Almost In The Spirit

I have to be honest... I am not yet in the Christmas spirit. I have not yet located my Elvis Christmas CD, for one thing (a sure fire way to make me jolly!) For another thing, we did not put up our tree and decorations yet because we had a humdinger of a weekend. And because we are "scaling back," somewhat, to be make for a brighter 2011, I made the executive decision weeks ago to not send out any Christmas cards this year, simply because they can be so costly (if you get the nice ones, which I like to do). That's a bummer, because I love sending AND receiving Christmas cards. Well... it looks like I may have found a way! A friend alerted me to the fact that Shutterfly is offering a wonderful deal! In exchange for a blog post (which you are now reading) Shutterfly will give out 50 free Christmas cards! How wonderful! I know they will be very high-quality cards, because we used them last year when our card also served as a birth announcement for Isaac.

So here are my contenders:

This one is called "Retro Kaleidoscope."

This one is called "Vintage Noel." I think Chasen would pick this one.

This one is called "Scrapbook Style Blue."

I am super excited about this opportunity from Shutterfly! If you'd like to try for 50 free cards, click here. Good luck! Ho ho ho!

Birthday Review

I shared my 36th birthday with Thanksgiving this year. Older. Than. Dirt. *sigh*

I have been thinking about recent birthdays and the running-related gifts I have received from Chasen. When I turned 30, we were engaged, and he got me an awesome mp3 player. I was a gym rat at the time, and it came in soooo handy. By the time I was 32 I was training for my first marathon. He got me my beloved ipod. Oh the miles we've shared! Then at 34 when I was pregnant, he got me possibly the best gift ever: Teddy Tready! We have also shared many miles. We shared 8 just today! When I was 35 I received some awesome running sunglasses. Now, at 36, I received registration for the Cowtown Marathon and the "blessing" to head to Texas alone as Chasen keeps the home fires burning. YAY!

This was a pretty good week for running. On Tuesday I did 4 miles of pacework on Teddy Tready. On Wednesday I again used Teddy for an easy 3-miler. On Thursday I used Teddy for 4 miles of speedwork (different from pacework!) and thus ended my on-schedule week. Friday was a rest day, which was easy enough to accomplish. But Friday night brought a splitting headache which led to a bit of insomnia (when it rains, it pours) so I did not get up early on Saturday for my 8-miler. Then the day got away from me (and throw in a little bit of car trouble) and the next thing I knew I had a pain in my chest (right side) which Chasen diagnosed as gas. Huh? And Isaac was sick, also. So I went to bed not knowing if I'd even get to the 8-miler. I did, I did... Sunday afternoon. On Teddy, too. I think Teddy and I need some time apart in the coming week...

Ever since this past summer, my hips have given me fits. I described the pains to Chasen and he thought it was my hip flexor muscles. So he found me a workout online to strengthen them. Between those and the Hard CORE Club workouts, I am spending lots of time on the floor!

Six days from now Chasen will run the St. Jude Half Marathon. I am very, very excited to be his traveling cheerleader! I will have to plot my cheering spots soon so I can be properly placed around the streets of Memphis to cheer him on! This is quite a role reversal for us, but I think I am up to the challenge. :)

Back At It!

Once I made the decision to train for the Cowtown Marathon, of course I pondered how I'd train for it. With careful consideration I decided to use a plan from one of my favorite running books, as I have previously mentioned, but I altered it a bit to fit my lifestyle. It looks something like this:

Monday: rest
Tuesday: 6-8 mile pace workout (read: SPEED) either at the track or on the treadmill while Isaac is at Mother's Day Out (i.e. get it done early in the day)
Wednesday: 3-4 easy miles (probably with Isaac in our hilly neighborhood)
Thursday: 6-8 mile stride workout (read: SPEED) on the treadmill as Isaac naps OR on the treadmill after Isaac goes to bed
Friday: rest
Saturday: longrun
Sunday: 3 mile recovery run

I am liking this plan so far (of course I have only been doing it for a week). I have also decided to participate in the Hard CORE Club challenge. It's always something! It's always something with our house, also. So last night I finally figured out how I would display all of Isaac's artwork from Mother's Day Out:

Our kitchen is Isaac's very first art gallery! I used very small wire and mini-clothespins.

And here is Isaac's very first "school picture" from Mother's Day Out (taken one month ago).

I think rather than purchasing a bigger cork board to display my growing number of race bibs, I'll do my own "art gallery" in my home office. It's certainly the economic way to go!

Scared. To. Death.

Last night Isaac was eating some snacks in his high chair as I was prepping dinner right before we went to pick up Chasen from the airport. The next thing I knew, my rambunctious little boy had pushed himself backward and fell to the floor while strapped into the chair. Aaaaack! My first emotion, for a split second, was anger. He is always doing something! But then, of course, I got really scared. He was screaming and crying as I picked him up, unstrapped him, and checked him out. No blood!

After about a minute of calming him down, he quieted. And then he spent about the unhappiest 10 minutes of his whole 21 month old life. His head must have been hurting him soooo badly. Next thing I knew, he threw up. Uh oh! At that point I was focused on the mess. Yuck. We had to go to the airport and now I had to give him a bath. A few minutes later he was cleaned up and in PJ's. Off we went.

I do have some sense, so I made a call to the pediatrician's office (after hours, of course). The on-call nurse said he better go get checked out as throwing up after a head injury could mean a concussion. OMG! I did not know that. I was told where to go (an after-hours type place). I decided to call some pediatrician friends from church at home. The suspicion was backed up, yet I was told to go to a specific ER. Uh oh.

We picked up Chasen and off we went.

Here is Isaac trying to tear up the waiting room in his pajamas from Japan.

It didn't take them long to call us back at all. Yay! I just knew he was OK, but obviously it's better to be safe than sorry. Especially when the doc said he had seen several kids who seemed OK and then turned out to have concussions. Yikes!

First hospital bracelet since he was born. :(

The doc said he would indeed need a CT scan. I quickly asked if he would be sedated, because there was NO WAY my guy would lie still. He said no. Well, this ought to be interesting...

Chasen, Isaac in a peach hospital gown, and the good ole Cat in the Hat.

Getting his pulse/ox checked like a champ. By far the easiest part of the night!

Holding Isaac down for the CT scan was like something out of a horror movie. He squirmed so much that the first traumatic session wasn't good enough. So we had to go back for round two. Aye aye aye! That time the nurse tried to sort of tape his head down. No dice. We just had to put a death grip on him (face, hands, chest, legs). A nightmare. But better safe than sorry. The results were A-OK. Thank God!

Daddy, it's way past my bedtime and these people won't let me eat. Let's sneak out...

We got home at 10:45 PM. That is close to 4 hours past Isaac's bedtime. He slept well, and I was up early hawking over him just listening to him breathe. As the title of this post says, I was scared to death of what could have been. I definitely don't want to go to another ER for a long time!

Going To A Town Of Cows? Moo!

Better late than never, I'm back! Man oh man - getting the house all set up and settling into our new life in Southaven, MS did not happen overnight... but now we're all good. We are moving-box free now, including the garage. I personally went and recycled, over time, 91 moving boxes. Chasen took a bunch from the garage (and forgot to get me an exact count, that little devil!) and now we're good.

I battled a head cold / chest cold / sinus crap for over a week. Yuck. It happens. No running. Until one day last week, a month past Chicago, Isaac and I did a 3.25 mile walk around our new, very hilly neighborhood. And I do mean hilly!

To recap, I have the Mojo Loco Relay Race coming up in less than a month.


I am so excited to get to finally meet so many of my online running friends! Past this relay, I planned to work on strength training until I take the plunge this spring and attempt my first sprint triathlon! More on that to come...

So Friday night Chasen says to me "Why don't you go ahead and do another marathon?" Umm... because I hadn't planned on it due to the afore-mentioned timeline. With a bit of encouraging, I got really excited about doing another so quickly. We looked online and began targeting races within my timeline (about 3 months from now). I have one frequent flier free ticket still waiting on me, so I presumed that I could go anywhere I wanted. WRONG! I got all excited about going to Arizona and possibly getting to see Rio until I realized that the timing was not good for my miles. Ick. So I took about a half day to feel sorry for myself. :(

Then I dusted myself off and tried to pick a race solely based on where I could actually get to FOR FREE. Texas seemed to be an option. I narrowed three races down to one:

Does Fort Worth ever cross your mind?

Looks like I'll be heading to the Lone Star State for marathon number five! And now that I am back in training (as of this morning) I feel GREAT! I have picked a plan from a book I own (not Galloway - I only have 15 weeks to train, people!) and have modified it slightly (just the day of the longrun) to fit my lifestyle better. Away we go!

As we head into the Thanksgiving holiday, I'd just like to say that I am very thankful for this blog and all of the friends I have gained through blogging. I know people are blogging less and less these days thanks to social networking, but I do not intend to stop!

Is that Isaac in a dress? No, silly, it's ME! Chasen finally admitted that Isaac looks like me.

Happy running, everyone. Let's do this thing!

Thank Heaven For November

I am sitting here with a nice glass of malbec wondering where to even begin. In true Type A fashion, I'll just start from the beginning. I will try to recap my post-marathon October (a doozy of a three weeks).

As most of you know from my Facebook page, Chasen indeed made it home from Asia in one piece! Isaac and I went to the airport in plenty of time to be front and center for him to come out of the secured area.

In spite of the fact that I seem only interested in my juice, I can't wait to see my Daddy!

Reunited and it feels so good!

Oh it was sooooo nice to have Chasen home! While I feel that I did a bang-up job of holding the fort down while he was gone (and selling our house!), I would NOT want to do it full time.

Isaac models his new pajamas from Shanghai, China.

As I said, he sure was happy to see his Daddy!

The next two days we were super busy with a church project. We (Chasen and I) were to power wash an elderly lady's front deck and apply a sealer to it. Yours truly was doubled over in pain. A trip to the doc revealed that I had both a bladder infection and a calcium deficiency (thus too much painful stomach acid). Some meds fixed me right up!

Within a week's time, jet lagged Chasen and I were moving. No joke. Packing up, heading out. It took seven people four hours to move all of our "big stuff." Chasen and I had moved tons of boxes the day before. When it was all said and done, Chasen was so ill (cold/sinus/allergy type stuff) that we skipped church and went to the emergency clinic where he was given FOUR prescriptions. Ouch.

Next: Halloween week! Isaac and I attended two get-togethers in addition to the traditional trick-or-treating.

Mommy group Halloween party. These are my besties!

At another soiree, all Spidey wanted to do was play with sharp metal objects. Aye aye aye!

Oh yes, did I mention that we got to tour a fire station? Life is good. (and busy...)

Halloween night: Spidey and I painted the old neighborhood red!

Yes, I like candy... you got a problem with that?

As I type this we have been in the new house for 10 days. It would be in tip top shape IF we didn't have to lay some new flooring in the dining room and entryway. That project has totally consumed us, but we can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Beautiful Brazilian Koa engineered hardwoods.

We have to put down quarter round trim (which I was just out painting) and install thresholds, and then we can move in the furniture. DIY projects and toddlers do NOT mix... so we have been primarily working when Isaac goes to bed at night. We are oh so tired! And SORE. I am here to tell you... this has taken A LOT out of me. Much more than running a marathon. But I didn't train for this for months on end!

Needless to say, I am soooooo glad October is done. November will be a much, much calmer month. I haven't run a step since Chicago, but that is about to change. After all, I have the Mojo Loco in less than 6 weeks!

Thank you, dear friends, for keeping up with me! I am back in the saddle now.