Marathon and Holiday cool-down

Jennifer ran a marathon last month. She drove over TEN HOURS to Nevada just to get to the race site. She did great. Maybe she'll come on and edit this post and give you the whole race play-by-play...or maybe she won't. When I ran my first marathon it was RUGGED. Very hard. MUCH harder than I hoped it would be. But we have now both finished a marathon. Kinda cool. Husband and wife. Marathoners. The next one we do, we do together. This time we'll find one for both of us that is down-hill or at least level.

Here she is while one of the girls that she works with that went down to Mesquite with her to run the race. Her name is India. Sometimes, in my absent-mindedness I call her China. ONLY because I really have met a 'China' before and that seems to stick more than India. In fact, the first time Jennifer mentioned India, I asked her if she truly was FROM INDIA. Nope. She's just like me. American. bummer.

Then, a couple weeks later at Thanksgiving she told me that she wanted to start a new tradition and do a Turkey-Trot Run. The nearest one was in the town next door to my parents. But I didn't want to get up early and drive all the way there to get the t-shirt, only to have to wait for the race to start an hour later and then drive all the way back. Only to get back in the car a couple hours later to drive back to Modesto for dinner. So I told her that we wern't going to do one. As the day went by I realized the error of my ways, so I decided to compromise: We would have our own Turkey-Trot. So we did. I was in charge of the shirts and they looked great. We woke up at seven and went for our run. She didn't know the t-shirts were going to be provided. But they were. The t-shirts read "The Bjarnason First Annual Turkey Trot. November 27th 2010. Turlock, Ca". At the bottom it reads "Gobble-Gobble".

It turned out to be a great morning and a great day to give many thanks.

Muir Woods National Monument

A couple of weeks ago we went to visit the beautiful woods of John Muir, just north of San Francisco. We were accompanied by some of our favorite people, the Wooleys. They have showed up in some of our other posts, because they truly are some of our favorite people. Between them and the Kyle and Stephanie Bills Family, it seems like there is always something to do and somewhere to go.

I elected to use this photo specifically and not the one with the flash, to show how dark it was inside the woods/forest. And did I mentioned CHILLY! As you see more pictures, you'll see that there wasn't much sun. Some of these trees are hundreds of feet tall. They do a great job of blocking out the warm sun. Also, every time we visit the bay it just seems to be colder. Maybe I'm rambling on, because I forgot to wear my coat and was cold the whole time. Ya, that was probably it.





Like I said, some of these trees were REALLY BIG! They are called The Coastal Redwoods, The Sequoia's.

Here's another one that shows the sun breaking through the trees. Any ounce of sun was a valuable commodity to these trees. Right when you walked into the forest, it immediately felt damp and cold. It definitely added to the peacefulness of the forest walk.

More trees. More walk-ways. Its tough to capture all the sights and sounds of the forest. It really was quite amazing.