2009 Goal

At the end of 2008 I decided that my goal for 2009 was to do a race every month in 2009. It kicked off in October of 08 when we did the 5K run for Nie Nie. At the time Sophie was 3 months old and that was a tough 5K for me. I also did the Turkey trot and Nutcracker 5K in 2008.

Here is a recap of my 2009 goal:

January
Frigid 5K (25:50)
Traci and I

February
UVU No Snow 5K
Tayson and I

March
Moab 1/2 marathon (1:58)
Leigh Anne, Gretchen, Traci and I

April
Inaugural Boston 5K (24:12)

May
Memorial Day 10K (53:27)
Jen, Jill and I

June
Riverwoods 10 miler (1:25)
Laurie, Stephanie, Leigh Anne, Jill, Me and Traci

June (again)
Little Red Century (6 hrs 20 min - 103 miles)
Gretchen, Me and Leigh Anne

July
Surf City 4th of July 5K (23:29)
Amy and I

August
Park City 1/2 marathon (1:58)
Jill, Traci, Leigh Anne and I

September
Top of Utah Marathon (4:02)
Leigh Anne, Gretchen, Traci and I

Sherry and I @ TOU Marathon

October

The following are my excuses for missing:

I did 2 events in June

I ran a freaking marathon in September and still wasn't motivated yet

Todd was in California the whole month training for his new job and was only home 2 weekends and I didn't want to spend my Saturday away from him

None of my family or friends did races to force me to be motivated

November
Earn your Turkey 4 mile (31:38)
Todd, Mark, Me, Danny, Timmy and Tayson

December
Nutcracker 5K (25:25)
big old group of friends, friends of friends and family members

I must say it was a great goal and I'm glad I did it. Next year however I will not be repeating this goal. It was very time consuming and at times a bit stressful and expensive (although I have lots of amazing cotton t-shirts now - ha ha). And I have lots of great memories, pictures, new friends and I still love running.

Christmas Flashback

It has been really cold this past week (and I mean really cold... -2 a few mornings when I've gotten up). The other day when I was freezing in my car driving home from work I remembered my first Christmas driving home from BYU. My freshman year here there were 4 of us attending BYU (George, Steve, Sherry and I). They all lived at the Raintree apartments and I was in the dorms so the night before we went home I slept at Sherry's apartment so we could leave early. It was about a 24 hour drive back then when the speed limit was 55 mph and we wanted to drive straight through. So Sherry and I stayed up almost all night then we left early in the morning and the boys were in the front driving while Sherry and I slept in the backseat of the Chevy Sprint (one of the smallest cars ever made). Then at night the boys slept and it was our turn to drive. Since I was "too young" they wouldn't let me drive. I remember being mad at the time - now I will do anything to get out of a driving shift on a long trip.

The most memorable part of the trip though was that it was soooooo cold. The car was never warm enough to take off our coats and the windows were icy the whole drive home. We had the defrost on high the whole way and it still didn't get the back windows or the edges of the front windshield. And then at home that year we had to use the blow dryer to get the door open one day. I also remember sleeping 14 hours straight 2 days in a row when I got home (I guess I played a little too much at school instead of sleeping).

ah the memories.....

Gingerbread Houses

For family night this week we decorated gingerbread houses, drank hot chocolate and decorated and ate sugar cookies. I love this time of the year when we can spend time together as a family and make memories.

I'm not extremely crafty and wasn't blessed with amazing decorating talent, but that's not what it's about with gingerbread houses. I buy the kits and we have a blast putting them together and I really don't care what they end up looking like in the end.

working hard as a family
(except Sophie we put her to bed before starting something like this)

Luke helping Todd

Todd and Luke's finished product
(there is a gingerbread man already missing and eaten at this point)

Tayson and Claire did the Snoopy doghouse with me.

The huge marshmallow snoopy was too big to sit on the roof...he kept falling off.

Sugar cookies....yummy!

**on a side note. Luke gave a sweet lesson on our bodies and how to take care of them.

It's a Love/Hate thing

Today has been a love/hate day for me. I got up early to hit the gym. It's been really cold (-2) out and it was perfect timing to start a weight lifting program so this is the week. So we ran for 30 minutes then lifted upper body.

I love that Traci pushes me so hard and makes me mix it up but I hate her for making it so hard for me to fix my hair. I had to trade a bad hair day for long term fitness today....I guess it's worth it but seriously I can barely lift my arms up they are so tired. And I know they will only hurt more tomorrow.

Then to top it off last night when I was sleeping soundly Todd made snicker-doodles. I love that he wanted cookies and made them himself and even cleaned everything up but I hate that I ate 3 cookies with my recovery drink for breakfast! I have the feeling that my attempt to eat healthy (which means everyone has to for dinner) isn't sitting so well with the rest of the family.

Nutcracker 5K 2009

Today finished off my year of races. It was fun to end on such a fun race with such a great group of friends. I'm pretty sure our big group made up about half the participants this year (it was way smaller than last year). I love wearing a tutu for a race..good times.

The whole clan

Several of the girls I run with.
Me, Traci, Gretchen, Laurie, Stephanie and Jill

Right before the race ... about when I started getting silly.

Gretch and I coming into the finish after the hill
(I hate finishing a run uphill)

Woo hoo! It's always good to see the finish line.

My tutu had major static cling (I need to fix that next time) and it's rather poofy on my behind...oh well. It was a really cold morning (19 when I got out of my car) and the course is rather hilly so it wasn't a personal record or anything but it was one of the most fun races I did this year and finishing at 25:25 is a fun time to finish.

O Christmas Tree

Last night for FHE we took the kids to get our Christmas tree. There is this cool family owned tree lot (in their front lawn) that is on my running course and they have the best trees. We found a cute little 6 ft tree and had it on top of the minivan when we saw a gorgeous tree standing in the road right in front of us. It was the perfect tree for us and luckily it wasn't already bought so we traded the one off the top of the mini for this one (paid twice as much .... but it was well worth it) and headed home. I had to open the sunroof and hold the tree for half the ride and my hand was VERY cold.

Then we turned on Christmas music, started the hot cocoa maker, broke out the donuts and decorated. It was a blast and I love making memories. Every time Todd gave Claire an ornament she would put it on the same branch so there would be 3 or 4 on there at a time before I could disperse them around the tree.

I found a box of Christmas stuff my dad gave me last year from my Grandpa Schultz so we put a a box of old ornaments on the tree and I found a few other gems (I'll add pictures soon).

I'm not very good about decorating for every holiday (even though I have boxes of cute stuff in the storage room) but our entire house is now changed for Christmas. SO FUN! I'm totally in the holiday spirit now.

Everyone working together without fighting for once
(except Sophie ... she was in bed)

Luke (always in a hoodie)

Tayson

Claire (with her "silky or silks" of course)

The finished tree (not the best picture but it's awesome)

Earn Your Turkey

Once again this year (3 years in a row now) we ran the "Earn Your Turkey" 4 mile race.

It was cold and way too early for the boys. Danny, Timmy, Mark, Todd, Tayson and I all ran. I thought Todd was going to kill me when I woke him up 4 hours after he went to bed to get up to go run in the cold. Morning is not his favorite time. Danny killed all of us (of course). Mark and Timmy found me within the first 400 meters (the boys and girls start separately) and we ran together the whole time. I forgot to take my accelGel and really felt it about half way in since we were keeping a quick pace and I haven't pushed myself at all since the marathon 2 months ago. At mile 3 I really started hurting and told them I was hurting and Mark said "this is where Schultz's are best.....and you're mostly Schultz" that made me laugh since we are the exact same amount of Schultz. But we held our pace and then at 1/4 mile to go we were running around 7:15 pace which was killing me and then Timmy and Mark took off like they weren't even tired. RIDICULOUS! I had nothing left to give and ran as fast as I could but just had no more to give. I beat my time from last year by 7 seconds so I left happy. Tayson ran his race after us. He was pretty upset at first and didn't want to run but Timmy worked his magic and got him to run his half-mile. He did great and finished in 4:06. It makes me happy that he loves to run and is pretty competitive, now I just need to find a way to help him run more to get even faster.

Before the race
(Todd, Danny, Timmy, Mark
Me and Tayson)

After the race

Showing off our numbers
(in case you didn't know we got shirts made with our
number on the back of when we became a part of the family)

Look at Tayson go!!!

My super-cute running buddy Jill
(who was and is my inspiration for the 11 races I've done so far this year)

Thanks to a fun race I got to eat whatever I wanted the rest of the day!