13.1

comcast pulled through. hooray! so far (it's been about 5 hours) i'm impressed *gasp* we'll see how long they can keep this customer happy . . .

now on to the more exciting stuff. i know y'all've been holding you breath for this post. 

last friday, i packed up the car and the girls and i picked grant up from school. the drive to surfside, texas took us around two hours. it was incredibly foggy and humid, with a slight chill in the wind when we got there. we met up with amanda and matt, picked up our packets and had a really heavy dinner, where amanda got some hilarious pictures of lucy (i've never mentioned this on the blog but lucy cannot have a sweater on and leave her hood down. she freaks out.) then we headed to a hotel with hopes of  sleeping:

sadly, lucy and hazel had other ideas. by 11 o'clock, hazel was nearing unconsciousness and lucy was at least flopping around quieter. i set my alarm for 5:50 am (we planned to leave the hotel by 6:45) and tried to sleep. ha. i fell asleep okay but woke a few hours later. after tossing and turning, i slept again and was startled awake by grant's "it's 6:30, ruth!" sometime in the night i must have knocked my phone onto the floor and then hazel's pillow fell on top of it. i panicked, of course. grant kept a cool head and we made it. 

amanda and matt were excited:

here's the crowd:

we had a lot of friends from church running the half as well. we only got a picture with amelia:

the boys (and babies):

here we have grant finishing (2:10:40 [thanks for the picture, nicole!]):

i was going to write a really long, braggy paragraph about how awesome he is, but i know he wouldn't like that. just know that he is my hero and i love him to pieces. 

and now here i am finishing (2:57:13):

i'm not going to lie, this is probably most photogenic i've ever been. overall, the run was a positive experience. it was somewhat hard on my feet to run on the uneven sand (my shins felt great though) but i think i'd to this race again. i loved listening to the waves. so calming, i probably could have done it without my teeny-bopper music.

here's amanda coming in:

she's my hero as well. despite side aches and cramping feet, she plugged away and finished. way to go, amanda!

after our grueling task was complete, we let hazel and lucy loose on the ocean:

amanda took some fantastic photos of the girls playing on the beach.

i did it. i ran 13.1 miles. what's next? more half-marathons, 5 ks, 10 ks, maybe a marathon . . . we'll see. it seems much more plausible now than it did nearly a year ago.