Michal the Marathon Runner

Lately Michal & I have been really busy... I mean - who hasn't been? It's the Holiday season with Thanksgiving and then Christmas right around the corner...

Well, with all that we've been doing, we had someone at Church ask us if we were going inactive and why we haven't been lately. Michal jokingly said, "Oh, we've been trying out the other Churches in the area, so far we really like the Catholic church." And they believed him! Their mouth dropped open and they blinked their eyes (as if to make sure we were still standing in front of them)... and they were speechless, didn't know what to say or do. Told us that maybe they should get our home-teachers to stop by and make sure everything was okay. I think that we were justified in not being around the last two weekends because here is what we've been up to:

For Thanksgiving we went home to Layton to spend the time with my family. It was extremely nice to have 4 days off of work and just lounge around and spend all of your time with family. Michal had this crazy idea, it was partly my idea too, to get up early the day after Thanksgiving and go shopping. It was the first time that Michal has ever experienced Black Friday. We ended up getting OUT of the house around 5:10 am. I assumed that after Michal experienced the crazy shoppers of this day, he would not want to return. I was wrong. Michal loved it! We got all of our shopping done and spent hardly any money! We got such GREAT deals. Michal got himself a really nice coat from EXPRESS. It was normally $278.00 but we only paid $59.40. I got a coat too, for about 65% off from Banana Republic. We got steals at Wal-mart, and the best part about all of it was that we had a blast. Michal couldn't believe that people camped out in their trailers overnight. He couldn't get over how people were in Pajamas at Wal-mart and people were dressed up (or at least in Jeans) at Target. All-in-all we had fun and Michal couldn't believe how much money that we saved and he is now converted to black friday. He wants us to do all of our shopping on that day from now on. He is a smart man.

When we returned home from our Thanksgiving break, Michal got a surprise in the mail. His OFFICIAL green card came in the mail. He was so excited! I believe that for the next two days every time I saw him he was looking at his green card. And I do have to admit, it is interesting... they have made this card so hard to get a "fake" one. There are so many minute details, for example, all the pictures of the presidents of the United States are on the back of a size of a credit-card, but you can only tell that they are the Presidents when you tilt it in the light at a certain angle. I am really excited for him. The instant we got his Green Card meant that we can legally leave the country now. So he asks me, "Where do you want to go now....?" (More details to come soon!)

Last week Michal accomplished an even greater feat. He ran the ROCK AND ROLL LAS VEGAS MARATHON.

Yes he did it!

5 hours!

I got really nervous because I went outside to wait for him after 4 hours, and I didn't see him until like 6 hours. I knew that he would never take that long, but apparently because there was over 30,000 people who run this marathon they let about 1,000 people go in increments of 5 minutes. So he had to wait a little over an hour before he actually started running. While I was waiting for him, I was listening to the announcers comment... and I learned some pretty interesting facts about this marathon. There is a band who plays for you at about every mile marker. They had contestants from over 33 different countries and almost every state in the US. They had over 300 Elvis' who ran this race, numerous Santa-Claus', Mrs. Claus', Elves, Cavemen, and they even had a few dozen (yes dozen) couples who got married the night before and then ran the race together in wedding attire. Here are a few pictures of people that I caught running like this.

Here are the Elvis runners:

Here is the Caveman

Here are some married couples:

I was so proud of Michal for running this race! He did such a good job. Including the face and everything else we did, we had a blast in Vegas. We ate at some really awesome places, and we just shopped. It was such a fun trip - but don't even get me started on the LUXOR hotel. One piece of advice: If you want to stay there - DONT!