2009 Year in Review

I wasn't sure if I could do it this year. I had planned to do my annual "Year in Review" on this blog, as I did last year. But as the world knows, our year has ended in the worst way. I wasn't sure if I could ever get to a point of talking about vacations and birthday parties again. It will never be the same.

Nonetheless, Mitch and I have 2 wonderful children who are still in need of parents to love and nurture them. Although the pain of losing their Uncle Jason may not feel as great to them as mine of losing my baby brother, they have also lost a great part of their future. But they deserve what Uncle Jason fought for them to have. The freedom to travel and see great things. The opportunities to be educated and healthy. The right to live freely and remember his sacrifice not only as their Uncle, but truly as an American Hero. JD has set a great example for my children to live a life as selfless and loving as he did.

I hope this holiday season will give us more to celebrate than to mourn, yet I would be foolish to say there will be no tears. Celebrating that JD gets to spend Christmas with Christ Himself - so happy for you lil' bro. I hope a lot of people will remember JD and be thankful for what soldiers like him provide for us this holiday season. And I hope you all have a peaceful and meaningful Christmas.

Here is our year in review:

January

We had a great visit from Mitch's sister, Marci. She is also active duty Army and is an extremely admired as a Major, as well as a wonderful aunt and sister and daughter. The kids love her and so do we. Malia started a new tradition with Daddy: Waiting to go to bed, then asking (in the sweetest voice) to get back up and share a peanut butter and banana "sammich"with him. Both kids had bouts with wheezing during winter illnesses and had to do breathing treatments. And for some reason, they both love to wear Daddy's shoes. Also introduced "family band night." But for the neighbors sake, we haven't done it since.

February

Malia turns 3! We had a big Wizard of Oz celebration at our house, complete with all GREEN food to ad to our Emerald City decor and even a green Mommy dressed up as the Wicked Witch of the West. I took Malia to Altus for a mommy-daughter weekend, and was honored to have the Miss Altus Pageant give her up-close and personal time with some real princesses. Grandpa Gary came to visit on his motorcycle. Pretty sure the kids think they have coolest grandparents ever.

March

My mom came to visit and dyed Easter eggs with the kids. Eggs from the chicken on her farm! My mom wanted to give Makai an early birthday present and took us all to Six Flags. My brother came too. I'll never forget how he took off like a big kid, riding all the roller coasters. I'm glad he got to do that.

April

After the Easter Egg hunts, I was ready to finish what I had been training for 18 weeks to do - run a full marathon for the first time. I did it! I accomplished my goal of running it under 6 hours. We visited our great Oklahoma friends while we were there for the OKC Memorial Marathon.

May

Happy Birthday Makai and Mitch! At the beginning of May, we took what has become our yearly San Diego trip. We did the beach, Legoland and then drove with Mitch's parents to Mesa, AZ to visit them as well as my Aunt Carol. It was a great trip. We came home and had an awesome Spongebob Squarepants bash for an awesome 5 year old.

June

We found ways to beat the heat by camping in the backyard with friends, swimming, ice skating and roller skating. Mitch took Malia to their 2nd Annual Daddy Daughter Dance. She will forever be talking about how Daddy danced with her at the ball.

July

Mitch's parents came down and we had a great visit filled with cookie baking and light saber fights. My mom came for the 4th and we went to a festival and had a picnic. Mitch and I competed in our first triathlon sprint at the Cooper Aerobics Center. Swim, bike, run - it was fun.

August

Malia started ballet and loves it. We paid my mom a long overdue visit to Frederick, Oklahoma. The kids got to pick some vegetables from her garden and played with the puppies. Then we went to OKC to JD's wedding. I've never seen him look so handsome and manly. He wore a beautiful tux with a turquoise tie. He was so nervous beforehand - it was adorable.

September

Happy Birthday to me! 30th that is. I wasn't sure how I felt about that. But after some sneaky planning by my friends and husband, I was surprised with one of the most special nights. Surprise pedicure with on of my BFF's Amy, then to a restaurant to be greeted by friends from Oklahoma! And the icing on the cake, literally, was this AMAZING cake shaped like a pink purse complete with high heeled shoes made by Amy. Eat your heart out Cake Boss! She blows me away with her talent and kindness. The kids both started an amazing preschool. We also went to both the Oklahoma and Texas state fairs. The kids have found a love for funnel cakes.

October

This is the month that I earned my soccer mom stripes. The busiest month of the year. Fall festivals, school projects, pumpkin patches, trick-or-treating and Makai started soccer. To top it off, we went to San Antonio to Sea World and visited the Alamo. Whew! Wonder Woman and C3PO wore out their costumes though. It was a fun month.

November

The saddest month of our lives. I hope there are no more like them. Ever.

December

Wishing you Love this holiday season. God is Love. 1 John 4:8

For JD

This is what I wrote and read at my baby brother's funeral on November the 14, 2009. I wanted to share it with the world - people who wanted to attend his service but couldn't.



Hello. I am JD’s sister, Leila. I’m sure a lot of you who knew him well, especially military people know me as the annoying, motherly sister. I became an actual mother 5 years ago when I had my son, Makai, Jason’s nephew. But I truly became a mother the day he was born. You can imagine an 8 year old little girl with a live baby doll to diaper and dress. The poor little guy never had a chance to escape me from the day he was born.

Forgive me for calling him JD. This is something he was working on me to change. You see, he was JD all his life. He was named after his dad, Gary Dean Hunt. So Jason Dean Hunt just became JD for short. Well, as you all know, when we get to high school, we think we become too cool for school and decide to do things to stand out our stand up for ourselves. One of his friend’s called one afternoon and asked, “Is Jason there?” Who??? Jason doesn’t live here, I said. Oh? You mean JD – Um okay. So then he slowly became known as Jason by his friends. I’m sorry though – he is and always will be JD to me.

So you can imagine when he enlisted in the Army in 2006, he immediately became his last name, Hunt. He would even say that to me on the phone – “Hello – this is Hunt” Who? JD? Is that you?

While he was in Basic Training, he wrote me a lot of letters. Now, I married into a military family, so I thank God for them for helping me understand everything JD was going through when he went off to Basic. I was so worried about my little baby brother, off becoming a man without someone to check his temperature or make sure he was eating enough. But a man he became.

The first letters, he’d hate to admit, were much different than the first ones. He was a smaller kid from an even smaller town – thrown into a world he had never known about. He didn’t play sports in high school and even he’d admit at the time he wasn’t very athletic. So the first letters would be about how his arms were burning from holding a bag too long and how he had blisters on his feet from running 1 mile. By the end of it, he was saying how running 5 miles was nothing to him. And he planned to do extra workouts. Just for fun.

I saw pride forming within him during his Basic Training. In a letter he wrote me in April of 2006, he said “Well sis thanks for the support. Tell everyone I said hi and I am coming back as He-man.”

He knew that this was changing his life. He said in May, “Yea I can’t wait to get home but I keep thinking I’m going to act weird around normal people with the way I talk and stand and sit and everything will be instinct.” Well, he couldn’t be more right.

Now, like I said, I have a military reference in my husband so I was constantly asking him to decipher some of JD’s letters. The military has a language all it’s own, as a lot of you in this room will probably know exactly what I’m talking about. For our family however, it was as foreign as asking us to call him Jason. Abbreviating every thing you say, telling time in quadruple digits, and I had never before been asked about a trip to the “latrine” until JD said it. When he told me he was eating MRE’s, I thought they were feeding him bullets or something. It’s not Velcro, its “hook and fasteners.” I just learned that one from his roommate and escort, SPC Borgeling. One letter he wrote to me said this: “Things are okay. Everyone’s just tired because this week we have first squad as duty squad and all other squads have two shifts of either CQ, AWOL, or Fire Guard if that makes sense. “ Um, no. It doesn’t.

When the end of Basic was approaching, I could sense the excitement and pride in his letters. He was so excited to show us what he had done, what he had become in just 4 months. He wrote “Will everyone be able to come to family day at our Basic graduation? I think that’s when you can even meet my Drill Sergeants. Our SDS is the best. (there he goes again – that means Senior Drill Seargeant) Drill Sergeant Holmes. He will probably say how I always have the same “cold” expression and how he calls me Iceman. Yea that’s my nickname according to Drill Sergeant Holmes and now the platoon. Iceman. I’ve had a lot of nicknames here. Pretty sure that will be the final one though.”

And that day we saw him at his Basic graduation in Ft Benning, Georgia was an incredible day. He marched past me and I could hardly believe my eyes. I almost didn’t recognize the man before me. A lean, fit MAN. No longer a boy, the Army changed him into a man. I still beam with pride looking at all the pictures we took that day. They are many of the pictures you have all seen. And they are pictures of a smiling, proud man. Most military pictures I see are of people with the stern, respectable face that must somehow be a requirement of taking a picture in uniform. But all the ones I got – smiles and pride in every one.

When he was then stationed in Ft. Stewart, he continued his proud military life and set goals of starting a family. That man wanted to have his own family at a younger age than most men do. When he met Jennifer, he was so excited to have found what he had been looking for. The day they got married, he told me he had what he had always wanted.

When he went to Iraq for 15 months, he continued to try to teach me about his new life. When he told us he was a driver, my mom and I just started telling everyone he drives tanks. He’d get SO mad. They’re not TANKS GUYS! They’re “Bradleys” Okay – not sure we knew the difference. While he was in Iraq, I had a birthday and was surprised to see a bouquet of beautiful pink flowers in a pink vase delivered to my home. I first thought “Wow my husband really pulled through this year” When I read the card, I was amazed: “Happy Birthday Sis! Sorry I couldn’t do better, I promise I’ll take you and the kids out when I get back from Iraq. Thank you for all your support with everything. I couldn’t have done it without you. Happy Birthday! Love, Jason” That’s the kind of man my brother was. In the midst of fighting in a war, in another country, he still took time to have flowers delivered to his sister on her birthday and apologized for not doing more.

When he returned home from Iraq he had lots of stories for me. Some I didn’t want to hear. It’s been established that I worried about him all the time. But he was telling me “he said this and I said that and then I said “hooah “ I said, “You said what?” “Hooah. It just means yea. Or yes sir. Or okay. Or lots of things.” “WHOO AHH?” I tried. He laughed that little snicker laugh that sounds like my dad. “No. Just “hooah”” I tried again “HUH!?” He finally just gave up. “Close enough” he said.

So I’ve been practicing.

I know my brother loved his family growing up. And I know my brother loved the military and what it was shaping him to be. Some people die of old age, some people are in car wrecks, some even gunned down in a convenience store. All tragic and sad on their own. But how many of those people get the honor and respect of this kind of ceremony? How many people have the President of the United States and Generals say their name in honor? How many of them are willing to die for a purpose instead of by accident?

So as a tribute to my brother and what he has inspired in this great nation – For a fallen husband. For a mother and a father’s son who served his country. For JD. Jason. Iceman. He-man. Hunt - can I get one last loud HOOAH.
(*THUNDEROUS REPLY FROM SOLDIERS PRESENT "HOOAH!!!!!!!!"*)

The Willinghams do the Monster Mash

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Vote for Malia!

Okay - I KNOW. It's been a LONG time. And what a time to throw up a post. For a selfish reason. Forgive me! ha ha

Just got an AWESOME photo shoot done by my photographer friend, and they are AMAZING! Shannon Gurney, you ROCK!

So I decided to enter them in the Gap casting call contest. I know - everyone thinks their kid is the cutest - that's why so many people enter! But, as Malia would say, PWEASE vote for her pic!

The prize is a family trip to Jamaica...where Mitch and I got married almost 7 years ago. It may be a long shot - the leader already has 1000 votes!

It takes just a minute to register, but then you can vote once a day until Nov 22! So PWEASE...vote for Malia :)

San Diego/Mesa vamily vacation

Wow - what a trip! I look forward to this every year, as we have now made this a tradition. This was our 3rd and best year. We decided on 2 days of Legoland since we have already conquered San Diego's other great things like the Zoo, Sea World, etc. Makai's birthday is next week so we wanted this to be something he really remembered for his 5th birthday. And since Legos are his #1 favorite thing right now, he could not have had a better time.

Mitch's parents drove from Mesa and picked us up after 3 days of playing in San Diego. We drove 6 hours to Mesa and spent 2 days with them. We even got to see my Aunt Carol - she lives about 30 minutes from them.

Boy are we tired, but we had SUCH a great time!


Look what Makai built! ha ha








Giant pancake with Snickers candy bar in it from Hash House

You Westerners don't know how good you have it

Driving to Mesa - you can see the fence along the Mexican border in this little town

Swimming with PawPaw

Riding Jasmine's horse in their backyard

Making S'mores at a cool restaurant Aunt Carol took us to - my beautiful cousin Jasmine

Marathon play-by-play

I did it!!! It feels great! I reached my goal of completing it under 6 hours. 5:37.37 to be exact. Woo hoo!!

Mitch was so supportive. He ran this with me, but you would think he just took a stroll in the park or something, ha ha. He drove all the way home the same day, and has been taking care of the kids and let me sleep until 10:30am - I JUST woke up! He said I could go get a massage today too - he's the best. He was so supportive during the whole race. He was "coaching" me and telling me how good I was doing. I love that guy.

The only thing I wish I could do differently could not be controlled - and that was the bathroom stops. There were port-a-potties all along the way (at all the wrong times for me!) but waiting in line and taking care of business sure does add those unwanted minutes to your time. Oh well - I guess you gotta do what you gotta do in 6 hours! TMI? ha ha

I had "mini-goals" throughout the race that helped me mentally stay on task. The first one was obviously to finish under 6 hours. The next one was to do the first 2 sets of 5 miles in an hour each. So the first 5 I was right at 1 hour. Second 5 - right at 2 hours. I hit mile 15 right at 3 hours, so I added one more set of 5 to my goal of 1 hour each set! Then we hit the lake. Lake Hefner - in OKLAHOMA, mind you - wow. That wind is something else. It was almost funny - almost. Running south, into the wind, on a lake - I could barely stand up in some parts. So that's where I slowed down quite a bit.

And the last half was definitely harder than the first half, of course. I hit 13.1 at 2:37 feeling pretty good. But the last 6-8 miles were just brutal! Very hard, very, very windy. Everytime I would have to stop for a minute or two, it was excruciating to start running again. It was almost better not to stop, but my body had to have breaks very often toward the end.

At about mile 24, I realized that even if I walked...slowly...for the last 2 miles, I would still get there under 6 hours. But I still managed to do an ugly sort-of-running shuffle every 5 minutes so I didn't feel like I was quitting. We rounded the corner and into the shoot around 5:30-something and I decided to finish with every single thing I had left. So I sprinted. I'm sure that "sprint" was comical to anyone who might think that was a sprint, but to me, I was leaving smoke behind me, ha ha.

At the finish, Mitch scooped me up and hugged me and I had an emotional and physical release of everything I had just went through and the letdown of that last push. It was great!!

I can confidently say I will never do that again, but I am so glad I accomplished something so monumental before my 30th birthday. Now it's time to rest and get a massage and get ready for next week's vacation in San Diego!

Here are my averages, per my Garmin watch. I knew I would have to average 13-14 minute miles to reach my goal so I tried to stay close to that, speeding up when I had more energy, or running downhill to make up for times I knew I would need to rest.

Mile 1: 11.35
Mile 2: 12.12
Mile 3: 11.58
Mile 4: 11.59
Mile 5: 11.51
Mile 6: 11.42
Mile 7: 11.33
Mile 8: 11.25
Mile 9: 11.55
Mile 10: 11.40
Mile 11: 12.31
Mile 12: 11.44
Mile 13: 12.46
Mile 14: 11.29
Mile 15: 14.02 (This was the lake stretch with the wind)
Mile 16: 12.03
Mile 17: 11.42
Mile 18: 12.40
Mile 19: 12.38
Mile 20: 12.05
Mile 21: 13.13
Mile 22: 13.47
Mile 23: 13.45
Mile 24: 14.31
Mile 25: 12.48
Mile 26: 13.44
And 6 minutes for the last bit!

Before the race. With a Spongebob wristband from Makai. I look so hopeful and rested!

I only had my phone with me - the camera on it is not good. This is what it looks like before the sun comes up (I never knew). Standing in front of the beautiful OKC bombing Memorial just before it started - but of course you can't see.

I took this of myself with the camera phone at 13.1 - the half, while Mitch was talking to a fellow runner. Feeling *okay* at this point. It was SO humid - I was sweating at mile 5 unusually hard.

About mile 24 - the wind on this street was coming right at us, and was literally pushing me backwards at some times - I was ticked off!

Just after we finished - our friends took this pic.

The wind blowing my finisher shirt back at our friend's house.

Ready or not, marathon, here I come

Three more days until the big run! I must say, I'm a little nervous. I started my training very dedicated, doing every suggested run on the program I chose. But toward the end, I got sick of running, running, running for 18 weeks straight, so I have been slacking. I hope I've trained my body enough to get through this! Because I'm certain I will never done another one again.

My goal is to finish, #1. But my secondary goal is to do it under 6 hours, which, unless I WALK the entire time, should not be too hard. Well, yes, it will be hard, but I will be pretty disappointed in myself if I don't finish under 6 hours. At my slow 13ish-minute pace, that will be...carry the 1... hmmmmm...TOO stinking close! Cross your fingers for me that I get there - I don't think you get a finisher shirt unless you finish under 6!

Just for fun, I looked up some famous people who have run marathons and their times. You would be surprised! Some fit people take a long time and some unexpected people are crazy fast!

Meredith Baxter (Family Ties mom) 4:08 - Wow!
Will Ferrell: 3:56 - HOLY cow!
Mario Lopez: 5:41 (must have been flirting with the ladies a lot)
Freddie Prinze Jr: 5:50 - okay, I can hang with that
Oprah Winfrey: 4:29 - must've been skinny Oprah
Lance Armstrong: 2:47 - why did I even put this on here?
Ali Landry: 5:41
Katie Holmes: 5:30