We did it!

What a crazy few weeks.  Both of the girls are miraculously quiet, and so while I am surrounded by mountains of laundry to fold and a house to clean I am choosing to sit down for a few minutes to catch up here.  Hopefully that doesn't get me in trouble later.  :)

Let's start with the marathon weekend.  We rocked it!  :)  Laura was so much fun to run with, even if she was literally sprinting up hills and all over to take pictures while I was determinedly huffing along in one direction.  It was quite obvious which half of our team was enjoying a relaxing pace. ;) The course was so much fun.   Well... I mean that in the sense that we got to run through downtown Seattle streets, along beautiful Lake Washington, through the 1-90 tunnel (the one just after the floating bridge...  the full marathoners got to run across the bridge, guess I'll have to go back and do that!).  We came down the 1-90 exit ramp by Safeco Field, which was not only scenic but also delightfully downhill.  What a unique way to experience the city-scape!  I was glad Laura encouraged me to sign up, and I'm already looking forward to the next race.

Even more surprising was that we actually beat my first time!  2:05, faster by three minutes!  That ended up being about 9.5 min miles, which far exceeded any expectations given my training schedule.  Who knew?  I'm glad we tried!

This was going to be Luke and Laura's last weekend in the Northwest (at this moment, they're enjoying a National Parks roadtrip on their drive back East), so we encouraged the boys to cross something big off their bucket list too.  So as soon as the race finished we loaded up and headed over to Leavenworth, where Luke and Adam spent all Sunday hiking the 18 mile Enchantment Lakes trail.  I was glad to relax and hear about this adventure second-hand, with its 6000 mile elevation change, scaling of icy slopes, and extremely un-timid mountain goats.  The boys had a blast, though.  We're going to miss this family, and feel grateful that the Navy has given us the chance to make such good friends!