I cringe not because of the fact that I turn 30 today but because that is the title of one of the many country songs that exhausts the hell out of me.

2012 is looking to be pretty good so far.

I’ve already run two 5k’s here in Dallas, for a total of four in the last 4 months, with five more scheduled the rest of the year as I’m participating in the Run Project series of races. Starting in the 4th quarter of 2011 I found a renewed sense to improve my fitness not only for myself but for my family. The increase in fitness level will hopefully have a direct, and positive, impact on my future job prospects, of which I’m really looking forward to this year.

There will be a considerable amount of large group family time over the coming months as well. My sister, Laura, will be getting married on St. Patrick’s day, also the date of one of my races, so, we’ll see if I still get to run in it! Immediately proceeding that event my father and I will join various other family members in Surprise, Arizona for Texas Rangers Spring Training for several days. I’m pretty excited about that because of the recent success of my favorite baseball team. My brother, Jesse, will also be jumping the rope this year in June.

However, just before my brother’s wedding in June, Katie and I (and Logan) will be welcoming little Zachary (Zach) William Bares into the world somewhere in the vicinity of May 22.  Hopefully he doesn’t have too early of an arrival date because then I won’t be attending Jesse’s bachelor party weekend.  Such is the life of a parent, right?

So, in summation, there’s quite a bit going on this year, and that’s mostly just the first half…

…and, oh yeah, I turn 30 today, so there’s that, too.

Today I signed up for the Warrior Dash.  I will be running it at the North Texas location at the 9:30am time slot.  When I checked there will still 150-ish available spots to register for the 9:30am start time so if you are going to be in the area that day and want to run it with me then there is still some time to do that.

I’d heard of this race before from a friend and decided to give it a shot this year.  I figured it would be fun to run through waist deep water, crawl under barbed wire, scale a wall, maneuver cargo nets, and leap over fiery logs.

This will be another timed 5k, my 4th of the year and 8th overall.  It should be interesting.

Warrior Dash – North Texas

Saturday night Logan was pretty excited to have turkey burgers for dinner.  However, he hasn’t quite mastered how to properly say the word hamburger.  His attempts nearly made Katie and I cry from laughing so hard.

Watching Logan try to say hamburger immediately reminded me of this clip of Steve Martin from Pink Panther. The gold begins at the 1:00 mark.

So, a few weeks ago when all three (technically four) of us were working in the garage Logan was fussing a bit because Katie and I were working and he wanted to play with what we were working on and we kept shooing him away. We were unpacking from our holiday trips and beginning to put away our Christmas decorations. To pacify him I let him wear one of my new LED headlamps (thanks Nina and Papa!) that would alternately flash red LED’s or have two stages of brightness for white steady-on LED’s. He was quite happy with having his own lights to wear (I got two headlamps). Katie and I were instructed to turn off the lights so he could see it all flashing, etc. Since I had shown him the button to switch between all the different settings he was having quite a blast. I had to snap this photo and remind myself that I’ll still need to show him lots of love and attention when Zach arrives in may and I hope I can accomplish that.

My brother, Jesse, and his fiance, Megan, will be getting married soon and like all good, and tech-savvy couples seem to be doing, got themselves a website. Megan took to the task and got it all set up with bios for everyone, with input from Jesse for The Boys, and other various details for the wedding. Go check it out!

JesseAndMegan.com

Katie and I have been blessed to be friends with a great photographer, Kristin Bednarz. She was the one who graciously and beautifully captured our wedding back in 2008. We all decided that as long as we live in Texas that we should make an annual trip back to Lubbock for the Texas Tech homecoming game and get in a family session each year while we’re there. Here’s the result of our first crack at it. Enjoy!

I wish I had a pair of these so bad. If anyone wants to drop several G’s on a pair of sz 11′s for me I will be eternally grateful. Unfortunately these ones don’t power lace but I can wait until 2015 to get that version in addition to these. I’m now going… Back… to the Future!

Source: Nike Mag eBay

For those of you who are Texas Tech football fans with U-Verse and you don’t already have the Sports Package then you may be able to get the upgrade for free. When I called in to upgrade just for that weekend of Sept. 24, because the game is being televised on the Fox College Sports channel, they informed me they were running a promotion on the Sports Package where the first month is free and $10 per month after that. Well, you can cancel before the end of that 30 day period and it’s only a $5 cancellation fee. So, you’ll get the TTU/Nevada game on Sept. 24 and a month of the Sports Package on U-Verse for only $5. I’ve already set myself a calendar reminder to call and cancel before the 30 day period is up.

On September 4 a fire raged through, and continues to rage through, Bastrop, TX and surrounding areas. Katie’s parents barn apartment, tool shed, and aunt & uncle’s house were all directly in the path of the fire and were evacuated. No one was able to get back out to the land for several days to check on the damage and when they were able to this is what they found…

…it looks like winter out there in the middle of summer with absolutely nothing on the trees anymore. Very creepy. I’m sure it still smells heavily of smoke out on the land.