Collin at 9

The last week of school is always hectic but fun as it almost always includes Collin's birthday!

 I can't believe he is already 9.  It seems like only yesterday that this sweet, chunky little monkey was this age....

Chad is 40

In May Chad turned 40 and we celebrated with a surprise overnight stay in Kansas City!

 As an added bonus, we were able to celebrate with Chad's college roommate and the best man in our wedding, Brian and his wife who also live in KC.

 Brian's 40th birthday was the day after Chad's so it was perfect timing and something the wives had been planning for quite some time.  It was awesome to see it come together and be able to hang out with them!

 Part of our surprise was attending an evening Royals game with some pretty amazing seats that Brian's mother purchased for all of us.  We had so much fun together and our seats were awesome!

Fine at 40.....40 never looked so good....whatever the best say is, they are all true! :)

6 After a Week

I took a week off but I got back after it Saturday and thought I'd run 3 or 4 miles in the cool and cloudy weather.

 

 My legs felt great and with the perfect running conditions, I went further and ran 6.

I don't have any race goals in the near future but I plan to start running 4-5 days a week and hopefully regain a faster pace before summer approached with its warmer temperatures.

Lucky 13

Saturday I ran the Wicked Half Marathon in Wamego, KS for the 3rd year in a row.  I've found over the seven years since my first half marathon that I prefer training for this distance in the winter months so a late March race date that is also close to home has been an ideal and cost effective fit.

 After dealing with my festive unwanted friend from the Mexican Rivera cyclospora, running was basically non-existent for me all summer and I didn't start trying to run on a consistent basis/regular distance until after the middle school cross country season concluded in October.  Getting the distances back was easy, the speed, stamina after long runs and time to fit in long runs on busy weekends with all our other family activities....was not easy.

So for Saturday's race, I was just focusing on finishing, staying positive and not paying attention to my pace (which I knew if I did I would become frustrated).  And as the day of the race drew closer, I also realized that I would most likely be running my 3rd half marathon in cold and rainy conditions.  And the photo above was the conditions at race time.

 It rained/misted  for the entire race.  Thankfully there were only brief moments (maybe 3 miles total) where we were fully exposed to the north winds while it was also raining in the 40 degree temperatures.  But I have found that with the right gear (socks that don't cause blisters and get warm as your feet sweat/get wet are the most crucial) I actually prefer this kind of weather for a half marathon verses running in heat and humidity.

My lucky 13th half marathon was my slowest time to date.  But my attitude was probably the best it has ever been during 13.1 miles.  It was a soggy photo finish but I accomplished my goal of finishing and staying positive.

Grandparents

We are so incredibly blessed to each have wonderful parents who also make pretty incredible grandparents to our boys!

They still help us and support us of when we need it and the boys make so many memories with them each time they are together.

Spring Breakin'

It's  spring break this week and the Bunger's are on a stay-cation.

We took a day trip to the Topeka Zoo and met my dear friend from high school, Amy and her two boys.  Having boys the same ages makes for instant fun together!

I am so glad we could both find a free moment in our busy schedules to get together and catch up.

There was some work involved in our spring break with the never-ending spring clean up of our yard.  And now that it's been a year since we had our 3 ginormous cottonwood trees removed from the backyard, we have been busy prepping this area to be grassed.

Which may sound like an easy task....accept when you dig up and transplant dozens upon dozens of flower bulbs, scoop out all the existing mulch from having the enormous stump ground out, filling said hole, leveling the area and then picking up all left over yard "stuff" that could get in the way of seeding this area to become a lawn.  To have an idea of just how massive these expensive cottonwood trees were, the boys are each holding up sections of roots that Chad had to hack out of the of the group with his ax while prepping this area.  The one Collin is holding up was easily the size of my leg.

Mitchell and I also dug up dozens upon dozens of flower bulbs in a massive front flower bed to transplant as we overhaul this area to make it smaller, add more grass and hopefully have a more manageable flower bed with less weeds and more actual flowers.

We also had fun seeing a movie in the new dine in movie theater and watching the second round of the NCAA Women's Basketball tournament.

The end of  our Spring Break 2017 Stay-cation will including my 13th half marathon on Saturday morning in Wamego.  I don't think I have ever felt so unprepared for running 13.1, so my goal will be to stay positive and be happy to finish.

It will be slow, but I am determined to complete it!

App Fail

The blogger app continues to be a huge fail on my phone so I have been unable to update my blog for several weeks. 

Mitchell finished up his last short course season in the 11-12 year old age group with his first appearance at MVS District Championships in Wichita a few weeks ago.  He had never qualified for this meet before and was very excited to see his hard work pay off, qualifying for 4 events. 

He didn't make finals for either day of Districts, but he did take more time off in half of the 6 events he swam and as always, he had a great time with his Marlins Swim Friends.

Mitchell has one more season of long course to swim with the 12 & under age group before he moves up with the big kids this fall swimming in 13& up sessions.  This will mean this is also our last season of having both boys in the same swim session (both in the morning or both in the afternoon).  Next fall, we will begin to start a "divide and conquer" approach on swim meet weekends!

 In other news that doesn't deal with swimming....we finally got to see a KSU game (their last of the regular season)

 Collin had the chance to have a small part in an internet commercial to promote teaching as a profession through KSDE!  While he wasn't sure about trying this out, he was a natural. :)

And I've still been training for my 13th half marathon!  I have come to terms with the fact that this will be my slowest finishing time to date.  It's been difficult to gain my endurance back and our hectic schedules coupled with a weekend full of the 24 hour stomach flu hitting our entire house has cut into training like I have in the past.  Right now I am just focused on finishing the race on March  25th.