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.

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!!

Happy Birthday Kandace!

June 16, 1987....A day that was a life changing day for the Leavitt Family. Kandace Kay Leavitt joined our family and it has not been the same since that day. And here she is at one year old, she didn't have much hair then, but look at her now! 24 years later...and still those beautiful blue eyes that light up a room.
Kandace bought herself a birthday present a new puppy.

Here she is with "Ollyonka" or Olly for short. She has had the puppy for two weeks, and is learning how much work they really are. Hopefully by her next birthday she will have the puppy trained and getting more sleep.

Crazy Kandace....that is what we love about her. Always having FUN.

So Kandace decided to throw her own party so she invited a few friends over for pizza, games and fun. Sorry we didn't get AUBS in the picture before she had to leave.

Kandace and her friends just having some FUN.

And the 24 things we love about Kandace in no particular order:

1. A great Daughter

2. Loves her friends

3. Her BIG BLUE eyes.

4. Always wants to have FUN.

5. Paid off her car!

6. Cleaned and Organized her closet...and the world didn't even end!

7. Finds great DI ties to send to Cameron.

8. Makes a great Chauffer for Grandma and Grandpa Haupt.

9. Helps with the yard work.

10. Has a grumpy turtle named Turd!

11. Loves her cousins.

12. Loves to hang out with her Aunties and Uncles.

13. Makes great protein shakes.

14. SHOES...Loves them and has a great collection.

15. Quick texting skills.

16. Drops what she is doing to help a friend in need.

17. LOVES ICE CREAM!

18. A great sport to run a race with, even if she hasn't trained/

19. Great taste in nail polish.

20. Has great clothes to steal.

21. Loves to SHOP any time any where!

22. Makes us Laugh!

23. Has a cute puppy that everyone wants!

24. Always says "Love You" when she calls!

Hope your day was great Kandace!

U2...With or Without You!

Tuesday Casey, Kandace and I got to attend the U2 360 concert at Rice Eccels Stadium. We have had the tickets for over a year, or I should say I got the tickets for Steve, Casey and Kandace last year to attend the concert. But then the concert was cancelled and rescheduled for May 24th, just one week after Steve's knee replacement surgery. Unfortunatley Steve was not up to going to the concert and I got his ticket by default. So Tuesday night, we got a couple of "Babysitters" Tineke and Margaret to come and stay with Steve while we headed off in "Blueberry" to the concert.

We were there with thousands of other crazy fans. You could feel the excitement in the air. Here are Casey and Kandace waiting for the concert to start.

Casey just LOVES it when I make him take pictures with me...can you tell?

So when we got there we found out that they had closed our section of seats due to restaging and they "Upgraded" our seats. Well when we went to find our "Upgraded" seats they had moved us from row 14 to row 57. Kandace was not happy and grabbed the tickets and said she was going to go talk to them. We didn't think that we would get anywhere, but when she came back we had seats in the middle section on row 16...now that is an "UPGRADE". So, we really did have sweet seats!

The FREY started the concert and they were so amazing!

Oh....me taking more pictures....Casey was just so thrilled, can you tell by the look on his face?

The FREY finishing up their gig. After the FREY there was a change of stage to setup for U2. This is a picture of the camera crew climbing into their seats for the concert. It looked like a fun carnival ride.

Here we are, waiting for U2 to come out and start the concert. Once the sun went behind the mountain, it got COLD, but at least we didn't have any rain!

And finally the concert started....here is "The Edge" playing the guitar. The start of a great night!

The concert was completley sold out! This is a shot of the 360 screenn showing not an empty seat in the crowd.

Bono treating us to " A Beautiful Day" one of my favorites!

Bono and Adam Clayton...."With or Without You"....Made me want to be "WITH" Steve! I felt bad he had to miss this great concert, but I will make it up to him and surprise him with new tickets sometime soon!

And before we knew it U2 was doing their encore and the concert ended. It was such a fun night, great music, great company and perfect....a little cold....weather. Thanks Casey and Kandace for such a fun night! Steve keep up with your Physical Therapy so we can go to another concert soon!

Running with Angels...2011

Running with Angels is one of my very favorite races that I do each year. Of course I don't like to run a race alone, so I always have to talk one of my kids into running with me. Lucky Kandace got to run with me this year, she also ran with me in 2009 so she knew how lucky she really was to run this race!This is a traditional picture we take every year in front of the ARCH. I have a picture here with Courtney and Cameron too, so I had to get one with Kandace!
There were more people at the race this year than I have ever seen before. Everyone is finding my favorite races to run and joining the fun. This is me and Kandace at the start line, you can kind of see the start arch in my sunglasses. COOL!
Running in the gardens. It was so beautiful! Not a cloud in the sky and after rain for a solid week we appreciated every minute of sunshine among the amazing garden path.

More of the beauty in the garden, this is the BIGGEST reason I love to run this race. However, there are alot of hills and the final hill at the end nearly killed me this year. I finished the race in just 33 minutes, not too bad since I couldn't run this past week. After I finish, I always head back and run my kids in.

And this is where I caught up with Kandace to run her in. She was walking pretty fast!

I made her stop for a quick picture so we wouldn't have to come back for pictures. She was in a hurry to see how fast she could walk the course.

Kandace....booking it to the finish line. Are the gardens so amazing?

She did it! Kandace walked the course in 49 minutes! Awesome job Kandace!

After the race we walked around the gardens for a few minutes and took a few shots. Doesn't Kandace look great!

And here I am, not sure what is going on with my crazy hair, but the flowers look good!

And a final shot of both of us before we leave. It was a great start of our day. After the race we came home and helped Steve for a little while, then worked outside in the yard for a couple of hours. When we came in, Kandace said "Mom and Dad are Killing Me" They wake me up early for a race, and work me all day long....AGHHHH! That's the breaks when you are the only kid left at home I guess! Let's see what torture I can find for her next weekend! :) Love you Kandace!