Our fabulous birthday weekend!

Owen's actual birthday was on Saturday and mine was on Sunday. We had a great time celebrating the birthday filled weekend as a family. We talked all day about where we were at this time last year. It is hard to believe that Owen has only been in our lives for a year. We love our little man and wanted to do something fun this weekend so we planned to go hiking at Red River Gorge on Saturday but the forecast called for rain, so sadly we decided not to go.

Anyways it turned out to be a beautiful day after we had already decided not to go. So we took a long drive through the beautiful countryside to Windy Corner cafe.

This little place has delicious southern cooking and is surrounded by the beautiful horse country. Owen loved eating barbecue and exploring on the property after lunch.

Then we passed by this little winery on the way home and stopped for some wine flights. Owen loved running around outside and checking out the grape vines while playing on the grounds.

We made it home for Owen's afternoon nap, but not before we got our last monthly photo in. It is much more difficult to get a good picture of a 12 month old. Bribing with food always works!

He looks enormous in this picture. At the end of the night we stopped by Oktoberfest at West Sixth Brewery. Owen met a friend to steal a ball from, I mean to play ball with.

Owen also enjoyed watching the hilarious dancers that stopped by for the bike prom. We have to participate in this sometime.

Sunday we celebrated my birthday by going to one of my alltime favorite restaurants in Lexington, Sal's. We got a babysitter so we were able to go without a wiggling child. We had a lovely dinner filled with adult conversation!

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Our little pumpkin is one (almost)!!

We celebrated Owen's first birthday a week early. His birthday is actually this coming Saturday but we thought since so many people were visiting last weekend for the Bourbon Chase we should celebrate then. I used one of my favorite websites, pinterest for inspiration for my pumpkin themed party.

We had apple cider and lots of different kinds of pumpkin beer (for the adults of course).

I made a pumpkin cake, which actually didn't come out as planned, it was supposed to be a double layer of bundt cakes so the cake should have been higher, but it still worked.

Owen wasn't so sure about the cake....

but he sure liked the chocolate cone used as the stem.

I made a banner with a picture of Owen from each month of his life thus far.

Here is a closer view.

We set up cornhole in the backyard and had pumpkin decorating at a table out back.

 

Some of Owen's cute girlfriends came to celebrate.

Owen loved showing off his new walking skills at the party.

Owen enjoyed opening his gifts, however his favorite gift was the used toy Max and Luke wrapped up for him, go figure.

Seriously, this kid won't put it down, I'm not even quite sure what it is. Notice the chocolate all over him.

Owen is one happy boy!

We had so much fun celebrating with friends and family! It was a perfect day for a perfect little boy.

 

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We survived the race!

We survived the torturous and somehow enjoyable Bourbon Chase yet again. This race is a 200 mile 12 person team race which took us 31 hours to complete. This was my second year doing the race and both times I said I hated it while running and yet I am already forgetting the negative parts of the race and missing all of my team mates, sleeping in the van and training at 6:00 AM most mornings. What is wrong with me? Here is a map of the race. It is crazy to think we all ran this far.

Here is a picture of most of our team before van 2 took off at the Maker's Mark exchange point.

Most teams rent 15 passenger vans which allow more space to sleep. This picture was taken at an exchange point so the vans are parked to pick up or drop a runner.

So this is how it works, each runner has a number 1-12. You rotate through 3 rounds of runs or legs each. When runner one finishes they pass off to runner two and so on. Here is a picture or Pipes' passing off to Eddie.

Then Eddie passed off to me. This was my first run of the race.

Some runners run so fast that bugs stick to their face, see Russell below.

Then your next run is sometime in the middle of the night. You are required to wear a reflective vest, a headlamp and a flashing light during your night run. There were fog warnings on our night runs and some runners said they could hardly see 5 feet in front of them. My night run wasn't terrible and it was mostly downhill which was also better than some of the others. This picture was taken at an exchange point.

After running through the night, we tried to catch a couple of hours of sleep so we could wake up and run one last leg. Here is Brad getting ready to run 6 miles on his last leg of the race.

Brad comes in to exchange with Lisa, our last runner before we cross the finish line in downtown Lexington.

Along the last runs we saw some of the most beautiful parts of the Lexington countryside. It made my 13 miles and 3 hours of sleep worth it all.

Brad and I are happy to be done and have agreed it was our last time. We will see if we get conned into it yet again in the future.

I wouldn't have been able to do this without the support of Lisa! You are the best!! We complained together while also keeping one another positive throughout the journey.

Here is our entire team together at the finish.

The next morning we had everyone over for Owen's first birthday party. That blog will be coming soon!

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