while mom's away, the boys will play

For Christmas, Grandma and Grandpa Train got tickets for all the grandkids, and their parents, to go to see "Dinosaurs Live" at the Energy Solutions Arena (formerly known as the Delta Center, which is so much easier to say and remember!) and it turned out to be the same weekend I was in St. George running the 1/2 marathon. They went without me, and had a great time. It would have been so cool to see them life-size and moving around!! Will said his favorite part was the baby dinosaur. Photos courtesy of Grandma Train--thank you!

Sydney, Daren, Will, and Jake (hiding). Ben and Jack

The boys had a great time while I was gone--almost too much fun?!?! Donuts for breakfast (and eggs too, so it wasn't a complete wash), movies, eating out, and all around good times. They know how to have a party when the mama leaves!!

girl's weekend in st. george

I have the greatest group of friends that I grew up with, and I'm so lucky we are all still friends! This is the group I go to Bear Lake with every summer, and now we've come up with a winter get-away (they go on more trips together than that, but it's too hard for me to go on all of them!), and what's better than St. George in the middle of winter. (With all the inversion we are having here at home lately, I wish I were back down there now!) Oh, and we'll throw a half-marathon in there while we're at it! Someone came up with the idea that having a half-marathon to train for in January would be a good way to get through the holidays--I'm here to tell you, it wasn't that "good" this time.

I've had a bit of a hard time with running lately. I ran this same half last January, and felt good the first 2/3 of the race and then my body just died the last 1/3. Then I ran a marathon in May, and once again felt good the first half (13.1 miles) and then I went past dying and hit rock bottom like I never have before. I have been playing sports for over 30 years and never in my life had I felt like that before where my legs could NOT go any faster, no matter what I tried telling them. (Maybe they have been hanging around my boys too long because they don't seem to hear me either!) So this was going to be a make-or-break race for me. Don't get me wrong, I like running, but I like it on my own terms, and I especially don't like feeling like I have to run when I'd rather sleep in. I didn't train like I felt I should have, but I have been doing more cross-training, so I was hoping that would help.

It was a brisk 30 degrees or so at 9am last Saturday--a perfect day for a race! Jalynn ran the 5k so she took lots of pictures--thanks Jay! She got one at the start of the race, and then here are the rest of us coming in together. We finished in just over 2 hours, but I didn't even care about that because I felt SOOOOOOO much better than my 2 previous races. Plus, I have to put in a plug that they talked me into getting an ipod to run with this year, and Michelle was kind enough to sync all our ipods together with the same songs. It was so nice to have music to listen to in one ear and still be able to talk!! I love my hot pink "shuffle," which will never be confused with Daren's silver "shuffle," and thanks to Daren I got some real sweet earphones too.

This is the girls--Jalynn, me, Megyn, Michelle, and Teresa. And our medals of course. But really, the race is just a good excuse for a girl's weekend away *but don't tell the husbands that!* We did miss Tara coming who had to bail at the last minute because her husband had to have neck surgery, so thanks to Tara for letting us stay at her condo without her!!

We had a blast the rest of the time. This is the best I could do for a shopping picture since I didn't have my camera--Jalynn is in the mall holding all of our bags!! We laughed so much on this trip!! We were laughing so hard while shopping at the distribution center (by the temple), don't ask why we were there, but I can be a bit forgetful sometimes! The lady who ended up helping us was very nice and made the comment, "You girls are either having a great time or you have been drinking! *gasps* Did I just say that in here?" Which made us laugh even harder. There was also plenty of eating, hanging out, eating some more, planning when and what we were going to eat for our next meal, and we got in a movie a day--Bride Wars, Last Chance Harvey, and Paul Blart: Mall Cop. Ya, my vote is 0 for 3 on movies this year! Not impressed with any of them.

Oh, and since I finally got to run my race, I finally got to drink a Diet Coke again--however, it wasn't as great as I hoped it would be. I've only had a couple since then, but I'm really going to do better about not drinking it everyday like I did before. Anyway, it was a great time, but it's always good to get back home.

day 4: battle on the bayou--food and football

We had some rather...interesting...food in New Orleans. From bengiets to a muffuletta, and from jambalaya to crawfish etouffe, there were plenty of new things to try. I'm one for trying new things, but that doesn't mean I'll order them again! On the recommendations of our friend, (and dentist) who attended Tulane, he gave us quite a few places to try.

I really liked the muffuletta (a really big Italian-type sandwich) at Masperos; we had a Ferdi special--a ham and roast beef po' boy with debris--at Mother's (which we had to stand in line for over an hour to get in...at 3 in the afternoon!! We tagged along with Daren's friend, Zach, and his son, David, to get into the Bon Ton Cafe, which is said to be Rick Majerus' (who used to coach the U of U basketball team and knew his food well!) favorite restaurant anywhere! It sure did live up to its reputation. The steak was one of the best ever, and Daren got crawfish etouffe, which was surprisingly good. On game day we ate breakfast, which turned out to be lunch by the time you stood in line for-ev-er, at Camelia Grill. Still we ate breakfast, but heard they had killer burgers as well. The guys who work there are good entertainment as you pass the time, and we talked to lots of very nice Alabama fans too.

We took a taxi to get to Camelia Grill on Friday morning because it was impossible to get on the street cars that morning. We were going to catch one on the way back, but first we wanted to walk down St. Charles Street for a bit.

Audobon Park is on St. Charles Street, and like the rest of the city, has plenty of huge old oak trees. That's as far as we got, because it was getting late and we needed to get back, so we didn't make it to all the beautiful mansions. We rode one of the street cars back, just to say we did it, but it was jam-packed so we couldn't see anything.

There are many artists and a market around Jackson Square by the old cathedral.

And then there was the football game...

These are the crazy Utah students who come dressed to games like this whether rain or shine; whether warm or cold. Fortunately for them, and the rest of us, the game was played in the Superdome!!

We sat in the end zone on the bottom level--decent seats, but not great. There were about ten thousand Ute fans in attendance, and another seventy thousand Alabama fans. The Ute fans were all together in the same area. We were a small crowd in comparison, but we really made ourselves heard and represented well!

This (above) was the view from our seats. Photo 2 is the view of our 10,000+ fans (taken from across the stadium behind enemy lines). Yep, that's where they put all of us...in the end zone and barely around the corner. Seriously, I am still bugged about that--couldn't they give us (as in Utah fans) even a few decent seats?!

This was the view from the top of the upper deck--way up there! Heather sporting the traditional "New Orleans beads." They made special ones with the Utah and Alabama helmets on them.

The Utes got off to a strong start and were ahead 21-0 at the end of the first quarter. They never looked back from there. The Utes dominated both sides of the football and the Alabama fans were mostly quiet after the first few minutes. It was so unexpected (for everybody) and the Utah fans were crazy and very loud! We didn't even sit down for the first half of the game. I didn't even get to take a good picture of the game on our end until close to the end of the game, because the rest of the game pretty much took place on the other end of the field--it was crazy!

And there it is. What a victory! NO TIDE!!

The players came up to greet and thank the fans after the game--a great tradition started a few years back that will hopefully continue long into the future. There was no storming the field--the cops were surrounding the field, many on horseback, to prevent the crowd from coming down.

We hung around and watched the presentation of the trophies and the media interviews.

The Utah Utes ended up being the only college football team in the country to go through the entire season 13-0 and stay undefeated. We have the longest bowl winning streak in the country at 8, and the longest game winning streak at 14. We ended up ranked No. 2 in the Associated Press and No. 4 in the USA Today Coaches' Poll. Coach Kyle Whittingham (in above picture sporting the "U" hand sign) was named the American Football Coaches Association Coach of the Year, as well as the Paul "Bear" Bryant College Coach of the Year Award.

I think we got about 4 hours of sleep that night, and headed home first thing the next morning. The boys had a blast while we were gone--they watched movies, played games, went bowling, ate at McDonald's, went swimming, survived a power outage, and each of them got their own turn to go with Grandma and Grandpa Train to have fun and spend the night. Janae was quite a star for keeping up with them while we were gone, and we are so grateful for her! It was funny because later that Saturday evening they all told me they were so glad all of us were back together, but that they did miss Janae just a bit! What a great trip that we'll always remember. GO UTES!

day 3: the big easy--tours and a pep rally

Day 3: 1 January 2009: Happy New Year!

Like I said in my last post, there is a lot of history in New Orleans. History can be made at any time, whether it was 300 years ago, 3 years ago, or 3 days ago. On our third day there we took a combo Katrina/city tour. We had a great tour guide who talked and talked the whole time and taught us a lot about the history of the area. I loved getting out to see the rest of the city away from the French Quarters, but I was blown away by the part of the tour which took us to see parts of New Orleans that were devestated by Hurricane Katrina in Sept. 2005.

Photo 1 is a satellite picture of Hurricane Katrina, just before the eye of the storm reached land. There were many indicators around town about how people felt about what happened, esp. with the levees.

Our tour took us through the Ninth Ward, which was one of the hardest hit places.

Abandoned buildings were everywhere, with windows either knocked out or boarded up. We drove by Fats Domino's house. He was born, raised, and still lives here in New Orleans...and not in one of the big fancy houses, but in this humble home in the Ninth Ward.

And then we drove to the lower Ninth Ward. This was the hardest hit place that did the most damage, as you can see. There are open fields everywhere, where used to be homes, one right next to the other. It was chilling to see all that was left were foundations, perhaps a porch here and there. It really made me stop and think about the families who lost everything; maybe even each other. These pictures don't even begin to really tell what it looks like there, but it's the best we could do while taking them from a tour bus.

Brad Pitt has created a foundation that is helping to rebuild homes in the lower Ninth Ward. He got a bunch of architects together, and they came up with plans to build better homes to withstand flooding. Some of them are pretty funky looking, and there are only a few homes up already, but they are looking to replace 300 homes in this neighborhood. He was recently featured in an article in Architectural Digest for what he is doing in New Orleans.

In other areas, some homes have already been rebuilt, up on concrete blocks as you can see. And one thing I learned about N.O. is that they love color, as seen in the homes above.

We left the lower Ninth Ward and continued on our tour of the city. This is Esplanade Avenue, which is known for the beautiful old oak trees, and for their Bed & Breakfast's. On this avenue is St. Louis Cemetery #3.

We stopped here to get out for just a few minutes and look around the cemetery.

One of my favorite pictures is the second one above, which shows all the statues on top of the tombs. This was taken from our bus, so I got a great angle of them.

Some of the places we drove past I didn't get any pictures of, like City Park (which has the most amazing playground for kids) and Lake Pontchartrain. We passed one of the streetcars as we turned onto St. Charles Avenue.

On St. Charles Avenue we passed Tulane and Loyola Universities, Audobon Park, and drove through the scenic Garden District, where there are plenty of big, beautiful mansions. This one above is nicknamed, the "wedding cake house." And with that, our tour ended, but we had a great time and learned a ton.

All over town are these painted streetcars--I loved them!

After our tour and some food, we went to the National WWII Museum.

Unfortunately, we only had about an hour and a half to go through the place, where we could have easily spent at least another hour. It was neat to see the suspended airplanes, as well as tanks and boats used in the war.

This flag was a highlight as well. It was raised and flying on the USS St. Louis at Pearl Harbor on the morning of December 7, 1941, when we were being attacked by the Japanese. Apparently they only bring it out for a short time each year to commemorate the attack on Pearl Harbor, so it was neat to see.

Our next stop was the Utah pep rally held at the Marriott on Canal St. It was fun to be with so many Utah fans at one time. The band played "Utah Man," the football team was there, and the crowd went wild when Coach Kyle Whittingham spoke.

Because we were at the back of the hall, we were in perfect position when the football team left. I snapped a few pictures, but mostly just high-fived the players. l to r: Brian Johnson, QB; (King) Louie Sakoda, our king kicker ("Louuuuuuuie!"); and Kyle Whittingham, coach.

It was another fun day, ended by a great dinner (which I'll get into the food on my next blog), and more walking around French Quarters. While there were mostly Utah fans the first night we were there, by this night there were plenty of Alabama fans filtering in as well. You could definitely feel the excitement for the big game the next day!!