Luck o' the Irish

St. Patrick's day was a blast as usual, although we were surprised that we didn't hear from Seamus until the day before. In fact, we were all in trouble because no one had mentioned him and he was annoyed that we had all forgotten him. He threatened to move, but we fulfilled his request to put together a puzzle and color it and he was appeased and even left us some treats the next day. (After we left a hearty offering of gold.)

I feel badly that I did not take a picture of the puzzle before I packed it away. The girls did a really good job at putting it together and coloring it. But I did get a picture of our annual wishing-on-a-piece-of-gold.

Robyn  took a picture of me, but I think the camera was a little big for her hand. She was having trouble steadying it. (Hence the bluriness.)

Pearl was getting in on the action. My favorite was when she had her coin uncentered on her head.

The actual day of green was really fun. We eventually got to yummy things like this, but we started the day with a 5k, family style. I actually let Tyler run by himself since he has been running a lot more recently. I paired up June and Robyn and they ran together, and I took on Ivory, Daisy, Pearl, and the stroller.

Wow, it really slows you down to push a stroller. Ivory ran most of the way by herself, but sometimes she would fall down and then ride a bit, or she would get tired and ride a bit. I did plenty of walking myself. Somewhere along the way Tyler joined up with us since he had finished and was coming back to help out. And not only did he finish, but he WON!!

Turns out he won in RECORD TIME too!! He crossed the finish line sub 17; at 16:55. Not too shabby. But that usually happens when you miss part of the course. He didn't mean to. There was no flagger at one of the turns when he went by, so he just continued on his merry way. He missed an entire loop of the run. He figured out from the times of the other runners that he was probably more on a 22 minute pace. Still pretty good in my book. Right now he is enjoying bragging up first place. (Even if he ran more of a 3k.)

I on the other hand was hoping to finish in less than 45 minutes with my heavy cargo. When Tyler joined me, I remained stubborn and kept the stroller because I wanted to have a reason to be slow, but after relenting the stroller, I realized how much it was slowing me down. (I would like to point out here that I am not a runner and my time would not have been great even without the stroller, but I jogged the entire thing after I let go. I actually felt pretty light without the extra burden.) We crossed the finish line at 41:45. Thanks Tyler for taking the load. I wouldn't have made my goal without you.

Amazingly, the girls (June and Robyn) started in front of us and we never caught up to them. They finished just a minute before us. (40:22/40:43) They said they ran the whole time. And this is seriously impressive because June has no tennis shoes so she ran in boots the entire time. I am having slight guilt issues that I didn't get her some proper shoes before the run. However, she is so used to wearing boots that she didn't even have blisters at the end. (Some guilt relieved. And if I had bought her new shoes, she wouldn't have had time to break them in. See...I did her a favor. I'll keep telling myself that.)

It was really fun to run together as a family, but next time, Tyler can have the stroller. He'll still beat my time. Here we are in our green shirts, fresh from the run.

Hope you had a good St. Patrick's Day.