Eleven Miles to Paradise (and musings about my paradise)

Me and Allison, near the end of the run

This weekend my friend Allison and I went to the Paradise Valley of Montana for an 11 mile race called "11 Miles to Paradise."  It follows lovely single track along the Clark Fork River, which is truly beautiful country.  We made a girls' weekend of it, drinking lots of beer at Quinn's Hot Springs Resort on Saturday night.  It was a lot of fun and great to hang out with Alli, who has moved to Helena for work and I don't get to see as often as I would like.  Unfortunately the beer consumption made for a somewhat uncomfortable run, but we managed to finish and I enjoyed myself.

I don't like wet feet, ok?

My friend Dave just blogged about another blog and I am going to blog about Dave's blog of the blog.  Awesome, right?  Except rather than go into a detailed explanation of the genesis of these following comments, I'll just get to the point.  You may notice that Danni & Ted's Adventures is primarily about Danni's adventures.  In large part this is because Ted doesn't actually write blog posts -- if he did you'd know what he was up to - but obviously my running and such doesn't normally involve Ted.  While I'm sure it would be fun if he wanted to do all the same stuff I do (if it didn't just create conflict), it's really fun nonetheless and I probably better appreciate my Ted time.  We don't have to do everything together all the time.  Really.

I enjoy the opportunity to go have fun with my friends, and appreciate how supportive Ted is of my activities and social-butterfly inclinations.  I also value my time with Ted, even if that time is never spent running (in the proverbial chase, Ted would rather be caught than run -- and that might be only a slight exaggeration).  We are coming up on our tenth wedding anniversary in August, and I've been reflecting more and more on what makes our marriage so incredibly awesome (except for the rare occassions where we quarrel, the rarity of which really just makes me better appreciate the awesomeness).  I think while there are some inequities in terms of who does the housework and all that (i.e. Ted does almost all of it, which I truly am trying to be better about) we, on the whole, balance each other and work well together so that ultimately we can still truly enjoy each others' company (I enjoy his at least).  Ying and yang my friends.

So really, Paradise?  (See, I am trying to tie this all together in a theme somehow).  Paradise is the fact that I can enjoy time with friends, enjoy doing things I enjoy doing, and then enjoy being with Ted and have it all.  Life is grand.  Thanks Ted.  I sure love that man.