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.

7 Summit Challenge

Back in August we registered to do the Seven Summit Challenge hosted by the City of Phoenix. I had talked about doing this for a couple of years, but never actually made it happen.

This was our hiking route - there were 3 different routes for the 7 Summits, and there was a 5-summit and 4-summit challenge as well. We decided to go big with all 7.

I woke up yesterday morning at 3:30am since we all met at my apartment to leave by 4:15am. This was our group at 4:55am right before starting the first trail - Dave, me, Gina, Brian, Christine, Kyle and Corina.

Lookout Mountain - Summit #1

On our way up Shaw Butte trail

Shaw Butte Summit...

...#2

Squaw Peak - Gina and I got our picture together on this one since it is "our" mountain (we do this one every Friday morning with our friend Amy).

Squaw Peak - Summit #3

Apache Wash - Apache Vista - Summit #4

Apache Wash - Ridgeback Overlook - Summit #5

Deem Hills - Ridgeline - Summit #6

Holbert Trail - Summit #7

We were feeling strong after 7 summits, 25 miles, 4,934 feet elevation gain and approximately 11 hours.

Downtown Phoenix behind us as we were descending South Mountain

Holbert Trail was the last hike for all of the PSC routes. After we finished the final summit, there was an after-party with live music, food trucks and churn ice cream.

We chose this food truck since they won the New Times Best of Phoenix in 2013.

This was our passport book for the day.

At the top of every summit we received a stamp.

My final time. Gina and Brian rocked it and were 27th and 28th overall with a time of 10:27:21. Dave beat me by 2 seconds and Kyle finished directly behind me.

My net time (not including driving was 8:06:27 and that was 41st out of 128 people who finished my route).

My parents were also along for the day - they were our drivers for the day as we had read that parking would be difficult at each trailhead (and from experience hiking some of these mountains without an event happening we knew that was a real possibility). But, parking was restricted to event participants so we never had a problem. I think they enjoyed their day ok though :)

All in all it was a fun day. We are all a little sore today but nothing unbearable. It was a fun bucket list item to complete and I would definitely do it again!