A Run-derful Weekend!

Well, I took an unintended mini break from blogging and it was actually pretty nice. :) 

Before I get this post started I just wanted to report that my sister's sweet pup, Clarence, is cancer free! His surgery was successful in removing the cancer and he will just have to have checkups periodically. Thank you all for the well wishes!

We had quite the busy weekend. We participated in the Fall Fermentation race series, this meant running three 5k races in 24 hours. 

We started with the No One Fights Alone 5k held at the Night Hawk Winery in Paola, Kansas. The morning was dreary and a bit rainy which made for a muddy course especially since it was a packed gravel road course. The location was beautiful and the organizers were wonderful! We appreciate courses that are a loop course versus an out and back. It's nice not having to pass the same thing twice. 

They had free wine samples at the end of the race and we were given souvenir wine glasses to take home. The results were posted and Kyle ended up placing 1st in his age group! Of course, E just wanted the medal haha. 

 This race was about an hour away from home so we headed back to shower, change, eat lunch, and put E down for a nap. We got some stuff done around the house before changing to head out to the 2nd race of the series. 

The next race was the Louisburg Cider Run 5k held in Louisburg, Kansas. We have been here before when we went to the Cider Mill and it's such a cute town. Very small town USA with wonderful people. They had food vendors set up so we walked around prior to the start. We chatted with some other people who were at the morning race. Before the event got started the announcer had a moment of silence for Las Vegas, that was an emotional moment for sure.

This was another beautiful course! A portion of it ran along a lake at a golf course and the weather was perfect. A little humid but not unbearable. We finished the race and grabbed our free drinks. You could either get regular apple cider or hard cider. I opted for apple cider and Kyle took the hard cider. By this point results were posted and we placed! I placed 2nd in my age group and Kyle placed 3rd. Let me just say that we never have an goal to place we just go out to have fun. 

We got home around 8:30pm. E was such a trooper, she is the happiest kid and just goes with the flow. We fed her and put her right to bed because we knew we had another early morning. 

Sunday morning rolled around and it was time to head to Martin City for the Oktoberfest 5k. This was the last leg of the fall fermentation series. It started out pretty chilly but quickly warmed up, thank goodness! This was the flattest course out of the three and we were so happy haha. I swear every race we have done has had some sort of horrendous hill, so this was a welcome change. 

It was a semi out and back but only about the last 1/4 mile. I could deal with that, the straight away to the finish was downhill! Brilliant! 

I finished a few minutes after Kyle and we grabbed our medals for completing the series! This ended up being my fastest time of the weekend and I was shocked when I found out I placed 1st in my age group! We also received beer steins for running this race which for Kyle was the best part haha. 

This event has put us at 97 races (well Kyle is at 98 but I will even us out when I run the KC 1/2 in 2 weeks) and we are close to our goal of 100!

We decided to finish the weekend with a trip to Wamego, Kansas. It was almost a 2 hour drive but it was worth it. They have the Oz Museum and Oz Winery there. On Saturday, they had the OZtoberfest, which we heard was awesome but really busy. 

We enjoyed the museum and picked up some wine from the winery. The museum has over 22,000 artifacts revolving around the book and movie. It was so cool seeing everything. We saw the original ruby slippers in the Smithsonian several years but it was amazing seeing all of these items. If you are ever in this area, definitely go!

We spent about 2 hours there and then stopped in Topeka for lunch.

I decided last night that it was time to do a little treat making and introduce the mice for 2017! I love this time of year because it means I get to make these!

We had such a great weekend, it was tiring, but so fun to make so many memories together! 

Hope you all had a great weekend!