Today is actually Sunday, September 16th. It is our daughter, Tani's, 15th birthday! Happy birthday to an amazing girl! Friday Tom and I took off our mommy and daddy hats and went away for our anniversary weekend. This Wednesday will be our 26th wedding anniversary so we decided to have a little fun with the number 26. How many couples run 26 miles together on their 26th anniversary? We also pulled in the 26 letters of the alphabet. Friday night we got to meet up with some good friends from back in our Logan days of yore. It was so nice to be with David and Linda Barney again. We went to Maddox for dinner...not much on the menu there for the night before a marathon. But we did our best and didn't worry since this marathon was all for fun. It was nice to have bus service from our hotel to the bus pick up park. We hit that bus at 5:00 and then jumped aboard the bus to the start line. At the top the bus driver told us it was 23 degrees. We didn't feel like it was quite that cold. I'm sure it must have been more like 26 degrees to work in with the rest of our 26s. It was nice to hang out in the heated tents while waiting for the start. Since we had a very casual plan for the day we stayed in the tent until after we heard the gun start. It was kind of interesting how many others did the same. The canyon was beautiful. And the weather was perfect! We only talked to 2 other guys we knew. Other than that it was all a bunch of strangers who like doing the same thing we do. We wore our new purple Spanish Fork Running Club singlets with an added sign on the back mentioning our 26 years and 26 miles. It also said "lovin the jouney". We got lots of comments and congratulations! With the 26 letters I had made up a set of alphabet flash cards that I carried with me. I also had my camera. We took pictures of something with every letter of the alphabet. I am going to make them into an ABC book dedicated to all of our future grandchildren. A Anniversary B Bus C Cowbell D Ditch (Tom sat in a nice cold ditch after the race.) E Elevator (At our hotel. Some of the letters were just from our weekend away.) F FOOD (Dinner after the marathon!) G Gloves (nice to have for a few miles) H Halfway point I Ice Cream at the finish line J Jail (there was a jungle gym at the park. The only other idea was to jump but we are afraid to jump...my back would not like that!) K Kim L Love (we did a fun pic with our fingers spelling love with the blue sky in the background.) M Medal, Moose. (I have always wanted a moose medal and this one did not disappoint!) N Number O Oranges P Port-a-potties Q Quirky (a friend our ours who looked a little quirky with his garbage bag on let us take his pic for that.) R Red (the race shirt was red and I loved that it said 26.2 instead of marathon on it....it worked right into our weekend.) S Shoes T Tom U University Inn. (where we stayed) V Volunteer W Watches X (this one was a bit tricky. We just made our arms into an x for x marks the spot or something like that.) Y Yawn (big yawn after the race) Z ZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzz (after the big yawn that was after the race.) It was fun on main street to hear a honk and a "go Tom and Kim" from Tyler Shepherd who happened to be driving past. It was also fun to see Smooth at the finish line. She is always a fun one to be around. One more that we met up with was our buddy from good ole Manti High School, Bob Blauer. He was so excited to meet and even go beyond his goal of 3:20 to reach 3:12. He was pretty giddy to do so well and get 4th in his age. We had a great time and was happy to come home to our good friends who had planned a nice birthday dinner for Tani and the rest of us. Thank you so much Scott, Marcia and Kelsie for a yummy dinner to come home to. | 
