Amazing Family and Friends and Baby Showers

A few weeks ago, some friends put on two baby showers for Heather: one for her friends and colleagues at the elementary school where she works, and the other for all of our friends from our church. These showers were really wonderful and really made us feel so grateful for all the wonderful people that God has put in our lives. We have made some incredible friends living in Virginia for the past two and half years, and we truly feel blessed to be part of such an incredible community.

A few months before the showers, Rochelle -- one of Heather's closest friends, who lives in Boston -- emailed me saying that she wanted to surprise Heather and come down for the shower. So we kept it secret from Heather, and I'm so glad that Rochelle wanted to. When Rochelle and her husband Jeremy walked in the door on Friday night, Heather started screaming she was so excited. We love those two and were so glad they came down and visited. Nine hours is definitely too far apart.

My sister Alyson also came up from Richmond for the baby shower. And it was a sacrifice for her, too, since she came up with her 4-month old infant Griffey who cried the entire 3 plus hour drive! Thanks so much for coming, Pookie! We loved having you here, even if it was for only a short visit.

So our friends from church put on an awesome shower for Heather. Lots of people came and there was tons of food and games. We've really felt very close to this ward, so it was really wonderful for Heather to have so many people come that she feels so close to and respects so much.

Nichole (below) planned, organized, and hosted the whole event, with some help from others. She did an amazing job! Thanks, Nichole!

A lot of other people helped as well, so THANK YOU EVERYONE for making it such a special event for my wife! Here are some fun pics from the shower.

Even one of Heather's closest friends growing up, Priscilla, was there vicariously through a humungous package sent from Nebraska, which was full of all sorts of great things. My favorite was the bouncing pink donkey in a tutu. Thanks, Priss! We miss you!

One of Heather's closest friends from school, Kimmee, co-hosted a shower for Heather as well. Unfortunately, her baby son got sick and so she wasn't even able to be there for the shower, but she did a fantastic job! You're incredible, Kimmee! Thanks.

Here's Heather with her kindergarten team! They were also very involved in putting on this shower, even complete with party favors and chocolate covered strawberries (one of Heather's absolute favorites!) She is really going to miss teaching those adorable kids with her friends.

One of her coworkers is also due around the same time as Heather, and so the shower was a joint shower. Below is a pic of the two glowing ladies!

The Sunday following these showers, Meagan and Chris invited us to Wendy's baby blessing. It was a wonderful meeting, and that Wendy is simply adorable. We like living close to those two!

Harper's Ferry

Two weekends ago, Heather and I went with our close friends Ken and Nichole to spend a day in the historical little town of Harper's Ferry, which is in the western part of Virginia, also known by some as the state of West Virginia (that was for you, Tys). Heather did some amazing research beforehand, so we knew some of the more interesting points of the town and fun things to do. We had a great day.

We started out with a nice little hike up a few of the hills surrounding Harper's Ferry. Heather set a pretty brisk pace, but we somehow managed to keep up. Here you see everyone pointing to Harper's Ferry below. It was a great vantage point.

Next, we bought some incredibly delicious homemade kettle corn and cinnamon roasted almonds and drove into town and. After Kenny found an awesome parking spot, we started walking around. Harper's Ferry is famous because George Washington picked the site to be a federal arsenal. As a result, gun factories lined the river in this city. A man named John Brown attacked this city in 1859 and held it for a little while before Robert E. Lee (a colonel at the time) led a detachment of marines and overcame Brown's band. Brown apparently raided city and in hopes of taking the weapons, sparking an armed slave revolt, and overthrowing slavery in the US. Ironic thing is, the only person killed by Brown's group during his raid was a free black man who wouldn't abandon his post. I never did quite figure that one out.

Anyway, below is a picture where Brown made his last stand before his death. It was a pretty emotional place (not really).

I took the next pic from a lovely spot overlooking the river. It was close to the very spot where Thomas Jefferson in 1783 said the following: "The passage of the Patowmac (yes, he spelled it funny; how's a guy supposed to know how to pronounce this stupid word with all these funny spellings!) through the Blue Ridge is perhaps one of the most stupendous scenes in Nature... This scene is worth a voyage across the Atlantic."

We certainly thought that the scenery was nice, but realized that Mr. Jefferson was definitely prone to exaggeration.

We ate dinner in this pleasant little cafe.

Our highlight of the day was a ghost tour that we did at night. The tour originated with a woman who moved to the town in the late 70's to open a small cafe. Not long after moving there, some weird things started happening in her cafe (I won't go into the details; you'll have to take the tour to find out what happened). She started asking around about the history of her cafe (which was built before the Civil War), and discovered that many people had had similar experiences in other town buildings, some long before she had showed up. So she compiled all of the stories into a book and gave tours around the city at night relaying these stories. She recently stopped doing it 5 or so years ago, but this nice gentleman pictured below picked up her baton and now runs the ghost tour. It was a lot of fun, and a great way to end the day.

DC Fun

(This was written by Heather on March 30th. She just never got around to posting it, so I'm helping her.)

So- you have all heard about the marathon from Todd, and I am so proud of him for his accomplishment (although seeing him train, I too have come to a sure knowledge that I will never do a full marathon!). It's my spring break right now, and I wanted to take a minute to share the fun I had with Todd's family who came to see Adam and him race. We definitely enjoyed watching the race, but that was not the end of our adventures. Oh no.

During the race, we all (Nate, Sarena and the kids, and even me with my pregnant belly) had to run several blocks to make sure we were going to be at the right spots at the right time and luckily we never missed seeing Todd and Adam. I took a lot of pics, so that's why I am not in many!

After the race, we all had our sack lunches under the trees while the kids enjoyed some big blow up jumping things. It was the perfect day for this. Next, we said goodbye to the boys, and Sarena and her kids, Meagan and Chris and their little one Wendy, and me all decided to do a little touring. We started off going to the capital for a tour. Annoyingly enough, they allowed absolutely no food or drinks inside the capital. You couldn't even have an empty water bottle. I asked the security guard if that was really necessary and he said "for safety, no, but I guess they want you to buy the food in there--so sorry mam." Very annoying since we had brought food to munch on through out the day. Meagan really didn't want to trash all her food, since she is nursing and needs the sustenance, so they waited outside in the nice weather with all the food.

The capital was pretty cool. I had never been inside before. They showed us the halls of statues, the dome, and the most awesome part- we got to see the House in session. We got to watch the preceedings for a couple minutes and even got to see a little bit of "frustration" on the part of one house representative about how vague a particular vote had been. It was neat to see how they cast the votes and how it shows on this screen with colored lights indicating who voted. I am sure it was even more crazy there the next day when they voted for health care.

Speaking of...

(This is not a picture taken of the protest we saw, but something I downloaded off of the internet that is akin to it.)

On our way out, we immediately realized something was different. The way we came was barracaded and an officer with a machine gun was standing at the top of the capital stairs. Snipers were on the roof of the capital and huge crowds were surrounding the capital. Apparently we had the priviledge of being a part of the Anti-Health care rally. It was actually pretty awesome in some ways to be in the middle of such a huge controversy, we even got into it a little with some chants as we were trying to wield our way through the crowd to get to the air and space museum like we wanted. Finally we came to a stand still. We saw that the police had made a pathway for house reps to walk to their vehicles and both sides were lined with people yelling and screaming (at this point the kids especially were a little scared and worried-- some of those people were really mad!). So- I did the only thing I thought I could-- squirmed my way to the front and told the police officer how I was here with my family and we weren't a part of the rally, we just wanted to get the air and space museum. He said "you are going to have to go all the way around the crowd and cross way over there." Then he looked at my stomach (yeah for pregnant me) and said, "Ummm actually just go right this way." And that is how we ended up walking right behind different house representatives in the area blocked off to other people besides them. I wish I would have recognized some of them, but I didn't. There were a couple who we had seen in the capital in the house room voting or speaking though! I'd like to say it was smooth sailing from there, but we still had quite a time, crossing streets and getting through a couple more areas. All the policemen were quite on edge as well. It was crazy!

The rest of the day we saw some of the museum and by that time we were all pretty exhausted. Sarena and I took the kids home on the metro and finally got home where we enjoyed much needed rest along with Kentucky Fried Chicken and ice cream. The whole day it was really a lot of fun to spend time with my neices and nephews and to be able to see a little more of the city. Nevertheless, I think we did our own kind of marathon, not to take away from Adam and Todd--- it was a great but pretty grueling day for everybody!

Catching Up

Several things have happened over the last couple of weeks that we have been too busy (or too lazy) to write about, so here we are catching up. First, I had a little photo session with Heather the other weekend (at week 31 of our little fetus). She was sitting on the couch looking absolutely radiant as a pregnant mom, and I felt I just had to capture the moment. So here is a sampling of the pics I took that night.

What a hot baby-momma!

A few weeks ago, we had a rare chance to see one of our close friends, Brett. We don't live close to most of the friends we grew up with and went to college with, so we get really excited when we get the chance to see one. So we were pretty thrilled to meet up with Brett for a late brunch. He was visiting a good friend of his, and he was really nice about letting us interrupt his vacation for a few hours. His friend recommended we eat French toast at Carlyle's in Alexandria, and he did not over-sell the food. The French toast was amazing, and it was really good to catch up with a friend that we enjoy being around so much.

Also, we had the chance to go down to Richmond for a quick trip to attend Griffey's baby blessing a little while ago. Although it was a short trip, we love hanging around at Alyson and Nate's and rough-housing and playing Disney princesses with Trey and Jayci. We didn't get too many pics this time around, but I love this pic of Griffey. He sure bulked up fast these past few months!

My Marathon Time

I realized from some of the comments you left on our last blog entry that many of you are probably confused as to how long it took me to run the marathon (I blame you, Saul, although I thought your comment was hilarious!). I purposefully neglected to write down my time because I was waiting for the official count. And while that hasn't come out yet, the marathon's website has posted the unofficial times. I think that the unofficial time will do just fine for now.

So, here are the results:

Overall, I placed 1,264 out of 2,348 marathoners. Out of my age group, I placed 175 out of 249. My 10k time was 51:38 (average of 8:21minutes per mile), my half marathon time was 1:49:41 (average of 8:22 minutes per mile), my 20 mile time was 2:59:23 (average of 8:59 minutes per mile), and my final time was 4:12:47 (average of 9:39 minutes per mile).

My only real goal was to finish the race, and I did that, so I feel just fine about the time. As you can tell by the numbers, our pace pretty much took a nose-dive during the last 5 or so miles, and we were okay with that. By that point, we weren't so concerned with setting any records. : )

An Official Marathoner

After two and half months of intense training, I did it! I ran a full marathon; all 26.2 miles of grueling fun. : )

This past Saturday morning at 4:30am, my brother-in-law Adam and I crawled out of bed (no, we didn't stay up all night in anticipation of the exciting run) and headed to downtown DC to run the National Marathon. It was the perfect day for the run. The race started at 7am, just as the sun was cresting the horizon. The sky was perfectly clear and the air was cool; it stayed in the fifties until around 10:30. We had our ipods; we were ready to dance.

(Our fabulous support crew. They had quite a wild day touring DC while we were running and then going home to clean ourselves up, but I'll tell you more about that in another entry.)

The National Marathon is a great course. It starts out east of the Capitol building a few miles and continues past the Washington Monument and partway to the Lincoln Memorial before it makes a giant loop north. The first 13 miles finish at the starting line (the RFK Stadium). The faint of heart stop there, but those of masochists who feel we need a real challenge, we keep going. Out of the hoard of runners we began with, only about 1 in every 4 or 5 continue to do the full. When most of the runners drop off, it all of a sudden gets really quiet, and that's when we knew the real race had begun. The second half of the course repeats most of the beginning length past the Capitol and along the Mall, but then turns south and makes a huge loop around the waterfront and along the Anacostia river walk trail, finishing by crossing the bridge back to the RFK Stadium.

My one goal for the race was to finish, because as anyone who's ran a marathon knows, that's all that matters! So Adam and I started off slow for the first 3 or so miles just conserving energy, keeping our heart rates low, and chipping away at the mileage. This was my favorite part of the race because we were surrounded by thousands of people and it felt more like we were walking than running. We chatted and took in the sites as we went; it was very relaxing. When we turned to start the northernly route, Adam and I turned up the pace and cruised until we hit the halfway mark. At this point, I was feeling really strong and wanted to ratchet up the pace even higher, but the thought of 13 more miles caused me to moderate my eagerness.

(Our adoring fans capturing this memorable moment -- downing some fluids at mile 17. I tried to give Sarena a hug here, but she wasn't as eager to embrace as I was. I got Nate, though!)

(And thus we parted for another 9.2 miles.)

Heather, my sister Sarena, their kids McKenzie, Trevor, Jared, and Karinn, and my other brother-in-law Nate were all waiting for us at around mile 17 to cheer us on! Heather wanted to paint in big letters on her pregnant belly "That's my daddy!", but decided against it at the last minute. It was great to see them. Especially since I had to shed my sweat-soaked shirt to prevent skin chaffing. I definitely recommend very tight, dry fit tops for anyone who is considering running a marathon. Darn my overly-effective Woodruff sweat glands!

It was really nice to have Adam running with me the whole time, but I was especially grateful he was there the last 6 miles or so. That's when we went into survival mode. Surprisingly, I actually found that part of the run very educational: I discovered every little muscle on my body that is used for running because THEY ALL HURT! Yup, and that included random muscles in my neck, lower back, shoulders ... pretty much every major region of the body. My ears felt okay, though.

But by and by, as the scriptures say, we finished. As we approached the finish line, I had a strange urge to jump up in the air, do a cheesy kick with both of my legs going to one side, and put thrust both my arms skyward with my hands doing a number one sign. Well, upon doing this ill-conceived jump, both of my calves cramped in midair and I nearly crash landed. But after some hobbling and skipping, I shook it off like I meant to do that all along and crossed the finish line. I'm pretty sure everyone bought it.

(This is right after my jump celebration as I try to remain on my feet.)

Recovery didn't go so well for me. And that is where I learned my biggest take-home lesson. After a marathon, there's no blood flowing to your digestive system - - it's all been siphoned off to your lungs, heart, and legs. Our bodies are smart like that and send blood to the area of the body where it's most needed automatically. I discovered this when I ate some food after the run. I didn't eat a lot, only a few items, but it was enough to cause an upset stomach for the rest of the day and most of the day after, too. So for those who run a marathon, remember after the race to focus mostly on rehydrating yourself. Wait a little while before you try to take any solids into your body.

All in all, I'm glad that Adam talked me into running with him. I enjoyed almost all of the race, and I am proud to have achieved something as challenging and trying as a marathon.