You and me will be always

 June 2022

This is going to be a long post because June was my favorite month of the year so far! My birthday, the end of the school year, my first "official" half marathon, visiting friends and national parks in Utah, a trip to Colorado with Andrew, hiking, trail running, and lots of mountains. I can still smell the mountain rain and feel the cool breeze. June was unbeatable. 

Proof of mom pic-even if it's blurry and we all look a little crazy

Matthew showing off his self-defense skills that he learned during the school year at the belt ceremony

For my birthday, a friend watched our kids while Andrew and I went to Cheesecake Factory, a running store, and Costco (ha!) It doesn't really matter what we do, it's just so nice to get a little break, have some uninterrupted conversations, and delicious food is a great bonus. 

31 baby! As long as I can run and hike and not take myself too seriously, then age is just a reminder of how long I've been busy being awesome. 

Water games party for the final primary activity before summer. It ended up being a randomly cold evening, but the kids were all good sports about it and still had fun.

Real life spidermen

On the last day of school, there was a little picnic/party after the kids' field day. It was fun, but it was SO hot and we didn't last long. The highlights were the glitter tattoos/face painting and the chairs and shade umbrellas that Lydia brought and was kind enough to share.  

Summer time means more time to spend at the library. I love seeing all of my kids sucked into a book.

And of course summer means later nights and more time to hang out with friends!

We have some awesome neighbors whose thumbs are far greener than mine. They are super generous to share their fruits and vegetables with us and to even let me kids get out all their toys inside while we're picking produce outside. On this particular day, we picked a bunch of apricots and then turned it into apricot fruit roll-ups and apricot crumble. So fun and so tasty.

    ROCK TAHOE! Alright, let's back up to September 2019. I went to Texas to visit my sister and newborn niece/try to be helpful while she adjusted (btw she was crushing it and totally didn't need me). I ended up with some down time and started reading through their library. One of the books I read led to me finally committing to running a half marathon. I had thought about running a half lots of times, but I was genuinely scared that I wouldn't be able to do it. I never signed up and never even told anyone that it was something I wanted to do because I didn't want to be a failure. The book motivated me to just go for it and to even commit big by telling people that I was going to do it. In an effort to really go all out, I texted every friend I thought would maybe, possibly get on board with me and asked if they wanted to sign up with me. I got a few bites, signed up for a race in April, and started building my aerobic base back up from years of on and off running. 

    I was more committed than ever, and in January my training started to pick up. In March, I remember texting my sister that I had just run 8 miles even though it was raining and I was on my period. I was proving to myself that I could actually do this, and I was excited by what I was accomplishing. And then, about 4ish weeks out, my race was cancelled due to Covid. I was SO disappointed. I did not want to run a virtual race and I stopped running all together for a little while. I was so bummed. After moping for a while, and realizing that this pandemic wasn't going to be short lived, I decided to just pick a place, pick a day, and run until my app said it was 13.1 miles. I tried to get some of the original friends on board, but I chose July 4th to do my run, and the only one I got was a friend on vacation who agreed to also run 13.1 miles so we would kind of be virtual race buddies (thank you, Natalie!). For the record, she definitely won that race. 

    So on July 4, 2020 I set out on the Iron Horse trail in Walnut Creek and headed to Danville. Andrew and the kids dropped me off and gave me water and encouragement once or twice along the way. I had two running apps tracking my distance and I just ran until they both said I had reached 13.1. It was an anti-climactic finish as I accidentally took a slightly different route than I intended, so I just had to call Andrew when I finished and tell him where I was so he could come pick me up. They came with cheers and sour patch kids and it definitely added a little thrill to the lackluster finish.

    Once races were consistently happening again, I signed up for a few 5Ks, got a new PR, and then decided it was time to get in an official half marathon race. I got a friend to go with me which made the drive and the whole trip even more fun. She was the best sport and it was so fun to have her with me. She wasn't running the race, but was nice enough to drop be off at the buses that took me up to the start. It felt like such a long ride up to the start, and I just kept thinking, "wow, I need to run this whole way back." As soon as it started and we rounded the bend onto the highway, tears came to my eyes. The mountain smell, gorgeous views, the energy, and all these fellow crazy people who love this same thing that I do. 

    The race was beautiful! The course wound down the highway around the southeast side of Lake Tahoe. I thought that it'd be fine to run a race at an elevation 6000-7000 ft higher than where I live since it was mostly downhill, but the joke was on me since there were still quite a few hills. I ran with the 2 hour pacers most of the way and they were so much fun to hang out with. At one point, I needed to stop to pee (all that water I was drinking to combat the altitude) so I pulled ahead to try and make it easy to catch back up with them. Well they flew past while I was waiting for the person in front of me to come out. As they were passing, a guy I'd been chatting with shouted something about hoping I could catch back up. I had to run like hell, but I freakin did it! It was so good to have that motivation of knowing my running group was just up ahead and that at least one person would notice if I made it or not. After that, I stuck with them until around the last mile or so where I pulled ahead because I was feeling good. My running buddy caught up to me with about a half mile to go, and I tried so hard to match his speed as we approached the finish, but my calves were cramping every time I tried to pick up the pace. (more salt tablets next time) I cruised into the finish line at 1:56:42 and I was so proud. 8:55 pace for 13.1 miles! My goal was to be under two hours and I crushed it. It was an amazing race with perfect weather and just the best atmosphere. 

Recovery from the half was going quite well until I somehow stepped on a drill bit and got it stuck deep enough that I had to pull it back out-as opposed to it just falling out. It hurt so much more than any picture was able to capture and I was pretty worried about it since we had a lot of hiking/walking scheduled in the near future. 

Filling up water bottles at the enthusiastic water fountain proved challenging.

A few days after the half, we headed off to Utah for an epic vacation. Our first stop was visiting the LeMmons and exploring southern Utah with them! I cannot express what a fun time we had. We miss these friends so much and it was awesome to reconnect and to watch our kids play now that they're older. 

The day after we got in, we went to Zion National Park to hike Angel's Landing. It was SO hot-well over 100 degrees- and we did not bring enough water with us. We made it up to the permit required section by encouraging the kids with candy and sometimes just carrying them (Alex and Adaline). Only Andrew had won a permit, so only 6 people could go. Alex and Adaline attempted to head up with us, but quickly decided it was beyond what they wanted to do. So they switched places with Brett and Natalie, the hero that she is, was left in charge of 6 kids while Andrew, Brett, Michael, Matthew, and I headed to the top. Michael and Matthew are basically mountain goats and they did an amazing job. We ran out of water and it turned out that Andrew and I were both pretending not to notice that we were starting to get dangerously dehydrated. We told ourselves that we'd be able to get more water as soon as we made it back to the landing where the kids and Natalie were waiting, and we pressed on. Michael occasionally commented that "so far no one from our family has fallen off the cliff." Ha! 

It was absolutely gorgeous at the top. Matthew and Michael boosted their confidence so much by reaching the top on their own, and on the way down they encouraged everyone we passed by telling them "I know you can do it because and 7 year old and 5 year old just did it." They even said this to the adults who had decided they'd reached their limits and were sitting, waiting for the rest of their group to come back down. In the moment, I didn't feel especially scared, but I had nightmares about the kids falling over the edge for the next couple weeks. When we got back to the public part of the trail, we found that Natalie and the kids and headed back down (definitely a wise choice) but that meant we had to wait longer for water. When we eventually did catch up to them, we discovered that they were counting on us to bring them water. Oh dear. Thankfully it was all downhill from there. After drinking our body weight in water at the trail head, we rode the shuttle back, checked out the visitors' center, and headed back to the LeMmons' house. 

The next day was a little more chill as we hung out at the house, explored the St. George "narrows", went out to eat, and went swimming. The kids all adored their sweet dog Dixie and she was so good to let them snuggle and play with her. 

It was only slightly terrifying to walk through here.

Over the next couple days, Andrew and Brett went mountain biking, Natalie and I went running, they fed us delicious food, we swam in their pool, the kids played outside, and we had lots of time to chat and plan fun things for the future. On Sunday night, it cooled off and rained a little and we had so much fun playing in the street riding skateboards and scooters and just goofing off. It was just such a good time. Thanks for hosting us, N & B! I cannot wait until our next adventure.

I took some epic slow-mo videos of everyone jumping into the stack of 5 innertubes. I guess I better upload those somewhere.

Andrew did the planning for this trip and he found a u-dig fossils place sort of on the way up to his parents' house from St. George. Getting there was just a little bit dicey. I turned onto a dirt road, and after a few miles I could not tell if I was still on a road or not. We stuck with it despite not seeing any other cars for well over an hour, and thankfully we did indeed make it to the place Andrew had found. It was crazy hot and we, again, didn't have enough water, but we did find a whole bunch of trilobites to take home with us. Would I do it again? Definitely not. Was it an adventure? For sure!

We made it to Salem! It was a quick turnaround. We had dinner, did some laundry, reorganized our stuff, and gave Andrew's parents the downlow on our kids. The next day, Andrew and I headed off to Colorado to finally take a little 10 year anniversary trip. It was a lovely break and I loved the rainy mountain whether that we had in Glenwood Springs. We stayed at a cute little B&B and walked downtown to grab dinner the first night. The weather was absolutely perfect, so we followed up dinner with a bike ride and walking in the river. 

The next day, we went rafting on the Colorado River. Somehow this was my first time going white water rafting, and it was tame but still super fun. Our guide was funny and the weather was perfect. The only bummer was when we jumped into the river and I lost my sunglasses-still worth the dip though. I loved it and immediately wanted to plan some more rafting trips. I realize this was a very tame expedition, but we got some pictures from it and I was smiling in basically every single photo. It was fun. 

Definitely almost fell out right before this.

After rafting, we got some amazing pizza, took a nap, and then went back out to walk across the bridge, check out more shops, and get some dinner. We got caught in a huge thunderstorm (which I absolutely loved) and ended up spending way more time in one of the outdoor gear stores while we waited it out.

The next day, we had a permit to hike Hanging Lake, but the rain made mudslides risky and it was closed for the day. We quickly found another hike nearby and headed out. It ended up being awesome. It was incredibly muddy, but the clouds and rain were awesome. It ended up being around 6 miles, and we probably ran half of it. I was just so full of adrenaline and mountain air that I couldn't slow down.  By the time we made it back to the car, we were soaked and covered in mud. It was perfect.

 Next up was visiting the giant pool heated by the hot springs. It was HUGE. I had seen pictures, but it was still bigger than I expected. In addition to the giant pool that stays at a cozy 90 degrees, there was a "therapy pool" aka giant hot tub that was 104 degrees and a water slide. We spent so much longer here than I would have guessed. It's kind of awesome to have a chance to turn off my "mom brain" and just be the kid that I still am. We jumped off the diving board, did somersaults and handstands, went on the water slide, etc. When we first got there it was overcast and rainy which made it even more fun to be in a huge heated pool. Oh yeah, and the whole time we were surrounded by the gorgeous mountain views. Gosh dang I love Colorado so much. 

Meanwhile, the kids were back at Andrew's parents' house having plenty of fun of their own. Deborah sent us pictures of the kids riding horses, playing at a trampoline park, going to colonial days, and playing in the sandbox. 

And that was June! I'll pick up with the rest of our trip in July.