The boys and I have kept really busy these last few weeks and I’m finally finding time to sit down and share some of it. Not only have we been busy, these past few weeks have been filled with lots of exciting stuff like animals, make believe, cowbells, magnets, buses, sack lunches...and running! To say that it has been anything less than an adventure would not do it justice...and in looking back it was an adventure that none of us would have passed up and it was definitely a lot of fun! So what is that we did that included all of those things? Well it wasn’t just one thing but a whole lot of things that made these past couple of weeks so great and I’ll start by sharing a little about each adventure!
We started off our adventures with the kid’s year end field trips. Hayden got to go to the Gateway Discovery center for his field trip and then a week later, Connor got to go to Hogle Zoo for his field trip...which explains the animals, make believe and magnets part of our adventures!
Both field trips were down in Salt Lake and I volunteered to help with each one of them. The boys were both thrilled to be able to ride a bus to their field trip and even though Hayden’s bus was an hour late getting to the school, I was lucky enough to get to ride with him…which quite honestly, was probably one part of the adventure I could have done without! On the other hand, Connor got to ride the bus for his very first time ever and he got to do it all by himself...with a few teachers along for the ride! Needless to say, they both loved it and would have, if necessary, counted that as their adventure and been happy without doing the rest!
I had never been to the Gateway Discover center and I was just as excited as Hayden was to see it for the first time. I had to chaperone 2 other boys besides Hayden and they were probably the ones that the teacher considered the hardest to handle, but we had a great time and I didn’t have one bit of trouble with any of them. At times it was hard to keep track of all of them because the place was crawling with 3rd graders, but once they had spent a few minutes at each attraction, they were ready to move on to the next one and I just tried to stay right behind them. However, at a few of the attractions, the kids were having so much fun that I had to urge them to move along so that they would be able to see everything there was to see in the 2 short hours that we were going to be there. There were a lot of fun things to see and do and I was truly impressed with the place. I was just glad that it was an indoor activity because it just so happened to be raining and 52 degrees outside and would have been miserable if we would have had to be outside.
The 3 kids I had to chaperone - Hayden, Wyatt and Ryan
Me and Hayden
A week later, I went with Connor to the zoo. Fortunately, a week’s time in Utah is enough time for the weather to go from winter-like conditions to summer-like conditions and we were able to spend the day at the zoo with sunshine and 82 degree weather. It was a perfect day to be outside! Connor had been to the zoo several times before so it wasn’t new to him, but we still had fun seeing all of the animals…especially the new baby elephant! That was probably my favorite, but I don’t think that Connor really had any favorites. He just loved it all! The only downfall to our trip at the zoo was all of the walking we had to do...which included a lot of uphills and downhills…and I was still recovering from running my marathon only a few days earlier and I still had blisters on my feet and sore quads from running downhill at the race! I survived though and had a great day with Connor! Did I mention that the only kid I had to chaperone was Connor? That made the day even more perfect...that and being able to hang out with our best friends Carmen and Austin Harrison.
Connor has a bit of an attitude!
Connor with his teacher Ms. Littlewood
Our best friends, Carmen and Austin
(and the little boy she had to chaperone, Trace Johnson)
Help! The kids are going "ape"!
Me and my buddy
At the elephant cage...can you see the baby elephant under his mom?
In between the field trips, I ran in the Ogden marathon for the second year in a row. I finished my marathon last year in 4:08 and I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to beat that time this year. So rather than bust my butt and come out disappointed, I decided to do something different this year...I chose to run the race with one of my best friend’s, Jodee. She had only ever run one other marathon, which was the Top of Utah marathon in the fall and she wanted to beat her time if possible. When I told her that I wanted to run with her, she was excited, but I also forewarned her that I was going to push her a little and that didn’t seem to scare her. So when the starting gun went off, we set out with frozen feet and hands (we had been sitting around for an hour at the starting line in 35 degree weather waiting for the race to start) and high hopes!
Right from the start of the race, I really pushed the pace and we kept it up for the first 8 miles...and then Jodee broke it to me that she wasn’t sure if she would be able to keep it up! I told her that we’d slow down and go her pace for a while, but only if we could go my pace when we reached mile 17, which was all downhill from there, and that’s exactly what we did...until we got to mile 23 and then we were both dead! Jodee encouraged (or insisted) that I go on ahead and she promised that she wouldn’t be far behind me. I fought her for a while, but I finally gave in and went on by myself. Even though I may have been pushing her, she had been pushing me too and we had kept each other going. We finished the race within 3 minutes of each other and although I didn’t better my time (I finished it in 4:26), I wasn’t disappointed with myself because I’d actually done better than I thought I would and best of all, Jodee finished 40 minutes faster than she did in her first marathon and was thrilled! We made a great team! My only repercussion to the race was the aforementioned blisters and sore quads, but what would a race be without those? No pain, no gain, right?
Hayden took this photo
Me and Jodee - we finished 3 minutes apart but ran together most of the way
My favorite little buddies
An hour after we finished our race, our kids ran the KidsK that started from the park and ended coming through the same Finish line that we had just passed through. Hayden went on ahead with Jodee’s daughter Audrey and her cousin and Connor just ran by himself...trying to keep up with Hayden! I tried to keep up with both of them, but soon decided that the blisters on my feet were bigger and more sore than I had realized and I had a hard time keeping up. I was glad when I realized that they were going to double back on the course that they had just run, so I just waited for the boys to return so that I could take pictures of them and then run through the Finish line with them. The kids all received a “medal” for finishing but it was actually a cowbell…which explains the running and the cowbell part of our adventure! It was a fun day for all of us! Even Rod was a good sport and just hung around and supported all of us! He’s an amazing husband and dad and we sure do love him!
Hayden running with his buddies
Connor ran alone, but he did great!
The finishers!
Aren't they cute?
The winners...and our greatest supporter, Rod
Connor graduated from kindergarten today…and although I’ve been to a lot of graduations up until now with 3 boys graduating from both 6th grade and high school and 2 boys graduating from preschool and now from kindergarten…this was probably the graduation that made me the saddest! Why? Because my baby is now on the verge of going to school full time…and he’s no longer much of a baby! I feel like he’s just about to take his first big step into the real world and I don’t know if I’m ready for it!
The graduation march with Connor in the lead
Connor has made me incredibly proud this year when I look back on all that he has accomplished. I can vividly remember as he was being tested at his pre-kindergarten assessment and he barely knew about a 1/3 of the alphabet. When his teacher pointed to most of the letters in the alphabet, he would just shrug his shoulders and say “I have no idea what it is!”...and I just sat in the background cringing and thinking that I was an awful mom for not teaching him more! Then just this past week he finished reading almost the highest level of reading books that he could read in kindergarten and he reads almost as good as Hayden, who will be in 4th grade next year!
