Cornbelly's 2011

In the last two years since Will has been old enough, we have discovered a love for Cornbelly's!  Last year we were able to take one of Will's good friends with us, and they had a BLAST!

 Climbing the haystack mountain, and going through the tunnel underneath.  How cute are these boys?!

The corn box was heaven!  They went diving in and buried themselves, did corn angels, and Will had handfuls of corn running through his hands the whole time!

The wooden toys to climb on were super fun

After Will's friend had to leave, he and I stayed until it almost closed because he was just having such a great time.  I never knew it would be so much fun watching someone else have such a ball!

Classic, supper happy, Will-smile.

We can't wait to go this year!

Loose Moose

Hello again!  I didn't quite make it a full 6 months without blogging, although I sure was close!  ;)  The reason for such a hiatus was A) our computer got overloaded and couldn't function to pull up my calendar, much less run picture programs necessary for blogging, and B) I became overwhelmed over the fact that I was very behind, because I post all my pictures chronologically for blog book purposes.  Alas, now I am not only 6 months behind, but a full year behind!  Huzzah!  I have decided to finish out 2011 in what will hopefully be as minimally tedious as possible, then I will move on to a new chapter in my blogging and just blog about what is current and what I want to and not worry about posting every picture of our lives.  Novel, right?

So last fall I was able to head to a friend's cabin with some incredible women who I feel very fortunate to call my friends.  These women are incredibly uplifting, and that is just the kind of weekend away a mom needs every once in awhile.  And let's be honest, Will loves the boy time with dad!

The beautiful leaves on the way there were already starting to turn.

We found out why their cabin is called Loose Moose.  We came back from shopping and found this lovely dude, along with the mom and babies, just kickin' it on the front doorstep.  Ok, more like the front lawn.  Oh yeah, and we weren't supposed to show the pic of the moose literally kickin' our lovely hostess' husband's car.  Sorry Aliesha :)

Hey ma, look how close we are!  Thanks for being such a nerd with me, Jamie.  I can always count on you for support ;)

Oh man, we are awesome.

We all brought different kinds of yummy, gooey popcorn to snack on.  Jamie makes a good Vanna White, no?

The whole crew gathered around for Jamie's impromptu "devotional".  I love you girls!!

Joy School

This past year a few neighbor friends and I decided we wanted to do a preschool swap instead of putting our kids in formal preschool for this first year. So we set it up and we take turns teaching in joy school fashion. I just remember my mom doing this when I was little and how fun it was and the memories and friendships I made, and I wanted that for Will too! It really intimidated me at first but it has been SO much fun! These kids have really grown and it has been so great to witness them learning and progressing in a setting where you can actually measure the growth in a sense. Mostly it has been fun to watch them interact and make new friendships! And the field trips where the moms get to visit at McDonalds or the park afterwards hasn't been too bad either :)

First day of school! I know it's really more like formal playdates (even though we have somewhat of curriculum), but this day was mind blowing for me! I cannot believe he is this old. I never thought I would be one of those moms who are sad to send their child off to school until I experienced it.

So this is the second day of school, but since I failed to get a pic of him leaving on his first day (the previous pic I snagged from one of the other moms), I had to get one on the second day. Only after loading this pic on the computer did I realize how embarrassingly short the sleeves on this shirt are! But in my own defense I do have a very tall child!

Our first field trip was to bridal veil falls. If you notice Will is holding a stick in every picture. He is to this day obsessed with them and will collect sticks to bring home everywhere we go. Every so often Ryan cleans the stick collection out of the garage.

Playtime on one of the days I was teaching. These kids are too cute!

Will loves his "wizard wand" (old fairy wand of mine with the tinsel and star ripped off) and appears to be casting a spell on the camera to make it go away.

Just last week our field trip was to the pet store. It was one of the best field trips yet! The kids loved all the animals that the trainer had to show us, and when she asked who wanted to feel a rat on their shoulder, Will was the first in line! We were able to get up close and personal to a lizard, snake, rat, birds, cats, dogs, and even a chinchilla, to name a few.

MV Studios

This is a shameless plug for my friend, Meagan, because she did our family pics in Sept and was just starting out with her own business and is AMAZING! She shadowed an amazing mentor for quite awhile and was finally ready to go out on her own, and from the looks of her work she definitely will do well in this business. Her website is http://mvstudiosphotography.com/ and her blog is http://mvstudiosllc.blogspot.com/. Our pics are on both. Check her out!

We had so much fun with these pics even though Will was SO grumpy that morning! You couldn't even tell because Megs was so awesome. But I do have to say even when Will is grumpy he is the best! Look at his cute little face in these pics :) We were totally bribing him with donuts so Meagan kept saying "donuts!" every time she would go to snap a pic and he would smile. She asked him what kind were his fav and he said sprinkles so then the word before every pic became "sprinkles!". I was so worried we wouldn't have one decent pic between Will's grumpiness and the sun coming out and blasting us with too much light, but again, the girl is amazing and look at how many cute pics we got! Too many! I am posting ALL of my favorites because I want them in my blog book when I get this all printed, so bear with me :)

8 Minutes

This past summer I ran the SLC Half Marathon with my SILs in April (already posted about that one), then I continued on through the summer to train with two of my very best friends who have become very dear to me and I am so glad we have been able to spend so much time together. They are both incredible runners and I owe my newfound love of speed training all to Alisa! We have run together until we hurt so bad we (maybe just I?) wanted to cry, been injured together, shared our joys and sorrows together, and even frozen our behinds off together on 6 am runs in the middle of Jan in the pitch black freezing cold hours where we needed a headlamp to guide our way. These ladies have become my sisters.

Our first race that we finally managed to run all together! In the past we had trained together quite a bit but always managed to sign up for different races. We signed up for this 2011 Provo Freedom Festival 10K on the 4th of July as part of our training for...

The Top of Utah Half Marathon 2011! (Ok I HAVE to say that there was a little girl cooling off runners from her front lawn with her garden hose on the last mile of the race, so my wet shirt is not all sweat! I was soaked from her hose and it hadn't dried yet, promise!)

Buckle up, there's a story behind this race:

You may remember that I ran this one last year (2010) by myself and it was the first time I had ever set a time goal in a race because I was finally to the point where I felt that I could train for speed, but then I injured my knee 2 weeks before the race on my 14 mile run and ended up limping through the end of the race and getting almost my worst time ever. Well, since training with Alisa and Kerstin was going so great and it was the right time of year and my knee seemed to be fully recovered, I convinced them to sign up to do it with me and I once again set myself a goal of 2 hours for the Top of Utah Half. I was so scared of this race because it kicked me so hard last year, but instead of turning tail and running I decided to stare it in the face and try to conquer it.

Race day came and my training wasn't where I wanted it to be as far as speed, even though my knee was great. I had done my intervals every week and while my speed definitely had improved, when I ran my long runs on Saturdays I just couldn't get to where I needed to be on speed when coupled with distance. So, I just decided I would go have fun with friends and run a good race and just keep my body healthy and not worry too much about time.

The race begins and it's perfect deja vu: gentle rolling downhill out of the beautiful canyon, perfect (even heavenly) weather, well run race and aid stations, etc. I even remember one moment while whisking down the canyon road, flanked by fellow runners, when Katy Perry's "Firework" song came on and I lost it. I mean full on tears of pure, blissful adrenaline. I know that sounds absolutely insane given it's KATY PERRY, but google the lyrics. Go on, do it. You'll understand. Or maybe you won't...

There's something about a race that makes your emotions so raw. Maybe it's because it's one of those rare moments in life where you have worked so hard for something for so long and put so much of your precious time and effort into it and you actually have one tangible moment in time where it's almost as if time freezes and you think to yourself, "This is it. This is everything I have been working so hard for. Within the next few moments of my life I will know, for better or worse, the fruits of all of my labors over the past few months...of everything that I have sweated and cried for and wanted so badly." It all sounds so dramatic on the screen but that is how it plays out in my mind every time I run a race. Every time. And I have heard and read plenty of people's words making fun of people like me for describing scenarios like I just have and saying how melodramatic it can all be, but I think you say that until you experience it and then you really believe it, but then again maybe it's just me :)

So we get out of the canyon and I am feeling good. Knee=great. Pace=respectable. I'm not really paying much attention cause I am truly just ENJOYING this race and so happy. I get to about mile 8 and start to add up in my mind how fast I would need to run to finish in 2 hours and I think, "Hey, if I can pick it up a little I could actually do this thing." But I am very aware that this is exactly where I started struggling and my knee started paining last year, besides the fact that 8 miles and 13.1 miles are very different, so I kind of put it out of my mind. Along comes 9 miles and I check my watch again and think wow, I can still do this thing. Again, put out of mind and keep trudging along. Mile 10 comes and this is where it starts to get hard. But still, I can't get over the nagging feeling that if I can keep up this pace and then some I could really hit this goal. I am really bookin' it at this point and it's hard but I just think I'm doing ok and if there was ever a time that I was going to hit this goal it was going to be now, and after all, I haven't hit this goal ever before for a reason: it's not easy and it's going to be hard no matter when I do it! So I set it in my mind that I am going to do this, figure out the pace I need, and start to push. Then comes the last 2 miles.

Again the imagery of everything turning to slow motion comes to mind. Those last 2 miles felt like the world was stuck in the mud, spinning ever so slowly around me. Then I get to the very last mile, my friend, Mister 12.1 and I think, "I have to stop and walk. This is it. I have pushed too hard. I can't do this." The last mile of this race, which I feel like I know so personally from walking it while flooded with pain last year, is on one very long and straight street that seems to not be an incline, but it's definitely not a decline, but it doesn't seem very flat either. It just is in a league all it's own. I have run this street when I was in so much pain I cried like a child and wanted my mom to come hold me. Yet today I am on a whole new plane. Painful still, but in such a different and interesting way. Over the period of that last mile, which I think I needed to run in something like 7-8 min but can't remember for sure, my mind jostled back and forth continuously between thoughts of, "I can't do this! It's over! I'm stopping and walking now cause it hurts too bad!" to, "You are less than a mile away from a goal you have wanted for over a year now! Push! Only 8 more minutes! You can do ANYTHING for 8 minutes!" It's funny the conversations you have with yourself sometimes. It makes me think there's something to those cartoons with the devil on one shoulder and the angel on the other.

I can't begin to describe how badly I was hurting when I came into view of that "Finish" banner up ahead, but I knew I had to run hard to do it. I kid you not, about every 5 seconds of that last minute before I crossed that finish line, the devil on my shoulder whispered in my ear to stop and walk, and I almost did. Every time. But then the angel came back and I pushed hard. Then I almost walked, then I pushed harder. It was this sort of back and forth tennis match of thoughts. I don't ever remember feeling when I have run before the sort of physical exhaustion that I felt during that last minute. I do remember looking down at my watch and seeing 30 seconds left before the 2 hour mark and looking up and deciding I will make this goal or break my leg trying, but either way I am going all out. I set off in the hardest sprint and caught the time in the corner of my eye...20 seconds left...15 seconds...10 seconds...the finish banner was SO close. I didn't look down again at my watch for those last 10 seconds as I gave it all I had left in me. My foot hit that finish pad, my finger hit the STOP on my Garmin, and this is what I saw...

Two hours.

Two hours and two seconds.

(I didn't know whether to cry or laugh hysterically over those 2 measly seconds!)

But still, two hours!

Now, I had envisioned this moment many times in the year that I had had this goal for myself, and there were many different scenarios of what I would do and feel when I finally accomplished it, but most of them involved a whole lot of crying. Blissful crying. If you know anything about me, you know that I'm a crybaby. I have cried, mostly for joy, after every race I have ever run. So you can imagine my genuine shock when I realized I wasn't crying. I wasn't laughing either. I was past any of those reactions. I simply was too exhausted to have emotion. For the MOST emotional girl in the world, this is utterly hilarious to me! Oh, how it makes me laugh now! In any case, I did it. I mean, tack on a couple silly seconds, but I did it :)

And tears or not, all I can say is it felt really good. It always does after it feels really bad, right?

And now I'm doing a marathon in June. What's wrong with me??

We celebrated that night by taking Will to an Orem Owlz baseball game, after Ryan let me come home and take an ice bath and sleep all day of course! What a fabulous husband and a wonderful day! I took Will over, towards the end of the game, to roll around on the grassy knoll with all the other kids and watched him laugh hysterically in the cool summer evening. Then we went back and sat by Ry and I enjoyed such a fun and relaxing night with my family. Seriously I remember driving home from the game with Will asleep in the backseat and grabbing Ryan's hand and saying, "This has seriously been one of the best days ever."

Last 8 minutes included.

Guilty Pleasures

Hobbies and interests sections on questionnaires, for me, usually consist of little more than the following 2 things: running and quilting. (I guess I really like to read and am into music too, but can you imagine how interesting a blog post about how much I love to read would be? Bleh.)

At the encouragement of a good friend, I signed up for my first quilt class over 2 years ago now and have done the yearly class ever since. We do a few blocks a month and at the end of the year you have a gorgeous quilt. I still need to post pics of those quilts, but recently I finally decided I have had enough practice to start coming up with quilts to do all on my very own, and since I had 2 of my very best friends having babies at the end of this last year, it was the perfect time to do a couple baby quilts. Not only were these my first quilts that I totally designed and pieced together by myself, but I also did the actual "quilting" myself with my machine instead of taking it to a professional quilter to be quilted. It was fun to have the experience but having them professionally quilted after they're all pieced is much less painful!

Then at the end of the year we FINALLY bought Will a real bed and moved him out of his toddler bed, and I remembered the Star Wars quilts my brothers had growing up that great grandpa made for them and still own to this day, and I thought how fun would it be for Will to have the same kind of thing? So I asked him what kind of room he wanted and of course it was a superhero room and I got the genius idea to make a quilt for a full sized bed+use the fattest batting+quilt it on my mini size sewing machine=nightmare! I know I said I love quilting but right now I'm making it sound like a real headache aren't I? ;) Well it was!

In the end his batman room is turning out great and the quilt is perfect and I am glad he will always have it and know his mom made it in it's entirety on her very own, but I told Ryan he had to swear to make sure I stuck with baby quilts from now on!

(I bought the stuff to make a decorative pillow with the bat symbol on it but it's not completed yet, so the spiderman pillow pet is a good stand in for now)

On to running now, but that deserves a post of its very own...