Red Rock Relay Moab 2012

This last weekend was finally the Red Rock Relay in Moab, Ut. This was something that I had been looking forward to since October.  Our team name was Sole Sisters and was made up of 6 girls.  Me, Taliah, my cousins Heather & Cheryl, Sarita (Heather's friend) & Jentrie (Cheryl's friend).  Everyone had been on their own as far as training, but we had been in close contact for all the important details like team shirts, & food, lodging etc.

Me, Cheryl, Heather, Taliah, Sarita, Jentrie

Saturday morning we met up at the park so we could send Cheryl off as our 1st runner. Her leg began at 8:35.

After we sent Cheryl off, we went up a head to be prepared for when she needed water & to get our next runners in place.

Our 2nd leg was ran by Sarita, 3rd by Taliah & finally the 4th leg was all mine!  The very beginning of my leg was an immediate up hill.  It really was a lot more difficult than I had expected.  I thought that I had trained ok on hills, but it was apparent that I need to do more hill training...at a longer distance.  About 1/2 way up the hill I got a major side ache.  It was so bad that I couldn't really get a good breath. I had to slow down to a walk and try to breathe through the pain to hopefully get it to go away.  Finally, after about 1/2 of my water bottle it subsided and I was able to continue my leg of the race.  The remaining part of my leg was a gradual uphill.  Very hot and very intense.  It was awesome though.  Even though I stayed at a pretty steady pace (not super fast), I was still passed by some of those "elite" runners. As they would pass, they would offer encouraging words.  Those helped a ton. It really made you want to continue moving forward.

I finally made it to the exchange & passed the "baton" on to Heather!  My pace ended up being about 11:25 mm. Definitely not great, but given the heat, & incline I felt ok about it.

We continued up through the La Sal Mountains.  At one of our places that we had pulled off, I snapped this picture.  We had ran down that road earlier!! It was so pretty. The views were just amazing.  It was nice to be able to enjoy those views as we waited for our runners.

Feelin' like I'm on top of the world!

Heather passed the baton onto Jentrie, then onto Cheryl again, onto Sarita, back to Jentrie then back to me for my 2nd leg!

This hill (right below the tree line-rocky area) was the beginning of my 2nd leg. Yeah, I lucked out having to start out on a hill again!  It wasn't too bad though.  By this time the temperature had cooled down a bit, plus there was a breeze being that high in the mountains.  After that incline, the rest of the leg was all down hill. It dropped 2000 ft in 7.5 miles.  Once I got into a groove, I was able to cruise along.  I have never ran so hard and so fast in my entire life.  I was able to finish that leg in about an hour.  I ended up running at about an 8:30 mm!! It was awesome. It passed so quick, I was quite surprised! 

I passed the baton onto Taliah!  I was so proud of Taliah.  She found out a few days before the relay, that her foot that had been giving her trouble was because of a slight fracture.  Even though she was hurting, she gave it her all and did quite well! That my friends is dedication!!

She passed the baton back to Heather for the final leg of the relay.  Heather made it to the finish line at the park and we all ran across as a team!

We finished the relay at 9:30pm and collected our finisher medals!

It was a very long, hot, exhausting, amazing, exciting, & addicting day!  Even though my team didn't win any awards, we didn't finish in record time, we still had a great time and we finished after 70 miles of road through the mountains and valleys of Moab. I call that a successful day.

I'm already to do it again next year!  I don't know about everyone else, but I'm ready!!

Monday May 14th, I received an email telling me that I had made the lottery draw into the St George Marathon this October!!  I'm super excited to begin training for this.  Taliah didn't make the lottery draw which is a huge bummer, but she is going to run the Mesquite Marathon in November.  We will still be able to train together (from afar...hehe) and keep each other motivated!  I can't wait. 

Just an Update!

Wow! Time completely has a way of slipping away! It seems like quite a bit happens in just a short time!

Jordyn

Jordyn absolutely loves kindergarten! She is doing so well. She's learning to read a little bit, and learning so much about a lot of different things. Lately they have been learning about the Native Americans.  Everyday she has came home with different "facts" or stories about them.  She gets so excited when she tells me about what she has learned in class.

She is also loving soccer!  Her coach is amazing, the kids on the team are a lot of fun and all get along quite well! She has practice on Mondays & Wednesdays with games on Saturdays.  I can't believe how much she has improved from Spring.  She seems more confident with the game and her skills have improved so much.  She has scored quite a few goals in her games. It's so fun to watch her run around the soccer field with a smile on her face.   I love watching her improve, learn and grow!

She is such a big help with Aspyn and they get along so well!

Aspyn!

Aspyn is just about 11 months now!  She is walking everywhere. She started walking about 2 weeks before her 10 mos.  She is down to 2 bottles max a day. Sometimes 1 in the morning (sometimes not) and one right before bed. I think that one is going to be the hardest to break!  One thing that hasn't been hard to get rid of is her pacifier!  She actually took herself off it.  She just decided one day that she didn't want it anymore.  She would chew on it and let it dangle out of her mouth, but wasn't really sucking on it.   If I would try to give it to her at night she would take it out and throw it on the floor.  So we just put it away and she hasn't really cared since. It's been so nice not having to worry about having one around or with us when we go out.  It's also been nice not having to worry about us taking it away from her!

She no longer is eating baby food. She just eats what we eat or a slight variation of it.  She is down to one nap a day, usually 1-3 hours depending on the day. Aspyn loves books! She has 3 favorite ones that she will find on the book shelf and bring to us to read.  Her favorite toy is still her stuffed Monkey and now she has a favorite cell phone! Yup, she's starting early on the cell phone thing. She will walk around with it holding it up to her ear saying "Hello" and chattering all around the house.  It seems like everyday she is learning new words or some new thing.  Jordyn is still her favorite person. She loves her dogs and still loves being outside.  When we are outside she will walk around the yard, crawl on the dogs or play in the grass, the sand or the leaves! She loves (& prefers) to drink from a straw.

She has 4 teeth, 2 top, 2 bottom with one of her eye teeth popping through very soon. She is happy 98% of the time.

It's so much fun watching my girls grow!!

Cody

Cody has had a change in departments at work.  He is now in the Survey/Engineering department.  He's doing more drafting and working with numbers, more of what he went to school for.  He still goes down in the mine, just not for as long during the night as he used to.  It's been a very nice change.  He leaves to go into work at 11:45pm (to start at 12:30) and gets home about 9:00am.  He usually sleeps until about 5pm.  It's been nice to have him home at night, to have dinner, spend time with the girls, and help put them to bed.  Then we are able to spend some time together before having to leave.  The girls love having him awake and home more consistently. I do too!  It's really done a lot for our relationship being able to spend more time together.  He seems a lot happier in this new department (even though it does have it's down sides) doing more of what he's comfortable doing!

He was supposed to take his Electrical test in November. However, the paperwork to take it was needing to be submitted by October 5th. In order to submit the paperwork you have to have been working for a year. His year hire date is October 6th. They would not make an exception for 1 day. So, the Electrical test has been pushed by to February. That will just give him a little while longer to study so he can pass 1st try!!!

Me

I am adjusting to the changes and all the things that are going on in our family. I love having Jordyn in Kindergarten, Aspyn growing and changing  everyday and Cody's new schedule.  I have started taking time for myself everyday by either going to the gym or running.  It's been great!  I feel a lot better!  In 2 weeks, Taliah, Clint, Laura, Heather and myself are going to be running a 10k in St George.  It's for breast cancer awareness.  It called Save a Sister! I am pretty excited to do it.  That is 1 more goal of mine that I can cross off my list. This race all I want to do is finish the race. I'm not going for an awesome, amazing time. I just want to be able to say that I finished a 10k.  I guess this is just one more stepping stone on my way to my big goal of running a marathon and hopefully (eventually) a triathlon!

All in all we are doing really well.  We are getting excited for Fall/Winter to be here!

Next post there will be pictures.....I promise!!

What Day Is It Again?

Wow! Our lives have just gotten a lot more crazy! Jordyn now has something going every day of the week. This past week she has started Level 2 swimming lessons which she goes to Mondays and Wednesdays. Her 1st day she was quite nervous. They are now in the big pool and she can no longer touch the bottom, so she's not as confident as she was in Level 1. The 2nd day she seemed to do a lot better. Jordyn said she does like it and really wants to do well in it. The instructors have said that Level 2 is the hardest level to pass, so we'll see how it all works out.

 Tuesday 3-15 Jordyn also started soccer! She had a blast! Her good friend Carmen is also on her team. She has soccer practice Tuesdays and Thursdays. It's so much fun watching her learn new sports and try new things. She just isn't afraid to get in there and Just Do It! I'm very glad that she is one that loves to be outside and active. I would still support her if the things that interested her were inside, but we are just an outside family, so it's great!

 Jordyn still has dance class on Fridays! Yesterday they had their 1st dance recital. She wasn't even nervous! She marched out onto the court and performed her little heart out. She was smiling and really animated with her routines. I have to say she was by far the best one (ok I may be a bit biased)! After their routine they stayed and watched the Highschool girls do their routines. Jordyn talked non stop about them on the way home. She said she would love to keep dancing with Ms Linda (her dance teacher) so that she can be as good as the big girls when she gets into highschool!

I'm very proud of her in everything she does. She really is a talented young girl. I guess my career as a "soccer mom" is now beginning. I love it. It makes our days busy, but interesting. We all are pretty worn out at the end of the day, but it is so worth it!

Aspyn is now 4 months old. On her 4 month birthday we decided to let her try a little bit of rice cereal. She wasn't too sure about it. We all had a good laugh though watching her experience the texture of it. We now have switched over to Oatmeal, and she seems to like that a little bit better!

Yesterday we took Aspyn in for her 4 month check up! Wow! She weighs 15 lbs 3 oz (75-90%), and is 24 1/4" tall (50-75%). She is very healthy! Dr Moore is pleased with her growth and development and doesn't see anything we need to be concerned about. We still have her on Zantac, but we have not increased her dose. We are just going to let her wean herself off of it as she contiues to grow. We received the official ok to start solids but I think for now we'll just stick with oatmeal for a little bit and slowly add vegetables for quite awhile before adding fruit. We told Dr Moore about her "mad time" EVERY night. She said it's just colic and as long as she's fed and changed there's really not much we can do, but to let her cry it out. We do still try to comfort her and hold her, but she really does mainly just need to cry for 15 min to an hour then she's fine. Weird. Aspyn is so cute and watching the new things she does is so amazing. Watching the concentration it takes to pick something up or grab something is so cute. She just lights up our entire house!

Cody is taking an Emergency Medical Responder course for work. He goes to that class Tuesdays and Thursdays. He's really not into the whole medical thing, but he needs this class before he can take the Foreman test. Once he's done with the class he will get a raise (YAY!!) but he'll also be on the Mine Rescue team. I'm super proud of him for taking this class. It's been quite the challenge to go to the class, as well as go to work almost right after, but it will all be worth it in the end.

Me, well obviously I'm staying busy getting Jordyn to her various activities, and taking care of Aspyn. I've started jogging again and I feel great! I'm up to jogging 2 miles continuously! That may not sound like very far,but considering I've only been back jogging for a week and a half I feel like I'm doing great! I have 2 goals with my jogging. One is to do a 5k for sure and possibly a 10k by the end of the year. The 2nd goal is to jog 1 mile UP Electric Mountain. Electric Mountain is a steep road that does not level out at all until you get to the very top.  I'm excited!

Yes, we are very busy, but we are having a good time and we do still find time to spend together as a family. It's a very fun time in our lives and we wouldn't change it at all! I can't wait to see how the soccer season goes and how Level 2 works out. Stay tuned!!