Boise

We spent the weekend in Boise, and I love that city! It's beautiful! It was warm and sunny, and so many more trees than here ... and so many shops, and a cool downtown. I wouldn't mind moving to a city like that. Anyway, the purpose of our trip was the Boise Half Marathon. Thad signed up to run it, we drove for a little more than 4 hours to get there, bought a night's stay in a nice hotel .....and he almost didn't run it.

Beautiful downtown

I guess every race can't go smoothly. Sooner or later you're bound to have a little hiccup, right? Because Saturday morning everything went wrong. First, Thad pulled his running shoes out of his suitcase and realized that he'd brought the wrong shoes. He brought his old, worn out ones. That's a big deal. When shoes get too worn out they don't provide adequate support and they hurt your feet and other parts of your body: especially when you're running long distances. Plus I guess you have to get into a runner's mode before your race, and Thad said that as soon as he pulled out the wrong shoes, he panicked a little.

Then, after Thad was dressed and ready to leave for his race, he just about left without his stopwatch and iPod. Thanks to me, he didn't. (The kids and I didn't plan to go to the race because it was out in the middle of nowhere with no playground, and it would have been a long 2 hours with 2 little kids) 

So Thad finally left the hotel with plenty of time to spare, but at 10 minutes to start time, he called me, upset, and ready to come home. Mapquest gave him directions to some bogus address in the middle of nowhere, and he had no idea where the race was. So I jumped on the hotel's computer down in the lobby and while Benjamin crawled around the lobby with a poopy diaper with Analyn chasing after him, pulling off his clothes, I looked up the address of the race and figured out how to get Thad there. By this time he would have been a few minutes late, and wouldn't have time to warm up. But he would still make it. 

 

But about 5 minutes later, he called me back and was totally defeated. He had left his runner's packet in our hotel room, which had his running bib (his number with the computer chip that records his time when he crosses the finish line). We were both bummed that we'd paid for the race and come all this way and now he wasn't going to get to run it. Maybe with all that had gone wrong, it was a sign that he wasn't supposed to run for some reason. I hung up the phone with him and a few minutes later he texted me and said he was going to ask to run anyway. And he did, but he had to start on his own and time himself. Once he started running, everything was fine, and he tied with his personal record. So after all was said and done, he had a good run and our trip was complete.  

Benj on the long drive to Boise Friday morning. We had to wake him up to put him in the car and he wasn't very happy at first.

These videos are funny. The first one is of Benj and the mirrors in the hotel room. He just couldn't get the concept. The second video is Ana rockin out on the car ride home. It was long. So we had to have a little fun.

The first video is