Saturday, December 18, 2010 - 10K Run

We participated in the 22nd Annual Say No To Drugs Holiday Classic 10K Run in Clearwater on 12/18/10. I had to serve only as Coach Big Monkey since it was a rainy, miserable morning. My pantyhose and fiber fill stuffing prevents me from running in the rain. Laura did pretty well despite the fact that I wasn't running alongside of her. She got 4th place in her age group with a time of 48:30 - only 12 seconds away from 3rd place and an award. Oh well! I was still pretty pleased with her performance as her coach.

Remembering My Boys

I haven't been blogging much because our family suffered two excruciatingly painful losses in the past two months. On 11/11/10, Mark lost his 4+ year battle with brain and spine cancer. Although I always claimed to be his uncle, Mark insisted we were twin brothers since we shared the same birthday. I decided to post this picture of him from about a year ago at Christmastime. We had a contest to see who rocked the sock monkey hat the best, and Mark won hands down. He was an incredibly talented, funny and special human who I miss more than you know.

Thirteen days prior to losing Mark, his beloved cat Karl passed away. Karl battled bladder stones and kidney disease for over 5 years with spunk and defiance. He was very similar to his "father" in many ways. This was Karl during last year's Christmas celebration embracing his new sock brothers. I miss "the boy" and his unique cat personality. He was a treasured member of our family.