Tuesday, July 19, 2011

Run...Karen...RUN!

One thing I love to do when the weather is warmer is run a quick 5k on a Saturday morning. Well the past month, that is exactly what I have been able to do. Thank goodness I have great friends and family to join me in my quest. This is the hill on the American Fork 5K, I was running up it, but soon found I could walk as fast as I could run.
At the top of the hill was the Timpanogos Temple, a beautiful site to behold, and of course, what ever goes up must come down, and it was great running down the hill.

My good friend "Marathon Margaret" and her friends ran the 1/2 marathon. They finished after the 5K, and they all ran it in under 2-hours. They are my hero's!

Me and Margaret at the end of the AF Race.

I was shocked to learn that I took 2nd place for my age division. Margaret also placed in her age division for the 1/2 marathon. Wooo Whoo, pretty good for a couple of 29ish year old gals.

Then two weeks ago, I had Kandace and myself all signed up to run the "Lavender Race" a beautiful 5K through the Lavender fields. The kicker was we had to leave our house by 5 AM to be there in time for the 7 AM start time. Kandace did not want to even think about getting up on a Saturday to drive 1 1/2 hours to run a race. So "Life Size Bridget" to the rescue. The drive actually only took an hour and we had plenty of time to walk around the beautiful grounds of the "Young Family Living" farms.

This is the beautiful view of running in the Lavender fields.

Crazy to be running through this gorgeous field, and can you see Mona Lake in the background?

At the end, we found these guys to snap our picture, the only spoke spanish and we were both cracking up at them trying to give the other instructions on how to take this picture.

After the race, we stopped off at the "Krishna Lotus Temple" a snapped a quick picture. It is kinda beautiful, and reminded me of India.

Finally, last weekend I did get Kandace to run the "Draper Days 5K" with me. We got there as they shot the gun for the 7 AM start. I had another good run. Our bishop and his whole family ran the race, so my goal was just to keep up with the bishop. He finished just in front of me, so I achieved that goal. this is Kandace and Olly at the finish line. Kandace had a hard time even walking the 5K, everyone wanted to stop and pet her cute puppy. I told her she was great "Pre-Parade" entertainment.

Here I am with Nicole, and Lisa. I trained with Nicole last week, this was her first 5K. She did absolutley fantastic for her first 5K, she is amazing.

Olly was soo tired after the race. She didn't want to walk anymore, but the cool thing is that we ran into the finish line and everyone was cheering for the cute puppy. She finished in 54 minutes, not bad for such short legs, and her first 5k.

Olly fell sound to sleep after the race. We let her sleep a few minutes before we walked over to the Draper Days Parade.



I had to snap this picture at the parade for Cameron. A Chinese dragon...in Draper, UT. Kinda a strange site to see, but I loved the litte grandma just clapping and so happy to see it.

So now I am leaving for three days to do TREK, so no races this weekend. Then we are doing a FUN race called the "Great Urban Race", it will be alot like the "Amazing Race" We have a team of four, and we are excited to compete in this race. We will post pictures after August 13th. I will try and get more of Cameron's mission pictures up next week. Sorry Cam that I am running behind. Hope you are all doing the things you love to do too this summer.

Monday, July 4, 2011

It's SUMMER time...how did that happen?

It's SUMMER! I know what you are thinking...DUH! But what many of you don't know is that 7-weeks ago today, Steve had knee replacement surgery. So we have missed out on a few weeks getting him up an running so to speak. Here is his second day home after surgery on the CPM machine. He had to be on this machine for 3-weeks, three times a day. The day this machine left, we all were rejoicing!
So now, fast forward to 7-weeks later and here we are celebrating the 4Th of July. We love SUMMER and all the fireworks and fun things we get to do. Kandace and Bridget enjoying the Riverton fireworks from our front yard, something we love every year!

Last week we got to go to Girls Camp. Steve even went as our Priesthood protection. We had such a great time with the girls, they are all so amazing and our camp director did a fabulous job with our "Amazing Race" theme.

And a week ago Kandace and I got to help at the REAL soccer game and they gave us tickets for our friends and family to come and enjoy the game. Here are most of the people we gave our tickets to. Bridget, Lexi and Elvis also got to enjoy the game.

And here is Kandace and me in our great T-Shirts they gave us for helping to swap people for potential bone marrow donor's for Johan. Extreme Makeover was in town building a house for the Gomez family and at half time they asked for people to come and be swapped to find a bone marrow match for 7-year old Jonah. I also was able to go out and help build the house. I must say that volunteering to help at the home site for Extreme Home Makeover was HARD, HOT work! The volunteer really do all the work on the house. While I was there a camera crew came through with Michael for two seconds, and the only reason I knew they were right by me is I could taste the stronge colonge in my mouth. CRAZY, but it was a fun adventure!


Steve has worked hard on his physical therapy. Friday he got his knee to bend at 127 degrees, a major accomplishment. We celebrated by him riding his motorcycle up the canyon and having a BBQ with friends. It has been a Loooong 7-weeks and we are so glad he is doing so much better now.


Here I am with our great friends Margaret and Connie on our trip up the canyon.

And finally, me and Kandace enjoying the cooler weather up the canyon. Hope you are all having a wonderful summer. We look forward to enjoying the rest of the summer not at home! Maybe I can even ride on the back of the motorcycle next trip up the canyon!

Today I made Kandace and Bridget take a 15 mile bike ride with me, and there was a 5K on the trial we took. Here is Bridget with almost "Charlie ROCKS".

And here we are almost back home. I love SUMMER and being outside! next week we are running the "Lavendar Race" and I plan on staying busy, and making everyone else come with me. Enjoy your SUMMER!!