It’s Race Week…

In 6 days, I’ll be running a half-marathon PREGNANT! Am I excited? You bet! After missing out on the full marathon in March and getting pregnant in April, I thought I would miss out on racing in 2011 (with the exception of the Virginia is for Lovers 14k in February). I was able to start “training” again on April 18th. This consisted of walking fast.  Little did I know, I was pregnant already.  About a month later, I was able to start “running” again.  One minute of running. Five minutes. of walking. Repeat.  At this point, I knew I was pregnant.  I was incredibly nervous that the doctors were going to tell me that I needed to avoid running during my pregnancy since I was on a 12 week running vacation when I got pregnant.

After a visit to the doctor, I was given the thumbs up to continue with my training plan since I had been consistantly running for over 2 years.

I need to be aware of my body. I need to hydrate A LOT. I need to take walk breaks. I need to run slower.

I will take whatever I can get.  I’m just so happy to be running.

3 months of very casual training, and I feel more than ready for the half-marathon on Sunday. I won’t be setting a new PR on Sunday. I won’t be passing too many people on the course. I’ll be starting in the back of the pack (corral #16). What I am doing is finishing a race and that is more than enough for me.  I’m guessing my finish time with be somewhere around the 3 hour mark. (I’m secretly hoping for a sub 3 hour finish, but I’ll take whatever I can get. Trust me. I’ll be just has happy with 3:10 as I will be with 2:59.)

Every race has a different story for me. Each race develops a personality over the course of training and over the race course.

Shamrock 1/2 Marathon 2010 – my first race.  I proved to myself I could do it.

Rock n Roll 1/2 Marathon 2010 – my first race without proper training. It was an incredibly emotional race for me (more on that later this week). This race was about overcoming and processing emotions.

Richmond 1/2 Marathon  2010 – A new PR on a Hilly course. Not too shabby for a girl from FLAT Virginia Beach.  This race inspired bigger goals. Get Faster. Run a Full.

Surfin Santa 10 mile 2010 – Finished with a 10:00 mile pace exactly. Getting faster!

Virginia is for Lovers 14k 2011 – Finished with a 9:55 mile pace. I learned to always carry my own water no mater what!

Shamrock Full Marathon – I didn’t run (Stress fracture after 18 mile training run). I learned to be a spectator during this race. I fell in love with running even more by cheering on everyone as they ran by. I learned that running is something I HAVE to do for the rest of my life. I learned to appreciate my body and the sport that I love. I was inspired. I learned to appreciate every spectator at each running event. I became more thankful for my family and their support. This was the race that turned my flirtation with running into a marriage. I was committed.

And now the Rock n Roll 1/2 Marathon 2012 – While I haven’t run the race yet, I can tell you this… By running through my pregnancy, I have become rooted and connected to my body, my baby, and running in a way that I can’t describe. After every run, I take a moment to say thank you to my body and my baby for allowing me to run another day and another mile. While I can’t predict what will happen on race day, I already know there will be A LOT of tears that day. The Rock n Roll half is turning into my emotional run each year.

6 more days! I have a 6-mile run I’d like to complete this week and two 2-mile runs. This week is about eating clean and staying healthy!

Somebody pinch me. I’m still a little bit in shock that I will running a half-marathon PREGNANT! When the seed of hope was planted in my brain over 20 weeks ago, I was never convinced it would really happen.  6 more days and I can check this very lofty goal of my list! Run a half-marathon during my pregnancy. Almost done!

Rock n Roll 2010 Finish

I finally treated myself to the new running shorts reward from my last 40 day goal challenge except I didn’t buy shorts. I bought a running skirt. I’ve avoided this trend.  Christian suggested I try one to accommodate and comfort my pregnant body, so I did. And I’m in LOVE! Anyone else run in running skirts? I seriously might wear it every day until Mister Moo arrives!

My new Nike Run Skirt

Lucky to be back to normal

Fortunately for us, we made it through Hurricane Irene with only a few bumps and bruises.  We lost power for about 12 hours. A large tree branch fell on my car and smashed my windshield.  We have a days worth of clean-up around our house.  Nothing happened that can’t be fixed, replaced, or neatly stacked along the roadside curb for trash removal.

Most of us are very fortunate, but my heart goes out to those people who were not.  A 11-year-old boy lost his life. Two other people lost their lives in Virginia. Several other lives were lost in other states.  A tornado touched down in Sandbridge Beach and destroyed entire family homes.  Since this is my blog, I’m going to take a few moments to say…..

It makes me sad to see all the people who are mocking the strength of the storm. It makes me sad to hear all the people who are saying it wasn’t anything bad. It makes me sad to hear all the people who are saying the news hyped up another event. It makes me sad to see people post funny pictures about their definition of storm damage. It makes my heart sad that they can’t recognize that they are fortunate and respect the loss of those around them.

WE ARE ALL VERY LUCKY!

A mom lost her son. Families lost their siblings, son, daughters, parents. Friends lost friends. Families are left without a home.

It makes me sad that we as people who live and share this planet can’t step outside of the bubble that is their world to show compassion and respect for the loss another individual might be feeling.

For us, in our household, we are back to life as normal. We spent Friday and Saturday night camping out in our living room.  We got to spend simple quality family time together while we anxiously awaited the impact of the storm. We are lucky!

My boys enjoying game time by lattern light

 

Preparing for the storm…

After our fun little earthquake on Tuesday, I’ve decided that we should probably prepare for the big hurricane that is headed our way.  The forecast is looking worse as the day progresses. Right now it’s tracked to follow the “worst case scenario” route straight into Virginia Beach. Growing up on the east coast, in a beach town, has definitely made me desensitized to hurricane warnings.  The news talks about it too much. 99% of the time we end up with some wind and a lot of rain. This time I think I better paying attention.

We are located at the bottom east corner of Virginia (near the North Carolina border)

Maybe it’s because I’m pregnant and a mom or maybe it’s because we own our house, but I’m definitely nervous about the rain and wind. We have at least a dozen trees in our yard that are over 100 feet all.  Branches fall off all the time during thunderstorms. We live less than a 1/2 mile from the Lynnhaven River that is affected by the tide every day. Trees falling. Flooding. All of it makes me anxious. I can deal with power outages, just please let all the trees and water stay away from my house.

As of right now, we are stocking up on water and groceries in case we loss power and safe drinking water. I’m going for my long run tomorrow instead of this weekend. (Yes! Getting my run in makes the cut for preparing for the hurricane. I don’t know if that is sad and pathetic or great, but it’s a part of my brain process). We are pulling out our camping gear – flash lights, head lamps, and lanterns. We will all be sleeping in the living room Saturday night. If the eye of the storm is supposed to hit Virginia Beach early Sunday AM, Cole is not sleeping down the hall from us. I’d prefer us to all be in one room together. I’ll be dusting off all the board games and puzzles just in case we are stuck staring at each other for hours (preferably not days) without power.  Everything from outside is getting moved into the garage.

To say I’m a little anxious is definitely an understatement.  To make matters worse, I work for the City of Virginia Beach. I’m sure you can imagine the buzz around here the past few days.  The hurricane is the topic of every conversation from personal to business. As of right now, I’m anxiously awaiting the decisions made by our City Manager about closings. I have dozens of contracted employees who work under contracts that I write and oversee. I’d love to tell them to stay home this weekend and stay safe. I really don’t like not having answers to give to people.

Until the storm hits, we will sit and wait……

(Confession: I’m secretly relieved that the storm is this weekend and not next. That would have interfered with the Rock n Roll half marathon)

There is a crib in our house!

One step closer to be ready for Mister Moo. We now have a crib in his bedroom!

As soon as I found out I was pregnant, I instantly starting looking at cribs and crib bedding. First you must understand that I do not like to shop. I prefer to get in and get out. I don’t like to try on clothes. I am definitely not going to spend a few hours shopping in a mall. It’s just not my thing. I even ordered my wedding dress online.

I was VERY worried that I would have a hard time finding a crib and crib bedding. One look at the Land of Nod magazine that arrived in my mailbox was all it took to pick out my crib bedding. It was a no brainer. I was sold.  From there, the theme of our baby nursery just fell into place. So easy. So not stressful. Exactly like I like it. We are building our baby nursery around the 5 elements – Space, Air, Water, Earth and Fire – the building blocks of our world. (You can read more about embracing our inner hippy and see our bedding here).

Once we had bedding, I knew we needed a bed.  Let the search for the perfect crib begin.

Priority #1 – We wanted a crib that was solid wood, void of toxic chemicals and names I can’t pronounce, and yucky artificial junk.  In a nutshell, we wanted a “green” crib.  After a quick search on the internet, I instantly felt overwhelmed. Hello HUGE PRICE TAGS. Ouch! This quickly introduced priority #2.

Priority #2 – Spend less than $400.  If you’ve searched for a crib and you’ve looked for green products, you know I was looking for a small miracle.  I was feeling less than hopeful, so I started to look for any crib under $400.  This quickly introduced priority #3.

Priority #3 – Simple! I wanted a simple crib with simple lines. No fancy stuff. I just wanted a rectangle crib that was safe for my baby.

After a few way too stressful searches online, I walked away from cribs for a few days.  By way too stressful, I mean I quit looking after 10 minutes. It was just too overwhelming!

One evening, while reading all my favorite blogs, a crib solution popped into my brain. Young House Love. They have a baby. They don’t like to spend big bucks on things that shouldn’t cost big bucks. They are a practical family that tries to be as green as possible (within reason). I just knew they would have a great crib. One quick visit to their website followed by a search for a blog entry on their baby nursery, and I found their our crib. They had the same check list and same budget. I was sold. I never in a million years thought I’d buy my baby crib from Walmart, but guess what? I did! I wouldn’t have even looked there if it wasn’t for their blog.

We now have a simple, solid wood, non toxic finished crib for Mister Moo for $299 plus free shipping to the store. The entire process was relatively stress-free thanks to Young House Love. And it was all completely free for us. Christian’s parents graciously offered to buy us our crib right after I sent my mother-in-law an email saying I had found one I loved.

Although the plan was to only pick up our crib on Sunday, it didn’t take long for Christian to get the itch to put it together. This created a whole new task list. In order to put the crib together, we needed to clean out Mister Moo’s bedroom.

This is Mister Moo’s bedroom before the clean out. It’s been home to all of our office stuff/boxes of photos/boxes of my high school yearbooks/unwanted home stuff/bags waiting to go to goodwill while also functioning as Christian’s closet.

Diaper Boxes = Cole's baby clothes! Yay for being able to use them again!

A few hours later, all the goodwill items were sorted out. Office stuff was relocated to our front room which will ultimately become part office. Right now it is just a mess with boxes and computer stuff. Cole went through every single one of his millions of stuffed animals. We managed to donated a few.

Cole and his keep pile

Once the hard work was done, Christian managed to get the crib box from his car to Mister Moo’s upstairs bedroom without any help. It’s a good thing I only saw the very end of this process. I might have freaked out more than I did.  I have to admit I was more worried about the crib than I was about Christian’s safety. Shame on me.

 
 
Christian and Cole immediately got to work on the crib. I was happy to sit back and watch (and take pictures). Seeing my two favorite men put together my future little man’s crib was all I needed to make my heart happy. Christian taught Cole about using power tools. He taught him how to use an allen wrench. They were quite the duo. 
 

 

And the final product…………….The wall color, the curtains, and the dresser on the left side of the photo will all be changing in the next few weeks. The cute mobile hanging from the curtain rod – it will be hanging from the ceiling shortly too!

Once the room was clean and the crib was assembled, it didn’t take long for GODZILLA to move in the nursery. Welcome to my world of boys!

40 Day Goal Challenge #5

It’s that time again – time for my next set of 40 day goals!  It’s all a part of the plan to help me achieve my life vision. Each individual goal keeps me motivated and inspired to keep moving in a positive direction.

My fifth set of 40 Day Goals starts today!

August 23rd – October 1st

1. Paint Mister Moo’s Room

2. Run the Rock n Roll half-marathon and enjoy the race

3. Furniture Shop (craigs list, antique stores, yard sales etc) – Pie Cabinet for front room (office stuff), Dresser (Mister Moo’s Room)

4. Submit paperwork to renew teaching licenses

5. Read a book (for fun!)

6. Read The Bradley Method book

7. Sign up for a labor/delivery class

8. Curtain Projects – Living Room and Mister Moo’s Room

9. Camp with Cole (possibly September, maybe October)

10. Date night with Christian

11. Register for Mister Moo

12. Come up with post half-marathon running plans AND post-Mister Moo running plans

Reward: A NEW pair of TOMS for my chubby pregnant feet

Want to create your own life vision and goals to keep you motivated.  Lululemon has a WONDERFUL website to get you started.  Go HERE to start your journey.