The Race

After nearly a month of suffering through a family-sized dose of the flu and the stomach virus, I am finally back.  What do I do to celebrate being able to live life again?  Well, three days after crawling out of my hole, I ran my yearly half-marathon this past Sunday.  This did not happen because I was feeling particularly fresh and prepared for a thirteen (point one) mile race.  It happened because I'm stubborn. I paid forty bucks for it back in October and gosh darn it, I was going to get my money's-worth whether or not somebody had to scrape me up off the finish line with a spatula for my trouble. 

And that is exactly the outcome I expected.  It had been weeks since I'd trained.  The illnesses left me with a nagging cough and weak digestion.  Family members shook their heads in bewilderment, wondering why I'd even want to run at this point.  I ignored them.  They are always bewildered over this race anyway.  Noodle even asked me recently, Why would you PAY MONEY to run?? I don't have much of an answer for her, either.  I just LIKE it, okay?

Because I really do like running.  But sometimes I need a goal.  Sometimes I look out the window on a freezing, drizzly morning and huddle deeper into my fleece pajamas, but then I get out on the trail because I've got that half-marathon comin' up. The idea of it keeps me going when the going gets tough.

But this race?

Plain ol' stubbornness.

I may have a smile on my face, but it's only because my kids are so darn cute running along beside me toward the finish line.  I think I'm only being held upright by spandex at this point.

My dear husband always takes pictures for me at the end.  A teensy part of me wishes he would get there closer to the beginning of the race and take pictures of me actually running instead of this shuffling I'm doing by this point.

Yay!  I'm done!!  I had a completely embarrassing worst time ever of two hours and forty-four minutes, but I'm so glad to be crossing the finish line that I can't even care about it.  My hips and knees feel like they have broken glass inside of them, and I'm pretty sure I left some of my toes back at mile nine, but woohoooo!!

I survived!!

Now somebody bring me some Advil.  I'll be in bed, huddling in my fleece pajamas.

Soccer: It's the New Thing

With the new year, new things are happening!  The good kind of new, not the scary, one-day-we'll-all-look-back-on-this-and-laugh-because-it-was-a-mistake, kind of new. At least I hope not.

But I digress.

My daughters are playing soccer.  There.  Good new, right? Yeah. They're having a blast, so yeah, good. Noodle was pretty nervous when she got to her first practice and realized she was the only girl on her team.  She got over it quickly.  Hopers is just happy to be running around an open space, kicking things.

Here they are, just before their first games. Incidentally, both girls had their first games at the exact same time on two fields right next to each other. And because their daddy was at work, he asked me to take video of their games. And how does a mother accomplish this? By standing in between the two fields and spinning back and forth, of course. Here is a sample of my awesome videography. 

(I'm especially fond of pondering the differences between 5-6 year-old soccer techniques and 8-11 soccer techniques.)