Me, the Runner, Part 3: College and Beyond

2 February 2019, 10:01 pm by Giggles
Categories: Exercise, Family, Remembers

Part 1: The Early Years
Part 2: Jr. High Track & Field

I mentioned at the end of Part 2 that I’d dislocated my knee at the end of high school. But I still got back to running when I could. At BYU I did the inaugural Rex E. Lee Memorial 5K my freshman year and every year I was at school. Getting into a regular running routine was a bit of a challenge as I also got into the routine of living on my own, but things went better when I was running regularly.

1997 was the sesquicentennial of the Mormon pioneers arriving in the Salt Lake valley. As part of the celebrations for Pioneer Day, July 24th, there is the Deseret News Marathon that starts in the mountains and follows the route of the pioneers down the mountains and into town. My dad and I decided we would run the marathon in honor of the last wagons, the ones who had to breathe the dust of everyone else ahead of them. And that’s pretty much where I finished. But I officially finished. My dad finished ahead of me but came back to run the last bit with me.

In 2004 I ran my first 10K, part of the Deseret News Marathon. The runners never really thin out and the race finishes running down the parade route. With all of that pushing me on I finished in 59:45. It was a great race.

At midnight on December 31, 2007 I bundled up and went for a 3 mile run to get 2008 off to a running start. It became a tradition. One that has been modified most often to a walk that “starts on the right foot” due to being sick, or having small children, at New Year’s. But I hope to get the years off to a running start again soon.

In 2008 I turned 30 and my dad and I again ran the Deseret News Marathon, which is the day after my birthday. We both had the goal to qualify for Boston but his hip started giving him grief near the end and I had issues with my ankle through training and the race. But we finished. So the race didn’t beat us.


In 2008 I also moved to Tucson and that September I ran an 11 mile trail race in the mountains north of town and decided that I am definitely not a trail runner. But finding races in Tucson that aren’t on Sunday is hard.

As 2008 turned into 2009 Brett joined me on my midnight New Year’s run.

And that’s a good place to end part 3. Part 4 I’ll talk about running since getting married and having children.

4 Shared thoughts

Lasts

25 January 2019, 11:21 pm by Giggles
Categories: Family, Musings

One of the hardest parts of motherhood for me is lasts.

You rarely get to plan them. They sneak up on you. Sometimes they pass without you noticing till it’s too late.

Brett was completely in charge of the bed time routine with our oldest daughter. He would brush her teeth, give her a bath, put on her diaper, get her in pajamas, read to her, sing to her, and then hand her to me to nurse to sleep. After over 3 years of doing that (except the nursing to sleep, at 13 months he would hand her to me and I’d sing to her and put her down), she potty trained from one day to the next. We put her in underwear after her nap and then at bed time gave her the choice of underwear or a diaper. She chose underwear. And he realized he’d already put the last diaper on her. It was an unexpected emotional moment.

Our youngest is 19 months old. He’s still waking up to nurse at night. I LOVE my sleep. But I also consider those moonlit moments of holding my warm, soft, sleeping children so close to me to be sacred moments. Our bedroom window faces south and I have a rocker-recliner next to the window. I have loved opening the blinds at night when the moon is big to let that soft blue light rest on my baby’s cheeks and feel his small hand hold on to my chest.

But I can tell the LAST is coming. And as much as I want to sleep through the night again, I’m definitely going to miss those sacred moments.

And I won’t even know to enjoy that LAST until it’s already gone.

1 Shared thought

Me, the Runner, Part 2: Jr. High Track & Field

7 January 2019, 5:39 pm by Giggles
Categories: Exercise, Family, Remembers

See Part 1 for a review.

When I started jr. high in 7th grade I considered myself athletic. So I went out for every sport. And, it turns out, I’m not as athletic as I thought I was. At least not when it comes to team sports involving balls. And I was cut from every team. Track didn’t have cuts though. They could find something for everyone to do. I was definitely not a hurdler. That ambition never materialized. But I could run distances. So I ended up running the 800m, the 1600m, the 4x800m relay, and the anchor for the 1600m medley relay (200, 200, 400, 800).

Our junior high had a dirt track which actually gave us a slight advantage when we ran on real tracks. And there was a hill on the northeast corner of the track that we’d have to run repeats on. And our coach loved to have the 4×200 and the 4×400 relays race against us long distance runners so that we were going up against fresh legs regularly. We moved at the beginning of my 8th grade year and I did track again at the new junior high as well.

I enjoyed going to the meets. I had a lot of fun being with the other runners but I liked that for the most part how I did on an event was all up to me. My mom came to all of them and my dad was there for as many as he could be. I had a cooler they’d pack for me with oranges and Gatorade in it. I had issues with shin splints so my dad would rub Icey Hot on my legs for me.

After junior high I continued running with my dad in the mornings during the summer and doing 5Ks when they’d come up but I didn’t pursue track in high school. My senior year of high school I dislocated my knee and it took a long time for me to come back from that. Knowing what I know about injuries now I should’ve done some physical therapy but the doctors never suggested it.




Next up: Running during college and my first three marathons.

6 Shared thoughts

NaBloPoMo?

1 November 2018, 10:11 pm by Giggles
Categories: Family

Well, it’s National Blog Posting Month again. And in all the history of this blog I have never not blogged every day for the month of November. That includes the year we got married (mid-November). But I cheated just a tad that month and pre-dated/post-dated a few because there was no way I was getting online the weekend we got married.

This year I will still have the goal to blog every day this month. However, because four children actually do keep a person rather busy, I’m disastrously behind on our private family blog about all their comings and goings and doings and such. So my goal for this month will be to do one catch-up post on our kids’ blog every day so that I can record all their littles while they are still little and we still remember them rather well. Because darn it all if they don’t all grow super fast. That still won’t get me caught up, but it will at least get me close enough that I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Wish me luck!

And if you get a chance, sit down a few times this month yourself and record parts of your own story in whatever fashion you’d like.

1 Shared thought

IVF Means…

25 July 2018, 4:06 pm by Giggles
Categories: Life

I can think of no better way to describe IVF than as one of the greatest miracles of modern science. Growing up I always wanted children and assumed I would be able to have them. Getting married in 2009 in my 30s, my expectation for a possibly large family was cut down to the idea that I might only have one or two kids. Then Lisa and I began to go through the infertility ordeal. We met with Dr. Gelety, our reproductive endocrinologist, in early 2011, and he assured us that we would be pregnant by the end of the year. I was a bit of a skeptic up until that point, but when the promise was fulfilled, and Lisa got pregnant through IVF in November 2011, I started to become a believer.

Our struggles had not ended by that time, as that pregnancy ended in miscarriage. With so many obstacles to overcome, I remember one moment of sheer desperation in mid-2012 when I was virtually out of hope and believed I would die without posterity. But through faith, prayers, sacrifices and struggles, we became pregnant again in October 2012, and gave birth to a beautiful baby girl in June 2013. This was followed by a frozen transfer that resulted in the birth of our twins, a boy and a girl, in April 2015, and because the pregnancies had kept Lisa’s endometriosis at bay, we became pregnant naturally and had our final child, a boy, in June 2017.

None of this would have happened without IVF. It is astonishing to me that the first IVF baby is the same age as my wife. That means if we’d been the age of our parents, we would not have had the opportunity of raising biological children in this life. Multiplied over tens of thousands of years of human history, it is staggering to think how lucky or blessed I am to be living when I am. I love my family and thank God for providing the science that enabled it to be what it is today.

– Brett

1 Shared thought

IVF Means…

25 July 2018, 4:02 pm by Giggles
Categories: Family, Happy Things, Infertility

Forty years ago today my future changed dramatically. I was two days old and in Utah. But in England Louise Brown was born, the first baby conceived via in vitro fertilization. That fact meant nothing to me at the time. But IVF means the world to me now.

IVF means a chance when there was none.
IVF means seeing our children the size of a period on a piece of paper and joking that they had Brett’s nose.
IVF means devastating disappointment.
IVF means intense prayers.
IVF means needles. Lots of them. And bruises.
IVF means telling each other a whole lot of inappropriate jokes.
IVF means funky socks.
IVF means more doctor appointments in a year than there are weeks.
IVF means enough blood draws that I wonder how many draws it would take to equal a pint.
IVF means enough blood draws that I have a permanent mark on my arm where they all came from and got burned out on being poked there to be interested in donating blood.
IVF means sleepless nights, throw up, spit up, poop, diapers.
IVF means four children call me mom, the first three a direct result of IVF and the fourth an indirect result as the first three kids cleared up the endometriosis in my body making him possible.

IVF means fear.
IVF means waiting.
IVF means faith.
IVF means hope.
IVF means miracles.



IVF means FAMILY!

– Lisa

1 Shared thought

Trucks and Trains!

4 May 2018, 2:21 pm by Giggles
Categories: Family, With the Kiddos

One advantage of being with small children all day is finding the joy in the small things again. With no meetings to get to and a schedule all our own we are able to take time to explore the things that make them smile.

For example, instead of hoping to not get stopped by a train on our way home, we actually do a u-turn and park next to the tracks so we can watch it.

And instead of just noticing that they’re clearing land for a new housing development as we drive down the road, we grab our water bottles, put on some sun screen, park the car, and walk down the path next to the new development to spend an hour watching the trucks and waving at the construction guys.


Big mom-ing wins are often found in the little things.

2 Shared thoughts