Each Day Is a Gift

Walked with Wendy.  Stretched a ton.

Ran 4.5 with Karen.  Walked 0.5 with Jessica.

Missing Emi, Eric and Marianne terribly! :(  But we'll see them later this week when we flew to Des Moines for his graduation and help them drive/move to Cleveland!

Lots of stretching while cleaning the house!

5 easy with Karen.  Beautiful blue sky!  Shin were bothersome, R worse than L.  Wearing compression sleeves.  Gentle stretching throughout the day.  Need to register for PCM soon.

After a long day of flying, finally arrived at Des Moines around 4:30.  The hotel is within quarter mile to the airport.  Eric and I went for a quick run before dinner.  It had rained the day before so a bit humid.  Looks like today's the only sunny day this week. 

We had dinner at Waterfront Restaurant in Ankeny, a nice seafood restaurant.  Note to shubby, do not take a toddler to fancy restaurant! :)

30 min. elliptical in the hotel's fitness center.  

The University hosted a picnic for all the graduates and their families on campus.

Emi loves picnic! :)

After taking the family back to the hotel, while Emi napped, Eric drove us to Gray's Lake for a run.  It was a very pleasant run in the rain around the lake twice.  The parkway has imprints of birds and butterflies.  I don't know if it was short on time or running at sea level, I ran it progressively faster.  The legs felt pretty good. :)  

In the evening, hubby and I and Emi had our own dates while Eric and Marianne went to a dinner and reception for the graduates and their spouses.

Eric and I got up at 5:45am and drove to Gray's Lake for an early run before Graduation Commencement which began at 9am and we had to leave the hotel by 8am.  We ran along the Des Moines River out and back for a little over 6 miles then around the lake once.  It was overcast with a misty rain, the sun peeked thru the clouds for a brief moment while we ran at the lake.  This was a very memorable and beautiful run.  Eric used to run here when he was a med student with couple of his classmates.  This will be the last time he'd run here.  Many emotions went through my mind as we talked about the past, my childhood, his dad, his experience at DMU and his future.  I would treasure our talks and this beautiful run forever! :)

The commencement was great; but a little too long (3+hours) for a wiggly two year old Emi.  My legs got stiffened up and my feet very sore from walking in heels.

Dr. Eric J. Lew

After the graduation ceremony, we grabbed a quick bite; then went to get the rental truck.  We loaded Eric's and Marianne's household items and furnitures from a storage unit onto the 16' truck.  Thankfully the rain has stopped when we were loading the truck.  My arms got pretty tired.

Marianne hadn't seen her stored contents for 18 months.  I think they did a fantastic job dejunking and boxing up their things.  They had to move their furnitures across town twice while they were in Iowa.  They're grateful for our help to move across States this time.