Road Trip with mom to Kentucky, March, 2023

 Mom and I had talked about going to see the Ark Encounter in Kentucky many times.  I finally decided why wait.. let's plan this and go.   So I did.... and then my dad got shingles, my brother had a heart episode, and my dad got chest cold on top of his shingles....  It seemed like everything was falling apart and me and mom would not get to go.....  I literally waited till Wednesday prior to our weekend getaway to decide for sure if we were going or not.   Travis, my brother was doing better.. he's wearing a heart monitor everyday 🙏... my dad's shingles were finally drying up 🙏.....  So me and mom decided to go on our little trip.  I'm SO GLAD we did.   

As I’ve aged, I’ve really enjoyed learning some history more so than when I was a kid 😂🤪 ….  Now days when I make road trips / run vacas, etc.  I try to find some history.   Mom and I traveled to Kentucky on Saturday.  The Ark, which we mainly went for, is not open on Sundays until late spring, so originally I had said we would just rest on Sunday after our 10 hour drive on Saturday.   We tried to get into Mammoth and Lincolns birth place on our way on Saturday... but were unable to....

However on Sunday we made it!  I decided why rest... rest when we get home... let's go see what we can and that's just what we did!  Here’s a little piece of history:

On February 12, 1809, Abraham Lincoln was born in a modest one-room log cabin on a small farm in north-central Kentucky. Little did his parents know at the time, that in 52 years he would become the United States’ 16th president, let alone a legend in history.

Abraham Lincoln Birthplace National Historical Park preserves two separate farm sites in LaRue County. The first site and Lincoln’s actual birthplace, Sinking Spring, is located just south of a small town called Hodgenville, where he remained with his family until the age of two. The second site, Knob Creek Farm, is northeast of Hodgenville, where Lincoln lived until he was 7 years old.

We also made it to mammoth cave on Sunday.... It was pretty cool and we enjoyed our 2 hour tour. 

We had a full day on Sunday between the 2 hour drive back to Lincoln's birthplace and Mammoth cave followed by a 2 hour drive back to Dry Ridge, KY where we were staying to see the Ark on Monday.  

It was COLD! We even had light snow off and on!  

We went to the creation museum first which is wonderful. It is a lot of READING.  But very interesting.. you  need a lot of time to really read and digest it all. 

The Ark Encounter is indescribable.  It really brought everything to life for me! To walk up to something that big and to imagine what the people thought back in biblical times of Noah as he built it.   The craftsmanship with all the details from water, food, getting rid of the waste created by animals, etc is just way above my level of thinking.   It’s just incredible to see in person and walk through the massive Ark is something I’ll never forget.   My pics are just a tiny fraction of what there is too see.  

They have plans to build a Jerusalem, and more within the coming years.  💕

smaller animal cages inside the Ark

Look how small mom is compared to the ARK! 

A door inside the ARK

Outside the Ark there is eating places, gift shops and a carousel..

We had a wonderful day.  

In our driving around, we also found a CASTLE! Google it and read the story.. interesting..

2 things I just couldn’t work into the very short long weekend in Kentucky…. Visiting the horse park & the Distilleries…. They are many there 🤪.   I would of planned an extra day or two if I had known there was so much to see in the area.   

Go plan a trip! Why wait till everything is perfect to do something.. take the time to spend with family.  My sister called me when we got back and thanked me for taking mom... she said mom needed a break from dad. 😂😂😂😂😁😍

That's a wrap until our next adventure... 💕

Baby Brown coming August, 2023

 

The gender is revealed. 

I got a surprise at Christmas.  My daughter, Erin, told me she was expecting.  💓  It was still early so we kept it a secret and FINALLY on February 25 we had a small family gathering for the GENDER reveal.  IT'S A GIRL! 💟

I'm so excited for my daughter.  She's waited awhile to have children.  She's watched all her friends have children and she's even had a few of them in her class at school. 😂😍  Now it's her turn.  We are all super excited.  I had a feeling it was a girl, but kind of hoped it might be a boy for Matt's sake.  He already has 2 girls and since him and Erin are older... this may be the only child they try to have together.   Matt's luck wasn't strong enough... Girls win.... Girls rule... 💪😂😍💗  We will all LOVE the child no matter the gender.  It's just fun to guess and joke about what we think the baby may be ahead of the gender reveal.  We all gave Matt a hard time and told him the male determines the sex of the child and his odds of a boy were not looking good. 😂 

We are counting down till August 8, 2023 ... or maybe a little early and share a birthday month with me.. (July)... YaYa wouldn't complain about that one bit. 😍

Here are a few pictures from the gender reveal:

Looking at the sonogram pics... Rori still can't believe it's a girl either... ha  she wore blue that day. 

Happy YAYA with her baby girl. 

The parents to be.... plus baby boss (the dog). 

yes, these crazy girls ended up getting in the pool... which it did turn out to be 85 degrees in February and was so HOT that afternoon! I thought the cake was going to melt.  

Brett, Neely, Whitney, me, Bubba, Erin, Aybri, Rori & Matt

Neely going to be a girl cousin... YIPPIE

They let the girls, big sisters (Aybri & Rori)

 open the box that had the pink balloons in it to reveal the gender while Matt & Erin popper the popper things... No one knew what the gender was except for my Aunt Debby that was the gender keeper and kept it a secret until this day.   

Whitney, Neely &  Erin

The family with my mom & dad.... Great Grandparents.

The ultra sound pictures confirming it's a girl that was sealed in an envelope that Erin opened at the reveal. 

Matt's family

baby momma showing off her baby bump

After everyone left, Matt let the girls ride their toys in my neighborhood and even Bubba hung around to visit.  I think he enjoyed holding Neely.  He says Brett rarely let's him hold her.. ha  

Erin's been on spring break this past week and wanted to get the baby room ready while she was out of school, so I went over this weekend and helped her put together the baby bed. 

Here she is sporting that baby bump at 1/2 way ...... so dang cute! 

YaYa can't wait to welcome another grandbaby! 

Marathon #30 - Little Rock, AR

 

Marathon #30 for me.   I finished the race with a young girl that was doing her first marathon.   It was so sweet seeing her accomplish her goal.   She is a young nursing student that decided she wanted to run a marathon and today she did.  ❤️.   I highly recommend this race to anyone that wants to run a new race.  It's amazing! 

There she is behind me... we were about to go up ANOTHER hill!  We had just passed a water stop where they were handing out the beads I have around my neck.  We had been back and forth passing each other as we jogged / walked.  It wasn't until those last few miles that I started talking to her.  She told me how hard nursing school was and that she decided she would try her first marathon.  She had hurt her ankle like 3 weeks prior to the race so she was struggling those last miles.   I was also pushing through my own pain during that time and we just kind of bonded.  We quickly became running friends. 💕  She was amazed that I didn't start running until I was 40.  The closer we got the finish line, she said... "let's finish together"...  I told her I'd run a bit more with her, but I wanted her to go on in alone and get that picture of her finishing her first!  Her parents were waiting for her at the finish line.  It was so SWEET!  I still remember my first.  You just never forget it.  😍

Here we are at the finish headed inside to the athlete village for food. 

Little Rock was awesome.  I can’t say enough about the race.  From all the wonderful volunteers, the decorations, the aid stations were plenty and the porta potties! the cheer support along the course to the amazing huge medal.  It was all amazing…. Except those few giant hills at the end 😩 

We stayed at the Marriott which I didn't realize was the same place for Expo and Finish line.  It was so nice not having to drive anywhere.  We did walk 2 blocks to Samatha's Tap Room and had a very nice meal.  Little Rock did not disappoint!   

And I am forever grateful for my crazy friends, Felicia and Penny that love to travel and go to races.  We had decided on this bucket list race way before my hip/back issues.....  I literally debated on pulling out of the event... but since they had an 8 hour time limit... I was like what the heck... I'm going to go do this thing and get that HUGE medal.   I still can't believe how big the medal is!  

Expo Pictures... they had so many neat decorations. 

We found Joe right before we started and grabbed a quick pic. 

The medal is as big as my head!

My sweet friend with awesome calves! Felicia. 

Check out those huge medals!  Penny, me & Felicia.. we did it! I believe it was marathon #7 for Felicia and #44 for Penny! 

and of course we found Joe... he had finished so fast he had already changed clothes when we saw him to grab a picture... he's holding his medal up next to my head... once again.. Notice how HUGE!

 

 It was a quick weekend as we left on Saturday morning, ran on Sunday and drove back home Sunday after the race...    I don’t recommend driving 5 hours after doing 26.2 miles … but sometimes you got to.  It’s called work 😜❤️ ... So sorry Penny & Felicia had to go to work on Monday....  I ended up sleeping till 7am and then doing lots of cleaning around my house.. DANG POLLEN... but I crashed for a 2 hour nap that afternoon.   And the drive was actually not that bad when you have friends to laugh and talk with to keep you busy.  

I'm so glad I did not back out of going to this race.  It had been a bucket list for me and now I've complete it.  I give God all the glory for giving me the strength and endurance to finish. 🙏💓

I'm thinking I'll rest now a few months.... 😁😂 

Marathon #29 - Mercedes Marathon

 Marathon #29 is in the books! 

Mercedes Marathon 2-12-2023

Notice the wording... "THE FINAL"...   This year was the last year for the Mercedes race after 20+ years.  I'm not sure of all the reasons why, but I'm sad to see it go.   The race is always well organized.  It's a 2 loop course for the full marathon in the heart of downtown.  I last ran the race back in 2020 right before COVID shut down all the races.   It was my last full marathon for several months due to COVID!  

 When we discovered it was the last time for the race, we encouraged Felicia to run it.  Then of course, I'm suckered in to also going with them. 😆😅   Due to my recent amount of pain I've had from my multi-level disc degeneration most pronounced from L2-3 and L4-5.   in my lower back, I was pretty set on only attempting the half marathon while they ran the full marathon.  I've been pretty aggravated with my back issues.  But it is what it is..... as the doctor says... you can blame your genetics! I have problems from L2-5... my disc have moderate bulges and what they call Trace retrolisthesis...  "Lumbar retrolisthesis is when parts of your spine, known as vertebra, slip backward on one another. This puts a lot of pressure on the vertebra and various parts of the spine, causing leg and back pain."

So I've been dealing with a lot of pain after doing 6 marathons last year.  Yep, I have to admit to myself that I over did it.... it's hard... but the truth is the truth.   So we are now trying to get it under control.  So far I've had 3 injections with little relief so we are leaning towards the next step of burning my nerve roots in that area.   Some people get 1-2 years of relief from this procedure.  Surgery is not recommended at this time because as he says... they'd have to try to go in an fix all disc.. not just 1 or 2.. so it would be major surgery and then I'd pretty much be limited or fused together as they say ....  So I'm no where near ready to go that route.  I will keep doing PT exercises and this year I'm NOT going to do 6 marathons. 😐

So let me get to the details:

There are 4 pillars of strength:

Physical 

Emotional 

Mental

Spiritual 

Sunday it took all 4 of those for me.   My plan was to just turn at the half and wait for Penny Pruitt Smith, Felicia Allen-Bass and Joe B. Raymond III to finish the full marathon.   However when we got to that split, something inside me took over …. And probably a little peer pressure from friends 😂❤️.  I made the decision to keep going.   Was it pretty? NO Was it hard? YES!  I questioned myself multiple times for going on.   I tried to get them to leave me.  I was doing a lot of walking.   When you have multi levels of disc issues in your back, things get a little complicated …. I’ve had a lot of pain lately in my lower back and hips.   I’ve been working with PT and my pain doctor to manage it.   Some days are better than others.   And maybe I’m just crazy for pushing on 😳🙈😁😎.    But I know one thing… I could not do it without my one big pillar of strength… God.  

Today as we wore our don't quit tanks with Philippians 4:13 on the back of them, we all 3 pushed on by Gods grace and strength.   🙏🙏❤️ 

It was bitter sweet as this year after 21 years is the last year of the Mercedes race 😔.   Penny and I have ran it before, but this was Feleica's first.   I’m so thankful we finished together today.   I love you girls!  Thanks for hanging with the old, grumpy, wore out lady 😂❤️. 

The pancakes the group handed out at mile 24 were fabulous!! I didn’t think I could make those last miles until we got the pancakes ❤️😂. 

Proud of Joe today for pacing the 4:45 group! He’s 90th marathon! He’s on track to get to 100 soon! ❤️❤️. 

Here are a few pictures from our day... I never got to see Joe... It was COLD that am so we waited till the last possible minute to walk from hotel to start line.  We got there like 3 minutes prior to start. 😂 and of course he finished way before us girls:

Pancakes at mile 24 saved me!

So that's a wrap.   I finished marathon #29 not by running.... but by jogging when I could and doing A LOT of WALKING>.....  they say.... it's not how fast... it's the FINISH. 😍

Today is Tuesday and I have the normal soreness and stiffness.  My pain coming from my disc has been off and on shooting pains down my butucks and leg. 😢   My plan is to take it very easy the next few days and let my body recover.  

I hope to jog / walk Little Rock in March and then I'll be done with marathons till December!  Little Rock has been a bucket list and we all signed up prior to me having all my pain.  So I'm praying I can finish it also and then rest for a couple of months before it's time to get ready for St. Jude in December. 💓