Happy Birthday to me!

This year, as a birthday present to myself, I ran my first half marathon. I trained for about six weeks with my friends, Fran and Sherrida. I don't think I could have done it by myself- running for 2+ hours gets boring with just music for company. We ran the Monumental Half-Marathon in Indianapolis, meeting up with a friend who moved from our ward last year.

Here we are, getting ready for the race. I had butterflies in my stomach!

And we're off. By that, I mean we walked to the start line. I was amazed at how many people were there- over 6,000. Here are the good little babies, patiently, or not so patiently, waiting.

Our husbands were such troopers. We had to get up at 4:15 am to drive there. Then they had to take care of tired, and maybe bored kids for two and half hours. Luckily, Bailey had a friend, Savannah, to keep her entertained. In this picture they are playing on a monument in the middle of Indianapolis which we ran around.

Here's us, after the race. I almost finished in my goal time, just two minutes over. Mike did get a picture of me as I crossed the finish line on his phone, but I couldn't figure out how to get in on the computer. Oh well.

A few miles before the end, the chip fell off the shoe. I carried it across the finish line, but it didn't read it. So, sadly, I don't have an officially chip time.

It felt good to set a goal, work towards it, and accomplish it. Now I am working to run another half marathon in May, with a much faster finish time.

Here's what everyone else is up to:

• Mike applied to 49 orthopedic surgery programs. So far, he has five interviews scheduled, and has had about 5 rejections. He's starting to get really nervous, since he thought he'd have more interviews by now. We are praying really hard and are hoping the interviews start rolling it. Only half of the people who have had five interviews have matched in the past. Not a good number...
• Avery is finally walking. She definitely is not as daring as her sister. She hates falling, and cries about the tiniest things.
• Bailey is getting so grown up. Her big thing right now is knock-knock jokes. All day long, everywhere we go, all the time. The first knock-knock joke I told was "orange you glad you're not a banana," and now all of her jokes are "something, aren't you glad you're not something else." They are usually somehow related, like the light post outside and the car sitting next to it. Bailey has told so many, and demanded so many, that even Avery knows how to say, "Who's there?"