Moving on Up!

Just had to post that starting today, we start moving into the house! I'm so giddy! It's finally here and I can finally be happy about it! In fact, I'm actually up a whole hour earlier this morning because I'm so excited! I'll be moving, unpacking and cleaning all day today and tomorrow. On Monday we'll have all of the big stuff and whatever might be left taken over there. We are hoping to just be able to relax Monday evening once it's all in, even though I know there are going to be a lot more things to unpack as we go, I hope to get a huge chunk done by the end of the weekend and all of it done by the end of next week! Once we're all in, I'll post some pictures of the finished product on the inside. You saw what the outside looks like right now, but there won't be too much of a difference for a while until they get our yard grated, seeded, and straw laid down. Until next week, y'all have a great week!

P.S. As you can imagine, this week has not been the week for training, so next week everything starts right back up! Whoohoo! I'm so ready to get back to my schedule!

Picture Update

Andy had his first Fun Run of the year and did amazing! He did the route in 4 minutes flat and ended up in 3rd place. A lot of his friends were there and he was so excited. He had to get an update picture from the previous year of him and Griffin. I am so proud of him for shaving 33 seconds off of his time. Either he's getting more confident or his growth spurt really helped him out! Way to go Andy! We love you and are proud of you!

My birthday weekend I chose to have a cookout with my parents Friday evening and then on Saturday spend a couple of hours at the Minnetrista Cultural Center in Muncie, IN with my boys, all three of them, so we could go check out Andy's art entry into the show. He made the oil pastel painting above and named it Saturn Earth Galaxy. He did amazing, huh?

We found out that we are doing our final walk through on Wednesday this week and then we should be able to finally move some stuff in starting Friday afternoon. Yipee! This is Jared's weekend to work, so I'll be taking box loads over to the house with a few people helping me and then unpacking a lot of it over the weekend and getting things ready for Monday evening's final move. YES! I cannot believe it's finally here. I have a super busy week ahead of me with finishing up Andy's schooling, packing, cleaning, etc. but it will totally be worth it all!

White River Run: Race #2

Today's race was amazing! I invited my Mom to come along and join me and we did awesome! I cut my time down by a whopping 18 minutes! Can you believe it?! My finishing time was 57:11, yep that's right, I'm finally under an hour! I was worried coming into this race because my workouts this week were terrible. By the time Thursday came, I could barely do two miles. Maybe it was my body's way of helping me reserve my energy for today, who knows, all I know is that I was way excited for my Mom to be part of this. Did I mention that she was sick with a bad respiratory infection, this was her first race, AND she should've had a faster time than me but kept coming back to be with me. She is amazing and I'm so proud of what we both accomplished today! Can't wait until the next race, which is next month on the 16th.

P.S. Mom and I actually jogged a tiny bit of this race & placed in our age group, I got third out of three and Mom got second out of two, hey, we finished, that's all that matters!

Updated Race List:

4/7/2012 DINO Run 5k  1:15:18

05/12/2012 White River Run 5k 57:11

06/16/2012 Pink Ribbon Rush 5k      

07/04/2012 Chesterfield Optimist 5k  

09/08/2012 Walk IN - 13.1 Walk

09/29/2012 Soles to Souls 5k

10/20/2012 Indianpolis Half Marathon

11/22/2012 Thanksgiving Day Run

Head Full of Doubt

Here lately I've been doubting myself on whether or not I can pull this off, ya know the whole couch to running lifestyle. I'm definitely not perfect at it and I have a long way to go both physically and mentally. Whenever I do have a lot of doubt in my mind, I always turn to this song, it really speaks to me. It's written and performed by the Avett Brothers, who right now are one of my all time favorite bands. Here are the lyrics to the song if you're interested:

                                             Head Full Of Doubt / Road Full Of Promise

There's a darkness upon me that's flooded in light
In the fine print they tell me what's wrong and what's right
And it comes in black and it comes in white
And I'm frightened by those that don't see it

When nothing is owed or deserved or expected
And your life doesn't change by the man that's elected
If you're loved by someone, you're never rejected
Decide what to be and go be it

There was a dream and one day I could see it
Like a bird in a cage I broke in and demanded that somebody free it
And there was a kid with a head full of doubt
So I'll scream til I die and the last of those bad thoughts are finally out

There's a darkness upon you that's flooded in light
And in the fine print they tell you what's wrong and what's right
And it flies by day and it flies by night
And I'm frightened by those that don't see it

There was a dream and one day I could see it
Like a bird in a cage I broke in and demanded that somebody free it
And there was a kid with a head full of doubt
So I'll scream til I die and the last of those bad thoughts are finally out

There was a dream and one day I could see it
Like a bird in a cage I broke in and demanded that somebody free it
And there was a kid with a head full of doubt
So I'll scream til I die and the last of those bad thoughts are finally out

There's a darkness upon me that's flooded in light
In the fine print they tell me what's wrong and what's right
There's a darkness upon me that's flooded in light
And I'm frightened by those that don't see it

The lyrics, when you look at them are very powerful. I especially love the motto, "Decide what to be and go be it." It can apply to many aspects of our lives, motherhood/fatherhood, our careers, our dreams, our callings in church and life, etc. It makes me remember that hey, I want to be a runner but there are steps I have to take to be it and slowly I'm getting there and one day I will be there. I had a thought today during my 3.2 mile walk, when Jared and I were first married I was running 45 minutes a day, which to me was at least 3 miles a day. Next year in 2013, we will have been married for 10 years (yikes it goes fast!) and I thought to myself, how wonderful would it be to say that 10 years later that I can again run 3 miles a day? So, that's my ultimate goal is to be able to run 3 miles a day easy by the time I hit my 10 year anniversary. That gives me a year and 7 months and then some to get my big bootie into gear. I'm well on my my way, but this is where I want to be. 

Updated Race List

4/7/2012 DINO Run 5k  1:15:18

05/12/2012 White River Run 5k   (w/my Momma!)

06/16/2012 Pink Ribbon Rush 5k      

07/04/2012 Chesterfield Optimist 5k  

09/08/2012 Walk IN - 13.1 Walk

09/29/2012 Soles to Souls 5k

10/20/2012 Indianpolis Half Marathon

11/22/2012 Thanksgiving Day Run

I was so sad to see that two of my races that I was greatly looking forward to are going to be on Sunday, the one I especially wanted was the Run the Mounds race at the same place that my first race of the year was held. I was looking forward to redoing the race to see what my time could actually be after quite a few months of improvement! I guess I'll just have to wait until the Mounds run next year to see what my improvement will be! I have added a couple of really big races to my list as you can see. The first one is an actual walk that is a half marathon. What's nice is the that race organizers have actually put together a 14 week training program for it, which is incredibly easy to follow and definitely doable for me. I cannot wait!

13.1

Yep. You guessed it, I'm going to do a half marathon, but mine is going to be a walk half marathon on September 2nd. I thought it would be a great way to challenge myself during one of the months that I don't have a lot going on as far as races. This is the training schedule, which is totally doable and this is their website if you're interested. They're having a full marathon, which I really, really want to try and do, but I don't know that I'll be ready for it or not, so I'll play it safe, do the half and go from there. 

The Number 10

You might wonder what the title of the post means. Oh, nothing but 10 minutes shaved off of my 5k time! I'm sure it's not a real representation of just how much faster I've gotten since the first 5k that I did since it had steep hills, lots of stairs and was just plain rugged, but it was still a 5k and I still just did it in 10 minutes less than what I did at Mounds! Yay me! Just had to put that out there. Sorry, you don't get any pics, no showy graphics, etc. Just me and my words! I feel great tonight!

3.14 in 1:05--4/24/12

Happy Birthday to Me!!

This definitely wasn't on the list of things that I had to have for my birthday in a couple of weeks, but it ended up being something that I got and I'm so grateful for my wonderful husband in buying this for us! We had been searching high and low for a few months for the perfect rental and thought we had found it a couple of times, but it always fell through. We even looked at places we knew we didn't want because we felt desperate. Those places were tiny, like 900 square feet for 4 people and having the washer and dryer in the kitchen next to the stove and refrigerator for close to the same amount we'll pay for a house. When we saw the ad on Craigslist we thought that it had to be too good to be true, but when we sat down to talk, it actually worked out in our favor. What's even more wonderful is that another young family in the branch lives in the same neighborhood, so Rhys will have a little friend to play with here and there! We move into the house in mid-May. I cannot wait to show off the finished results.

Easter 2012 In Pictures

 

 Easter weekend started out with an Easter Egg Hunt at my grandma's house (Mom Mom's). All of the Davis cousins were there except little Taylor (we missed you buddy)! It was a lot of fun because this was the first year that Andy sort of went on his own to find stuff and the first year Rhys actually knew what was going on. I "hired" my cousin Mollie to do the pics for once so I could relax and have fun with my boys. Jared had to work third shift, so he missed out on the festivities.

 Look at that excitement in Rhys' face!! He knew everyone was running, but not really what for. NOT a good pic of me, but that's not what counts, right?

 Andy was able to find a lot of candy, most of which he had eaten within a couple of days!

 Rhys got to ride on Pappy's new tractor while we were there and he loved it. I caught him just as he was about to get down off of there.

 It was so late on Saturday, but we still had to color eggs. We quickly did it and got into bed. Andy did most of the coloring on his own this year, Rhys didn't quite understand what was going on. He just wanted to try and play in the water.

 Don't mind the clutter! 

 The Easter Bunny ate the carrot chips and drank the bunny milk AND left some eggs on the plate for us!!

 Isn't he just the most handsome boy there is?! He is so photogenic! 

 This kid, won't even look at the camera. Can you tell that I haven't trained him enough yet? Andy was a pro at this by his age, I have to get on the ball!!

I got a quick one while he was looking at his Jammy after church. This is as close as I get to an actual portrait that able to be put up on the wall!

This was about the best picture I got of them in their matching outfits. Kind of an odd picture of both of them, but hey, what are you going to do, right?

DINO Run: Race 1

Today was the first race for me and boy I really could feel it. On a whim last week I decided to sign up for this one, even though I knew I'd definitely be walking the whole thing. I showed up this morning, got my number, which is 54, and pinned it on. I had quite a bit of time beforehand and so I thought I'd walk around, get the blood flowing. I saw a lady with a Mackinac Island shirt and commented on it as she was going into the building where sign ups were. I think I threw her off, but I thought it was interesting because well, I had a a Mackinaw City hat on, or maybe it's the island on there, I can't remember, but either way, thought it was interesting. About 15 minutes later as I was starting to stretch, she comes back up to me and asked if I were the one who said something about her shirt. Of course it was me and we started to talk. She was from Muncie, has a friend who lives on the island, she used to train on the island, so we were starting to get along fairly well. She had me all pumped up for this race, so much so that at the start at 9:10, I started to jog, which for me isn't a good idea to do. I didn't jog long, but got through the out and back part in the grass and entered the woods.

The first mile wasn't so bad, just like normal walking trails. Just before mile 2, things started to pick up, the hills started to get rougher and more rugged, the stairs hit us and I was starting to get tired. At this point, mile 2, I kept saying to myself, "What the heck was I thinking?! Seriously, a trail run for my first 5k?!" I could barely walk it and was starting to get passed by the 15k-ers. They were amazing! I couldn't believe how well they were doing and they had to do 3x's the distance I was doing! The first two flew by me so quickly! The second mile was hard, I won't say that, some of the hills were crazy to climb, but I got through them, then mile three and just after that the worst part of the race...the boardwalk! If anyone has ever been out there at Mounds State Park and has seen the larger staircase that's closer to the clubhouse, you'll know what I'm talking about. 80 2ft. tall stairs! Steep stairs! I got up two of the flights and I wasn't sure I could make it.

I got about at the third flight, huffing and puffing and guess what!?! My new friend from Muncie was at the top off to the side of the stairs rooting me on! She made a world of difference for me! I still get emotional over it because she was there and there were others along the way who pushed me and encouraged me and made me feel so good about what I was doing. At the top of the horrible staircase, was the last little bit of the trail. I was so dog tired by the time I got there, that the last little bit seemed horrible and so long! I got up to the finish line area, they announced my name and where I was from and wha-la! It was done. I finished with a walking time of 1hr 15min 38sec, which was so much faster than what I thought it would be. I was thinking it'd take me at least another 15 more minutes! I know now that after this 5k, there is no way I can't finish the rest of the ones I'm doing! I had so much support today and I'm so grateful for the guts to get out there and do it! So what if I was last in the 5k, so what if my time was longer than some of the 15k-ers, you know what, I finished and that's ALL that matters! Time to get ready for May 12!

New Outlet

I have a new outlet that I really want to start putting energy toward. I am going to start training to run. I am going to start out slowly and work my way up. I think I want to join the Anderson Road Runners Club this year, which means I have to do a total of 6 Road Runners race series, so I might end up with more events than this.

I really want to get myself back in shape. When Jared and I first got married I was running 3 miles a day, no problem! I can't wait to be able to do this easily again. Next year will be a more adventurous year. There's a couple of sprint triathlons I'd like to prepare for and a paddle/run that I'd love to be able to do too. Heck, maybe I'll even find a Tough Mudder event or something similar to it.

Actually, here's a list of races I think I would like to try this year. They are all part of the Road Series:

Date of Race & Name	Location
4/7/2012 DINO Run 5k  *Will probably walk most of this ______________________________ 5/12/2012 White River Run 5k  *will probably walk this one	Anderson, IN *REGISTERED* ______________________________ Anderson, IN *REGISTERED*
6/16/2012 Pink Ribbon Rush 5k   *will probably run/walk	New Castle, IN *REGISTERED*
7/4/2012 Chesterfield Optimist 5k  *hope to run whole thing	Chesterfield, IN *REGISTERED*
9/29/2012 Soles to Souls	Muncie, IN
11/4/2012 Run the Mounds  *I'm excited about this one	Anderson, IN
11/22/2012 Thanksgiving Day Run  *starting new tradition for me	Anderson, IN
12/2/2012 Kris Kringle	Anderson, IN