My first 5K - Update...

Here is the one and only photo of me at my first 5k event. It was taken by my friend 2Busy, who also ran her first 5k that day too. She did leave me in the dust....that's ok! I made it to the finish! It was good to have a friend in the crowd!

Among the crowd, awaiting our time to take off!

My first 5k

First of all, they spelled my name correctly! That's a first!
On this last Saturday, Sept. 25th I ran my first 5k race. I didn't really race anyone but myself even though I was surrounded by thousands of women. I had started "training" for this event back in June doing the Couch to 5K program on my iPod. I had completed all 9 weeks of that program a couple of weeks before my big day so I would just pick a distance or time for my run two to three times a week to continute to train.
The night before the race I had everything set out and ready to go. My ride shows up and I grab my pile of stuff and hop into her car. We are parking the car at the shuttle location and I notice that I left my headphones at home, nice.... And then I also realized I had left my pins home to attach my number to my shirt, again....nice going! Oh well, I was up and on my way!
We waited forever for our wave to start the race. My toes were going numb standing around waiting! Meanwhile I am hoping that I can complete this race pain free. During my last 4 or 5 weeks I have had pain in my upper thigh that gets unbearable at about 1.5 miles into my run. And my inner knee on the same leg is painful too.
I left the starting line at a good pace. It is hard to maintain your own pace when so many are running around you. I ran up the hill and made it to the top and then shin splints set in. Ugh.....all this training, all this time and NOW shin splints? What????? So this was about 1.5 miles into my first race and I was VERY discouraged! But I had to keep on going. So I would walk for a few minutes and then run for a few minutes until the shin splints took over again! I crossed the finish line only to see the clock had been stopped...I can only guess that I finished in about 45-50 min! My worst pace ever! After reviewing the hundreds and hundreds of photos taken at the finish line I never did find a photo of me crossing the finish line, wow do I feel like a loser now!
BUT, I did finish the race! I felt great the rest of the day, until the end of the day and my soar throat won the day's race and I had lost my voice completely!

I have signed up for my next 5k event in October. This time the course is flat and I will continue to train and improve!

Harvesting....

Tonight we drove to the middle of nowhere, USA and gleaned about a ton of potatoes.
The kids have been pigging out on baked potatoes tonight.
Earlier today we picked apples.

And I have grapes in the sink ready to make juice.
We will be gleaning onions this weekend. Gotta love being surrounded by farmland!

So funny....

Emily makes us laugh...

--"Mom, my arm hurts real bad. I need to go to the dentist"

--With her forefinger raised in the air, Emily declares "(insert sibling name here), you need to get out of the car right now!" after a rather malodorous event.

Homemade English Muffins.....

While shopping at Winco the other day I had this crazy idea to make my own English Muffins. I have this bread book that I have had since middle school and every recipe I have ever made from it has been great! So tonight I thought I would make some for Sunday breakfast. It took just a few minutes to mix them up, shape them and put them into the warmed oven to rise. Then you cook them on an open electric skillet for about 7 min. on each side. In less than an hour you have fresh and warm English Muffins! I will never buy these from the store again. They are so easy to make and taste better, especially right off of the griddle! Yum!

Yum!!!!

Logan was given a huge jawbreaker for his birthday. Emily found that jawbreaker and was enjoying it!

The Last Splash of Summer....

Taking advantage of a warm Saturday afternoon we gathered our swimwear, smores sticks, and hotdog buns and headed to Kuna to Grandma Lockhart's house. She lives across the street from Indian Creek. The little park in her neighborhood that borders this creek has a great little swimming area that runs off to the side of this very swift flowing creek. During the summer months there are many floaters on tubes going down this creek. This is really an irrigation creek running through this natural creek bed, no cement here. When they turn off the irrigation water around the valley this creek dries up. You can walk where once it was knee or waist deep or deeper. There is a railroad tressel that crosses the creek very close to the swimming area too. Emily loving trains was enthralled as a train went by while she was on the floating mattress. It was very loud!

They are back to school too....

Jonny and Logan log-in to school each day here at home. Jonny is going to Seminary this year too. As you can see from their seating arrangements, school is quite formal! Ha....they are both enrolled with Idaho Virtual Academy. They have live classes at different times during the week and a lot of online coursework too. Logan has already completed his first four units in Math since starting class on Sept. 1st. He should finish his Algebra 1 class just after Christmas. he will also get high school credit along with his middle school credit for his Language Arts class. It is great for him to move ahead and not sit around waiting for a class to move on to the next topic! Jonny has chosen Game Design for his elective this year. He has dreams of making the next great action adventure game!

Back to school...

Everyone is officially back to school now! These four musketeers, Eme (borrowed child), Carson, Katie and Kristina have moved over to Sawtooth Middle School this year from our smaller charter school. They are loving the big school so far. Logan and Jonny are still doing Idaho Virtual Academy here at home and started back to school today. Jonny is a Freshman this year, Logan an 8th grader! They are all in middle school or high school this year! Wow! When Emily starts Kindergarten these older kids will all be in high school!

ABC Excitement Club....

Emily has been wearing everyone else's backpacks the last couple of days. We go to the school when I have meetings and she wants to ride the bus home, never mind the stroller we came in! She had a plastic bag last night with her "lunch" in it. She will be so ready to go to "skwell" in just a few short years.
Meanwhile 3 other moms in our ward decided to put together a pre-preschool group, a glorified playgroup. There are 2 boys and 2 girls and they are all within about 4-6 months of the same age. It is pretty low-key academic wise, more social with some structure. Emily was so excited to get to go but all she could say while she was there was "my mom is here!" We will rotate between the family's homes so we will have "skwell" at our house at the end of the month. Emily will LOVE that!