Its not you...its me...its just...

we've grown apart.

If this blog were a relationship...I'd say its pretty much clear that its over. I mean...no posting in weeks...and I haven't even missed it. In fact, I can say, with pretty much every fiber of my being, that at least for the next little while, its going to feel really good to shed this blog thing. You hear that little blog...no more. We are done. Plus, I've found another blog that I like a little better (way less demanding) and I'm going to start seeing it...at least twice a month (see below).

Guys...I just can't keep up. Training for this marathon is tough with two girls. There are few days where I have any downtime and on those days, the last thing I care to do is blog. In fact...I feel bad about sitting down and resting. Normally those free moments are spent tweezing my eyebrows...making grocery lists...studying photography and cleaning up all of Layla stray fancy accessories that inevitably end up in my crawling 8 month old's mouth.

WHICH brings me to my most exciting point...I have been picking up some extra "responsibilities" (if I can even call them that because they are SO much fun) with Autumn Song. One of those responsibilities is going to be a bi-monthly guest post on their blog. SO if all two of you guys are REALLY REALLY missing me :-) you can find me at my new blog's home HERE. Yeah, me and this new blog totally moved in together. I know....seems early. But I think we'll be a great match.

As for my sweet girls. They are amazing. Layla is constantly teaching me...she is growing like crazy and is developing the most amazing little personality. She is one of the most logical thinking humans I have met...I am constantly impressed with her ability to use uniquely sound logic and reasoning. Adalei...sweet little Adalei. She is crawling...standing and cruising on furniture. She is saying "mama" which I LOVE...she's been saying it for about a month now, but during the past two weeks has started using it to "call" me. She laughs all the time. Those girls make my days extraordinary.

Finally, for those of you who read this blog and go to my home church--you probably think we have disappeared :-) WELL, we are actually working with an amazing team of men and women to plant a church in Winston-Salem. If you are interested...please take a few minutes to visit the website HERE....We are so excited about what God is doing in Winston Salem...and we are excited about the opportunity to get in and serve a community that we love so much! YAHOO.....

Adios...whew. That felt good...the de-cluttering process can be pretty stinking amazing :-)

Vacation is over...let the training begin

Sorry for the delay in posting...we just got back from an amazing family vacation and its been so difficult to get back in the swing of things.

So excited...this week marks the first week of marathon training season! YAHOO! Its finally here. I just love training hard and working towards a goal. I love seeing progress and conditioning my body to do incredible things. We have about 16 weeks until the Marine Corps on October 31st....and these next 16 weeks are going to be challenging. I think my biggest challenge is making sure I can train at a high level AND keep my milk supply up for my sweet little Adalei. I also have a precious little toddler who LOVES to run with mommy...well, she loves to be pushed in the stroller while mommy runs--which is fun during "off" season, but kind of difficult after training runs! She ends each run with the following, "good thing you have me as your running buddy, huh mommy?" "Am I the best running buddy ever?" and then "whew...that was a hard workout." My answer, "yes" "most definitely" and an exhausted "yes".

Dad and I had our first hill session on Monday. It poured down rain on us...but I've been fighting a cold, so the rain was nice enough to come and wash all the snot off my face so I wouldn't have to worry about it while sprinting up hills. Nice. The rest of the week includes a tempo run today...45 minutes at just below 10K pace, 6 mile pace run tomorrow and 13 mile long run on Friday...then a 4 mile recovery run Saturday and REST REST REST on Sunday.

In other running related news...

My dear friend Jessica is running her FIRST 5K this Saturday. I am so excited for her....I'm most excited about crossing that finish line with her. She is the mother of six...so even getting out the door to run is an accomplishment. I don't think I could be any more proud. Hopefully if I can get my silly little point and shoot camera to work, I can post some pictures!

my babies

SO...

As promised, here's the video of Adalei's military crawling skills. Over the past week, she's started pushing up on all fours, rocking back and forth...and then falling--but she's getting very close to really crawling! She is also getting two new teeth, which brings her total to FOUR.

She has a really yucky cold right now...she's doing just like Layla did with cutting teeth. Poor baby! When I went into her room this morning, her little nose was stuck to the sheet and snot had sealed both nostrils shut--except for a tiny little hole where she was getting the smallest amount of air in. She peeled her nose off the sheet and looked up at me...my heart broke for her...she just smiled at me...ear to ear grin and started reaching for my face to give me her morning kiss. She defines happy in every circumstance. That little one is incredible!

Untitled from Black Daffodil Films on Vimeo.

Layla...

Oh my goodness, that girl is as sweet as ever...challenging sometimes as we make our way through some awkward stages--but we are learning. We've had some really good moments and some not so pretty moments over the past few weeks. But she has the sweetest and most compassionate little heart--even during a toddler meltdowns.

Here's a short little video of her. She has these crazy big headphones. She decorated them with Hello Kitty stickers--because without the stickers, she insisted they were boy colors. Let me just say...she sometimes wears these headphones on grocery shopping trips. Yes. I am serious. She's funny....she definitely doesn't take herself too seriously! I think her daddy turns the music up too loud...but she says she likes it loud so she can sing. And, sing she does. Enjoy her rendition of Everything Glorious.

Untitled from Black Daffodil Films on Vimeo.

Scent of a Woman

So a good friend of mine...who works at The Dispatch and who walks at the track where I almost always finish up my runs, posed this very interesting question to me yesterday. I laughed out loud--especially when I thought of why these women may be doing what they are doing....

Why do women spray themselves with perfume before going out for a run? (I think he has found that it isn't a slight scent of perfume, rather a dousing of perfume)

I am sure there are a ton of reasons why that makes perfect sense to a lot of women. For me...there is only one reason. I have been known to wear the same running shirt/bra two or three days in a row. There. Its out. So in order to save those who I BLAZE by (ha!) from my trail of two day old sweat...I sometimes spray perfume on said shirt/bra. Sometimes. Rarely. Maybe I've done this twice (okay...maybe more than twice). I can hardly take it. Perfume makes me gag...I'd rather smell sweat...but I'm sure not everyone feels the same.

SO--I pose this question--anyone out there...do you spray before you run or workout?

QUICK little catch-up on sweet Adalei--

That girl is crawling...full on military crawl. And she's imitating sounds. Agh...they get big TOO fast. Breaks my heart. She's sometimes sleeping through the night (from 7pm to 7am) and sometimes waking up once at around 3:30 and then sometimes on more unfortunate nights :-) she wakes up twice--especially now that she's working on cutting her top two teeth!

I have some video of her I am waiting to upload and will post. She gets sweeter by the day. I think she takes after her big sister!

Bang for my buck

Apparently my words were offensive. The BIG gigantic zero in the comment box sends a clear message :-) Or, like I told myself last night....it could be that my husband did the offending. Yeah...I'll just throw him under the bus.

SO...here's something a little lighter. Okay...a lot lighter..but offensive all the same.

Edy's ice cream. What in the world is up with those folks. My first post ever...okay maybe second or tenth...was about the incredible shrinking Edy's ice cream. They really pulled the wool over my eyes by mysteriously shrinking the ice cream container. Passing off the smaller ice cream as the normal size without even a word. I compared it to turning in a research paper typed in Courier New rather than Times New Roman font--you know, giving the illusion that you typed 10 pages worth of stuff when really you just typed 7.

Well, surprise surprise. I was at the store last night and found the Edy's has now expanded the size of their ice cream BUT they are calling it a bonus buy....20% more free. Really. Boy, now I feel like a winner. I'm finally getting what I paid for. Sheesh.

I sure would like to be in the board room when they discuss these kind of marketing tactics. They must really thing the consumer is a dummy. I guess I am. I bought some. Yep. I did. And for a hot minute, I felt like a winner. Until I remembered that I didn't really find a bargain buy on ice cream. I was just finally getting what was normal two years ago. I finally out grew my mini-Edy's. Great. I feel for it.

The slow churned butter pecan was wonderful, by the way :-) The indigestion after realizing that I wasn't the bargain shopper I thought I was was terrible.

Just like ME

Jesus is just like ME....my buddy...my homeboy...He needs ME....

This is a way of thinking that has bothered me for quite some time now....this materialistic Jesus that wants us to have everything our upper middle class heart desires...this needy Jesus who really REALLY desires to be our friend and wants desperately to know us...this buddy Jesus who we can talk to like our BFF....this watered down Jesus that we take to unbelievers because He somehow seems easier to digest than the Jesus who commanded us to deny ourselves...to know the costs of following Him...to hate our fathers, mothers, spouses and children....to pick up our cross and follow Him.

I could go on forever. The short end of it is this...

I am deeply offended when the gospel is presented in a watered down form. When Jesus becomes our buddy...when its all the sudden okay to sin because He is our peer...its okay with Him because He understands and loves the mess out of us anyway. When its more about me than it is about God. The end result quickly becomes....ME. Sinning just hurts ME and prevents ME from receiving God's favor RATHER than sinning deeply offends a holy God....God loves ME....period...rather than God loves me so that I may make His name known. So in our attempts to make Jesus more marketable and easier to digest, we have somehow have managed to place ourselves at the center of the gospel.

And ultimately...don't ya think if the gospel really needed to be watered down to be digestible to unbelievers...if the intention was for Jesus to be our peer...that God would have spelled it out pretty clearly in the Bible. Just sayin.

While I am not going to go on at length...my sweet hubby did. You can tell that our time together over the past few weeks has been interesting. I love and am so very grateful that Neil and I can be passionate about our Lord together.

Anyway....check out his blog...HERE...and then you can come back to me and comment. I think. :-)

Lacin up my shoes

I feel like I should post today..its been a while...and unfortunately, I can't just leave my sweet little husbands wonderful accolades up forever. Though, it would be nice :-)

Currently, my head is so full of snot that I can barely think and my little family has been sick with a yucky cold virus so rest has not been abundant in my house. This will be a pretty brainless running post. I really REALLY wanted to do a post on some of the awesome things God is teaching me--but He deserves WAY more than part of my brain this morning.

SO...here goes.

Yes--I am still running even though I haven't talked about it in months. I'm still running about 40 miles a week--which includes a long run of about 12 miles and a 7 mile tempo run. Right now, dad and I are just "maintence running". Meaning, we aren't really picking up strength and distance training just yet. My next big race is October 31st--the Marine Corps Marathon. I'm hoping to qualify for Boston and am really looking forward to training hard and pushing myself. I miss hill workouts and speed work at the track. I am certain I'll be singing a different tune when June rolls around :-) Dad is so good--once I had Adalei, I was ready to jump right in and start hill work. Dad reminded me that I needed my fitness to peak on October 31st not June 1st. Minor details....minor details. Sometimes I remind myself of a bull in the pin just before the gate goes up at the rodeo.

What's even better...I am SERIOUSLY considering becoming a certified running coach and that excites the tar out of me. It would be a great way to make a little extra money AND be doing something that I love and get really excited about. Neil says he is going to force me to take the class and become certified--I guess he knows that there are a few--well founded in my opinion--reasons why I would back out (money for the class and two full days away from my sweet family and in a class room). So we'll see. I secretly think he wants me to take the class so that he can go to Birmingham with me and visit David Platt's church. I'm just saying.

So...the summer will be interesting. What will be SUPER interesting is how I keep up Adalei's milk supply while running my rear off. Bring on the chocolate milk and peanut butter sandwiches!

Okay--I'm off to blow my nose--or drill a hole in my head. I can't figure out which one would cause the least amount of pain at this point :-)