Monday, December 1, 2008

Gobble, Gobble

We've only done it for three years now, but the Jason & Rachel Short family have decided that participating in the Oregon Zoo 4 mile Turkey Trot is a great way to start our Thanksgiving day and we hope it's a tradition that we will carry on. This year we talked Grandpa & Grandma Heder into joining us.


Here's all of us before the race. We couldn't have asked for better weather...chilly, but sunny.


Here is Clara before the race. (Notice the smile and cheerful dispostion...)

The gun shot and the race began. Grandpa and Jaykob were the first to dart off with Jason and I to follow. Grandma was nice enough to push Max and Clara in the jogger with Mary's help. We don't know how it happened, but as we finished the first 2 miles and we were running back up the hill, we saw Grandpa & Jaykob heading down. There were so many people that we didn't see it when we passed them. We then passed Grandma and we noticed that Clara was crying, Max was trying to get out of his seat and Mary was 10 feet ahead (obviously, not helping out much). She told us to go ahead and she would wait for Grandpa to help her.

I finished the race, Jason followed...alright, alright, Jason slowed down as we approached the finish line to "let" me win, it's true, regardless, we finished the race and then waited, waited and waited for the rest of the group to join us. While Jason was in line for water, I backtracked to see if I could find the gang. I finally saw my dad with Clara on his shoulders coming around the corner. I yelled at him to go find Jason while I waited for Mom and the other kids. I waited and waited some more. Jason then found me and said he never saw my dad. We wandered around the zoo and the parking lot for what seemed like forever trying to track everyone down. We finally headed back to the finish line and to make a long story short we found everyone. My mom had headed to the wrong finishing spot and got hot chocolate for the kids and sat around wondering where everyone was. Clara was not enjoying the jogger and so Grandpa had to run with her on his shoulders for the last two miles.

It was crazy, hectic, but in the end everyone said they had fun.

We made it to the finish line and caught the turkey! It looks like we are all still smiling too!Clara was quite fascinated with this fine feathered creature.

6 comments:

Sarah Heder said...

That's a GREAT Thanksgiving tradition! I love that the whole family participated. Maybe one year we'll get to visit and do the race with you guys! No, seriously, next Thanksgiving, here we come!

Rockelle said...

looks like a great time.
I wish we were all a family of runners too. What do we do...uh....tv?
okay maybe music. :)

Gabrielle said...

Kudos to you and the fam! I am really impressed with the kids tackling the whole thing. Maybe one of these years we can join you!

Diana said...

Yeah! I am sooooo proud of you! I can't believe Clara rode on Jim's shoulders for two miles!

Élder y Hermana Heder said...

It was fun and a great way to start the Thanksgiving Weekend. I could've beat Rachel if I hadn't been having so much fun with Clara. While everyone was trying to find us, Clara and I were eating animal crackers and bananas with the monkeys for an hour. She loved it.

Jennifer said...

I am totally impressed. You are my idol mom--energetic, creative, proactive! What a great tradition. And that reminds me...I really need to start training for HTC. Do you have any good training sites you used last time?

And that reminds me, yes, Derrick wants to be in the race and I will mail you another check ASAP. So sorry for the misunderstanding--totally my fault! Thanks for all your work.