Cooper is Back at School

Yesterday I took Cooper back to school. He stayed all day and seemed fine. He and Hank came home and  played in the playroom. When Zac got home from work, he put the water table together and we let them play with that for a little bit before bedtime. They loved it and soaked themselves within about 2 minutes. Cooper came home with his very first year book yesterday! It was so precious too, I was so proud his See You At The Pole picture made it into the yearbook. This morning Cooper's friend Link brought his new puppy to school for show and tell. It is a Newfoundland puppy, and it was the cutest thing!! Cooper was excited, we stopped in the hallway to let him pet the dog. Once we got to the classroom he was to busy playing to have any interest in the dog. I brought my camera and got some pictures though.

Elmo and Abby cookies from Hank's birthday. I forgot to take a picture of them until today.

 He loved this puppy because she was nice and calm.

 He had just busted out in one of his little super excited Cooper yells!!

 He tried to give her the dry board eraser to chew on.

My 1st half Marathon

I still can't believe I did it yesterday. I signed up to run the Country Music half marathon last month. I had started training for it in February. As soon as I started training, I hurt my foot. I had it xray'd and was told to stay off of it and take pain pills while it heals. Once that got better, I caught strep throat, then gashed my head open after that, then Cooper's surgery was after that. Unfortunately I hadn't even run more than 2 miles in 3 months. I figured I was just going to walk most of it and still do it just for the experience. So.....4:45 Saturday morning my alarm goes off. It was freezing in the house, so I went downstairs got my breakfast, brought it upstairs and sat in the bathroom floor wrapped up in a blanket to eat it. I could hear the rain just pelting the roof. It reminded me of the night we did our night hike to Leconte. We were in a monsoon on the way to the Smokies and we knew then that it didn't matter if we were ready for it or not, we had to set our minds to it and just go. After I ate, I still didn't see any lights on in the playroom, so I opened the door and made sure Lauren was awake. She was, but was just laying there trying to wake up. We got our running clothes on, grabbed our ponchos and her friend picked us up at 5:30. Her friends sister dropped us off close to the start line and we stood around for awhile until it was time to get in our corrals. I didn't know what the corral was. Apparently they place you in a corral depending on how quickly you think you can run. I put an estimate of 3 hours in. I tried to just get in Lauren's corral which was 22 and the security Nazi wouldn't let me. So I headed back to corral 30 (there were only 32 in all), and yep....I'm in a group with a guy dressed up in a blow up bull suit, an old man pushing his wife in a wheel chair and a blind runner to name just a few. And right about then, it started raining. Wow, I could not have felt more defeated. So I stood there by myself with my poncho wrapped around me freezing as we inched corral by corral toward the start line. The first group was off the start line at 7am, my group finally started at 7:54. I ran for a little while still cuddled up holding my poncho because I wasn't warm yet and couldn't decide if I was truly ready to get my clothes drenched. About a mile later we started seeing our first photographers. They were all along the route taking pictures for us that we can get online later. This may seem crazy vain, but I thought, with my poncho on they cant see my bib number and I won't have any pictures of my first 1/2 marathon. My inner photographer decided to Enrique Iglesias that poncho and rip it off with the wind blowing it away from me. It was far less dramatic and successful as I thought it would be. Oh well. So my plan was to run a mile, walk a mile right?? When everyone is running and people are watching a cheering, there is just something in you that does not want to walk. I would barely walk a minute or two and I truly ended up running 9 to 10 miles of the 13.1. My ear buds were so waterlogged, they wouldn't even work by mile 2, so much for my music.  Around mile 6 I started getting tight, so I stepped off onto a sidewalk and stretched a second before jumping back in. That actually helped a lot. By mile 11 the wind picked up, the rain was coming down harder and I was so cold. The wind was so hard, I just put my head down and braced against it. I was seriously thinking there is no way I'm gonna make it to that finish line. I said over and over in my mind, I'm running to my dry clothes, I'm almost there. Luckily the night before I googled tips for running in the rain, they said wear a hat or sunglasses to protect your eyes from the rain. I wore a hat and it was so nice, no rain touched my face and I could see clearly. We had water at every mile and Gatorade at every 3 mile marker. Gatorade never tasted so good. They handed out salt, glucose goo, and other weird stuff along the way. I tried one of the glucose packets and it was so gross I chucked that thing into the street and tried not to gag. By mile 13 I was headed over the bridge to LP Field and I was sore and pretty miserable, but I kept thinking, I can't believe I did it, I did it. I went with no training, expecting to walk most of it and just with the adrenalin and excitement of it all ended up running most of it. It took me 2 hours and 51 minutes, yes old people and children smoked me, but I was so proud of myself I did not care. I not only did it, I did it in the pouring down rain that never let up for a second. Dad, Gina, Lauren and her friends and I all went out to eat afterwards and I took strong pain meds. I chaffed under my right armpit, that was hurting along the run too. Today though, I'm feeling so much better. I was at church early for praise team practice. After church I came home and took a nap and felt even better after getting some sleep.

 We started at 25th Ave on West End and finished at LP Field. There were over 30,000 runners.


 Lauren was a machine, she finished in 2 hrs and 4 minutes!!


 At the finish line Dad, Gina and Lauren were waiting on me. I got my metal and plastic thing to wrap up in and we got out of there as quick as we could.


 The runners were all given these bands to wear. There is a photo online of the crowd holding up their arms with the bands on right before the first group took off. It was neat.


          This is a picture of our metals. I was so proud to have earned it.


 Lauren and I back home in dry clothes.


And like a fabulous dad, Zac got up and made Birthday pancakes for Hank. My little buddy turned 2 at 4:54am that morning. Thankfully Zac did special Birthday things for Hank while I was out running.

                           

   

Hank's Birthday

This morning my sweet Hankie Poo turned 2. We had his party last night because I knew after the half marathon, I would not feel like it...and boy was I right, I'm hurting. Anyways, we had planned on having Hank's party in the park and a few hours before party time, it looked like rain. I brainstormed and texted Kelly at church to see if they would allow us to use the church gym. He asked Brian and they said we could. So around 4 I went to church and set up food and toys for the kids to play with. It actually turned out great, the kids loved playing in their and it ended up pouring down rain and was pretty cold too. Cooper still was not eating or drinking, so we brought his juice and a syringe with us. He was very clingy to me, so I got no video and some random pictures at the party, it was a little stressful, but I thought it turned out great. Hank was so excited to eat pizza, cupcakes and cookies. A lady in Smyrna made the cutest Elmo and Abby cookies, wrapped them up individually and that is what we gave the kids as they left the party. Hank had a fit wanting cookies though, he kept saying abby cookie. After the party, our family came back to our house and we did gifts. Gift opening was crazy....Hank would open one gift and play with that one and not care about anything else. So we basically all just opened his gifts for him. Cooper helped us open most of them. He got some super fun gifts too. After everyone left, Lauren spent the night with us because we were running the half marathon the next morning. Her friends were coming to pick us up early the next morning.

 Love this picture of Michael, Erin and the boys

 Thankfully Timothy could identify all the Thomas the Train characters. We got one that we had no idea who it was but Timothy knew.

 Hank was a little smitten with Campbell

 I had to take a picture, his present was wrapped so cute with his name on it.

 Yep...enough running and playing in the gym and this guy decided to finally drink!!!!

 Hank got a trampoline, a train set, clothes, books, dvds, guitar...all sorts of goodies. Zac and I got him a water table but it was still in the box so he was not interested yet.

 Hank got a Mr potato head from Amory, he was very excited to get that home and opened.

Such a fun party, thank you to our family and to our friends that all came out to celebrate!!