Lynnea and Kristin found a St Patrick Day's race that they, and all the nieces, wanted to run in. The first race of the morning was the kids 1-miler. Morgan had a door slammed on her foot a few days prior and ended up being a spectator with Auntie Kristin, Mom, and Papa. Dad then ran with Ashley, while I ran with Ella. When we started running, my goal was to get Ella to run the first 1/4th mile without walking. When she did that without complaint, I thought how cool if she could run a half mile. When that passed, I finally realized she just might run the whole mile straight! Which she did. She also talked the whole time. She talked about why geese where in the park if they are suppose to go to warmer weather, whether Uncle Chris has ever seen a horned owl, how the barn owls were her favorite, that she did want to walk, but knew she would be cold if she did so she was going to keep running, how she runs around the track at recess, did I know this 1 mile race was equal to four times around that track and so forth...it was crazy. We crossed the finish line at an impressive 12 minutes 09 seconds. Once we meet up with our cheer section, Kerry and Ashley came into sight, and we learned Ashley ran the whole race too in 14 min 58 sec!
Notice Ella's shoes!
Chris and Molly then showed up to cheer on Lynnea, Kristin and me for the 5K race. We had all decided to run together and I had so much fun being in the "race" atmosphere for the first time since Molly. Lynn had quite the competitor in her and we raced it out in the end...though my time never showed up! Lynn crossed the finish line at 32 minutes and 32 seconds (I was just a touch in front of her). Kristin was then just a few seconds behind us and came in at 32 minutes and 39 seconds...a PR for her!
