Monster Dash

I have been waiting 10 long weeks to make this post. I am glad to say I have good news to report. The Monster Dash was a huge success! Here we are before the race began. I was nervous beyond belief at this point. My knee has been giving me trouble the last few weeks of training and I was hoping and praying that it would hold out long enough for me to make it through the race.

The weather was BEAUTIFUL and running around downtown Chicago over bridges, around the lake, and through the parks was an amazing sight. All the costumes were so fun to see as well. This was for sure the best race to run in for my first 1/2 marathon.

There were moments that I really began to doubt if I was going to be able to finish but thank goodness to a dear friend and my husband who literally ran by my side the entire time giving me words of encouragement helped me cross that finish line. They both could have gone much faster without me but we stayed together and I can never thank them enough for the support they gave me.

The last mile was for sure the most difficult. Lots of people were walking and every part of my body was telling me to STOP. I dug deep and gave everything I had to literally just put one foot in front of the other.

I don't know how many moments in my life will ever compare to crossing that finish line. I was emotional holding the hands of my support crew as we crossed the finish line together. Once we crossed, I cried and then promptly found myself a patch of grass to sit on while I tried to regain some strength. Here we are with the other families from our ward that came and did the race as well. Everyone did a great job and it was fun to share the experience with friends.

These mementos of our race day will be something I will treasure forever. I owe a big thank you to my in-laws who took the kids for us so that we could go do this race together. A big thank you to my dear friend who stuck by me through all of our training and the race. She was willing to sacrifice her own better time to stay by me and show me the ropes along the way and I will forever be grateful to her. A big thanks to my hubby for encouraging me to do hard things and for believing in me when I did not believe in myself. Last, a thanks to my Dad who has lovingly called and emailed throughout my training checking in and making me feel proud of myself!

While this was my first, I am pretty sure it won't be my last. The aches and pains are a good reminder to me of what I just accomplished. It was just a little over a year ago that I ran my first 5k and here I am 12 months later with a 1/2 marathon under my belt! So let this be a reminder out there to anyone who may be reading this that YOU CAN DO HARD THINGS!

So cool

Ok, I really never thought I would be posting this but today in the mail we got a letter. The letter was addressed to "The Young Scientist" as soon as I saw it I knew what it was about. I quickly called in the kids and showed it to them and their excitement could not be contained when they realized someone had found their balloon and written back!

The letter was from a dear woman who owns a farm and found our note out in her field when she was picking pumpkins! The farm is about 25 minutes away and we are going to go there tomorrow to buy pumpkins for Halloween with the kids. They loved looking up on the map and seeing how far this particular balloon had gone. I think it will be even more exciting to drive the route tomorrow and get to see the actual farm where it was found.

My favorite part of the letter that she wrote back was when she said this: "Have a good day and keep studying. You can learn about all kinds of wonderful things that God has created and controls."

This goes down in the history books as one of my favorite experiments we have done with the kids. The look on their faces as they read this letter was priceless!

Balloon Launch

This weekend we did a fun little experiment with the kids that they LOVED. We got some helium balloons and they wrote notes on each of them asking people to be part of our experiment. They put on them the date they were launched and asked if it was found to send us a letter telling us where and when the balloon was found.

The balloons probably did not make it all that far and the chance of anyone actually finding one and writing us back is highly unlikely but the kids had so much fun working on this project. All weekend long they have been wondering if one of their balloons made it to grandmas cabin in Utah. We went on a nature walk yesterday and they were discussing how fun it would be if they found one of their own balloons.

I 'll keep you posted if we actually hear back from someone. Even if we don't, the kids had so much fun with this little project I think we will be doing it again soon!