Did you know she ran marathons?

For those of you who don't know this, Brent is training for a marathon. 26.2 blistering miles. In order to qualify to even run in the Boston marathon, you have to run this distance ridiculously fast, like in about 1/3 of the time it took me to run it in 2007. (I am and will always be proud of my 5 hour 51 minute time. That means I finished.)

But, Wow! Elaine Dalton qualified for Boston, huh? That's kind of cool.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vIrGKB5nRKE

Bequest of wings

She ate and drank the precious words
Her spirit grew robust;
She knew no more that she was poor,
Nor that her frame was dust.
She danced along the dingy days,
And this bequest of wings
Was but a book.
What liberty a loosened spirit brings!

-Emily Dickinson

Mega Post - The Last Month

We've had a full month, rather than post all the events individually, I thought I'd use this post to catch up with everything:
* I got really sick (the flu) for almost two weeks. Sick enough that I didn't even update the blog :( Although I wasn't able to run for that time, I was still able to stay on track with my running goals. I did an 18-mile run last week and a 20 mile run this past Thursday, so I should be on track for the Marathon on 19 September :) (also National Talk Like a Pirate Day).
* Nicole finished all her work for her Bachelor's Degree. She can be seen here celebrating with the steam cleaner she picked as a reward for finishing all her classes. I call this picture "dualing vacuums." (She also got a bread maker, but we don't have any pictures of that).
* We found some great deals for trips to Ireland and ended up getting tickets! We're going next April with my Mom and Nicole's best friend, Marie.
* Another product that Nicole just had to have is called the defurminator (yeah, I know). It actually did work as advertised, as seen in the picture below. All that white stuff on the lawn is just some of the fur that was defirminated off Gabe. As you can see, it's totals more mass then Teddy (the little dog). Nicole also got Gabe a shock collar on account of the police visit in the middle of the night, but that's another story.

* This month saw a lot of activity on various DYI and home improvement projects. We decided if we keep going to Home Depot, we'll need a bigger car; you can only fit so much into a Corolla. We'll post some before and after pictures later, but we've 1) had a new roof put on the garage 2) new window put in the living room and bedrooms 3) initial painting done in the future "super-office" 3) Nicole repaired the sprinklers and 4) the swamp cooler 5) We're planning a new granite counter-top for the bathroom 6) actually, that's it, but isn't that enough for one month?
* We have continued to eat. I've continued to cook and try and be creative. Here's "Love with a side of meatballs":

* Nicole's also regularly been attending a weekly seminar in Salt Lake.

* In the midst of the defending of the thesis and the finishing of degrees and working full time jobs and home projects and running and eating, we also took the chance to take a long weekend in Cedar. We went camping in the mountains and hiked the beautiful Zion's narrows. Here's the pictures:

Pretty beautiful, huh? We also finished reading a book together (it only took about 8 months) so it was a nice break.

*Oh and we bought a car:

We're thinking of names. Here are the top contenters, place your vote or suggest a new one: Magnum, Prometheus, Remington (Steele), Craigen.

So anyway, that's our been our month. Up next: I'll wrap up teaching the Gender class and start teaching History at UVU and some other class at BYU. Nicole starts a Leadership training seminar. We go to Canada, New York and Connecticut and register our new car. Oh and I might apply for an internship in Salt Lake.

(Sore) Green Thumb

We finally got around to buying AND planting some roses for our front yard. We have two "Golden Unicorns" (GU) Three "Kings Randsoms" (KR) a mystery red rose bush (MRR) and a white climber (WC).

We named them:
Dreamweaver (GU)
Moonshadow (GU)
Oberon (KR)
d'Artagnan (WC)
Randor (KR)
Kyrie Eleison (MRR)

Théoden (KR)

We have another white climber in the back, but we don't have a name yet, feel free to post suggestions.

Weighter Matters

I've posted about reaching my weight goal (215 lbs for a month), but in the month or so since then, the lbs. have started inching up again (and my waist has begun to centimeter out again). Partly this was because of a sever foot injury (requiring my first X-rays!) preventing me from running for awhile, but mostly it was just not having a goal.



It was hard thinking of another sufficiently motivating goal, the Wii was a really good one (even if I never have time to play) and I struggled to come up with something else that would entice me to drop another 20-25 lbs or so (5-10 of those being ones I had already lost this year). Then I had it. I'm going to run a marathon!



I know, suffering both mind and body for 4-6 hours doesn't sound like much of a reward for getting in shape, especially when compared to a Wii (note how there's no "Wii Marathon" game), but I know myself and a little reverse psychology* is just what I need right now. The other thing I need is support. I have my eye on the Logan Marathon in September which does give much time for dilly-dallying as they say. If I tell a lot of people, especially in writing, like now, then that'll help motivate me, because you all can keep me honest. So if you chat with me before September, ask how the training's going. The first two weeks have been impressive, although my 10 mile run yesterday was more of a shuffle, still I'm getting faster and more consistent in my running.



*I'm also using some regular old psychology to buy myself some books on Amazon a certain running sub-goals.

Surprised by surprise

There's one thing you should know about my dear sweet wonderful wife. She cannot, for the life of her, pull of a surprise. She's horrible at being sneaky and inevitably drops hints and teases that give things away. Contrast this with my family growing up. One summer day my mom and aunt tell me and my brothers "Let's go to the beach." We all piled in the car, but two hours later we were still on the highway... "Oh, we're going to a different beach than usual," they said (we could reach the beach in an hour and a half from our house normally).



About halfway down the New Jersey Turnpike, they put in a tape that had been put together by a DJ my Aunt knew. It played songs specially dedicated to the family (like "Put Me in Coach" for Seth) and announced the weather plan for Florida... we were going to Disney for two weeks.*



Anyway... Back to Nicole. While I delight in surprising her, she's really more of a "open the presents when you get them and sneak a peak into the kitchen when I'm making a special meal" kind of girl.



So when she surprised me on Wednesday... I was really surprised. Without me suspecting a single thing, she organized a large (and well attended) party to celebrate my thesis defense. We had planned on spending a few hours together that night since she would be out of town for the next four days and I let her plan the date. She brought me to BYU's Museum of Art, but after 10 minutes it closed (there were some really interesting pieces on display too, including the I-Spy guy's stuff). Nicole was believably disappointed that her plan was cut short and we went home to regroup. That's when over a dozen of my friends shouted surprise. In the 15 minutes or so that we had been gone, they had put up decorations, got a stack of pizzas, and set up a chocolate fondue.



So props to Nicole, for a great party and an amazingly successful surprise. While this was a real accomplishment for her (keeping a secret), I don't think it's let to a permanent change. As she put it later, "Lying is hard!"



*Now mine is also a family of planning, another trip we took had weekly family planning meetings for a year with us kids managing the "Vacation Fund" and having a vote as to hotels and destinations.

Masters of the University

Unfortunately, this post is not about He-Man and his Masters of the Universe. However, I did recently hear a fantastic orchestral version of the He-Man and She-Ra themes on youtube that no 80's child should go without watching: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFM95w4CXT0

No, this post is to announce the completion of my first two years of Grad school through the successful defense of my thesis. My mentor said "That was the least scathed I've ever seen anyone get through the defense." This despite one of the committee members threatening to bring barbecue sauce to roast me...

If it weren't for Matthew 10:10* I bet M.S.'s would insist on being called Master like PhD's insist on being called Doctor.

*My birthday's actually on 10/10... I'm sure there's a message in there for me somewhere, but who knows what it could be...

Nicole's Prom

Moving away from home at 16 Nicole never got the opportunity to goto Prom. Hearing her talk about the kinds of kids in her high school, that was probably a good thing. Anyway, when the opportunity to attend a Charity Dinner Gala thing came up, she went all out. She had her nails done, colored her hair, bought a dress, and got "all gussied up." We had a good time and even got some pictures:

Wii Weight!

So, last year, despite diet attempts, my weight was topping out at 250-260. I have pictures, but I won't post them. You're welcome. After Thanksgiving I decided to set a goal and get a big prize if I obtained it. The conditions were that I had to get to 215 lbs and stay there for at least a month. Long story short, I did it! Here's a picture of me, sucking it in to symbolically show how much I'd lost, about to open my prize... what could it be???

My sweetie made a big deal of my accomplishment and threw a party with all of my balloon friends shown above (it was an inpromptu party and my real live friends weren't able to make it, so we named the balloons after them, see if you can identify yours!). Nicole even got me candles and put them on (low-fat) ice-cream (see below). For those of you who are terribly observant, you might ask if they ran out of 2's at the store. The answer's "no" we just usually only pay attention to the last two digits of my weight and Nicole's used to her own weight range being in the hundreds... Bless her heart.

Look! It's a Wii! My next goal is to finish my thesis so I can have time to actually play it!

Safe and Smart Family!

Seth's back from Ghana! He brought us a cool statue that wel'll have to post soon. We had fun the day he got back, despite him being really really really really sick still (and over a week later, he's still real sick). But sick or not, we got him back and he's still alive, although given that someone in Africa suggested he should go intern in Iraq, we'll see how true that is at the end of the summer. With that possible (him going to Iraq) and his twin brother wanting to buy a (real) sports car, my Mom called me and said I was the family's last hope to be safe and smart and to just stay in school and work on my degree. For that I have to say "Mission Accomplished" in the same sense as the former administration used the term: I have, just this weekend, finished the substantive work on my thesis!!! Now's it just off to my chair and my committee and all get a (nother) degree! I've allready done my course work for both my MS and PhD so the next two years of school should be must less intense.