To choose life -

When we feel there is no way out and no hope for our lives what do we do?

Sunday my husband and I spent the day bicycling around the tulip fields in Skagit county. It started out cloudy with rain threatening, but turned into a glorious sunny day. While we were walking in the view gardens of "Tulip town" and Roozedgaarde", I was watching families with young children dressed in their boots playing in the mud and posing in the tulips for that perfect shot their parents were trying to capture. I was suddenly overcome by grief for the young mother and her children that can no longer have these moments together.

Here's the link about her tragic story:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/13/us-drowning-family-idUSTRE73C4CH20110413

The hope for a better life and a "new" tomorrow was dashed by her act of desperation. We can not even try to understand the amount of pain she was suffering in her life at that time that caused this to happen, or why she felt her friends and family couldn't help her out of the scenario she was in. It 's not even up to us to judge her and say she shouldn't have done this, we can only learn from her experience and remember that there are those out there feeling helpless, hopeless and desperate.

When our moment to step up and offer just that word of encouragement or hand of support comes,

will we be to busy to respond?

I snapped this picture while wishing LaShandra had been able to experience the warmth of the sun on her skin and view the scenery that absolutely would take her breath away while hearing the joyous laughter of  children as I was in that moment.

My wish is for us all to have "hope" for a better day tomorrow......

Whidbey Island half marathon results




 Wow, didn't know if it was going to be a go or not. Trained hard, ran lots of long weekend runs and then...stomach flu Friday am. Yuck, I almost cried thinking I wouldn't be able to do the run after all of the hard work I'd put in. Thankfully by about 4 pm I started feeling well again, so I pushed the electrolytes in the evening and all day Saturday. My husband and I agreed that he would go on without me if I wanted to bail at about the 6 1/2 mile mark where the Windjammer park is. The run comes back and finishes there.

Today I woke up feeling great so we got up at 5:30 am and drove to Oak Harbor for the 8 am start. When we got to Oak Harbor it was overcast and very windy. When I got home I checked out the wind at http://www.intellicast.com/ and here's the gusts from 7:56 am to 10:56 am. The gusts ranged between 28 and 40 miles an hour. No wonder I felt like I was running against a wall when we hit the wind head on!

Thankfully I didn't feel any ill effects (pun intended) from Friday, and with being sick and the wind and a pretty hilly course we still ran 1 min. and 58 seconds faster than our Seattle half marathon time last November.

By my watch (the results weren't up at the site when I posted this) - I started and stopped it on the chip mats, so it should be close, was 2 hours 54 minutes and 5 seconds. *Added note after posting, our official chip time was 2:54:15! It was great to be back, the last time I did this event I walked it with my dad 2 years ago. I weighed 187 lbs. then.

me and my dad finishing Whidbey Island half marathon (walking) 2009

Yes, I'm still revelling in my weight loss glory and the fun of being able to do

the things that I love again and feeling great doing them!

(see post about my 3 year weight loss goal here:

 http://hearsdifferentdrummer.blogspot.com/2011/04/220-lbs-to-140-lbs-getting-fit-my-3.html)

It was also nice running the whole thing with my husband this year and finishing with him!

Alas not one picture of us running together :-(