All this fun and a FREE laptop too!!!!

I'd have to call this past weekend not only a great deal of fun but also a smashing success! I'll give it to you point by point.

1. Gideon got to help grandpa "drive" the big truck. - Several of you know my father-in-law is a truck driver. Every now and then he'll bring the truck home and let Gideon "help" him drive around the block. It's always great fun for both of them.

2. We left Friday afternoon & made it safely to Jake & Hillary's house in Provo. - It's always fun to visit because their dog, Toby, is seriously the best dog ever with kids and my kids LOVE him. Plus, they for some reason enjoy wrestling with Uncle Jake and he's a good enough sport to let them.

3. The Hobbler Half Marathon - The reason for the trip was so that I could run the half marathon out of Hobble Canyon. I was doing really great, actually on pace to FINALLY break 2 hours 30 minutes (which has been my elusive goal time for the half recently.) Up until mile 9 anyway, at that point my calves really started cramping up. I'm thinking it was the "gradual" downhill finally catching up with me. At any rate the last four miles were tougher than I expected and I finished in 2:41.15. Disappointing, yes, but definitely my best half so far this year. I have to admit I'm more sore after this race than I've ever been after a half marathon. But a soak in my favorite bath salts, frequent Bio-Freeze applications and a little ibuprophen and I should be ready to go this weekend at the Ririe Days Half Marathon.

(This is the only picture I have of Hillary from the weekend, a self-portrait of her holding Princess P.)

And here I come. Hobbling along (pun intended) to the finish. Oh well, as usual I may have looked rough, but at least I was dressed well.

Gideon didn't want to cross the finish line with me this time. I guess because there was too much else going on for the kids like face painting and a bouncy castle.

4. The trampoline & the swing - I think this is pretty self-explanatory. Gideon had a ball! Well, both kids did.

5. Yes, I said FREE laptop - One of the best things about having Jake as a brother-in-law is that he's a self-proclaimed computer geek. This really benefitted me over the weekend when he saw an ad for someone giving away two "broken" laptops. Unlike the rest of us who would steer clear and just buy new ones, Jake sees any kind of "broken" computer as an opportunity. Even if it's unfixable, he can still tear it down and keep the usable parts for future projects (because as Jake once explained to me years ago, the best computers aren't bought, they're built.) It turns out one of the computers only needed a new power cord & a virus removed and it worked perfectly. It's about 5-6 years old, but Jake reconfigured it and updated it and offered it to me. I've actually never had my own laptop so this is exciting for me. We have one, which Travis takes with him when he travels, and we have a 9 year old desktop at home that I use when he's on the road. The laptop I'd been using was a hand-me-down from my mom that was like 8 years old (and actually quit working on me a few weeks ago) I jumped at the chance. A working laptop & all I had to invest in was a new power cord?!?!?! SOLD!!!!!!!!

So yeah, a very successful weekend and definitely worth the trip to Utah. I'm actually considering going back down to run the Timp Half on the 30th, but I'll have to wait & see where Travis is going to be at that point.