanted, Scott and I have the following exchange.

Scott: Dad, are you going to work today?

Me: No, its Saturday, I don't usually go to work on Saturday.

Scott: Well, you should.

Me: Why?

Scott: So you can earn more money and leave your kids alone.

What a little turkey!

New Beginnings

Since Alyssa will be turning 12 this summer she was invited to the New Beginnings program on Wednesday night.

The theme was "We seek after these things" from 13th Article of Faith.

Each girl was asked to dress up like a Treasure Hunter. Most of the girls did not dress up, but Alyssa did and she looked adorable (I won't be able to call her that much longer.) Then they had to use their book of clues to find several items. The items ended up being charms for a key ring and each charm was a young women's value with a scripture so there was

Faith --Faith is not to have a perfect knowledge of things; therefore, if ye have faith, ye hope for things which are not seen, which are true (Alma 32:21)

Individual Worth--Remember the worth of souls is great in the sight of god (Doctrine and Covenants 18:10)

Divine Nature--Be partakers of the divine nature. . . Giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue; and to virtue knowledge; and to knowledge temperance; and to temperance patience; and to patience godliness; and to godliness brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness charity (2 Peter 1:4-7)

Good Works--Therefore let your light so shine before this people, that they may see your good works and glorify your father who is in heaven (3 Nephi 12:16)

Integrity--Till I die I will not remove mine integrity from me (Job 27:5)

Knowledge--Seek learning, even by study and also by faith (Doctrine and Covenants 88:118)

Choice and Accountability--Choose you this day whom ye will serve . . . but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord (Joshua 24:15)

Virtue--Who can find a virtuous woman? For her price is far above rubies (Proverbs 31:10).

Then at the end of finding all the charms for their key ring they came back to the Young Women's room that had the TREASURE.


Jason was making fun of me taking pictures, in fact he had just said "Really" you can see it on his face. Alyssa wasn't real thrilled about pictures either, but I told her I had to document this special night.

The Treasure

So this is what $2170.53 looks like

I don't do Pampered Chef parties much anymore because I simply just don't enjoy it as much as I used to. In fact I don't call anyone to do parties, I let them call me. When my past hosts call and ask for a party I'm more than happy to schedule one for them.

A girl named Angie needed a Fundraiser for the T.T.T. Society. She is a super organized person so as such was a fabulous Chairperson for this fundraiser.

She asked for 50 catalogs and I thought that sounded like a bit much, but she worked her tail off to get orders.

Last week I turned it all in and the total came to $2170.53 I was shocked that the fundraiser did so well, but happy at the same time!

I told her that since she worked during the day and since there would be a massive amount of boxes arriving at her house that I would be happy to have it delivered to me and seperate it for her. I had forgotten how much Pampered Chef stuff over $2000 really is.

Above are the 8 boxes that first showed up on my doorstep. In my opinion it should have been 16 boxes. Whoever loaded these boxes loaded them so heavy that I struggled to get them in the house, they should have had half the stuff they actually had in them.




I didn't even unload the batter bowls because there were so many of them that they all fit in one box.

The top selling item Mix N' Chop

After 3 long hours I was finally done unpacking, sorting, labeling and ready for my host to pick it all up because I'm not delivering.

Day Out with Mom

Yesterday was President's Day and my children were out of school. I asked them what they wanted to do. Alyssa and Scott said Ice Skating. Brenden and Scott said a movie, Jared said hang out at the mall and eat at the mall.

So we set out on our journey to Coralridge Mall in Coralville, IA which is only 4 miles from our house.














Here is Scott and Alyssa putting on their skates. They each have their own skates now which is very exciting to them.








Some skating pictures

Then I told them they could each pick their favorite place to eat at.

Jared and Brenden both picked Panda Express for the Orange chicken.

Scott picked pizza.

Alyssa loves Charley's Grilled Subs.

I didn't pick anything because I knew from all that food there would be left overs and sure enough both Jared and Brenden didn't want all their chow mein noodles so I got a fair helping of those.

Then we went to Target for some candy.

Then we went to a movie. The children picked Gnomeo and Juliet. It was a great movie for them. I thought it was just okay.

Overall, super fun day.

You may be wondering, where is Caleb and Daniel. Daniel had to work and Caleb had a huge research paper.

Brenden at his Indoor Triathlon

Back on January 29, 2011 we had the opportunity to put on an Indoor Triathlon at North Dodge Athletic Club in Iowa City. My husband Jason was the race director and I helped with many of the tasks to pull off the event. We had 21 sign up to do the race.

In case you have no idea what a triathlon even is, you

SWIM, BIKE and then RUN for set amount of distances or times.

Because this was an indoor triathlon due to the temperatures outside. There were times set in order to complete your events. You had to swim for 10 minutes, then bike for 30 minutes and then run for 20 minutes.



Here Brenden is swimming. You could swim any way you wanted and your progress was recorded as the number of laps you completed. Some of the pictures are blurry that I took. I either need to get a better camera or get classes on how to take pictures. Jason's Mom takes great pictures, if only she could be our photographer for the next race.




Brenden wanted to do this, so I signed him up and talked him through all the events. He was super confident and ready to proceed. He would ask me almost daily how much longer it was until the triathlon.

I am so proud of him and what he accomplished. He was the youngest participant and he finished all the events. He even won a door prize for a Running Wild gift certificate at the end of the event. He can't wait to spend it.

Brenden never complained the entire race and you could tell he was super exhausted. Below he is holding his finishing certificate. He was glad to place 1st in his age group!

Immature mean and rude

Sounds like I'm about to write about teenagers. Well after the morning I've had at church and my teenagers being less than respectful, this post could be about them.

I just don't understand why some people are so immature that when you put comments on their blog that is just your opinion and not hurtful in any way, that they delete them. If you can't handle other's opinions, then why have a comment feature on your blog at all?

I have tried to be nice to some people over and over and over and yet they just seem to keep trying to be mean or hurtful back. I just don't understand mean, rude and immature behavior. It needs to stop.

Grow up people, be nice, be loving, be kind! It's so much easier to just be nice.

Never mess with the power of Awesome

Earlier this morning I went to this store that sells this fabulous hot sauce that Jason just loves. The hot sauce is called Blair's Death Sauce and you can get it at www.extremefood.com

It has been around for years and has many different levels of hotness. The names are things like: Sweet Death, Jalapeno Death, Golden Death, Original Death, Pure Death, Mega Death, Ultra Death, After Death, Sudden Death, Beyond Death

Today he tried a new one called Sudden Death sauce. He said it was one of the hottest things he's ever eaten. It had Habanero peppers, cayenne peppers and other things in it to make it burn you.

So that he could try this hot sauce properly I made him an omelet (which is one of his favorite breakfast foods) with jalapeno peppers in it. He was thrilled.

Now here's the real story:

While I was touching the jalapeño peppers or maybe it was while I touched a drop of this hot sauce to smell it, not sure which, I must have gotten some on my fingers. I also must have NOT washed it all off of me.

About an hour later, well after I had forgotten about any hot things that I had touched,

I touched my left eye.

Maybe you can just imagine what I went through next. Sudden burning death to the eye. I was rubbing my eye and screaming and forgot that I had contacts in. I was at the end of the hallway by the stairs burning in pain. I ran to the bathroom only to think my contacts were still in my eyes, not sure at this point. I washed my hands with much scrubbing and tons of soap and then proceeded to get my contacts out so I could just cry in pain without them in my eyes as well.

My right contact came out with ease, the left one no where to be seen. I searched the bathroom, nothing. I searched myself, nothing. I searched the hallway with a flashlight, nothing. I retraced my steps and then thought to myself that I was standing at the top of the stairs when I screamed and rubbed the hardest. So I went to the top stair with the flashlight, looked down and there was my tiny gas permeable contact all by it's lonesome staring at me begging for solution.

So there you have it. I am Awesome

Show Choir performance

Below is a link to watch the entire Show Choir performance at Caleb's last competition he was in.

If you fast forward to 11:36 in the show you will see Caleb on the left hiking up his pants, then walking to the top of the bleachers and giving the Star Trek sign since he is playing a geek. Too funny. Enjoy the performance!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQ3MLtAe0_8

February

Many things have happened this month and it's only the 10th.

First at the beginning of the month our dryer broke AGAIN. I was super worried, because the last time our dryer broke we waited 3 days for the Sears man to get here, then he didn't have the part so he had to order it, so then we waited for the part, then we waited for him to come back then it finally got fixed after 3 weeks.

Well I was pretty sure the same thing was wrong this time since the same light came on and it wouldn't start.

I called Sears and to my surprise they had an opening that morning between 8-12. AND he showed up at 9:30, found the problem, had the part, and fixed it.

That was the quickest and best service call I have ever received and to top it off it was FREE because that dryer is still under warranty!! Lucky us.

Caleb, Daniel and Jared had a choir concert and it was super awesome. Caleb had a solo. So proud of him for he did a fabulous job. If only we had a video of that, but our software to our video camera is missing so we don't know how to get the video on the camera off the camera to take more video. Bummer.

On February 2nd we had the largest snowstorm since last winter. I would say we had been pretty spoiled with little snow all winter, so this was overdue. However it was so much snow that the city is just not doing well with clearing it. They are STILL NOT running the city buses on their regular routes, this creates many problems.

Zumba is going well for me. I have taken on another teaching position and I'm loving my classes! At some point check out www.zumba.com go to Find a Class and type in your zip code. You have to try this class out, it totally energizes you. All fitness levels can do this. At one place I teach most of the women are over 50 and seem to shake it well!

Valentines Day is coming up. I really like that holiday. I know it's just a Hallmark holiday, but I love it and hope it ends up special! hint hint Jason :) I have already done something nice for him!

I am far into my training for my next half marathon on May 7th. Last week I ran 5.2 and this week the plan is 6 miles or more. Each week I will try and increase by 1/2 mile and see how it all goes. I hope to beat my 13.1 mile time by at least 13 minutes, thus shaving off 1 minute per mile.

Brenden and I have registered for an upcoming race on February 26th called the Freeze Fest. I just hope it's warmer than my last race that had temps below zero.

Speaking of cold temps it is minus 11 today. I couldn't believe it, but it definitely feels that cold. All my joints hurt and my hands are so sore, time for more hand cream.

I'm happy to say my sister is Cancer FREE! She had a scare in December with finding a lump in her side and it was removed and declared as Leiomyosarcoma. After that she had a cat scan a month later and it was determined that all the cancer was gone. However she did go in for surgery this past Tuesday to have more of the area removed just to be safe. I'm so glad she's okay. She has to be checked every 6 months for the next 5 years. What a scary time for her and the rest of the family. Jan I'm so glad you are cancer free, love you!

Winter Storm in February