Rock n' Roll Marathon

Chris has been training for months for his first official marathon.  You may remember back in May that he ran in an unofficial marathon but he still wanted to run an official marathon.  Plus he did proper training for this marathon.  He chose the Rock n' Roll marathon because every couple of miles they have cheerleaders or a band playing to help keep you motivated. We all made signs to help cheer Chris on and hopefully cheer on the rest of the runners.

The runners really seemed to like this one.

I had someone stop me and ask to take a picture of this one.

Our biggest comment from runners was they wanted to know if the Chuck Norris sign was true.

I did have to stop and take a picture of the sunrise coming up in front of the arch.

Our plan was after we saw him cross the start line we would meet him at around the 11 mile marker.  Chris had told us where we needed to be at and after we cheered him on and several of the other runners we headed that way.  The only bad thing is when you aren't familiar with a city and all of the streets are closed for the race, it becomes very frustrating trying to get there!  We eventually did find where we were supposed to meet him but after we received a text saying that he was at the 13 mile marker we realized that we were in the wrong spot.  I guess the half marathoners and the full marathoners split at the 10 mile mark and you couldn't see that on the race map.  I'm sad that we didn't get to cheer Chris on but all of the runners who saw our signs LOVED them.

Once we realized that we had missed Chris we decided to head back to our hotel and walk to the finish line to meet him.  Our hotel was located right next to the NFL football stadium and they were having a football game that day.  All of the streets leading up to our hotel where closed and we had to pay to park 6 blocks away to make it back to our hotel.  I bet we ended up walking 4 miles that day!

Chris crossed the finish line in 4 hours and 59 minutes.  His goal was to be finished in less than 5 hours and he just made it!  I'm so proud of how hard he's been working towards his goals.  He's already training for the Little Rock marathon in February and he has several more races planned for next year.  I told him that he needs to start picking races in cities that we've never been before so we can plan a vacation around it.

Meet me in Saint Louis

Last month we took a long weekend trip and drove to Saint Louis so Chris could run in the St. Louis Rock n Roll marathon.  Since Chris and his parents had never been before we thought we'd make it into a mini vacation.  We drove up Friday morning and hit the outlet mall right outside of Saint Louis. After spending the afternoon shopping we headed to our hotel and then went to the convention center so Chris could get checked in for the race.  When we got finished with the running expo we got some dinner and then did a little bit more shopping.  We finished the night at Schafly's brewery with drinks with Chris's coworkers.  I'm not a beer fan at all but I will say that the Pumpkin Ale was to die for!!

Saturday we woke up early and drove to Grant's Farm.  It is owned by Anheuser-Busch and that's where some of the Budweiser Clydesdales are stabled.  We were hoping that we'd be able to book one of the Clydesdale tours but they were all sold out.  We did get to go into the stables and see the horses and pet them.  We also took the tram around the grounds and got to sample some free beer.  When we finished with Grant's farm we drove to the Budweiser brewery to take one of the free tours of the facility.  Since we didn't pay for one of the more extensive tours, the tour that we took was really basic. After the tour we ate at restaurant across the street that used to be an old police station.

The young Clydesdale is the size of a regular horse!  

This kangaroo kept trying to get a leaf off the tree.

You were able to eat in several of the jail cells and they were using this one for a wedding reception.

We wrapped up the afternoon with another trip to the running expo and then headed to dinner at Charlie Gitto's so everyone running the race could carb load.  I will say that if you plan on eating at Charlie Gitto's make sure and make a reservation a week before.  We had to eat at 4:45 and the owner was really rude about it.  Other than that the food and service was amazing.  Our drinks were never below full at all times.  We wrapped up the evening with a visit to a local chocolate bar.

Sunday was the race and I'm going to skip that part of the day because I'll do another blog entry about that later.  After the race we went to City Museum and I wish that we would have had more time to explore it before they closed.  We did get to go down the 10 story slide and I crawled around in some of the caves.  At one point I thought I was going to get stuck and they would have to call the fire department to get me out!! But thankfully I was able to squeeze my way out! We ended the night with eating some traditional Saint Louis style pizza and of course we had Ted Drewes frozen custard for dessert.

One of the various slides at City Museum.

Monday we woke up early and checked out of our hotel and headed over to the arch.  We wanted to get there early so we'd be one of first groups up in the arch.  If you're going to be in St. Louis it's totally worth going up in the arch.  The views are gorgeous especially during fall.

If you're claustaophobic then you might not want to go up in the little pod that takes you to the top!

View from the top of the arch.

After we finished our tour of the arch we headed back to our car which was parked in the Hyatt hotel parking garage.  I was walking over a metal storm grate when the next thing I know I'm laying sprawled out on the ground!  My foot was the perfect size to fit through one of the grates.  I felt so bad because Chris had to drive home because my ankle was all busted up. It's been 3 weeks and I my ankle is still healing up.

Funkytown

This is the longest I've gone without posting to our blog but I really haven't had any motivation to blog or had anything to blog about.  Since about June I've been in a funk, I really don't know how to describe it.  I know that Chris has noticed it and he's been trying to get me out of it.  So if you're wondering why I haven't been acting normally this is why.  Hopefully I'll be back to my normal self soon.  I don't want people to think that there is something wrong with me and I really haven't been spending time with anyone but Chris anyways.  He's gotten the brunt of my mood!

We really didn't do much over the summer.  We celebrated our 12th anniversary on June 8th.  We didn't do anything big since our trip to Mexico was our gift to each other. We attended a couple of charity galas, and watched fireworks.  In August we went to Mena for a wedding and watched some dirt track racing with Chris's family.  That's pretty much the highlights for us over the last couple of months.  Chris has been running a lot because he's training for the St. Louis marathon next month.  So we're really looking forward to a mini vacation.

Child Safety Center Gala

Color of Hope Gala

Life's a beach

The best thing about going on a beach vacation is if you don't want to do anything, you don't have to!  We had planned on taking 2-3 excursions but our television blow up a week before our vacation so our excursion budget was cut in half.  We ended up spending the majority of our time laying at the beach.  Which I was totally content with.  As long as I had a book to read and someone to bring me something to drink I would have stayed there our whole vacation.

We did do a few activities like kayaking and painting pottery.  I tried getting Chris to do Latin dancing but he decided he would rather paint instead.  It worked out for me because I really loved it. We painted for 2 days and I was really surprised at how well our pottery turned out!  We tried doing some of the activities at night but they all started at 9:30 and we were so exhausted from being outside that we went to bed early most nights.

They had us pretty busy most nights with all of the wonderful food to eat.  One night we had a private candlelit dinner along the beach to celebration our anniversary.  The next morning we woke up to breakfast delivered to our room prepared by the chef.  After that we had a couple's massage along the beach.  This was our last day and we headed back to the beach to relax.  After 30 minutes I looked over at Chris and he had a look of pure boredom on his face.  After another 30 minutes he still had the same look so I asked if he wanted to do an excursion and he said yes.

View from our private table for our candlelit dinner.

We had booked an excursion to go parasailing but it was cancelled because it was too windy.  The booking agent asking if there was something else that we wanted to do and he suggested swimming with the dolphins.  This is something that I've always wanted to do for as long as I can remember.  I know that Chris has never wanted to do this but he decided to do it for me.  I was so nervous about it but I had a blast!  The dolphins were so friendly and they loved being touched.  We paid extra to do the foot push which I was worried I was going to face plant it into the water but I was really proud of myself because I actually got pretty high!  We did buy the pictures that they sell but thankfully with Chris's negotiation skills we got a huge discount!!  If you ever travel to Mexico make sure and haggle! I definitely loved being at the beach but I think Chris and I have decided if we go back we'd want to go somewhere else like Jamaica or Aruba where the beaches are a little bit better.

We woke up early before breakfast to watch the sunrise.