Catching up

The upside of posing for a pic with Asians and children...you get to be the tallest person in the pic, for the first time ever.

May and June were busy months, but for all good reasons.

1. I ran a 50k. It wasn't the prettiest or fastest 50k, but I made it to both the starting and finish lines, so I'm very grateful for that. It's a lengthy story as to how it all came about, so it's easier probably easier to link to it: https://www.gofundme.com/f/50k-for-the-50

None of this would have been possible without the race day support from Rich, and the financial support of over forty amazing friends and family who have richly blessed the break room of the police station like never before.

Although asking for support is the hardest thing in the world for me, I've done it twice now...once five years ago to raise funds for The Trevor Project, when I ran from Waikoloa to Kona. We raised over $1700 then, and it felt incredibly important to help save lives of young children traumatized by the hardships of being LGBTQ. https://give.thetrevorproject.org/fundraiser/344158

The 5am starting line...cold, dark and lonely...but NOT sad at all. I love running alone, endlessly... in the dark when it's cool. I didn't mind starting off solo at all. And it turned out to be a good thing, as I had serious gastrointestinal issues. Let's just say I stopped counting after the 7th or 8th trip into the bushes. It's a wonder I didn't dehydrate!

Despite a few run friends all racing at the Kona Marathon at the same time just a few miles away, I had other friends and family come out to support me from mile 19 on. This was a glorious distraction from how brutally hot it was, and sore my joints were from the pounding!

I think this was the longest distance I've ever done in a day. 

The first of four deliveries we'll be making to the police station thanks to the 50k for the 5-0!

2. We are in escrow x 3.  We are selling two units, and doing a 1031 exchange to buy another one instead. It'll be a less risky financial situation for us, even though the new condo is almost the same price we paid for the other two. But this way, we have 50% less HOA dues, property taxes and insurance...so we should be slightly more stable when all is said and done.  But the process of orchestrating all of this has been both emotionally stressful AND exciting. No complaints...but eager to be done with it all in a few weeks!

3. Ryan finished 5th grade and turned 11! He celebrated with a series of celebrations. The first was an ice cream party with his school friends after their tennis interest group, and the second was a birthday party at the beach with friends, followed by camping that same night with family.

4. We celebrated our 22nd wedding anniversary! I got married at age 22, which means I've officially been together with Rich for about half my lifetime. We rented a tiny house for the weekend on the other side of the island to celebrate.

5. It's summer vacation!!! It hasn't felt like it, since we've been so busy dealing with the real estate issues, work and training, but we did slurge on a brand new slip and slide, pool and water balloons to help cool off the boy on warm days.

July is going to be even better, with a rare summer trip to the mainland for largely Ryan's benefit, but also a Fourth celebration with family and the closing on two more units. It's been a rough couple of months to get through, but filled with far more good than bad.