A taste of summer in spring

This weekend has been phenomenal.  We've had sunny warm weather and we enjoyed it to the fullest,  

After school on Friday we headed to the park for some fun adventures.  

Tyler learned a new trick (and started a new park trend) and learned how to hang upside down on the monkey bars.  

The park also had a beautiful lake that we checked out.  The boys loved it.  Look at that sky!  Talk about blue!  We don't get that very often around here, so when we do we appreciate it!

We had such a fun time at the park, and we were sad that Vaughn had to work.  (We maybe have rubbed it in his face a little with constant picture messages of the awesome things we were doing.)

After Vaughn finally got home from work (at about 3:30) we headed over to the nearby middle school to watch track practice.  The kids loved it.  Their workout was to do 100m dashes, and so my kids started lining up outside the fence on top of that rise and when the coach blew the whistle they ran their dash right along the middle school kids.  (You can just see Henry in his red shirt if you look closely.)

The kids really loved it and we will have to go back and watch again soon!  

On Saturday I started the morning with a 20 mile run. 

It started off a little chilly, but it warmed up quickly.  I had forgotten my garmin, but (for once) Terra was there with hers charged and ready!  We started off together at a pretty good pace.  The first 8 miles or so flew by.  But then we stopped at a water stop.  After that water stop I started struggling.  Big time.  I didn't know what mile we were at, how fast we were (or weren't) running, and it was a strange feeling.  Terra is always stronger than me on long distance runs and she started pulling ahead, far ahead.  

Finally, we saw the next water stop.  I was feeling really discouraged and down.  I told Terra that I was going to walk a lot and probably cut the run short.  We consulted our map and realized that what I thought was a shortcut home was really almost the same distance as finishing the run.  She said to me "You can start walking and I'll pick you up.  I won't even make you feel bad about it.  You'll do that to yourself."

It's so true.  But it was the kick in the pants I needed to get my act back together.  Although I did walk a few times after that.  My right hip flexor is hurting again and it makes it difficult to get power going uphill, and this was a very hilly course.  But for the most part we ran to the finish. 

This is what a running buddy can do for you!  She's been there for me far more than I've been there for her on these long runs.  I may beat her in 5k's, but when we are doing the longer runs she is by far the stronger runner.  Plus, she's way nicer and more patient than me.  

I finished the 20 mile run at a respectable 8:45 pace (I added a few minutes to Terra's overall time for when she had to wait for me at a water stop, this is really a general guess) though we did stop the watch for our short walk breaks.

After the run I hurried home and packed my kids in the car and headed out to our scookum creek property for lunch around the campfire and fun times with cousins.  

It was a beautiful day out there and when it wasn't windy was nice and warm.  We had a good time and we left a few hours later with tired kids with wet feet.  

We topped the evening off by watching an episode of Planet Earth.  This is the first time our family has seen these documentary shows (we're a little behind the times) and they are so cool.  Our kids are really into nature documentaries and are just soaking all this information up.  I've been really impressed by them and we've enjoyed watching them as a family.  

I'll leave you with one thing I learned this weekend.  When you put reeces peanut butter cups in the same pouch as your salt tablets you'll get salt all over them.  But as you're driving home from a hard 20 mile run the salty chocolate tastes phenomenal!  Seriously, they were so good.