Running Blog

So Kris gave me the idea to keep a separate blog for my running. I love it. I will make it private though, so anyone that wants to be kept informed on my running just comment on this post with the email address you want it send to and I will send you an invite. I will also get rid of past posts about running on this blog, but they are all on the other one now.
(I accidentally deleted the first post, so I had to re-post this one :)

Worth 1000

She is going to kill me when she grows up, but this is one of the privileges of being a parent!

She was in the middle of changing into her jammies when nature called. I snuck up on her and was able to get this picture. This is definitely one of those that is worth 1000 words. She can't read them, but she loves to look at them because Papi does it. He actually had left these next to the loo.

Ireland in a Minute

Jayme is way better at blogging and sharing everything. I'm horrible with details and just assume sum it all up. So here is Ireland from my perspective . . .

Ireland- Day 3

Sunday, Jan. 24th


We attended the Limerick branch sacrament meeting at 11am. Then we took our sack lunches and headed up north to Cong and Galway. We intended to use most of the day as a "Sunday drive".

Our first stop was Ashford Castle in Cong, County Mayo. This was the largest castle we stopped at. It was built in 1228, but was turned into a hotel in 1939. Only those staying at the hotel can go inside, but the grounds were vast and so beautiful. This was pretty high on my favorites list.


This is a shot from behind the castle. It doesn't do it justice.




This is a view of the castle through the trees. There was a path through the heavily wooded grounds that you could walk around. It was perfect for a nice Sunday walk. I think the temperature was perfect as long as you were wearing a coat and gloves. Ben was freezing though and got bored pretty quick. Mnisa and I were perfectly content to casually stroll and just look at all of the fauna around us.


This was looking back through a cute arbor that we walked through. I can just imagine how awesome it would look in the summer when it is all green and probably flowering. I just loved this shot though.



This is Eric standing in front of Squire Danaghers Home from "The Quiet Man", a John Wayne movie filmed in Ireland. This home was actually only half of the full building and we walked past it on our walk.

This was a guard tower you walked through to get onto the grounds. You could go up through on side of it and look out over the river that goes under the bridge, just past the gate.


Here are: a stranger( that kindly smiled for our photo), Mnisa, Jayme and Ben from the top of the guard tower.




Next we went to Cong Abbey. It was really neat.


It was just ruins, but had many graves around and inside of it. There was even a headstone as recent as the 1970s. I wondered who you had to be to be able to be buried in such a place. There was some beautiful stone carving that could still be seen in places. (I will add the pictures later).

















This also had a little path to walk around and there was "The Monk's Fishing Hut" that we saw too. Mnisa got much better pictures than I did, which I will put on here when she shares them :) I am a horrible photographer, in that I never remember to take pictures of my favorite things, because I am to captivated by them.

This hut was right on the river and diverted the water directly under it, so that fishing could be done through the floor. There is a fireplace there to the left of Ben (peeking through a window from a narrow ledge outside the hut).







Here Ben and Mnisa are coming back from walking the ledge outside the hut. Ben is standing on the part the diverted the water under the hut.

Dinner that night was at a Lohan's in Salthill on the coast, near Galway. Galway was rather disappointing. It was too "urban". I had crab claws, Ben had prawns, Eric had bangers and mash and Mnisa had chicken strips. We all liked it except Mnisa. I guess that's what she gets for ordering chicken strips in Ireland! (Just teasing Mnisa) Ben also had a non-alcoholic beer. I don't think he will ever do that again.

Ireland- Day 2

Dingle Penisula

Ireland- Day 1

Ireland was totally amazing. There were a lot of things that I expected like driving on the wrong side of the car, on the wrong side of the road. This was an adventure all by itself. Other things were the almost constantly overcast skies and beautiful green country sides; fields with grazing sheep separated by low stone walls and the wonderful accents. But, there were also several things that I didn't quite expect, like the toilet handles on the wrong side of the toilet, most signs in Gaelic as well as English, all of the American music on the radio, very few red heads and such a diverse mix of people. We saw a lot of Asians, Blacks (wouldn't call them African Americans so I don't know what else to call them) and even some Pacific Islanders. I think one family we saw was Greek. One street in Dublin that was like China-town.
We left on Wednesday afternoon and got to Dublin the next evening. We drove straight to Adare which is near Limerick and Shannon. We stayed in a villa, which is like a little townhouse, on the grounds of Adare Manor. Sunset is at about 4:30PM this time of year in Ireland so it was dark for most of our drive. When we got to our villa we unpacked then found the closest grocery store to buy stuff for breakfasts, lunch for one day and snacks.
So Friday was really our first day. We let ourselves sleep in which was only until about 8. Our bodies were still on AZ and TX time (8 and 9 hours difference), so it felt like we had slept in late.
We headed south to Cork and Kinsale. Our first stop was Blarney Castle. It was a short walk from the entrance to the castle.

The castle is not at all restored, so it is just bare stone everywhere.

Our first expedition was into the dungeon. It was barely a dungeon and the sign said it was used for water storage. That was believable cause it was all drippy and wet. The boys weren't adventurous enough, so Mnisa and I just went in as far as we could with out crawling on our bellies. The boys wouldn't have made it far either, the ceilings were very low.
We didn't get any pictures here, can't remember if Eric snapped one of the girls in the entrance.

I love all the mist in the pictures. It makes the places look so magical. This here is the "Great Hall". Just above Mnisa's head on the right there are two stones that stick out farther than the wall. The signs say there was another floor and the dining room was up there. This is their guess because the kitchen was right next to it.
Ben checking out one of the bedrooms. They were all surprisingly small. The signs said it would have had a four-poster bed in it; which, as I imagined it, would have taken up the entire floor.






The staircases where all spiral, stone, very narrow and dimly lit. It definitely added to the atmosphere though.

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This is a view from one of the top windows. It was a beautiful sunny day, one of the few we actually had much sun.



I had seen pictures and videos of people kissing the Blarney Stone before we left and I had decided I was not going to do it. It is built into Blarney Castle at the very top which is almost 90 feet above the ground. Ben talked me into it though. He was probably right, I would have regretted it if I had gone all the way to Ireland and couldn't say that I kissed the Blarney Stone. You have to lay on your back and grab onto two metal bars that have been added and lean out over the open ground (there are a couple of metal bars across the hole) and stretch to kiss the stone. There is a guy there that will hold onto your waist and help guide you down, but none of that is comforting when you catch a glimpse of the ground below and you don't much like heights.

This is Ben. This picture shows very well what I was saying above.

And below is fuzzy me, terrified.


On the grounds of Blarney Castle is a little river and waterfall and several other fun places to explore.
This was called the Witch's Kitchen. It was a little stone cave with a small fireplace inside.
There was also a circle of large stones they called the Druid's Circle. One of the stone was supposedly used for sacrifices.
There was another little cave and "The Wishing Steps". The steps said if you could walk up the steps with your eyes closed thinking of your wish the whole way up, your wish would be granted. None of us could do it. Ben made it up with his eyes closed, but he didn't think of a wish.

We're Back!

So we got back from Ireland on Wednesday night, very late. It was so much fun! Everything was so awesome. I will get pictures on here in the next few days. We got some bad news the last night we were there and are working towards rectifying it. We are all healthy (with the exception of some late night vomit and a fever for Hyrum, which he is now recovered from) and we will get through this, but please keep us in your prayers.

PF Chang's Rock 'n' Roll 1/2 Marathon

Yesterday my sister-in-law Julie ran the 13.1 mile PF Changs' Rock 'n' Roll 1/2 Marathon. It was her first and she did an awesome job! I think we were more tired at the end of the day than she was. We drove along her route and stopped at 4 different spots to cheer her on. It was so much fun. She is trying to convince me to train over the next year to do it with her in 2011. It was so exciting just to watch her, that she almost has me convinced. I would have a lot of training to do though.

Today I did add my extra lap and I made it! 1.5 miles in a light drizzle. It was so nice. I only stopped once when I dropped my keys and once to check the mail.

Squished Fingers

My little 3 year old is bound and determined to out-do his sister's broken collar bone. So far he has not achieved, thankfully. A little over a year ago he injured his foot jumping off of an ottoman (see here). Today he tried with his finger. Josi was riding her bike in the back yard and her training wheels got high-centered, so she was going nowhere, just riding in place. Hyrum decided it was a good idea to stick his finger in and smashed it between the gear and the chain. Mind you, I didn't see any of this first hand. I went running down the stairs when I heard Hyrum crying his real "I'm hurt" cry.

This is Josi's version of what happened: "I was doing my exercises and I just didn't see him and his finger was in the spiky thing." I figured out the rest when I saw the gouge in his finger that was as wide as the gear that only smashed half of it. It looked like it smashed it all the way to the bone, but there was almost no blood. This is the best picture I could get of it. He held really still for the first picture, but the flash was too bright so it was all washed out. When Josi saw it the first time, she just said "eww" with a sickly look on her face. She felt really bad and just kept saying "I'm so sorry, Hyrum".

I gave him some children's Tylenol, then I got it cleaned as well as he would let me and poured hydrogen peroxide on it a few times. Then bandaged it with gauze and tape. He wouldn't let me put a bandaid on it because we didn't have a Spiderman one. It about broke my heart to hear his cries and not to be able to ease his pain. That is one of the worst parts about being a mom. I am so glad I am able to keep a level head and not get sick when it comes to my family. 'Cause it was disgusting looking. He was trying to be so strong and hold back the sobs, but it was just too much for him.

I sang him about 4 primary songs and rocked him while I held his hand above his head to ease the throbbing and he was out. When he woke up from his nap he was fussy again and he wouldn't move his finger. He said it hurt too much when he tried to bend it. So, I decided to take him to the Urgent Care to make sure it didn't get broken. They did an x-ray and found no breaks. It's a good thing Josi is a timid pedaler.

As we walked out of the x-ray room Hyrum said, "Mommy, my pinger doesn't hurt anymore. Well, it till hurt a little." I think he thought the x-ray was supposed to make it better and he wanted it to have worked. The doctor and nurses were really great with him. The doctor was the same doctor that checked his leg out last time we were there. I don't think he recognized us though.

The dent has mostly filled in with just a little hamburger-ish gash left. He doesn't like to leave bandaids on for long, so he keeps telling me that it is all better so that he can take the bandaid off.

So in the end:

2 children's tylenol, a dab of neosporin +pain relief, a gauze pad and 4" of tape - less than $2

tiny finger x-ray, a spiderman bandaid and a little peace of mind- $35 copay

Being able to sing and rock my generally less than snugly 3 year old baby to sleep again - PRICELESS

Karin, I hope it is out of his system now so you don't have to worry when you watch them next week :)

Christmas projects

So I forgot to take pictures of the projects I was working on for Christmas before I got them mailed out. I had to steal these pictures from my sis, Kristin's blog. She and her husband have a new little girl and I read about some blocks that someone in our ward made and thought I would give it a shot.

I appliqued the letters of her first and middle name on two of the sides. Then I put some other shapes like stars and dragonflies on a few of the other sides. Inside I put bells and crinkly cellophane and rice in an easter egg in a few of them.


Thanks for the inspiration Deirdre.

The other project was for my mom. She will have to take a picture for me.