Ahhh I found it!!!

Wow! Has it actually been over a year and a half?

I took this picture of my son, Coty, running track. Now realize, I am by no means a professional. In fact I just own a nifty looking camera, then set everything on auto and start clicking. One day... one day I will learn to use all the gizmos and gadgets.

Oh yeah, back to our story, I took this picture and loved it. The fellow standing on his left is Joe. Coty and Joe had a tendency to exchange first and second place all throughout the season on their high school track team. They both run distance and knew each other from cross country.

This is just after they finished a big race. I love how they are both standing by each other, one with his hands on his head, the other with his hands on his hips.



Somewhere amongst all my SD cards this one went missing until yesterday when I cleaned out my cupboard. See, when you clean, sometimes you get unexpected rewards!
I am going to blow this up, frame it and put it on Coty's wall for when he gets home. He is now serving a mission in Argentina, Buenos Aires West and won't be home for another year and half.

Here are a few other pictures of him running.






Even though the weather was usually crummy, I did love watching him and being apart of his accomplishments and his frustrations.

The interesting thing was, he started out second to last his freshman year and through hard work he became the number 1 runner by his senior year. That and team captain. The other interesting thing was, he would start out each year with such promise then he something would happen. He hit a growth spurt and his hips were very painful. Then he kept growing and he couldn't eat enough to keep up with his running and growing so his times kept dropping throughout his junior year. Finally his senior year, he had major hamstring problems. It was so frustrating when he went to districts, he started out number 1 and then each lap you could tell he was struggling as each person passed him. By the last lap he was pretty much hobbling just to finish. I will say though, he learned more about himself by not winning, than he ever could have by being a winner.

But there was justice. When he went to college, his aunt talked him into running the Top of Utah marathon. He took first in his age division and qualified for the Boston Marathon. He ran that in May of 2009...


then left on his mission about 6 weeks later.



And so there you have it. All this from cleaning out one cupboard. I am almost afraid of starting on the coat closet... it will probably bring back other memories.

Perhaps like the time Tracey and I got on a raft and flipped it in the middle of a lake. Luckily I was smart enough to stand on his shoulders and call for help. This just proves what a quick thinker I am. It wasn't about self preservation, it was really about getting help for "both" of us.
(we were pretty young and this may have been the reason we started swim team)

Or maybe it would remind when my parents were on a date, it was late, and Tracey and Brian came upstairs and told us they had heard strange noises. This ended with my parents coming home to find all four kids sitting on the stairs holding a bb gun and a pocket knife.

Or maybe even the time Tracey and Brian decided to sleep in a tent on the hill behind our house. Which or course gave Robyn the brillant idea of putting stockings over our heads and wearing big coats, then climbing out the second story window. We walked up to the tent grunting and walking half crazed. As Tracey and Brian bolted for the house, we climbed back through the window threw our stuff in the closet and jumped in bed just as my mother opened the door. She took one look at us and then said "would you like to tell your father what you just did". Man was she good.

Lots of good memories. Someday I will share a few more with you, but since I am suppose to be over helping my mom can chicken, I had better get moving. Luckily she doesn't read my blog, so she doesn't know that I have been sluffing :) And don't go telling her!!!