Girls Weekend!

 I was able to get away this weekend with some friends down to Utah for some back to school shopping! Of course in true Katie fashion, I was able to get in a good run. 

As much as I miss my running group, I am sure glad that I have such beautiful scenery to run in!

I came back, and showered up, and we were ready to do some damage!

We had so much fun, shopping, eating, talking, and laughing.

We were packed in like sardines with our loot!

I think we need to make this a tradition...

Friends Reunited.

 My good friend Shelly, back in Minnesota happens to be from Idaho Falls.

She gave me some good insider info when I moved here.

Shelly and her kiddos came to visit for the holidays and we were able to meet up and have some fun!

She has twins, Kylee and Brandon's age, they were also in the same kindergarten class.

Two sets of twins in the same place is quite the combination!

Thanks for the fun reunion.

A Visit with the Browns.

 Our good friends, the Browns were out from Minnesota visiting their family, so we were able to spend a day with them. It was so much fun to get together with friends from "back home".

The girls had so much fun. It was like time hadn't passed at all.

A dog pile of friends.

The boys! Gotta love little rough and rowdy boys.

I am so glad they took some time out of their trip to spend some time with us.

Now we are praying that they come and move here too! :)

Good Bye Becca.

 Thursday, we had a dinner for Becca. Turns out there is more than just us little Ellis family leaving MN. Becca is traveling to a much more exciting location, CHINA! Oh I am so going to miss her. We had a fabulous dinner, by Shannon! She had quite the helpers, great servers, Evan and Kristen. This is what makes leaving the hardest. Leaving behind dear friends.

Me and Melissa.

 The two movers:

 Great friends:

 Love Tiffany!

I"m patiently waiting for Becca to send me the group photo, and the pictures of the delicious food we ate. Seriously  Shannon could open a restaurant!

Good food. Good times.

Christmas Eve.

Nothing better than getting together with friends to make the holiday brighter!

And that's just what we did! Lots of food, games, and even some good Gingerbread house making.

The adults got in on some picture taking:

We even had a little fun Just Dancing away. The boys had some moves!

Once everyone left and we cleaned up, we started our night of traditions. 

First up, Christmas PJ's.

I think they were loved by all!

Brandon very proud of his pair:

Kylee proud to be a present:

After getting nice and cozy in our Christmas pajamas, we headed down for a Christmas movie. What better than watching "The Santa Clause".

And after all were asleep, our living room transformed into this:

Merry Christmas to All and to All a Good Night!

Not for the Weak.

I had a fabulous run this morning, with my fabulous group! Despite there being a few icy patches we had to dodge, it really was perfect out for a nice long run. As we came back to the club, we got a few, "you are crazy" or "you must be obsessed". Well, maybe we are, but I choose to think this better describes me and my fellow runners:

Thanks Lisa...( I stole this from her) 

Not only do I running, but I love how I feel after. Especially this time of year when I ate more cookies than I can count yesterday! :)

Cheers to my running group! Oh how I'm going to miss all of you...Sniff.

Chicago 2012 reunion run baby!

Monster Dash!

This past Saturday was my last race of the season... :( Sad but true. And in all reality my body needs a break! As much fun as this race was, back to back races was HARD! 

I didn't go into this race with any sort of a plan. Mostly just to have fun, and well, the jacket. Some race for the t-shirt( I fall into this category most of the time...), 

but I wanted the jacket they gave out at this race! 

Not knowing how I was going to feel after Mankato, I opted for the 10 mile race instead of the half. Boy I am sure glad I did!

A few miles in I recognized a girl I run with, Lisa. We ran several miles together, and then here came Linda. Another runner from the Chanhassen Lifetime Run Club! 

She didn't stick around to long and took off ahead. 

So then that's when the goal came into play for me. Keep her in my sights. And that I did! 

And because of that, I was so glad I didn't have 3 more miles to run, as I came up on the finish line!

I surprised myself by finishing about 2 minutes faster than I thought I would run it in! Lisa came in not far behind me! It was so fun to get to hang out with these girls at the end of a long hard run!

Lisa, Linda, Katie.

Monster Dash finishers!

And here are the official results!

And after all that hard work, and a podium finish in a large race, I was informed that they only medal the first two in the age group categories. Lame. Oh well! I still placed third, and had a blast!

A Finish for the Books.

Warning: This post may bore some, as I lay out the details of my race... if so the pictures of my cute kids are worth looking at, and you can ignore the rest. For my running buddies this post is for you!

All the training and hard work was over. It was now time to see if I could prove it out on the course!

Firday, Annie and I headed down to Mankato to get ready for our half Marathon.

We had a blast at the expo, trying on running clothes, laughing at the funny shirts and getting excited when we picked up our packets for race day!

 Annie, ready to blaze the course!

We went to dinner, to carb-load(so delicious! Best salad dressing I've ever had! Oh and dessert too, I couldn't resist!)

We then checked into our hotel, and just vegged out watching chick flicks and talking. It was so much fun! I actually slept pretty well that night considering how nervous/excited I was for the following morning. I only woke up three times that night, and was able to go right back to sleep. 

The next morning we were up bright and early, 5:20 ready to hit the course!

We got to the start line about an hour early. We hit the bathrooms, chilled in a bus shelter to stay warm, where we met and incredible, cute old man who was about to run his 292nd marathon! Just amazing! Once we warmed up we checked our sweatshirts in and warmed up with a couple of stride outs and some active stretching. Then it was time to hit the coral! Boy I was so nervous! This was the moment of truth! My awesome Coach MB had sent me an email, with a plan of how to run to hit my goal. I was going over it in my mind as I waited for the gun to go off. Right on time, we were off at 8am! We got as close to the start as we could, so it didin't take us too long to cross the start line.

Miles 1-3 were a warm up. Get loose. I stayed right about where coach told me, between at 7:55 and 8 min pace. It was so hard to not go faster. It felt slow, but I knew I'd be thanking myself come mile 11 to keep it there.

Mile1- 7:53

Mile 2- 7:49

Mile 3- 7:52

Miles 4-10 I was to get into race pace, a 7:40.  This was a little hard, cause there was a lot of down hill, followed by up hills. So over all I think it ended up evening out.

Mile 6 and  8 or so I saw my family! It was so fun to get to see them! My kids are so cute!

Mile 4- 7:41, Mile 5- 7:29, Mile 6- 7:24, Mile 7- 7:38, Mile 8- 7:39, Mile 9- 7:45, Mile 10- 7:29

 Cutest kids Cheering me on!

 Brooke was a trooper!

 

 Those first 10 miles flew! I felt good and in a groove. Then came the hard part. I had to dig in and find that power that I had learned all those early mornings with my training group. The plan was to kick it to about a 7:35, maybe a 7:30 mile for miles 11 and 12. I was having some pain in the side of my calf(this darn thing happened to me last year during the marathon...), but I pushed it aside, and pushed on!

 Mile 11- 7:41, Mile 12- 7:32

Then it was track thinking time! Put it all on the line for the last 1.1 miles! I was tired, but there was a girl who had passed me around mile 11 and she was just in front of me, and I knew she had to be in my age group. She is the reason I found the energy to kick it up a notch. I couldn't have her beat me! (oh the mind of a runner!) Also knowing that my family would be there at the end gave me the courage to speed it up. (I am in the green shirt)

Last mile and some: 7:07!

I did it! It was quite emotional for me as I saw the finish line, and my family cheering me on. I had overcome the injugry, made it through months of training, with an amazing coach and great friends! I couldn't have done it without that group of friends and their support.

Official results:

7:40 Pace

1:40:30

13/313 age divison

161/1413 overall

My dear friend Annie rocked it! We ran about the first five miles together, then came the long down hill, and she was off! She ran a 1:38:35! Just incredible. I knew she would rock it. This girl ran in college, so even though according to her she didn't train hard enough, she is just blazin no matter what! We took some post pictures together, but the site has yet to post them... I'm sure we look awesome, but fun to have regardless!

We hung around for the award ceremony, and man, this was a fast field! That is Minnesota for you! These runners don't mess around. The winning male time was 1:09, and the female 1:11. Just insane!

We also headed out to the finish line and watched some marathoners as they came in! Remember the cute old man running his 292nd marathon?! Well he busted it out in under 4 hours! One of my good friends husbands was running his second in 22 days. That was so much fun to cheer him across to the finish!

So what is next for this running addict? Well, I am running this weekend in a 10 mile race called the Monster Dash, but this one is for pure fun! I am thinking some more half's this spring, then kick up the training to run the Chicago Marathon with the Coach, and some of my running group! Can we say road trip!?

Ryan and I sat down to plan out our summer of madness, between my running and his TRI's this next summer is gonna be crazy! Bring it!

A Yankee night.

Last night we went to a Twins game. Again. But seriously, how could you not, they were playing the Yankee's. If you like that team or not, they are good! So we went with some friends who had extra tickets.As you can see, the seats weren't near as good as last time, but hey they were still pretty amazing! We had so much fun! Talking, laughing, and of course EATING!
Ryan and I:

Night time:

This picture made me laugh for a long time! I could not stop laughing!

Now because I don't watch much NFL I didn't know who this person was, but my husband did, and so did everyone around me, cause they were all taking pictures like crazy! If you're like me and have no clue who he is, he is the new quarterback for the Vikings, Donovan McNabb.
Scott got this picture for me, and apparently not to discreet about it cause he's looking right at the camera! The face he's making is priceless!

Take me out to the ball game.

While Mark and Caroline were here, we were able to go to a Twins game. I haven't been to a twins game at all, coming from Chicago and going to games at Wrigley,
the dome just didn't excite me. But since they got their new field last year,
and our seats were 3rd row behind home plate,

who wouldn't want to go?!
We had a blast! They were playing the Red Sox which was a bonus as well.
Ryan and I in our AMAZINGLY comfy seats!

Mark and Caroline:

Ortiz up to bat. He hit an awesome home run!

Ryan enjoying the game:

Minneapolis Skyline:

Twins dugout just a few feet away!

So i'm not a huge baseball fan, so I don't know much about the players, but this guy seemed to be every Twins fan fovrite player, Mauer:

It was fun trying to get quick shots as the pitches came in!
To top off the night with all you can eat food and drinks the Twins won!

I think another game might be in store for the Ellis'!

Tara.

I realized I missed a post, so this is a little out of order:)
For my birthday, Tara and I went on a shopping trip to Anchorage!
My family was nice enough to watch all of our little rug rats.

We had so much fun trying on clothes, buying things for ourselves and of course the kiddos.
It's hard to resist buying things for the little munchkins...

Really a highlight of my trip was getting to spend so much time with Tara.
I am so thankful for her friendship. She is truly like a sister to me.
She's such a good mother, wife and friend. I need to take notes when I'm around her.
Now if we can somehow figure out how to live by each other...
Love you friend!

Good times in AK.

We, or should I say, I survived the plane ride up with me and the four little rug-rats!
We had a fun bonfire tonight! Complete with a hot dog roast and smores!
We even had a fun play date with cute little Elle:

WE love little miss Elle. Brooke and Elle had so much fun together!

Birthday's all around!

Is this pic not just do die for?!?
Today is my brother Bret's Birthday. The big 25!
He still is a GOLF fanatic. And as you can tell by the picture he is working hard on passing down the love of the sport to his most adorable little son Benny!
I can't wait to see him...oh and of course Bret too! Less than a month baby!
My brother is the sweetest most laid back guy you'll ever meet. He's an awesome dad, and an amazing husband. So glad that he is MY brother.

Another birthday of someone special to me is today. She shares my brother's birthday, but also they are the same age! So I claim her as my sister. For more reasons than just the birthday share.:) I've known her since she was 16. Seen her date, marry and become a wonderful mother, to another most adorable little boy. Shayla, I love you, hope your day was fantastic!

Friends.

Brooke loves her friend David. She asks about him all the time. It's really just too cute!

More Easter. Just a week late!

A little late posting the rest of Easter. But better late than never right!?

The kids loved their Easter baskets this year, as you can clearly tell:

I kept it low key compared to years past, as I wanted Easter to be more focused on the Savior, so I was worried the older kids would complain, but they were just as thrilled with half the candy and a book instead of toys! I think we as parents put the expectation on our kids, when really they are so easy to please.

We had Easter dinner with some friends, and then did an egg hunt! The kids had a blast! Brooke thought it was so much fun!

A little bit of dog piling fun:
Brandon the little monkey!
After some playing we did a little scavenger hunt for the true meaning of Easter. We would read Scripture and the kids would have to go find something that matched with the clue. They had so much fun. The older kids understood the meaning of the hunt...younger ones not so much. But it was fun anyways!
So here's to next year!