Look out, weekend!

This past week went by WAY too fast!  Friday night, we all (my sister's family, Ben's family, Ben, and myself) all went out to Dade City for the Annual Christmas parade.  Now, who doesn't love a good parade?  Being that I'm a NPR native, I've a loyal follower of both the Chasco Fiesta and the NPR Christmas parade.  (In fact, the only Chasco I've ever missed is when my sister got married the same weekend - wassup with dat?!)  Anyway, this was my first experience at a DC parade.  It was a little cooler, which made it feel more like Christmas time (for Florida).

Afterwards, Ben went to the Pasco High School football game, where the Pasco Pirates beat Jesuit to advance to the semifinals of the state football championship!  Say whhaattt?!? Go Pirates! 

Saturday morning, I got up to go run with the Striders at Starkey Park.  Ben claimed that he wanted to get up and come for a run as well, but sometimes he's not feeling the same way in the morning.  Much to my surprise, he came!  This was the first time that I drove in to Starkey and parked instead of running in from Longleaf, and it was quite the interesting to see all the cars lined up to get in to the park.

It's always really fun to run at Starkey because there are so many people.  Ben and I started running with Coach Steve, Rhonda, Melanie, Jamie, JM, Tracey, and Josh and then were chatting with others as they ran by us as well.  We had planned on doing 8 miles, but when we got to the 4(ish) mile mark, Ben was feeling really good and he wanted to run out to the 5 mile mark.  So I agreed.  Of course!

Because both of our work schedules have been so busy, Ben and I haven't really had a chance to run together just the two of us in a long while.  And it was very nice to run together, especially out at Starkey with all nice scenery.  Here are our splits: (Right on 9:00 minute miles - suh-weet!!!)

Split	Time	Distance	Avg Pace
Summary	1:30:03.6	10.00	9:00
1	9:22.3	1.00	9:22
2	8:46.0	1.00	8:46
3	9:11.4	1.00	9:11
4	9:14.2	1.00	9:14
5	8:52.1	1.00	8:52
6	8:55.7	1.00	8:56
7	8:45.3	1.00	8:45
8	8:56.6	1.00	8:57
9	8:59.6	1.00	9:00
10	9:00.5	1.00	9:00

And you KNOW we had to take a picture with our medals on!

After the awesome run, Ben and I headed back out to Dade City to pick out our Christmas tree.  We normally go to Ergles Tree Farm to choose our tree.  Growing up, we always had a fake tree, so choosing a tree was a new concept to me.  But, it is really run to walk around the trees and pick the one that you want.  Last year, December was insane and we never got a chance to pick up a tree and it just wasn't the same.  So this year, we were set one getting one.  Here we are with"the one":

Here is my crazy country man with a saw (!):

As if that wasn't enough excitement for one day, I was meeting some of my lady running friends at Ocean Prime for a little relaxing, drinking, laughing, eating, and planning of future races.  Here is a photo of us at OP (with no ponytail, sweaty bands, or running shorts!):

Sunday was just as busy!  Ben and I were going to go to Busch Gardens to cash in the Safari tour that I won at the Busch Gardens 5K.  But, they weren't offering the tour that particular day, so we scheduled it for next weekend.  So instead of Busch Gardens we were able to finish decorating our Christmas Tree and work on some major Christmas shopping.  Anyway, there are only a few more days of work left and Christmas is creeping up around the corner!  Hope y'all are having a good week! :)