10 MILES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I have the best husband in the world. Seriously.

This morning started off rough for him at work and didn't end until 730pm, when he pulled into the driveway because his clients that were supposed to show up at his office for a 5pm meeting didn't get there until 6pm and didn't leave until7pm. He had a l-o-n-g day.

When he got home we set out to run our 3 miles, as per our training schedule, like we do every Tuesday. Sometimes we go in the morning, but that didn't happen today, so we ended up heading out around 8pm. In the 87 or so degree weather.

And then we didn't get home until about 10pm. I thought we were just going to run our 3 miles, but my sweet, sweet husband, who knew I was having trouble with my long runs and who knew that I was really mad at myself about how I did on Saturday, just kept running tonight, and got me all turned around in our neighborhood and made it to where I had no idea how long we were running for or how far we had gone or how fast we were going and made it to where I was able to run the full 10 miles.

At about 8 miles we were turning in to our section of the neighborhood and told me how far we had run and asked if I wanted to run the last 2 or so. And I knew I wouldn't forgive myself if I said I wanted to go home--this was my chance to run the full 10 and get over that hump--so of course I said yes. And man, it was a long last 2 miles, but I am so grateful to my husband for loving me so spot on and helping me with the one thing that has been eating away at me this week.

Now, I just have to do this on my own, without him to pace me and talk to me. I'm just going to have to do it though. No excuses. It's going to be hard and my legs are going to be tired and I just need to keep going. And, interestingly enough, when I run/walked a good portion of the 10 miles on Saturday I was much more out of breath throughout it all from all of the starting and stopping and my legs actually hurt worse when I was done--my hips hurt and I felt physically sick. Tonight I'm tired, but doing ok. Interesting. And, while tonight we did run at an almost embarrassingly slow pace, I just did the math and it was about a minute and a half faster per mile than my average pace on Saturday. So that's something I guess.

So now, as it nears midnight, we're both lounging in bed, watching the Astros and Conan, enjoying our frozen pizza (because really that was about all we could manage to cook for dinner, even though I had other plans when I thought we were running only 3 miles) and our Sonic drinks, because their commercials have been making me crave one lately and I made myself a deal that when I RAN the 10 miles, then I could go get my Cherry Limeade.

Thank you babe. You gave me a great gift tonight. Thank you for helping me to run 10 miles on this random Tuesday night, when I'm sure there were probably about a thousand things you'd rather have been doing. Despite the pain, I enjoyed seeing 2 hours worth of our neighborhood tonight with you--running down streets we'd never been down and parts of the neighborhood we'd never seen and looking at houses we'd never noticed as we ran to I-10 and then 610 and everywhere (it seemed) in between. I enjoyed just being able to run with you like we used it. It's a night I'm sure I'll remember for a long time.

Happy Monday!

Tonight Landon and I met some friends up at the church the church to play volleyball--well, he played and I watched and read my book and took pictures of the game (and the cute kids running around the court while they played), since I haven't played volleyball since, oh, 6th grade gym probably. And they already had six players anyway, so I would have just messed up the numbers anyhow. :) It was fun watching Landon play though---he played a lot during college intramurals and such, and I'd heard a lot of stories, but never seen him play. Great job, babe--I enjoyed watching you!


Then, as we were walking out to our car around 9pm, there was a thunderstorm rolling in with huge bolts of lightening. I just happened to have my camera and an amazing husband in the car with me, who immediately thought to pull into this tall parking garage we were driving by and we spent the next 30 minutes or so on the top level (and then the 2nd to top level as the rains began to pour down) taking pictures of the lightening and enjoying the show. We had a ball. I love thunderstorms and lightening is just so cool.

What a nice way to start the week.

A Night at the Ballpark

Tonight Landon and I got to go to the ballpark for an Astros game with some friends from our first family at church and, despite the heat, had a really good time. They beat the Detroit Tigers 8-1, which was a lot of fun, and it was nice just to get to sit and visit as we watched the game. Thanks for your friendship, Johnsons and Blackburns!

Landon and I waiting outside Minute Maid for the Sugarlanders to arrive

the view from our seats--it was definitely the highest up I'd ever sat and it was hot up there--I think all the A/C stayed down on the first level!

the girls--Brittnie, me and Becky--please excuse my shiny face and gross hair!!

the guys--Brandon, Ben and Landon--so cute! :)

Thanks for a fun night guys--we look forward to doing it again!

Marathon Training Week Seven

Well, I completed the 10 miles. I was so determined to run the whole 10 miles and am so disappointed in myself that I didn't. We ran on the track at Bally's (100 laps) and I ended up run walking (running 4 laps and walking 1) for over half of it, which resulted in about 12 minute miles overall. Worse than last week.

I wasn't feeling great during the run--we didn't fun until noon and I was hungry the whole time-- and my foot still hurt unfortunately and I just felt really tired by about mile 4, which is unusual. I think my problem is more mental than physical--I feel like I have this mental block that I can't run over 7 miles consecutively. I need to just be able to zone out and run and not be so aware of each little part of a mile ticking by. And the really frustrating part is that when Landon and I were running together, I did run 9 miles without stopping, faster than I was going today. Uggh. I know it's a mental block, but I don't know how to get past it.

Next week is a step down week so we only have 7 miles. And then after that we have 12. I really want to make myself run the whole thing. I need to be able to.

Landon did good today though-- he ran a little slower pace than he wanted, but he did not crash and burn and he definitely ran the whole thing without stopping. Then, he had to wait like 20 minutes for me, haha.

I'm really bummed out but I'll get over it. I'll try again next week. At least I finished the 10 miles, even if it did take me 2 hours. :)

How did we manage...

to make running this technological??

Snippets of Life

I am finally finished with my Dyslexia training class that I've been in since school let out for summer. In the beginning of it, I (and everyone else in the training) was thinking "what have I gotten myself in to???". It seemed like SO much work and so much to learn. But now that it's all done and I'm officially "certified" to teach kids with dyslexia, I've found a whole new passion that I never knew I had and a strong desire to be an advocate for kids with dyslexia, because I know at my school, as in many other schools, they're all but overlooked and many times pass through our doors without being diagnosed and given the help they're entitled to. So, now that it's all said and done, I am so thankful for the opportunity to go to this class--it opened up a whole new world I knew nothing about. And, because dyslexia is hereditary, all of this information could very well come in handy with my own kids one day and I'm so grateful for that also--it's a large part of what made me sign up for the class in the first place.
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In other exciting news (in my world, but I'm sure in no one else's), I think we've finally won the war against the ants that have been attacking our house for the past week or so. They were in everything, especially in the kitchen and in our bathroom and came out of no where as soon as the weather got so stinkin' hot. We cleared out and cleaned out everything in our kitchen cabinets and counters and sprayed the heck out of the house last weekend and they haven't come back since. Well, except for the one I saw crawling in the dishwasher (gross) but I quickly smashed it and pretended I hadn't seen the lone survivor. I even left a few dishes in the sink last night to try and tempt a few to come out of their hiding space if they were still in our kitchen, but when I woke this morning, there were none! Woohoo! I may be cursing myself by saying this, but I think can declare victory.
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Now, in other exciting news, (can you tell I'm on summer vacation and really doing a whole lot of nothing this week) when I got home from hanging out with one of my sweet friends and her baby yesterday afternoon, I saw these sitting on the island in the (ant free) kitchen for me from my sweet husband. I don't know what kind of flower they are, but they are beautiful!

I seriously have the best husband in the world. Things are kinda sucky at work for him right now and there's a lot of mess he's having to deal with there, and I'm at home loafing around and running errands and having lunch with friends and with my mom and he's the one that's so amazing to think of me on his way home and out of the blue bring me these. I am such a lucky girl. Thank you babe, for being you and for being better to me than I deserve.
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Some of you may have noticed (and I mentioned it once before on here a while ago) that Landon and I are running our marathon in October to raise money for World Vision, an awesome organization that brings life and hope to people around the world. We sponsor 2 kids and Landon knows so many people in Uganda from his trips there during high school and college and those are the people we are running this marathon for, the people we are raising money for, and all those in similar situations. More on that to come in a later post, but our fundraising has officially begun and if anyone would like to read a little more about World Vision or what we are doing, just click on the button on the right of the page.
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God is alive and moving in our lives right now and we are just taking it day by day, not really sure what the future holds or where it will lead us. But we are excited to see what God is doing as He continues to slowly reveal His plan for our lives to us, opening our eyes to new possibilities and passions and realities and things we hadn't before noticed. God is so good.

Happy Father's Day!

Dad, I love you. As I think back over the years and as I think about our times together in the future, I know how lucky I am. Thank you for being "sold out, all in" as our father.

Wes, thank you for being such a good father and for raising the man I love more than I ever thought possible. And thank you for your friendship with him today that we both cherish.

Marathon Training Week Six

Last week when I was running mile nine of our nine mile run, the inside of my foot started hurting. I was so tired and ready to be done running at that point that I didn't pay it much attention, and it didn't really bother me much after I stopped running.

Until I went out to run our 3 miles on Tuesday. I was in pain after running about 10 steps on Tuesday morning and it just got worse as I went on. It wasn't debilitating pain by any means, but it hurt. And it continued to hurt when I ran on Wednesday and Thursday, despite my best efforts at resting it and icing it after the runs--it feels like the bone above my arch and below my ankle bone (which I didn't even really know existed until this happened) is bruised.

And so, taking Landon's advice, I didn't run our long run this Saturday. We went to the gym yesterday evening so I could ride the bike, which we figured would put the least amount of pressure on my foot but still allow me to get some cardio in. And while I was feeling like a wimp riding the recumbent bike for an hour and a half, Landon ran nine miles around the .1 mile track above me. He ran around that little bitty track for an hour and 20 minutes--90 times!! Wow. And he ran so well--he was going at about a 9 minute pace the whole time and said he felt strong the whole nine miles. I am so proud of him--every time he'd go by me I'd cheer for him in my head, while I sat on my reclining chair and pedaled furiously. According to the bike computer, I ran 55 miles! Haha, I'm sure there's no way I could do that in real life in an hour and a half though!

Hopefully the rest time will help my foot heal though, because I really don't want to finish my training with this pain in my foot and I really don't want to have to run 26.2 miles with it. I'm hoping that by the time Tuesday morning rolls around, it will be gone. If it's not though, my personal athletic trainer (AKA my father in law :)) gets back from Africa on Thursday so I'll probably go see him! Because I cannot miss another long run--I need to redeem myself from my last one! :)

Oh--and on a postive note, my new watch came in this week, so now I can really start working on finding and keeping my pace, instead of just guessing! Woohoo!

Spooning

Yes, I think our dogs love each other.
And that the dog park really wore them out.

Marathon Training Week Five

While I was in grad school I had a professor that gave us, among other fun pieces of writing to use in our classroom, a compilation entitled "What it feels like to...". It's little mini-articles written by people who have experienced all kinds of things like being shot, being bitten by a shark, being really short, being really tall and all kinds of other interesting topics.

One of them was written by a woman who was a dishwasher to put herself through college. She talks about how her job was to carry (with her bare hands) the burning hot dishes from the massive dishwasher and bring them over to her station to dry them. And she said something that has stuck with me. She said that after a few days of burning her hands on these dishes as she carried them over and over, she just accepted that it was going to hurt. When she picked up the stack of dishes out of the steaming dishwasher there was no chance that it was not going to hurt. And something about just accepting that it was going to hurt, accepting that it was going to be painful, made it easier.

That's about how I'm feeling about running this marathon right now. It's what Landon and I were talking about tonight as we were looking over the training schedule and planning out some routes in our neighborhood for this week's runs. It's going to be hard. The training is going to be hard. There's no easy way out. There's no slow enough pace that will make running 26.2 miles easy (or 9 miles of 15 miles or 20 miles, for that matter). And something about just accepting that fact, that realizing that the daily runs and the marathon are going to be hard, going to hurt, gives me a little peace of mind. I've just got to accept that and set out to do my best anyway.

This week's run was 9 miles and we both agreed that it was pretty much the hardest run we've had so far. We got up around 6am on Saturday and went out to a park by our house to run and it was hot and sunny when we started running. By 815am or so when we finished, it was already in the mid/upper-80's: HOT. At 5 miles we stopped to drink a little Gatorade that we had set out at the beginning of our run (and I tried using a gel because our marathon training site said to experiment with them--bad idea for me, in case you were wondering) and the last 4 miles, once we started running again were brutal. I had to run/walk the last 2, which I definitely didn't have to do the last time we ran 9 miles (in our pre-marathon trainings), but it was about 15 degrees cooler last time we ran this distance (and I hadn't eaten a gel that time). So I'm hoping that has something to do with why my pace was about a minute and a half slower than it was last time we ran 9 miles and about a minute slower per mile than I needed to run to meet my marathon goal of under four and a half hours.

And even though I know Landon wasn't too happy with his time either, I was SO proud of him because he was a heck of a lot closer to his goal race pace than I was. And it shouldn't be this hot in Chicago when we run our race (we're crossing our fingers that the past holds true this year!!).

So, I'm hoping next week I'll run better. And faster. Even though I know it won't be any easier. Or hurt any less.

A day in the life...

A few months ago I was reading an article in the newspaper about how there's this new trend in America (supposedly) of women quitting their jobs and becoming stay at home wives--as in, they don't have kids but they don't work outside the home because it doesn't allow them to take care of their house and their husband as well as they want to. Part of me thought it sounded silly and part of me (as I was in the middle of TAKS season at school and not finding time to do any of the things I needed to at home) thought it sounded really nice!

Well, this summer, I am a stay at home wife, haha. And I get little jabs about it every day from my sweet husband as he gets up and heads to work. :) I thought I'd be sleeping in and lounging around and trying to find things to do so I wouldn't be bored. Um, that has not been the case at all. Life has been busy and, much to my disappointment, there has been very little lounging. :) We've been getting up and running around 630am every morning to try and beat the heat and then as soon as Landon leaves for work, I go to work too. I've been dusting and vaccuuming and mopping and cleaning wood floors and ironing and doing laundry (I think every blanket, table cloth, set of sheets, pair of clothing etc in our house has now been washed and dried). And running all of those little errands that have been on my to do list for the last few months that I could never find the time to do (and there are alot). And going to dyslexia training classes for my teaching next year, since this whole stay at home wife thing is just, you know, for the summer. Then it's back to real life.

So in conclusion, I will say this. It is nice to be able to be at home, but the longer I'm here, the more I find I need to do. My to do list keeps growing and growing, despite the fact that I keep crossing things off of it. I wonder if this is how it is for stay at home moms, or if taking care of the kids just makes all of the other little things I feel like I need to do seem insignificant.

By August, I may be so tired from all of this non-working that I may be ready to go back to work.

Or maybe not. (I'm kinda going with not! :)) Since most of the stuff on my to do list are at least things I at least semi-want to do and have been wanting/needing to do for a while now. We'll have to wait and see.

On a totally different note, I did get to take a little break from my days of cleaning today and go to an Astros game with Matthew and then Landon and I got to go to dinner with some sweet friends tonight to help a group from church raise money for a mission trip they're going on this summer to Mission Lazarus in Honduras. It was a nice night.

And in case I haven't mentioned it enough on here, I love living near family. :) It was so fun to visit with my brother at the Astros game--and I'm SO glad they finally won, even if it was an almost scoreless game and it took them 13 innings to pull out the victory!


TGIF (almost)! Fridays are even sweeter for us now, because they're our "rest" day in our marathon training program, so we get to "sleep in" until 730am or so. It's so sad that that's sleeping in, but we'll take what we can get! :)

Marathon Training Week Four

Well, we're one month in to our training and this week was an easy week--we had a stepback for our long run, meaning we only had to run five miles for our long run, so that we could gather up our strength for our step up next week--nine miles. Eek.

Because we spent a lot of our morning at the Sprint store, we ended up running our 5 miles at the gym because it was just too stinkin' hot outside by the time we got home. The run was ok (even though running on the treadmill is SO boring) and the audio book we started listening to this week is getting good. And I even woke up sore on Sunday, which hasn't happened after a run in a long time. Weird.

So now, we're on to nine miles next Saturday. I'm dreading it and wanting it to be here all at the same time; part of me is ready to get in to the really long runs and see if they're as bad as I feel like they're going to be. My goal this week on our nine mile run is to find a pace where I feel like I'm pushing myself, but where I don't feel like I have to walk after three or four miles.

To The Future And Beyond...

This afternoon my youngest brother graduated from high school, which hardley seems possible! Michael did such a good job in high school though and I think is ready to move on to bigger and better things...in Michigan! I am so sad that he'll be so far away, but we will get to see him some because of the way the school is set up. It's a co-op school, where the students work 3 months and then go to school for 3 months, and his company that he will working for in actually in Houston, so he'll be back for 3 months, every 3 months! And he starts his engineering job on Monday...congrats Michael, on a job well done!

all the honor graduates walking in firston the left on the big screen :) Woohoo! We finally got him to look at us! It's official!About 2/3 through, a girl in the row in front of Michael finished blowing up the beach ball she had snuck into the auditorium and tossed it behind her. And when it came to my brother, he definitely kept it in the air, despite the demands of the teachers to hand it over, right now! :)This man, when he finally managed to gain posession of the beach ball, was not a happy camper. And he was even less happy when three others materialized as the ceremony went on.Michael telling us about the beach ball fiascothe proud parents and the happy graduateme and my little broMichael and one of his good friends from schoolAshlee, his sweet girlfriendthe whole fammy wonderful parents, done with graduations (at least for the next four years!)

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After the graduation, we went to dinner at the Olive Garden to celebrate. Then, we went back to our house for coffee and dessert because Matthew was so sweet and had thought to buy some pastries from a little bakery by our house yesterday (which is also consequently right by his job) for us to have after dinner. They were delicious and it was so nice just to relax and talk and laugh and enjoy one another's company.

Congrats, Michael! We are so proud of you and so happy for you to be beginning this next stage in life! I know you will be such a light up in Michigan. Keep following where God is leading you.