The Foster Following

Daily Mile

2012-01-05T11:07:00.003-06:00

I have, once again, found another time waster, social network, what have you. Dailymile.com

It's basically like facebook for runners and other athletes. I always try to not post every.single. workout that I do on facebook because I know a lot of people don't care. But, I'm excited to share those things with the people who do care or the people it may motivate. Now, I can do that with this website. You can track all of your work outs (not just runs). You can meet other people who run (or whatever you do) in your area, with similar goals, or training for the same races.

I joined a couple of months ago, but I just started logging my workouts since the new year. So far I really like it. If you are apart of dailymile or are going to join - feel free to "friend" me. JusLyn678 is my name on there.

I am also addicted to pinterest. If you are on there, you can follow me here. I hope that link works.

Turkey trax 2011 recap

2011-12-04T21:32:00.007-06:00

Thanksgiving morning I ran my first race since July (I think). I was definitely itching to race.

At the beginning of this year I set a goal to run a sub 25 minute 5k. The race I ran on new year's eve 2010 was in 26:08 so I thought knocking just over a minute off my time shouldn't be too difficult. Well, here it was the end of November and I was still chasing that sub 25. I ran a St. Pat's race where my Garmin said 24:55, but my chip time was 25:08....wah! wah!

The weather was going to be wonderful for the race this year. I remember last year being fuh-reezing. It was in the low 30s or high 20s (I can't remember). This year was expected to be in the mid 40s. Perfect. I ended up wearing capris and a long sleeve tech T under a short sleeved shirt. Well, the mid-40s didn't come around until later in the day (even though the forecast said mid 40s at 8:30am when the race started). So I was a bit chilly, but even 40* is better than low 30s. :)

My dad ran this race with me and my mother-in-law walked/ran it also. It's great to do these races with other people. It's much more enjoyable to me.

Me, MIL, Dad

I knew my dad would beat me, that's no secret. He is a speedy guy! We still lined up together to start. This was a huge race. Prior to this one - St. Pat's is usually has the most participants with less than 700. There were more than 1000 people doing this 5k on Thanksgiving. That's crazy to me. I was happy to hear the guy on the PA system pre-race instruct the walkers and folks with strollers and dogs to start near the back. This usually helps some of the congestion at the beginning. Of course, there are people who ignore that, but every little bit helps I think.

So, we start out (no starting mat for timing, FYI). It's pretty congested at the beginning, but the street is pretty wide and everyone was able to spread out since there was no traffic.

There wasn't anything particularly interesting or noteworthy about this race. I thought it was fairly hilly, but my dad disagreed. About mile 1-1.5 (or maybe more) was a gradual uphill. That wears you out eventually. I did get passed by a lady with her dog during this hill. They were really moving and it made me wish my dog would run with me for that extra push. I remember last year getting passed during that hill by a guy pushing a double strollers...so I guess this is a win for me this year. :)

My pretty girl, Lucky Anne.

Luckily, after that gradual hill it was pretty flat for a mile and then a VERY steep hill at mile 2.4(ish). It wasn't very long, but at the point in the race it felt like we were going straight up. It kicked my butt.

Once we climbed that hill - we had just over a half of a mile to go and almost a quarter of that was on the track. I tried to really kick once I got the track (less than .25 of a mile left), but I only made a decent sprinting effort for about 100m and slowed a bit for about 200m. That 200m felt like forever so when I got to the final straight away I tried to give it hell.

I still missed my sub 25 even though I felt like I really pushed myself. Bummer.

Some stats:
Garmin time - 25:26 (I forgot to turn my watch off of a couple of minutes so this is my "moving time")
Garmin pace - 8:17 ("moving pace")
Official time - 25:15
Avg pace - 8:07
Overall place - 176/904
Division place - 10/73
Sex place - 55/140

Last year I ran this race in 28:06. So, even though I didn't get in under 25 minutes - I could definitely seem huge improvements in just a year of racing.

For anyone curious, my dad definitely beat me. His time was 22:XX. Maybe someday we can run a 5k at the same pace...probably not. Haha. And my MIL knocked 7 minutes off her time from last year so that's wonderful.

Couponing

2011-12-02T13:29:00.002-06:00

It's no secret that money is tight in the Foster household. We are paying a mortgage and a rent payment right now. It sucks. I am always looking for ways to save money. I always check hip2save.com just to see what kind of deals she has posted every couple of days. Last week I decided to watch some of her videos on couponing. I was inspired. I clipped some coupons in Sunday's paper and did some shopping today.

My purchases....

I got:
-6 sticks of Dove deodorant
-1 stick of Gillette deodorant for Justin
-3 bars of Dove soap
-2 bottles of Lysol toilet bowl cleaner
-2 bottles of Gillette body wash
-1 box of zip-loc sandwich bags
-3 bottles of Dawn dish soap
-a box of 25 Vanish dishwasher finishing bars (kind of like jet-dry)
-2 wicker baskets
-2 off brand air fresheners

My original total was $72.XX. My total after coupons, store discounts, etc. was $45.XX. I was pretty happy with that. Those 6 sticks of Dove deodorant for me would have been $24 on their own...I got them for $12. Niiiiice.

If you don't shop at Walgreen's and/or clip their coupons in their Sunday ad - YOU SHOULD. I really look forward to stacking manufacturers coupons on top of Walgreen's coupons to really save some mula. Justin was very excited about my savings too so that's fun. I know that I can do even better than my savings today and I am so excited to get Sunday's paper now. :)

Do you coupon?

You know you're a runner when...

2011-11-27T20:58:00.002-06:00

Every once in a while I have one of those moments where I'm like, "yeah, I'm definitely a runner because XYZ."

The most recent moment came when I was driving to my dad's house this afternoon. I am 100% jealous of all the sidewalks he has around his house and neighborhood. Around our house - I can run about 3-3.5 miles before having to do loops to add miles. It sucks. I crave more sidewalks and more places to run close to home.

There is actually a bunch of construction going on around us to expand roads, etc. So far, most of the area they are doing constructions seems to be adding sidewalks as well as expanding the roads. I am ridiculously excited about that. I would love to do a long run from my house without having to make loops around the same route. I absolutely hate having to drive to do a long run. That's a big reason why I missed some longer runs during my last half marathon training.

Runners, be thankful for your local sidewalks. :)

No AM group run today.

2011-11-21T10:55:00.005-06:00

The group I have been meeting with for a couple of weeks decided we would run Monday and Wednesday this week. We normally run on Tuesday and Thursday, but with Thursday being Thanksgiving - we just adjusted.

There was a discussion on our FB group page about running this morning. It seemed like a few girls were on board. When my alarm went off at 5 this morning I promptly checked the FB page because that last thing I wanted to do was show up and have no one there. One girl posted last night that she wouldn't be there this morning because she thinks her hip flexor is jacked (bummer). Another girl's husband is out of town and she has a daughter who she, obviously, can't leave in the morning to run. I knew that another girl was sick yesterday, but she intended to run today. I ended up texting one of the girls because I had a bad feeling that I would be the only one to show up. I'm glad I did because, sure enough, I would have been there by myself. I snuggled back into bed and went back to sleep for a few hours.

So it sucks about not getting a run in this morning, but I think I am going to do some speed work/intervals on the treadmill at the gym tonight. Tomorrow morning or after work I am going to do some cross training at the gym. Wednesday morning we are hopefully still meeting so I can get some easy miles in before the Turkey Trax 5k on Thanksgiving morning.

I did get in a little less than 4.5 miles on Saturday before we started tailgating for the Mizzou game. My 5am wake up call seems to be getting easier and easier each time. I went to the normal spot that I meet our group, but decided it was too dark and uncomfortable to run there by myself. So I drove across town to campus where I knew it would be better lit and more traffic. I just took off and really didn't have a route or a plan in place. I basically just ran until I was running out of time to meet to shower and meet our tailgating friends. It felt pretty good and I ran about a 9:20 pace.

That 5am start to my day really kicked me in the ass about 6 that evening. I was done. A full day of tailgating and watching the football game.did me in. Justin and I grabbed some Thai take out and vegged out the rest of the night. We were in bed by 9:30.

And I will leave you with some tailgating pics. :)

Justin and I showing off our "black out" outfits for the day.
I told him he looked like a cheerleader so we posed accordingly. :)

Justin with his bestfriend's sister who is, obviously, much taller than him.

MIL, Justin, and Me outside of the stadium

Family friends.

Structure? No thanks.

2011-11-15T10:08:00.006-06:00

All right, so I'm not going to post a training post and follow it. It's just not going to happen. Instead - I am going to blog whenever the heck I want. Haha. I suck at this blogging thing...and I think that's what the majority of my blog posts have been about this year. I will try. No promises.

In recent running news - I started meeting with a very casual running group. It's a group of girls that live on my side of town that meet at 5:30 in the morning on Tuesday and Thursdays. A few of them get together on the weekends for longer runs too. I say it's very casual because it's just a group put together by some girls on FB and they have each just invited some friends to get the word out. There is not a strict schedule, a coach to push you along, etc. You just come when you can and someone picks a route to run. I have only gone twice, but I'm loving it so far. I will definitely need the accountability in the winter months. :)

I have also amped up my cross training a bit. I need to get a bit more structured with my cross training, but I figure something is better than nothing. I have added speed work. It's all on the treadmill, but I'm doing it. It's also not very structured. I usually warm up pretty slowly for a half mile and then do one minute of just a bit faster than 5k (goal) race pace and then 2 minutes of a little slower than half marathon goal pace. I do this alternating for a couple of miles and then do a slow half mile cool down.

My next 5k is the Turkey Trax on Thanksgiving day. It will be my 1 year racing anniversary. I am pretty excited about it. :)

On the house front - our house is on the market!! No bites yet, but we are trying to stay optimistic since this is a slow time for home buyers.

Last thing - (Just) Trying is for little girls is doing a pretty sweet giveaway. Keep the faith creations has some really cool pieces of jewelry that are very runner friends. Check out her blog, the giveaway, and keep the faith creation's website.

FAIL

2011-10-05T22:34:00.002-05:00

So that pretty little plan I typed out last week?? Yeah, totally fail on my part. I got in about 2 miles while in Michigan and that's IT for exercise last week. Pretty pathetic.

In my defense (or just another excuse) I woke up with a pretty gnarly head cold Monday morning. Knowing that we had a busy, fun, exciting weekend coming up - I decided rest and medication were more important to me than running myself ragged. I know some people think exercise helps when they are sick, but I couldn't breathe out of my nose and I didn't want to chance being even more sick over the weekend.

Just tonight I have made the decision to sign up for the Rock the Parkway half marathon in KC April 14th, 2012. It seems to be a fairly challenging course described as having "gentle rolling hills." That's pretty similar to the description in Nashville, which I found to be VERY hilly. So, we'll see.

I would like to use the next 27 weeks (I think that's what I counted) to really concentrate on speed, hill work, and long runs away from the trail (think super flat trail). Assuming I can stick to a training plan that incorporates all of that then I should be blogging about a pretty significant PR next spring. But, I'm not going to get too cocky as I know I absolutely suck at following a plan.

I should have time to do Hal Higdon's intermediate training program pretty much each week twice...or some sort of combination of that program, just doubled. The unfortunate part is that this is another spring time half so that puts me training through the winter. I don't mind running in the cold, but it gets trickier when there is snow on the ground, it's dark outside, and the runs get longer.

I hope to blog a bit more leading up to this half, but anyone who has stuck around saw how that went for me last time around. Wish me luck, cheer me along my training, and please keep me accountable. Thanks in advance. :)

Plan for the week 9/26-10/2

2011-09-25T21:00:00.005-05:00

All right so I mentioned that I was going to start posting weekly plans...ummm, starting last week. Oops. So let's try this week. Of course this isn't the best week to start as we will be out of town Friday through Monday to visit friends. I am hoping to get 5-6 miles in while I am there, but I'm certainly not going to beat myself up if I don't get that.

Monday - Speed work* 5x400 @ 5k pace, AB lab class at the gym (basically 15 min core work)
Tuesday - 3.5 mile run, Body Pump class at the gym to follow
Wednesday - 60 min spin class at the gym (this is at 0530, so if this doesn't happen then some sort of cross training will happen that morning)
Thursday - 7 mile long run (doing this Thursday morning since it won't happen over the weekend)
Friday-Sunday - with any luck 5-6 miles over those days. :)

Not only did I type this out for all of the internets to view - I also have it pinned on the fridge. Let's hope this helps me get out of bed in the mornings.

*This will be my first attempt at speed work. I am going to do it on the treadmill (so I'm at the gym for that ab lab class). I assume it's probably better on the track, but I don't see myself making the time to drive to the track, drive the gym, and then home to be ready for work.

Accountability

2011-09-13T16:10:00.005-05:00

I am happy to report that my 5:30am wake up call followed by a run was successful last Saturday. I may or may not have hit snooze a couple of times, but I did make it out the door by a little after 6. Not bad considering I was seriously doubting myself to even get out of bed that early.

Since I was getting started a little later than I would have liked - I knew that I was going to have to cut my mileage shorter than I had planned. I ended up running a little over 3 miles. Not a great distance, but at least I made it out there.

The first mile of my run was pretty darn dark. It was a new experience for me. My eyes and mind were playing tricks on me. I really wasn't a fan of it all. I will definitely be asking for a head lamp for Christmas...along with reflective gear. I pointed all of this out to Justin last weekend when we were at a sporting goods store. :)

I am also happy to report that Mizzou won their first game. It was a close one, but they pulled it out.

Justin and I made the trip to Tempe, AZ this past weekend to watch Mizzou play at Arizona State. We weren't quite so fortunate there. We lost in overtime. It was disappointing, but they rallied to come back in the 4th quarter so I don't think it was a complete loss.

I got up fairly early in Tempe to go for a run as well. Our hotel was very close to the campus so I did a few miles around their campus. I know people mention that Arizona is a dry heat....I'm sorry, but 90* is 90* regardless of the "type" of heat. It was only 7am at the point, mind you. I think it got up to 113* that day before a little bit of rain came through.

I don't have much more to report at this point. Mizzou is back at home this weekend and it's a 6pm game. We will probably start tailgating around noon so a morning run should not be that hard to manage. There is a Susan G Komen 5k this Sunday, but I haven't signed up just yet. I know Saturday will be a long night so a race the next day may not go so well. I will probably still do the race just because of the cause, but I don't anticipate good results.

A lot of the blogs I read post their weekly training plan and then follow up with how they did later in the week. I think this is something I may have to try out around here. I know there for a while this blog was a way to keep me accountable and I would feel guilty missing runs because I knew I would report back here that I missed them. So, I think if I post my weekly plan then I might stick to it more. At this point I am not training for anything in particular. I have a half in mind for the spring so I am loosely training for that, but it's still 6 months away so it's not a major deal right now.

I hope everyone is enjoying the break in the crazy hot temps (at least around here). If you are not, I'm sorry. I hope relief comes soon. I know my pace has dropped a few seconds with the temperature drop. I can only hope that continues...in a big way.

Later, y'all!

It's the most wonderful time of the year!

2011-09-02T10:53:00.003-05:00

Football season has kicked off, my friends. NFL preseason started a couple of weeks ago. College football started last night. This is my favorite time of the year.

We are season ticket holders (along with the ILs) for Mizzou football. We have gotten our tailgating routines down to a science...almost. There seem to always be a couple of hiccups and speed bumps regardless of our intense planning.

Tailgating prep started last weekend. I completed the first couple steps of vodka infused gummy bears. So far - they are very yummy, but definitely very sweet. The tailgating totes were also busted out and organized. Apparently we left a bag of chips in one of the totes from last season. Oops. :) The coolers are being packed tonight and we may even pack up the truck bed since tomorrow's game is at 11am. Tailgating time is going to be limited so the more we do ahead of time the better.

I am very anxious to get this season started. Our starting QB from last year (Blaine Gabbert) decided not to return for his senior season and entered the NFL draft instead. Our new starting QB is James Franklin. He got some snaps last year and I think he is going to do just fine. It is, of course, a little nerve wracking when a new QB takes the reins.

I have grand plans to get up at 0530 to get in some sort of run tomorrow morning. Our tailgating begins at 8 so if I want to run - it has to be super early. I tend to be awful when it comes to getting up that early to run. We'll see if the butterflies in my tummy for Mizzou's home opener will get my rear out of bed to run tomorrow morning.

Happy football season to you. I hope you all have a great holiday weekend. Any big plans?? Races?? Tailgating?? Who will you be cheering for this football season??

Go Mizzou!!

ps
As I was finishing this post - an ESPN analyzer chose Missouri as his choice for the underrated team in the preseason rankings (they are currently at #21). I like to hear that.

Back in action!

2011-08-30T00:06:00.003-05:00

Wow, I haven't blogged since early may. And, get this, I GAINED follower. Thank you guys for not ditching me. I want to get back in the saddle of blogging.

I did, as I said in my last blog, finish the Nashville Country Music Half Marathon at the end of April. It was a wonderful experience and a lot of fun. I will touch on it more (when I FINALLY finish my race recap, ha....3-4 months later!), but I felt a bit "blah" soon after the race. That's a feeling I never would have expected. There was no doubt in my mind that I could finish, but the time I finished in was a bit slower than I would have liked. I actually raced slower than many of my training runs....you will find out about all of this when I finish my race recap.

My dad (fasha) is doing the Roots 'n Blues half marathon in less than two weeks. I had originally planned to run this with him. And by with him - I mean we were going to run the same course. He would definitely kick my arse. Dude is speedy! I am so incredibly excited for him and even more proud of him. This will be his first half. I would have loved to have run his first half "with" him. Unfortunately, football season calls. Mizzou plays at Arizona State so Justin and I are heading southwest for the game. I have enjoyed sharing training stories, trials, and tribulations with my fasha. I know he is going to rock this half marathon and totally kill my official time in Nashville. It's all good - that gives me a time to beat when I run my next half (which I hope to be in the Spring).

I want to jump back on the blogging bandwagon because it seems to go hand in hand with my running schedule. This summer has kicked my ass as far as running goes. The humidity has absolutely killed me. My pace has been a good 1.5-2 minutes slower per mile. When I do get out to run - my mileage has been poor. I have, honestly, run 3-4 six mile runs since Nashville...and nothing longer than six miles. In conclusion for this paragraph - F YOU, heat and humidity!!

It's all good though. Football season starts this week (college, WOOT!) so that means the air is about to get a bit more crisp...and hopefully my pace will return with the turning of the leaves.

So to my trusty followers who haven't "unfollowed" in my hiatus...please, show me some love. I need the motivation and support as I go after my goal to run a sub 25 5k for 2011. I definitely thought I posted a 2011 goal post, but I guess not. So to fill you in (8 months later, from what I remember)....I had a goal to blog more (fail), run a sub 25 5k (fail by 8 seconds, UGH!), and run a half marathon (winning!).

In closing - keep following my blog. Show some love. I hope to recap my runs, live, and the like as time goes by. Enjoy, y'all! :)

We did it!

2011-05-03T11:18:00.001-05:00

Three of my great friends and I finished the Country Music 1/2 marathon in Nashville this weekend. I hope to have a full recap with pictures up tonight or tomorrow.

The course was hilly (we thought, anyway) and tough - but it was such a fun and rewarding experience.

It was so much fun that I am already looking for another half to do in the future. I will probably do one this fall...as long as it doesn't interfere with football season. :)

Last long run

2011-04-23T15:47:00.005-05:00

Today I ran my last long run before I tackle 13.1 in a week. Most of the training plans called for 6-8 miles as sort of a taper. I knew that I needed one more 10 miler under my belt for some confidence. Have I mentioned that running is incredibly mental??

I have had a little bit of trouble updating music on my iphone since the hard drive on my computer crashed a few weeks ago. We had to get a new hard drive and it has been a PITA losing everything off of the old one. I attempted to update my music last night. Apparently I did just the opposite. I erased it all. Fantastic! Imagine my anger when I tried to play my "running" playlist just before I started my run and it wouldn't work. Not cool. So, I went with the next best thing....Ke$ha on pandora. Bwahaha! I am not sure why Ke$ha was the first "artist" (if you call her that) who popped in my head. It worked out just fine though. I kind of liked not knowing what the next song was going to be. I might have to try this more often.

I felt really really good during this run. I was trying out some new things that I want to implement in the race.

I wore a spi-belt. I am on call this weekend so I needed somewhere to hold my pager in case I got called in. This is basically just a fancy fanny pack. It definitely did its job. I didn't even notice it was there. I wanted to test this out because I really want to carry my camera along during the race next weekend. I think it would be cool to take a few pictures along the way. It might slow me down a bit, but I will never run my first half marathon ever again.

I have also been experimenting with fuel options. I notice that a few miles into runs I seem to run out of gas a little bit. I did some research and found information on Gu, Shot bloks, and sports beans. I actually purchased all three a few weeks ago. I tried them out before running with them. I could not stand the consistency of the Gu. Ick. And the sports beans had a weird salty taste to them. Luckily, I LOVED the shot bloks. They are like amazingly helpful fruit snacks. They are delicious. So I decided to test them out during a run today and I think it went well. I ate 3 of them about 20-30 minutes before my run. I ate 2 more about 5 miles into my run. I probably could have eaten 2 more at about 8 miles. But, now I know. That's why I was doing this little experiment. :)

I also purchased some new dri-fit socks this last week. I had heard that cotton socks weren't great for running. I have a couple of blisters so I thought I would try out some dri-fits. I have to say that they didn't make a difference to me. I couldn't really tell the difference as I was running and they didn't prevent my blisters from getting worse. Oh well...maybe a different type or brand of sock.

And finally, I had also heard that compression sleeves were great for recovery after a long run. I am all about it. So I bought some of those on Thursday. I never realized how expensive running was until I heard about all this cool stuff that could help me! :) I have to say that I have totally been missing out by not having compression sleeves until now. They are amazing. I popped them on pretty quickly after my long run and my legs are loving me for it. I really do think they will help with recovery. I do have to say that my feet are a little jealous. I might have to find a good deal on some compression socks too.

I hope you are having a great weekend. And now with that being 2 posts in 1 day - you probably won't hear from me for about a month. Ha! :)

Hi

2011-04-23T10:28:00.004-05:00

I suck at this blogging thing. Woops.

I enjoy reading other blogs that have daily (sometimes more than once a day) updates, but I can't seem to get myself in a blogging routine.

A little update....

My first half marathon is ONE.WEEK.FROM.TODAY. Holy cow! Time has flown by since we signed up in October (?). My running has been near non-existent this week. You would think with the race being so close that I would have the motivation to lace up my shoes and hit the road. Not so much.

I am feeling extremely nervous and anxious. I am not sure why. I really wish I could go into this race with the attitude of "just finish with a smile and enjoy yourself." I can't seem to wrap my mind around that. I am, apparently, too competitive and tough on myself. Competitive might not be the right word. There is NO way I will win this race or even come close. It's more competitive with myself. I know the time that I am able to achieve and now it's just a matter of doing it so I don't let myself down. Stupid mental side of running getting to me.

I have had 3 (and hopefully 4 after today) 10-11 mile long runs in the course of my training. I feel like if I can run 10 or 11 miles then I can run 13.1. I want to save that 13.1 for the race. I want to have that feeling of miles 12 and 13 to be the longest I have ever run to be in this race situation. Hopefully I don't eat my words and the wheels won't fall off after 10 or 11 miles.

My long runs have ranged from a 9:20-9:33/mile pace. That 9:33 pace came on a long run after a night out the night before. It was pretty miserable. So I like to scratch that pace out of my mind. 9:20/mile or faster is what I will be shooting for. Again, I wish I could just ignore the numbers and just run to run. It won't happen so I might as well share my goals with other people. More pressure does me good. No? Oh.

I am so excited for the trip to Nashville. As I have mentioned before - I am going with 3 of my very good friends from college. This will be the first half marathon for all 4 of us. I can't wait to experience this major accomplishment with these girls. And I REALLY can't wait to celebrate said accomplishment next Saturday night. :)

I am starting to make lists for packing. It's a little overwhelming doing a race so far away and being gone for 4 days. That's a lot to pack. I tend to over pack anyway...add a race to the situation and I can only imagine what my suitcase is going to be like next week.

I have been stalking weather.com for the next Saturday's forecast. It looks like a high of 78 and partly cloudy. That 78* could be a bit balmy, but with an 8AM start time I hope it's more low 60s to begin with. Missouri weather hasn't been that warm just yet so I am hope I am able to deal with that minor detail of heat.

So to the runners who read this blog:
Any advice, tips, etc. for my first half marathon?
How do I shut off my brain and just enjoy the experience?

St. Pat's 5k Race Recap

2011-03-21T23:04:00.005-05:00

I don't have any pictures to go with this race recap so I'll just get on with it....

The St. Patrick's Day 5k in Columbia, MO was my 3rd race in as many weeks. The weather was predicted to be about 40*. Not horrible, by any means...but I was hoping for about 50. Picky.

I tried to get Justin or my dad to do this race with me. Justin was on call so he couldn't and my dad was busy with my brother's baseball and a school fundraiser.

I had read that this 5k was one of the largest in Columbia. I was pretty excited to be apart of that. I love seeing large races with people out there being healthy and having a good time.

Unfortunately, Justin had a case the morning of my race so he was not able to come with me. So I had to go by myself. This wasn't the first race that I went totally on my own, but I'm still not a fan. I knew a couple of people running as well, but there were so many people that I only saw one of them after the race.

I wore capri length tights, a short sleeved wicking shirt, a 3/4 zip up fleece shirt, and gloves. I was pretty comfortable through out the entire race. I was so glad that I remembered gloves. I bought cute St. Pat's socks to wear at this race, but that didn't happen due to the cooler temperatures.

They didn't roll out the starting line/pad thing until literally just before starting. So I didn't have any idea where to line up or stand so I didn't get stuck in the back. Well, I guessed wrong. I got started in the middle towards the back. This isn't a huge deal because this race was chip timed. However, with this being such a large race (520+ participants) - it took me a while to hit my stride and my pace. There were so many people to pass.

A little note to people new to racing - if at all possible, please don't walk/run/whatever more than like 3 people across the road. It makes it very difficult to get around you. I would have never known this prior to running in a race, but if I can help one or two people then so be it.

It was literally .75 miles before I hit a pace that I was comfortable with. My first mile was at 8:29 pace. Not bad, by any means, but definitely not on track for a PR. I kicked it up a notch after the .75 mile mark in hopes to PR.

Prior to this race - I would look at my garmin and see a pace that I thought was way too fast for me (basically anything less than about 8:15/mile) and slow down a bit. I always say to myself, "there is no way you can keep that pace for an entire 5k so chill the eff out." This race I looked at it a little bit differently. This race I said to myself, "just maintain this sub 8min/mile pace (!!!!) for as long as you can. If the wheels fall off - at least you gave it a shot." Imagine my surprise when the wheels did not fall off. I was doing it!!

When my garmin beeped that we were two miles in I felt myself slowing down a bit. I had to give myself a little pep talk. I thought I should be struggling after just running a 7:55 mile (I think my fastest, ever). I thought wrong. I was feeling good. I just had to convince myself of that and keep on moving at this pace.

At this point I was 16:24 minutes into the race. My previous PR was 26:08. So I knew I had a fantastic shot at getting a PR. And holy shit! I have a good chance of a sub 25 minute 5k.

A lot of this race was on sidewalks. You could run on the road, but the road wasn't actually blocked off. So you ran at your own risk. The sidewalks got a little crowded at times.

The 3rd mile of the race I was running near a mom, dad, kid (like 9 years old), and a couple of kids that were about 14. The 14 year old boys kept speeding up and slowing down. I was getting so frustrated. They would pass me and then slow down and I would have to maneuver by way around them on the tiny sidewalk. The father and son running were sort of similar. The little boy would fall behind with the mom while the dad went ahead. The dad would notice and slow down with the boy. It was a fight for about .5-.75 of the 3rd mile. And then the race opened up. The road was all ours and I was off. '

I looked down at my race and it was about 2.6 miles into the race. I knew I only had half a mile to go and I had to kick. I picked up my pace and went after it. I saw the finish line after I turned the last corner. I looked down at my watch and I had to get to the finish in just under a minute to get a sub 25. I sprinted my ass off.

As soon as I crossed the finish line I stopped my watch. 24:55!!!!! The clock at the finish read 25:03 or something like that. I wasn't too worried about it because I knew they started the clock a few seconds before I was able to start.

I was over the moon. My runner's high was through the roof. But, as I said, I was there by myself so I had no one to share this with. I immediately took my phone off of my arm and called Justin. I went ahead and walked to my car to leave because what else was I going to do? Before driving away I updated my FB status and posted a pic of my watch. SO EXCITED!!

I stalked the Columbia Track Club's website for race results all day. The last time I checked it was about 4pm and still nothing. So I figured I would check Sunday because we had a fundraiser deal to go to for my brother's school.

Unfortunately, I made the mistake of checking on my phone while at the fundraiser. 25:08 WAH!WAH! I was crushed. I told Justin and he showed a little sympathy and we went about our business. It bugged so much that I went to the bathroom and cried. Wow. Who cries over 12 seconds??? Ridiculous. 25:08 is a FANTASTIC time (for me). An entire minute PR, even. It was just a huge blow. I had thought all day that I ran a sub 25 5k. I put it all over facebook. I mean, jeeze.

I have since relaxed a little bit about it. I am so close to that sub 25. That was my goal for 2011 so to be less than 3 months in and already be that close - I am a little more at peace about it. I also heard that other people thought the timing chips were a little slow too. So maybe I did run a sub 25, maybe I didn't. I am going with the chip time, I guess.

Just to give some perspective to anyone starting out racing and/or just running in general....
My first 5k was on Thanksgiving (2010) and my time was 28:06. Since my first I have run about 3 more before St. Pat's. I hoovered around the 26:30-27 minute mark. I had a great race on New Years Eve that gave me my PR of 26:08. And here I am like 5 months into racing and I have knocked 3 whole minutes off of my slowest (and first) time.

Running is discouraging and very difficult at times. That's normal. My advice is to just stick with it and keep working. Your hard work will pay off. You will get faster and you will get stronger. And, as you can see in this recap, running is a huge mental game. Your own inner voice is half the battle. Running is so mental.

The deets of my St. Pat's race:
Total time - 25:08
Avg pace - 8:06 (OH.EM.GEE!)
98th place out of 523 participants
4th out of 56 in my age/gender group (3rd place was 21:something...so I wasn't even close ha)

Truffle Shuffle race recap

2011-03-19T11:00:00.005-05:00

**Better late than never. :) Truffle Shuffle 5k in Overland Park, KS 3.5.11 My first 5k of 2011! Yay, finally!! Let's start with discussing the weather. The week leading up to the 5k was pretty darn good weather. 40s-50s. Nice. I was excited for a warmish 5k too. Wrong. The temperature dropped in a hurry Friday night. The forecast said 30* with an 11* windchill. Oh.em.gee. This was going to be like my first 5k on Thanksgiving all over again. Sure enough - cold ass temperature and lots of wind greeted me Saturday morning. Lovely. I wore long tights, Mizzou shorts (we were in KS and Mizzou was playing KU), long sleeved cold gear shirt, fleece 3/4 zip up, ear warmer, and gloves. To say that kept me warm would be a lie. My fingers were freezing. My toes were cold. My legs were cold. My core felt like it kept a good and warm temperature though. The race was held at a community college. Everyone huddled inside of one of the buildings on campus before braving the cold weather. I ran this race with one of my good friend's from college (she is one of the 3 I'm going with to run the half marathon in Nashville). It was a little difficult finding them in the sardine packed building. For me - there was no warm up, no stretching, none of that. I usually don't do a significant warm up pre-race, but I could have used it in those temps. The beginning of the race was pretty uneventful. We ran around the parking lot a bit and then made a turn towards a gravel trail. It was odd, for me. I have never run on a gravel trail. Parts of the trail were packed down and other was very loose gravel. It was a difficult surface to run on. The trail did all sorts of turns and things. It was basically a couple of miles packed into a small surface area...if that makes any sense. I hated it. There was no change in scenery. There was not much change in elevation. Boring. My time reflected how cold, bored, and uncomfortable I was with the trail. 27:37. I was 8th in my age/gender group (out of 29). The cool thing was that a 25 year old girl won it all. Me gusta. It was great to get to run a race with a friend. Unfortunately, for H, this was her first race. This was NOT a good first race, in my opinion. And some pics.... PS - Don't ask me why the formatting sucks on this post. I swear, whenever I had more than a couple of pics to a post that blogger freaks out. I'm sorry for the lack of a paragraphs. I tried multiple times to redo it, but failed.

I'm still here...

2011-03-10T19:22:00.002-06:00

I haven't forgotten about my blog. I still have things to talk about. Updates to do. I just can't right now. Whenever I turn on my computer it goes to a blue screen. Awesome. Right? I need to take it in to the Geek Squad and get that shiz fixed. I could continue to blog picture-less. But, how interesting would that be?

Who wants to read about my recent experience with being fitted for new shoes without pictures of the new shoes? Oh, I'm the only one who likes to see running shoe pictures?? :)

Who wants to read a (gravel trail) race recap with out race photos?

Who wants to read a race recap of the first race with my fasha without pics of said fasha?...that happens this Saturday so I couldn't blog about it if I wanted to.

Who wants to read about my really shitty 4 mile run on the treadmill two days ago without....Yeah, that one doesn't require pics. It just sucked. Bad.

So bear with me. I will be back to my super exciting (you can laugh) blogging in no time.

Clean Eating magazine

2011-02-09T11:38:00.003-06:00

In my quest to become more healthy - clean eating has become more and more prevalent. Clean eating is basically shifting away from processed food and more towards organic, natural, and fresh foods. I have seen many recipes from the magazine 'Clean Eating', but I didn't want to spend the money on a subscription.

Well, today hip2save.com let me in a little secret. I can get 'Clean Eating' for $5.99 for a 1 year subscription. That's great because it is normally $34.95. I followed the instructions and got myself a 2 year subscription for just under $12. Sweet!!

I thought I would pass this along to anyone else interested. Just go here and follow the instructions.

What's 1 more day?

2011-02-09T11:06:00.005-06:00

I have had an absolutely horrible month on the training front. An entire MONTH. 4 weeks. That is a solid bit of time when you consider I am training for a half marathon. It started with me getting sick, then we moved, then we got 6-8 inches of snow, then we got another 18 inches of snow...and I just haven't picked things back up on a consistent basis since. It all boils down to excuses. One after the other. And in my head I kept saying to myself, "what's one more day going to hurt?"

I proved to myself today what all those extra days off really do hurt. On my training plan I had 4 miles scheduled yesterday. I had planned to go after work, but it was so cold and I didn't bring appropriate clothes for the treadmill (another effing excuse). So today I was determined. I was determined to go before work. I work at 1pm so it's not like I have to get up at a crazy time to get this done. I lounged around for 30 minutes longer than I originally planned...and you guessed it...thinking of another excuse not to go to the gym this morning.

Well, I went. And it was miserable. I horrible 4 miles. In all honesty - the first 1.5 miles were good. I was feeling confident that I had not lost everything I had worked so hard for before. Well, that confidence was kicked straight to the curb and in a hurry. My run when down hill very quickly. At the 2.25 mark I had to stop to get some water. I didn't bring a water bottle for me. This was almost my excuse to quit for the day. The good news - every time that I wanted to quit, I thought about my blog. I knew I didn't want to blog about falling short. For that, I am thankful to anyone reading this because even if you don't know it - you are keeping me accountable.

Most of my run was at 6.5mph (9:15/mile pace, I think). Occasionally I would bump it up to 7mph (8:35/mile pace). And for the last half mile I did bumped it up to 7.5mph (8:00/mile pace). An 8 minute mile pace was pushing it for me a month ago. So that 8 minute pace for even just a half a mile kicked my butt. I knew I needed to kick my own ass for even just a half mile as a small extra punishment for all my time off.

I took a post run pic of myself in the gym bathroom. I have named this the "huff and puff face." How ridiculous do I look? My face was beet red. I don't think that's captured in this pic very accurately. I am, however, wearing one of my favorite running shirts. If I am going to have a horrible run - I would like it to be in my pink and yellow livestrong shirt.

Thankful

2011-01-20T20:29:00.002-06:00

Things that I am thankful for today:

1. Having a garage. We are still working on getting a garage door opener remote thing, but we are making it work. Unfortunately, we only have a single car garage. Justin has been kind enough to let me use it.

2. Justin. I am thankful for him being such an awesome person and letting me use the single car garage.

3. My fitness. I am pretty sure if I were out of shape, I would not have been able to shovel our driveway today. It took me a little over an hour. It was tough work. I think I was supposed to run 3 miles today. I really feel like shoveling was more of a work out than that. It will count as a cross training work out for the week.

4. My little car that could. It gets me from point A to point B...even in 8-10 inches of snow.

5. Snow plows. Thank you to the city, the plows, and the folks that drive them.

The uphill battle begins.

About half way finished.

And done!

Back at it....

2011-01-19T22:12:00.004-06:00

So, the last week has not been the most successful training week for me. I was sick last Wednesday, I was recovering Thursday and Friday, and we began moving on Saturday.

The good news is that we have moved back into our own place. We really appreciated the opportunity to live with Justin's parents and save money while living there...the time has come for us to live on our own again. January 1 marked one year that Justin lived with his parents. I moved there at the end of February/first of March...so my one year mark was quickly approaching.

We moved this past weekend into a duplex. And, quite honestly, it is in my in law's back yard. We are literally .4 of a mile from my in law's house. I know this from running the loop in their neighborhood often, ha.

We are slowly, but surely finding a place for everything. We got rid of a lot of furniture when we moved from Kansas City because we didn't have space in our storage unit for everything. So, needless to say, we are in the market for some new furniture. We have hand-me-down couches...which we are ok with for now. We have our master bedroom set which we love (until we move again...and we will get a king). And we have 2 beds for spare bedrooms. We need: a tv stand, end tables, coffee table, computer desk, and some bookcases. Once we get all of that furniture - we will be complete. :)

On the training front - with everything going on, I have not done much. AKA I have not run since my awesome work out last Tuesday. I really need to get after it and get back to my training plan. Based on my plan - I am at week 4. So I feel like as long as I get back on track Sunday with my long run (5 miles) then I am good. I have got to hit these long runs at an absolute minimum. Of course I want to get all of my work outs in, but I feel like as long as I am upping my mileage each week then I will be ok. But, I want to be more than ok. I want to rock this 13.1 I have a lot of work to to do. I have exactly 3 months, 1 week, and 4 days to go before Nashville.

Side note: the 5k that I was recently talking about...it got cancelled. It was supposed to be this past Sunday. Thankfully - it was cancelled due to ice/snow on a major hill of the course. By cancelled...I mean postponed. It's going to be the end of January instead. I am cool with that. I was feeling very run down on Sunday morning so this works better for me. The cool thing about this race? I paid $25 as an entry fee (pretty normal around here) and I get $20 back in gift certificate form to a local running store. SCORE! I got a fabulous gift card from my in law's for Christmas to this store. So add $20 to that and I should be able to get fitted and new running shoes without much out of pocket. Holla!

Here's to getting back on track this weekend. *tink*tink*

Sickly

2011-01-13T22:22:00.003-06:00

Yeah, so much for that whole "better, faster, stronger" comment from Tuesday night. I was feeling really great after that workout...that was until about 3:30Am Thursday. I woke up to a sour stomach that felt like it was in knots. I foolishly thought I could shut my eyes and sleep it off. I was oh so wrong.

I was up at least twice an hour for the next 5 or so hours. It was miserable. I am pretty sure my body was getting rid of absolutely everything in my system at that point. I was finally able to rest for about an hour around 10am. The frequent trips to the bathroom finally stopped completely around noon on Thursday. Then came the body aches.

I attempted a shower around 3pm. That proved to be a bit of a mistake...a bath might have been a better idea. When I got in the shower - I couldn't get the water hot enough. I was so cold. I got through shampoo just fine. I put conditioner in my hair and then went to soap my body. I was completely worn out at this point. I got incredibly hot and light headed. I turned the water to cool, opened the shower curtain a little...nothing seemed to help. I quickly tried to rinse my hair and the soap off, but not quickly enough. I thought for sure I was going to pass out before I could get the water turned off and myself out of the shower. Luckily, that did not happen. I grabbed a towel and sat on the bathroom rug for a few minutes. I sat there freezing until I got some strength back to me. That was enough excitement for me for the day. I spent the rest of the night on the couch or in bed.

Needless to say, I did not get my cross training in yesterday. Today I went to work. I probably should have taken an extra day off to get a little more rest. This would have left my shift incredibly short so I felt guilty. Luckily, we were not too busy so I had time to rest in between patients. Water was my number one priority today as I felt so dehydrated.

No running for me today either. Tomorrow is a scheduled rest day so I will definitely follow that. :) Saturday is another cross training day, but we are moving so I figure that is cross training enough. I am supposed to run in a 5k on Sunday, but my training calls for 5 miles...plus, the weather here is frigid. We will see how moving goes, how I am feeling, and how the weather is. That race may not happen for me.

I hope the stomach bug, flu, whatever it was stays away from everyone else. It sucks!

Today's workout

2011-01-12T00:49:00.005-06:00

Again, in an effort to hold myself accountable - I think I might track some and/or most of my work outs here. It might come daily, it might be a couple day recap, or it might be a weekly recap. Whenever the mood strikes.

Today I went to the gym when I got off work around 9:20pm. There was about 5 other people there. That seems to be the norm for that time of the evening. I like how slow it is, but I also like not being the only person in there.

On my schedule for today was 3 miles. I try to keep things interesting when I have to run on the treadmill. My goal for today - run each mile a little quicker than the previous (negative splits, sorta).

My first mile was at about a 8:49 pace. My 2nd mile about 8:26, I think. And my 3rd mile I ran in 8 minutes. After all of that I dropped it down to a 10 minute/mile pace to finish out 30 minutes. And then I walked for 5 minutes to cool down.

I felt awesome running that 8 minute mile...especially after running 2 miles prior to that. I feel stronger, faster, better every day. I love it.

After my run I got in a pretty quick core workout. I read everywhere that having a strong core is going to help my running. I started doing this routine a few weeks ago. I can already tell that I don't slouch as much when I run. I also don't scrunch my shoulders quite as much, but this is still a big issue for me.

I will leave you with this pic of the treadmill when I finished. Yes, I was the dork who took a pic of the treadmill when I finished. I tried to play it off like I wasn't actually taking a picture. Haha.

Half marathon training

2011-01-11T01:23:00.002-06:00

In an effort to be a bit more accountable for my training - I thought I would share a little bit about my training plan. I figure this might help someone considering something similar.

If you research half marathon training programs - you might become a bit overwhelmed with the many different options. Everyone and their brother has come up with the "perfect" training program. I discovered this very quickly. Every one of these programs has a disclaimer that is something along the lines of, "may not be suitable for everyone." And this is so very true. A training program that works for me may not work for you. Great, more to ponder and research!

I had heard many good things about Hal Higdon's training programs. They were definitely the most tried and true of the people that I talked to. His programs are about 12 weeks long and assume you have a decent running base (i.e. run 3 miles 3-4 times a week). This wasn't a problem for me, except that I had way more than 12 weeks to train.

I considered starting that program and just repeating weeks as I felt necessary. That, to me, was still not structured enough. I wanted to know what I was going to do on each day. That would keep me engaged and motivated.

I continued my research and finally found a 18 week half marathon training based on Hal Higdon's program. Perfect!! At the time - I had just about 18 weeks until our half* in Nashville. Prior to this discovery (about 2-3 weeks ago), I was randomly training and following a couple of different programs. This lack of structure and discipline was keeping me from really progressing in my training (i.e. beyond a 3 mile run).

I have to admit that I have yet to follow this program exactly. I almost followed week 3** perfectly last week...aside from the cross training on Wednesday and Saturday. I did play the xbox kinect for like 3 hours on Saturday so that has to count for something. I feel great that I was able to get the mileage in, but I know that strength training and cross training are going to be very important for my overall fitness level come race day.

Today was a rest day so I have knocked that out. :) I will pound out 3 miles tomorrow. Unfortunately those 3 miles will most likely be on the treadmill because we have gotten a few inches of snow today. I will be bound to the treadmill unless I get a pair of Yaktrax. In all seriousness, I might have to get those for a race I am signed up for on Sunday.

*Justin laughs when I say "half" instead of "half marathon." I don't think he thinks I am in it enough to use the lingo. :)
**I discovered tonight that last week should have been week 2, but I followed week 3. Oh well, right?

Final day of 2010....

2011-01-03T23:40:00.006-06:00

I ran my first 5k race on Thanksgiving day. I had a blast and instantly started searching for my next race. The soonest one that would work with my schedule was New Year's Eve. I signed up in mid-December...I was, somehow, the 9th person to sign up. I thought that was odd with the race just being a couple of weeks away. That actually made me nervous that it would be an incredibly small race. It wasn't too terribly small. There were about 280 people that participated. This was about 100-150 less than Thanksgiving, but still an OK size.

The race began at 4pm. The temperature at that point was about 59 degrees. It was unbelievably great. I decided to wear shorts and short-sleeves because it was so warm. I didn't really research the course of the race. The majority of it was through downtown Columbia and part of Mizzou's campus. It was a little windy that day anyway...but add to that larger buildings and it was SUPER windy. In hind site, I would have probably worn capri tights instead. The temperature dropped about 10-12 degrees by the time I finished the race. Brrrr.

My time at my Thanksgiving race was 28:06...I was very pleased with that. I was so pleased that I was nervous to run another because I was worried I would never be able to beat that time. I completely underestimated myself for my first race (I expected 30-34 minutes) and I underestimated myself once again on New Year's Eve. My time for NYE was 26:08. I was very pleased and even a bit impressed with myself. I suppose upping my mileage as I train for a half marathon makes a difference with speed as well.

I placed 93 out of 280 who finished. I was 3rd out of 17 in my age/gender group.

I look forward to improving my times as I continue racing. My goal for 2011 is to get my 5k time sub 25 minutes. After my race on NYE - I feel much more confident to achieve this.

Speaking of the half marathon training - this will take place in Nashville, TN with 3 of my favorite girls from college. I am really excited to accomplish this distance for the first time together. Pardon me if my blog becomes very running concentrated. It's become a beloved hobby.

Tellatubbies (sp?) at the finish line.

Me, post-race, with the tellatubby (sp?).

Happy 2011!

2011-01-03T23:37:00.003-06:00

I became very overwhelmed with my previous catch up post. I promised specific posts to go along with the list of events that happened over that 5 month hiatus. Here I am 3 months later and I have zero specific follow up posts. So let's just skip that. I will post about those things as I see fit...or maybe never.

Instead, let's welcome 2011 with a goal to blog more. I am not going to put a number on how much more I will blog, I just hope to blog more. I also hope to figure out how to add pictures without messing with the format of the post. I have seen a couple of different "miracle fixes" and they don't work for me.

Happy 2011 to everyone. I hope that it has started out well for everyone.

Holy catch up!!

2010-10-07T21:23:00.005-05:00

Five months without blogging. How did that happen?? Where does the time go?? I will do a fairly brief catch up post and then probably go into more detail on the individual things. Otherwise, this post might take hours to write and read.

Here we go....

-To start, I will say that we are still living with the inlaws.

-Justin and I are both still very happy to be back in Columbia. And we are both really liking our
new jobs.

-The month of May was fairly uneventful. We went to a lot of my little brother's baseball games. It's great being back and barely missing a game.

-June was a bit more eventful, I guess.
--We went to St. Louis for a weekend anniversary get-a-way. It was very nice (pics to come in a later post.
--I had an impromptu reuniting with some very close friends. Unfortunately, it was not
under good circumstances. One of my very bestfriend's mom lost her battle with cancer.
--We made a trip to Kansas City to watch the Cardinals and Royals play baseball. That was a
good time because it was a reuniting with friends under much better circumstances.
--We watched a ton of little league baseball in the month of June as well.

-July....
--We housesat for my mom for a week (EXCITING STUFF, PEOPLE! :)). As little of a detail
as that seems - it was great to stay a week away from the in-law's house. I am sure they
appreciated having their house to themselves for a week as well.
--I visited my pal Abbey and her family at the Lake of the Ozarks for the 4th of July. It's
always a lot of fun with Abbey and her fam. Good people.
--I began the south beach diet towards the end of July. I am still on it...and this will definitely
have its own dedicated post.

-The only big thing that happened in August was that I started on the evening shift and started
taking call at work. I miss being on days, but I have to work my way up the ladder.

-September was, of course, the beginning of football season. We also house and child sat for my
dad and stepmom a week in September. My little brother is 12 so it was kind of training for the
day we decide to have children...kind of.

That has brought us to now. That's where my time has gone in a nutshell.

I wonder if anyone has noticed my absence from blogging. I also wonder if anyone will notice that I am back to blogging. Leave a comment if you are reading this to let me know that/if someone is actually still interested.

Edit: UGH, I see blogger still sucks at formatting. Sorry for the wacky format here.

30 day shred...day 1.

2010-05-04T10:58:00.004-05:00

One of my new year's resolutions was the complete the 30 day shred (30DS) by June 1st. I did day one yesterday so I won't be finishing by June 1st. I am, however, able to finish by our 2nd anniversary on June 7th. So hopefully I can stick to it an finish by then.

As I said in my resolutions post - when I finish the 30DS I can get a new pair of jeans or two. I desperately need new jeans. Hopefully shopping for jeans will be a bit more enjoyable after the 30DS. I am hoping to fit into a size comfortably and not in between sizes.

So day 1 of the shred....
During the workout I got pretty tired a couple of times. Most of the time, I was able to keep up without any of the modified versions of things. I expected this though. I am an athlete so I never have to do modified versions of work outs. I did lose my breath a couple of times so I did the modified for a couple of reps.

I had to use Progressive (or Progresso...I never know which is soup and which is car insurance) soup cans for upper body lifts. So my upper body probably did not get work out that my lower body did. I have a trip to walmart planned for today to pick up some free weights.

Today I will do day 2 and I am SORE. My calfs (or is it calves too for muscles?) are very sore (?). My butt and legs are super sore also - squatting, forward lunges, and side lunges. I am anxious to do day 2 to see if these sore muscles are going to slow me down.

I will keep my blog updated as I continue on the the 30DS. Lord knows I need something to blog about. I plan to take before and after pictures as well. Unfortunately, my camera isn't working today so my before pictures might be a couple of days into the program (I doubt it will make that much difference).

Have you done the 30DS? Did you stick with it? Success? Are you or have you done any other work out program somewhat similar?

Just gorgeous, darling!

2010-05-01T16:26:00.003-05:00

I received the 'gorgeous blogger award' from Tiffany from Baby Fish. Thanks, girl!

Yes! Something to blog about...sad, isn't it??

Rules:
1. Accept and thank the blogger who gave this to you.
2. List 10 things about yourself.
3. List 5 additional things that you don't like.
4. Award this to 10 fellow bloggers.

10 things about me:
1. I was born in a hospital who is nicknamed "Deathwell."
2. I have always wanted an old VW Bug.
3. I learned (just last night, actually) that my dad has always wanted an old VW Bug. I guess that's where I got the idea.
4. Cinnamon toast is my favorite breakfast food...especially when it's made in the broiler.
5. I am the only person I know who likes the taste of red bull. I really wish that they would make caffeine free (and sugar free) red bull - I would LOVE it.
6. The only major injury I ever had during my 14 years of playing soccer was a head-on-head collision with another girl during the summer between my freshman and sophomore years of college. It resulted in about 36 stitches and a broken nose. Other than that, just a few sprained ankles.
7. During one of our trips moving from KC - I stopped to meet my cousin to give her some wedding stuff and I managed to lock my keys in the car with it running. Justin had a spare key, but he was about 90 minutes behind me. I have locked keys in the car before, but never with it running.
8. I did the electric slide to 'Achy Breaky Heart' in 2nd grade.
9. Also in 2nd grade was the election that Bill Clinton became president. My elementary school did a ballot, etc. I voted for Bill Clinton - totally uneducated vote, but I think it's crazy that I even remember that.
10. I love the Shrek movies. I am excited for another one to come out, but I hope it doesn't ruin it for me.

5 things I don't like:
1. Spiders.
2. Heights.
3. The sound of styrofoam being scratched.
4. This haircut I got today (I might post pics if my camera decides to work today).
5. Pineapple.

From what I can tell - just about everyone has already been awarded this. If you haven't, then I award YOU! It's genuine, I promise.

Update..

2010-04-30T12:39:00.004-05:00

Once again, I have done a horrible job at blogging over the last month or so. I don't feel like I have anything excited to talk about. Plus, my camera only works 1/2 the time so I don't take many pictures to upload here. I know that I enjoy posts from other people with pics so I am sure the few times I do update - they are probably pretty boring to everyone because the content is generally boring plus there are no pics.

So the last month...

-We have watched my little brother play baseball a lot this spring. I am so happy to be back in Columbia so that we can catch most of his games. They are all 10 or 11 years old and they are really fun to watch. They are starting to understand the game much better and they are getting pretty skilled at their specific positions. It's much more fun than a couple of years ago when there were kids who didn't have a clue. Rian pitches quite a bit, which I love to watch. He is doing so well. I hope that he keeps it up because I think he is going to continue to grow into a great player.

-We are still living with the in-laws. It's not ideal for anyone involved, but it's going pretty well. We definitely can't complain.

-My job is going very well. I am learning a ton each day. I have been told multiple times that I am learning very quickly and that they are impressed with how well I have done so far. I feel great about that, obviously. After my first week, I never thought I would get to a point where I feel so comfortable so quickly. I am very happy with this switch. And after a budget meeting earlier this week, it seems that MRI is one of the few sub-departments in radiology that are doing well. So, at the moment, my job is not in jeopardy. That's some great peace of mind to have.

-Justin's job is going well also. He does a lot of gopher work still. He is slowly working his way into doing more cases. He goes to a week long training in May. After that training, I think he will be better equipped to start selling some of the orthopaedic implants. He is doing a great job so far and I am really proud of him.

-Our 2 year wedding anniversary is in just over a month. Some days it seems like there is no way we could be married for that long...and other days it feels like we have been married for 10 years. We are also just a couple of weeks away from our 8 year dating anniversary. We don't have plans for our anniversary yet. I think we will probably just do something fairly low-key again this year. Last year we spent the night in a hotel in KC...we went to dinner, went to a comedy club, and out for a couple of drinks afterwards. Nothing too exciting. We do, however, plan to go to St. Lucia next year for our anniversary. I really hope that we are actually able to swing that. We definitely need a trip away just the two of us...and to a beach, my request. :)

So that's our exciting life in a nut shell.

And speaking of my less than par functioning camera...does you have any recommendations for a good point and shoot camera??

Moving...

2010-03-30T18:52:00.003-05:00

Moving sucks.

I doubt there is anyone in the world who actually enjoys moving. If they do, they are nuts. And by moving I mean the actual packing, loading boxes/furniture into a truck, unpacking, and putting away everything.

We attempted to move from Kansas City this last weekend. Unfortunately, since Justin started his job at the first of the year and I didn't start until March (and I left KC about 2 weeks after finding out I got the job) - we did ZERO packing before leaving for Columbia. We packed up the bare minimum that would get us by in Columbia. Other than that, everything was left in KC.

That was mistake #1. And mistake #2 was made by thinking we could get our entire house packed and moved 2 hours away in a weekend.

And, fear not, there was a mistake #3. Mistake #3 came when I got off work on Friday evening. Justin asked if I wanted to wait until Saturday morning to leave for KC. I agreed and continued to make mistakes #4 and #5 (are you still with me??). We met up with the fam to have some drinks Friday evening and then met up with some friends to close the bar down Friday night (collectively mistake #4). I then woke up at the crack of dawn (7:30...that's the crack of dawn on a Saturday morning for me) to watch my little brother play baseball. He had a double header starting at 8. Of course, I could not leave after the first game so I stayed for the 2nd (mistake #5). I didn't leave Columbia until about 12:30 on Saturday.

So if you are following...that's Friday evening and half of Saturday wasted. When I finally made it to KC, Justin was already there and at a friend's house because he didn't take a house key with him. OYE! I needed a nap at that point. So I asked Justin to let me sleep for 45-60 min. That turned into about 90 minutes because he was enjoying the company of his friend. So it's now about 5pm on Saturday.

Instead of getting right to packing/moving then, we decided we should grill burgers. So while the boys prepared and cooked burgers, I packed. I got a few boxes packed on Saturday...but no where near the amount we needed to pack in order to be ready for the in-laws to bring a trailer to load up on Sunday morning.

After dinner (oh and a movie) on Saturday night, we were worthless so we went to bed. We planned to get up around 9 on Sunday. As you can probably imagine, that didn't happened. We started packing about 10:30 on Sunday morning...with the in-laws planning to arrive about 12:30 ready to load things up.

Believe it or not, we got about 60-70% of our house packed and furniture disassembled by the time they got there. I was impressed with us considering how the rest of our weekend had gone.

By the time 6pm rolled around on Sunday we were D-U-N, done. :)

We still have about 25% left to do. Unfortunately, that means another planned trip back to KC to finish.

I hate moving under any circumstances.

I have quickly realized that I hate moving when it's:
A. moving long distance
B. completely put off until the last minute
C. preceded by slacking and procrastination (goes along with b).

I don't plan to move into another house until we can afford to build it how we want and make it our forever home. Other than that, we will move some things into an apartment in the mean time...1 apartment followed by 1 house and then never move again is the plan for right now.

And just based on this post, we can all now tell how good we are at executing plans. :)

Motivation? Where did you go??

2010-03-22T18:59:00.003-05:00

I have had next to no motivation over the last 3 weeks or so. When I had a couple of weeks off in between jobs - I was tracking every bit (almost every bit) of food that went in my mouth, going to the gym 4-5 times each week, and getting things done. That makes sense because I had a ton of time.

However, in my previous job I had a routine. I made time to track my food and I made time to hit the gym. I am still trying to find that groove and that routine in my new job. Granted, I this is only the beginning of my fourth week. I just think it's about time I get back into the gym routine.

On top of going to the gym, I need to get back on top of my eating habits. Yesterday Justin and I had Chinese buffet...and I had Chinese Tuesday and Friday last week (because work people were ordering that). And tonight he is bringing us home Chipotle. Oye, not good!!

Needless to say, my new year's resolution of running 500 miles this year has gone to the back burner until I can find my routine.

At this time I am asking everyone to keep an eye out for my motivation..it's seriously missing. Thanks! :)

I'm alive!

2010-03-14T21:41:00.003-05:00

Eeek. Sorry for the lack of blogging. I am still trying to find a routine now that I am working the day shift (for a bit..and then I will be back on evenings).

We are still transitioning from our house in KC to our in-laws in Columbia. It's a gradual process. And we are very lucky to have family here in Columbia to offer us places to stay. It's tough to be 25 and moving back in with our parents, but we are very fortunate to have the option.

I am about to start the 3rd week of my new job. It's going well. It is a lot of new information since I was doing x-ray and now I am doing MRI. The very first day in the MRI department I was definitely on information overload. I was very overwhelmed, but each day gets a little bit better. I actually meant to blog about my first day of work that evening because I figured I could look back on it and laugh about how overwhelmed I was. Needless to say, that didn't happen. But, believe me, I was incredibly overwhelmed and a little freaked out about taking on such a new modality.

Other than learning our new jobs and being back in our hometown...not much has been going on. My little brother's baseball season starts in 2 weeks and we are very excited for that. I am so happy to be back in town so that we can go to his sporting events. All in all, things here in Columbia are going well. We are very happy to be closer to our families.

I will do my best to keep up with this blog a bit better as things calm down and I get into a routine. I say the same thing about my gym routine also. Ha. :)

And the best news of all - it's almost spring!!

Word verification...

2010-02-26T14:48:00.002-06:00

I had to turn on the word verification for comments. I was getting some weird, random comments. Just a minor change.

Please resume your regular, frequent commenting. :)

STL Mardi Gras 2010

2010-02-25T19:47:00.007-06:00

As I posted about last year, I went to the Mardi Gras celebration in St. Louis, MO again this year. Although my post last year said that I wanted my next Mardi Gras experience to be the real thing in New Orleans...that just didn't happen.

The Mardi Gras in STL was a lot of fun this year...I had even more fun than last year. I made the trip with Tiffany, Beth, and Abbey. We stayed in Washington again with Katie (at her parents).

Katie just bought a house (closed a week ago) so we got to take a tour of that on Friday night. I am so excited for her to become a homeowner. I have to say that she is putting my home ownership to shame...we haven't done many home improvements since buying our house 19 months ago. And in one week Katie has ripped up carpet, removed walls, painted, framed walls, and probably even more than that. I cannot wait to see progress pics..and see it when it's all finished.

After touring Katie's house we went back to her family's house. My absolute favorite part of their house is the hot tub. We spent some time in there catching up, laughing, having a couple of drinks, and just hanging out. We went to bed at a decent time because we knew we had a long day ahead of us on Saturday.

Saturday morning came and we slowly got moving. We got up early enough that everyone could get ready at their own pace and there was no rushing (plus!!). We left Katie's parent's house around 9...we made a pit stop at McDonalds and Walmart and then met Katie's boyfriend to head to St. Louis. It is about a 40 minute drive.

The rest of the day was spent with good friends, lots of good people, drinking, and people watching (again, this year, the best part). We couldn't stay past sun down (same as last year) because it was too cold. So this year we went back to Washington and went to the bar instead of straight home. That was a good time as well. I never seem to have a boring time when I visit WashMo. :)

After the bar it was time for more hot tubbing. Only about half of us stayed up for that...and we were in there for about 3 hours (maybe not the best idea to be in there so long).

It was a great weekend and I am already looking forward to next year. :)

And the pics....

The group...Tiffany-Katie-Beth-Random puppy lady-Me-Abbey

Partner porta-pottying...invented by Katie and Beth.

We encountered some pretty interesting people. :)

There are more, but blogger is being weird about dragging pics from Flickr at the moment so that's all I can do for now.

ETA: Ugh, there's that formatting issue again. Blogger won't let me double space between paragraphs. Sorry for the jumbled mess.

Oh happy day!!

2010-02-24T14:54:00.004-06:00

I am in a bit of a funk today. I have been off work for a week now. It's been a great break, but in the back of my mind I know that I am not getting paid for this week (and the next half week I have off before starting on Monday). It takes some of the enjoyment out of it all. So that's my funk...

My funk has disappeared a bit when I logged in to find this joyful post from MrsTote. If you haven't already, check out her blog. She has some amazing recipes and is quite the domestic diva...I know she loves when I call her that. :)

Onto the joy that is this post...I was tagged by Katie at A tote's life (see link above). It's a fun, day brightening tag so here we go...

The rules:
_List 10 things that make you happy.
_Tag 10 bloggers and link back to the person who tagged you.

Ten things that make me happy:

1. Blog comments...hint! hint! :):)

2. Lazy days with Justin.

3. Snuggling with my puppy...especially on cold, winter mornings.

4. Hanging out with friends.

5. Tailgating.

6. Watching football.

7. Meeting fitness goals..whether it be keeping my calories in check for a day, meeting my goal for minutes of working out in a week, etc.

8. Sunshine...oh how I love sunshine.

9. Mexican dinner dates with Justin.

10. My family...all crazy sides of my family.

And I now tag....
MrsEyeCanSee at The Juice is Worth the Squeeze
Michelle at See Michelle Blog
Renee at A Taste of Life
Tiffany at Baby Fish
Shalay at Writefully Yours
Amanda at Amanda's Life Commentary

Amy at Newlywed News
Casey at You Call It Madness But We Call It Love
Allie at Simply Allie
Amy at Life in the Junction

**Sorry to anyone who has already been tagged. :)

See ya later!

2010-02-17T00:34:00.003-06:00

I had this whole post thought out in my head to write yesterday. Today was my last day of work...

At this time last night, I thought I was a-ok with that. I thought I might shed a few tears, but I never expected to be completely heart broken and for it to be so tough.

Even driving into work - I was cool with it being my last day. I was thinking, "yeah, I can do this. Bring it!"

I walked in and went straight to human resources so that I could get my immunization records and discuss rolling over my retirement to the new job. When I walked into my department, a bunch of my coworkers were there to "surprise" me with goodies and food. It was so nice of them. I managed to hold it together through everyone talking about my last day.

I quickly learned that I did not prepare myself for the types of feelings that I felt today. I was not prepared to hear how much I would be missed. I was not prepared for tight hugs that I knew were coming from the heart. I was not prepared to be missed by my favorite cafeteria lady that I saw everyday...and who I might not ever see again. I was not prepared to think about possibly never seeing some of my coworkers ever again. I was not prepared to clock out for the last time at that hospital.

Even more than all of that - I was not prepared to say goodbye to the coworkers who I consider good friends...and a couple my best friends, even. Some of these people I went to college with. Some of them were there when I was a student and when I became a full time tech. And some of them came in between.

This was the first place I worked where I was putting my major to use. I started as a student and was hired post-graduation. I only worked there for 4 years, but those 4 years were very important in my life.

I created bonds with those people. We would hang out after work. I could vent about life to them and they could do the same to me. We could fight one day and make up easily the next like nothing happened. I am going to miss them all so much.

I know that I want to be in Columbia...there is no question about that. It does not, however, make it any easier to leave the life that I have had for the last 4 years (at my job/hospital) and 7 years (since I moved to this city after high school). I am so excited for the next chapter in my life, but it's a bittersweet feeling.

If I could transplant my hospital and friends into Columbia - I would be in heaven. Obviously, that's me living in a fantasy world.

Life is about the changes and challenges. I am ready to face them full steam ahead. That's why I left work today saying "see ya later" and not "goodbye." I know I will see many of them again..and keep in touch with the majority of them. They all know that my journey started there and they understand that this is what is best for me. It's great to have their support as difficult as it is.

**And I want to apologize if this post is jumbled, rambling mess. It's hard to put into words the many different feelings that I have gone through in the last couple of weeks...and specifically the last couple of days.

Happy Valentine's Day!

2010-02-14T23:09:00.002-06:00

Happy Valentine's day to everyone. I hope that you have been surrounded by friends, family, spouses, children, and whoever else you love today.

Unfortunately, I only got to see Justin for 30-45 minutes today. I went to St. Louis with the girl for the Mardi Gras celebration (like I did last year). I will dedicate a post specifically for Mardi Gras later this week.

On our way back home (to KC) this afternoon, we stopped in Columbia so I could say hey Justin and the family. It was tough leaving, but I will be there for good later this week.

I have never been big on Valentine's day. While I enjoy there being a holiday to celebrate the love in your life...I just don't get the overpriced candies, flowers, and waiting hours just to have dinner that you could have in half the time the following day.

Enjoy the ones you love today (and everyday).

Treadmill peeker...

2010-02-10T11:54:00.004-06:00

I love checking out people's running blogs as I am becoming more of a runner everyday. They are very inspiring and informative.

More than that, I find myself comparing my times, weight, work outs, etc. to these bloggers. And 9 times out of 10, I am slower and work out less than these people. To everyone but me, that makes sense. They are true runners with running blogs. I am just getting started. Of course they are running faster and longer than me.

As I was reading a new blog that I found about a runner - I discovered a new way that I compare myself to others. I am a treadmill peeker. If there is someone running on the treadmill next to me, I check out how fast they are going, for how long they are running, and the distance they have ran. I totally compare my stats to theirs.

I always feel a little competitive when I am treadmill peeking. If they are running faster than me, I feel defeated. It's a ridiculous. I have tried to break myself of this habit. But, as soon as a I go on a little break from treadmill peeking - I glance over and see that I am running faster than the person next to me. That's a win for me...so it perpetuates the cycle.

So that's it...I am a treadmill peeker. And I am pretty sure I always will be. It's just a part of my competitive nature.

Resolution follow up...

2010-02-02T01:05:00.003-06:00

It's the second month of 2010 so I figured I should do a little follow up to the resolutions I set mid-way through January.

1. I am on my way to finishing the couch to 5k running program. I did week 6, day 1 tonight. So far so good. I should have no problem finishing by my birthday. And I definitely need some new scrubs so that is great motivation.

2. I haven't started the 30 day shred yet. That will come soon enough. I have until June 1st to finish that so I have some time.

3. This is the BIG one. I got offered a job in Columbia today. And it's a WONDERFUL job. It's MRI which will be some new training in a different modality of radiology. I am so excited about this, but I am also sad to be leaving the job that I have had for the last 4-5 years...and the people I have developed relationships with here in KC for the last 7 years that I have lived here. However, I will be moving back to my family which I cannot begin to explain how happy I am about that.

4. I am surviving the distance between Justin and myself right now. Luckily, I only have a couple of more weeks to survive the distance. And then at that point, my focus will be on surviving living with the 'rents for a bit, renting our house, and everything that goes along with those two things.

5. I have been tracking my mileage on on sparkpeople.com so I can see if I make it to 500 miles in 2010. So far, I am at 17.39 miles for the year. That is not 10 miles a week like I was hoping for, but I know as the year goes on I will up my mileage so some weeks I will have more than 10/week.

6. We are slowly, but surely working on our credit card debt. Not much to update there.

7. I did not blog at all last week so I think that means I have failing at the whole blogging 3x/week thing. I will keep working on this also. :) I am sure I will have a lot to blog about as I start the transition of moving back to my hometown and starting a brand new job. I can hope so anyway, right?? :)

Blindside

2010-01-20T23:33:00.004-06:00

Last Sunday the husband, the in-laws, and myself went to the theater to see Blindside.

The back story to the movie: a very large young man was basically an orphan and was pretty much homeless. A very rich family ended up adopting him. He became an incredible football player. That's it in a very small nutshell.

The movie was VERY good. It is definitely a must-see. It is very much a feel good story. The actors and actresses (Sandra Bullock!!) were great choices for each roll. I don't think they could have picked better people to play in the movie.

There was a book written based on this story. I am very interested in picking up a copy of the book and getting more details.

Again, I recommend everyone see the movie. 50% of the people in my party cried so it might be a good movie to get on DVD when it comes out. And I will let it be known that I was not one of the four of us who shed a tear during the movie. I am not sure how that is possible because I cry very easily when it comes to movies.

Have you seen this movie? What did you think? Have you read the book?

Comments x 2.

2010-01-14T19:45:00.003-06:00

Maybe I am really not getting e-mail updates about comments to my blog. I just noticed like 4 comments on my NYE post and another comment on a different post. I didn't even see those. Darnit, blogger!! I will pay more attention and respond accordingly. Sorry to those of you that commented and I missed it.

Blog dream re: comments...

2010-01-13T20:59:00.002-06:00

I guess I have a desire for more comments from YOU on my blog. I do enjoy comments, but I never realized how much I enjoy them.

I actually had a dream last night about the comments on my blog. I dreamt that somehow comments were not showing up in my e-mail address so the whole time I thought I wasn't getting any - and I was actually get 30+ a post.

Such a lame dream (and post, for that matter), but oh well.

Hint! Hint! More comments, please so I can dream about much more interesting things. :)

New Year's resolutions...

2010-01-11T20:35:00.003-06:00

I know we are a few days into the new year, but I figured I should probably blog about my new year's resolutions so I can reflect back next year to see how well I did at keeping them.

1. Finish the couch to 5k by my birthday (March 3rd). When I do finish, my reward will be to purchase a few new pairs of scrubs (with xmas money :)).

2. Finish the 30 day shred by June 1st. When I do finish this, my reward will be a new pair of jeans.

3. Find a job in Columbia.

4. Survive the distance between Justin and myself until I can find a job where he is.

5. Run (on the treadmill or elliptical) and/or walk at least 500 miles this year. My reward will hopefully be a more toned body and having my clothes fit better. I figured this number by thinking about 10 miles a week for 52 weeks (and I am already 2 weeks into it and figure some weeks I might not make it to 10). This seems very realistic and doable. I will record all of my distance runs/walks on sparkpeople so I can keep track of this number.

6. Pay at least 1/2 of our credit card debt that we have remaining. This, again, is very realistic and doable. Hopefully we can do even more than just 1/2 of what's left.

7. Blog at least 3 times a week. Hopefully the reward to this is more followers, more comments, etc.

Feel 'em...

2010-01-07T18:34:00.003-06:00

"Hot pink!"

"Purple!"

"None!"

"Black!"

"Green and white polka dots!"

If you have been on facebook today, you might have noticed statuses with random colors posted. And if you are like myself, you were wondering what the heck was going on around the crazy world of facebook. My curiosity lead me to the internet. After a quick google search, I got an answer!

This is an attempt to raise awareness for breast cancer. Apparently it started in the Detroit area. Women were messaging other women telling them to post the color of their bra in their facebook status. Apparently, word has now spread all around the world. I have a few Michigan friends, but many of my lady friends on facebook are doing this and they are from all around. It's pretty cool that this has spread like this.

My first thought was, "well how does this raise awareness for breast cancer?" After some pondering, I realized that it caught my attention. And hey, if someone is taking a peek down their shirt to see the color of their bra maybe they will think to do a quick self exam and just "feel 'em" real quick.

Although some of the copies of the messages that were being sent mentioned not telling men about this - make sure that you keep your guys in check about this as well. Men can get breast cancer too.

Breast cancer month is in October, but it's still important to have it in the back of your mind at all times. I think this is especially true because this is a type of cancer that you can essentially detect for yourself. So "feel 'em" ladies (and gentlemen).

By the way...hot pink! :)

ETA: And you know what I love about this ploy to raise awareness on facebook? No pressure!! I have seen many different people post things in their statuses about, "post this as your status to raise awareness for XYZ. Most people are ashamed, won't do this, etc. so let's see if you are man enough to post this." That just bugs. It definitely doesn't make me want to repost that status.

After all of these bra color posts today, I just saw a status that just annoyed the heck out of me.

"Put this as your status if you or

someone you know has suffered XYZ.

The majority won't put it on,

because unlike cancer, XYZ is taboo...."

Why put "unlike cancer, blabla is taboo"???? Bugs. /vent

Happy holidays!

2009-12-30T12:11:00.003-06:00

I hope that everyone is enjoying their holiday season. Justin and I had a great Christmas with our families. Hopefully it is our last one that we have to drive from KC to Columbia. *fingers crossed*

We both had to work Christmas eve (2-1030 for me and 830p-7a for him). That's just the joy of being hospital employees. We drove home after Justin got off work on Friday morning. The drive was not fun - it was through a snow storm. We made it though.

The entire weekend was BUSY. We had about 6 different Christmases with different families. Unfortunately, for us, the holidays means lots of running around to different places. We never get to spend as much time with each family as we would like.

I just have a few key points from this holiday....

1. I drove about 80 miles through a snow storm down i-70 on Friday morning. For anyone that knows me or my mom - you know that is a MAJOR accomplishment. I absolutely hate driving in the snow. I freak out.

2. Oreo balls are my new favorite thing. I am trying to figure out how I made it this far in my life without discovering them.

3. Board games with the family might be my absolute favorite thing to do. Board games with anyone, really. I love them. Apples to apples, Taboo, Catch Phrase, Guestures...any of them. We had a big (12 person), 2 hour game of Guestures on Friday night. That was a blast!

Again, I hope that everyone has had a great holiday season. You may (or may not) be pleased to find out that one of my new year's resolutions is to blog at least 3 times a week. I might need anyone who reads this to hold me to it. Feel free to ask questions in the comments on topics that you might want me to talk about.

From the Foster's, HAPPY NEW YEAR!!

100!!!

2009-12-16T01:49:00.001-06:00

I hit the 100 mark (last post) without even realizing it. CRAZY!!! I can't believe I have had enough to talk about to make up 100 posts. I am less than 8 weeks away from posting for an entire year. Yay! :)

So proud of my hubby!

2009-12-16T01:07:00.002-06:00

As I mentioned in my last post - Justin just accepted a job in our hometown (Columbia, MO). Like I said, we are super excited, nervous, scared, happy, and many more emotions all rolled into one.

Justin just wasn't completely satisfied with his position as an x-ray tech for the last couple of years. With each passing day, he seemed to become more and more unhappy with his job. It was pretty clear that he needed a change. On top of that - we wanted to be able to move back to our hometown in the near future.

An opportunity presented itself a few months ago (probably 4 or 5 months ago was when it was first mentioned). It has been a slow moving process, but Justin has made the trip back and forth to Columbia countless times for interviews, meetings, gatherings, etc. for this job. All of that traveling has paid off. He accepted the position last week. He will be in orthopedic sales.

Unfortunately, we purchased our house just 16 months ago. So now is not a good time to put it on the market. We don't have enough equity to make money. We would actually probably lose a large amount of money at this point if we attempted to sell. That is our first dilemma in this major change in our lives. Our hope at this point is that Justin's best friend and his wife will rent the house from us while she finished chiropractic school. That would give us some more time to hopefully allow the market to turn back around in our favor.

On top of that - x-ray jobs are pretty hard to come by in the mid-west in general...let alone in Columbia. As of right now, there are zero x-ray jobs for me to apply to. So I will be keeping my job in KC until I can find something in Columbia.

This is where the anxiety comes in. Justin and I have never lived farther than across town from each other (in high school) or across campus (in college). We will now live about 2 hours apart. This is temporary, but it still freaks me out. It all kind of hit me this weekend. I will be living on my own for a few months. Eeeek!! To any local friends reading this - you are welcome to stay the night at any time. :)

Justin will be staying with his parents at least until we sell the house. We haven't thought too far in advance as we are taking this transition one day at a time.

I am so incredibly proud of Justin. He has taken all the necessary steps to getting us back to our hometown. He has worked very hard to get this position.

Please send your well wishes our way as we begin this journey.

Alive.

2009-12-07T00:28:00.003-06:00

We are alive and well. It might be hard to believe since my blogging has been awful lately. It's just "that time of year." We are buuusy. I think we have spent a total of about 4 weekends at our house in KC over the past 6 months or so. Kind of crazy.

Lately we have been busy with football season. Season tickets at Mizzou (which is 2 hours from where we live now) makes for lots of time out of time, traveling, and just being tied up for an entire Saturday (love it!).

Now that (college) football season is coming to a close, the holiday season is upon us which of course means parties, family gatherings, shopping, and never-ending traveling.

I have also started the Couch to 5k running program. I usually go to the gym when I get off work at night (1030 pm) so I don't typically have time to blog after work. I will blog more about that training program later...I have quite the list to blog about actually. Many happenings over the last couple of months (football pics, my father-in-law's surprise 50th bday, etc.).

The great news that I have to share is that Justin got a job in Columbia (our hometown). We are VERY excited about this. In the very near future I will devote an entire post to this....it's very much deserving of its own post, I think. :) Needless to say, I am incredibly proud of Justin and I am so anxious to get the next chapter of our lives started in Columbia.

I hope some of my followers are still reading my blog when I finally do find the time to write. I hope you are all enjoying the holiday season. And season's greetings from the Foster's. :)

Poor timing.

2009-11-25T22:03:00.002-06:00

All of the patients that I have done x-rays on today must think I am the most annoying person on the planet. It is towards the end of my shift and I have caught myself saying something in affect of, "oh, this injury/illness/ect. probably couldn't have come at any worse time for you? I am sorry this happened to you so close to the holiday."

After recognizing that I had said it to the last couple of patients, I thought back...yep, sure enough, I must have said it to 80% of my patients. I feel like an ass. Not that there is a good time to get sick or hurt, but obviously around the holidays makes things even more tough.

With that being said, we were busy as heck tonight. We had a broken humerus, a broke wrist, a broken neck, and some very sick people. It makes me incredibly thankful for the health of myself and my loved ones.

Happy thanksgiving everyone. I hope you get to eat lots of great food and spend some good times with your families. Much love to all of you.

Formatting

2009-11-03T01:11:00.004-06:00

I know I am not good with computer stuff...no question there. But why in the world can I not get blogger to effing format correctly??

As soon as I throw a little kink in the blog (i.e. a pic, a centered text, etc), blogger decides that the formatting for the remainder of my post is going to be nonexistent.

I like to double space in between paragraphs. I actually hate to read my own posts with out that. Please blogger, let me double space between paragraphs after pictures and centered texts. And when I publish a post, realize the format went bonkers, and then attempt to correct it -please let me go back and edit to how I wanted it originally. K.Thanx!!!

Gym-bo

2009-11-03T00:58:00.003-06:00

Remember this post about 3 months ago? Yeah, the one where I was going to get back into a gym routine and shed some inches?

I started off so strong. I was going to fulfill my goal for 4x's a week for 3 weeks. That was until towards the end of the 2nd week I got a voicemail from the gym.

"Hi Lynsey, it's so-and-so from Anytime Fitness.

I just wanted to give you a call and see if there is

anything we can do to get you and Justin into the

gym on a more consistent basis. I noticed that

Justin hasn't been in since May and you seem to

come randomly and about 2-3 times a week. Please

let me know if there is anything we can do to help."

That voicemail just totally took the wind out of my sails. First off all, I have been trying to get my husband into the gym ever since we signed up for the damn membership. Call him for his reasoning on not ever going. Secondly, 2-3 times a week is a pretty good routine if you ask me. Sure there might be weeks where I don't come or only come a time or two...but I am there 8-10 times a month at the least. That's good stuff in my eyes. And lastly, thanks for the call - I am now embarrassed to step foot in the gym for fear that you will confront me about my limited visits to the gym (according to you..sorta). And your timing could not have been worse. I was on a roll for the last couple of weeks - at that point.

I am just as embarrassed to say that I have not been to the gym since that phone call. That is until tonight. I just had to bite the bullet and go. It's not gym employee guy's fault that I have not been in 3 months. That was just the easiest thing for me to blame it on at that time. Since then, I have come up with some even more lame excuses. It's pretty sad actually.

It's time for me to just get into a routine. Once I get into a routine that works for me and that I am sticking to consistently - then I can start worrying about what the scale is saying.

So now I am in that transition period where I figure out how to get my butt in the gym...and then how to keep that routine for an extended period of time.

Happy Halloween!!

2009-10-31T19:10:00.003-05:00

As I said in my last post, I am not a huge Halloween fan. When I was younger, all of my costumes were store bought. I think if there were some creativity involved, then I might have enjoyed the costumes a bit more.

We basically went to Walmart a couple of weeks before Halloween, got a random costume, trick-or-treated the night of, and had candy for months.

There was no real thrill for me...except in kindergarten when I was PeeWee Herman. I loved that costume. All of the pictures are at my mom's otherwise I would share them. I used to LOVE PeeWee. I may or may not still rent the movies from time to time.

As time went on, Halloween still wasn't a big deal for me. When I got to college, it was a HUGE deal amongst many of the people I went to school with. I don't even remember dressing up for Halloween in high school so I was pretty surprised when I realized how big of a deal Halloween was in college.

However, Halloween was a big deal because girls got to dress in the most sluttiest (word? or no?) outfits and call it a costume. There certainly was NO thrill in that for me. I preferred to keep my TnA covered, if ya know what I mean. First of all I don't have T to flaunt so that takes away that option. I do have the A, but I like it clothed.

Really?? Does she have to have to have that short of skirt on? Granted, she has the body...which 80% of the time the girls in these costumes most definitely do not.

Some of the girls I played soccer with and myself decided that we would create/buy the most conservative, goofy, and dorky costumes ever. My freshman year, we were clowns. We bought costumes that came with a big hula-hoop thing so we would have very round middle sections. I will post a pic of that some other time (I am stuck at work right now with no facebook access...oh the horror!!). We had a blast being the only girls not dressing skimpy. We got some funny looks which was almost the best part. It's like people never in a million years expected anyone to show up with that much covered.

To this day Halloween is just another day for me. I do like going out and being with friends on Halloween. I like seeing the creativity in some people's costumes. I just hate seeing girls in skimpy outfits...especially the ones that really should not be in skimpy outfits.

Creative? VERY! Hilarious? VERY! Slightly disturbing? Maybe a little. :)

I will admit that my costume for tonight is a bit more skimpy than any other costume I have had. The skirt is a little short, but I have very opaque black leggings to wear. I am going to be a punk rocker. Should pictures be taken, I will post them. Unfortunately my camera and the camera on my phone are both broken so I will not be taking any photos tonight.

So I hope this Halloween blog post finds you well, on a sugar high, and decked out in an amazing costume! Enjoy! Happy Halloween everyone!!

Text-aholic!

2009-10-30T01:09:00.003-05:00

Wanna know how I know that I text too much??? When I am typing on the computer, I hit the space bar twice thinking that a period will get inserted and the next word will be capitalized. I also type out contractions without the apostrophe because my phone makes the contraction for me.

In other news, I was off of work today and was a complete waste of human life. The only productive thing I did was make chili...unless you count playing a few games of Monopoly online as productive. Maybe??

I work this weekend...including Halloween. I am ok with that as I am not a Halloween person. I actually hate some parts of it. I will post more about that tomorrow or Saturday.

Uh-buhhhh

2009-10-23T00:53:00.004-05:00

I am in a blogging slump. I have nothing to write about. Nothing exciting is happening in my life. However, I feel like my blogging should be just as fabulous as my new layout. I am just not living up to the layout. ::Sigh:: Someday.

In fact, I have been sick for the last week and a half. I had to take a couple of days off of work last week because of a fever. I have had a cough since then.

And my sick brain just sucks. So attempting to blog while having sick brain is just not happening. My last post was written during sick brain and I had to edit it approximately eight times - no lie.

Hopefully sometime soon, I will come out of this slump and present you with something that you actually care to read. In the mean time - check out the wonderful bloggers on my blogroll. I am sure they would be happy to have you and they will entertain you much better than I am able at the moment.

ETA: Oh and somehow I have managed to follow my own blog. WTF???

Darn it Mizzou!

2009-10-18T17:21:00.005-05:00

I am a University of Missouri Tiger fan through and through. There is no doubt about that. My main focus is on football, but I keep up with the rest of it just because.

For those living under a rock for the last couple of months - it's football season. If you don't care, then this post will be of no interest to you. Buh-bye!

In all seriousness, I LOVE college football season. 9AM every Saturday, you will find me watching college Game Day on ESPN (unless it was this Saturday and I slept until 1040, oops). I love watching the polls, the upsets, undefeated stay undefeated, the Big 12 rock (sometimes), KU losing, Mizzou winning, and the list goes on and on.

When this season started, there were lots of questions among Mizzou fans as to how this season would go. Their first game was against Illinois and we thought many of those questions got some very positive answers. The next couple of games were decent. There were a few flaws, but no team is perfect...right? Yeah, we quickly found out that Mizzou is far from perfect this year.

Perfection was not a prediction by anyone, I am pretty sure. 4 quarters worth of effort from EVERYONE (coaches included) were expected. Unfortunately, in the last couple of games (happen to be losses as well) - effort was put forth for about 3 quarters. It was quite embarrassing actually.

They played Nebraska last week. It was a total defensive battle (think 9-0 at halftime). Mizzou was winning that battle. And then we watched them implode in approximately 3 minutes. It was pathetic. Players, fans, coaches, everyone - licked our wounds and continued on with our optimism.

Fast forward to yesterday. Mizzou traveled to Stillwater, OK to take on the Oklahoma State Cowboys. And again, everyone was hopeful that the previous loss would light a fire under the team's ass and we would come out on top. That was actually the case in the first half. They played very well and hung with OSU with many lead changes. It was a fun game to watch. Not so much in the 2nd half. The implosion happened once again.

Yeah, this would be the reaction you could expect to see when shit hits the fan for Mizzou.

Next week is homecoming and the Texas Longhorns come to town. Unfortunately, I am anticipating our 3rd loss in a row...which means 0-3 in conference play. I would love to be proved wrong, but with the performances in the last couple of weeks - I am not holding my breath.

Despite all of this, my loyalty holds strong. M-I-Z! Z-O-U! Fight Tigers!!

Any other college football fans out there? How is your team doing? What are your predictions for the rest of the season?

Pumpkin butterscotch cookies

2009-10-16T00:19:00.003-05:00

Last week we went to the Mizzou v Nebraska football game. We brought a few friends so I thought I should contribute to the food of the tailgate. That and I saw this recipe and wanted to try it out.

Let me start by saying that I am NOT a baker. Typically when I attempt to bake, something goes wrong. I am happy to say that NOTHING went wrong this time. I am pretty happy about that.

These cookies went over quite nicely at the tailgate...until they got completely rained on. Apparently the container had standing water in it by the end of the night. They made for good hangover breakfast the next day for the fam anyway. :)

I didn't take any pics (remember, my iphone camera is broken??). Here is a pic from Heather's blog which is where I got the recipe in the first place.

Ingredients:

3 cups all purpose flour

2 1/4 tsp baking powder

1 1/2 tsp baking soda

3/4 tsp salt

1 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

1/4 tsp nutmeg

3 eggs

1 1/2 cups sugar

1/2 cup applesauce (unsweetened)

1/4 cup canola or corn oil (I used all applesauce...so 3/4 cup applesauce)

1 1/2 cups canned pumpkin

1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract

1 1/2 cups butterscotch chips (I am sure I used more)

Directions:

1. Position a rack in the middle of the oven. Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F. Spray the cookie sheets with cooking spray.

2. Stir the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt cinnamon, and nutmeg in a medium bowl and set aside.

3. In a large bowl, using an electric mixer on medium, beat the eggs and sugar until smooth and light in color, about 1 minute. Stop the mixer and scrape the sides as needed while mixing.

4. On low speed, mix the applesauce, oil, pumpkin, and vanilla until blended. Mix in the flour mixture to incorporate it. Mix in the chips.

5. Scoop approximately 1/4 cup of dough (using measuring cup or ice cream scoop) onto prepared cookie sheet, spacing the cookies approximately 2 1/2 inches apart.

6. Bake the cookies one sheet at a time until the tops feel firm and a toothpick inserted into the center comes out dry, about 12-16 minutes. Cool them on a baking sheet for about 5 minutes , then use a wide metal spatula to transfer the cookies to a wire rack to cool.

Makes about 30 cookies.

Enjoy!!

#487

2009-10-16T00:07:00.004-05:00

Reason #487 that I love my friends: we make contracts before we go out.

About 75% of the time (and probably more so now that we don't go out as often), we create contracts of random things that have to be accomplished during our night out. It just adds to the fun. :)

I can only find a picture of one of these contracts, but this is just a taste.

Typical things on these lists:

-specific shots to take

-a certain # of pictures to take for the evening

-a song we must karaoke

You get the idea. We have fun. :)

Pimp my blog!!

2009-10-12T13:58:00.002-05:00

So as you may have noticed, my blog has been completely and totally PIMPED!! The oh so amazing LJKC has hooked me up. I love it!!

If you need any work done to your blog, check her out. She, clearly, does some awesome stuff! If you haven't already, you should check out her personal blog as well. She has the cutest pug...ever. :)

Thanks again, LJKC.

Wowzers!!

2009-10-07T00:00:00.004-05:00

I just randomly looked back at one of my first couple of posts (in February). I remembered giving a shout out to my followers and I was curious how many I had started with....

Yeah, I started with a total of 7 followers. I felt pretty cool to even have that many.

And here I am - 8 months later - and that number has grown to 33. I feel famous now. Haha, jk.

So to my 33 followers and anyone else who randomly stops by my blog: Feel free to leave comments (love 'em). I am always looking for more blogs to take a look at so just leave a random comment directing me to your blog. And last, but not least, please feel free to leave me a comment (at any time) about something you might want me to blog about.

I run out of ideas pretty quickly about topics to blog about and my life isn't really that exciting to talk about - so what do you want to read about??

So, yeah...a big fat shout out to my growing list of followers!!

Doh!

2009-10-06T11:18:00.002-05:00

So about 3 weeks ago I got an iPhone...remember?

Things have been going great with the phone - I LOVE IT! The problem came this weekend when I dropped it in a cup of beer. I don't even drink beer. This may have been the 5th time in my life that I have drank beer and this is what happens. Needless to say, beer is once again off my radar. Ugh.

Soon after the accident, my phone was doing wacky things. It wouldn't turn off, then it would turn off on its own, it wouldn't reset, etc. When I got home that evening I submerged my phone in a bag of uncooked rice (thanks to my friend's roommate's suggestion). I left it overnight.

And MUCH to my surprise, when I plugged it into iTunes the next day IT WORKED!! I could not have been more excited. I was completely freaking out because At&t does not offer accidental insurance for iPhones (UGH!).

The only issue I had once the phone started to work again was that there was moisture in the camera lens. So any pic I tried to take was foggy and not good. A few hours went by the day after the accident and all moisture was out of the lens area. AWESOME....only not. Now the camera shutter will not open. I tried to restore my phone back to factory settings, but it still won't work. I guess I can't complain because everything else works just fine.

I am hoping that some day the camera will just start magically working. :) I don't know how to check to see if the water sensor has turned colors. If, for some reason, the beer missed the sensor then I would take it to an Apple store to try to get them to fix it. But, since there is water damage my warranty is void...I believe.

Now that this HUGE scare has happened, I am going to look into getting a rider on our home owner's insurance for our phones (some companies offer it, some don't). We need to do the same for our new television as well.

If anyone has any tips or tricks on how to get my camera back working and/or how to tell if the water damage sensor was missed somehow - let me know.

Nananana...

2009-09-29T12:21:00.002-05:00

Hey! Hey! Hey! Goodbye!!

Adios, Jon.

Jon Gosselin will officially no longer be apart of Jon and Kate Plus 8. In fact, it's going to be called Kate Plus 8.

I started watching the show a couple of years ago. Jon and Kate were still semi-civil at that point. Speculations of divorce starting coming about a year after I started watching. I continued to watch through the train wreck. I felt sorry that it was all at the kid's expense, but there was no changing Kate's mind about the filming of the show.

They kept filming, so I kept watching.

Since the divorce, the show has been different - obviously. Kate seems to be much more content with life. She does what she needs to do for her children. She plans things that they enjoy to do (or they film when she is doing things that make them happy...whatever it may be). She clearly has their well being in mind at all times.

Sorry ass Jon on the other hand, not so much. The limited amount of time that he is actually on the show, he seems to suck as a dad. The kids never seem to enjoy the activities that he has planned for them. He seems completely uninterested in the children. It is actually somewhat painful to what painful to watch.

I will be happy to see him removed from the show. I would, honestly, be happy to to see the entire show cancelled for the sake of the children but I don't anticipate that happening. Those kids are so damn cute though. :)

I know most people don't care about the happenings in the Gosselin family so that is all I will say about that. Oh and goodbye to the Ed Hardy shirts that TLC has to blur out during the taping of the show.

In my next house...

2009-09-28T12:51:00.002-05:00

We have only lived in this house for about 15 months and I am already thinking about what I want differently in our next house. This house has been a great starter home, but it has definitely opened my eyes up to what I want/don't want next time.

1. White trim. I never realized how much I dislike wood trim and love white trim until I lived in a house with wood trim. We could paint all the trim in our house a beautifully stark white, but that just seems like a ton of work. :)

2. A separate laundry room. In our house now, the washer and dryer are in our guest bathroom. They are tucked nicely into a little nook, but it's definitely not ideal. I want all laundry related items to have their own separate room. Front loading washer and dryer would be a nice touch as well. :)

3. A large master bathroom. Our master bathroom has a small shower, a toilet and a sink. It is tiny. Justin and I can't hardly be in there at the same time. It's annoying.

4. No linoleum!! We will have tiled bathrooms and kitchen - maybe even some wood floors throughout the house. Absolutely, positively no linoleum. We have that in our kitchen and our bathrooms and I hate it!

A girl can dream, right? Hopefully we will be building our next home so we can get it just how we want it. I am very happy that we didn't build our first home (not that that was a thought of ours) and/or that we did not completely break the bank on our first home. We knew this was going to be a starter home. Now that we have lived here, we are beginning to form better ideas of what we like and don't like. Someday we will have a house exactly how we want it.

Not the most accomplished weekend ever.

2009-09-28T11:32:00.003-05:00

We had a great weekend. It was the perfect mixture of business and relaxation. With that being said, I didn't accomplish everything on my list. And the good news about that? We have another weekend at home this coming up weekend (with very little plans). So whatever I didn't get done this past weekend, I can do this weekend. Yay!!

Here is the run down from my list from last week:

-Clean the house -- Check! I cleaned on Friday, but we had to re-straighten up things yesterday because we had family over on Friday and friends on Saturday.
-Do laundry -- Check!
-Catch up on my blog with picture posts -- negative. Oops.
-Clean out my car -- another negative.
-Unpack the suitcases we have been living out of -- negative, again...but I can do that pretty quickly this week before I go to work at 2 in the afternoons.
-Watch college football -- big fat check!
-Balance the check book -- negative, but again that will be something quick to do this week.
-Update iphone/ipod -- semi-check! I only added a couple of new songs and a couple of apps. There are definitely more songs that I to add.
-Grocery shop -- Check!

Not a bad weekend all together. I am looking forward to a very similar weekend coming up. :)

Ketchup!

2009-09-24T10:32:00.002-05:00

It's time to play catch up. For the first time since before May, we will be at home for 2 weeks in a row. We won't be going home to Columbia, we won't be going out of town to visit any friends, and we don't have much in the way of plans for the next two weekends. I am unusually excited about that. I typically hate to not have plans or something to look forward to. However, I am incredibly anxious to catch up on things that have been put aside for the last few months.

We will of course watch Mizzou play this Friday night. And then this weekend Justin's friend Bill is coming to visit, but that doesn't involve much of anything planned out. The following weekend we might hit up The American Royal (big BBQ thing in KC). Other than that...CATCH UP!

And because I know you are DYING to know what kind of things I need to catch up on - here is my list...

-cleaning the house

-doing laundry - although we have done an all right job at keeping up with this over the weeks.

-catching up the blog with some picture posts

-cleaning out my car

-finally unpacking the suitcases that we have basically lived out of for the last few months.

-get back into the gym routine (this is A MUST!!)

-watching college football. I have missed a lot since I have been to the Mizzou games.

-balance the checkbook (ick)

-update the iphone/iphone

-grocery shop

That's all I can think of at the moment, but I think all of that will keep me quite busy this weekend.

Big Brother

2009-09-16T00:31:00.002-05:00

In the last couple of years, I have become a HUGE Big Brother fan. Tonight was the season finale of the 11th season.

First and foremost, I want to point out Julie Chen's outfit for the evening. She looked like she was wearing a Snuggie. No joke. I know that she is VERY pregnant, but a snuggie look alike???

If you didn't watch it, I can't find a pic of her in the outfit...but trust that it was definitely snugg-a-licious!

Secondly, GO JORDAN!! I was so happy that she won. I thought she was so cute. I would have loved to have seen Jeff win. I think that he played the best game overall, but since he got the boot a couple of weeks ago I had to be team-Jordan.

I was so anti-Natalie that it was not even funny. I was incredibly happy when Ronnie called her out for being the most two-faced liar in the house. She played everyone. She talked about aligning herself with strong competitors. Yeah, she aligned herself with those people so that they would win the competitions and do her dirty work. She never made major moves in the house because she never had to win competitions.

I won't bore anyone with my love of Big Brother anymore, but I cannot wait for the next season (whenever the heck that is!). I might just have to watch some episodes on youtube of previous seasons that I didn't watch.

iPhone!

2009-09-14T11:22:00.005-05:00

Justin and I are the proud owners of 2 brand new Apple iPhones 3Gs. We are very excited!

We just got them yesterday afternoon while we were at home in Columbia. We fought over who had to drive the 2 hours home while the other fiddled with their new phone. Needless to say, I won. :)

I am so anxious to find everything out about it. I have an iTouch, but I basically just used it as an ipod. Now I am on the search for the coolest (and free!) apps out there. If you have any suggestions, let me know.

I am sure there will be many blog updates from my iphone...I just have to figure out how to do that. I am sure there is an app for that. Ha!

I was a little sad to dump the Blackberry. It was an AWESOME phone. I just couldn't pass up the opportunity to get the cutting edge technology. :)

Now that we have iPhones, we are really wishing we would have bought a Mac Book last week when we purchased our new computer. We bought a PC instead. Oh well.

On a budget friendly note - don't buy cell phone accessories from your cell phone provider. Ebay has some FABULOUS! deals. We got a wall charger, 2 car chargers, a computer charger, 6 screen protectors, and a chrome case (pink - can't wait to show that off!!) all for just 17.00. I didn't look at the price of chargers in the store, but the dinky little silicone cases were like $28. No thanks, I will get my stuff off of ebay and save TONS of money.

Keep checking back....my blog should be completely made over sometime this week. It's going to be amazing!!!

And I am not sure why blogger is not formatting this post like I want it. Sorry there are no spaces between the paragraphs. blah, blogger.

M-I-Z! Z-O-U!

2009-09-08T10:56:00.002-05:00

College football started this week and I could not be more excited about that!

I love me some University of Missouri Tigers. I always have and always will. I have to admit that it has been nice being a Mizzou fan when they have been having success in the last few years, but I was a fan during the tough times also. My dad has been taking me to games for as long as I can remember. For all the Mizzou fans out there (anyone?), I can remember the first time that my dad let me and a friend sit on the hill by ourselves. We thought we were hot stuff! :)

Mizzou played in St. Louis Saturday again Illinois. Mizzou v. Illini in STL is a fairly recent tradition. They started doing that in 2002. Last I heard, next year could be the final year of the "contract." It's been nice having a pretty good game as the season opener. I would rather them be tested in the first game than play a rinky dink school and stomp all over them. Although, Mizzou sorta stomped all over Illinois on Saturday. Ha.

There were some great games this weekend on top of the Mizzou game. The Big 12 did well...Oklahoma and Colorado were the only two teams that lost. I am never too sad to see OU lose, but I am VERY sad to see that their QB (Sam Bradford) was injured. That makes me incredibly sad because he chose to stay at OU instead of going to the NFL.

I am just so excited that the season has begun. I could go on and on about it. I am sure there will be more posts as the season goes on. We have season tickets to Mizzou so we get to test those out for the first time this coming up weekend. I am super excited!! :) GO TIGERS!

Good ole Facebook!

2009-09-03T01:19:00.002-05:00

Once again, I got this amazing piece off of someone else's blog. Someday I will get my own material. Until then, thanks Michelle!! :)

Good stuff!! Haha!!

Wait for it....

2009-08-31T22:56:00.003-05:00

We are having major computer issues in the Foster home. I got a laptop for high school graduation 6 years ago...Justin got a desktop for HS grad 6 years ago as well. Needless to say, it's time for us to get a new computer.

We typically only use the laptop these days. It's just easier. However, the laptop is being very finicky about when it will turn on and when it won't. You never know if it will want to turn on today or not. Good times. On top of that, when it does turn on it won't connect to the internet. Perfect! Of course, it chooses to turn on late at night so I can't call our internet provider to fix the internet problem.

So needless to say, my updates might be few and far between until we get a new computer.

And to add to the lack of technology in our house, I can't find the cord for our external hard drive. I have tons of pictures from the last two weeks (wedding and girls weekend) that I can't upload to our computer even if it was working properly. I have to upload pics to the external hard drive because the hard drive on our computer says it is low on space. How?? Yeah, I have no clue. I have cleared out everything I can possibly think of (pics and documents have been moved to the external hard drive, we have removed programs that we don't use, etc.). The lap top is just done for!

As for last weekend, I can give a little update but it would be so much more fun with pictures. We made the 2 1/2 hour trip on Friday mid-day. This got us into Springfield at a decent time so that we could have lunch, do a little shopping (SO not needed for me!), and just hang out. We played a little Catch Phrase and had a couple of drinks before going to the bar. We had fun that night, but we were all looking forward to Saturday night for the real fun.

Saturday came and I had plans to meet up with Justin's at his friend's house to meet their new twin baby girls (ADORABLE!...again, I need pics for this post!!). After I left, my girls and I had a nice relaxing day at the pool. The weather was perfect (when the sun was out, a bit chilly when it wasn't) to just lounge around on rafts and hang out. It was great.

Saturday evening we played some more games (of course Apples to Apples!) and had some drinks before heading to dinner. Dinner was delicious...mac and cheese, amazing! After dinner we went to piano bar. Piano bars just about lead the list of the most fun bars to me. I love them. After the piano bar we went to Moonlight Delight, Midnight Delight, Midnight Rodeo, Midnight Hodeo...take your pick. It's a country bar that you can get into if you are 18...last time there were high school students there in prom attire. It is a blast! Of course we go there a bit later in the night every time so that might have something to do with it.

After Moonlight Delight, we went home and made all kind of (un)healthy foods and went to bed. Sunday was a veg out day all around. We hung out on the couch and watched a couple of movies before heading back to Kansas City. The drive home was loooong, but it was an awesome weekend. I cannot wait to go back!

As if the last few weekends have not been eventful enough, I have another exciting weekend coming up. I am going to the lake with a few friends. One of my friends, Abbey and her family, have a house down there. It should be a good time as well. Not to mention, Mizzou kicks of the season again Illinois on Saturday. Abbey's family love Mizzou as well so we will definitely be catching the game amongst all the other festivities. I am also anxious to see Oklahoma State host Georgia. That should be a good Big 12 v SEC match up. As much as I am not a fan of OSU, I am rooting for the Big 12 all the way.

Hopefully I can have some updates with pictures included in the near future. Until then, this will have to do. I hope everyone has a great week!

Hilarious.

2009-08-24T22:35:00.002-05:00

I saw this over at Marie-Etta's blog. I think this list is hilarious. Some of these things are SO true (which I put in bold). You might see some commentary in italics as well. Enjoy...if you have not seen this list already. And I am not sure where this list actually orginiated or who to give credit to.

-I wish Google Maps had an "Avoid Ghetto" routing option
.-More often than not, when someone is telling me a story all I can think about is that I can't wait for them to finish so that I can tell my own story that's not only better, but also more directly involves me.
-Nothing sucks more than that moment during an argument when you realize you're wrong.
-I don't understand the purpose of the line, "I don't need to drink to have fun." Great, no one does. But why start a fire with flint and sticks when they've invented the lighter?
-Have you ever been walking down the street and realized that you're going in the complete opposite direction of where you are supposed to be going? But instead of just turning a 180 and walking back in the direction from which you came, you have to first do something like check your watch or phone or make a grand arm gesture and mutter to yourself to ensure that no one in the surrounding area thinks you're crazy by randomly switching directions on the sidewalk. Everytime!!!
-That's enough, Nickelback.
-I totally take back all those times I didn't want to nap when I was younger.-
Is it just me, or are 80% of the people in the "people you may know" feature on Facebook people that I do know, but I deliberately choose not to be friends with?
-Do you remember when you were a kid, playing Nintendo and it wouldn't work? You take the cartridge out, blow in it and that would magically fix the problem. Every kid in America did that, but how did we all know how to fix the problem? There was no internet or message boards or FAQ's. We just figured it out. Today's kids are soft.
-There is a great need for sarcasm font. Abso-freaking-lutely!!!
-Sometimes, I'll watch a movie that I watched when I was younger and suddenly realize I had no idea was going on when I first saw it.
-I think everyone has a movie that they love so much, it actually becomes stressful to watch it with other people. I'll end up wasting 90 minutes shiftily glancing around to confirm that everyone's laughing at the right parts, then making sure I laugh just a little bit harder (and a millisecond earlier) to prove that I'm still the only one who really, really gets it.
-How the heck are you supposed to fold a fitted sheet? I actually learned this skill working at a tanning salon in college. Woot!! :)
-I would rather try to carry 10 plastic grocery bags in each hand than take 2 trips to bring my groceries in.
- I think part of a best friend's job should be to immediately clear your computer history if you die.
-The only time I look forward to a red light is when I’m trying to finish a text. Or find something in my purse.
- A recent study has shown that playing beer pong contributes to the spread of mono and the flu. Yeah, if you suck at it.
- LOL has gone from meaning, "laugh out loud" to "I have nothing else to say".
- I have a hard time deciphering the fine line between boredom and hunger. Ugh, yes!
- Answering the same letter three times or more in a row on a Scantron test is absolutely petrifying.
- Whenever someone says "I'm not book smart, but I'm street smart", all I hear is "I'm not real smart, but I'm imaginary smart".
-How many times is it appropriate to say "What?" before you just nod and smile because you still didn't hear what they said?
- I love the sense of camaraderie when an entire line of cars teams up to prevent a *** from cutting in at the front. Stay strong, brothers!
- Every time I have to spell a word over the phone using 'as in' examples, I will undoubtedly draw a blank and sound like a complete idiot. Today I had to spell my boss's last name to an attorney and said "Yes that's G as in...(10 second lapse)..ummm...Goonies"
-What would happen if I hired two private investigators to follow each other?
- While driving yesterday I saw a banana peel in the road and instinctively swerved to avoid it...thanks Mario Kart. This has never actually happened to me, but the thought still makes me chuckle.
- MapQuest really needs to start their directions on #5. Pretty sure I know how to get out of my neighborhood.
- Obituaries would be a lot more interesting if they told you how the person died.
- I find it hard to believe there are actually people who get in the shower first and THEN turn on the water. Although my husband is one of these people...weird.
-Shirts get dirty. Underwear gets dirty. Pants? Pants never get dirty, and you can wear them forever.
- I would like to officially coin the phrase 'catching the swine flu' to be used as a way to make fun of a friend for hooking up with an overweight woman. Example: "Dave caught the swine flu last night."
-I can't remember the last time I wasn't at least kind of tired.
- Bad decisions make good stories
-Whenever I'm Facebook stalking someone and I find out that their profile is public I feel like a kid on Christmas morning who just got the Red Ryder BB gun that I always wanted. 546 pictures? Don't mind if I do! I'm glad I'm not the only one!
- Is it just me or do high school girls get sluttier & sluttier every year?
-If Carmen San Diego and Waldo ever got together, their offspring would probably just be completely invisible. Bwahaha!
-Why is it that during an ice-breaker, when the whole room has to go around and say their name and where they are from, I get so incredibly nervous? Like I know my name, I know where I'm from, this shouldn't be a problem....
-You never know when it will strike, but there comes a moment at work when you've made up your mind that you just aren't doing anything productive for the rest of the day.
-Can we all just agree to ignore whatever comes after DVDs? I don't want to have to restart my collection.
-There's no worse feeling than that millisecond you're sure you are going to die after leaning your chair back a little too far.
-I'm always slightly terrified when I exit out of Word and it asks me if I want to save any changes to my ten page research paper that I swear I did not make any changes to.
- "Do not machine wash or tumble dry" means I will never wash this ever.
-I hate being the one with the remote in a room full of people watching TV. There's so much pressure. 'I love this show, but will they judge me if I keep it on? I bet everyone is wishing we weren't watching this. It's only a matter of time before they all get up and leave the room. Will we still be friends after this?'
-I hate when I just miss a call by the last ring (Hello? Hello? Dammit!), but when I immediately call back, it rings nine times and goes to voicemail. What'd you do after I didn't answer? Drop the phone and run away?
- I hate leaving my house confident and looking good and then not seeing anyone of importance the entire day. What a waste.
-When I meet a new girl, I'm terrified of mentioning something she hasn't already told me but that I have learned from some light internet stalking.
-I like all of the music in my iTunes, except when it's on shuffle, then I like about one in every fifteen songs in my iTunes. This is VERY bizarre...and, again, very true.
-Why is a school zone 20 mph? That seems like the optimal cruising speed for pedophiles...
- As a driver I hate pedestrians, and as a pedestrian I hate drivers, but no matter what the mode of transportation, I always hate cyclists.
-Sometimes I'll look down at my watch 3 consecutive times and still not know what time it is.
-It should probably be called Unplanned Parenthood.
-I keep some people's phone numbers in my phone just so I know not to answer when they call. yep!
-Even if I knew your social security number, I wouldn't know what do to with it.
-Even under ideal conditions people have trouble locating their car keys in a pocket and Pinning the Tail on the Donkey - but I’d bet my ass everyone can find and push the Snooze button from 3 feet away, in about 1.7 seconds, eyes closed, first time every time...
-My 4-year old son asked me in the car the other day "Dad what would happen if you ran over a ninja?" How the hell do I respond to that?
-It really bugs me when I want to read a story on CNN.com and the link takes me to a video instead of text. ...especially at work when I cannot view videos!
-I wonder if cops ever get pissed off at the fact that everyone they drive behind obeys the speed limit.
-I think the freezer deserves a light as well. Uhhh...mine has a light...?
-I disagree with Kay Jewelers. I would bet on any given Friday or Saturday night more kisses begin with Miller Lites than Kay.
-The other night I ordered takeout, and when I looked in the bag, saw they had included four sets of plastic silverware. In other words, someone at the restaurant packed my order, took a second to think about it, and then estimated that there must be at least four people eating to require such a large amount of food. Too bad I'm eating alone. Thanks for making me feel fat before dinner.

Good stuff!

I'm baaaack.

2009-08-24T22:16:00.002-05:00

We are back from our trip to Iowa. We were there from Wednesday night until yesterday evening. We had a blast! It was so nice to see family that we typically only see once a year or once every other year. I really wish there was more time to get family together. We always have a great time.

I don't have any pictures uploaded yet, but I will. I took a few at the actual wedding. I don't think I got any of the rest of the weekend.

Until I get some pics uploaded, here is a lame joke...

Do you know what happened to the frog that parked in the no parking zone??

He got toad!!! Haha. :)

Text from last night.

2009-08-18T00:49:00.002-05:00

This is the "Foster Following" version of the website textsfromlastnight.com.

I was about to leave work at about 11:15pm when I got a text from Justin...

(913): Your dog just farted out loud. Twice.

I laughed out loud for probably 5 minutes when I read this. She has been known to let out the little poof from time to time, but the fact that he sent me a text about it cracks me up.

It is also funny that when she does something odd, bad, or disgusting she is all of a sudden my dog. When she does something awesome, good, or pleasant then she is his dog.

Of course when I got home tonight, she was sprawled out across the couch. When I walked in, she just lifted her head up and gave me a look like, "oh hey, welcome home. Don't bug me..I'm tired. Oh and I'm gassy."

I love her.

Fab weekend.

2009-08-17T00:19:00.004-05:00

I am getting ready to wrap up the weekend and head to bed. I figured I would write a little post about our weekend now or else it might not get done. And we had such a great weekend that it would be a shame to not recap. Unfortunately, my camera was dead the entire weekend so I have no proof of this amazing weekend. :)

The weekend started with a surprise birthday party for my stepmom. My dad did an awesome job planning everything and keeping it a secret. Somehow, he got my stepmom on the golf course the evening of her birthday. While they were golfing, we got a room inside the country club set up for the party. My dad sent us a text when they were making their way onto the 9th tee. One of the country club staff members tied some black balloons to the flag in the hole. We watched them walk closer to the green and then everyone that was there for the party walked out to surprise her. Saying she was surprised was an understatement...she definitely cried.

Once we surprised her, we all made our way into the party room and got the party started. My main job for the party was the create a slide show for her. We kicked the party off with playing the slide show. Not to toot my horn or anything, but that slide show rocked (toot! toot!). She cried again...and so did I. I am a sucker for pictures set to music. I will pretty much cry every time.

We hung out at the club until about 11 and then we headed to my dad's to continue the party with her closest friends/family. I am not certain on the time my stepmom went to bed, but a few of us (including me, my dad, Justin, and some other friends/family) stayed up until about 3 or 4 in the morning on my dad's back deck. It was a lot of fun.

Needless to say, Saturday we needed some recovery time. We left my dad's around 11am on Saturday and made our way to my inlaws. They were out of town, but it's easier for us to stay there with Lucky. After eating some lunch, we all (Lucky included) fell asleep. We slept from about 1 until 4. It was a much needed relaxing day.

We might not have woken up, but we had another birthday party to go to that night. It was a birthday party for Justin's cousin, Jenn. She turned 16 today (Sunday). This party was a bit more low key, but definitely also a lot of fun. We had some good food...including cake and ice cream. We were going to go swimming in their pool, but it started to rain. We watched a bit of the Chief's preseason football game. It was pretty boring so we played Monopoly Deal. It's basically Monopoly in card form. It was a lot of fun. We played that game for about 4 hours. I am sad to report that I did not win a single time. I could have continued to play for 4 more hours, but Justin was ready to go home. We left a little before midnight. It was great to just hang out with the family and celebrate a BIG birthday for Jenn. :)

We used Sunday as another day to relax. We slept late, ate some lunch, watched golf, and napped on and off throughout the day. Speaking of watching golf...we witnessed golf history today. Y.E. Yang won the tournament (PGA, maybe??). He is the first Asian person to win a major tournament. I am not a big golf fan, but it was definitely cool to watch history in the making. I never thought I would be blogging about the winner of a golf tournament, but this definitely deserves a shout out.

We got back to KC around 8:30 tonight and have been doing laundry and a bit of cleaning to get ready for the week. Fortunately for us, we have a short work week. Justin only works 2 days and I work 3 days. We are leaving Wednesday evening for Iowa. Justin's cousin, Kyle, is getting married this weekend. I will charge my camera so I can have show some pics of that (hopefully).

I hope everyone had a great week. Happy Monday..ick.

Crazy lady!

2009-08-12T01:35:00.003-05:00

For those who don't know, I am an x-ray tech. My job requires that I put people in positions that might hurt whatever injury they are getting an x-ray for. There is typically no way around this part of my job. I do my best to get creative so that I can get the shots I need without hurting my patients too much. Again, sometimes I just can't do much and I have to BRIEFLY make these patients mad by putting them in pain.

Along with that side of my job, I also have to add that I see all types of people. My patients come in all shapes, sizes, colors, and ages. It's kind of cool to meet all these different types of people.

Now that I have set the stage I will give you one of my craziest stories since being an x-ray tech. I am sure if I thought long and hard, I could come up with something better. However, this story is just too funny not to blog about.

Tonight, an order came across for bilateral (both sides) hip x-rays on a lady who is 105 years old. Let me just say that this is only the 2nd oldest person that I have had as a patient...the oldest was 112. I kid you not.

The 105 year old woman's family was very nice and let me know that her hearing was just about 100% shot. She had hearing aids, but at the point they were just not working. They told me that she fell (what exactly was she doing to fall?? I wanted to ask, but didn't). They said that they weren't sure which hip was actually hurting her. She was just complaining of hip pain, but she couldn't hear/understand what they were asking when they inquired about which hip hurt. No big deal...the doctor orders both sides.

We get her on the x-ray table no problem. We do the first few pictures without having to move her much. Things are going great. I start positioning her for an x-ray that I have to bend one of her legs and move it a bit. She of course let me know that it hurt. I attempted to apologize and explain that we had to get these pictures so that the doctor could figure out why she was in pain. Of course, she couldn't hear me so she really had no clue what was going on.

After I moved her a bit more and she continued to tell me how it hurt....wait for it...she reached up and smacked me across the face. It wasn't with much force because, well, she was 105 years old. I would still like to give it the title of a bitch slap. I got bitched slapped by a 105 year old woman. Oh how I love my job. It was hilarious at the time and I still chuckle thinking about it.

That's one of my crazy work stories. What kind of crazy work stories do you have?

Happy birthday, Michelle.

2009-08-04T22:44:00.000-05:00

I just want to point all of you in the direction of Michelle. She is turning 30 in a few days. Yay, happy birthday. To celebrate, she is giving away a gift card to Cold Stone or Baskin Robbins. How cool is that??

Head on over there and wish her a happy birthday and enter the give away!

Happy birthday, Michelle!!

Ugh, gas money.

2009-08-02T13:28:00.003-05:00

Justin and I have been traveling back to Columbia A LOT lately. As I balanced our checkbook today, I realized just what that is doing to our bank account. Holy cow, we are spending a shit ton of money on gas money to make these trips.

To put it into terms, we spent about $334 in gas in the month of July. We typically budget about $200 a month for gas. So we spent over $130 more than usual on gas in one month. That is just nuts!!

Granted, one week looked like this: we drove to Columbia on a Friday night, drove back Sunday, Justin went to Columbia Wednesday for an interview, he drove back that night, we drove to Columbia Friday to stay for the weekend, and then we drove back on Sunday. That was an abnormal week, but it definitely was a contributor to our increased gas budget for the month of July.

If nothing else this definitely helps us realize that we REALLY want to move back to Columbia. We will save quite a bit of money on gas alone whenever we are able to move back.

Unfortunately for us, the frequent trips are not going to slow down anytime soon. We have season tickets to the University of Missouri Tigers (in Columbia, of course) so we will be traveling back there quite often in the fall as well.

4x's a week for 3 weeks.

2009-08-02T13:12:00.004-05:00

I have really gotten out of any sort of routine at the gym. I was going on a fairly regular basis and my motivation has since fizzled.

Justin's cousin is getting married in 3 weeks so I figure that's a good time frame for my re-entry into the gym rat life. And by gym rat, I mean I will go to the gym 4 times a week for the next three weeks. I am sure that doesn't really constitute a gym a rat, but it's self proclaimed.

I don't really have a weight loss goal or results goal for the next three weeks. I just want to stick to a routine of 4 days a week. If I see results over that time frame, then that's icing on the cake.

Justin and I recently purchased a scale that measures % body fat. I am not sure how accurate it is since it cost us $6 a liquidators store. It's all that I've got to go on at this point. Accurate or not, I DO NOT like the number that it is giving me these days. It says I have 30% body fat. That completely disgusts me.

A couple of years ago (when I had a trainer), I was 17%. To think that I am up 13% from that time is really eye opening. I wasn't even 30% when I started with my trainer.

30% body fat for a female my age is high so my goal is to reduce that number. Ideally, I would like to see my % body fat at about 20-23%. I hope that as I see my % body fat decrease, I will also see my measurements decrease and my weight decrease. And even better, I hope to see my jeans fit a little better.

My % body fat is about the only measurement having to do with my weight that I feel comfortable sharing on the web. I will, however, track my weight and measurements on my own for the next 3 weeks to see how things go. I will keep my blog updated with my % body fat in case you are interested.

In other news...tomorrow starts a trial run at work for 4 10 hour shifts. I am very excited about this. My shift will now be 1230pm-11pm. It should not be too bad. I normally work 2pm-10:30pm so I am used to the morning being my time to get things done. Although my morning time to get things done is being reduced a bit, I will have a whole extra day off each week to get things done. I have one 3 day weekend a month, which I am really excited about.

Just like my 4x's a week gym schedule, this working 4 days a week at work is just a 3 week trial. We are testing it out to see if it works for everyone and to see if we can work out the kinks. I am very hopeful that it will work, but I am trying not to get my hopes up.

Enough already!

2009-07-31T13:05:00.000-05:00

There has been construction on the main road next to our house since the end of March. It is driving me insane.

It started off pretty slow, but it was annoying because it blocked off the quick way to our house right away. For 4 months I have bad to go way out of my way to get home. I have gotten used to the extra drive time so that is not as much of an issue anymore.

Their original anticipated finishing date was mid-july. Here we are about the begin august and they are still working. Once mid-july hit, they seemed to start working in high gear. I am not sure why they were not working at this speed the entire time. if they would have gotten after it at the start of things, they probably wouldn't be in such a hurry to get things done at the last minute (after their deadline).

This new hard working attitude has them starting to work at 7am. Before now, I wouldn't start hearing them work until 9 or 10 in the morning.

I don't have to be at work until 2 in the afternoons so I am not an early riser. It is pissing me off the be woken up by loud machinery and men yelling.

Finish this job...whatever it is (something with the sewer lines or drains or something). I want to go back to my normal sleeping schedule as well as my normal driving route.

Kthanxbai.

Sent on the Now Network� from my Sprint® BlackBerry

Ironic marriage.

2009-07-21T21:16:00.002-05:00

I saw this on a random blog that I follow. Two people with the exact same first and last name are getting married in the near future. That is just crazy to me.

I have searched facebook for people with the exact same name as me as well. Lynsey is an odd spelling, but I found it to be more common than I would have thought on Facebook. I never really did much with the names that came back to match mine. I certainly never would think that I could potentially find my soul mate, best friend, or anything of the sort during that search.

It's a very unique and ironic story. It's definitely worth checking out. :)

The long road.

2009-07-21T10:53:00.002-05:00

I haven't been a very good blogger lately. The summer is just flying by and I am trying to enjoy every minute of it. We have only had 1 weekend so far this summer where we have not had something planned. I managed to find something to plan for that free weekend. :)

Along with having plans every weekend of the summer, it seems that many of those plans are in Columbia (our hometown). That 2 hour drive is beginning to feel like a 4 or 6 hour drive. We are so sick of making the drive. This is just another reason why we cannot wait to move back to Columbia. It will happen someday...hopefully sooner rather than later.

Speaking of moving back to Columbia...Justin has an interview in Columbia tomorrow. If you've got some thoughts, prayers, vibes, crossed fingers, etc. please send them our way for some good news tomorrow.

This coming up weekend, we have Justin's grandparent's 50th wedding anniversary. It should be a good time spent with friends and family. I am looking forward to the party. His grandparents have no idea that we have sent invitations to all of their friends and family. They just think we are having lunch with the immediate family. I am excited to see how they react to the larger party that they don't know about. :)

I hope everyone is having a good summer. I will do my best to update this thing a bit more.

Ehhh.

2009-07-09T01:08:00.002-05:00

I have a new background. It is just kind of ehhh for me right now. I was getting incredibly tired with my old one so I wanted to make a quick change. It is currently 1:10 in the morning so I am not going to do much more searching at the time.

I don't really know what I am looking for, but it's not this or my last background. It might be time to hit up some kind of customized background. LJKC, I might be calling on you in the near future. :)

More to Love

2009-07-09T00:54:00.003-05:00

I just saw a commercial for a new Fox reality show called More to Love.

It seems to be a Bachelor type show (same creators) for "fluffy" people. A line in the synopsis actually says, "the unscripted series follows a single average guy with a big waist and an even bigger hear as he romances several confident and secure plus-size women..." Really??? Is it necessary to single out larger people to have their own show to find love? They can't do a mixture of all shapes and sizes to create one very dynamic reality show of the sort?

The synopsis continues on with adjectives like: curvy, full figured, husky, and plus-size. I would consider myself a fairly average sized woman and this still pisses me off. The whole concept is completely ridiculous to me. Small people can't love large people and vice versa??

Apparently this show is attempting to send a message that one should embrace his or her size. And to know that regardless of size, he/she can be loved. I am happy to say that I never had a closed mind when it came to a guy's size during my dating experiences. And this show is just closing the doors to all women who are not plus-sized (for this particular bachelor).

The whole concept just blows my mind. Do you have thoughts on the show? Am I way off the mark on my reaction to this show? Do you agree? Leave it in a comment.

This weekend.

2009-06-29T23:16:00.003-05:00

I cannot even being to tell you how excited I am for this weekend!! I have so much to look forward to...I cannot wait.

First of all, I am off on Friday so I have a short work week and a long weekend. That is always nice. It's too bad I have to use vacation time in order to have off on Friday. Oh well, it will be worth it.

When Justin gets off of work on Friday we will head home to Columbia. He will either be off the entire day or he will only have to work 0600-0900. Either way, we will be home about mid-day/early afternoon on Friday.

Friday evening my BFF, Katie, is coming to Columbia. I am super excited about that because since she has moved away I only see her about every 3 months or so.

Friday night we have a game night planned with my family and Justin's family. I am about the biggest fan of game nights ever. I love board games. My favorite right now is Apples to Apples. If you have never played, add it to your list of things to do in the near future. It is a blast. Game nights are always a good time...I am excited to have Katie join us for this one. :)

Saturday is 4th of July (duh!) aaaannnddd my mother-in-law's birthday (how cool is that??). I am pretty sure for as long as Justin and I have been dating, we have gone to his grandparent's for the 4th. They live on a private lake that is very fun. We will be going to their lake again this year. I am pretty excited for some time in the sun and on the water. I have all appendages crossed that it will not rain. That will definitely put a damper on my weekend.

Last year I brought a little concoction I like to call the Paint Can to your 4th of July/MIL's bday celebration. I believe I have started a new tradition. I definitely plan on bringing the ingredients to make 2 or 3 of these Saturday. They are great on a summer day. :) Plus, I love me some Vodka so that makes the paint can just as good for me.

Happy 4th of July to everyone! I hope your work week goes by quickly and that you have good weather for whatever you are doing to celebrate.

Hair

2009-06-24T17:45:00.000-05:00

I got my hair done today...for the first time in 4 months (gross roots!!). I decided I wanted something different. I pretty much do something different everytime. I have had just about every color in my hair except orange, blue, and green.

I decided I wanted blonde and a few streaks of purple. Well, this is what she gave me. It is still pretty shocking. She put way more purple than I really wanted. I would have liked to have more blonde than that. I am going to give it until monday before I decide if I really like it or not. I know some of the purple will wash out.

Sent on the Now Network� from my Sprint® BlackBerry

Happy Father's Day!

2009-06-21T14:43:00.003-05:00

Happy father's day to my dad and all the dads everywhere. :)

Here are some random pics of my dad (and some of us together) that I like.

Yum.

2009-06-19T11:01:00.003-05:00

I am always on the look out for quick and easy meals to take to work for dinner (I work the evening shift). I stumbled upon Healthy Choice Fresh Mixers and I have to say they are pretty darn good. They don't taste like cardboard like some of the frozen meals and other healthy meals that you can purchases basically pre-made.

The one I had yesterday was freaking awesome!! It was the Tuscany chicken. It was penne pasta with chicken in a creamy tomato sauce. I just checked the healthy choice website and they don't even have it listed on their website as an option. Weird. Anyway, I definitely recommend these little mixers if you are looking from something to take to work for lunch. They are about 300 calories with lots of protein and fiber.

1st place!!!

2009-06-14T16:09:00.002-05:00

We spent a bit of this weekend at the baseball fields. My little brother, rian, had a tournament.

He is quite the little ball player. He pitched about 2-3 innings each game. When he was not pitching, he played center field or 1st base. I think there were only a couple at bats that he did not get on base.

It was fun watching him play. And it was even better that they got first place. :) congrats to the 10u Columbia Starpath!!

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Garage sale.

2009-06-11T11:03:00.002-05:00

This is how I felt during my garage sale. :)

This past weekend I had my garage sale. I say I had my garage sale because Justin wanted nothing to do with it. He would rather throw stuff away and just donate it right away. He's got a great heart...buuuuuuut we could use the money. Even if it's not much, we could use it for our anniversary celebration.

I didn't start gathering and pricing things until Thursday morning. That was a mistake. I could have used much more time to go through all of our things. When we moved into our house in July we had tons of junk that we knew we needed to get rid of. Our plan was to have a garage sale, but we never found the time in the year of '08. We were pushing into the hottest days of the summer, so I decided this had to be the weekend. Plus, our neighborhood was having a neighborhood wide sale. Score!

I opened the sale at 6am on Friday (WTF was I thinking??). I don't think I had a customer until about 8. Great, I could have slept in a couple more hours. From 6a until 12p, I think I made $40. Woo-freaking-hoo. That was HARDLY worth the effort of digging through boxes, pricing items, waking up at 5:30am, and setting up tables and things.

I had the great idea to open it back up from 3p-6p to target the people that might want to shop on their way home from work. What a HORRIBLE idea. I had one customer who purchased items totalling $2. Blah.

Saturday was a new day and I thought more people would be out shopping on a Saturday. I was correct, but I thought they would be out MUCH more. I decided to open at 8 on Saturday instead of 6 since opening at 6 on Friday was pointless.

At noon on Saturday we counted the money and we had made a total of $100 for the weekend. And here I say we count the money and we had made a total of $100 because Justin was now interested in the sale when I was figuring out the earnings. $100 was good enough. I was done dealing with the sale.

We packed everything into boxes to take to Goodwill. We have 3 huge moving boxes full of stuff. A lot of it is clothes...apparently people don't buy clothes from a garage sale much. Oh well.

The good news is that the $100 paid for our comedy show tickets, movie tickets (to Hangover, HILARIOUS!!), and our drinks that we had after the comedy show. Not too bad.

Pics.

2009-06-08T11:11:00.003-05:00

Because I love looking at them, here are some wedding pics. They are a day late from our anniversary. Oh well.

If you don't want to look at pics then just skip this post because that's all it is. Otherwise, enjoy!! :)

My very HOT outfit before the wedding.

I heart this picture!!

My sexy groom.

So freakin' cute!!

Here we go.

The kiss that sealed the deal.

The girls.

The cutest kids EVER!

The guys.

Made it!

My favorite pic from our first dance. :)

A little line dancing.

Our awesome wedding party.

That's enough for today. Ahhh, I miss our wedding. :):)

Happy anniversary to us!

2009-06-07T22:01:00.004-05:00

Today is our 1 year wedding anniversary. I can't even believe that it has been an entire year. At this point last year we were having the time of our lives at our reception. Our wedding was amazing..really, it was.

Our anniversary weekend was every bit of amazing. After our piss poor excuse for a garage sale, we dropped Lucky off to be boarded. We made our way to the Legends at Village West...a shopping and entertainment area in Kansas City, KS. We checked into our hotel and went to dinner. We stuffed ourselves full and then had some time to kill before the comedy show. We walked around to a few shops and wasted some time before the show.

The comedy show was OK. We went to one last summer that was MUCH better than the show last night. We still got some good laughs in and a few drinks. After the show went sat on a patio and had a couple of drinks. We heard some good music coming from a bar next door so we went in to take a look. Although it was good music, it was incredibly too loud (maybe that's why we could hear it on the patio next door).

We decided to call it a night and head back to our hotel room. Without going into too many details, the room was awesome. It had a whirlpool and a fake fireplace (which was kind of odd). And let me just say that bubble bath and a whirlpool do not mix very well.

We got to use our toasting flutes again. We had a bottle of pink champagne...even though neither of us even like champagne. The top tier of our wedding cake is at Justin's mom's so we will eat that next weekend when we go home.

We slept late Sunday morning - so late that we missed the continental breakfast (damnit!). After we showered and check out of the room, we went to lunch at a BBQ restaurant. They had some amazing bloody mary's. Yum!

After lunch, we decided we wanted to go see a movie. We went to buy tickets only to find we were 15 minutes late for the show we wanted to see. We had 2 hours to kill so we hit up Dave and Busters for some fun in the arcade. For the record, I beat Justin 4/5 times playing pop a shot. That's usually how it goes. He did beat me 2/4 times at Trivia and 2/2 times at the horse derby. It was a fun way to waste some time.

Finally it was time for the movie. We saw Hangover....which was HILARIOUS!! I highly recommend it and I'm not even a movie person. After the movie we picked up our little girl from being boarded. She was so excited to see us, but very tired after a session in doggy day camp. As I type, she is passed out on the couch (as she has been for the last 4 hours).

Now that we are home, we have just been lounging around, watching movies, etc. It has been a relaxing day after a very awesome weekend of celebrating.

I will make a better wedding picture post tomorrow (when facebook will let me view all of them...because I am too lazy to plug in our external hard drive).

This time last year...

2009-06-07T10:55:00.001-05:00

At this time last year, I had just gotten my airbrush makeup done and was heading to the country club to start getting ready with the girls. It was my wedding day!!!!

This time this year, I am relaxing in a hotel room with my husband.

Although I am so much more relaxed today versus a year ago, I would definitely do my wedding over in a heartbeat.

Happy anniversary to us!! We have had a great celebration so far and an even better year of wedded bliss.

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Well looky there!

2009-06-04T22:11:00.001-05:00

I guess all I had to do was post about the problem I was having. I publish the post and click "view blog" and voila! It's updating again. I am not sure why there was a little lull, but it's all good in the hood now. :)

Huh??

2009-06-04T22:03:00.002-05:00

For some reason my blog roll (or whatever its called) to the right is not updated correctly. It should show newly updated blogs from the people that I follow. Well, it's not. It's stuck on about 2 days ago. It doesn't matter what computer I am checking from, it's not updating at all. Anyone have any ideas how to fix this?

Other news...

I have decided (VERY LAST MINUTE) to do a garage sale this weekend. We have wanted to do one since we moved in last July, but we didn't get a chance to before the end of garage sale season (is there such a thing?) last year. I wanted to do it this spring, but ran out of time. And here we are, the beginning of summer, and we are going to finally get it done. It will be open 6A to 12P and 3p-6p tomorrow and then again 6A to 12P on Saturday. I pretty much made this decision today that we would be having this sale. Turns out, it is our neighborhood garage sale this weekend. I guess it would help if we knew many of our neighbors. The last minuteness is no big deal because all things we wanted to get rid of have been sitting in boxes in our 3rd bedroom since we moved. All we had to do was put price tags on things and organize them on tables. No big deal. Now, ask me on Saturday afternoon if t was really no big deal. Whatever is not sold will be donated to Goodwill. And we have LOTS OF CRAP that we are selling. So if nothing else, Goodwill is going to be getting one heck of a donation.

And the big news of this weekend...IT'S OUR FIRST WEDDING ANNIVERSARY. I am super excited about that. I cannot even believe that it has been an entire year since our wedding. That is just nuts. I feel like it just happened - or never happened at all since the day went by so quickly. I will dedicate a whole post to our first year of wedded bliss some other time. We have a fun Saturday afternoon/evening planned...once the garage sale is over (ugh).

Happy weekend to everyone. Happy anniversary to us. And please send some good vibes our way in hopes that we make lots of money at our garage sale.

My grown up husband.

2009-06-01T11:51:00.003-05:00

I always thought that it would be me to become the grown up first. This weekend made me realize that Justin is beating me to it. :)

While I had a girl's game night on Friday and went the Royals game on Saturday - Justin stained our deck and painted our patio furniture.

And there is my random thought for the day. Happy Monday to everyone. It's a short week for me and our 1 year anniversary is on Sunday. Yay!

Let's try this again.

2009-05-31T15:41:00.002-05:00

Here are the instructions from Wikipedia to moose. Just ignore my first (intoxicated) post about the rules. :)

The players gather around the table and decide as to which side of the ice cube tray is the "give" side and which side is the "take" side. Usually the right side is the give side and the left side is the take side. In some variations, a cup of whatever alcohol that is being used is placed in the center for the ice cube tray to be placed against and rotate around. After this is decided and set up, players take turns trying to bounce the quarter into the ice cube tray.

When the quarter lands in the ice cube tray and it lands on the "give" side, then the player who bounced the quarter into the tray can distribute as many sips to any combination of other players as there are squares that were passed over by the quarter. When the quarter lands in the ice cube tray and it lands on the "take" side, then the player who bounced the quarter into the tray has to take as many sips as there are squares that were passed over by the quarter.

If the quarter lands in the furthest row (or last two squares on either the "give" or "take" side) every player has to put their hands to their heads, mimicking a moose's antlers, and yell "MOOSE." The last person to do so has to take the "main drink" (also known as moose cup). (Other variations include the person has to fill their drink and then empty it).

However, if a player yells "Moose!" prematurely when no one has made it in the cup, he or she must drink the bowl. If the quarter lands in the bowl on a players turn he or she must drink the bowl and lose a turn.

If the quarter lands on the ice cube tray but does not fall into a square, this is a social and everyone must take a drink. If the quarter ends up in any person's drink, the player that bounced the quarter has to finish that person's drink.

Sometimes, if there is a tie when players yell "MOOSE!", then players put their thumb onto the table. The last one to do so, drinks the main drink or moose cup.

Our variations: if you bounce the quarter into the cup at the end of the tray then you get to chose who drinks what's in that cup. And if the quarter lands on the tray but not in a slot then you make a rule. You can change the rules to your liking.

Oopsy!

2009-05-30T10:34:00.000-05:00

So my post last night was created while we were playing moose. I will edit that later to fix the instructions. Oops. :)

Either way, it's a fun game.

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Moose!!

2009-05-29T22:08:00.002-05:00

Have you ever played the drinking game moose?? Wow, lots 'o fun! And lots 'o drinkin'.

Get an ice cube tray. You bounce a quarter towards the tray. If the quarter lands on the left side of the tray, you take that many drinks (I.em 2 from you, you drink 2). If it lands on the right side, you take that many drinks.

If the quarter lands in the slot farthest from you, then you put your hands to your temple (making the motion of moose ears). The last person to do this, has to drink the partially filled cup of beer (or whatever it is partially filled with). If the quarter does not land in a slot, bit lands in the middle of the tray then you make a rule. If someone makes their quarter in the partially filled cup then that person makes someone else drink the cup full.

So there are the rules. Ask if you have questions. Have fun!!...we sure do. :):)

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My plans...

2009-05-28T12:38:00.001-05:00

These are my plans for the next couple of days in nutshell:

-cook dinner for tonight (doing now)
-work
-gym
-sleep

-clean the house
-work
-girls game night (!!!)
-sleep

-work around the house
-tailgate for royal's game
-royal's game
-sleep

-work

Seems like it will be a pretty good little weekend. Bed bath and beyond...if we have time. I just don't know. :)

Yay for short weeks!

Sent on the Now Network� from my Sprint® BlackBerry

Justin's birthday.

2009-05-26T12:13:00.002-05:00

Here is one of my promised posts....

I planned a surprise birthday party for Justin. It took place on May 9th which was a couple of days before his birthday. My grand plan was to have our family come to KC and have some friends surprise him as well. I wanted everyone to surprise him at the golf course. The guys would go play golf and the girls would do whatever to get ready for the rest of the day.

This plan sort of happened. Some of our family came. His parents and brothers were all there. My dad was not able to come because my brother had a baseball tournament. A couple of his friends who had planned on being there were not able to show up. So the only friend that was able to golf was Brian. That was fine. He was surprised none the less.

Justin and Brian.

There was one little snag in the plan about a week before everyone came. Justin was invited to a work BBQ and he was very excited about going. He is newly interested into meat smoking and this is what his coworker was doing so he wanted to be apart of that. I was very concerned that he would be disappointed that I had planned all of this and he would not be able to go to the BBQ. I made sure his coworker knew that he would not be coming. Luckily, Justin was not disappointed.

I had the family surprise him at our house since getting him to the golf course would have been impossible otherwise. The guys golfed and the girls went to lunch, did a little shopping, and prepared for the BBQ at our house. When the guys got done golfing they came home and BBQed. It was a fun night of a couple of drinks, rockband, Apples to Apples, friends, and family.