Marathon Training

I thought I better give you an update on my marathon training. Today was especially hard as I had to go up the stairs TWICE when I realized I hadn't brought enough mini donuts down with me the first time. My work on the treadmill is much better after I discovered a little trick. I noticed that to make the workout harder, you can set this thing at an incline and simulate hills. So I thought, "Hey, I'm going to be going downhill sometimes, I need to train for that too!" I therefore came up with a "decline" system by placing a few dictionaries under the back of the treadmill. This has been a fantastic discovery. I have been working out for a week now on a "3 dictionary" decline and am now up to going 6 minutes at well over 2.5 miles an hour. (By the way, going any slower than 2.5 causes one to fall forward and strike their head on the front of the machine)

And now on to other exciting events. Nikki's mom has been somewhat reluctant, unwilling, stubborn or just plain lazy to get started on redoing our back deck; which has been very frustrating to me because I have no place to put my new lawn lounge chair. I was able to use it the other morning in the backyard to shout instructions to her as she cleaned out the gutters. It made it easier to check up on her atop our two story house being in the reclined position as I was. In reward for doing such a great job we took her up to Silver Mountain today.

We rode the "World's Longest Gondola" ride to the top of the mountain. We had a great time and really enjoyed the views. Not only did we ride in the gondola but took two other chair lifts and then hiked a ways to make it all the way to the tippy top. And here she thought she was coming to just relax and enjoy the grandkids. It was her first time on a chair lift, on a gondola, on the top of a mountain, and hiking at 7000 feet. We all had a great time.

Loads of Fun

I was going to wait and post when I had some pictures to show but I haven't had the time to download any so you have to suffer with just words.

We started off our fun by going to visit my sister and family in Utah. We spent a week with them and had a great time. Jaren spent the week at EFY in Provo. Darbi and McKenzie did girls camp together and had fun. The rest of us shopped and played golf. (I'll let you guess who did what. Suffice it to say that I found a lovely handbag that matched an outfit of mine that is to die for and this is Mike writing in case you were wondering.)

The only disappointmet came when I wasn't invited to participate in the new CD coming out. People just don't appreciate good humming like they used to. I even offered to whistle, but no takers. Instead we were treated to an AWESOME dinner at the Roof in Salt Lake overlooking the temple. If you haven't done this, you have to.

After a week in Utah we came home and I took the priests on their high adventure on Lake Coeur d' Alene. We had a great time on the water all week and no priests were killed or seriously injured.

The week after that, Nikki and I went up to girls camp and did the canoe trip. I lucked out and drove a chase boat while Nikki had to paddle a canoe with 14 young women. It was hot and a lot of wind to deal with. There were a lot of sunburns, tired hands, aching backs and sore bodies but they all survived. They didn't even care about me though when at one point I discovered I was out of sunflower seeds and was ready to cancel the rest of the trip. Fortunetly I found another bag and we were able to continue.

This week, Nikki's mom is in town and we are planning on showing her a good time. I did let here know that a good time at our house was replacing the back deck and repairing the fence on the side of the house. She is pretty good with a hammer for a senior citizen and I'm sure she'll do just fine.