Thanksgiving Weekend 2016

The 4-day weekend for Thanksgiving has become one of my favorites. Lots of time spent with family and friends for fun and relaxation.

Thanksgiving morning started out early with the Turkey Day 5K in downtown Phoenix. This was my 5th year in a row running this race, and the 3rd year of our "Friendsgiving" brunch after the run.

Dave and his kids ran this year

Bella and Kylie

Gina, Amy and I - I actually want both buns of steel AND buns of cinnamon :)

Kyle was a newcomer to the race this year too

Our entire group...it has grown over the past few years

Ready to run!

Kyle and I at the finish line. Kyle passed me at about the .5 mile mark, and I stayed behind him the rest of the race without his knowledge. I let him know I was there right before we got to the finish line so we finished together.

My time this year was 25:59 which was an 8:22 min/mile. I got 6th overall in my age group. BODI is working :)

Finished! Now off to brunch...

I don't know these girls but I thought their costume was creative

Brunch at the Kruckenberg's...Brian was the barista (again)

Such a great day in Phoenix to be outside

I stayed at brunch until about noon, and then came home to get ready to go to Kevin & Jocelyn's for family Thanksgiving. I gave Otis and Sam a turkey dinner snack since it was Thanksgiving.

Uriah and I relaxing in our food coma's

My cousin Eric brought this virtual reality game and Dad "rode" a roller coaster. You can ask him how that ended :)

On Friday afternoon I went to the ASU vs UofA game in Tucson. 

The game did not turn out well for ASU (we lost) but it was still a fun night! And I got my picture with Sparky.

On Saturday afternoon we went down to PHX Flea - it was a good event, however, my annoyance with downtown Phoenix is that it is not easy to be there on a weekend (specifically in regards to parking). The city is trying to get more people downtown and to build restaurant/store presence, but it cost us $12 to park yesterday to go to this market (and then it was a $5 entrance fee per person). If they want more people to come downtown on the weekends, parking should be free!

Finally, today after church and LGO we went to the car show downtown (but today we found a cheaper lot so parking was 'only' $8).

It was cloudy and cold (for Phoenix) the last two days so it makes it feel like Christmas now.

P.F. Chang's Half Marathon 2014

This was my 3rd year of running the Chang's half marathon, and my 4th half marathon in total. For some reason, I was not at all motivated to train this year. I think I just get bored running in Phoenix - I really got hooked on running when I was living in NYC and I truly believe there is not better place to live if you are a runner. Central Park is the best place to run.

My compression socks…can't really tell a difference when I run with these, other than I think they look cool.

Kathryn and I - we are thinking of doing a Disney Run next year to switch things up a bit.

I was at the front of the corral this year. 

In the future I am going to try to always get at the front of the corral.

This year they made the finish at Tempe Beach Park. In the past it had been in front of Sun Devil Stadium. With that change, they had to also change the course slightly - we did a little detour at 64th Street and McDowell up and down a hill. It wasn't bad but it also wasn't fun to do a hill at mile 9. 

I beat my PR by 7 minutes with a time of 1:48:03. I felt good for the first 10k, and miles 7 and 8 were my most difficult (I think it was because I was anticipating the hill). Once I finished mile 9, I felt good the rest of the way. And I was happy with my time too.

Thanksgiving Day 2013

Thanksgiving morning started out with heading to the Kruckenbergs to ride with them to do the Phoenix Turkey Trot 5k. This was the second year that I have done this race, and last year I actually ran into them at the race, but I had only been going to New City for a couple of weeks so I barely knew them.

Cute turkey hair bows that Gina made for Faith and Bella.

The kids ran the 1-mile kids dash.

Gina and I at the finish line. My time was 25:01 which is an 8:03 min/mile. I can't seem to break the 8 min/mile pace. Brian, Gina and I were all either 7th or 8th place in our age groups.

After the run I came home and watched the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. But watching on TV is not the same as being there. I then made a pumpkin pie to take to my parents for Thanksgiving Dinner. This year's Thanksgiving kind of came together at the last minute. We were originally planning to go to Kevin and Jocelyn's, however, that was kind of up in the air as Jocelyn's mom had been in the hospital for a while. Wednesday Kevin came down with the flu, so that afternoon the group Thanksgiving was cancelled. Mom and Dad also could not host a huge Thanksgiving this year as Grandma Hazel had not been doing well for approximately a week prior to Thanksgiving. Also, since the previous Sunday, she really wasn't doing well. However, on Wednesday she rallied a bit so we thought maybe she would be up for Thanksgiving dinner. I was at Trader Joe's on Wednesday night, so decided to pick up a turkey as their's were not frozen and they were hormone and antibiotic-free. On Wednesday night and Thursday morning my dad kind of planned out a meal and invited Randy and Todd, Jennifer and Colby over.

Grandma was doing well again on Thursday and wanted to go outside so we took her for a short walk around the block with Cruzer.

All the spices I used for the pumpkin pie - I made this recipe from a few years ago.

I also made a butternut squash and apple soup that I found online.

The recipe called for Camembert cheese - I just thought it was neat packaging.

The final presentation of the soup - recipe here.

The turkey.

The group ready to eat - Todd, Jen, Colby, Kyle, Grandma Hazel, Kellyn, Coby, Mom and Dad.

We were all so happy that Grandma was feeling well enough to eat at the table with us all. We love her.

Kellyn and Grandma

Me and Grandma

Lauren and Grandma having a little pumpkin pie. When we asked Grandma if she wanted pie she said "Of course!"

Thanksgiving was good because Grandma was there, and if it had been 24 hours prior she would not have been sitting at the table with us. Right now, we are thankful for each day that we have with her.

Spartan Sprint

Yesterday I ran the Spartan Sprint. My overall memory of this race is one word: FREEZING. The high yesterday in Phoenix was only 56 degrees, and it was probably in the 40s when we started this race at 10:15am. It was pretty cloudy too so there was not much sun.

We thought we had signed up for a 5k, however, when we arrived we found out that they changed the course and the distance was a total of 4.7 miles.

There were approximately 12 obstacles throughout the course, ranging from climbing over walls, monkey bars, balancing across logs, carrying a sandbag up a hill, dragging a concrete slab through the dirt, pulling yourself up a rope, throwing a spear and making it stick in a hay bale, and finally rolling under barbed wire probably half the length of a football field. 

If you could not successfully complete an obstacle, then you had to do 30 burpees. I ended up doing a total of 120 burpees - didn't make it all the way across the monkey bars, didn't make it across the wall on little pegs, couldn't climb up the rope and didn't get the spear to stick in the hay bale. Basically, all the ones where you needed good upper body strength - something to work on at the gym. The worst obstacle was going under the barbed wire. The best way to get across was rolling, but the ground was desert landscape so there were lots of rocks. Also, they kept spraying you with a hose, so it was wet and freezing cold.

I finished with a time of 1:34:15. I was #1548 out of 4048 total, #292 out of 1451 for females and #55 out of 287 in my age group. It took me all day yesterday to warm up - blasted the heat in my car on the way home, went down to the jacuzzi, took a long hot shower, and was still cold so I took a nap and finally warmed up.