Running

We’ve had some fun things going on around here lately. Mostly they involve being outside in the amazing fall weather here in Dallas, which is always a sweet treat after the summer heat finally goes away. First up was a family golf outing. Alixa and Jarom made PJ watch the kids while Mario took them on a 90 minute drive that ended at a beautiful and mostly empty golf course situated on a tree farm outside of Dallas. They had a great time with the course basically to themselves, and finished up while the sun was setting over some beautiful East Texas scenery. Neither Jarom nor Alixa played particularly well, but it didn’t seem to matter much.

 From the annual trip to the pumpkin patch

  

Alixa subbed on a rec league softball team a few weeks ago and was so amazing that they asked her to be a regular member of the team. So she is doing that every Friday night. Last week they planned a date night where Jarom would watch her softball game and then they would go to a high school football game. Things did not go as planned. When they arrived they found out that there were not enough men to play, so Jarom was recruited. But he did not bring a glove and was dressed up for his date. Fortunately, when Jarom is dressed up he is still wearing sneakers and shorts, so it wasn’t too big a deal to just trade in his polo for a t-shirt. There was also a big to do about everyone on the team having the right color shirt. As a result of that Alixa had to trade shirts with a 7-year old. Alixa has been doing a really amazing job of dropping weight, but no amount of Insanity or Turbo Kick Boxing was going to get her comfortably into a shirt that said “Excited about 2^nd grade”. But she got it on, and just had to run around the bases while holding it so it didn’t creep up too high. The game was a blowout, highlighted by Jarom getting all the way around the bases twice and Alixa getting pegged in the back going from 2^nd to 3^rd base. Then it was off the stadium to root for Wakeland. It had been about a decade since Jarom had been to a high school game, and it was fun to watch. He also got to share some of extremely nerdy marching band knowledge with his wife and friends. They promptly made fun of him. After getting some ice cream he dropped Alixa off at home and headed to the airport to pick up his cousin Kyle. It’s always nice to see Kyle, but it was especially nice this time because he had flown in some Café Rio from the SLC airport for Alixa. She was already asleep when he got home, but it was the perfect post race lunch to reward her for her great performance the next day.

 Alixa has resurrected her recipe club, and learned how to take panoramic pics with her phone

 Every morning Bo now goes downstairs to get his breakfast

Which brings us to the best thing that has happened recently, the Friends of Frisco 5k. This race is organized by one of Alixa’s favorite people and the proceeds went to support a local charity that the Winns are glad to support. Jarom and Alixa signed up for the 5k, and Jenna was super excited for her big race, a 1 mile fun run. Jarom has gone on a few training runs with her, and while she had never done a full mile without at least a few walk breaks she had done very well. However, the moment she found herself in a competitive environment a switch flipped. All of a sudden she had a mean look in her eyes and was ready to go. She took off as soon as the starter said go and never let up. Jarom was shocked at the pace she was setting, and thought about telling her to slow down a bit but decided to just see what happened. Not only did she not slow down, she would get mad when other people would pass her and speed up to try and pass them back. As we rounded the final turn and saw the finish line she said “Daddy, I’ve got to win” and turned on the jets for the last few hundred feet. The fun run began at 8:03 and she crossed the finish line at 8:11. We didn’t time it exactly because nobody was expecting her to do as well as she did. An 8-minute mile seemed a little fast, so Jarom mapped out the course and found that it is actually only .93 miles, so her pace was probably closer to 9 min/mile, but everyone was amazed. And she wasn’t even tired. When Jarom and Alixa took off on their run Jenna occupied herself by running up and down the small hills near the finish line.

Alixa was just as impressive. She also gets pretty intense and competitive and doesn’t like it when people pass her. Jarom’s plan was to run with her or just behind her until the last tenth of a mile and then pass her at the finish line. The plan was working really well until about the 2 mile mark. That’s when all of the not running that Jarom has been doing over the past few months started to kick in, and Lix began to pull away. She ended up finishing at 25:36, with Jarom floundering in 47 seconds later. We stuck around for a few minutes afterwards to enjoy the DJ, get Jenna’s face painted, and check the results. And boy were we glad we did, because standing atop the podium for the Female 25 to 29 age group is your 2013 champion, Alixa Winn. She got a cool little medal and was rightfully very proud. It was a great time and we will probably turn this into an annual event, especially for the kids. And while those three were running Bo got to spend a fun morning with Opa and Emily got to watch hunting shows with her good buddy Adam, so everyone had a pretty good day.

It's a good thing she can run fast, because gymnastics is not going to be her thing