It's that time of year again

I bet you thought this was going to be a Christmas post...

Well, even though I spent the weekend decorating for Christmas and baking Christmas cookies, I thought I would first post about ways I can tell it is time to get ready for Christmas.

 The "drift" of corn leaves is as high as a snow drift should be in front of our shed. 

 Mikes hunting trophy is on display on our radio tower. You can compare the rack to last years deer displayed below. (I'm sorry to any animal lovers out there that you had to see this, but it is a truth of the farm)

 My fall display has dried up and is ready to be thrown away.  

Ironically, my mums stopped growing while a gourd displayed in a glass jar on my dining room table decided to start growing.  

I guess it is time to move on to the next season because fall has decided to be done at my house.   

I did it

I completed my first race and boy can I pick them.  This morning Mike and I decided to participate in a 4 mile (according to GPS it was only 3.78 miles) trail run race at Quarry Oaks Golf Course near Ashland Nebraska.  While the overall experience was fun and I trained well for that distance, I did not train well for the hills this course contained.  Mike and I decided there was less than a 1/4 of a mile that was flat the rest of the race was either up or down.  Mike decided to run the race "for fun" and ran my pace, which was really nice because I would have ran much slower and probably would have walked if it wasn't for him.  I may have uttered the words "I can't" at one point, but we kept going and made it the entire way.  The craziest part was running through ankle deep water twice about one mile from the end and having to finish with wet socks and shoes.

The good news is we both had smiles at the end of the race and both felt it was a good experience. It would have been smarter to choose an easier race for my first time out, but all and all I'm happy with my time and am pretty sure I gave it everything I had.  If I run this race again next year I will definitely run more hills that are steeper for my preparation.