St. George 2010

On Friday we took off down to St. George for a mini-vacay. My friend Candace and I signed up about two months ago to run in the Painter's 1/2 Marathon and we decided it was a good excuse to make it a long weekend and get away. We arrived Friday afternoon to RAIN!! AGHGH! Our plans to go hiking were derailed but we managed to meet up with a friend of mine that I haven't seen in years, Amy. We had a blast chatting with her for an hour before her and her family had to take off, but she managed to get me out of a bind. I had only brought tank tops to run in (I know stupid me) and so she let me borrow a shirt for the race the next morning. It was heaven sent for sure:) But the shirt was the only good thing that happened that day. We arrived at our hotel and immediately my allergies kicked into high gear. Who knows what was in that room before us but I could barely go 5 minutes without sneezing. And we couldn't escape because it was RAINING outside!! So we put everyone to bed early and I read until pretty much I thought I would be able to sleep. WRONG. My allergies were horrid, Lexie woke up every hour because of her teething, and Mikaela woke up throwing up (apparently she had consumed so much junk on the trip down that her stomach just couldn't handle it)! At that point I was pretty much delirious. I just lay there with a pounding headache and a drippy nose, and prayed for at least two hours of sleep.

Thankfully, the race wasn't until 9:00 a.m. and so I did get about two hours of rest, got up and met my friend. I was totally upfront and said I had no idea how I was going to make it through, but that I would try. And make it through we did, we actually beat our Top of Utah time without even meaning to! This was actually the nicest run I have ever ran. We talked more than we ever had, enjoyed the scenery, and even hammed it up for some of the photographers along the route. And our luck did finally turn around this day. It didn't rain at all, in fact the sun peeked out around noon and we got to enjoy St. George! Oh, and my final time: 1:53:25. Jared says I am quite reliable in my running time! Ha Ha! I ended up placing 26th out of 121 women in my age division!
After eating an enormous lunch, we headed back to the Dixie Center to the Rosenbruch Wildlife Museum. After the Bean Museum in Provo, the kids were so excited to go to another "dead animal museum" as they like to put it!! It was actually a lot bigger than the Bean Museum and the animals there were incredible. I think we spent over two hours looking at all the stuff. The funnest part for the kids were these binoculars and telephone radios they gave us to walk around with. Apparently at every station you could call into the radio and it would talk about the animals in that exhibit. They loved that and wouldn't leave until they saw everything!

After the museum we were all getting a bit hungry again and so we headed to this fabulous Frozen Yogurt place called KRAVE. Candace and her friends had told us about it and we had to go and try for ourselves. You pay by the oz. and you can create create any type of frozen yogurt concotion you'd like. There was tons of flavors to choose from and tons of candies/cookies/fruit/brownies to top your creation with. It was a hit!

We ended our day with shopping at the outlets and dinner at a little place called Pepper's Cantina. Yum Yum! And you know the day was a hit when this is how I found my honey and Lexie in the wee hours of the morning the next day:

We had so much fun and the best part was that my friend came back into town early and we got to hang out with her whole family on Sunday at a more relaxed pace. We had breakfast at her place and headed over to a park to enjoy the sunshine! We finally left around 2:00 p.m. and made it home without any problems. It was such a nice break from our nasty winter and I am so glad that we got a little chance to get away.