That’s me (and Jen) crossing the finish line of the 3M Half Marathon!  I ran 13.1 miles in 2:16:26 (2 hours, 16 minutes and 26 seconds).  My goal was to stay under 2:30:00.  Yes, the clock in the picture shows 2:18:48, but that’s gun time, not chip time.  The start line is about the same width as the finish line in the picture, so it takes a while for everybody (4179 people) to get through.  That’s where the timing chip comes in.  If you look real close, you’ll see an orange tag on my right shoe laces.  That’s an RFID tag that registered my time when I crossed the start line, mid-way point and finish line.

The start was at 7am and it was less than 40 degrees.  I had a jacket and gloves, but got rid of them the first time I saw Jeff, Cooper and my parents (between miles 5 and 6) because I got hot.  I was enjoying the scenery in mile 8 and just happened to notice that my friend, Jen, from church, was running right next to me.  Neither of us had realized it.  She had passed me in the first mile, so I wasn’t expecting to see her until the finish line.  She is a personal trainer and ran in the San Antonio marathon in November.  She told me that she hadn’t really trained for this race and had just been doing strength training in the gym.  She had to stop once to stretch and again to use the restroom (that’s how I caught up with her).  We ended up running the rest of the way together because her legs were not holding up very well.  I think she helped me to not slow down and I was able to run the second half of the race faster than the first half. 

All in all, I had a great run.  It was a great experience.  My legs are pretty sore today and my knees don’t seem to want to work properly, but I’m sure that will pass.  I’m not sure what my next race will be, but I will continue running.  Jeff is training for the Austin Marathon, February 15th.  He wants me to try a marathon, but we’ll just have to wait and see how he does first.

More pics here.

His teacher says he does great and loves to sing and dance to the music.  He helps put things away when it’s time to go.  He seems excited when I ask him if he is ready to go back to school, so I think this is going to be a good thing.  The only thing that is not ideal is the nap situation.  Cooper usually goes down for his nap around 1:30 and sleeps for about 2-3 hours.  At school, nap-time is from 11:45 to 1:30.  So far, he has only slept for about 30 minutes each day and the evenings are pretty rough.  Looks like we’re just going to have to go to bed early after school.  I tried putting him down around 3ish on Tuesday to see if he would take another nap, but no luck.  Oh well.  We’ll get used to it.

I found out the Thursday before school started on Tuesday, that I needed to get Cooper a nap mat.  Do you know how hard it is to find a nap mat, without spending a ton of money?  I ended up making one for him and I think it turned out pretty cute.  I found some cute choo-choo (go figure) fabric at Walmart with a coordinating quilted fabric that I made into a blanket.  I bought a full size piece of batting and folded it over several times and made a cover with the fabric.  Then I took some black ribbon and sewed it into a trifold seam on the napmat, so that when folded, the velcro on the ribbon holds the mat closed.  Not bad for no pattern and little time, huh?  I did end up spending about $30 on it.  But when you look at the ones online selling for $50, I don’t think I did a bad job.

While the changes look big, they were actually really easy. With the help of the interwebs I found a new theme that works for both the blog and photo gallery software we use. The great thing is both themes are optimized for each other. This means that rather than fighting layouts in both WordPress and Gallery2, it just works.

Another great thing about the vSlider theme is that it’s very customizable out of the box with very little effort. You’ll see some of these customizations take place over the next few weeks.

We need to create new header images for the site. The old headers are the wrong size and the colors don’t work well with the changes we’re making. In addition, Wendy is now a Photoshop queen thanks to her work for Lesley (Hi, Lesley!). Hopefully I’ll be able to con Wendy into creating some really good headers over the next couple of days.

As always, things break with changes, so if you find anything that’s busted, let us know.

Yes, I know I still owe you photos of the front yard =). I need a clear morning to take the pictures so the light is good. It’s been cloudy in the morning here for the last week. Afternoon photos are no good because the front yard ends up backlit with the Sun in the West.

Here’s the plan:

• Front Bed: Pull the Indian Hawthorns and Japanes Boxwoods out of the main bed
• Front Bed: Add Penstemon Sage and some daylilies
• Utilities: Kill the grass
• Utilities: Screen the utilities from the street with bi-color iris, more Penstemon Sage, some purple Verbena and more daylilies
• House: Kill the grass to the right of the garage door
• House: Add a bi-color iris, a purple Verbena, and either a crape myrtle, mountain laurel, or a cherry laurel
• House: On the left side where the long red-brick wall is, install two Natchez crape myrtles

Of course we’ll have to bring in dirt and then mulch everything (front and back) when we’re done. It sounds like a lot, but if the rain either holds off our moves out by tomorrow afternoon, we should get it all done this weekend.

As always, we’ll post before/during/after pictures as we go.

A guy I work with was talking about running it this past Saturday after one of our indoor soccer games. I’ve been running lately (a lot for me) but you guys know me – I’m not exactly skinny. This will be a big accomplishment. Who knows, I might even drop a few pounds on the way =).

I’ll document my training and progress here for those that are interested.

I would have linked to Nancy and Jack’s nursery (Texas Heritage Nursery in Bandera), but they don’t have a site. They really got us some high-quality plants!

Bushes

• Lantana – Dallas Red
  • VERY vigorous grower! I don’t know if it’s just all the rain we had this year or what, but we planted the second or third week of June and I had to cut them back yesterday.
  • These have beautiful red and orange flowers and have pretty much bloomed since the day they were put in the ground.
• Lantana – Purple Trailing
  • See the comments on the Dallas Red Lantana.
  • As the name would suggest, the flowers are purple but the same size/shape as the Dallas Red.
  • This grows more like ground cover than a big bush which works really well for us.
• Daylily – Happy Returns
  • Bright yellow flowers
• Shasta Daisy – Becky
  • Picture a daisy in your head – Yep, that’s what this looks like.
• Mexican Feather Grass
  • This is a small (2ft tall x 2 ft wide), very wispy grass. We like this because it adds movement to the flower beds when there’s even the smallest breeze.
  • This is *not* that huge pampas grass stuff you see everywhere.
• Plumbago – Leadwort
  • Purple to blue ground cover.
  • These have been having trouble since they were overtaken by the Lantana. They’ll do better now that they’ll be getting more sun.
• Buddleia – Black Knight
  • This gets flower clusters in the deepest color purple I’ve ever seen.
  • Another name for this one is “Butterfly Bush” which is a very appropriate as it attracts lots of butterflies.
• Iris – Bi-Color
  • These are taller grass-like plants with wider leaves than the Mexican Feather Grass.
  • Ours didn’t bloom this year, but will look great next spring and early summer
• Agapanthus – Elaine
  • Definitely the most showy of our beds.
  • The globe of purple flowers on a 4-foot stalk really stand out!

Trees

• Red Bud – Texas
  • Got it in a good spot, just waiting for it to establish.
  • It should have bright-pink flowers in the spring if all goes well.
• Crape Myrtle – Zuni
  • Yeah, yeah – calling this a tree is debatable, but that’s what we’re using them as.
  • This is another one that has bloomed since we put them in the ground.
• Japanese Blueberry Tree – Elaeocarpus decipiens
  • This is a great looking ornamental, evergreen tree.

Well, there you have it. If you’ve got any questions, just give us a call or drop us an e-mail.

I guess on the bright side, we haven’t even sniffed 100 degrees yet this summer. The back yard is also lookin’ great with all the water. Of course, now I can’t mow it ’cause it’s always wet. When I do get the chance, the grass is a foot high. Oh yeah, the water keeps washing away the mulch too.

Stupid rain…

We’ve been so busy lately that we haven’t been able to keep up.  We’ve had playdates, soccer games, my grandparents 60th wedding anniversary dinner, family photos, our anniversary, Father’s Day and Todd’s 21st birthday, all in the last few weeks.  Not to mention that Cooper is sick with an upper respiratory infection.  Oh, and did I mention, he now has two teeth?

There are close to 200 pictures on our camera that I need to sort through and upload as well.  Luckily, I think I may just have found some time to get this done since Jeff and Todd are playing Todd’s new XBox 360 Elite (I knew we should have charged him rent) on the only TV in the house that is hooked up to the satellite dish.  He did buy a new TV to play it on, but no antenna and no satellite box.  At least they’re not playing the same songs over and over again on Guitar Hero.  We’ll see how long I can hold out not being able to relax on the couch watching TV after Cooper goes to bed at night.