Halfway To 18 … Really?

I was going to write my standard weekly recap for Monday, since it’s Monday, but for reasons that I’ll explain, I had to stray from that for today. I have some nuggets from the weekend for tomorrow. Today, I’m going to be talking a little bit about my son Benjamin’s birthday. He turned 9 yesterday and we had a great day, which is going to be the subject of today’s blog.

But first, just in case this is your first time here, I’m a father of three and a marathon runner. My middle child, 6 1/2-year-old Jack, is severely autistic. So, I’m trying to run 60 marathons this year to raise money and awareness for a charity I’m a part of called Train 4 Autism. So far, so good. I’m through 31 of 60 marathons, I’m reaching people, I’m raising money … we’ll see how it all works out, but all I can do is try, right? And I’m trying.

On Saturday, marathon No. 31 of the year was the Seattle Rock ‘N Roll Marathon. I was pretty happy with how the race turned out. I posted a race report here, although I don’t think it’s too interesting to read, because it’s a fairly technical report of how I executed a race according to plan. If you’re not a runner, you’ll scan over it in about 20 seconds. If you are a runner, you’ll probably do the same.

I Really, Really, Really Need Your Help!!!
There’s a contest sponsored by Chase called Chase Community Giving. They’re going to give $20,000 to 200 small charities. The recipients will be the charities that receive the most votes in the contest on Facebook. You can only vote once, so it’s not a “vote early, vote often” thing. You just need to vote once and encourage your friends on Facebook to do the same.

We’re currently in 130th place, so we’re in the running still, but we’re slowly slipping. When I wrote this last night, we only had 365 votes. So I know we have a ton of votes we can capture. If you haven’t voted, PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE HEAD OVER HERE and vote. And even if you have, please head over there to re-post it on your wall or send it out via Twitter (or both). If you ever can’t find the address, it’s in the Chase button at the top left of every page on this site.

I know you wouldn’t be here if you didn’t believe in the cause. This is a really good way to raise a large amount of money and it won’t cost any of us a nickel. So PLEASE, make sure you vote and spread the word! Let’s get 200 votes today!

On To Benjamin …
I can’t believe he’s already 9! Halfway to 18? It blows my mind how fast time flies. I don’t even want to think about the fact that he’s going to be a teenager in four years.

Anyways, his birthday really started on Saturday night in our house. His actual birthday was yesterday, but we had some friends over for a sleepover party Saturday night. After my race on Saturday, I basically went straight to my motel, checked out within 20 minutes and then went straight to the airport. Side note: I didn’t have a rental car, so the three-mile run from the rail station to my motel while carrying my gear-check bag after the marathon … yeah, it wasn’t fun.

Anyways, my flight landed, I stopped off to pick up pizza for the kids on the way home and I walked through the door about 10 minutes before the first of Benjamin’s friends arrived. Perfect timing! From then, it was nothing but that, “Ahhhh, life is good” feeling through the end of Sunday.

Benjamin wanted the sleepover party for his birthday for the past year, so when I set up my schedule, there was no question I’d be running a race that would have me home in time. He had an absolute blast, which was awesome. He had a tough year in school with some of the kids in his class, so it was so wonderful emotionally for me and Tiff to see him have has much fun as he did during his party. They ate pizza, cake, had an ice cream bar, ran themselves ragged playing ball in the back yard, played against each other with their DS game systems, watched a movie, stayed up being silly until 11:30 p.m. and then woke up being silly at 7 a.m. before feasting on donuts for breakfast.

Benjamin had an absolute blast, which pretty much made my month. He’s a good kid and he deserved it. We had family over yesterday and it was nice to see everybody. He had a great time at his party and he didn’t get in any trouble for anything and he didn’t have to do any chores. One of his gifts was a Monopoly game and we started a game (just me and him) at about 7 p.m. It was his birthday, and I let his bedtime slide and we played until the game was done at about 9:45. That’s why there’s no weekend recap today. I allocate at least an hour or so for those and I wanted to get some sleep.

So all-in-all, he had a perfect day, which makes me happier than I can really explain in writing. I won the game — he had two monopolies with hotels, but I had the reds on the back row (Indiana, Illinois and Kentucky) and built hotels and gradually put him out of business. I won the game, but he had a great time and I’m glad I put my weekend blog off for a day.

Oh, one side note: I picked up some flowers for Tiff yesterday. I know it’s Benjamin’s birthday, but it’s still the day that she gave birth to him. She deserves the flowers, so she gets them on each of the kids’ birthdays. Yeah, she’s special to me like that!

OK, here’s some pictures … have a great Monday!

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Me and Tiff in our aprons before everybody arrived for Ben’s birthday barbecue with the relatives. Yes, that’s a sweet In-N-Out apron I’m wearing.