At the "Finn"ish Line

This past weekend I ran in the largest relay race in the world, Hood to Coast. Teams of 12 people start at the top of Mount Hood (8:30am Friday) and relay their way all the way to the Oregon coast (3:00pm Saturday--197 miles). Each person runs 3 legs of about 5 miles per leg. But the running wasn't the difficult part. The hard part is staying up all night (I slept from about 7am-8am Sat) and running 5.75 miles up a 900 foot incline from 12:50-1:40am on a dark'n dusty gravel road. The other not-so-pleasant part is the porta-potty usage and the repeated wiping with a toilet paper that was more of a sand paper/wax paper hybrid. But overall I had a great time and the free t-shirt makes it all worth while. Seriously, it's a pretty sweet tee!

Blog while I Log

So, I went out for a run yesterday and thought it would be a good idea to brainstorm for my next blog to help the time pass. I logged 20 miles in my training for the Portland Marathon (it's on Oct 7 and I'm all registered so there's no turning back now), but today I just have sore legs and no great blog topics. I really just needed to put up a new post so I don't have to see that weird picture of me everytime I come to my site. I asked Brad what I should blog about and he said, "the irony of something." So that left me with even less of an idea (hey, that's kind of ironic).

But while I'm posting, I may as well put up a picture. When I got home from my run Brad was having a good time with the kids. Galla was wearing this Tinkerbell costume and tap shoes that Brad's mom just sent her. You can imagine how much she loves it (except for the apparent chafing)! Thank you, Mimi!

The Blueberry Fairy

What do you do with 14 pounds of blueberries? No, it's not a riddle, it's the question Brad and I were faced with last weekend when our bulk order from church came in. For weeks we'd been looking forward to basking in blueberries. And then they came...a big bucket-o-bluebs that were already mushy on top, so we could only imagine their condition on the bottom. So we got to work making every berry-oriented creation we could think of: jam, muffins, tarts, scones, even pureed for Finn. Now we're all packed with antioxidants! A Deep Thought by Jack Handy comes to mind: "If anyone ever offers you something in a bucket, take it. Because I can't think of anything bad that comes in a bucket." Or something like that.

The kids and I are off to Cali/Arizona in the morning!