Happy Birthday Mom!

It's my Mom's birthday today, so Happy Birthday! I hope you have a wonderful day! My parents came up to visit us this past weekend and we had such a great time. They always spoil us when they are here--taking us out to eat, buying us groceries, taking care of our cars, fixing all of our broken things--can't get much better than that!

I talked to Benj last night. SLU wined and dined all of the students that are interviewing today. They got to go out to a really nice restaurant on The Hill (the Italian district in St. Louis). He said that the food was really good and the residents were nice and seemed happy, which is always a good sign. I am looking forward to hearing how his actual interview goes today, though. He'll have to take off straight from the hospital there and head to Omaha. He has two more weeks of rotations up there and then he can finally be in Kirksville for awhile. The weeks go by fast, but it's been hard to have Ben gone on so many out-rotations this year.

Thanks for the comments, girls! It's fun to see that someone is reading this! Tara, you asked about my preparations for running this race. Well, I think that I started running (really slowly and very short distances) sometime early last summer. As I said in my last post, I swore that I would never run...I would do anything to lose weight, except run. But, I soon found out that running was the most effecient way for me to burn calories and so I gave it a try. In the spring of this year, when it started getting nice out I got more serious about picking up some distance. Instead of going to the gym everyday, I was able to run outside, which is a lot more fun. I did my first race, a 10K, in April at the Osteopathic Fun Run. Of course, I didn't come anywhere close to winning, but I really did enjoy it. Over the summer I ran between 6 and 7.5 miles each day, which is maybe a little excessive for regular exercise, but that's what I did. I just decided to do this half marathon maybe a month ago or a little less. So, in preparation I am running 4-7 miles five days a week and then doing one long run of 10-12 miles once a week and taking a day off to rest. So, I guess that I have been working up to this race kind of slowly over the past year and a half. Since winter is on it's way, I'll have to head back to the gym and cut back on my running, but I am glad that I am getting the opportunity to run this race, while I am still in shape for it. Anyway, that is probably way more than you really wanted to know, but there you go!