This blog post will self-destruct in 3....2....1.....

There's something that's been quite the fancy around our house the last couple weeks.

Treasure hunts.

I love this activity because a) supplies are minimal; b) it doesn't take me too much time to set up; c) all three kids can work together... (or, more accurately, the boys work together and Sophie tags along behind them repeating whatever she heard them say....but it works), and d) everyone has a blast.

The other day, Travis begged most of the evening for one more treasure hunt. I told him we could do one last one before bed, but that they would have to go brush their teeth first, because as soon as the treasure hunt was over, it was straight to bed for them.

He reluctantly agreed, and the kids headed to the upstairs bathroom.

Oh no!! Their toothbrushes were missing!! And in their place, this note.....

....from the evil Captain Hook. (The boys have been watching a Disney Neverland show and like to pretend to be Neverland pirates quite frequently.) Captain Hook had stolen their toothbrushes, and it was up to them to follow the clues to find them before the toothbrushes were destroyed FOREVER !!!! (duh duh duuuuuuuuuuuuuuhn)

The first clue led them to a toy mailbox, where a second clue waited inside.

(My goal was to try to snap the pictures of the actual clues, but the kids were too excited and too speedy for that to happen. You'll just have to trust me that a clue was there.)

Next, downstairs to the ottoman, where we store all the Wii crap.

This clue instructed them to find an Elmo toy on the bookshelf and look inside.

Next, to a candle in front of the TV.

The dog food bowl!! (The dog was safely caged during this adventure.)

Hidden inside the Toy Story couch!

The next clue was at the dining room window. Can YOU find it?

This clue was their favorite. Track down your dad, and check his pockets!

Hmmmmm.... I think I saw Captain Hook getting a juice pouch right after he stole your toothbrushes!

And, he got a cup from the 'kids cup' drawer!

Maybe the toothbrushes are hidden in the stuffed animal tote!

Nope, just another clue that led them to a pretend movie theater!

Nope, how about try the pretend garage? (Oh yes, my house is STOCKED with old school Little People stuff. I'm not a fan of the new-fangled Little People. But the vintage stuff - LOVE it.)

The next clue led them to one of their pajama drawers.

No toothbrushes yet. Try the toy box.

The clues now led them to Sophie's room. Perhaps Elmo knows where the toothbrushes are.

Elmo instructed them to check the play refrigerator in Sophie's kitchen set.

What do you know??

The toothbrushes were there!!

BUT....no toothpaste.

Not to worry.

Toothpaste located in the oven.

One of my favorite things about the treasure hunts is watching Travis figure out how to set up his own. He's done quite a few, and is getting quite good. Here's a snapshot of some of his creativity at work:

"Captain Hook has stolen a glue stick, soon he is going to destroy it."

"X marks the spot"

"Captain Hook likes freezer pops" (clue hidden in freezer)

"He likes lab notebooks"

"Look in the front room"

"He likes the word up. Look up." (clue hidden on top of the piano)

"The refrigerator has milk. He likes milk."

"Look under here"

Ben says I'm likely turning him into some freakish mystery nut, a la the super-corny Mystery Team movie we watched on Netflix last night.

Which one of these is Travis, again?

Attack of the ..... Chickens?

Mom, I'm scaaaaaaaared!!!.......

You're scared, Sophie? Of what?

Of the bokking noises!

The barking noises?

Ummm, no. The BOKKING noises.

Bokking noises? Like, uh..., like a chicken?

Yeah.

You're scared of chicken noises? Where at?

Um...in my bedroom.

Chicken noises in your bedroom? Where do you hear chickens?

Um, out the window.

---------------------------------------------

This has been the consistent story from Sophie for the past two weeks. She is scared of chicken sounds that she hears outside her bedroom window at night.

Our neighborhood is the very definition of suburbia. I'm quite certain there are no free-range chickens within hearing distance.

I've scoured her room for old forgotten toys that might make barnyard animal noises. Nothing.

I have yet to hear anything that even remotely resembles a chicken in, near, around or otherwise disrupting her bedroom.

She tells me she's scared. But she doesn't act particularly scared. She goes to bed happily, wakes up happily, and seems generally untraumatized by these ghostly chickens that haunt her bedroom.

But she has taken to telling random people about her fear of the chickens, enough so that I feel guilty that I'm still putting her to bed under these seemingly nightmarish conditions. And feel the need to explain myself that the extent of her fear is really her just saying that she's scared, and not that she lies awake screaming in her bed each night as imaginary chickens descend upon her with unspeakable intentions.

I'm already imagining how I'm going to explain this to her therapist in about ten years.

Caching In

I'm not a huge fan of bike riding. I don't hate it or anything, it's just not usually on top of my list of things I feel like doing.

But let's face it, what does tend to top that list is things like having a glass of wine and reading silly vampire romance novels.

Ben's more of a biker than I am. In fact, just twelve hours ago he was preparing for a midnight bike ride in downtown Indy with three thousand other fanatical bike riders.

This evening, we decided to drag out the bikes and assorted equipment, and go for a geo-caching adventure at a local park. I was kind of tired after a long day, but heck, if Ben's up for it after getting barely any sleep and biking twenty miles in the middle of the night then surely I can play along.

So, Ben loaded up our geo-cache destination into his GPS, and we got the kids ready.

Noah and Sophie LOVE the trailer. Love it. Even more than last year.

Ben was busy doing .....uh...something, so I asked Travis to take my picture. He told me the sun was in his eyes, but he'd try.

This is me snapping a picture mid-cycle, at the entrance to Clay Park.

My regular view. Ben, way ahead of me, and getting farther away.

Once in the park, we veered off onto a trail. I tried to get a picture behind me while I was making my way through the trail. I love this one -- the look on Noah's face is priceless.

Ummmm....mom?? Do you know what you're doing??

I tried a second time. I have no idea what happened.

One more time. Okay, this is a stupid idea. I give up.

When I finally caught up with Ben he and Travis were dismounted. They'd reached an impasse.

Time to unload. This ain't bike territory, kids.

Noah was devastated.

I want to stay in the trailer, mom!!

But got over it when he realized we now got to hike.

We hiked through the woods. Noah and Travis led the way, with the GPS on Ben's phone pointing us in the right direction.

Finally, we made it to our destination. An old campground fire-circle.

Wait, what's this?? A loose brick!

There's something inside!

We found it!!

Inside was a piece of paper to sign, and a little prize that you can take as long as you leave something in its place. Well, we forgot to bring something to leave behind -- so we didn't get to take the prize. That's okay though, the kids barely even noticed.

(The prize was a little pin that said, "I went caching and all I got was this lousy pin." I totally love it and we might have to go back and get that one, when we're smart enough to remember to bring an exchange.)

Anyway, after the caching adventure, we hiked and biked out of the woods and let the kids play at the park for a bit.

On the way back, I cursed Ben and told him I am no good at this biking thing, and Noah and Sophie combined are way heavier than they were last year, and my thighs are burning and I am just plain miserable.

But, I survived.

Now, I've got me that glass of wine. Just need that ridiculous vampire novel.

Easy like Sunday.....afternoon

You know how a picture is like, a thousand words? Well, here's....oh, about fifteen thousand words about our perfectly pleasant backyard afternoon.

(The boys love taking turns kinking the hose to the beach ball sprinkler, unleashing the water whenever it is least expected.)

Here's some pictures of Sophie's side adventure, some sort of 'rock/tea' party for Moose and Buddy.

Relief

Earlier this week, Sophie was crying about something. I can't remember what. She's a drama queen, it's hard to keep track.

Noah brought her her favorite stuffed moose.

She sniffled a couple times, then her face brightened up, she looked at me and said,

"Noah feel me better!"

.....................................................

So.... it's Friday night.

I'm sitting with my feet propped up in the recliner, an Ace bandage wrapped tightly around my throbbing left shin.

I couldn't figure out why my shins were hurting me so badly today until Ben reminded me that this is my first 5K that I've gone to work immediately after, and I had unfortunately picked one of my most brutal pair of heels to wear today. Certainly, I've run before and/or during lunch break at work, but not ever a race so that is probably the difference.

Lesson learned and tomorrow I may head into a local running store and invest in some compression sleeves. I had no idea how awesome a tightly-wrapped shin could be.

It feels me better.

What's on YOUR playlist?

I'm kind of new to this whole running thing.

I'm not exactly a stranger to running; I used to run track in middle & high school, throughout college I would occasionally take it back up, I've had an on-and-off relationship with running for years. I've not run competitively since my high school days and the 800-meters.

So now that I've gotten back into this, I am JUST NOW discovering the magic of the iPod.

iPod playlists are a MUST for runners. I hadn't really realized that before. When I started training for the mini last year, I just listened to the radio while running, which is NOT the same thing. Not. At. All.

A quality playlist is like a magical element that can completely transform your running experience.

I've been doing some research on running playlists, picking songs that are the right BPM (beats per minute, see how I'm already using cool running jargon?), the right energy and mood, and all that.

I'm not an expert playlist-maker yet. But here's where I'm at so far. In no particular order.

• Streetcorner Symphony by Rob Thomas. I love starting a run with this one. It's such a happy song that makes you feel like all is right with the world; running is awesome, being outside is awesome, heck, even 6a.m. is awesome with this song.

• Pink - take your pick. I had to pare back the number of Pink songs in my playlist because it was a bit much, but I can almost not get enough. My current favorites are Just Like a Pill, Trouble, and Please Don't Leave Me.

• I Gotta Feeling by The Black Eyed Peas. Obviously, just a great song to run to. Every time I hear it, I think of Italy, and the parties there, because they played this song all the time. I am instantly transported to a packed gondola on the ski slopes of Cortina, at the welcome party our ski guides threw for us, with a bunch of Ohio Valley skiiers and a group of Asian skiiers from California (the Grumpy Asian Skiiers, or GAS, those guys were awesome), all of us belting out I Gotta Feeling at the top of our lungs. Good times.

• Sublime - any number of songs from their self-titled album. I love that entire CD and it takes me back to my college days. I had to pare that one down too and right now just have What I Got and Santeria on there although I am thinking about adding back some others. I really don't listen to much ska-punk music but Sublime is genius (RIP Bradley).

• I'm Yours by Jason Mraz. This one is a little cheesy, and a little slower, so I like to put it somewhere in the middle where I'm pacing myself a little more, but it is such a happy song that I had to include it.

• Sunday Morning by Maroon 5. Also a little slower, but I love this song and I absolutely adore Adam Levine, so there you go.

• Teenage Dream by Katy Perry. I know, I know, I'm a little embarrassed about this one, too, I mean I'm not seventeen and heading to the prom or anything, but it's got a good running beat and, what can I say, I like it. Sue me.

• Gives You Hell by The All American Rejects - I just feel like jumping up and down when I hear this song. I don't (usually) do this during a run, thankfully, but it still has a good running tempo.

• Rock Your Body by Justin Timberlake because JT is super-awesome I don't care how much you try to deny it.

• The Lazy Song by Bruno Mars. This song is one of my favorites right now and once I get it in my head I sing it all day long. It was kind of coincidence that it was what was playing as I finished the Sunburst 5K and I made the decision right then that I would always try to end a race on this song. There's just something awesome about thinking about not doing anything all day after having just run three miles first thing in the morning.

There you have it.

Any suggestions, add a comment.

Weddings and Races

Sorry I've been kid of missing-in-action lately. Last week was full of festivities for the grand EVENT that was the Repic-Seifer wedding. I'm happy to say that everything went fantastically awesome and we had a blast.

Congrats Erin & Justin!

In other news, my gym is putting on this 5K Fridays thing, where for 8 weeks during the summer, you run a 5K every Friday at 6a.m. It's informal, not like a real race, just for "fun" (if you can call running 3.1 miles fun), they give prizes at the end for fastest, most improved, etc.

Last Friday was the first such race. I waited until after running my first 5K earlier this month before signing up for 5K Fridays, but since that race didn't totally suck, I decided to give it a try.

Thursday night I started to get a little panicky, like what if everyone else that signed up for 5K Fridays is like total marathon stars that run 15 minute 5Ks while simultaneously updating their Facebook status on their iPhones and making up their grocery lists for that afternoon.

Ben promised me it wouldn't be like that.

5:30 a.m. rolled around, and I made my way to the gym. All told, there was probably about 30-35 of us. Mostly females, with about 8-10 guys. I was relieved to see that there were some people signed up just to walk the 5K, so I was pretty sure I at least wouldn't cross the finish dead last.

As it turns out, I did okay. I did NOT beat my Sunburst time of 30:15 (they updated the race results since I originally posted them, I did 3 seconds better! Hooray!), but that was partly because I ran too far. They told us the course of the race, which was alongside the river (and quite pretty), and then told us that we turned around at Twyckenham, the halfway point, and make our way back.

Well, I roughly knew where Twyckenham was, but I'll be honest, I'm not all that terribly familiar with that part of town, particularly on foot.

So I was running, kind of in a zone, and knew I was fairly close to where we were to turn around at. A handful of runners had passed me going back the other way. I crossed under a bridge and was looking for a Twyckenham street sign. Nothing. I slowed, turned around, saw there was still people behind me. Kept running. Kept looking. Turned around again. Noticed there were people turning around at the bridge which was now about 75 yards behind me.

Ahhhhhh.....Twyckenham was the bridge.

So, I turned around, determined to catch up with those people who should rightfully have been behind me as they had been just minutes before, and were now in front of me by virtue of my idiotic geographic skills.

I'm happy to report that I did catch up with them, and beat them all across the finish line.

In fact, I was about the 9th person across, and the second female.

I don't want to get too braggy, after all, I am hardly a super-competitive runner, and will likely never be. And my goal wasn't to go out and beat a bunch of people, but rather to challenge myself and see some improvement. But this race gave me quite a boost in my self-confidence about 5Ks - I'm not just a goofy loser who tries to pretend she can run 3.1 miles.

I'm going to shoot for under 29 minutes by the end of this thing.

Wish me luck.

Budding author

I'm a grammar snob. Darned if I'm not going to pass that along to my children.

Travis was writing a story the other day. I generally push him to just try to sound out the spelling of words, rather than telling him how to spell them. He's getting better, but oftentimes forgets the vowels.

In the midst of his story writing, he came up to me and said "Is this how you spell 'wasn't'?"


wasint


So, I praised him for his effort, and explained that he was very close. And then asked him if he'd learned about contractions in Kindergarten. He looked at me rather blankly, so I explained that a contraction was kind of like two words thrown together.

Ohhhh, yes, we learned about those. But at school we call those compound words.

Well, actually contractions are different from compound words. A compound word is -

One word that is made up of two other words! Like..... pancake!

Yes, yes that's right. In a compound word, two words come together to make a totally new word. But a contraction is when two words that you would normally say separately are kind of shoved together into one word to make it easier to say.

(That's right, I should totally be an early education teacher, I use such glamorous descriptions to explain things.)

At any rate, we talked about contractions, and I told him that when the two words are smashed together, one or two letters come flying out of the word, and you use the little apostrophe mark to show where those letters used to be.

We went through some examples. Travis took it to a whole new level and said,

We should write subtraction sentences out of these!

And then proceeded to take a piece of paper and write:

he had - ha = he'd
did not - o = didn't


Grammar lessons AND math combined?? Man, I love this kid.


After our impromptu English lesson, Travis went back to writing his story. As he showed it to me later, this is what I saw:

You can see the little hash marks flying out of the word wasn't. This didn't surprise me terribly, because these hash marks were the way I had illustrated to Travis how the letter (or letters) in a contraction disappeared.

I said, "I see you're showing here how the o disappears."

Oh no, mom, the o didn't disappear. It just flew off the page and onto the next page. See?


And there it is. You can follow those hash marks to the o in the word told.

I'm telling you. This kid is awesome.

Here's the unadulterated transcript. There's an area or two where I might need to translate, otherwise, this is it's original form:

"Travis and Noah, Science Detectives - The case of the flying bird


Once upon a time ther was two brothers named Travis and Noah and they liked to prtend to be science detectives. One day they saw a bird it wasn't a regular bird. It was a fast flying bird. Travis saw it. He told Noah. He said ok I'll find some hints. Ok Travis side (said). Rite away Travis saw a hint it was a blak hole! Later, Noah find a hint. What is it side (said) Travis. Ant's side (said) Noah. Then Travis saw a hint it was a bigger blak hole! Travis saw a pipe in both holes. One was samall. One was biger. Travis whnt to the swangsite (swingset) he saw a inviseble pipe it was waer (where) the big pipe led to. Travis saw a prat of a spnge (part of a sponge). Ants waer boncing (were bouncing) off of it. They all landit on the bird. How did they all do that Travis wishpered! Travis can wishpr sooo quiet nobody can hear him! Rane clouds came."


And that's that.

Happiness is a skinned knee...or two.

We took the kids for our first camping trip of the year this weekend, to Pokagon State Park. My adorably-pregnant sister and her family came and joined us.

The kids love camping. They told us repeatedly just how much they love it.

We are CAMPING!

They love the pop-up. No matter how cramped, or cold, or hot, or buggy it gets, it is still an awesome novelty for the kids. They can't get enough of it.

They don't quite get the meaning of "pop"-up, though. No amount of three- and six-year-old muscle was enough to get the job done.

We went for several hikes, toured the Pokagon Nature Center, did some pony rides, had our requisite hot dogs and S'mores over the campfire, and otherwise got our camp on.

The weekend was defined by more scrapes and bruises than I care to count. Sophie skinned her knees repeatedly. Her wounds are looking much improved today, but she still wanted me to take her picture.

So, Exhibit A:

Noah fell a few times as well, mostly because he insisted on running in his flip flops, ignoring my warnings. He skinned his nose and even his upper lip.

Upper lip? Who does that?

Apparently, my Noah does that, and it looks sadly reminiscent of a Hitler-moustache.

He's quite proud of his Third Reich impressionism.

I asked Travis if he got any scrapes and bruises from the weekend, and he said, no, only two mosquito bites. He got off easy.

And, on an unrelated note, here is a picture of Travis's last day of school.

Bring on 1st grade!

Terms of Endearment

Sophie usually addresses the boys by one of two terms.

"the brothers"

or

"my guys"

I totally love them both.

For instance, right now the boys are running circles in the living room pretending to be some kind of super hero. Sophie was watching from the sidelines for a minute or two, and then turned to me and said,

"Can I run with the brothers?"

Noah says, "Come on in, Sophie!"

Every night when I take her up to bed, she takes turns telling everyone goodnight. After cuddling with dad and smothering him with loving, she yells,

"Goodnight brothers!!"

to which both boys stop whatever they are doing and respond in kind, goodnight Sophie!

Last week, we were playing outside in the backyard. Travis and Noah had disappeared to the treehouse while Sophie was swinging.

She hopped off the swing, looked around, came up to me and asked,

"Where'd my guys go?"

Here's your guys, Soph.

Funny, I've never seen this technique in any parenting magazines

Sometimes, I threaten my kids that I'm going to sell them to Goodwill.

It's true.

Like tonight, Noah was being loud and not letting Travis go to sleep. I went to their room, gathered Noah up, and told him to say goodbye to his brother because I was going to sell him to Goodwill.

Travis piped up, But I'll miss Noah! Some things about Noah are good!

I generally only use this technique when I'm tired and exhausted and I've run out of nice, calm, appropriate teaching-method ways of dealing with their behavior. I consider it my last resort before I start hurling obscenities and/or sharp objects.

It's all said in jest, of course, and I've made sure to explicitly remind them that it is all a joke and that I would never, ever sell anyone to Goodwill and, of course, point out that although Goodwill does have a "Boys" section, they really only sell boys' clothing and not actual boys.

Regardless, our Goodwill stories typically serve as a kind of tension breaker for all involved.

Our conversations usually go something like this:

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Okay, that's it Noah, I'm going to have to sell you to Goodwill. I'm going to put a sticker on you that says "12 cents" and take you over to Goodwill and put you on a shelf.

Well, I would jump off the shelf and walk home!

Oh, well then I would pack you up in a cardboard box and put a sticker on the cardboard box that says "cute little boy inside, 12 cents" and take you back to Goodwill.

Well, I would break out of the box! 'Cause I am STRONG!

Yes, but then someone that works at Goodwill would see you breaking out of the cardboard box and they would pick you up and put you back in the box and tape the box all up and put a sticker on it that says "cute but strong little boy inside, 12 cents"

Ummmm...and then what would happen?

Well then, some nice family would be shopping at Goodwill and they would see this box on the shelf that said "cute but strong little boy inside, 12 cents" and they would say, Oh, wouldn't it be fun to have a cute and strong little boy at home, and they would take the box up to the counter and give the cashier 12 cents.

But I would make a hole in the box and I would get out and run out of the store!

Oh, well, that's okay, because right then I would be coming up to the store to find you because we would miss you so much and when you got out of the box I would come in and pick you up and say "sorry Goodwill but this cute little boy is mine!" and then I would take you home and cuddle with you.

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Noah generally can't get enough of it, and wants me to keep going, and keeps coming up with more and more scenarios, like but then I would jump out of your lap and into an invisible pipe and it would take me back to Goodwill and THEN what would happen?

At the end of it all, we're all laughing and mostly forget about what it was that started the problem in the first place.

Either I'm a parenting GENIUS or I am profoundly damaging my children.

Your guess is as good as mine.

Sweeter than cough syrup

I've never taught any of my kids to call me "mommy".

From the days of their infancy, I have referred to myself exclusively as "Mom". And to Ben as "Dad".

I didn't spend any time agonizing over this decision, but it was most certainly on purpose. I just don't like the sound of "mommy", in my head it sounds so whiiiiiny, like that old Chloraseptic commercial that my own mother always hated, where the little girl is in bed repeating to herself, it'll hurt if I swallow, it'll hurt if I swallow, it'll hurt if I .... MOMMY!

I didn't take to "momma" at all either. That's just doesn't sound like me. I'm a MOM.

So, my kids have called me Mom since they've been able to utter single-syllable words.

I've noticed many of my friends do not feel this same way. In fact, they revel in the "mommy" or "momma" titles, so much that they feel a twinge of sadness when their children grow old enough to decide that "mommy" sounds too childish, so they switch to "mom" of their own accord.

I guess I'm missing whatever that mommy gene is, it's probably the same one that regulates gardening because try as I might I cannot get myself to care one whit about what's growing in my yard.

Anyway, for six years, I've been Mom and only Mom.


Then along came Sophie.

Of all three of my kids, she's the only one that has figured out that "Mommy" can be a more disarming, endearing way to address me. And she uses it whenever she wants to really lay on the charm.

I'm kind of getting a glimpse of why those other moms might like it.

She's syrupy sweet with her use of this moniker, cocks her head to the side when she says it, and usually employs a slight smile and eye twinkle as accompaniment.

Mommy, let's cuddle!

Oooh, I YUV you, Mommy!!

Look!! There's my mommy!

She does this with Ben, too. She went so far as to call him "Daddy Waddy" the other day.

This kid. Oy.

Run Like a Champion Today

I had a dream last night that I had to take a ferry to get to downtown for the Sunburst Races.

I took the ferry, then once I got there, realized I had left my bag with all my stuff back on the 'other side'. (The other side of what, don't ask me. I just know we had to take a boat to get there.)

So, I was on the 'race' side of downtown, minus my bag, which had my shoes and socks in it.

Luckily, there was a Wal-Mart kiosk on the bridge, so I bought a pair of shoes and a package of socks. (I distinctly remember being annoyed that I had to buy a huge pack of like 12 pairs of socks and that this silly Wal-Mart kiosk didn't sell single-serving socks.)

The problem was, I didn't have my chip timer with me to attach to my shoe.

I reconciled myself that I was going to have run this race without being timed, and decided I would just pay extra close attention to the timers on the side of the road.

The race started on a bridge (apparently, my dream had transformed downtown South Bend into some gigantic water metropolis) and as I headed out to the bridge for start time, I noticed the big clock that said 7:25. My race was supposed to start at 7:15. I thought, "huh, looks like they are getting started late" and then realized that everyone on the bridge was wearing 3K T-shirts. I started frantically asking everyone about the 5K and they all laughed and said, oh that race left 10 minutes ago.

I saw Ben standing on an overpass just above me, so I called up to him and started crying and said "I'm going to have to run this race without a chip timer plus it's the wrong race because the 5K already left so I'm going to have to run this 3K instead and everything is ruined"

and that's when I woke up.

It was one of those dreams that takes you a few minutes to realize it was all a dream, and this huge flood of relief washed over me as I realized that I still had the chance to run my race right.

By the time I woke up, it was about 5:30, and I wanted to leave the house by around 6 so I could get downtown about an hour before the race (you know, in case I missed the ferry). (Just kidding.)

So I got up and around, got dressed, stretched a little, checked my iPod battery, then whispered to Ben that I was leaving. I told him not to worry about bringing the kids in to catch my estimated 7:45a.m. finish time, but I was secretly super-hoping he would do it. He mumbled something unintelligible and then I was off.

The race itself went well, it was a super-hot day but luckily I missed most of that since the 5K was so early. They ended up black-flagging the marathon around noon because of the heat and humidity.

The race ended inside Notre Dame Stadium, which is actually pretty cool. Ben asked which one I liked better - the stadium, or the run around the Speedway during the mini. They were both pretty neat, but I liked the stadium better because that was the finish line -- it was already a big rush running through the tunnel and onto the football field, and to have that be the end of the race made it that much sweeter.

I think I did Ara Parseghian proud.

My goal was 30 minutes -- I ran it in 30:18, which I'm okay with for my first 5K. I plan to do more, not crazy more, but it's a good race for me.

By the way, Ben did make it, with all three kids, waiting in the stadium for me as I finished. We then went out for a pancake breakfast which I devoured and then regretted about an hour later, as my stomach revolted against that compared to the poor pre-race nutrition I had provided it, since I had forgotten my protein bar & banana breakfast I had planned to eat on my way to the race.

Noah kept asking me, "which place did you get?" (I told him we'd have to check when we got home. Turns out I got 1426th place. That's a bit much for a not-quite-four-year-old to understand.)

(Side note: I did get 63rd out of a total of 259 runners in the Female 30-34 category. Not terrible, considering I'm really a hobby-runner at best. Ben was impressed, which is really all that counts here.)

Travis told me it looked there were "three-hundred" people in that race, and was astounded when I told him it was actually more like three thousand.

Sophie just wanted to cuddle with me, and put her hands on my face, and say "you got all wet, you must be dirty!"

Next up: Urban Adventure in late July. Watch for our training video coming soon.

Mildly Phobic

I have a mini-fear of elevators.

It's not a debilitating fear, by any means. It's not like I cling to the hand rail screaming anymore or anything.

(I know people like to pretend that the hand rail is there for balance, but let's face it, it's totally there because when the elevator goes careening toward the ground people are going to want to hold on to something.)

Anyway, I do get a little panicked when I feel like an elevator is about to screw me over. The elevators in my building have a sordid history of trapping people inside them -- thankfully, it's never been me -- but it means the thought is always in my head. I'm always just about to get trapped in an elevator.

And everyone knows, the next logical step after an elevator trapping you inside it, is for said elevator to lose its grippers or snap its cables and crash forty feet to the ground.

Admittedly, I know very little about the inner mechanics of elevators. I know just enough to assume that one faulty system likely means the whole thing is going to go down in flames.

I take two elevator trips into my office, and out of my office, meaning four elevator trips in a workday. The elevator in my parking garage is no better than the one in my office, in fact, is slightly worse, as it has an inclination to break down in cold weather. Just for the heck of it. It's cold and doesn't feel like working any more than the rest of us.

The past couple weeks, the parking garage elevator has had some problems with the door-opening mechanism. I stepped in it the other day, hit the "G" and the "door close" buttons. Nothing happened. Similarly, nothing happened when I pressed the button more impatiently and insistently, and not even when I leaned on it angrily. The button was most definitely ignoring me.

I decided it must be broken, and made a move to leave through the perpetually-open door, when the buzzing started.

You know that buzzing -- it's the one that sounds when someone is holding down the "door-open" button -- like your boss trying to give you some last-minute projects to work on as you're trying to leave, or the strange lady from the second floor who wants to hold the door open for her friend who will be here any second.

I know quite well what the buzzing means. Logically, that is. My instinct, though, when I hear that sound, is to assume that it is the elevator's double-secret warning buzzer, you know, saying "all systems failing" and "evacuate immediately" and "this elevator will self-destruct in T-minus twenty seconds".

So, the elevator started buzzing even though no one was pushing the door-open button, but rather there was something wrong with the door-closing mechanism. At the same time, the door started closing.

Mind you, the door closing was precisely what I had been trying to accomplish. I'd been feverishly pressing the button seconds before.

But now, the door was closing and the buzzer was sounding.

In the split second I had to make a decision, I darted out the elevator door before it closed all the way. I mean, the ability to open and close its doors is, in my opinion, the second-most important job an elevator has. Behind only being able to move, you know, up and down. Safely.

So, I'm thinking, if this elevator can't figure out how to shut its doors correctly, it's probably on its last leg of being able to remember how to open its doors appropriately, which means if I stay in this elevator, I will get down to the first floor and be stranded there for the remainder of the day, and that would mean being stranded roughly 14 feet above the bottom floor of this elevator's path, seeing as it how it also travels to the basement; and as I mentioned before if an elevator is stuck, it stands to reason that it is mere seconds away from plummeting.

I took the stairs.

Okay, maybe it is a debilitating fear.

Don't even get me started on airplanes.