Shamrock 1/2 Marathon

Okay well, I am back from the Shamrock 1/2 marathon in Virginia Beach. I have to say they put on a good race and it was perfect running weather. A little chilly (weather channel said 30) but not too bad. Better than 90 and humid.

I don't have any real pictures to show you right now, as I took a disposable camera instead of my digital one. I had this idea I'd take it with me while running, but I nixed the idea.

I did just what I wanted until mile 10 when my leg started to cramp up a bit, so then I walked until I could see the finish line. But all in all it was decent and I was only 2 minutes slower than the race I did at Disney when I was 24. Not too shabby, FOR ME, although I wish I had run more. There is always another race, and I realize that perhaps a race this close to winter is not so good for me. Maybe May or October is better suited, as some days I missed out on training due to weather. I know some people can run on the treadmill, but I always get either 1) shinsplints or 2) back pain when I run on a treadmill. Plus, let's admit it - I have been a little depressed since Harland left and put on 10 pounds. Not too cool.

Anyway my time was slooooow. I'll admit it though, just because if I know you, you'll go look it up anyway. I think only like 250 people were left behind me. Haha. Oh well. I wasn't in it to win it, that was for sure. My time was 3:18... which is close to my 3:16 in Disney. I hope to work on my running this year a bit. Maybe I'll try a more local run in the fall.

Anyway, it was a good race. They have a lot of people cheering, the waterstop people really cheer well, and they have a lot of waterstops. They also have some DJs out there playing music, one band live, and some signs with Virginia trivia and funny slogans (an example I can remember: "I used to have nothing and I still have most of it").

The race ends with Yuengling beer and Irish stew (I only partook in the beer and only one cup, I don't know how people drank all 4 of their ticket's worth of beer... it would have made me sick).

The race is Virginia's first "Green race". The race book is a calendar, the bag that the t-shirts came in is one of those mini back packs. I don't really know how to explain what that is, so here is a link to one for sale.
The bag the food came in at the end was a lunch bag cooler thing. We also got a lot of gear - a technical tee (I got a large, I should have gotten a medium, d'oh), a sports hat (that says finisher on it, it's pretty cool because it is very lightweight with mesh and it fits my head which is hard for adult hats because I have a tiny head) and a plastic cup.

Also you get a medal too. Here is all the loot. I'll post more pictures later in the week.

Longwood Gardens

One day after Christmas we went to Longwood Gardens. If you haven't been there before, you should go if you're ever in the Philly area. I love the Gardens in any season, and they always have something new each time, so it never gets boring. Harland and I took a lot of pictures, but I had to only select a few to show here.

Here is my mom and me in front of the DuPonts' house.


These pictures are all from the biggest building on the grounds.
The orchid room is my favorite room. I love orchids, and I miss mine that I had in Florida.


Here are my darling parents!


Some bonzai!


Here is me and a little wooden friend in their treehouse. He was wearing his very own scarf, I'm not loaning him one.

At night they had the fountains lit up and they were changing to some beautiful Christmas Carols and some classical music.




They decorated the topiary...



And of course, they also use Christmas lights to light up a lot of trees (over 70% are led lights!).

Thanksgiving - the non-traditional way

So most people go home for Thanksgiving and eat some turkey with all the fixin's. But we bucked tradition this year "thanks" to the Army (who might not be allowing Harland to see me again before he leaves the states, we learned today. Which is a whole other story).

Anyway, I drove down to Ft. Jackson (well actually to Camp McCrady) and picked Harland up and we traveled to Columbia.

This was the view from our hotel room.


We had an okay time, Thanksgiving dinner was taken at the local Chinese Buffet. It had a roasted turkey on there, so at least i got a slice of turkey (if not my beloved mashed potatoes and stuffing). And really it didn't matter where we were - I was very thankful for the time we spent together.

I think Harland was thankful for the pie that I made and brought with me.


We also went to Congaree National Park on Friday, continuing my family's tradition of hiking on Black Friday. We did a really nice 6.6 mile loop. I'll share those photos with you tomorrow.

But I want to say that I don't ever want to drive anywhere on the Sunday after Thanksgiving ever ever again. Here is one snapshot of some fog I went though... Luckily it was only foggy for about 1 mile out of the hundreds I traveled. But it was the beginning of about 200 miles of crazy bad traffic. I was ready to scream.

Last Aruba pics

Okay I have plenty more but don't want to bore all of you to tears.

Here is a cave that has early Indian cave paintings!!



The Cave paintings


We took a sunset cruise on another day...
Here is the 40 FT Catamaran


The view to shore

Here we are on it...



the sunset...

Some more Aruba

Okay - So we can keep on moving. So the next place we went to was the Ostrich farm. Just so you know, Ostriches are not my favorite thing. They're huge and they look like they'd poke out your eyes if you looked at them twice, and that killing you comes to them as natural as breathing.

So it took me the time it took about 5 other tourists to feed them to decide I would try it myself. You can notice this is not my natural smile, :).

But the babies are soooo fluffy and cute!


Then on the drive to the natural pool, we saw some sights:

Some wild Donkeys:

We went by htese big rocks. These are odd rocks in that Aruba is a volcanic island, and should not have htese kind of rocks on it. Naturalists do not understand how these rocks came to be on Aruba! Mysterious!


This crazy ranch with these weird huge plastic animals (like you'd see on a mini-golf course or something) and it had these catci fences. It was bizaro.

Then we took this insane dirt road. For about 45 minutes it was pretty scary. I was really worried people that people fall out the back. It was a little nuts. I'm glad I was not driving.

So you can see what the people in the other jeeps... but can you see the road below? No. Neither could we.

And here is Harland driving along a cliff.


But what we were driving to was sooo worth it. We went to the natural pool It was so beautiful. There was this circle of rocks where the waves would break over them, and it was like swiming in waterfalls. The water was clear and there were all kids of beautiful fish swimming in the pool. You can see the pool in the middle of the picture if you look closely.

The tour - take 1

On Wednesday we took a tour of the Island... but since I took sooo many pictures I'll have to break this down a bit.

We took a tour with ABC Jeep Tour. It was a good tour, interestingly, Harland got to drive one of these old Land ROvers. I'm pretty sure these wouldn't fly in the US. For one reason having a member of the the tour drive around 7 other tour members around just wouldn't work.

Anyway, Here is a picture of us in the Jeep.

One of the Shipwreck.


One of the California Lighthouse.

Of the Alto Vista Chapel.


Of some rocks.


We took a stop at the Gold Mines... But we didn't see any gold.




And we also stopped at the natural Bridge. The old one, which was the biggest in the Carribean collapsed in 2005, but there is another one next to it.





It was also nice to see what the "wild side" beach looked like.

Aruba - beach

When people ask about your vacation, they always want to know about your hotel and the Beach. As for the Bucuti, it was awesome and the people were great, the staff was the friendliest I have ever seen, and they were extremely environmentally friendly. And they happen to be on the best area of the Eagle Beach. No one could ask for any more than that.




We had pretty much the same view from our room.





Here is a pic of the restaurant and also of an Iguana. There were 3 or 4 around the area of the hotel, and this green guy was rather large, at least 2 feet long! He made me nervous one day when we were cozying up to the "Sandbar" taking advantage of happy hour. All the sudden there he was at our feet!




I'm afraid I won't have time to blog tomorrow, but on Friday or over the weekend, I'll have pictures for you from our tour of the Island... don't miss it!