Posting for Heather Because It's Her Birthday

Did you know my sister got run over by a truck? She was on her bike, at her peak training week for an Ironman, and then wham. When Rick called it was one of those moments when you feel like the world has cracked and will never heal. But Heather is tough and is not dead. I'm deeply grateful she's alive. Who else would I call while I'm driving around town?

Despite being broken up and bruised, she's traveling to the Ironman event and cheering Rick on. That's self-less: championing someone else when you'd so much like to be doing it yourself.

Rick's pretty cool. But Heather? She be my hero.

And since she is continually harassing, I mean, requesting, pictures - here's some more for her birthday:



Sonya and Talmage attending to a Halloween Costume in the works.


Syd in the Lego box sans Legos.

Syd and Jude on their impromptu Sunday promenade.


Hey, Hed. I'll post some more later - you know - the last import isn't uploading to the blog for some reason.

Future post: Everyone Should Have a Live-In Hilary. Or, "I Won't Let Her Go Until You Give Me Back My Boat."

Red Priest

We took in a show early this week.

Dazzling. Entertaining. Creative.

This baroque quartet swashbuckled onstage wearing pirate outfits. Periodically, their renditions of Bach masterpieces and such were punctuated with "Arrr's!" and "Shiver me timbers!" But they didn't even need such gimmicks to impress. If you ever hear of Red Priest coming to town, I highly recommend going out of your way to attend a concert.

Tom Sawyer?

Talmage has been on a real "job" kick lately. There's a job wheel in The Friend this month that we stuck on the wall and he's all about turning that wheel to see what job he has. Sometimes more than once a day. So I get a lot of mileage out of him. I'm also getting a lot of free labor out of his friends:



Love how Holly slaps that rag down.

St George Marathon. OCT 2.

The marathon was awesome! Many thanks to Briton's parents for coming down and watching the girls and also to Heidi for taking Talmage for the weekend. Without your support this would have been impossible.

We crossed the starting line approximately 7 minutes after the horn. This was due to my desire not to get run over by faster runners (approx. 7,000 of them) and both of our evacuation needs that kept us in the porta-potty line. This is the last I saw Briton until the finish line. Sorta romantic to start out together, though, huh?

Favorite sign I saw along the side of the road? "I'd rather be watching conference."

Time elapsed between Briton and my finishing times? 99 minutes (for my pride's sake, assume Briton runs a 2:06 marathon).

Some Race Highlights:
*beautiful sunrise glowing on red rock, a show that only Southern Utah can put on.
*BenGay knee and quad massages at aid stops,
*two timely bags of ice that allayed heat stroke (thanks for the tip, Hed) ... the high that day was 93 degrees.
*For Briton: Snow Canyon and seeing the balloon (or, rather, who it was attached to)
*the finish line. I got all sorts of choked up.
*as always, the spectators and musicians and conversation with other runners
*watching practically all of St. George hobbling around the next morning.
*realizing I wanted to do it again. This was a big deal because usually after a marathon, I hate running.

For more pics of the day/weekend activities, you can check out P&L's blog post here.

Roma Marathon 2011?

If I had $12,000 to spare, what a kick to run the Antarctica Marathon (for a glimpse into the lives of some adventurous folk, check out the profiles of last year's competitors)