Yesterday afternoon, following our last day of VBS at the church, we packed up the car and headed down to Texas. Why in the world would we travel so far after such a busy, hectic week?

To drink Dublin Dr. Pepper, of course.

Oh, and also to run a 10K.

We stayed over at my parents’ house for the night, then got on the road at 4:30am (eeee!!!) and headed to Dublin, a town known for its Dr. Pepper plant, where the finished product is just a wee bit sweeter than normal. Dublin Dr. Pepper was celebrating its 120th birthday this weekend, and the festivities kicked off with a 10K… which was all uphill, I think. (Seriously!) Even so, Wes and I managed to complete the race and ran across the finish line holding hands and smiling. Both sets of our parents were able to come out and cheer us on, along with our friend, Marilyn. It really makes race day even more exciting when there are familiar faces cheering in the crowd!

Here we are post-race with our littlest cheerleaders. Go, Team Faulk!

Instead of goody bags, the race sponsors gave each of us Dublin Dollars, which we combined to buy this…

Oh, yeah. Those will probably last us two days. Maybe.

We convinced Emma to try some…

And all that sugar turned her into this…

As you can see, poor little Ana had a run-in with the bricked street and was bruised and beaten for the rest of the afternoon. Sad day. For the next race, I plan on wrapping her in bubble wrap so as to avoid the caliber of meltdown that we witnessed today.

And just what IS that next race? A half marathon in July. Stay tuned to hear all about how smart it was to run 13.1 miles at the height of a humid, Texas summer, because I’ll surely be posting that (or the complete opposite!) after it’s all said and done.

Keep on running, Mommy…