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