Tuesday, May 14, 2013

Spring season sports wrap-up

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Spring soccer has finished for Savannah’s team. They have learned a lot this year and have improved drastically from last fall. They won a game this spring and scored several goals in other games. Last fall, they only scored 2 the whole season, so definitely improving.

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Spring baseball season finished last weekend. Hadden’s team won the tournament championship! Hadden was on the winning tournament team last year, as well, so he has 2 in a row!!  We have started the allstar season, so we are busy with practices for that.

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Family photo celebrating Hadden’s win! John was the assistant coach, so he had a big part in it, too. Love my family!!

Monday, April 15, 2013

2 “Half”s make a whole, right?

When it comes to marathons, I hope this is the case. I am not sure I could ever run 26.2 miles all at one time :)

Last Saturday, I finished my second half marathon and I survived. This time, training was sketchy and I didn’t feel as prepared as I had for the Mercedes Half back in February. My time reflected that I wasn’t as prepared, either, because I was 3:52 behind my last finish. I still finished under 2 hours, which was my goal for the day. My final time was 1:58:11.

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Almost there!

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Really almost there! If you are wondering how I closed that distance in 0:02 seconds … here is the reason. Thanks to technology, the bib numbers have an electronic chip in them. There are strips on the ground that pick up my actual start time and actual finish time using the chip. The “gun” clock is what you see on the time clock, so my official time is slightly different because I didn’t cross the start line right as the gun went off. Hopefully, that makes sense.

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Caffeine!!! On race days, I don’t drink coffee before the race, so I was enjoying a coke after I finished. This was a very well organized run – their inaugural event. The funds raised went towards Team 413 ministry and you can read about them here.

At this point, I am going to take a break from running and do some cross training mainly due to the heat increasing and the time needed to train for races. John took my bike to get a tune-up and I am hoping that we can get some rides in on the weekends. I do MUCH better running when the weather is cool, so I am hoping to train again next fall and winter for some more half marathons. I think I have the bug :)

Saturday, March 23, 2013

I know, I know – it’s been a while!!

I don’t even know where to begin to catch up. We have been doing life quickly, it seems.

John has been at a new job for about 6 months and is enjoying it. The transition has been a pretty big adjustment for all of us, as he now has about a 1 hour commute each way, so we see much less of him than we did. He has been getting up extra early to beat the traffic and has been riding his bike before starting work. So proud of him – some of the mornings have been pretty cold by Alabama standards!

The kids are growing up too fast. They continue to enjoy sports and being outdoors. They have added a new game to their repertoire – chess. They learned it during our last co-op session. Needless to say, I am not any competition for them.

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Hadden enjoyed playing basketball this winter. We are hoping to get a basketball hoop so that we can practice in the off season. John helped coach during the games. The league was held at our church and it is very well done. Baseball season has started and we had some overlap between basketball and baseball with some tournaments. His team won their first tournament. The second tournament was played in snow flurries! John is also helping coach baseball!

Savannah continues to play competitive level soccer. She continues to improve and enjoys playing. Hoping for some success for her team – they are playing an age group higher than most of them, so it is extra challenging! We have had quite a few indoor practices due to all the rain this spring.

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I have spent a fair amount this winter and spring training for half-marathons. I ran my first half-marathon in Feb in Birmingham and I am scheduled to run my second on Apr 13. I think I will have to take a break for the summer heat after that. It was very cold race day with a starting temperature of 27 degrees – brrr!

The whole family got in on the fun when we ran a local 5K all together! So proud of all of them – they all finished until 30 minutes. I haven’t asked if they want to do any more :)

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The dogs. Oh, the dogs! Remember the cute little pups? Well, the two we kept are no longer little, but I have to say they are pretty cute still. We were planning on getting rid of Happy (with my friend who does rescues), but we felt it wouldn’t be very fair to him because he just loves to run free. He just wouldn’t be happy cooped up anywhere.

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5 of the 6 warming on the front porch. And the pups have made themselves rather comfy on the car. I can’t remember if I had said, but the goat used to jump on the car all.the.time. Drove me crazy! Somehow, since the pups don’t scratch the finish, they don’t bother me being up there.

I’m sure there is lots that I have missed. Who knows, maybe I’ll be a little more consistent with updates – ha!

How are you?