Half, Mile, ND

Saturday was quite a day for us here.  I started quite early by driving down to St. George with my brother to run the Snow Canyon Half Marathon.  Now I'm sure you're thinking, "what would possess you to run a half marathon".  It appears I'm a sucker for peer pressure when that peer happens to be my brother.  Robert approached me about a month ago and said he was seriously thinking about running the half so we increased our training from 14 miles a week to 16 miles a week and had one day of 8 miles and one day of 10 miles.  Looking back I think that was adequate training in order to finish a half, but not if you run the first 7 miles of that half at 7:30 pace.  It was a brutal final 5 for me.  Melissa and the kids came down to watch me finish and run their own race that day as well.

 Spencer and Jessi ran in the Tuff Kids mile race.  This was Spencer's first race and he did very well.  Jessi's an old pro at running, but she did equally well.  They both broke 9 minutes in the mile.

 They were wearing Barbara Corry shirts to help promote grandma's election tomorrow, but they pinned the numbers over the signage so I'm not sure anyone noticed during the race.

 Both Jessi and Spencer were excited to get medals at the end of the race and they liked wearing the timing chip on their shoes.

 Here we are after the races back home safe and sound.

 After the races we spent the afternoon watching the Irish play Pitt.  It was a stressful game for all of us as you can see from the final picture, but when ND triumphed at the end of triple overtime there was great rejoicing in our household.

In case you are wondering, it's now two days since the half and I continue to have searing pain in my legs with each step.

Naderism

Some of you longtime followers may remember when we used to write about some of the interesting things Spencer said and did.  We called those Spencerisms.

Well the other night I watched as the kids said their nightime prayers.  Kristian always seems to say longer prayers than his two older siblings.  I thought this a bit curious so I asked him what he prays for at night.

Me:  "Nader, you always pray for a long time at night.  What do you say in your prayers?"
Nader:  "I pray for us to be happy, no nightmares, that we can be a family forever and that you and mom can go to the temple."
Me:  "Do you say anything else because that doesn't sound like it would take as long as you usually pray?"
Nader:  "You don't want to know what else."
Me:  "Sure I do, tell me, it's ok."
Nader (with a little smirk on his face):  "I pray that I can get better at playing the Wii."

Just FYI, we don't even own a Wii, but his Grandma in Salt Lake does and he likes to play it when we go visit.