October 3rd St George Marathon!

4 am wake up and off to the busses!

 7800 people make for a much bigger run than 1600 do!  This is intense!

 We had a great start and while it is a tough marathon, we were doing pretty well until about mile 17.   Then Brigham got sick.  Looking back, it may be the fact that he ate candy from every booth the night before, took candy from all the spectators that had a candy bag by them, and ate two pieces of licorice at every water stop handing out candy.  Plus I was pushing us to eat more than we ever had before.  Either way, he was in pain and we visited every port-a-potty the rest of the race.  :)  We finished at 4:42 but we had a great time and we REALLY enjoyed the race.  I can't communicate how much our time together on these races means to me.  Memories I will never forget.

This is what the kids did while we were out on the course.  We loved staying at sister Simpson's house.

Love these supportive people who wait so patiently and give us so much love when we come in.

After the race and some rest, the kids wanted to go to the rec center...but it was closed.  So we decided to take them to DI.  They each drew someone else's name and had $5 to get that person something they would want.  They had a ton of fun.  Then the neatest thing happened.  Peter was looking at some church history books debating if we should get them for Porter.  There were 16 books and each were $2 .  Ultimately he said he wasn't that interested and didn't think he would read them so we put them back.  Then this beautiful woman walks up and hand me some money.  She is insistent that she wants to buy them for our family.  I tried to explain that it wasn't the money that was holding us back but she just kept saying she wanted to buy them for us.  She said she saw a video on Facebook of a woman buying a cake for a family that had wanted it but when their groceries were rung up, they didn't have enough money.  She had decided she wanted to do something like that for someone.  I couldn't talk her out of it so we bought the books.  But told her I wanted her picture so we could remember what a special experience she had provided for us.  We talked about what we could do with the money and decided that we could send it to the people trying to rescue people from Syria.  Such a nice good example for our family.

Then we went to dinner at Paula's where Peter picked a prickley pear off the cactus.  We took it inside to dinner, cut the skin off, and ate it.  Pretty good.  Mild flavor but super dark red like a beat.  Fun new treat.
   
Then on the way home, we stopped at Albertsons for some ice cream and saw some roses.  Peter picked them up and said he wanted to get them for me.  I told him that was sweet but it was the thought that counted so he could just take my picture with them and save himself the money.  He responded, "In that case, have two dozen."  Love him.