Dam to Dam 2018

I was talked into doing Dam to Dam a 20K race this year.  I have actually done this 3 times BEFORE kids so I thought I would do it again.  So I signed up, I trained and here is the low down of the race.

This was the Doppler I checked on the way to the race.  It was raining.

We waited for the shuttle until the absolute last minute before we got out of the car

Still raining at the start and our shoes are totally soaked, but the trash bags kept our clothes dry

I was hoping I would do this 20K in under 2 hours, but that quickly changed to just finishing.  This was totally a mind game.  I wanted to walk and was really fading the last mile, but I dug deep, continued to run and came just over 2 hours. 
Here is a pic of me just as I had crossed the finish line

I am a little bummed I didn't get it done in under 2 hours, but this is the 2nd best time out of the 4 of these I had done.  I will take it because finding time to train and still having to be a parent was pretty hard and just even doing this with 3 littles at home is quite the feat.

My friend that talked me into this and I at the end.  We actually didn't run together during the race, but met up with each other at the end.

Joey and the kids came and cheered me on and got an action shot.  I think I was waving which I why I look weird.

My cheering section! :)




And the celebratory beer at the end.  It tasted super gross.


And my medal that I totally EARNED!!  Glad it's done.  I won't say I will NEVER do a distance race again, but I will say it will be a long time if I ever do one again.  I am proud of myself for doing this because again, finding the time to train and still having the responsibilities at home made wanting to go run the last thing on my list, but I did it!! 

Lemonade Stand

Josie came to me and told me she wanted to do a lemonade stand and asked if we could.  Yeah, we can do that sometime I said.  Well that sometime turned out to be the next morning.  She was so organized and knew exactly what we needed.  Her and Ella got to work on making signs and helped make the lemonade.  Josie also wore the yellow dress for lemonade.  The only issue is we are at the END of a cul de sac and would get absolutely no traffic so I decided we had to move our lemonade stand away from our house.  I actually picked the entrance to The Beach, which turned out to be quite busy.
Here are the kids with the signs they held close to the road.

Ella's sign she made for the lemonade stand. :)

And Josie's we hung on the van.  The ones they held I made so people could actually read them, but they told me what to write.

Eli was caught holding his sign like this a lot.  LOL!

Eli lost interest pretty fast and hung out in the van and did his own thing.  Ella hung on but eventually lost interest as well.  And Josie was going strong!  She was out there at the road holding that sign the whole time (1.5 hours).  She was determined and I loved it.  We had quite the traffic and the girls had a lot of fun.  The spot I picked drew quite the crowd including Channel 5 News Des Moines and the local newspaper.  We made the front page of the paper and channel 5 news shared on their social media.  The girls made quite a bit of money for being 5 and the $.50 lemonade was clearly ignored as people gave more than that.  I enjoyed being able to do this with the girls and they enjoyed it too, so all in all it was a SUCESS!!