Helvatia Half Marathon

I meant to post this the same day as my marathon, but here I am. Blogging seems to be that friend that I hang out with a ton at a time and then get going with other life stuff and we pick up where we left off...whenever it is we pick up. So, my feeble attempt to "journal" like this and let you inside my head and world a little is something I keep wanting to and trying to attend to.

So I trained and trained and got myself ready for my second half marathon. Steve and I were ready. We left early with Jerry and headed to Hillsboro. We stretched, took some pics and lined up. Jeanne-Ann and some of her girlfriends were doing the 10K and drove up separately. I am so proud of my best friend! She is amazing.

We started off in the mass of people and got on our way. We started really fast. The first mile was done in 7 minutes and 15 seconds. We slowed a little bit every mile, but not by a ton. We hit the 2 major hills and I was dying. I literally went back to that place I was when I ran the 800M race in high school. Every time I ever ran that race I thought, "If I can trip in the pack it will look like it was someone else's fault." I never actually did because I love competing too much. I had that thought, what if I tripped. Then I can bail out of this thing. I had run 10 miles the weekend before and felt great! This was different. We ran too fast and had major hills. I had that thought over and over. I also reminded myself that a half marathon is mostly mental.

I pushed my brain past the pain. We hit stride into the last portion of the race. We were on the last part of the downhill section. After that we would be going on flat roads for the rest of the way. Then came that ill-fated moment. At around mile 8 I was running along the edge of the road when I stepped on the edge where there was a 4 inch drop and twisted my ankle. I followed that with a double roll-over and immediately heard a large collective gasp from the 15 or so people that were right around me. Thankfully I fell into grass and not the 8 foot drop into rocks that was just 100 feet back.

Steve asked if I needed help, but I knew I already threw him off so I told him to keep running. I got up and hobbled for about a half mile until I saw a volunteer. She didn't have anyway to contact anyone, so I waited. A police officer on a motorcycle stopped and called in an ambulance. When they finally got there they gave me a cold pack, but I guess I wasn't priority enough to get a ride, so the police officer was kind enough to call in another officer who had a car. Soon enough I was on my way. During all of this some guy stopped and asked if he could quit because his back was hurting (he has chronic back pain) and so the police officer put him in the back where he complained that the seats were uncomfortable and not ideal for tall people. The officer said that if you break the law you deserve an uncomfortable ride.

So I began to ask the officer about his life and he kept sharing more and more. Turns out he was let go from the force 8 years ago in another state and has been volunteering for a number of years at the behest of a friend. He will finish his law degree in October and hopes to get back on the force full time. He had shared so much with me that as we pulled into the stadium I asked if it was OK if I prayed for him. The guy in the back said, "Let me out before he does that!" That made me laugh. The officer said, "I'm not a religious person." I told him it was OK if he was OK with it. He said, "Sure."

I prayed for him and he said, "Do you do this often?" I said, "You mean pray for people?" He said, "Yes." I told him "all the time." He thanked me and let me out. I headed to where the finish line was without crossing it. It was weird. I got my free burger and joined Jeanne-Ann and the kids and Steve and Jerry and their families and some other friends. Drank about 8 Jamba Juices and we headed home. It was quite the event. I am very sad that I didn't get to finish. Next year, but for now I will have to just train for the Hood to Coast race.

40 Days of Blog

Tonight we had dinner with some of our dearest friends in the world. We all decided it would be fun to do a "40 Days of Blog" together. Essentially we are committing to posting one blog per day for the next 40 days starting today! As soon as Bex mentioned this I was ALL IN! It is exactly what I need. I want to blog more and I need motivation and accountability. I love to blog, it is just one of those things that can be hard to set time aside to do. Now I am doing it! You can hold me accountable to. Interaction is a great thing (hint..feel free to comment). I love that blogging can open conversations on all sorts of topics.

I am sure there will be plenty of adoption conversation along the way, as that is what 3 out of 5 of us are doing and it consumes a lot of our thought energy. It will also have plenty of daily life mixed in, as that is what my blog tends to be about. Hopefully there will be something that will be thought-provoking and interesting to you as well. I expect that there will be some give-aways happening. I won't reveal yet, but I think someone from this team will be doing one today. So keep a look out.

Want to read along? Check out the "Team."
Bex Mann.
Michelle Unwin.
and Steve Unwin (but Steve will start his 40 days on the 1st of September)

Here we go!!!
    My beautiful bride, Jeanne-Ann is blogging, but not yet ready for 40 days. Encourage her and comment on her blog!

Silly Bands

Have you seen them? Chances are you have. You may not have realized what you were looking at, but it is the current craze amongst young people right now. At first I thought it was just elementary aged kids, but it crosses several age brackets.

Basically it is gel bracelets that are in the shape of almost everything you can imagine! Disney characters, sports teams, words, animals, instruments, etc. Some even glow in the dark. They are all the rage right now. I was at a conference this past week in Louisville called LIFE conference with 6,500 high school students and I saw them everywhere. You can pick them up almost any place you can spend money. I picked up a few at a gas station for my kids. Then my nephews had hundreds of them including a dreaded Yankee one. Ewwwww! I will have to see if I can find a Red Sox one soon.

I then read an article on line that mentioned that some schools are banning them because they are cause for fights and distraction. It's crazy. Do you have any of them? If so, what kind?

The Mickey and glow-in-the-dark dinosaur are upside down. oops.

We are on the LIST!!!

Last week while we were at LIFE conference we got some great news. Our dossier was sent off to Ethiopia. That means we are on the list. We watched as the DHL tracking kept moving along. It was very exciting, but most exciting was when we saw that it had arrived in Addis Ababa. I shared earlier that there are some similarities of going through the adoption process to going through pregnancy. This moment is likened to hearing the baby's heart beat. this is the most excited I think I have been in this whole process. Now it's just waiting and raising the funds for the next check. Thought you might like to join us on the journey we went on.

Random Updates

* Our dossier is in the mail! Sent it out on Thursday. This is HUGE! Now we wait to get on the waiting list.

* My son's fishing pole broke so he decided to take a stick, tie some line to it and put a worm on a hook. He caught 4 trout and a large mouth bass! AMAZING! (pics to come)

* I slept 2 hours last night (before I left for vacation)

*I have not run once since my half marathon. Tomorrow I start back to it so I can be ready for the Hood to Coast relay in August.

* I bought 2 books at an outlet store today for $5 each. They are the first and third in a three book series. I couldn't find the second one. It's been a while since I have read a good novel.

* Facetime rocks my face off!

* I sang Owl City's Fireflies while catching fireflies tonight. I love fireflies.

* Imagine the world if we all decided to adopt a child...

Adoption Update

We are almost there! We have finished all our classes, got all our paper work finished and notarized and we are ready to move forward! Gulp. As soon as we mail this off we our agency will send it to Ethiopia and we will wait for word that we are on the waiting list! Wow.

Many of my dear blog friends are part of that. Thank you. We are just about done with our t-shirt pre-orders and have sold about 70!! Thank you so much. I am truly grateful for how many have joined us on this journey. The shirts will be ready on July 12. I am super excited to see them and see many of you wearing them. What a cool opportunity for so many to get a chance to raise awareness about adoption. Feel free to send people over to this blog or www.erikwithak.com if they want to read more of the story.

If you still want to get your order in do it quick. $25 and you choose green or blue (add$5 if it needs to be shipped to you). Just click this link and you can order from there. If you don't have paypal or don't want to pay that way you can send a check or hand me cash.

Thanx again friends!!

Want to Buy an Adoption T-Shirt?

ADENDUM:

We have ordered the shirts, but ordered extras, so please contact me before you buy to see if we have the size. We may do a second order if they are all gone and more people want them.

So it's final. After your votes came in it is clear what 2 colors made it to the final. We will be taking orders for 2 weeks (of course you can order later than that) and then we will put the order in to the t-shirt company. Then it will take 1-2 weeks to get them printed and then you can get them. We are going with the fatigue green and true navy colors as you can see below. The shirts will go for $25 each and if you live locally to me that will be it. If you need them shipped just add $5 to the total. Every dollar goes to helping bring our 2 babies home.

I know that God will provide the money we need. I am in complete trust of that. It is the only way that this can happen. I also know that we need to do our part in it. I have never been good at asking people for money. I remember when I was a Boy Scout I hated going door to door selling junk. I just didn't want to bother people. And to ask people straight up for money was completely out of the question. So here I get to "ask" for your $$$ but give you something in return. So that's fun.

When you click the paypal button that corresponds with the color you want indicate the size you want. I hope you like it and the extra surprise that we are not sharing yet.

<---this is for the fatigue green one

<---this is for the navy shirt

This is what the graphic looks like up close.