She's going to hate this picture but I had to document the fact that she got her braces off.

Nicole painted the bedroom and I'm digging the iPhone panorama lately.  I should have turned off the lamp though.

Picking up Madison from a friends house.

Today was the Bix7.  A seven mile road race that is probably the biggest non-marathon in the Midwest.  I love it because it's a chance to run with professionals.  This years winner was Leonard Korir from Kenya in 32:14, and the biggest name runner (at least to me) was Meb Keflezighi who won a silver medal in the 2004 Olympic Marathon.  Meb finished third and I was 5070th out of 10,677 finishers in 1:08:08.

Tomorrow I'm running the Bix7.  It's such a large race that you have to pick up your packet the day before so Madison drove me down.  She get her license in a little over a month and still needs to get in more hours of driving.  After picking up my race packet we went to Harris Pizza.  Madison insisted this guy looks like the Crocodile Hunter, Steve Irwin.  What do you think?

I apologize to myself and anyone viewing that I allowed this to be the only photo I took today.

Logan had a roommate named Noah who was five (and a half).  By morning they had become pretty good buddies and Noah even climbed into Logan's bed to show him a video.

The hospital is across the street from Kinnick Stadium, home of the Iowa Hawkeyes.

Waiting for the doctor to give the word that we can leave.

He's been cleared to go and we got a laugh / big cheesy smile out of him.

Walking out, the same way they walked in.

And finally... back home on the couch.

We left the hotel at 7:00 am.  Logan isn't a big fan of getting poked by needles so Nicole got some numbing gel to put on his hands.  We took care of that in the parking garage before heading in.

Getting a little comfort as we walk across the skybridge from the parking garage to the hospital.

We just arrived and he's not looking thrilled about what is to come.

Still pretty stoic as he's prepped for surgery.

Logan's surgery was a two part deal.  The first part involved placing a tube into the kidney, the second part involved the actual removal of the stones.  We headed to the first of two waiting rooms and it was small and packed.  I discretely snapped the below photo as a memory of the worst waiting room ever. 

The tech came out to see us after the tube was in place and we were told he would be wheeled down the hall to next surgical suit so Mom camped out by the door to get a glimpse of her boy.

It's an odd thing to see your son under anesthesia.

The second waiting room was much larger and less populated but I still decide to take a walk.  From the skyway you can see the construction site for the new children's hospital.

While in the skyway I met up with the rest of the family and led them to the spacious waiting room.

A very relieved mother meeting up with her son in the recovery room.

Big sister helping with the straw.  He was still able to give her the evil eye even though he wasn't totally awake.

Curious George stopped by the room.

By evening he was up and walking around the unit.

Parents are allowed to stay sleep overnight in the room.  It took some shuffling but we managed to set up two fold out bed/chairs in the tiny room.

Logan has over 20 kidney stones all in his left kidney.  Tomorrow, he is having them surgically removed at the University of Iowa Hospital.  We are about two hours from Iowa City so we headed out tonight and got a hotel room so we don't have to get up so early tomorrow.  While Mom checked us in Logan found a comfy seat and I began to document our time in photos.  I decided to to use Hipstamatic's Claunch 72 Monochrome for all of the photos and just change the "lens" for effect.

When we got tot the room he grabbed the remote and got even more comfortable.

Next thing I knew everyone was in bed.

I decided to go for a run and found a nice bike path behind our hotel.  Iowa City is a college town so as I trudged along at about 11:30 per mile I encountered several young runners easily galloping along at about 7:00 per mile.   

While I was gone, Logan spent some time at the pool.  I managed to coax a smile out of him even though he's pretty nervous about tomorrows procedure.

Nicole is nervous as well.

Logan is having his surgery on Tuesday so we let him choose a place where we could go out to eat.  He chose Pizza Ranch, a pizza and chicken buffet.  Here is with my Mom.

Tomorrow is my wife's friend Missy's birthday so tonight we went out to the Prime Quarter.  It's a steak house where you cook your own steak.

I snapped this as Madison and I were sitting on the front porch watching a storm move in.  About a minute later our neighbor, Jan ran by at a pretty quick pace, obviously trying to get home before the rain came.  You can read about Jan's crazy run on her blog Running on Fumes.  

I'm a quality manager at Metal Spinners in Rock Falls, IL.  Metal spinning is a process of forming metal over a formed tool to make a round part.  In some ways it's like using a pottery wheel to shape ceramics.  Today our plant manager came out to see if he can still spin and I thought should document it with a photo.