September 2012

Already?!?!?!?!  Holy Smokes! Where did the month go?  I feel like I just barely sat down and typed up August.  Wow!

So September started out with a trip to American Fork, UT over Labor Day weekend to see our newest nephew, baby Isaac.  Dale's brother and his wife AND his parents all made the trek too.  It was one of the few times that the entire Walker/Reshetnikov family has been able to be together.  It was a lot of fun.  RJ got to spend time with his cousins and they played a lot.  His cousin, Alex, was staying at the same hotel as us, so they played together a lot.

We came back home and a couple days later, RJ started his second year of preschool.  He was VERY excited about this.  In May, he never quite understood why he just "stopped" going to school.  It was a very long summer of "Am I going to preschool tomorrow?"  It is great having him back in class even though I miss having him at home.

We also made the trek to Blackfoot (oh so far away...) to the East Idaho State Fair with our friend's Amanda and Noah.  The boys' most favorite thing by far was the Children's Science Exhibit Tent where they had different activity booths set up that were supposed to teach the kids a different lesson about science.  I don't think that our boys learned too much about force or gravity but they sure had fun playing with everything.  Also while at the fair, RJ was able to get his face professionally face painted for the first time ever.  He was SO good and set SO still for the lady.

RJ also stepped in and helped me out a bunch over the month.  He helped me make pumpkin snickerdoodles and he always brings our trash can back to the garage after trash pick-up. 

My activities for the month included....canning and running AND running and canning.  Seriously.  September 29, 2012 was my first ever marathon (that's 26.2 miles, ya'll) and pretty much ALL my free time was running or biking to train for the marathon.  Finally, this month the garden started to slow down, but I still had tomatoes and cucumbers and peppers galore.  I kept busy canning pickles and salsa.  Just when I had everything from the garden caught up and the kitchen semi-cleaned again, a friend dropped off peaches.  Now, we may be the only weirdos out there that don't really care for fresh peaches...SOOO that meant "a-canning I will go again".  I made all different varieties of peach jam.  It was kind of fun experimenting with different fruit blends and seasonings.

Back to the marathon....I DID it!!!!!  There were a couple things that I ended up HATING about this marathon: 1) the heat and 2) the head wind.  I knew when I registered that the course was pretty much all downhill.  I also knew that that was going to be hard because downhill uses different muscles then uphill or flat running.  However, I was NOT expecting almost 80 degree weather and a head wind for all 21 miles of the downhill.  Finally the last 5.2 miles the course leveled out though it was still hot and had a head wind.  My friend Aarin and I finished at 5 hours 5 minutes.  If you want to be technical, I am not "thrilled" with my time because I know that I can run better, BUT I am so SOO happy that I was able to accomplish this goal and overcome both the physical and mental obstacles associated with this goal.  There may be another one in my future in 2 or 3 years....not any time soon though. :)

In between all of this, Dale has kept busy with school.  He feels that he is never caught up and that he is always behind, BUT he still loves what he does for a living and he loves his classes he is teaching.

I think that is about it for us :)