Marathon Man, Part II

Adam's biggest fan!

...running through Sleeping Beauty's castle...

Photo ops invite runners to stop for a shot.

You can get a photograph with Johnny Depp? Or a look-alike?

Entertainment provided along the way

Character photo ops...

Runners run through the theme parks and see beautiful things...

this is Animal Kingdom's Tree of Life with 396 animals carved into it.

A choir singing to runners?

26.2 miles of running with 100 picture stops along the way and Adam comes in view of the FINISH!

Any moment now...

...he pauses to pose with Goofy before running across the fnish line...

does this mean he'll run the Goofy Race

 (a half marathon + a full marathon) next year?

Marathon Man, Part I

I showed you pictures from the CHEAR SQUAD side of the

Walt Disney Marathon runway on Abbey Style.

Adam took pictures as he ran the race so this is Part I of the race from his point of view.
This post will take you midway through the race--from the start point to Magic Kingdom where we waited for him to run by (and stop for pictures).

Pre-race family portrait while thousands of runners gather. It's about 4:30 a.m.

Oh, the humanity!

And the first group is off! It's 5:30 a.m.

Adam is in the fourth group so he waits to start until the first three groups have gone.

 

The 6 mile marker.

They run along the roads that circle around and through the many parks of Disney World.

 Dawn is coming and the air warms with the sun. Kim, Al, Landon, and I are sipping warm things over at the Contemporary Hotel until Magic Kingdom opens.

What? Richard Petty is standing by to cheer the runners?

Coming close to our meet up point...

...turning the corner onto Main Street...

...and there's Kim, waving her GO DADDY GO sign!

Family Portrait in front of Sleeping Beauty's Castle.

This is the place where Adam proposed to Kim...that's why it's our place

 to meet him while he runs the marathon.

 Sweet, isn't it?

Shelter in the Shells

We are taking shelter from the cold here in Des Moines and maybe in a little denial that we are actually in Iowa by sorting through our new shell collection. We spent the past 10 years collecting shells on the beaches around Venice and this year decided to find out what we had. We cleaned and sorted hundreds of little treasures we had collected and stashed in plastic bags and bins throughout the house over the years. Pee Ew!!

This project started with Hunter and a trip to the Shell Factory. His Nana got him a shell identification catalog and he began his quest for the ultimate shell collection. Here is Nana and Blake at the Shell Factory.

After sorting, came the neverending process of identifying each shell. It turns out there are many different shells with various varieties and markings found along the Florida west coast. Looking closely, we discovered over 80 different shell types in our little collection alone.

Finally we found a special case for the unique finds like these two sea horses we found in perfect condition. They were laying on the beach after a violent storm. Blake found the left one (he thinks it was a pregnant mama) and Hunter found the one on the right. They were no longing living when they were found.

Cold Spring

To see Hunter and Blake's "Cold Spring," click HERE.

Geysers from Aunt Kathy in Alaska

Allen's sister, Kathy, sent Blake a Christmas present--a kit for shooting off geysers with Mentos and 2-liter bottles of diet soda. This geyser shot a foam rocket but the weight of the rocket kept the geyser shooting lower than the one below: Check it out!

Impressive, eh?