One week ago...

I was spending some quality time with

Me Mum.
We were doing a chocolate demo for Super Saturday.
It was so much fun.
She is a really nice lady.
She took time out of her busy life to...
-Make all the delicious chocolates you see there on the table.
(there was a lot)
-Spent a day shopping to get all the ingredients to make all the
delicious chocolates you see there on the table.
-Came all the way down here from Home Sweet Home (Preston)
to do the demonstration with me.

AND
-She let me go with her to get all of her grand kid Christmas shopping done
during her visit.
(it's always fun to help someone else spend money)
What a Gal!!

One week from today....

I will be in Preston ready to start a furry a chocolate making magic happen.
Can't wait!
I haven't been home to do chocolates in over ten years.
OooLaLa
This'll be grrreat!

Welcome, Guest Blogger.

A plane ride

Hello people.
Usually I am reading the post, not writing it.
But not today. Today I am "borrowing" my mothers blog.
But that is because of numerous reasons. Reasons being...
1. ya just gotta carry on that talent.
2. I am a farm girls daughter it is in my nature.
3. today I had the most amazing experience.
O.k. so I bet you are just dying to hear what happened.
So here it is.
Today Brooke Duvall and her dad took me flying.
FLYING!
Like in a plane!
In the sky!
Off the ground!
O.k. so, we arrived at the air port. Brooke showed me this plane.


We were about ready to take to the sky's.
(I was all ready a little sky sick!)



I could see my house!




Can you find yours?
(good luck!)

P.S. for those of you who have not already figured it out.
This is Audrey!

The Challenge. To myself.

Life's road has been, well....a bit bumpy of late.
Life's road is supposed to be bumpy.
I'm okay with bumps.
I am Farmgirl, after all. I do tough things really well.

You know, I look at life as a down-scalator. There is no standing still. You are either moving forward or you are moving backward.
You choose.

Over the last few months I have felt like I have needed to continually raise the bar in order to keep getting the help I am sorely in need of.
That's a good thing.
Raising the bar is a good thing.
So, the latest and greatest is to take on something I have always struggled with...scripture reading.

The challenge? Read the Book of Mormon by my birthday, February 8th.
I started last week and I am already into Second Nephi.
Good, right?

There ya go.
If anyone wants to go ahead and jump on this here band wagon, feel free.
It should be a great ride.
:o)

Halloween Rundown.

*Disclaimer: This was a weird Halloween week for me.
I haven't been on my game of late.

First things first.
Carving Pumpkins.
This is normally the Family Home Evening before the big Spook-Day tradition.
Some how this year I just didn't see this one coming. Didn't even have pumpkins purchased last Monday. A quick trip to our trusty neighborhood grocer and that was taken care off.
I should throw in that carving pumpkins rivals Christmas tree light stringing in Mike's book of 'fun things to do'.
He is, how ever, the only one the kids want to help them with their pumpkins.
And, with a little bit of fore warning, he is a pretty darn good sport about it.
This year it was a two day event. Drawing faces on Monday. Cleaning out and carving on Tuesday.P.S.
It was crazy hair day at the elementary. Lucy and Elsie went all out.

They were all happy with the end result. That made me happy.
Yes, Adam's is a Led Zeplin jack-o-lantern.
Ya, I didn't get a picture until today so they are sorta caving in.
Toldcha I'm off.

No group-kid pictures this year, what's up with that? I always line them up on the front porch.
What can I say? I'm off.

Grant. A skeleton. Again.
Good thing he looks so cute in it.
This boy DID NOT want to wear a costume.
At. All.
We talked of many an option. Not interested.
Finally, a desperate call to Stace on Friday, one pair of Skeleton jammies later and we called it good. FYI he is sitting next to the 'handing out' bowl (pre-trick or treating).
Got right on the sugar high, that one did.

Pirate Elsie.
Don't ye be thinkin' O takin' me booty, Matey!

All right, Lucy gets two pictures. Her costume cracked me up. She decided she wanted to be a Granny. She was hilarious!

Ahhh, Goose.

Audrey was a vampire.
I love 5$ finds at the D.I. and she loved the dress.
I'm not gonna lie, the older this girl gets the more I fear for her dates when they meet her very protective father.

Adam didn't end up dressing up this year.
The neighborhood party was Friday, they had already made plans to go paint balling.
Saturday they had a party=no costumes=no trick or treating.
He and his buddies had a lovely idea though...
Flashers.
Maybe next year.
Adam did make time to take Grant trick or treating, what a good big brother.
In Grant's words, his "Best Brother".
I know, competition is slim.

One Sunday afternoon nap for Mom and Dad, which resulted in no parental supervision, which resulted in a major candy swap meet for the kiddies, which resulted in an all out candy consumption smorgasbord and almost all the candy is gone.
Sounds good to me.

There you have it. Halloween rundown.
Done and Done.

By the By can you all believe I have been at this whole blogging thing for a year now?
Weird, huh?
Who'da thunk it?

Breakfast of Champions.

There are a few things that happen in our house--for sure.
Every day.
Rain or Shine.
In sickness and in health.
Till death do us part.

One of these is Mike's midnight snack.
He always has a midnight snack.
Always.
Whether it's a couple of cookies, a spoonful of peanut butter, a random treat,
a glass of milk, a bowl of cereal...
it's something.
Every night.

Another happening is Grant's early riser-ness.
Now, I do have high hopes that this is a phase.
A very long phase, but a phase all the same.
Regardless,
for the time being, he's up early.
And I do mean early.
Hello, 5 am!

In my perfect world he would just head on into the family room
and start himself a movie.
(Cuz, he can do that you know)
I don't live in that world.
I live in the world where he comes into my room to help me welcome in the new day.
Every. Day.

Last week I thought I had ventured into the other side of the looking glass.
I woke up at six.
Six!
On my own.
NO Grant assistance.
~Que Hallelujah choir~

What did I come out in the kitchen to find?
~cancel Hallelujah choir~
A little laziness on Mike's part
(not putting away the sugar after a midnight bowl of Chex)
and one very satisfied Mr. Grant D

That, my friends, is a cup FULL of sugar.
Bear in mind, the kid generally wakes up close to 5.
I came out just after 6.
We are talking about a good 40 minutes of a boy and his sugarcup.

I like to call this picture,
"Please...don't kill me Mom, it's all really my Dad's fault anyway."
I have to say, I can't really argue logic like that.

:o)
So go ahead, just give those kiddies a cup-o-sugar for breakfast.
Literally.
That's how we do it 'round here.

Casualties: 1

One of these piggies is not like the others.
Second toe. Left foot.
Poor toenail.
I don't think he's gonna make it.
Ragnar did him in.
Not gonna lie, I'm kinda proud.
Isn't that the sign of a real runner?

And now I have posted a picture of my feet.
Don't we all feel just a little bit closer?
It's so nice to tear down all these barriers.
Who says feet are ugly?

It could of been worse, I could of posted a picture of my other milestone
reminder...
stretch marks.
You can thank me later.

Just me and my Boy.

Grant and I are holding down the fort this afternoon. It is VERY rare for us not only to have our own crew running a muck, but we usually have at least a few extra friends after school.

I was sitting here at the computer just messing around, he was racing up and down the hall-sporting his Thomas undies and Double Diamond Dairy t-shirt- showing me his muscles and how fast he can run and as I watched him I was over come with how lucky I am to have him here.

That little stink really gave us a run for our money...one sick little bambino. I don't look at the pictures very often, but since I was sitting right here I pulled them up...

Six weeks old, he weighed only one ounce more than the day he was born. This picture was taken the day he was admitted into the hospital. He had already been under the lights for a few hours when this picture was taken. Pumpkin Boy was already pinking up, you can really see the difference around his eyes where his mask covered. The trouble was he had multiple symptoms. He was so jaundice, his levels were at an 18- should have been nonexistent or a 1 at six weeks. Compound that with his failure to thrive and that fact he puked up everything. He was a mess.

My momgut told me it was pyloric stynosis. Grandmagut confirmed- we have a family history. The doctor thought so too.

The test was negative. That night I spent in the hospital was horrifically long. Not knowing was the worst part. Thank the heavens above for my sweet nurse, Bobbi. We made it through the night together.

Grant's brilliant doctor ordered a different test, testing for the same thing the next day and sure enough...pyloric stynosis! One surgery later and we were one our way to a healthy boy. Never did figure out the multiple symptoms. But I have my boy, and that's good enough for me.

Three years later and I couldn't love him more.

Keeping the Flu at bay.

I'm pretty sure with hygiene standards as high as this...

(Sticky Fingers G. is what we like to call him)

we should have
no
worries of catching any sort of illness this season.

All for a Medal?!

Are you all ready for another Ragnar rundown?
Ohhhh, goody.
Cuz here it comes!!

If you ran the Wasatch Back and the Vegas Ragnar this year you got a special edition
Saints and Sinners medal.
Ten out of the twelve of our team members ran both,
hence the team name...
All for a Medal?!

We decided to decorate our vans accordingly.
Van #1 (my van) : Sinners
Van #2 : Saints
btw, that's Louie-short for Lucifer- on the grill of my van there, he was our mascot.


Jonathan started us off. Strong. Ya, he pretty much dusted the competition.
He is one fast hombre. That boy runs like the wind blows, I tell ya.


Here I am waiting to start my first run. All decked out in my devil horns.
Might I take a moment here to say something about Vegas...
It is freaking hot!
I know it's cooled down from the summer blast furnace, but Holy Hannah!!
With my own personal solar panel (black hair) I was a real live Hottie. ;o)


After we all got in our first run we went to hang out at the first major exchange while van #2 got a run under their belts.
Here's the thing, you are supposed to sleep at a major exchange.
It doesn't really work out that way so much.
Everyone lays out their blankets, you all lay down, you all close your eyes, you all pretend to sleep but, in the end you all give up the whole idea
and take '8 is enough' pictures instead.
This is a good time to introduce you to my van.
We have Jonathan(my brother), Me(farmgirl), My 27 chins(who need no introduction), Amanda(my sister), Tawna(amanda's friend), Dick(penny's dad) & Penny(amanda's friend and fellow prestonite and dixie johnson's little sister fyi for all my p.h.s. buddies).

Okey dokey, here's the part were I tell you about the night running.
No pictures, sorry.
Jonathan, Dick, Penny & Tawna all get their second run finished.
Tawna hands off to me, I take off for my 3.6 miles.
The plan was for my team to meet me at 1 mile to give me water.
I had gone about a half mile, I could see one runner a little way ahead of me and ahead of her I could see two people walking.
Bare in mind we are out in the middle of NO WHERE.
I was thinking maybe the two people were her team members.
She runs right past these two and they just keep walking.
I am came up to them and saw it is was just two guys, clearly no part of the race at all.
I was a little concerned, but by now my team van was in sight so I just ran past them.
Tawna gave me water and I took off again. We had decided for them to meet me at 2 miles.
Luckily, right as they were pulling away, they saw these two guys start to run towards me and felt just as uneasy as I did about them and decided to shadow me.
THANK YOU TEAM!!!
So the van and I played leap frog for next 1/2 mile until the two guys were no where in sight.
The rest of the run was great, I ran next to Lake Mead.
Moon over the lake...Be-A-U-ti-Ful!

Night run fiasco: phase two.
I passed off to Amanda.
She had two miles of trail running starting at 1 1/2 miles in. I got out to give her water and Jonathan yelled from the van, "Does she want someone to go with her?" She said yes.
I'm right there, it's only two miles, Jonathan was in the van with his shoes off so I decided to just go with her.
We started on a bike trail. After about a mile we veer onto a dirt road, after another two miles we were running next to some industrial plant of some sort. A couple of runners start running back towards us because they came to a locked gate.
Ugghhh, we were off the course!
So we turned around and started heading back. A security guard came along in his truck and took us all back, we weren't the first to make this mistake.
(note to Ragnar people--Mark the dang course!)
By this point I am exhausted.
Amanda made the comment she was surprised Jonathan hadn't come looking for us.
I kept telling Amanda to leave me, but I didn't have a vest or a head lamp so she stayed until we were back in sight of the road and we could see the vans, what a good little sister.
At that point she took off.
I made my way back to the van to find out that Jonathan had indeed gone looking for us.
We missed him coming the other direction and never crossed paths.
He ended up running almost back to the beginning of the trail before he realized we weren't there. He sprinted back to the van, got the full scoop and headed back out to finish Amanda's run with her.
Whew, what an adventure!!

Amanda handed off to van #2 and we headed out to our last major exchange.
Jonathan started running again at about 4:30 am.
p.s. once he put those running shoes on-he didn't take them off again the rest of the day.
He was prepared to run at a moments notice--
Have I mentioned he is a stinkin' fast runner?
He had told us that every leg of both Ragnar's he had 13 road kills (passed 13 people), but he wasn't so sure how this leg was going to be.
His finish was amazing.
He was coming at us fff-aaast, about 1/4 mile left to go.
He was going after runners that were a long way ahead of him.
We figured he was trying to get his 13 road kills.
He passed the last one 5 feet from the finish line,
ran through, raised his arms in the air and said,
"Fourteen!"
I know this is a crappy picture, but he was so awesome I had to post it any way.


Next up, Dick.
Dick's night adventure was that he forgot to change into his running shoes and ran in some old tennis shoes. So this morning run was mighty painful.
He was great. A lot of fun to have in the van.
He told us he wouldn't run again unless it was on a team with a bunch of old guys. :)
Don't worry, Jonathan ran Dick's last mile with him too.


Dick passed off to Penny.
Oh, I'm sorry. Did I fail to mention that Penny is 5+ months pregnant?
She is. And she is a machine. And that is one proud Daddy standing next to her.


From Penny to Tawna.
Tawna kept saying she wasn't much of a runner, but she did great and had some serious hills to climb in the heat.



Runner #5 coming atcha.
That would be me.
The running rock star.
I'd love to tell you that I looked even remotely like that during my 4.1 miles.
Unfortunately, it was only for the last 20 yards.



I handed off to Amanda.
Who is saying in this picture,
"Holy Crap! Did you see how I didn't let that dude beat me? How I raced him to the finish and won?"
Yes, My Dear, we did. And it was fantastic!
She handed off to van #2 and they brought it on home.


Here's the whole team at the finish line.
Jonathan, Penny, Me, Tawna, Amanda, Rocky, Derrik, Dick, Marcia, Mike, Dixie & Natalie
Just a bunch of Saints and Sinners.
Looking for a good time.
Crazy enough to run a combined 171 miles.

For me?
3.5 miles + 3.6 miles + 4.1 miles + 4 miles with Amanda = 15.2 miles
One 3 mile training run last week.
A cough that belongs to a chain smoker.
Total exhaustion yesterday.
Seriously sore muscles today....


All for a medal?!
You betcha!!!

Say what???

Alright friends, I may have had a temporary lapse of sanity.
Remember way back, way way back in June when I ran that crazy race the Wasatch Back?
It was so much fun!
LoVeD iT!!
At that point in time I had every intention of running the Vegas Ragnar in October.
(The Vegas Ragnar that is a mere 10 short days away, p.s.)
I discovered I had a conflict and I had to back out.
My spot was filled- I took a very long running hiatus and went on with my life minus a training schedule.
Side note: My conflict was rescheduled last week and next weekend is now open. No matter, my spot was filled months ago and I haven't trained any way, right? Wrong.
Fast forward to yesterday when Amanda called me to say that 2 spots had opened up in her van and she wanted Jonathan and I to run with her.
That's Jonathan, my brother.
Jonathan, my brother who just ran the Top of Utah marathon with a finishing time of 3:30.
And me.
Me, who has done NO RUNNING WHAT SO EVER IN MONTHS!!!!!
So what was my answer?
After a few moments of humming and hahhing
"I'm in."
I'm doing this.
It would appear that I have lost my freaking mind!

Okay, so here's the low down.
I am runner number five on a team of twelve.
I have three legs to run.
First leg: 3.5 miles
Second leg: 3.6 miles
Third leg: 3.9 miles
None of these are a crazy far distance. But, I will be running them all within about a 30someodd (or less?) hour time frame, ugh. There are some hills involved too. My last leg is a gradual uphill the whole way.
I'm not gonna lie.....I'm sceered.

The good news is that I ran this morning and it was purty durn good.
Remember, I'm normally a ten-minute mile kind of a gal...when I have been running-which I haven't.
This morning I did three miles in....are you ready?....are you really ready?
Drum roll please...
28:59!
High fives all around!

And now lets have a moment of silence to pray for my poor decrepit body.
Let us pray that my legs will not collapse.
Let us pray that my lungs will not wheeze their last breath.
Let us pray that my heart will not explode out of my chest.
Let us pray that my 7 day training program (that I have yet to figure out) will suffice.
And finally, let us pray that if I do indeed die on this race that my head stone will read,
"See, I told you I was out of shape!"

But, if I don't die...I will get an awesome Saints & Sinners medal for running both the Wasatch and the Vegas Ragnar in the same year.
And that will be pretty cool.
:o)


That and I will live to see my 35th birthday.