26.2

Running a marathon is something that I have wanted to do for a LONG time. The end of last summer my friend Lisa, who I've known since 8th grade, asked me if I would be up for the challenge with her. Freak yeah! So we started our official training in January and 16 weeks, and some ups and downs later was race day. We decided to run The Avenue of the Giants Marathon outside of Eureka, California. It was close enough to home to drive and small enough of a race to make it a great first experience. The race is along an old highway through the redwood forest. Beautiful! As far as the race itself went, I loved it. The first half I was running off adrenaline. I was having so much fun. It makes me think that I could really get into half marathons. The second half seemed a bit longer to me, but it was still so fun. I ended up finishing in a blistering 5 hours and 15 mins. Not really fast at all, but I did it. I was right about the middle of the pack when all was said and done which I felt good about for my first effort. All in all, I am so happy with the experience and I look forward to doing it all again some time. I'm not sure when that next one will be but I plan on running other smaller races like 10K's and half marathons as often as I can. I am so thankful to by good buddy Lisa for getting this whole thing started. Our chats during the Saturday morning long runs will be greatly missed!

Old School and New School

I, Bryan, have had some free time on my hands at work and when you couple that with an obsession of looking up things from my younger days, this is the kind of post you end up with. This post is a then and now post. In other words, here are some of my favorite characters from movies and cartoons back in the day and how they look these days.

First up is Sylvester Stallone as Rocky Balboa in the classic underdog movie Rocky. Stallone initially produced five of these movies, the fifth one being a bit of a let down. Thank goodness he came out with the sixth, which he titled Rocky Balboa. Thanks to the help of some good human growth hormones, Stallone was able to look pretty dang good, especially for a 60-year-old man.

Here we have Ralph Macchio as the Karate Kid back in the day and now as a full-grown adult. Make no mistake, Ralph Macchio is not the proud owner of a lucrative chain of "Karate Kid Kar Wash" stores. There was a dirty rumor that was the case, but it is not.

This is the beloved Optimus Prime, leader of the Autobots. My brother, Mikel, and I still have all of our original Transformers and Optimus Prime is one of them. Sometimes I wish Optimus Prime was real. As you can see, he has become much more technologically advanced with the release of the most recent Transformers movie.

For all you Star Wars fans there is no need of an introduction for this individual. In the original trilogy Yoda was a pretty fragile little guy, but in the new trilogy we all found out that the little green guy can fight pretty good, although I was disappointed that he never actually won any of his fights. I feel like he was holding back.

He-Man was a normal guy by day, and super powerful muscle-man after a raise of his sword and the statement of a simple phrase, "By the power of Greyskull, I have the power!" Not only did he gain super strength and courage, but so did his tiger-like sidekick, Cringer the Battle Cat. Once Prince Adam turned himself into He-Man, he would point his sword at Cringer and shoot him with some sort of special strength and courage ray. Mikel and I have a ton of He-Man action figures too, which most definitely includes He-Man, Cringer, and Castle Greyskull to name a few.

Just another day at the beach

The weekend that I ran my marathon we were able to get to the beach with the kids. Jake had been waiting all day to make it there so he was very excited. We found out that Kate does not like the feel of the sand between her toes for now, but maybe later. Both of the kids were afraid of touching the water even when Bry was holding them. It was a bit chilly as usual at the coast, but it is always fun to go.

Single Image Stereograms

I, Bryan, have always been fascinated with single image stereograms. I think they came about in the early 90s and I just rediscovered a bunch of them on the Internet. Check this out if you want to see more. If anybody knows of any other good websites that have a bunch of single image stereograms let me know. For those of you who do not know what these are or how they work, let me try to explain. Single image stereograms create a three-dimensional illusion based on the human stereoscopic vision, or in other words the ability of the human eye to see depth, be it two or three-dimensional. From a seemingly random picture, you should expect to see a 3D image appear when correctly viewed. Good luck and enjoy!

This is in honor of Mother's Day and all the great mothers out there. Mothers are the best and as we all know, if it wasn't for our mothers none of us would be here. In this picture you should see a rose as if you were looking down on it from directly above.

In this image you should see the full body of a lion facing to the left.

Lakes are leaving and we're leaving the Lakes

These are our friends Matt Jessie and Molly(Lake is their last name by the way). During our time here in the Medford area we have spent A LOT of time with them. Doing everything from watching reality tv (mostly me and Jessie:), watching movies, lame attempts at game nights, and making dinner together a crazy amount of the time, we always enjoy these guys. They are now gone for the summer to Texas and by the time they get back we will be moved to Utah. So sad to say good bye but can't wait to be neighbors some day!

For some the farewell was emotional,

but mostly we just are so happy to have them as our friends. We will miss you guys and can't wait to see you soon!

I just thought this was cute of the three boys. Jake looks so tiny.

Jake is 4!!!!!!!!!

I can hardly believe that our Jake is 4. His birthday was on the 29th of April and we had his party a few days early on the 27th. He had been requesting for some time that he have a volcano birthday cake this year. We had no idea how to go about that so I called our good family friend and cake making extraordinaire Meta for advice. With the purchase of a few cake pans, food coloring, blood, sweat, and tears we finished around midnight the night before the party. We are not ready to go pro but the 4 year old that we were trying to impress was, so we felt good about our effort. We had his party at our "favorite" friends Matt and Jessie's house. Between family and friends we had a good group and Jake had plenty of kids to run around with. After presents and cake the kids headed out for pinata fun. Jake went home with fun presents, skinned elbows, a stomach full of sugar, and told me that it was the "best party ever!" I suppose we can chalk it up to a success. The actual night of his birthday we went to Applebees for dinner so we could have him sung to. He was a little surprised, excited and embarrassed but smiled for a while about it. To look back on how tiny he was when we met him and see the funny, sweet, emotional, happy, smart boy he has become has been the funnest time. Can't wait to see what else this guy has in store for us. We love this boy!