Zion National Park

This last weekend we decided that we should get out of town for a couple of days and do some camping at Zion National Park. It was a great escape. The weather was perfect during the day. Though it was quite windy at night, and made us think the tent might be blown off the ground.

Henry loved being outside, but made it was a little hard for us, as he laid in the dirt and crawled around eating rocks and dirt and sticks and whatever junk he could find. He was super filthy, and tired by the end of the two days. Gavin, on the other hand, had a fabulous time and would have kept camping forever if we had found him a way to watch Curious George once in a while. We took them on several hikes, and were impressed with their endurance over the very long day.

Carrying Henry in the backpack doesn't seemed to be getting easier, though it did keep him out of the dirt for some periods of time. He agreed to it, except when he thought he might have a chance of escape into some sort of mess.

Gavin's new favorite animals are lizards. There were tons of them running around on the hikes that we took, so we had to stop a lot of check them out. Gavin insisted that he was really strong and could catch one and hold onto it until we found a bottle to put it in, so it took some convincing before he agreed not to try and chase any down. He really was impressive on the hikes that we did, and walked about 95% of the time. As we were getting ready to go, he walked around singing to himself "We are going to camping! We are going to camping!"

Nana and Vatti visit

Just a few more pictures from our visit with Nana, Vatti and Bridgett. We sure had fun. We were all sad to see them go.

Salt Lake City 1/2 Marathon

In December, my amazing friend, Caryn asked me if I would be interested in running the half marathon with her and her sister and whoever she could round up. At first, I just laughed, but after looking over the training schedule and the route, I made the decision that I was going to try and do it. And then of course, I convinced my dad to do it too. So after 15 weeks of running in the early morning hours, on the treadmill and on Saturdays outside, with an amazing group of women... Today we ran the Salt Lake City 1/2 Marathon. We had a great run. I did reach a point at about 7 miles, where I thought that a 10k was probably more my race. But aside from a few brief stops for water etc, we kept picking up our feet and somehow they kept moving us forward. We didn't see many of the women that I trained with along the route... there were 3819 people who finished the half marathon... not to mention all of the other races running part of the same course today, but Dad and I were able to stick together. In the end, we were pretty happy with our time and our pace. We finished the 13.1 mile race in 2:18:41, which had us at an average mile pace of 10:35. Not bad for first timers, and since I was never a distance runner in my previous life, my goal was to finish.

Here is a shot of the back of us.

And at 8 miles, we were actually still able to raise our arms and wave, so I think that was a good sign.
Here is Dad at the end of the race. With all of the work that Dad was doing on his house, he didn't get as many chances to train and get in shape, but he still did an amazing job. There were only 29 people in Dad's age bracket and he beat 9 of them. Way to go Dad!
Here is me at the end of the race... Let's just say that I felt better while I was running, than when we stopped. I got pretty light headed, and then on the trax ride home, ended up having to whip off my running shirt so that I could throw up into it. Yeah... that's right, I now have a most-embarrassing moment of puking on a super crowded train to go along with pivotal moment of finishing my first half marathon. I guess that is just how it goes.
I think the most important part of these last few months is what I have learned about myself and others.

1. A group of determined and supportive women can accomplish anything they want to.

(Thanks to Caryn, Stephanie, Paula, Martie and Jasmine for being such amazing Saturday running mates. Great job on your races girls. Thanks to Shelby, McCall and Jessi for showing up to the gym in the early morning hours or joining on Saturday runs even when you didn't have a to train for a race. Having your support was so great.)

2. Caleb really loves me, even after all this time. He was so encouraging to me as I trained and especially on Saturday long runs, he was often up really early with the boys on his own... he is always so supportive and amazing... Even when I was limping around the rest of the day. It was so great to have such a cheering squad.

3. Everything is better with a friend.

4. Being in shape again feels great! Even though my goal was just to run, I can't believe how much more muscle I am carrying around, and I actually lost 5 pounds without even trying to.

5. Sometimes I just have to make a decision and then do it, no excuses. I have forgotten what I can do based just on pure willpower.

As of today, I have run 208 miles so far this year.

And for all of you who might be thinking about running a race of any length- DO IT! You might be tired sometimes, but you certainly won't look back and think "Man, I wish I hadn't finished that race." :-) Thanks to all of our cheering fans.

Rock Hunting

Yesterday morning we decided to head west of the Great Salt Lake in search of an old rocky quarry that is said to contain a lot of easy to identify fossils. Caleb heard about this place from someone in his lab and was eager to go a see what we could find. We had a great time and after driving on some gravel roads through some open ranch lands, we came to some cool looking rocky ridges and a small mountain range. At no point were we sure if we had found the right place, but we got out and started hiking around. Caleb's co-worker Thomas, who has kids the same age as ours, came along too. We never ended up finding the old quarry, or any fossils, but we had a great time hiking around on a super nice day. And we did find some cool looking rocks.

This was just a tree that I thought was really cool.

Gavin and his friend, Tommy, were pretty much in 3 year old heaven wandering around picking up rocks and sticks and working their way up the steepest parts of the mountains. We kept having to urge them to throw some rocks and sticks back so that they could at least be able to hike around. Oh yeah, and aside from all of that, Gavin was also super excited that we saw some baby cows and a lizard.

Dad is the strongest of our whole family, according to Gavin, so he got to carry Henry around in the backpack.
On most of the road trips of my life, I have often found myself looking out the window at mountains in the distance with little windy roads on them, and wondering where those roads lead to and who ever drives on them. Now I know.
We did find some really great views of the lake and surrounding mountains. These pictures hardly do them justice. It was quite beautiful.