Happy 4th of July!

We had a fun 4th of July weekend in Glenwood.  Bill, Steve, DeAnn and their families were there.  The cousins all had so much fun together!  July 2014 will forever be known as "the year Daisy ate all the bread".

We did the usual 4-wheeling, horseback riding, BBQ routine.  It never gets old!  I love it down there so much.  I slacked on taking pictures this trip, but Bear sure looked patriotic on Sunday!

We did the Richfield Liberty 5K for the 3rd year in a row.  My dad placed in his age group for about the millionth time, and Natalie placed in hers!  She and Jonathan have turned into awesome runners this past year!

Fish Lake Relay 2013

On Friday evening, we dropped the kids off at Grandma's, went and picked up Andrea, and headed south.  We stopped at Olive Garden and ate pasta for dinner.  So delicious!  Our waitress was kind of interesting.... Andrea:  "Can you put $17 on this card, right here?"  We had some good laughs.

Andrea and I talked all the way down to Glenwood.  It was fun to visit.  We stayed with Carrie and pretty much went straight to bed when we got there.  Up at 5!  We met the other runners on our team, Phil and Jenny, and piled in our van to head up to Fish Lake.  (Andrea, we're lucky Phil was normal!)  We were a tad nervous about running with people we didn't know, but the 6 of us clicked immediately, and we knew we were in for a fun day.

So, quick back story:  My aunt, Brenda, runs lots of relays, so she sent me some messages with advice.  She kept saying things like, "Bring a change of shoes for in between your legs." and "Make sure you have some extra clothes for between your legs."  She was obviously talking about in between the RUNNING legs, but it sounded SO bad, and it cracked me up.

So, when we got to Fish Lake and had some time to kill, I told the team this story, and we started coming up with other things you can do "Between Your Legs".  (In case you didn't know, each section of running in a relay is called a leg.  So you know....you really do have lots of time between legs!!)  We were DYING laughing.  I haven't laughed so hard in a long time.  We pretty much kept the jokes going all day long.  We wrote down a huge list, and it got pretty bad.  Andrea is supposed to type it up, so I'll put it on here when it's done.  Oh man....so bad.  But so SO hilarious!

Anyway, back to the running, I had legs #1 and #6.  So I was up first.  Each of us ran 2 legs, for a total of 12, in case you can't do math.  ;)  The legs were all about 4-6 miles each.  The entire relay was 64 miles long.  There were 23 teams that signed up.  Overall, it was such a well put-together race!  I really hope more and more teams sign up each year.  I was really impressed.

At 6:30, the race started.  Both of my legs were 6-milers.  I ran for about 1/2 mile with a cute high school senior girl, but then she started walking.  I don't run with music (shocking, I know!), so I just enjoyed the gorgeous views of Fish Lake and enjoyed my run!  The van met me every couple of miles with cheers and support, which was fun.  I ran that leg in 1:01, which I was thrilled about!  I was pretty done though and very ready to high five Phil!  Off he went!

Finishing up the first leg.  Ready to eat some food and relax in the van!

Giving Phil some support!

It was such a gorgeous course.  HIGH elevation though.  About 10,000 feet at some places!  Tough to breathe!!

Andrea is ready to run!

Porta-potty!

Nate had the toughest leg.  This hill was over a mile long!  Phil dubbed him, "Mountain Man" because he did awesome!

Just relaxing and making jokes between the legs...  These two were a RIOT.  We seriously spent hours in the van just laughing.  We weren't the fastest team, but we are convinced that we were the most hilarious!

We passed this dead cow during Nate's run.  SO nasty!  Andrea has a fear of cows, so she had to get pictures.  She then took a few with her phone, but didn't know it was turned around and ended up taking a bunch of pictures of her face.  Hilarious.

Luckily what goes up must come down, so Nate got some good downhill, too!

The aspens and wildflowers were so pretty!

Jenny was probably our strongest runner.  She was awesome!!

Lots of cows for Andrea!

All too soon, it was back around to me again!  Another 6 miles.

Right at the end of her leg, Carrie took a little tumble and had to be patched up.  Luckily she was just fine to run her other leg!

My 2nd leg was much tougher than my first.  It was really hot, and my stomach was unsettled the whole time.  I almost always run in the mornings on an empty stomach, so running in the early afternoon was not great!  But I did it!  And I loved it!  I ran this leg in 1:04, which surprised me because it felt eternal!

Phil tackled his 6 miles like a pro!

His family met him at this exchange and ran with him for a few feet.

Go Andrea!

 The only bad weather we got was this quick rain shower.  Hard to tell in the pics, but it's pouring!

Nate did so awesome on his first leg, that Phil also dubbed him "The Gazelle".  At this point in the race, we were neck and neck with another team.  Their next runner came up to Phil and said, "Who is your next runner?  I hope he is slow."  So Phil goes, "Oh, no.  We saved Gazelle for this leg.  That's what everyone calls him."  The guy's eyes got big and he just walked away.  It was HILARIOUS.

When Jenny finished her 2nd leg, she had to leave to drive up to SLC, so we took a few quick team pictures.

Crossing our legs...nothing went on between our legs!

The course went past this cute little cow farm.  More cows for Andrea!  These ones aren't scary though, just cute!

The course also ran literally right by Uncle Dick's place.  He and Trish came out and said hello, so that was fun!  Carrie ended our team and ran from there to Richfield Park.  We met her there and ran together through the final chute.

Legs...

It took us about 11 hours.  We were exhausted, and I was so ready for a big cheeseburger (which I inhaled)!! It was such a blast!  I loved being with these great people all day, supporting and cheering each other on.  We each worked so hard to accomplish this awesome relay.  We all vowed to get in better shape, meet up next year, beat our time, and have another big party between the legs!!  ;)  (ha, oh man, still cracking up!)