Heidi's Sweet Sixteen (again)!

The Birthday girl on her 32nd Birthday!

On Wednesday, Jesse and I were lucky enough to get to celebrate Heidi's 32nd birthday with her. It was a fun evening involving Sushi (yuck!), cupcakes (yum!), and go karts (uhh, can you say whiplash!). I'll let the pictures do most of the talking...along with my superior captions. Happy Birthday Heidi, hope you had a blast!
The Birthday girl and her man Andy. He ate us all under the table.

Heidi really wanted to go to this Sushi place for her birthday, so who was I to say no. Jesse also hates all things seafood and he had tried some and survived so I decided to give it a try. As you can see, it didn't go so well for me. I didn't make it all the way through a whole roll. Sushi verdict...never again!

Jesse and I eating cheesecake with chopsticks, yeah we are dorks!

All of us at Sushi Go Round. Jesse, Me, Leslie (Bart's wife), Heidi, Andy, and Bart (Heidi's brother.)

The birthday girl posing by the delicious raspberry filled cupcakes.

Heidi and all her helpers blowing out her 32 candles.

And how could you not love the ultra cool head socks, you even get to keep these babies!

They had these super sweet jump suits so all of us ladies decided to suit up! Clarissa and Doug showed up for the racing portion of the evening, just in time to kick our butts, but they were experienced :)!

The racers all lined up. I got the same go kart all night. I guess I can blame my sucking on that! Although I didn't come in last in the final race, just third to last! These are hardly just go karts, though, they are like mini race cars.

All of our racing mugshots, Andy and Jesse's are particularly interesting. Is that a MOOSE Jesse?

The results from the final race. Doug came in first, Jesse in second, and Bart in third. Although Jesse did say that Doug basically had to cheat to win!

That Cheddar was Challenging!

Jesse would like this story to be inspiring, heartfelt, a little sad, but still have a happy ending so we will see what I can do.

On an overcast morning, a wife awoke before the alarm after a restless nights sleep. You would think she had been the one preparing for a race , but in fact it was her husband who would be stuggling for air today. After quickly getting the chitlens ready, the car was loaded and they were literally off to the races. Nervous chatter filled the air as they approached their destination, Toledo. A mecca for running, some would say, a perfct place for the husabnd to run and race his first 5k. Knowing he had a big event approaching the next weekend, the husband needed a good yardstick to measure against and was desperately hoping for around 23:00 min. But a foolish slide into second base had hurt his ankle and the husband was worried how it would affect his performance. Would he be able to overcome the pain? There were other friends among the runners, could he perform under pressure? He sized up the competition, nothing to stiff looking. Would he get overconfident?

As the fire engine sounded and his heart raced faster, his feet began to take off beneath as he lead with the front of the group. Up, and up he climbed. Steady hills lay before him, as did a girl. Would a chick defeat this warrior? How many others would cross the line first? The husabnd was pushing himself while the wife was pushing the rambuctious children around in the stroller, desperate to keep them entertained till a familiar face came to the finish line. By minute 21:00 2 runners had already finished and the wife heard the announcement, "Here comes the first girl." Oh, no! She thought. He will be beat by a girl, sad. As she strode across the line another male quickly followed. That made 4. Her eyes were glued to the hill. Watching for what would come over it. Then she saw it. A lime green wonder. The husband, pounding the pavement, too fast to even get a great finishing picture. And the time...22:29! The husband was ecstatic! He had made his goal, survived the race, and had only been beat by one girl. As he accepted his gleeming white ribbon for 3rd place in his division and watched other friends cross the line, he looked forward to the next weekend's Chelan Man where he would truly be testing himself. As for the wife, she was sad not to be running, but more than happy to be cheering on her hubby and she was super proud of him.


Clarissa, Traci, and Brook ready to go

Jesse all amped up to go

Jesse finishing the race in stellar fashion, but I missed him actually crossing the line.

The always great, rgith after the race exhausted pic

Clarissa, Brook, and Traci finsihing althought they don't look too exhausted!

Stacie was there, but she did the way thougher 8 miler, way to go! Peyton helped cheer on a lot of people at the finish line.

The RACERS!

Races

Well it seems I am going to try this running thing for a while at least. I just got done doing my plyo and ab workout and then tomorrow will be a long run. Jesse will have me on a very mild training schedule to get me in shape and hopefully have me running a better time. There is a race this weekend (Toledo Cheese Days), but just Jesse is doing that one while I watch the boys and root him on. He needs the practice for the Chelan Man the next weeekend anyways. So I have about three weeks left to train for my next run. Here are some of the races I am thinking about doing if anyone is looking for some to do, needs motivation, a partner, has advice on them, or any other suggestions for races or running in general. That means you too Heidi!

July 31st- Seafair Torchlight Run 5k (Downtown Seattle) 6:30 pm
August 14th- Loggers Jubilee 2 mile fun run (Morton)
September 4th- Parkland Pace or Race 5k (Tacoma)
September 18th- Run Wild 5k (Northwest Trek)

Firecracker 5k

Striking my best running pose (now you see why I'm slow?)

I do realize I still haven't posted about the Beach to Chowder Run, but I am still waiting on pictures, and what is a good blog without pictures? All you need to really know about that run in order for the tale of this run to be exquisite is my time, so spoiler alert, I got an embarrassing 42:00. Between the conditions, my out-of-shapeness and lack of training, and my poor will power that was my first 5k time. Luckily, it gave me a long way to go. Lots of room for improvement.

The Runners! My coach and trainer, support and hero! is it just me or do I still look tired?

So going into today my big goal was to PR, by at least a minute or two. Unfortunately, it seems you always go into a race with something wrong (look at me talk like I am some saged runner now!) and this was no exception. I had done some jumping exercises earlier in the week that my poor tiny calves are still sore from and I had been able to run all week. On top of that, with all my nervousness I forgot to take my inhaler, oops. So those were my negatives, but I did have one really big positive, Jesse. Alesha was supposed to do this run with me, but in what may have been a stroke of luck she bailed at the last minute and Jesse filled in. He is great at pushing me either because he is an awesome motivator or I just don't want to look to dumb in front of him.

Jesse, not really nervous. Running with me would be a breeze, even with a hurt ankle.
I, however, was a nervous wreck! I peed twice before the race and could have made it three.
We were trying to be red, white, and blue patriotic! Not many others were feeling the spirit here.

Whichever it is I was looking forward to getting to Elma and starting the race, but in another stroke of bad luck, the thing was poorly ran and the race started an hour late, so we did a lot of standing around. Once we finally started, I took my place in the back and headed off for 3.1 miles of torture. Why I run hasn't officially kicked in yet. Jesse thinks I just do it to get dressed up and have some place to go. He is probably right. I definitely still struggled today, but it was better. I ended up PRing by 3 min and 19 sec. We crossed the line at 38 min 41 sec. Due to lack of runners it was good enough for a medal (second in my division) and Jesse won his division. He could have easily won the whole thing if he didn't have to stay with me. This was definitely more of a triathlon event.

Just after the race and happy to be done.
What our medal's look like, still cracks me up that we got em.

Now I am at a crossroad. I have a super competitive nature and I hate not being good at things. Initially, I think part of why I took up running is because it is the only competitive type sport I can really do around here. However, I will never have the time or discipline to be as good as I would want to be, but I might be able to be decent. So do I keep doing this thing I hate for sport or do I just keep running/walking to stay in shape and just do the occasional race for fun? Or hey, do I stop running all together since it sucks! It is just so weird that we have some kind of racing event like every weekend. When did we become a racing family? Jesse did say it is nice to be getting out and doing something like this. I do believe I have to credit Stacie for the inspiration and lately her inspiration (Tall Mom on the Run) for getting me interested in racing and being good at it, although I have no aspirations of running long distances. Just too boring for me. I will always just be a sprinter. Ok, that is too crazy that I just called 3 miles, a sprint!

Girls Weekend

Sometimes, you just need to get away, and I had really been feeling like that lately. I love my life (husband, kids, etc) but I just wanted some me time. So I planned a weekend with my sisters, and our honorary sister Heidi, to go up and stay in a hotel in Seattle and partake in some kid free activities.

After figuring out some last minute kid watching situations (thanks again Jesse for saving the day), we headed out for the ultimate girl activity, pedicures! We tried to soak up and enjoy every minute of relaxation in our massage chairs while trying to not to laugh as our feet were being rubbed. Some were more successful than others at that.

With our toes looking all cute we went over to Olive Garden to stuff ourselves full of bread sticks and salad, and did quite a good job. I could barely move the rest of the day. After that we headed north, but unfortunately we hit some traffic and this started to make some minor problems in Alesha's car much worse. Suddenly, every stop was loud and shaky. Not good. By the time we reached Lynnwood, hours later, we were so happy to be out of that car, but poor Alesha was so worried about her car.

Once we checked into our super nice, for us, suite, we went to the pool for some play time. We had it mostly to our self so like grown ups, we played some Marco polo and then hit the hot tub. Poor Heidi was still sick from the car ride so we didn't stay there long. We went back to the room and made plans for the evening. Melia wanted a haircut, something drastic, so we called and got her an appt, and figured that would be a fun surprise for Spencer. As you can see her hair was very long. They even gave it to us in a bag to send to locks of love.

By the time we got back to the hotel we were all tired, how lame I know, but we settled in for the night, did some masks, gave backrubs, ate junkfood, watched tv, and went to bed around midnight.

In the morning Alesha took her car in to get it fixed and then we had some breakfast before my sister in law Raya came to the rescue and picked us up for some beautiful, wonderful, kid free shopping! No girl trip is complete without shopping so we went to the Seattle Premium Outlets in Marysville and I was in heaven. I may have been able to spend all day there, but for everyone else's consideration I tried to keep the stores to a minimum. We did work up quite the appetite talking Heidi out of TWO pairs of expensive sunglasses, so we finished the day with a late lunch at the Old Spaghetti Factory. The meal took a long time but that was ok, our waiter was great and the food was awesome so we just ate and talked. Heidi and Raya realized they have quite a few people in common, small world I guess. By then Alesha's car was fixed, and we loaded up and headed on our way. Everyone was tired and possibly not as recharged as we should have been, but we had a lot of fun. Thanks girls!