Baby #6, Coming May 2013

So this is the reason I need to back off the running!  I am pregnant, nearly 13 weeks along, and I am due May 21st.  We will know the "flavor" of this baby at our ultrasound on January 3rd.  People who know we have 5 little boys keep saying to me, "are you hoping for a girl this time?"  Honestly, I don't know WHY I would hope for a girl when we are completely outfitted for a boy.  And it would be so strange to have a girl when what we have given our lives to these past 9 years is raising little boys-- that's just what I do!  BUT, I am sure that if this is a girl that it will be wonderful, we will love her and welcome her as we have all our boys.  I will keep you all posted, and hopefully soon I will get around to blogging about our many adventures of this summer, before we ring in a new year!

Running in 2012

Back in May, Jon's older brother and sister invited him to train to run a marathon (26.2 miles) with them.  He had set a goal while he was a missionary to run a marathon one day, but it was one of those goals he thought he'd probably never get around to doing.  But after a summer of training and preparing, he ran the Huntsville Marathon on September 29th and had a strong, successful finish time of 4 hours, 30 minutes, and 15.3 seconds!  He placed 96th over all and felt really, really good afterward.  Way to go, Sweetheart!  I'm so proud of you!

After the finish with our boys:

 

This is what the gorgeous fall day looked like at the race:

Before the run, with Mindi and Mike (don't they look so thrilled to be there?):

With the spirit of fitness in the air at our house, and after reading a blog post by my little sister about running, I too decided to become a "runner" in May this year.  I opted to run a 5K with Jamilyn to jump-start my commitment to running.  So we ran at the Cancer Thrasher 5K back on June 9th:

Before and after pics:

We had so much fun that we decided to go for a 10K, but unfortunately, it costs a lot of money to enter competitive races like that.  So I decided to plan one myself.  We held our first annual Beckstrom family 10K race on freezy-breezy Saturday, October 27th.  I ran with Jon, Jamilyn, my brother Adam, and my dad.  We planned a course around and through our stake boundaries, and you know what?  It was really fun!  I have slowed down a lot, following my body's requests (reason why to follow in a future blog post), but I finished and felt good!  

Here we are before the race:

 

And afterward:

And just because I need to write it down somewhere, I have decided I want to do a half-marathon to celebrate when I know our family is complete (all the babies here) and I would like to shoot for a marathon (yeeks!) in fall 2014.  I hope those goals will help me stay committed to running!  I sure do enjoy it.  Thanks family for coming and running too!  We'll do it again next year.