A Smattering of Duehrings

A year ago tonight I was sitting in the ER waiting on a dose of Methotrexate. (Nightmare of a night I am telling ya) I was one week away from a little dream vacation to the beach. I had missed our ski trip earlier in the year to the mountains due to sick kids and I was ready for a vacation. Rachel and I had our plane tickets and were on our way.  Or so we thought.

The doctor looked at me that day and told me that I was not going anywhere. I told him I already had the plane tickets. Then he told me again. This is a life or death situation. You are not going anywhere. So, we lost our trip and our money.

Well, somehow we managed to plan another trip to Florida this year and are leaving the exact same weekend. Only this year we are taking the entire clan of 13 and we are going for 9 days.

Next Friday morning we are starting on a 17 +hour drive to Florida. The kids first time to the ocean and they are so excited. I am pretty sure I am as excited as they are, but I may change my mind a few hours into the drive.

I am so thankful for good health this year.

Molly has started adding details to her pictures. She drew me two pictures this week which she is proudly displaying on our refrigerator. One is a boy (Eli) and one is a girl (me). I will let you decide which is which.

I sent our two girls to church and took our 3 boys and my friend and her two boys to chase the guys around during the marathon. We ended up seeing the guys at least 8 times on the route. This is what the boys did while they waited for 4 hours.

played in the mud and got really muddy

explored the countryside peeing behind random trees along the way

played video games (pretty sure Micah missed his daddy coming in to the finish line because of this)

rolled around in big soccer balls (couldn’t find the boys at one point and then spotted them inside of these balls being pushed all over the fields)

covered their bodies in stickers

It was a fun day. I am proud of Damon. He managed to train for a marathon while working his full time job plus being full time youth pastor at our church. Not to mention full time husband and daddy to his five kids. It is a lot to balance and he is one busy man.

The finishing chute. Almost there...almost there...

Last weekend I ran the inaugural Lynn Electric Marathon in Lawrence, KS, with my buddy Rob. I ran my first marathon with him a couple of years ago, up in Wisconsin.

This year was Kansas. You know, flat, featureless Kansas. Whatever. That was the hilliest course I’ve ever ran on! If we weren’t going up a hill, we were going down a hill, with one of the steepest hills saved for mile 24.

So, yeah, it was super fun! As I stated in a tweet, my legs officially hate my guts. I don’t blame them.

Here are a few pictures from the older kids/cousin outing to the skating rink.

This was the best I could do for a group picture.

Afterwards we went to Jose Peppers to eat.