Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Brady's 4th Birthday Party

Oh man, this was one of the most fun things I've been able to do as a dad so far. We held the party at a large building that has all kinds of air slides and bounce pits. Normally, Brady is pretty cautious when it comes to things like this so I didn't know how well he'd take to it. As soon as we opened the door, he bolted with his friends like a madman set loose from prison...it was a joy to watch them play with so much enthusiasm.

There was a separate play area for the "littler ones" but Alex wanted nothing to do with that...he went onto the big kids stuff with passion! One of the most fun parts of the day was playing in the bounce pit with Alex. He would stand up and all I had to do was bounce to knock him off balance...he'd fall over and laugh so hard that he could hardly breathe. Then he'd get up, stand still, and wait for me to do it again...over and over! My face hurt from laughing so much. I also took him up the biggest slide in the place and he liked that too. His favorite was probably the dinsosaur slide, which he did repeatedly. He could climb and slide down that one all on his own.


Brady was bouncing all over the place. He would do the big slide, then go to the bounce pit, then hop over the long obstacle course with climbing wall. All in all, it was an awesome day and lots of Brady's friends from school showed up.

Being a parent shouldn't be this much fun!

Lake Benbrook Half Marathon

Oh man, talk about worried. Here's how all this came about...

My friend Elizabeth talked me into signing up for the Benbrook Half on Jan 31st a long time ago. I figured why not, it would help get me motivated to start back with run training again. Well, on Jan 30th, I realized I still hadn't done squat for training! I had only ran a total of 17 miles for the entire month of January, and to top it off, here was the course description I was given for Benbrook: "the hills start before mile 1 and end after mile 12." Needless to say, I was a bit worried about just jumping in and running this.

My goals (in progressive order so that I must complete the first to move onto the next):
1. Don't get injured
2. Finish...seriously
3. Finish without walking
4. Negative split (2nd half faster than first half)

The race is great; where else can you do a half marathon for only $15? The views and scenery were really nice and they weren't kidding about the hills. One of the hilliest runs I've ever done. But I'm happy to say that despite my lack of training, I accomplished all 4 of my goals. The best part is that I actually am back running again since then and am really having fun doing it. My time was a good 20+ minutes slower than my PR and placing was not good, but c'est la vie. I had a lot of fun at this race.