Follow the Orange Signs

I hosted my first yard sale today! It was so exciting: the thrill of watching droves of people stop at my house to look at my treasures, bartering for a good price, selling the big ticket items (Adirondack lawn furniture, crib, bike, snow blower), making new friends (I met one lady who's the wife of childhood acquaintance--she stayed to talk for 20 minutes), and making money on things I didn't need anymore. It's so exciting!

We were cleaned out pretty good today, so if any neighbors or friends want to drop some stuff off, we'll sell it for you (and give you the money, of course). The best attended yard sales have lots of items at the beginning of the day, so to sell what we have left, we need your stuff! Bring it over!

Just follow the ORANGE signs!

A 10K is a 10K, whether I pay to run it or not

So all of the 5:30am running I've been doing for the past few months has been leading up to today: the Bolder Boulder. It's a famous 10K in Boulder, Colorado, that 56,000 runners run from all over the world. Who knows why it's so famous or what charity it sponsors, but it's a big deal here in Colorado.

It's a great time...if only I would have paid the $55 to register and run it. (Really? They wanted me to pay them? I don't love running quite that much. Maybe if they paid me I'd love it more). Donita had already paid, so she headed up there this morning, but I coaxed Kraig into doing our own 10K at 5:30 this morning. I mapped it out on www.mapmyrun.com and memorized the course (it wasn't really that complicated) so that we wouldn't miss any turns. My mom came over at 5:20am to be here with the boys and we headed out.

I love running with Kraig. He's so funny and is great at keeping my mind off what I'm doing. So here's how it went:




Starting from home (the green circle), we ran to Eaglecrest high school (via Picadilly St), lapped the track 4 times (the big oval that looks like, well, a track :), hopped a fence (that I didn't originally see on the satellite--I should have run Cross Country in High School)to Copperleaf Street and looped back home through the neighborhood (Tempe to Riviera to Picadilly to Netherland to home). We ran to the 6.5K mark, walked until the 7.5K mark (a nice loop around an elementry school), and then ran the rest of the way home. My original goal was to run 2 miles, walk 1 mile, run 2 more, walk the last 1 and then run in the last .2 of the mile (a 10K is 6.2 miles). But, obviously, we beat our goal and ended up walking less than 1 mile (.62 of a mile, to be exact).

My other goal was to finish in under 1 hour 10 minutes (70 minutes or 1:10). I don't think that if I would have run/walked/run/walked like I'd originally planned I would have made it, but as we ended up running it, here was our time:



Can you read my heart monitor? Our time was 1:11 (71 minutes) Not bad! I'm glad I did it AND that I didn't have to pay to run AND that Kraig did it too (it's the farthest he's ever barefooted before--there was just a little blood when he cut his toe hopping the fence at the high school).

So, is this the end of my running career? We'll see!

The Gift of Life and Breath

--Taken from http://www.thegiftoflifeandbreath.com/
"On April 29, 2004 our lives were to be forever changed ... Gary was diagnosed with late stage lung cancer. Having never smoked, the diagnosis came with shock and disbelief. But the biopsy and CT scan revealed a deadly disease that had gone undetected in its early stage and now left very little hope of a cure.

Determined to beat tremendous odds, Gary did everything he could to preserve his life for his family. This included standard cancer treatments as well as a rarely done double lung transplant. However, despite his heroic efforts, Gary succumbed to lung cancer September 9, 2007.

Lung cancer is a silent killer that takes life one breath at a time. Because symptoms usually do not occur until late stages, it is difficult to treat and cure. For this reason, there is a great need for an early detection screening.

Gary's journey with lung cancer began long before he was even aware of its presence ... long before chemotherapy, radiation and a double lung transplant. It was his greatest hope to give others the advantage of early detection, the best chances for treatment and above all ... the gift of life and breath."

I did it! I've done it before and I'll do it again, but this year's Gift of Life and Breath race was a triumphant success!

I raced with my dear friend Donita. She and I have been training together for a few months. We both beat our training times by MINUTES!

Cory, Creighton, Connor, and Zachary also raced. Zach was the winner out of all of us and it was his first 5K even. No longer can he ever use the excuse that he's too tired or slow :) We know how fast he is now. The kid should race cross country.

Kraig came to see us off, but couldn't do the entire race because he had to work. He did run a few blocks with me about a mile into it and raised my spirits and cheered my soul to push on.

This was Cory's second 5K and she beat her previous time by over 1:30. Well done! Keep up the good work.

My friend Chadlee also raced. It's always fun to see friends joined in a good cause.

So here were the overall race standings for my group of runners:

Zachary: 113th/629 entrants Time: 27:52 Pace: 9:00 minute mile

Creighton: 135th/629 entrants Time: 29:17 Pace: 9:27 minute mile

Jacqui: 162th/629 entrants Time: 30:29 Pace: 9:50 minute mile (When I did my math, I had a 9:30 minute mile, but this is ok too :)

Donita 167th/629 entrants Time: 30:46 Pace: 9:56 minute mile

Connor: 168th/629 entrants Time: 30:51 Pace: 9:58 minute mile

Cory: 308th/629 entrants Time: 40:10 Pace: 12:58 minute mile

Just so everyone takes note, I want to point out that I beat Connor, my 15 year old nephew. Not to rub it in or anything, but I feel pretty good about that :) All our hard work has paid off that I beat the teenager :)

I shouldn't be allowed to make decisions, Part II

So I hope that from the years of reading my blog, you, my stalkers, know at least one thing about me: I'm frugal. I scrimp and save, bend and stretch to make all of our dollars go as far as they can. Kraig thinks I'm stingy all the way around, but if we have a few extra un-allotted dollars, I rarely spend it on myself.

In fact, my thrift goes so far that I've stopped highlighting my hair (who knew I'd love my dark brown so much? ) and it's been 6 months since my last haircut. Ok, too long, I know. The last time I got it cut, it was fantastic and it's grown out pretty decently. It wasn't until my horrible passport photo experience at wal-mart that I realized how bad it was truly getting. I promptly went to Supercuts (first mistake) and paid $15.95 for a "trim." Here are the results. Prepare yourselves. It's pretty gruesome:

Just wait, it gets worse.

Notice the 2 big holes in the side of my mullet?

I wish I could say I'd done my make-up to look as horrible as possible to make these photos even worse, but that's not the case. The red rimmed eyes are evidence of my bouts of crying over this mistake. I should just go to bed and sleep it off. Unfortunately my hair will look the same when I wake up.

So I have two requests in to two friends who cut hair to fix this disaster, but no one's returned my calls/emails/pleas for help. I think they're scared. I fear I'll never be able to be seen in public again.

So what lesson did I learn? It's much better to shell out the $40 for a decent cut than to "cut corners" and end up looking like this and THEN have to pay for the expensive hair cut anyway. That's not thrifty, it's wasteful.

Update: I just got a call back (9:35pm) from one of my requests and she's willing to fix my hair tonight, bless her soul. I'll post an after photo in the morning.

5:50am update (Why is it important to get a time stamp on this? I don't know.): She did a fantastic job. It was practically all she could do to not cry when she saw my hair. So we laughed. A LOT. Here's my amazing transformation. She had to take quite a bit to even the back out with the hack job on the sides, but I love it!

Thanks, Elise! I have a smile again :)

Passing along a good thing

Every so often I come across Internet sites that are worth their weight in gold (can you weigh cyberspace?) I feel I'm doing my duty as a pleased customer to pass along these great sites:

http://www.mapmyrun.com/ My neighbor and running buddy introduced me to this site a few months ago. It's a global mapping program, but what makes it superior to google is that I can map out my running route turn by turn and curve by curve and not just have to tell the computer "I want to get from A to B." Also, if you turn it to the satellite mode, it will map trails that you run on too! What a feature! It will also measure the altitude changes and graph it for you, so you know how hard the hills really were.

You can buy a subscription (or maybe it's free, I don't know) and it'll save your courses or just use it case by case, which is what I do. I love it!

http://www.epassportphoto.com/ As par for the course, I had a horrible experience at Wal-Mart trying to get passport photos taken. So in my frustration, I came home to see if there was a service to which I could upload a photo (this is 2009, for crying out loud. I shouldn't have to stand in front of a white screen and pay $8 for someone to take a horrible digital photo that wouldn't be accepted by the State Department. For the love, people). I found epassportphoto.com and have had so much fun creating my own passport photos. Now all I have to do is print it on photo paper (or take it to a copy center and pay $.45 to have them print it since my ink's too low). That's a savings of $7.55 that I can go to a movie with, or out to dinner, or tuck it away for a rainy day. AND I will have spent ZERO time at Wal-mart. Priceless!

Won't my handsome honey look great on his passport for our cruise to Belize?

We'll Take Fame However it Comes

My neighbor pointed this out to me this morning: It's the Google satellite street view of our home last summer (I know it was last summer because of my flower pots out front). Look closely and you can see Kraig and Andy taking out the trash. What a riot! :) If the photo doesn't load, click on the link.


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Happy Mother's Day

Happy Mother's Day to all the wonderful mothers in my life. I'm feeling especially grateful to be a mother today, so here's a little list of why I love being a Mom:

1. Andrew



2. Joshua

Who wouldn't love being the mama of these little boys?

Feel Free to Stand Up and Dance With Your Honey

Kraig and I just booked our first cruise!!! WooHoo! I'm so excited. I've decided that this song is going to be the theme song for our vacation-sans-children.



Doesn't it make you smile?