Motel 6 to Red Carpet in 20 Minutes

Although another possible title could have been "ER to Marathon in Two Weeks" but more on that in a minute. On Thursday we left home as soon as Nick got out of school and drove straight to Santa Barbara hoping to make it in time to attend the opening night gala of the Santa Barbara Film Festival with our friends Kirsten and Dirk. We made it to the Motel, dropped of grandma and the kids and rushed to make it just in time for the opening film. We were in the first row and below is a picture of the stars of the opening night film. Afterwards we went to the opening night party and had so much fun catching up with Kristen and Dirk, drinking and laughing until way past our normal bed time. On Friday morning we went to the premiere of Dirk's movie which was amazing! They weren't sure what kind of turnout they would have since it was on the morning of the first day and it was pouring rain but the theater was full and his showing on Sunday was completely sold out. We are so glad that the timing worked out that we could see them and the film.

Sorry for the grainy picture but we lost our camera and are using our camcorder to take pictures for now.

Now onto the marathon. Pete has run this marathon for seven years in memory of Jack. Two weeks before the marathon Pete hurt his back and we had to go to the ER so he could get a shot of morphine. So, after all of his months of training he wasn't able to run for the two weeks leading up to the race. We saw him at the first mile and he did not look good, I could tell he was hurting. Then we saw him at mile 7 and he was smiling and looked much better. He ran into some friends from high school around mile 2 and they were chatting and catching up and it took his mind off the pain. As a legacy runner he is able to personalize his race bib and his says "Jack Henry" so people were yelling out "Go Jack" as he ran by which motivated him also. Based on his training he was hoping for a better time but given his injury the fact that he completed the race is great and his time was only a minute off of his previous personal record.

And here is one more picture of the cousins at the beach house we rented. We said to say "Beach House" and all the boys shouted it which is why their mouths are wide open.

There were definitely some challenging parts of the trip such as buckets of rain on two of the days and horrible traffic between Santa Barbara and Huntington Beach which caused poor Nick to get carsick. But even though life isn't all rainbows and roses it's more fun to remember the good parts of the trip :)