No AM group run today.

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.

FAIL

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. :)

Accountability

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!

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.

Last long run

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! :)

St. Pat's 5k Race Recap

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

**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.

Back at it....

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*

Holy catch up!!

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.

STL Mardi Gras 2010

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.

Not the most accomplished weekend ever.

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. :)

Wait for it....

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!

Fab weekend.

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.

This weekend.

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.

1st place!!!

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!!

Sent on the Now Network� from my Sprint® BlackBerry

Garage sale.

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.

Happy anniversary to us!

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).

Huh??

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.

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!

Justin's birthday.

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.