Birthday at Newport Beach

We had the pleasure of taking one last run to the beach before summer ended the last weekend of July.  There were about 15 families from our ward/ around here that went, and we had a BLAST!  That is the way to go to California!  Our kids were in heaven playing with friends, and we had a great time talking with all the adults.  Truly heaven on earth.  We all decided we need to do this every year!

Addi made friends with Gary (she pronounces geeeiirreee)  They had a ton of fun!!

Just getting buried.

Some of the group chillin' on the beach.  The weather was perfect!

I had to snap this picture of the shop in Balboa.  No one spells Kathryn like I do!  

 We ran into this crazy guy on the sidewalk.  Yes, he is standing on the handlebars riding down the street!!!

Conner and his best buddy Matt with their sand crabs.  We could not get these guys out of the water for 3 days straight!!

Addi and her strut.  I wish you could see it!

Savannah, Addi and Sara enjoying a little cupcake for dad's birthday.

Lane's birthday is the 28th of July, and it was the Saturday we were there.  I mentioned to my friends I was going to sneak away and pick up a cake at Costco that was about 4 miles away and bring it back.  They quickly and very wisely convinced me to just go to the grocery store up the street and buy a cake there.  With traffic they said my 4 mile trip would take 2 hours! 

Boy were they not kidding!  Holy cow!  I walked all the way down to our car (almost 1 mile away) and drove 1 mile to the grocery store where I bought 2 cakes and some cupcakes and utensils.  Then I drove back and circled for 20 mins.  looking for any parking place!  No dice.

Then I started calling Lane and all my friends praying someone would answer so I could meet them at the beach and drop off all the stuff I bought and then go park the car far away.  No one was answering!  I was getting super bugged because I had been gone almost 1 hour with my little "errand".  I finally got ahold of someone, and they sent Lane to grab all the stuff from me, and I drove clear down the road, found a place to park, and walked all the way back.  Overall it took me 1 1/4 hours to do that little errand!  Crazy!!!

Oh well, at least Lane got his carrot cake for his birthday, and everyone sang to him.  Course we couldn't light the candles because it was wayyyy too windy!

The big 45!!!!

That night 6 of us families met at the Claim Jumper and we had a great dinner and dessert to celebrate Lane's day again.  It was so fun!  What a great group of people and friends, and I can't figure out why I don't have a picture of all of us!  I'm sure someone does somewhere!!We played some serious beach volleyball. Ha! 

This is the amazing huge jellyfish one of the teenagers caught.  Don't worry, we released it back into the ocean.  But how cool is that????

Kayla and her daddy

We took a little trip over to Balboa island to get Balboa ice cream bars, and they made a side stop in the candy shop!  What  a cute little island with darling houses that only cost around $2 million!  We'll probably buy one next week. Ha!

Anyway, it was a great trip, and though I didn't really get Lane many gifts for his actual birthday, I think he was OK with carrot cake on the beach! :)

Photo Shoot

July 28th was Lane's birthday (which we celebrated on the beach and will be documented in another post!)

So what, what, what do you give the guy who already has everything?  I mean really .... there is not a single thing we could buy him that he needed!  Ugh!!

So, Kayla got the brilliant idea to call my friend Jane who is a great photographer and do a photo shoot and update the pictures in his office!  I quickly bought some clothes in matching colors, and she came over and let me tell you, it was HARD to not post every single picture!  They all turned out so good!

My kids are gorgeous.  I know that's bragging, and frankly obnoxious, but I am totally biased and love them to death!  So, for posterity and history, here are a few of the pictures we ended up with.

Addi - 4 years 11 months

Kayla - 17 years and 3 days old

Conner - 8 yrs and 3 months

Savannah - 10 yrs and 9 months

 Yeah, you gotta admit - they are kinda cute.

A little more Utah ....

Welcome to the Cook family road trip!!!  Don't you wish you could come??? :)  (Yes, this was totally staged, but later in the trip would have been real had I had the camera out!)

Just driving through a HUGE fire in the middle of nowhere Utah.

The kids got to carry the sign for the parade at Grandma and Grandpa's ward 4th of July Breakfast.  I got to help make the breakfast with my mom and dad! Pancakes and Buttermilk syrup!

Mom and the giddy teenagers going to EFY!!

I can't go home to Bountiful without getting a Nielsen's Custard!  The nights are sooooo beautiful in Utah it was great to sit outside and talk with Kyle and Angi and mom and dad, and of course get my chocolate fix in a Brownie Concrete!

My mom and dad are serving full-time as hosts in the Humanitarian Center in Salt Lake City.  We took the kids in to have grandma and grandpa give them a tour.  So interesting, and so cool to see all the help the church gives all around the world.  Plus our tour guides were the best! :)

Meeting up with our "tour guides".

Mom telling us about the clothing collections and disbursements.

OK, maybe not everyone was thrilled to do the tour! :)

The teenage brigade.  Some beautiful girls!

Aspen Grove

One of our favorite family vacations when I was young was going to Aspen Grove.  Then, 5 years ago mom and dad took all of us kids and our families to Aspen Grove for a big reunion.  We had so much fun that Kaelyn and I decided we wanted to go back again with our families, and mom and dad came along too! :)

So, we made the drive to Utah, and anxiously looked for our cousins when we arrived at the family Camp Saturday afternoon.
We checked into our cabins, which are exactly as I remembered them from when I was 14 and there with my family!

Addi and Ryan had lots of fun flying around on the cabin broom.

After unloading our stuff into the cabin, we headed over to the main quad area to sign up for all the adult sport tournaments.  Tough things like badminton, shuffleboard, tennis, horseshoes, etc.  :)

I'm there all of 5 minutes, and I hear someone say, "Kathryn!!!"  I look over, and there is my next door neighbor dorm mate from Freshman year at BYU,  Diana Call Ferre!!  She lives in Chandler, AZ, and was up there with her family the same week as us for a vacation!  Holy cow!  This was going to be fun! 

Diana and I

Then, I am looking at my competition for the women's singles tennis, and there is a lady standing next to me looking as well.  We figure out we have to play each other in the first round of tennis.  So, we start talking and I ask her where she is from.  She says Laguna Niguel.  I tell her we are from Mesa, does she know anyone from Mesa?  She pauses and says, "Well, do you know a Steven Wade?"  My jaw drops, and I say, "Well yes, my brother in law is Steve Wade! How do you know him?  or is it even the same one?"

She then tells me they rent their house out while they are away, and the Wades from Mesa rented it.  When she told me they listed it on Craigslist, I knew it was Steve and Shauna, because Steve is the king of Craigslist!  Small, small world!!  Kinda crazy!

Then, later that night I realize one of the families there is a couple that met at BYU and I had a class with them when they met.  In fact, the guy asked me out on a date and I had to tell him I'm sorry, I'm married!!!  Awkward!

Well, he never talked to me the rest of the semester, but I watched him and the girl sitting across the room from him talk and flirt, and they ended up getting married, and there they were at Aspen Grove 20 years later with 4 kids just like Lane and I!  Crazy crazy crazy!  He never did let on that he remembered me or anything.  I'm hoping not!

I did say I wanted redemption from the last time we were at Aspen Grove.  We went 5 years ago, when I was 1 week from delivering Addi.  To say that I was a huge whale would really be an understatement.  And of course, the first night there, I see a guy from my freshman year who was totally in love with me.   I'm sure he wasn't feeling bad that he was too short for me when he saw how large I got when pregnant!  Ugh!!

Here's who came along:

Mom and Dad (obviously)

Kaelyn and Scott's family

Our family!

The week is packed with fun things to do, and as a mom and dad you don't have to lift a finger!  It is a true vacation!  We had so much fun doing so many things.  Sadly Kayla was only there the first couple of days.  She spent the rest of the week at EFY, much to the dismay of all the older teenage boys at Aspen Grove! :)

Conner and Dad doing "Minute to Win It"

Me with my coveted paper awards!

Our little billy goat climber Savannah

The Bug!  I could eat this kid up!

Lauren and Savannah waiting their turn

One of the highlights for us adults was taking a Communications test to tell us what kind of communicators we are.  There are 4 different "types" of communications.  That was hilarious and insightful.  Boy did we learn a lot about how to talk to our spouses/siblings/kids in a way that they understand.  We had a good time laughing at how spot on some of the typical traits of our type of communicators have!  Does that make sense?  Needless to say, I am an Expressive.  Hmm, I don't know how that's possible because I rarely express how I feel or my opinions! ha!!!

And here's a huge collage of lots of stuff:  groups, leaders, Family Follies, climbing wall stuff and more.  I'm still waiting for Angi to send me more pictures.  She is the family photographer and got some good pics of us while they were up there one day with us.

Sorry this collage is too small and you can't see anything.  Ugh!  They change Picasa and Blogger on me!!

But, it was seriously so fun.  I recommend going with friends or family.

Back to BYU

One of the fun things about running the race in Utah Valley was that we got to go back to our old college stomping grounds.  Lisa and I had a blast telling stories about who we dated, where we lived, where we went, etc. etc.  My favorite was driving past the football stadium and showing her the parking lot where I was parked one night with a boyfriend and we were "talking" and next thing I know there is a knock on my window.  I roll it down and there is a campus police asking if I am OK.  YIKES!  I assured him I was fine, and we never parked in that lot again! :)

Before we left mom and dad's Lisa had to get her hair big enough to be allowed to walk around Utah! HA!!!  I tell you what, we saw a few people with hair exactly like this!  What the heck???

This pizza place is owned by a guy Lisa went to high school with.  It was very good!!!  I highly recommend it!!

I had to drive by our first house that Lane and I lived in.  It is sooooo cute!  We lived in this house rent free to take care of it for some friends of Lane's parents.  What a blessing that was!  I loved this little house!  2 bedrooms, 1 bathroom and a huge garden in the back that the neighbor across the street took care of, but told us we could eat anything we wanted out of it!  Such good memories of this cute little house!  I'll never forget the really old man Clyde, across the street would come over and mow our front yard without telling us.  One day Lane was inside that big window at the front studying on the floor.  Clyde started mowing the lawn, and Lane had to duck and hide so he didn't feel like such a scum for being the 24 year old kid inside while the 75 year old man was mowing!!

Here's a picture of the Y up on the hill that surprisingly Lisa and I never did hike up to!  You're kinda supposed to do that at some point of your college life, but we never did.  We joked about how we would hike it after we ran the marathon.  HA!!!

Missing from the blog world

Kayla just asked me tonight, "Mom?  Are you not going to blog anymore?"
Me: "I don't know Kayla, I just don't seem to be into that much anymore, and no one reads it anyway, but it was a good family journal for us, so I can't decide."
She said, "I read it!"
She also lives it every day!

We've had a busy, fun summer.  I have to put the pictures up and write about it all for our family history.

I'll do that next week.
When the kids are in school, and I'm not teaching 22 aerobics classes.

First Marathon Ever!!!

When I told people I was running my first full marathon, 90% of the time I got the same reaction:  "What?  Really?  I thought you ran marathon's all the time!"

For that very reason (combined with many others) I decided I had to run a marathon.

Now, when I tell people I ran my first full marathon last weekend, they look at me and say, "What?  Really?  I thought you had run several or ran them all the time!" (That just happened Friday afternoon with 2 ladies I was talking to.  They both said it!)

At least now I can say I ran one.

Lane would like me to say that is the only one.

Unfortunately, that will probably not be the case.

You see, I have this disease.  It's called the "I can do it better" disease.  This disease doesn't come up in competition with other people, though.  Strangely, when competing against other people or friends, many times my mental conversation goes something like this: "You don't have to beat them, just stay up with them.  Keep them in your sights."  Or it says, "Wow, they are really fast!  Good for them, I'll just do my thing, because there is always going to be someone faster, better (and skinnier- how did that get in here?) than you!"

I'm really OK with being pretty mediocre at everything.

BUT!  When I do a race, when I finish, if I feel I could have been faster/stronger/better, I have to do another one to prove I can!  I want to beat myself, thus the "I can do it better" disease.

So, for my own posterity, here is the play by play of my first, but probably not last, marathon:

JUNE 9, 2012


The alarm sounds at 2:45 a.m. My friend Lisa Wallace and I wake up bright eyed, and bushy-tailed (my dad's saying) ready to go run my first and her second marathon. We get dressed, pack our bag, make sure everything is in order, and drive the 2 miles down the street to the parking lot to meet the busses that will take us up the canyon.  The last bus left at 4:15 a.m., so no sleeping in that morning!  Us and 7,000 other crazy people were ready to go.  We ride about 45 mins. up Provo Canyon and through a small town called Wellsville.  We are dropped off at a cow field with rows of port-a-potties, and some fire pits to snuggle up around and keep warm.  It is a beautiful morning, and expected to hit a high of only 75.  Perfect day!!!

I counted about 50 port-a-potties!

As the sun peaks over the mountains from the east, the excitement starts to build in the air.  Everyone is encouraged to line up according to how fast you think you will run the race.

This brings to mind yet again, what will be my plan?  We listened to some pros lecture the day before.  They said, "hydrate, hydrate, hydrate" and don't start too fast if this is your first marathon.  You will hit the wall and die.  I had heard that so many times from many people.  I also was concerned about the elevation difference.  I live at about sea level, and the race was at about 5-6,000 ft.

So, in my head I thought my best best time could be 4 hours, my realistic time 4:15, and my worst time 4:30.  I also decided I would drink water and powerade and walk 10 seconds at every water station.  They said what you don't do in the beginning to save seconds can cost you lots of minutes at the end in cramping, dehydration, "the wall", etc.  I didn't want that.

Standing behind the 4 hour finish pacer.

But then I start thinking about how I know myself.  I need to start fast because then my body will keep that pace.  It is hard for me to start slower and make myself speed up.  Plus, the first 8 miles were supposedly downhill (I later found that those downhills also had 5 good uphills!!!)

So, we got behind the 4 hour pacer, and took off with the shot of the gun.  Well, wouldn't you know it, 1 mile in, I have to pee.  Are you kidding me??? I never have had to do that!  Nerves? maybe. Pre-race hydration drinks?  Maybe.  Whatever it is, I need to pee.  However, there is a line at the port-a-potties.  So I continue on to mile 2, 3, 4, and finally at mile 5 I don't care.  I wish I was a guy who could just run to the side and pee behind a tree like so many guys did!  I decide to stand in line, and Lisa keeps on going. I stopped my watch to see what time difference it would make for me (in the end it was only 4 minutes.)

I do my business as fast as possible, and take off running again.  I feel good.  It is a beautiful morning, the sun is coming up over the mountains, there are horses running around, mountains around, things are green, I have music in my ears and I feel really good! 

Me and some of the other crazies on a beautiful morning marathon!

At about mile 12 I am running up a hill and see Lisa up ahead.  I caught her!  Unfortunately I still haven't found the 4 hour pacer.  We rejoice in our reunion and start chatting while we run.  Lisa is feeling OK.  At mile 13 I turn to her and jokingly say, "Hey!  We only have to run 13 miles!  That is a half marathon!  Want to come with me?  Let's do it!"

She pulls out 2 Excedrin for pain, and I asked if she happened to have any extra?  I thought maybe my legs won't hurt toward the end if I take a pain killer.  She said she had a couple, so I took some.  We run another mile, and I start feeling really good!  It is downhill, my legs are basically numb, and I want to kick it!  I think that was Ecstasy and not Excedrin she gave me!

I pick up the pace a bit and Lisa gives me the OK to leave her.  I feel good.  I'm singing AIDA and Wicked and Justin Bieber and Carrie Underwood and Taio Cruz and Jason DeRulo and Taylor Swift all down the canyon.  I hit mile 20 and feel great and pass what used to be Bridal Veil falls.  I pull out my phone and snap a picture.

I start to wonder when the "wall" is going to hit.  I feel good!  I am at the end of the canyon and have 4 miles to go until I'm done.  I can't believe I am almost done with this marathon, and I feel great!  I'm breathing fine, no problems there at all.  Legs feel great.  I pick it up a little.  I keep playing "I pass you, you pass me" with various runners.  I hate that unintentional game.

3 miles to go and the bottom of my foot starts to pull a little.  I've never had that before, but it doesn't hurt or bother me too bad.  I run past the last 2 water stations because I really feel good and don't want to stop and walk.  I run past BYU and all the memories I have of going there.  I get to downtown and have 1 mile left.  I can't believe I still haven't hit my wall.  I realize I'm not going to hit any wall.  I am going to finish this smiling!  I get a little emotional as I begin to think that I just reached a goal I set for myself 3 years ago that I never in a million years thought I ever would have set for myself in my life!  I think of my great friend Lisa and how she was willing to step in and train with me and run the race with me.  I NEVER could have done it without her!  I don't have enough self motivation to do that!!!  I ran my first marathon at, ahem, um ...... 40. 

 I pick up the pace a little more and cross the finish line with an official time of 4:11:54.  I look around in awe, and want so bad to hug someone or talk to someone but there is no one there.  Just me.  So I smile, congratulate myself, pinch myself to be sure it's real and bask in the fact that I just did it. 

The legs and feet that served me well that day!!

My time without the potty break! :)

Then I immediately realize that this will not be my last marathon.  I could have gone faster, I could have done more, I didn't leave it all out there.  I try not to be disappointed by this.  I did a good, safe, first race.  I didn't injure myself, I didn't have a horrible experience, it was a good "maiden voyage".  But now I do know I can't call it good with that.  I have to do another one and break 4 hours.  Why?  I don't know, I'm just crazy I guess!  It's that "I can do better" disease.

Lisa and I at the end.  What a great friend!