October 10 and 11

Another big change in our house right now is that our kitchen is being completely redone. New floors, cabinets, counter tops, sink, fridge, lights... It has been a bit messy, and a bit frustrating not having the accommodations of a kitchen, but also exciting watching it all come together. The weekend of October 10 and 11 we primed and painted the walls of the kitchen and utility room to prepare for the cabinet installation. It was a busy weekend, and I'd love to show the transformation, however we are still waiting another 10 days for the counter tops and sink to be installed, and Phil wants to wait until it is all complete to show the whole change.

Marathon Morning- October 11
It has been a very long time since I have been able to run a marathon! The last time I actually ran a marathon was up until the last few weeks before getting pregnant with the twins. I was determined to get in a marathon to make my goal of running 8 (my favorite number) marathons before having kids. So I trained and ran in the "Second Floor/OK Go Marathon". The marathon was run on the second floor of my house on the treadmill. The OK Go part came into play because at the time the song OK Go was popular and the video of the song was of a few guys doing a intricate routine to the song on treadmills. It was a little monotonous to say the least, but I had good music, and at times especially near the end great company. Christy and Andrew made signs just like they were downtown cheering me on, my mom rang the obnoxiously loud cow bell, and Phil made sure the playlist was good. I can not wait to run another marathon, so watch out for next year!

In the meantime I decided to volunteer at the Chicago marathon, helping with the start corral. 3 years ago when I was unable to run I volunteered at the marathon as an "Ask Me" person. So this year was a different job. Waking up at 4am to get downtown was not as bad as it seemed. Partly because this little girl likes to wake me up between 3-5am every morning lately, and partly because I think I've been trained to not need as much sleep anymore. At any rate, I bundled up and went downtown to help out and cheer on 40,0000 strangers. When I got to the volunteer compound I was put in a group of extra people. The leader was ready to stick me with the elite runners, until another couple spoke up and said they needed to get out early to do some finish line volunteering as well. So close to seeing the elite up close, but instead I was shifted to the very end of the corrals-6 hour plus runners. It was nice to see their enthusiasm and dedication as they lined up for so many different reasons, so proud of how far they've come and what they were about to accomplish. It was pretty frigid, but a good morning overall. (After getting back home it was back to painting in the kitchen!)