Race for Literacy Half Marathon

I decided that I wanted to try to run another half marathon before my full marathon in March.  Running has all of a sudden become so easy for me (not sure if it's the cooler weather or the paleo eating habits that I have adapted to).  The very first half marathon that I did was last April.  It was the Dismal Swamp Stomp in Chesapeake and I finished in 2hours 25 minutes and spent the afternoon throwing up.  The second half marathon I ran was this past August in Virginia Beach.  I finished in 2 hours and 21 minutes and still felt awful after I was finished running.  Third third half marathon that I ran was in Suffolk and it was called The Race for Literacy.  I am pleased and very excited to announce that I finished in 2 hours and 4 minutes!!!  I could not believe how much faster I had gotten.  The best part was that after I finished running I could talk normally and I was not really exhausted at all.  I also expected to be sore a day or two after the race, however I never got sore!  I was back at Body Pump the following Monday and back to running/training for the marathon on Tuesday.  It was a huge boost for me and makes me even more excited to tackle a full marathon!

Speaking of the Shamrock Marathon....it is only 3 months away!!  I have been training for a month now.  This past Sunday I ran my furthest distance (14 miles)  Next Sunday is 16 miles and then the following Sunday is 18 miles.  It seems almost impossible, but I am so determined!

Thank you so much for all the encouragement that many of you have given me.....it helps more than you know!

Thanksgiving

I am way behind on the blogs!!  I hate blogging with no pictures, however, I am always that person who has the camera at every event....I just never remember to take pictures!

Anyway, Jonathan and I had a wonderful Thanksgiving with family!  The night before Thanksgiving was spent with me cooking and getting the house cleaned for my family to come over for brunch on Thanksgiving morning.  Jonathan spent the night before Thanksgiving putting together the turkey fryer.  He was in charge of the turkey this year for his family's get together!

On Thanksgiving morning, I woke up at 5 am to do my morning run.  I had a race the following saturday, so I just did an easy 5 miles.  After I got home and showered, I began setting out and cooking all the food for the brunch.  The menu included chocolate covered strawberries, muffins, pancakes, bacon egg and cheese casserole, cinnamon rolls, and pilgrim hat cookies!  The food was delicious (special thanks to Laura for making the pancakes....I have no mastered that skill yet!!)  My parents, sister, aunt, uncle, and 3 cousins came over as well to celebrate with us.  It was a great time!!

After the brunch, I had to clean up real quick (again, thanks Laura!) and make some homemade macaroni and cheese for Jonathan's family lunch.  So, after stuffing my face that morning with breakfast, it was off to eat some more lunch!  We ate with Jonathan's family around 1:00.  Jonathan's turkey was AMAZING!!  I must admit I was a little nervous about him frying a turkey after we watched all of the you tube videos of turkey fryer fires!  He did a great job with it though, and he will be frying another turkey and a chicken for Christmas dinner!  The food at the Wetherington's was great and the fellowship was great as well!

Jonathan and I came home after a couple hours and took a short nap.  That night we went to the movies and saw Four Christmases (I highly recommend it by the way!)  Holidays are always so exhausting and they always seem to end so quick.  

We hope that you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving........and a somewhat relaxing Black Friday! 

Savings!!

It might be too late for some of you guys, but in case you didn't know, Harris Teeter and Bloom are both having triple coupon savings this weekend. I have been clipping coupons for several months now and have really enjoyed seeing how much money we save! This past Thursday night at Harris Teeter, we saved $30 from coupons! Amazing!
We were also able to eat dinner last night at Max and Erma's for $12.00 due to a coupon and we saw a movie for $12.00 from using super saver coupons. It all adds up!! Not to mention I filled up my Rodeo this morning for $22!! I LOVE saving money! :)
Moving on....
Jonathan and I are both thrilled that there is no traveling required of us this weekend. It seems that every weekend for the past month or so, we have been driving up to DC/Charlottesville for UVA games and Redskins games. They games are awesome..it's the drive home that is always so long!! We finally have a break this weekend!
Laura and I are running in a race this upcoming weekend. I am running a 10 mile race and Laura is doing a 5K. The race is at Fort Story. I enjoy doing races with her..it's nice to have somebody else there. I have also registered for antoher half marathon the weekend after Thanksgiving. I am so excited to run another half marathon because I feel like my time is going to be a good 10 minutes faster than my last time. Since my last race, I have been eating Paleo. I'm not sure if any of you are familiar with it or not, but basically you are supposed to eat only lean meats. fruits and vegetables.....no grains. I stick to it during the week...weekends I slide a little bit. I decided to get on this Paleo diet because it is supposed to incease your athletic stamina. Boy does it work!! The first week that I started on the diet, it was miserable. I was having bad headaches (probably due to the sugar withdrawl). But during week two , my speed in my runs had picked up remarkably. I have never been able to run so fast. I have also dropped 5lbs, so that helps as well. The half marathon will be a good way to see how I have improved. I also begin officially training for the full marathon in one week. I still cannot grasp the idea that I will ever be able to run 26.2 miles..it will be interesting! :)
Now, a quick house update...We were supposed to start last week, but it rained non stop. So, hopefully the weather will cooperate better this week. I will have pictures once there is some action on the lot!

Election Day!

Today is the day that many of us have been waiting for...Election Day!! Everybody has been saying the past couple days that you should get to the polls early to vote because the lines would be much worse later in the day. Well, I took the advice of these people....even after not getting back in town from the Washington Redskins game until 4:30 a.m. this morning. I slept for one hour and then woke up to go wait in line for......3.5 hours!!!! It was unbelievable.
I was scheduled to vote at Sparrow Road Intermediate. They had 4 computers running and only one check in computer working (the other one was already broken). Needless to say, the line did not move fast! I finally made it out of there around 9:45ish and made it to work around 10:00. What a morning!
Here is how I thought the morning would go in my head. I would wake up at the same time, go and maybe wait in line 30-45 minutes. Have time to go by Chick Fil A and get my free chicken biscuit for voting and then make it to work on time at 7:30. Boy was I wrong!!
At any rate, my vote has been placed.....and Jonathan and I went out tonight and took advantage of free Chick Fil A sandwiches and free Krispy Kreme Doughnuts...yum!!

Hallelujah Harvest

This past Friday night at our church was Hallelujah Harvest. This is a yearly event that our church has every year. They have horse rides, moon bounces, games, face painting, and trunk or treating! It's always so fun. I have volunteered to pass our candy at my trunk for the past 6 or 7 years. It is always so awesome to see the children dressed up in their costumes!

A lot of people decorate their trunks by theme. Jonathan and I have never really gone all out with the decorations (neither one of us are creative like that) but we had our football pumpkins out and we wore our Redskins gear. We even brough Einstein out with his Redskins bandana!

My sister in law Brittney decided to help us out at our trunk this year. She is an Eagle's fan, so to keep with the theme, she wore her Philadelphia Eagles jersey. She even brought her dog, Baxter, in an Eagles jersey as well!

The dogs were so well behaved and they were a huge hit with the kids...and their parents too!! Einstein was even caught shaking some of the children's hands :)

Some of you might be wondering why we did not bring Chubbs. Chubbs is scared of EVERYTHING!! When he gets scared, he gets defensive and mean. Therefore, we decided to leave him at home for the night. Before we left, Jonathan spent some one on one time with Chubbs and gave him a special bone to let him know we still love him! Well, when we got home, the bone was untouched.....Chubbs was mad at us!!!! We ended up putting Einstein to bed early and let Chubbs stay up with us. He was craving attention. Just like kids huh? :)

Friday night Auction

Thursday night, Jonathan and I were talking about our plans for the weekend. We were frustrated because there were no new movies in the theater that we were interested in seeing....Usually on friday nights, we do dinner and a movie.

Well, Thursday night I got an e mail from my dad that said that there is a surfer (pete smith) from virginia beach who was retiring and they were auctioning off some of his stuff that he has collected through the years. Now, you might wonder why we would be interested in going to this since neither Jonathan or I surf. Well, one of the items being auctioned off was a turtle shell from Costa Rica.

Let me back up just a bit. When Jonathan and I got married in 2007 in the Cayman Islands, we ate at a restaurant there. In this restaurant they had a HUGE turtle shell hanging up on the wall. Jonathan was fascinated by it right away (these turtle shells are beautiful!). He said that he wanted one, and was going to offer to buy the one right off the wall of the restaurant. When he talked to the waiter about the shell, he informed us that it is illegal for them to preserve the shells now. They are afraid that if people start demanding the turtle shells, then more and more people will be poaching the turtles to get them. They even have a turtle farm in the cayman islands where they just breed the turtles for food purposes....however, the shells all have to be grinded. After we heard this, we realized that it was unlikely that we would ever have an authentic turtle shell hanging on our wall.

Now, back to the auction. This guy had purchased his shell back in 1968, when it was still legal. Now he was auctioning it off....this will probably be Jonathan's only shot at ever owning one. When we got to the auction, the starting bid on the turtle shell was $1200 (silent auction). The shell was beautiful, however it had been cracked and you could see where it was replaced with some tape before it was polished up. Jonathan was a little upset at that, but figured he could probably get it fixed for a couple hundred dollars. We got to the auction at 7 and the auctions did not close until 10:30. So, after we ate dinner there we walked down to 31st street and had some coffee and desert at Starbucks. We decided to head back to the auction about 9:30. The bidding had gone up a little bit, and we had it narrowed down to the guy who was going to fighting for this turtle shell with jonathan. During the last couple minutes of the auction, Jonathan and his competition were just guarding this turtle shell. Jonathan, would write down a bit and right away the other guy would write down a higher bid. When the shell got up to $1750, Jonathan decided to stop. So needless to say, we came home without a turtle shell.....but Jonathan still had $1750 in his pocket :)

It ended up being a really fun night. I enjoyed the time that we had at starbucks to just sit and talk to each other in a quiet environment. I love my husband so much, and I always look forward to the time we get to spend together on the weekends!!

So, to end this blog...if you know of anyone trying to get rid of a turtle shell, let us know!! :)

Pumpkins-October 2008

This year for the fall festival at our church, Jonathan and I are going to have a football themed car for trunk or treating. Here are the pumpkins that I carved. We are hoping to out there in our Redskins gear....even Einstein! :) Should be a good time for all!

UVA/UNC Football Game-October 18

Jonathan and I had 4 tickets to the UVA/UNC football game this past weekend in Charlottesville. Jonathan and I go to several UVA games each year, and we have become big Cavalier fans! We decided to invite my parents along for this game as they are both UNC Tarheel fans. The bet was....loser pays for dinner!

We left around 10:00 that morning and got into Charlottesville around 1:00. We stopped at the University Grille (apparently the people in charlottesville don't like to eat at restaurants...this was the only place we could find after driving around for a good 20 minutes!) We had a crazy waitress who got half of the order wrong, but the food that we did get was pretty good!

We got to the stadium a good hour before the game started. We got to see it fill up! The game was pretty boring all up until the last 5 minutes of the fourth quarter. UNC was winning through the whole game and the cavaliers were just frustrating all of their fans! Well, something happened during the last 5 minutes of the game, and UVA scored a touchdown to tie the game 10-10. This means OT!! Jonathan was really excited because he has never seen an Overtime game in person. The stadium was going crazy!!!

UVA ended up scoring a touchdown in OT to win the game. Everybody rushed the field it was quite exciting! UVA's next home game is agains Miami on November 1 in Charlottesville. Jonathan and I will be there wearing our blue and orange with pride! :)

Fireproof

This is just a quick blog to recommend a movie.  Last night I went to see Fireproof with my mom, mother in law, and sister in law.  The movie was incredible!  I honestly went into it with low expectations since it is a low budget christian film....however at the end of it, I was most impressed!  So, if you have not seen this movie, Go see it!! :)

Team Hoyt VB-St. Mary's 5K run

This past Saturday morning, I ran in the St. mary's 5K run on Fort Story. I found out about this race after running the Rock and Roll Half Marathon, when I spoke with one of the other Team Hoyt runners. He told me that I should come out and push a disabled child during their next race (all of the pushers are local and push children from CHKD and St. Mary's Home for Disabled Children, so they can compete in the race). I had wanted to do this ever since I saw the Team Hoyt VB team at the CHKD run back in June (I think..??).
Anyway, after I got home that day, I contacted St. Mary's and that week I filled out all of the background check information that would allow me to push one of there precious children in this race.
As it got closer to race day, i had a lot of people ask me if I had ever ran with a jogging stroller before. I hadn't...I didn't think it was a big deal. However, everyone was telling me how much harder it is to run while pushing a child. I decided to practice with Addison, the little 20lb girl that I watch during the week. Well, pushing that extra 20 lbs was HARD!! I knew that the child I would be pushing in the race would be at least double her weight. I started getting a little nervous.
Race day came and when I got onto Fort Story, I was introduced to my child. Her name was Day Z (pronounced Daisy). She was very sweet and I talked to her for a bit before the race, but she didn't respond much. Well once we started the race and I began running, Day Z laughed the whole time!!! I felt so guilty for all of the times that I have looked at a mentally challenged or disabled child and thought that they had no clue what was going around them. This little girl laughing, inspired me the whole race! We finished about 30 minutes and it was awesome! It was such a wonderful experience and I am so thankful that I had the opportunity to take part in this wonderful cause.
Unfortunately, this was Team Hoyt's last race until the spring. I can't wait to get more involved with this wonderful group in the spring and get to know more of the children at St. Mary's.
I have tried posting pictures, but for some reason, it has not let me upload photos. I will try again soon...so check back!!

Go Redskins!!

Jonathan was lucky enough to purchase one season ticket to the Redskins games this season. His buddy purchased the other ticket. He had a friend who has had season tickets to the skins for 37 years, however had a bad year financially, so instead of getting rid of his season tickets all together, he them just for this season. For whatever reason, Jonathan's buddy couldn't go to the home opener this past Sunday, so I was able to go!

I was so excited. It was my first NFL game and it was amazing!! The seats we had were 17 rows from the endzone and we were right behind the goal post. You couldn't have asked for better seats! And the game was fantastic! The Redskins came back in the last couple minutes to win the game. I'm not sure if I'll be able to make it to anymore games this season, but I have a feeling that I am a Redskins fan now :)

Bulldogs......x 4!!

This past Friday and Saturday we offered to dogsit for our friends Morgan and Juan. They have two English Bulldogs named Tank and Gracie. Jonathan and I both love them (Chubbs and Einstein do too!!) so we were very excited to spend the two days with them. Here are some pictures from the weekend!!

This was the vision that I woke up to on Saturday morning when I went to wake the dogs up. Tank and Chubbs had both claimed a bed and seemed to be sleeping rather peacefully! :)

On Saturday morning jonathan and I decided to make the dogs scrambled eggs. The dogs sat in the kitchen and stared at me the whole time I was making them. Chubbs and Einstein had never had scrambled eggs before, however their buddy Tank gets them every saturday morning! Einstein loved them.....Chubbs, not so much! I don't think he ever swallowed one bite. All of the scrambled eggs were eating in a matter of seconds!

This picture is of Einstein after he devoured the eggs. You can see he still has a little piece above his right eye :)

Rock and Roll Half Marathon

After 4 months of training, it is finally over! This morning was my second half marathon. I am pleased to announce that I finished almost 5 minutes under my first half marathon time and that I kept everything down after this race! yay!! I still felt terrible right after the race, but that feeling went away after about 10 minutes of sitting down. This race was not any easier than the last one and I still do not know how I am going to do a marathon. My marathon, which is 26.2 miles, is in March. I begin training for that next week. I have decided to take a week off. BTW, I was able to wear my Garmin watch for this race...at the conclusion of the race, I had burned 1400 calories. Not bad huh? :)
Running with Team Hoyt was AMAZING!! I enjoyed getting to meet Dick and Rick Hoyt and many of the team memebers. I very excited about running some local races here with Team Hoyt VB and pushing disabled children from St. Mary's Home for Disabled Children. I will keep you updated on the progress of that.
Thanks for much for those of you who were always asking how training was going, or those of you who supported financially by donating to the Hoyt Foundation!!

Rita's Fanatics!

Jonathan and I are frequent visitors of Rita's Italian Ice. It is a place that serves custard and shaved ice in several different flavors. It is so good!! We just discovered it last summer. We have been lucky enough to have a Ritas about 3 miles from our current house.
Well, as I was doing my run a couple Sundays ago, i noticed that they are building a brand new Ritas in the shopping center almost directly behind where our new house is going to be! It is within walking distance and I think I will conveniently end my runs at the Ritas! Ha :) We were very excited, and figured that his lot must be meant to be for us to live there!!
Before I finish this blog, a quick update on our house. The lot has been completely cleared. We received the final drawing of the house plans this week, however we decided to change a couple things in the kitchen this weekend, so she will have to send us a new final copy this week. The next step is getting the plans submitted to the city. Once they are approved from the city we can start construction! yay!!

Swimming Bulldogs......and a swimming Boxer!

This is a video that I took of Einstein swimming for the first time with his life jacket on. He loves the water!! His Aunt Brittany worked with him. Towards the end of the night Einstein and Baxter (although mostly Baxter) were swimming to retreive sticks. They had a lot of fun!! All three dogs get along great, and going to Oak Grove Lake Park has become one of our favorite things to do!!

An Afternoon at the Lake

My sister in law had mentioned in passing last weekend about how her dog, Baxter, loved swimming in the water at a local park. After she had talked about it, we made plans to meet up there Sunday to let the dogs all go for a swim together. We weren't sure if we were going to make it happen due to the weather, but everything cleared up around 4:00 so we gave it a shot. The dogs had so much fun!! Chubbs has never been fond of getting wet past his ankles, but today he surprised us all and took off swimming! This was the first time that Einstein has been swimming and I am sad to report that......he did not have the coordination yet to swim. He kept trying to find the bottom of the lake with his feet, so he was sinking fast!!

For those of you who don't know, english bulldogs are not known for their swimming abilities. Because they are so top heavy, many of them have a problem with swimming (they sink) and many of them die from drowning. About a year ago, I took Chubbs to his first Bulldog Play Group at the peta dog park in norfolk. There is some water there for dogs to jump into. I noticed that all of the bulldog owners started pulling out these orange life jackets to put on their dogs. At this point I had not known that bulldogs could not swim. Needless to say after seeing one bulldog at the play group fall in the water....and sink, Chubbs and I made a stop at petsmart to get a life jacket. I still remember Jonathan's reaction when I told him that I was a buying a life jacket for our bulldog!! Ha!

Anyway, next time we go to the lake, the lifejacket will come back out and Einstein will get a chance to try it out. Just for kicks and giggles, I posted a picture of the very first time we put the life jacket on Chubbs. He HATED it and he did not move for 15 minutes...he stood in the middle of our living room completely frozen.

P.S. Because it was still sprinkling I left my camera in the car so I have no pictures of them swimming. The pictures posted are the boys on the way home from swimming. Next time I will have to get pictures and a video!

Marriage

Yesterday I asked a recently married woman, how she was enjoying married life. I was disappointed to hear the dullness in her voice as she said "it's okay...." I couldn't believe it.
I'm pretty sure when people ask me that question my face lights up. I cannot express to everyone enough how much I LOVE being married! I just wanted to take this time to express how much I love my husband and how much I love our life.
There was not a big adjustment period for us after marriage with the transition of moving in together. Everything has gone pretty smoothly. Even more recently with my change of my job/schedule I feel even better about our household as I am able to cook our own meals now and deep clean the house once a week on a regular basis. I have even gotten into clipping coupons every Sunday and we are saving a ton of money!!
I am lucky enough to have every Friday off from work. My fridays once a month are spent cooking about 20 meals. I freeze them for us to use for the whole month. It has made my life so much easier!
I am so thankful for my husband and I appreciate how hard he works to support and take care of me and our two bulldogs. I am thankful that we are in the position to have a brand new house in a couple of months. I am thankful for the similarities and the differences in Jonathan and my personalities as I think we compliment each other perfectly. I love my husband!! So next time you ask me how I am enjoying married life, be prepared to get a long happy answer along with a glowing smile! :)

Beach Appreciation

I was reminded this weekend just how lucky we are to leave so close to a beach! This morning I woke up at 5am to do my run (12 miles....which ended up being only 10 due to some blistering and shorts that I found out were too big!)
I was able to see the sunrise and several dolphins in the water. It was so beautiful!! I was so focused on the water during my whole run. I even saw a dolphin jump out of the water. I have never seen one do that in the wild. It was amazing!
I really enjoyed doing my long run on sunday mornings. Hopefully I can stick to that schedule for the next marathon. I was able to get the run out of the way first thing in the morning, still make it to church, and have the rest of the day to relax.
Back to the shorts issue....I bought some shorts on clearance at Tj Maxx. They were Nike shorts for only $10. I made the mistake of wearing them for the first time during a long run. Big mistake. A mile into my run they were sliding down my waist. I had to run the next 4 miles holding them up until I could get back to my car to get my hydration belt to help hold them up. I am also in the process of breaking in some new shoes, and my feet were blistering terribly this morning. It was a rough run, but I am able to do 10+ miles now with ease. I'm really looking forward to this race and finding out how much easier and enjoyable a race can be when you train properly :)

Sunset Cruisin'

Saturday night, Jonathan's parents invited us to go sailing for a sunset cruise. It was so nice!! We got to the marina about 7:00, ate Chick-Fil-A on the boat and then started sailing. The sunset was beautiful and the temperature was perfect! I was hoping to see some dolphins, but no such luck. Maybe next time! We sailed for a couple hours until we started to notice some lightning and decided that we should prepare for a storm and head back to the marina. We never received any rain....oh well! It was fun, and we cannot wait to do another sunset cruise. Next time hopefully the dolphins will show up! :)

This was the boat as it was leaning significantly...I must admit I was a little nervous and thought we were all going to get wet!
Brittany (my sister and law) and me
Beautiful Sunset!
Jonathan and me, afterwards

Rough Night for Chubbs

This morning, like always, I went to let the dogs outside. For those of you who don't know about our bulldogs, they are so spoiled!! We build an additional sunroom onto our house for them to sleep in. Chubbs is our "good" bulldog, so he gets the luxury of sleeping on an old couch in the sunroom. Einstein is our challenge and he cannot be trusted, so he sleeps inside a large crate. As I entered the sunroom, I found Chubbs like this....Looks like he had a rough night! We keep that sheet on the couch for him to lay on. Somehow Chubbs and the sheet fell off the couch in the middle of the night. :)

Cheesecake!

So, thanks for Katy, we found out that today (July 30th) The Cheesecake Factory was having a celebration and having all of their cheesecake slices selling for $1.50 today. Jonathan and I decided to give it a shot tonight. Somehow whenever we go to the Cheesecake Factory, we manage to walk right up to a vacant table in the bar area. That happened again to us tonight. The line was well out the door, we walked in and sat down right away. We decided that we would just eat dinner there as well. Jonathan had a chicken sandwich and I had a salad. The salad was $13, which I thought was ridiculous. Anyway, everybody was getting cheesecake. Jonathan had strawberry and I had Godiva chocolate. The cheesecake was fabulous!! We ended up having a $50 dinner, but we saved $8 on cheesecake Ha! :) Oh well, it was a fun experience!!

Clearfield Avenue

Many of you already know, but we are excited to announce that we will start building our new house very soon! We have purchased a lot on Clearfield Avenue and Jonathan (Wetherington Homes) will be building our home. We are both very excited, and cannot wait for the process to begin. Right now some of the trees have been cleared off the lot. We are waiting on our house plans to get finished being designed and then Jonathan will have to submit them to the city. We are probably about a month away from the building process. Here are some pictures of our lot....

Sick Bulldogs

We had quite an interesting week last week with our two bulldogs. It all started two sundays ago. Jonathan was outside playing ball with Chubbs and I was attempting to go on a run with Einstein (a failed attempt). When I got back to the house, we went ouside to join chubbs and jonathan. As Jonathan threw the ball for the last time, Chubbs went sliding to catch it and did something to his back leg. He came back limping terribly.

We decided to wait and see how it was in the morning before we took him to the vet. The next morning he was still limping, so Jonathan took him into the vet. They said that he had torn a ligament and it could be repaired with a $3,000 surgery! Needless to say, Jonathan was not game for that. He brought Chubbs home and we just waited it out. By the end of the night, he was no longer limping! It was a miracle........or it could've been the delicious pup cakes brought to him by his aunt laura or the fact that Einstein was spending the night at his friend, Tank's house).

We thought we were done with injuries for the week until Friday I noticed something shiny on Einstein's side. When I got closer, I realized that it was exposed flesh and somehow he had gotten poked by something outside. We took him into the vet that afternoon and he was given 4 staples. He had to keep them in for a week. We just got them removed yesterday.

Both bulldogs are doing fine now, and hopefully we are done with the vet for a while now.......