Live and Learn

Saturday we ran with about 12,000 people in the St. Jude marathon/half marathon event. We did the half, no full marathon for us! Somehow I talked Jason into doing it with me and he has been an absolutely awesome running partner. Training together was so fun and the race was definitely worth it. The thing with first experiences is you always learn a lot, like when you run past a water station slow down to drink it or else you will get more water up your nose than in your mouth. Yes, that happened to me. Or, if you have to use the bathroom before the race and think it's just from being nervous use it anyway or at mile 9 you will literally be running for the bathroom! We ended up finishing in 2:06:12 which overall we are happy with. We had been training to finish in right at about 2 hrs. so I can't complain too much. It was definitely a fun experience and hopefully I will be running more of these in the future!

Running down Beale St.:

(above photo from here)

We ended at the Autozone park-the baseball stadium downtown

Our medals:

And of course, no event in Memphis is complete without an Elvis or two:

(above photo from here)

Checking that off my list

Last weekend we talked our friends into going with us to this place. Okay, it wasn't very hard to talk them into it. I decided this was on the list of must go to places in Memphis because everytime we drive by it there is a line out the door. So, because of course there was a line out the door when we went we had to entertain ourselves somehow.

Wade, Heidi's husband was there too, but I'll spare him of the embarrassment of the jumping photo. (you're welcome.)

(Candice, Heidi, and I)


We started off with the fried pickles. (excuse the horrible photo quality) Let me tell you I hate pickles. hate them. But not these. They were actually so good!

Yep, that is a lot of chicken. 18 pieces of it. (the other two were on another part of the table) And it didn't disappoint. Definitely the best fried chicken I've ever had.

The next day we ran the Eye 5k for Jason's school. We felt the chicken the. whole. time. It was still fun though. I ran it in 25:20 and Jason in 23:50. My goal was under 25 min. but with all that fried chicken I feel okay about it.

Jason looks soaked because he was. It rained and thankfully they provided people to watch the kids! I don't think Javen minded at all. By the way he snarfed down that entire piece of pizza in about 12 seconds!

Meet the Flinstones

Hope everyone had a Happy Halloween!

And because Javen looked really sad in the last photo here's another one:

San Juan, PR

Every October there is a COVD (an optometry organization) meeting and we've been able to go the past two years. Whoever got to pick the spot this year should get to do it every year.

The first few days we spent in Old San Juan:

And it was HOT and we felt like this:

I was trying to get Jason to take a picture with me after we had walked about 1,000 miles, Javen had dumped water all down him, and we had been taking pictures all day.

This is how we kept Javen entertained:

The next few days that the boys went to class we spent in old San Juan shopping, taking pictures, posing, and taking more pictures. Sue reverse parallel parked this on a downhill one way cobblestone street. It was a proud moment. Until we had to move because we were informed that spot was only for taxis. Dumb.

I'm not sure what this is but everyone else was taking pictures of it so I thought maybe I should too.

The posing:

One night Jason and I were able to go Kayaking at the bioluminescent bay area. It was awesome!

This is a dramatized and possibly photoshopped photo of what it looked like:

(The water did glow-and it was amazing-but not quite like this) photo from here

We spent a day hiking to other lookout areas

And to here:

And exactly one week ago today I was sitting on this sand:

and doing stuff like this:

Our guide told us it has been featured as one of the most beautiful beaches in the world. It is now a goal of mine to one day own a part of this island, although that may require selling all of our possessions(in 20 years when we have some worth selling) plus a few limbs. Maybe it will just be my happy place for now.

Did I mention that I think he is the cutest boy?

September Visitors

Jason's brother Cade and his wife Kelsie came to visit. Cade had an interview at SCO and got accepted. Wahoo Cade! It was fun to have them out but my camera didn't make it past their cute boy:

It was fun having them and we're glad they were able to come stay!

The next week my Dad and Step-Mom came for a quick trip. We did lots of eating out, eating ice-cream, and cheesecake. We did find time to explore in between all of the eating. The first day we went to the zoo and this was the face Javen had the entire time:

The petting zoo-we were trying to get him a little closer:

Isn't this guy great?

We discovered what Javen would look like as a china baby..what do you think?

We obviously thought it was hillarious:


But this guy was pretty serious, I think he was scouting out which person was going to be his next meal. Seriously look at those creepy eyes!

Colettle hadn't seen Beale Street yet so we thought she needed the experience of watching people eat BBQ and inhale all of their second hand smoke.

It really was fun, aside from the second hand smoke. Javen even thought about dancing to the blues band, until it got so loud our brains were vibrating.

We love all ya'll! haha. Thanks for coming and we miss you!

Want one??

Last Thanksgiving I did a post with Javen wearing these awesome hats...and here they are again! Aren't they cute? Go here to buy some. They have some darling girl ones too.

Doing something I told myself I would never do

I let my baby swim in the ocean for the first time. Naked. With lots of people (who were not naked)

We forgot his swimming suit so we let him walk in a little.

And it quickly turned into this. He was loving it so much we had to let him get in. This is the face he made every time a wave hit him.

And then his diaper started doing this and the poor kid could hardly walk. We had no choice, the diaper had to come off.

Just so you know, we now have some really good photos to bribe Javen with one day. hehe. He did make one cute naked baby at the beach though!

We tried to squeeze in as much of Charleston in 5 hours as possible. The result was not a lot of pictures and future plans to go back. (It's been added to my list of places to visit that one day we will get to.)

The custom house..one of the only tourist pics we got besides the beach. We did have an amazing lunch and drove by Fort Sumter of course, but no photos.

We went to a few football games and Javen got a little too excited over the cheerleaders...but we'll just pretend he was this into the game.

And just for fun here are a few more pics from Gatlinburg. We hiked 4 miles one way to get to this one:

Ramsey Cascades

This was the view from our cabin:

I love vacations, especially when they involve the mountains and the ocean.

Gatlinburg

Jason had a week off between semesters and luckily we have in-laws who love to travel as much as we do. We met them in Nashville and took off to the Smokey Moutains for a few days.

I don't have the photos yet of all of us together, but here's a little family pic.

Javen spent most of his trip in this carrier. Which thanks goodness he loved it. And if your looking for an extra good workout carry 20+ lbs. on your back!

See? He loved it.

He even fell asleep, I don't know how but he did.

We also had our 4 year anniversay while we were there. Wahoo! Here's to us, four years later and it keeps getting better and better.

This really doesn't do the scenery any justice. It was amazing. We mostly hiked to waterfalls, but I don't have those pics yet either.

The next few are my up-close and personals with nature...I got to borrow my mother-in-laws macro lens and had way too much fun.

This little guy has a story..we called him the alien. We looked and there seriously was nothing holding him in mid-air, which is why we concluded that he must be an alien. He followed us back to the cabin too by riding on our car. crazy. Just look at him. Alien, right?

I know this one is a little blurry but I've never actually seen a centipede. He did this cool little curl up in a ball thing when you touched him with your foot. we tried to get a photo of it....but lets just say we were a little too forceful and this little centipede is no longer. whoops.

Maybe if my eyes were this big I'd be able to see better.

Sue braved this one. I was too big of a chicken, but she got a great pic.

The last stop of our trip was this site. I don't remember the name, but it's the highest point of the smokey mountains. They say this is what it looks like pretty much every day...which I assume is the reason for their name.

The trip was amazing and hopefully I'll get around to puting up some waterfall photos. We spent the rest of our trip in Charlotte, NC and Charleston, and those places need thier own post.