prom and other recent happenings

So, I was able to give myself a few days to recover from the half marathon......and then I had to jump into finishing up the school 5K. I was a co-race organizer again this year. I think we did our best job yet. I was happy to have my kids running, my dad, and Bree and Abby. As Bree told you in her blog, Abby was awesome and won the overall girls in the 1 mile division. Dad won his division, and Alex, Kobe, and Brooklyn all won their divisions. Brooklyn was thrilled to get to run with Bree! Kobe has now met his lifelong goal of beating Grandpa Griffiths in a race. (You can refer to Bree's blog for a great shot of them at the finish). Here are a few more pictures from the race that Tia took for me. Tia didn't run this year, but she was a wonderful help to me. We were out there at 5:00am setting up the courses, and she helped out on the course during the race and took pictures for me. I hope everyone had fun. Of course, it is the best race around!

THEN....Tia turned 17. Wow!! Her junior year is nearly over. AP tests have been accomplished, and the last of the many big end of the year papers and projects and posters, etc are getting turned in this week. She got her certification to teach swimming lessons this summer and she is looking forward to that. She wants everyone to know that she grew 1 1/2 inches this year. She is now 4 feet 10 inches tall. Woo Hoo!

We also had prom happening the day after her birthday. I say WE because I was the dress creater for this event. I'm pretty proud of myself on this one! We just couldn't find very many stores that carried her size, and even fewer stores that had modest selections in her size. I even had a hard time finding a pattern with sleaves. I ended up combining 3 different patterns. Tia was the fashion designer. I only had two weeks to pull this off. Lots of late nights. Four hours to glue on all those crystals around the neck line!! So now I'll give pictures of our first Tia/Shamae original....

Bree was kind enough to make another hair design house call. Tia loved Bree's latest hair creation.

And tomorrow is the Women of Steel Triathlon. Give a cheer for Bree and I. We'll be hitting the water at 8am!! I'll try to get a post in on how it went soon.....

I did it!!

So, last December Steve and I stayed after church to meet meet with the bishop ( I can't even remember why now). As we were leaving the church we run into a friend from "the other half" of our ward (you know--before it split). He asks us about how the running is going, if I have any trialthlons planned--he also does tri's--and before we know it we are agreeing to sign up for the Moab half marathon with him and some of his friends (whom we vaguely know).





Now, I have never run anywhere near 13 miles before, so I research out a training plan I think I can commit to and get going. My body does not like moving up to three running days per week. Remember that this trianing has to happen between January and March in UTAH, and that I am a firm believer that NO ONE should be running more that 6 miles on a tread mill--talk about boring. I work through shin splints and aching hips and brave LOTS of cold windy runs outside. I find out that getting new running shoes helps the shin splints and the pain in my foot. I also find out that I CAN do this. I realize that new music, and more of it, is a must. (thanks Cory) I learn alot about my body and how far I can push it--turns out I can push alot more than I would have thought.





And then March comes. I actually complete two different 12 mile runs. I even start to get excited. There was a very cold day at the beginning of March (yes, really) so I decided to go do an interval workout on the treadmill. I haven't done this workout since the beginning of my training. I find out that I need to push those max settings up from 7 to 7.8 to get the same exertion. How cool to actually get to see a measure of my improvement. Yes, I will be able to do this.





So, last Friday Steve and I packed up the camper and headed for Moab. We left the kids home. We had a fun evening enjoying the Moab race weekend excitement, had dinner, did some shopping, and went to bed early.

Saturday morning I wake up sooooo nervous. Can I really do this? Steve is taking everything in stride. This is an easy short race for him (and he's done this race before). But he is supportive and patient with me. We didn't have anyone to be a photographer with us. I would have liked to have some proof for this--but we did do one self portrait just before we locked everything in the car and went to meet the buses. It was a cold, windy morning. We were freezing by the time the race started. Steve went up to the front. I played it conservative and went about 3/4 of the way back. 5000 runners! I think I should have started a little further up because I spent the first two miles doing some serious weaving and passing. I actually passed lots of people all the way through the race. I didn't enjoy the massive head wind coming up the canyon. I actually got blown around a little bit. I'll blame about 5 minutes of my time on wind!



I ran the WHOLE thing all by myself. And I'm really proud to say that. Steve waited for me and ran with me for the last mile. He's so nice!! It was just what I needed to keep me going. I finished in 2 hours and 10 minutes and I stayed with the first half of the runners. There were almost 600 women registered in my age category!! So no top prizes there. I did get a good shirt out of it though. And a few bragging rights.... I think I might even do it again!

(Oh, and while we were gone Brooklyn had her first gymnastics meet of the season. She was the top scorer for her team and got a gold medal. (thanks to grandma for taking her) Tia tried out for the ballroom dance team, and made it!, Kobe did and 10 mile hike with his scout troup which turned into a 14 mile hike, and Alex made sure the fish and the hamster got fed--what would we do without him!)

99 and counting

Meet Steve's Grandma Nora. Tomorrow (December 12) she turns 99! This amazing lady was born in 1911. Imagine the things she has witnessed in this world.

And she's still going strong.

We had a wonderful afternoon visiting with her and hearing her stories of Indians trying to break into her home when her father was gone, a cow falling into their new well, having her twins in her kitchen (steve's dad is one of those twins), how crazy doctors are--so she never listens to them--- and on and on and on. I hope I am as healthy and happy as she is if I get to live that old. She says she didn't really plan to live this long, but she just goes with it anyway.....

We forgot to get a picture today, but here's one from a family reunion two summers ago. She hasn't changed much (but we have a little)--you can see those powerful Mickelson tallness genes coming through



Happy Birthday Grandma!

New Pictures

I'm sure you are all surprised to see another post so soon. I'm a little shocked myself. We took advantage of great weather on Saturday and got some pictures done. Since Steve was at the BYU game, the family shots will have to come later. I think I might actually be getting better at this photography thing. I didn't have to do nearly as much editing as I usually do. It also helps that they are older and therefore more cooperative (when properly bribed). Here is everyone one year older:

Who Knew.......

OK. This has been, hands down, the hardest post EVER!!!! I now officially hate putting videos in a blog. What? you say, but it's so easy--just click the icon and upload. If only life were that simple for me. However, I am a proud mom right now so it is probably worth all the hours I have spent staring at a computer screen this past week to get this done (maybe).

ADVICE: don't try to upload a video when using a computer that is much to old and slow to handle this kind of workload, and don't try edit down certain videos that are too long for blogger to handle while using a version of movie maker that is older than your video camera and therefore not compatible--you'll just end up staring at your computer screen for a very long time while nothing happens.

That said, here is the original post that I wrote a week ago. The video clips had to be published as their own blog entries because....well, I'm not really sure, but it worked to do it that way when just about everything else didn't, so I went with it. So....don't forget to look at the next two posts as well!! Also, my blog template cuts off the left side of the video (again-not sure why) so if you want to see the full screen just click on the video once to start it, then click it again and it will switch you to YouTube and you will be able to see the full screen.


Lehi High School does a Dancing With the Athletes competition--their version of the TV show. All the coaches nominate a few of the athletes on their teams and then the student body votes for their top 10 favorites. The top 10 athletes get paired up with a ballroom dance team member and they learn two dances. Then they perform the dances for judges. The audience participates by texting in their votes.

Tia has spent the last three weeks practicing and practicing and practicing (and doing homework and all those great end of term projects, taking the ACT, working, etc). But she also had a lot of fun and made some new friends.

The big night happened last Thursday. Tia was so nervous. Tia hasn't done much with dance, so we didn't really know what to expect. It was such a fun show to watch. Grandma and Grandpa Griffiths came, and Bree brought Abby and Liv. Paul was our designated texter at home with Eva. (thanks Paul-you were awesome)

Of course we all thought Tia was the best....and then....SHE WON!! Can you believe it?!

So I really wanted to post the videos of her dances so everyone can see them, and it was much harder than anticipated. If they don't work, please let me know (even though I really don't want to hear that right now) and I'll send you a link for YouTube.

ENJOY

cha cha video

waltz video