Five on Friday

Linking up this week for Five on Friday

1.  It's HALLOWEEN!  We are heading over to friends to eat pizza, trick or treat and hang out for a bit.  It's gonna be cold, but lots o fun!

2. The 2 little's and I made monster cupcakes.  Scary stuff.

 

Can you even imagine sitting like Alayna?  Makes me knees quiver...

 

3.  Tomorrow night we have our annual Halloween bus with a ton of our friends.  It's a BLAST and this year we have a whole crew dressing up in Austin Powers characters.  

 Melissa and I are going to be the Japanese twins, and Mr. Zimmer is Austin Powers.  Oh my word, I CAN'T WAIT!

4.  I got a 6 mile run in last night which felt AWESOME!  Hoping to get a 5 miler in sometimes tomorrow.

5.  Is it sad that I am most looking forward to crappy Halloween candy???  Why do you think I got in a long run last night????

Have a fantastic (and safe) Halloween!

A Reminder

I was a bit cranky last week.  Cranky that I didn't get my mileage in for the week, which made me completely doubt that I will ever be able to successfully finish a marathon in 6 months.  Funny how warped our minds are...

I was seriously having a super fun pity party for myself which may have included chocolate, when I walked out back to sit on the patio and sulk.  That's when I saw this:

 

A perfectly beautiful purple petunia growing from our brick patio.  This was like a face smack from God.  Seeing this flower reminded me how something beautiful can come from the most unlikely places.  It *shouldn't* be growing from the patio, but because of perfect circumstances ( and hard work on the petunias end...I mean really!), it did.

This was enough for me to suck it up and quit my pity party.  I CAN and WILL finish the marathon.  Will it be easy?  Hell no.  The training is going to be hell, I might get injured, I might have to take time off of running for whatever reason.  But I CAN do this.  Amen.

One of my favorite quotes is: "Forget the reasons why it won't work, and believe the one reason why it will."

Linking to Fitness Blondie

Friday Randoms

It's Friday, it's FRIDAY!!!  Amazing how quickly these weeks fly by....

We've been doing our normal things, but wanted to share some pics from the last 2 weeks...

If you look reeaaallll close you will see our cat Maci on top of the wood pile (don't worry, that nasty looking shed will be coming down shortly), this cat CRACKS me up.  She is damn near human.  Yes, I may be a crazy cat lady, but she is my fourth kid.

Last weekend mousey and I made an apple pie with the pie filling I canned this year.  Complete yumminess.

Alayna made a toilet paper roll monster.  Scary.

And NO, this is not a Christmas tree, silly, it's a Halloween tree!  Brad had a minor flip out thinking I was putting up a Christmas tree....silly boy, doesn't he know that I wait until the week before Thanksgiving to put our Christmas stuff up...

 

Hope you all have a great weekend!

The "M" Word

Oh yes, the M word.  I almost don't want to say it out loud, for fear of jinxing myself, but here goes....

My goal is to run the Fargo Marathon in May of 2015.

I just started sweating after reading that...

It's a big goal, peeps.  One that is going to take up a LOT of my time (and money, haha).  But the good thing is that I have 7 months to prepare, which I feel very good about.  I have a book called "The Women's Running Book" ( and yes, Emma did actually ask what the book was about...) and have read it cover to cover.  It's my running bible!  I am following their training plan for now, which focuses on how long you run, not the mileage.  Right now my long run is an hour and a half, which is 8 miles for me.  It's so much easier mentally to look at my time instead of miles!   And after my long run, I enjoy a big ole salad.  This is in a mixing bowl, if you can't tell.  I told ya it's big.



In January I am going to hire a running coach to give me more of a personalized running schedule.  By then I will be ready to amp up my training.  She can also help me with my nutrition.  Honestly, that is where I struggle right now.  I eat very healthy, and I know what types of foods to eat to stay healthy.  However, adding in all those miles means you need more protein/fats, carbs and calories.  That is where I'm not sure....do I eat 60 grams of protein/day, or 120?  Carb load before a run or not?  Salt tablets?
I look forward to learning a lot from her.

Right now I run a total of 4 days/week and then mix in either a walk, bike ride or a pilates video on one of my off days.  I am really trying to incorporate strength training into my weeks too, need to beef these legs up if I'm going to run 26.2 miles.

So there's my life for the next 7 months.  Yowsa.  Pray for me.

  

Weekend

We had a really great, but BUSY weekend!  It started off with a volleyball tournament for Rachel, they played ok, ended up coming in 3rd place overall.  They didn't seem to have their "groove" though.  Alayna had a birthday party at 11 and thankfully she stayed there until the tournament was over with.  I may have pulled every piece of my hair out if she had to stay all day.  She was complaining after sitting for half an hour...

This is their game face.  Or maybe it was because they were pissed at how bad they had just played, haha...

After the tournament, Rachel asked if some of the girls could spend the night.  Why not?  Emma had a friend over too, so I had 8 girls spend the night.  What was I thinking??

In all honesty, the girls had a blast and they were so fun to listen to!

And if the girls were coming over, why not invite the parents to come over for supper, right??!!  I had 15 extra guests for supper.  I made a big batch of tacos, because it was taco day, of course!

Sunday we decided to hit up the nearby apple orchards where the fall festivals were happening.  It was cold and blustery, but we survived.  I was exhausted.  Not from having so many kids over, but from getting the crap beat out of me by Alayna.  She decided she needed to sleep with me since everyone else had friends over.  That kid is VIOLENT when she sleeps.  Not kidding.  I really thought my nose would be bruised...

Apple orchard fun!

Alayna got to do some pumpkin painting...

And she got to help lead the horses on the carriage ride...

We came home and all enjoyed a nap...but just know that Alayna was NOT tired and was NOT crabby...

Even Maci was exhausted.  I think the noise from the night before was too much...

Fleetwood Mac!

Tuesday night I got to rock out with my ALL TIME FAVE BAND!  We went with my mom and her husband to see Fleetwood Mac at Target Center and had a blast!  

Our seats were less than desirable....we were literally the LAST row on top!  The upside was that I didn't have to worry about people getting pissy because I am standing up dancing, haha!  IT'S A CONCERT PEOPLE!!

This is the 3rd time I've seen them, the other two times we had phenomenal seats, so I can't really complain too much...

This was the first time since 1998 that they were all together, and they were of course incredible!  

Can you seem them???  Ya, neither could I...

 

I did get a titch emotional at the end, thinking this is probably the last time I will see them.  I grew up listening to them, I have memories of listening to certain Fleetwood Mac songs while playing my toys in our living room when I was little.  I played their greatest hits album NONSTOP in high school.  I can recite word for word just about every song they have and have seen all the documentaries and specials about them and their history.

So ya, I kinda like em.  I even have a letter from Stevie Nicks fan club.  Just sayin.