Photo Dump

Several weeks ago Bobby (of Kari and Bobby) took pictures of our family at the Raleigh Art Museum. Kari was the photo director and we got a bunch of great shots.  Here are a few (not all great, but with some stories behind them)

Damn you, Pinterest! There were so many cute picture ideas. I tried to recreate one here, but we only got like 3 shots before Logan stood up, fell over backwards, and refused to get back in the tub. Oh well.

In all of these the only thing I kept thinking was, 'I can't open my eyes, too sunny!'

It really was impossible to get all of us together in one shot. Tassie, quit hiding.

Another silly Pinterest idea that totally didn't pan out. Logan just liked to walk around with the frame. Again, oh well.

I have to admit, I really liked this one.

FREEDOM!

Kari and Bobby cropped this one and framed it for us. I love it.  Shortly after, Logan headed over to those lights in the bottom left corner, tripped, and face planted on top of one. That was the end of picture day.

Happy Birthday, Logan!

 

Go to Marty's blog to see Logan's first encounter with a cupcake on his birthday. Turns out he takes after his momma here.


We had a little birthday party for Logan on Saturday. He ate MORE cake and some wrapping paper. It rocks being 1.

 

Who's this guy stealing my thunder?

Logan also saw Santa for the first time last week. The photographer got one quick picture of him before he started crying. I don't know why we do this to our kids!

This kid is also very nosy. Whenever we go out to eat, he is turned all around trying to check everyone and everything out. Here's his typical look:

And finally, we did a Santa Pub Crawl on Saturday night (thanks mom for watching Logan!). It was mandatory dress up so I went as an angel (because, duh) and Marty went as an Elf, because it's the closest thing to Lord of the Rings and he knows how I feel about Orlando Bloom (yum yum).

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Logan is 1!

Tomorrow is Logan's birthday! I was having a lot of nostalgic moments the past few days remembering the time leading up to his birth.  It really felt like a ticking time bomb inside of me - I knew it was going to happen but the when was so up in the air. My official due date was December 15.

On December 9 (Friday), my boss said something along the lines of "We'll take a look at that on Monday."  My coworker scoffed, "Bri won't be here Monday." She said I just looked like I wasn't going to make it that long (she's good). That night we went to a farewell party for Steffan and Jen who were moving to Germany. I remember feeling like a giant whale.

December 10 - went for a swim at TAC. Really felt like a whale. Very high probability I had a contraction in the water.

December 11 - sometime in the afternoon Logan decided it was time to get the show on the road. That's what they tell you in the labor/birthing class, that the child decides when labor starts. We had one last dinner out that evening at The Mellow Mushroom, where I even ordered dessert with just a short pause to get through a minor contraction.  Here's one of the very last belly shot pictures we took:

December 12 - Logan was born at 1:44pm.  Happy birthday, baby!

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Kiawah Half Marathon Race Report

When I signed up for this race back in June, I really thought I would be in better shape. I thought for sure I would break 1:30 and was even thinking I could be closer to 1:28. But throughout the rest of the year my run training was very inconsistent for one reason or another and frankly the mileage was just not high enough. I knew going in that running a 1:30 was probably not going to happen based on all of my long run paces, but I figured I would still try for it. As Kari put it, "a sub 1:30 was ambitious...not absurd, but ambitious"  She was so right on. And so you can just skip to the ending, I ran a 1:31:10.

There were 8 of us traveling down to Kiawah Island, South Carolina together. 7 wimmins and 1 dude. It was a fun crew. And that is sort of an understatement.  We (and when I say we I mean Heidi and Michele) drove the 6 or so hours straight to packet pickup. I had been waiting for this day for a long time because Kari had registered me and had written in a secret nickname for my bib number. She refused to tell me and with her I was never quite certain what might show up on there. She teased me saying things like "Suckit"  "Nice to beat you"  "I'm pretty good at winning" but when it was said and done the stupid bib number just said "Bri"  You could hear the screech from across the room when Kari saw that what she had written wasn't on there and I was also disappointed. ESPECIALLY when she told me that she had written "Logan's Mom"

Pre-race antics ensued which included lots of outfit, food, poop, compression, etc discussions.  Then we went to sleep and the talk continued throughout the morning until the start. Although some topics were continued and thoroughly covered througout the weekend.

8am start - me and Mayhew lined up several rows back but not that far back for the amount of people we had to weave through the first mile.  We both didn't really have any business gunning for a 1:30 but we did it anyways. First mile was right on (or close enough), the next 3 were just below which gave us a nice cushion. Kari backed off after that and I was left to my own devices. Miles 5-9 were held nicely and I still had a bit of cushion for the sub 1:30. Then mile 10 happened and it was gone. The last 3 miles were typical of most people's half marathon races I imagine. I felt like I slowed down to a jog but it actually wasn't horrible. Just that little bit slower felt a lot better and I don't have the mental capacity to push through the hurt at this point. For me that comes with being in better shape. Some girl passed me at mile 13 and I was all set to let her go before I yelled at myself and put in a great sprint for the last 30 yards. Go me. Final time: 1:31:10.

We watched the rest of the crew finish, including our two marathoners before relaxing in the afternoon and getting ready to have a night on the town in Charleston. What a great city! We had a delicious meal at a brewery and plenty of alcohol. Some of us had more than others. Half the group stayed out very late for more shenanigans and took an hour cab ride back to Kiawah.



Frank for the win




The blogger finishing




Post race beer and food



Post dinner in Charleston. I'm posing Glamour Shots style.

 

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Needing an update

Marty told me he wanted me to update my blog, which I found to be a funny request since he lives with me and should know everything that's going on. But here goes.

When we last talked, we had just gotten back from the Dominican Republic.  That Sunday I did my longest run (14 miles) in preparation for the half marathon I have next weekend and it went all right.  I negative split it and although my paces were not stellar, they were not horrible. I was still thinking breaking 1:30 would be doable. Fast forward to the next day and my *hip* was really bothering me.  After some self assessment I determined that it's really my glute medius - a very common weak muscle in runners/triathletes.  I now see a pattern that when I go over 12 miles at harder paces I end up with issues. It's just not a correlation I totally realized because I hardly ever run that long.  So I've been dealing with this ever since; missing runs here and there and overall seeing my goal times disappearing and adjusting my outlook to have a fun weekend (which it will be, the posse going to the race is all fun).  My plan is to get through this as best as possible, then take a short time off from running to allow it to rest before I focus in on specific exercises to get that muscle stronger and able to endure longer distances without weakening.

Gaal, party of 3, ran in one of the local Turkey Trot's although if you search you won't find us in any of the results. Marty had originally signed up for the Skinny Turkey half marathon but after his foot injury asked to be switched to the 5K. For whatever reason, he wasn't switched and because of the timing of the two races he didn't want to cross the line since it would look like he had a super awesome half marathon time.  We got to the race with not a whole lot of time to spare and as we're in line to pick up our packets Marty asked, "You registered for this, right?"  I looked at him and gave a very eloquent, "Uhhhhhhh.....I thought you registered me?" Fail. So because my hip was being obnoxious and I didn't have a whole lot of time to get back to the car for my checkbook, I just ran with Marty and Logan, went ahead a little for some short tempo, and stopped before the finish line.

I will be asleep in 3...2...

That afternoon we headed on over to our friends house for orphan Thanksgiving which has become a tradition.  Logan looooooved Thanksgiving dinner.

He's also cuter than Jesse Thomas.

All right, everybody be cool, this is a robbery!

Double points for knowing the movie quote above (googling doesn't count). 

Here are some more recent pictures of the little guy in no particular order. He is loving Tassie now, handing her toys and trying to play ball with her (in the house, of course).

In our backyard

Gimme that ball

Come on, gimme!!

This place has so much stuff!

Here's a tiny leaf for you, mom

Think I'll take a break

Spider monkey (where are my Twilight fans?!)

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Dominican Republic

One of our very good friends from Orlando, Dan, got married last Thursday in the Dominican Republic. In a tribute to how awesome he is (and his wife), this destination wedding had 100 people at it. Grandma flew up to watch Logan for us and Marty and I flew to Punta Cana by way of Atlanta early Wednesday morning.

Happy New Year 2006! This guy is off the market, ladies.

Punta Cana, as far away from Haiti as possible

This was the first time Marty and I had ever stayed in an all-inclusive resort, and it did not disappoint. It didn't hurt that a bunch of our friends had flown down to eat, drink and be merry through the weekend. There was this little bothersome feeling I had deep down about the juxtaposition of being in 'paradise' in a 3rd world country developing country (apparently 3rd world is not a word that is used anymore. who knew.) And then to also know that Haiti, one of the poorest countries in the entire world was right next door. I tried not to let this bother me too much as I got my pina colada's at the swim up bar.

It was seriously a good time. I did very little running/working out. We did do 20min of water aerobics one day which was led by a pretty ripped Dominican named James Bond. Marty also won a swimming contest where he traveled across the pool the furthest distance underwater before coming up for air. This earned him the nickname of "Greg Louganis" from one confused vacationer, while another person tried to decide if he was even going to try since the "Merman" already won.

All you can eat; all you can drink

Not a bad place for a wedding

All the single ladies, all the single ladies

Dan sweating it out waiting for his bride

I'm sure it's a good idea to stand in my speedo next to this beautiful wedding

Da Gaal's

Dancing to their first song, it was not Gangnam Style as someone had guessed

Ed & Andi, we hung out with these fellow NC'ers a lot

Fire dancers

"You have no idea how good the wind feels on my chest." You're right, I don't, Pat

Our group started early and ended late at the pool bar on Friday. I'm in the green tube.

We had a great time down there and it was nice to have a mini vacation away - although we really did miss Logan a whole lot. No more traveling for us until St. Pete tri camp at the end of February.

We got home really late on Saturday (actually Sunday) and I was the last one up in the morning. Logan was at the bottom of the stairs with grandma and when I said, "Hi Logan," he whipped around and exclaimed, "Mama!!" Heart. Melt.  He had been saying those sounds recently but I really couldn't determine that they were at me - so this was the first real intentional mama I had gotten :)

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Walking Problems

The problem with walking when you're a baby is you fall down a lot. And you brake your fall with your face. Case in point:

He tripped at daycare and landed on the side of a little bookshelf. I'd say we are averaging 1 accident report a week right now. We went to the nearest Urgent Care and they glued and taped him up.

I'm just wondering if the scar is going to cause him to look like Vanilla Ice when his eyebrows come in.


Yo, VIP! Let's kick it!

 In other news, I got a new Ipod! My original Ipod (to be clear, this was actually 'Our' Ipod, but I totally appropriated it. Kind of like I did with the Kindle. I am the youngest, whaddya want.) was 7 years old, totally full and finally bit the dust a couple of weeks ago. It was really annoying to have to delete songs off when I wanted a new song. Anyways, I received a brand new one in the mail, with a note that read: "I am not always not listening. love Marty" And it wasn't even my birthday!

In other, other news, I ran a 10K yesterday morning that was part of the Raleigh City Oaks Marathon and 1/2 Marathon. As expected, I felt not all that great after coming off of whatever the heck I had last week. But, I did go much faster than I was really expecting, particularly considering the course was up and down and up and down. Actually, the first 2 miles were mostly down so those splits were fast and easy, then the ups killed me and I'm pretty sure each mile got slower and slower which is very atypical with how I usually race. Since all the fast people do the 1/2 or full (there is some $$), I ended up winning the 10K. They start all races together and I certainly felt weird 'winning' since there were several girls ahead of me -- running much further than I was!  Bottom line, I have some serious cramming to do if I want to feel good during the Kiawah 1/2 marathon. Because right now I am not strong at all.

But it was a fun morning - I got some good Kari time, which I haven't had very much of recently, and we knew a bunch of people from the group we often do our track workouts with who were all running.

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