Me and My Boys

A week ago on tax day, Caleb and I attended our first rally. Ariane, Zane, and Dallin accompanied (Matt wasn't feeling well). It was really neat to see so many conservatives and so many people voicing their opinion. I feel that the world is continuing to lean more and more left and taking everyone else with it, so it was refreshing to see so many people come out and support this cause. Here are some pics from the event:

Caleb's first hunt. As you can see the eggs were not too difficult to find. :o)

I set the goal to train for a half marathon at the end of December, but it was more wishful thinking than anything else. I gave up the idea of running an actual race pretty quickly when I couldn't find a half marathon that was close by (within an hour). Running has always been something I've forced myself to do to stay in shape and to try to control weight gain, but never something I was passionate about. I have run 3 miles three times a week pretty faithfully since high school. Running anything beyond those 3 miles wasn't something I even ever considered, so each Saturday during my training when I did my long runs, every additional mile I added on was an amazing feat for me.


My awesome friend, Stacie, found a half marathon that was only 90 minutes away. I figured that was doable, and so I now had a deadline for my training: April 11th, which helped to keep me focused. Starting out in my training, I averaged 10 minute miles whenever I ran distance. After 2 months of training, I still hadn't improved that average by much on my Saturday runs (9:45), so I was getting a bit frustrated. Then I decided that during my weekday runs, I was going to start doing some sprinting to work on my speed. I did mostly 1 mile sprints (running at the fastest speed I could push myself for the duration of the mile), but I did run a couple of 2 mile sprints as well. It was amazing to me how I would feel like there was no way I could run any faster one week, and then be able to shave a substantial amount of time off the next week I ran. The fastest mile I ever ran before my training was a 7:04 mile in 7th grade. I never thought I could beat that time, but last week I ran my fastest mile ever at a 6:28 (with Caleb in the stroller).


Thanks to the sprinting, I started to notice that I finally was able to improve my speed during my distance runs. A month ago, I ran 13 miles in my training at 2 hours and 3 minutes (just under a 9:30 mile), so my goal for the actual race was to run the 13.1 miles under 2 hours. In setting this goal, I knew it would be a stretch to actually achieve it. Perhaps it was the energy that comes from running with other people or the great new music Matt downloaded on our ipod for me, but I achieved my "mission" and ran the race in 1:58:45, which is pretty close to a 9-minute mile.


The race site was in Groveton, Texas, and we were up at 4:30 in the morning to allow plenty of time to get there and get checked in etc. We didn't check the weather for the day of the race beforehand and just assumed it would be like the previous day, which got up to the 80s. Imagine our surprise when our car read the temperature at 50 degrees. I was not dressed for the weather at all, but thankfully the race fee included a long-sleeved t-shirt! It did warm up to 55 degrees, but I was so cold for the first couple of miles!

Matt and I celebrated our birthdays a few weeks ago. My birthday is on March 30th, and I turned 26; Matt's is on April 2nd, and he turned 27. (I'm not liking the whole past 25 thing...now I'm just getting closer to 30, which is so old ! :o)) Our birthday celebration was mainly our cruise so we didn't get each other gifts. We did go out to eat to celebrate, but due to General Conference (a world-wide church conference where the prophet and church leaders speak), we postponed eating out till the following weekend. One of our favorite places to eat is Benihanas; we absolutely love the fried rice! Since Matt had Good Friday off of work, we were able to go for lunch and get the lunch special...even better because it's cheaper. Here we are with full tummies.

Caleb's first time at the zoo! He enjoyed seeing all the animals and with all his excitement but inability to call the animals by name yet, he just called each animal 'doggie.'

Caleb's week with Grandma and Grandpa:



New words that Caleb learned: outside, bubbles, Grandpa, and bus. Matt and I get a real kick out of how Caleb says 'butt' instead of 'bus', so every time we see a bus, Caleb shouts 'butt,' 'butt'. Too funny.