Turkey Day Run: Race Recap

Ok…so I have to officially say I hate the chip timing system. Hate.

I feel like my time is never logged right in the end. {Let’s not forget last month’s Race for the Cure when my time chip apparently didn’t even log my actual!}

So let’s hash this out…the race officially started at 9am. I was in the second wave which started at 9:03. So the clock had been running 3 minutes before I was able to start. When I hit the end of the race, I remember looking up at the time and seeing 34:54…then of course, due to bottlenecking, was unable to get my timer under the finish line until sometime after 35 min, apparently 35:09, because my time on the website says this:

BUT, if I go to my RunKeeper app, I show that I ran FURTHER than 3.1 miles {not by much} and know that my app had been running for at least two minutes before I actually started moving:

I suppose this chip time was close, but due to the bottlenecking at the start and at the end of the race, I’d estimate my actual time to be right at about 30:30 – 31:00 minutes. So pretty much the same as last month’s Race for the Cure. My next run is the Reindeer Run, hopefully I can really push it then! I’d so love to see a time UNDER 30 minutes.

Going to trudge through with my half marathon training this week!

Monday Musings

How was y’all’s Thanksgiving weekend? I tell you, it was soooo nice having four days off from work. Thanksgiving/My 5th Anniversary was a great day. I started out on a good foot by doing the Turkey Day 5K downtown. It was a great day for running, however, a bit cold waiting for the race to start! Before heading back home, I had a post-race beer {gotta love free booze!}

Our Thanksgiving dinner was very quaint since it was just the four of us this year. We cooked a turkey and a few of our other favorite Thanksgiving dishes and had a nice family meal. {Due to the cold, we didn’t make it out to Breach Inlet for a beach picnic as I had originally hoped.} Here’s my sweet boys enjoying their feast:

And yes, that is turkey he is holding {he gets just as excited for Thanksgiving as his daddy does}:

After dinner, hubby surprised me with my anniversary gift:

It was the Chance Chanel perfume…

I’m loving the fragrance. It’s nice to wear a new scent every once in a while.

On Friday, I put up the Christmas decorations and that night we passed around the eggnog, turned up some Christmas music and decorated our Christmas tree.

On Sunday, we went to church and then that afternoon we headed to the cobblestone streets of downtown Charleston to have a long overdue family photo session. {Christmas cards need to be made soon!} I can’t wait to get the portrait CD back later this week to show y’all how they turned out!

Have a great week!

Find me and follow on Facebook, Twitter & Instagram 

Add my RSS Feed to your Reader

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving!

I am likely off running in our local Turkey Day 5K as you’re reading this. I look forward to this 5K every year. It is one of my favorites. The weather is usually ideal for running and it’s just a fun event afterward with the free beer in the park and all. {Hey, I can be a little bad, right?} Is there a Thanksgiving race in your town?

I’d like to take a moment to be thankful for my health. Not everyone out there is able to even run a race. The fact that I can breathe easy, complete tasks without ailment and am disease-free is a very big blessing. I thank God for the ability to do the things I want to do…that my body is strong and able…I try never to take that for granted…that is why fitness is very important to me.

I have a favorite quote that I use at the bottom of my work email signature…and I believe it is very fitting for today…

Steve Prefontaine was a great American runner that lost his life in a car accident at the young age of 24 – in his prime. He never once wasted his God-given ability in the years he had. My advice to you always with fitness is to take today and take it now. Do your absolute best with the time you have.

We’ve not a lot planned today as far as Thanksgiving dinner goes – my family is 3,000 miles away and Jake’s family left town to visit his dad’s side in Illinois. It is actually also our 5th wedding anniversary today, so we plan on cooking up a few smaller portions of our favorite Thanksgiving foods and having a picnic at Breach Inlet, Sullivan’s Island where we were married. The boys in tow too, of course. {And hey, less Thanksgiving calories for me this year!}

Hope you are enjoying this holiday with loved ones. xoxo.

Happy Thanksgiving & An Anniversary

Happy Thanksgiving to all of you…I hope you are able to be surrounded by loved ones.

I think it’s important to stop and be thankful every day. It shouldn’t have to wait to be said until this one day each year.

Food for thought: Try to start each day on a high note by being thankful you were given the breath to breathe another day…end it on a good note by praying to God and being thankful for the blessings you have. You may also notice you naturally become a happier person. A thankful heart is a happy heart.

This is the last post in my Thankful series…and seeing as how it is Thanksgiving and also my husband’s and my 5th wedding anniversary, I am dedicating this thankful post to my loving husband.

I am thankful for Jake, the love we share, the family we’ve built and the life we have together. We are far from perfect; we have ups and downs, but we always make it through in the end and that is what a real marriage is all about.

It was 5 years ago, on Thanksgiving of that year, that we exchanged our vows:

We had a quaint little private ceremony at Breach Inlet on Sullivan’s Island.

Six months later, we had a reception with family and friends.

Thank you, my sweet husband, for five amazing years…looking forward to many more. You are the most wonderfully perfect man for me. Happy Anniversary, I love you. ♥

I hope y’all have a wonderful Thanksgiving with loved ones and good food. It is just Jake, the boys and me this year, I am running the Turkey Day 5K downtown and then, since it’s our 5th anniversary, we plan on making some small portions of our fave Thanksgiving foods and heading out to Breach Inlet on Sullivan’s Island where we were married to have a family picnic. Hoping it goes as planned!

Find me and follow on Facebook, Twitter & Instagram 

Add my RSS Feed to your Reader

Thankful Series: My Sweet Boys

For this Thankful series post, I am sharing what I am most thankful for:

I don’t know if this post needs words…

Nope, just pictures I think…

I thank God every day for these beautiful boys of mine.

Find me and follow on Facebook, Twitter & Instagram 

Add my RSS Feed to your Reader

Thankful Series: The First Family I Knew

Today’s Thankful post is dedicated to my immediate family – my dad, mom and brothers. I am so far from all of them…and I miss them all very much every day.

I am thankful for my dad because he was always a hard worker for our family. We never went without and we were blessed with the privilege of growing up in a beautiful home; each having a room of our own. We were able to afford extracurricular activities…such as my dance classes. Dance outfits and competitions were always paid for without issue. When I was in college, there were so many times I was strapped for cash, or something big would happen, i.e. my many car break-ins and wrecks {thanks, SoCal}, and he would help me out no questions asked. I also love that I got my spitfire wit and sarcastic disposition from him {my husband is not so thankful for that}. I love you, Dad!

I am thankful for my mom because she is always there for me…I can count on getting good advice whenever I need it and she willingly lets me vent when I just need someone to listen. She also managed not to kill me during my bitchy & self-absorbed teenage years. We have become close over the last decade and I consider her a best friend. She loves her grandsons and makes the effort to visit us from all the way across the US at least once a year. I love you, Mom!

I am thankful for my older brother, Jared. We have had our share of periods of closeness and periods of distance, but no matter where we are in life, we can always come back together and find our common ground. I enjoy talking with him and just shootin’ the sh&t. He has always been able to make me laugh…and even though he teased me relentlessly when we were children, he always stood up for me if anyone else tried anything. He has a good heart and he will always have a place in mine. I love you, Jared!

I am thankful for my younger brother, Jeff. He has a heart of gold. Some people might see raggedy hair and too many tattoos when they first look at him, but if they don’t get to know him, they are most certainly missing out on knowing an awesome person. Jeff has a wonderfully quirky sense of humor and is very generous. Just like with Jared, I enjoy our sarcasm-filled conversations and how even though we’ve lived apart for years, we can always come back together and it feels like we are adolescents again. I love you, Jeff!

 Because of my wonderfully sarcastic upbringing – this e-card perfectly describes my own parenting mantra:

Find me and follow on Facebook, Twitter & Instagram 

Add my RSS Feed to your Reader

Thankful Series: Bread & Butter

I am continuing on with my Thankful series for Thanksgiving today… I am so thankful my husband and I both have a jobs…and a decent-paying ones at that. With our current economic state, there are so many people out there struggling to put food on the table, pay their mortgages or are just barely getting by. Some have lost their jobs and are still looking for new ones…which are slim pickin’s at the moment.

Sometimes it feels as though we’ll have a couple months where we’re living paycheck to paycheck, but for the most part, we have plenty…with a little leftover for non-essential items…such as home decor and my wardrobe {hubby considers non-essential, not me}. We can be ungrateful at time and complain that we don’t have enough for this and that…but truly, we are in such a good position compared to many…and I like to sit back like this and actually gain real perspective on it…to realize how blessed we truly are.

My job can be a drag sometimes…and I know my husband’s job requires a lot of hard labor at times…but I am so glad we have paychecks coming in on the regular. It’s nice that we know where are next meal is coming from, as I know some aren’t so lucky, and my heart hurts for them.

So today, I know it’s Monday and you are probably sitting at your desk with a case of “the Mondays”, but try to instead be grateful for having that desk. xoxo

Find me and follow on Facebook, Twitter & Instagram 

Add my RSS Feed to your Reader

Thankful Series: A Place To Call Home

In spirit of the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday, I thought it appropriate to dedicate a the next week of blog posts to the things I am most thankful for.

Today, I am writing about my home. I am thankful, for one, that my home is in the USA. We have it so good here…and even though the economy is on it’s downturn in the cycle, we are still very fortunate to have the freedoms we do and the laws that protect us in so many ways.

Now as for my real home…I am very thankful my husband and I are able to provide a {not too shabby} roof over our sons’ and our heads. The decor and aesthetics are ever-changing, but we are happy to call it home.

{Forgive my pathetic garden. It needs some love and attention.}

Find me and follow on Facebook, Twitter & Instagram 

Add my RSS Feed to your Reader

The Thanksgiving Three Thousand

*This post was originally posted on my family blog, Love, Laughter & Happy Ever After in November 2010. I deemed the information necessary and worthy of reposting here!

I was watching Regis & Kelly today and Kelly spilled out a nice article about the calories we consume in an average Thanksgiving meal. If you are one of those ignorance-is-bliss types, you may want to stop reading now. (However, I must admit, my post title has pretty much given it away. Oops.)

Here you have it ladies and gents, the average calorie-consumption in your run-of-the-mill Thanksgiving feast:

3493

Holy moly!!! That’s just about how many calories you need to burn to lose 1 pound! (And good Lord, we know how tough that can be.)

And just for kicks – here’s a list of some individual Thanksgiving staples and their calorie counts:

1/8 of an Apple Pie: 400 cal
1/8 of a Pumpkin Pie: 350 cal
2 glasses of red wine: 250 cal (who has just TWO glasses?)
1 cup stuffing: 358 cal
1/2 cup gravy: 80
2 slices canned cranberry sauce: 110 cal
1 cup sweet potato dish: 315 cal
1 dinner roll: 150 cal

Thanksgiving is my husband’s FAVORITE holiday. (If you know my husband, I’m sure that’s no surprise.) It is my least favorite holiday. I absolutely dread Thanksgiving. It’s like the kickoff to all the holiday eating and bad choices. And this year I’m still working on dropping my pregnancy pounds, so I can’t exactly call it a cheat day. That meal would be the equivalent of a cheat week. I don’t want to end up with an extra 5 lbs to RE-lose. And I’m also working to avoid all the Christmastime goodies as well. So I’ve been coaching myself (well, brainwashing myself) into thinking of all the casseroles and desserts as disgusting…telling myself I don’t even want them. I guess we’ll see how I do. At least I’m running the Turkey Day 5K in downtown Charleston that morning…so I can feel a little less guilty about what I do eat. It may even lead me to make better food decisions (exercise has a way of doing that.)

Well, Happy Thanksgiving to all of you! Try not to think about the calories too much and just enjoy your loved ones and some football.

Easy Thanksgiving Centerpiece Ideas

Thanksgiving is a week away, so by now most of you have made your plans. Some of you are lucky enough to be invited as a guest to someone else’s home, likely leaving a lot of the work off your shoulders. Maybe you are hosting your family and friends this year for the first time, or for the 20th time…either way, here are some Thanksgiving centerpiece ideas you may want to try to add some decorative flair to your table setting:

Add a non-traditional splash of color – I love this one because it takes the color blue (a personal fave), which is not normally thought of for an autumn holiday, but makes it work by adding natural browns with the use of pecans. You can make this your own by finding glass bottles or vases and using any type of nut:

Create the illusion of a table runner using pumpkins and ribbons with little berry sprigs. You could make it your own by collecting leaves from outside and sprinkling them along the sides of the ribbon in a whimsical fashion:

I adore the use of pumpkins in this centerpiece. Placing them at different levels using candleholders, etc. keeps it interesting to the eye. You can get pumpkins in white, orange and yellow to keep it colorful. Another thing I thought that I would add to this centerpiece would be name placards at each place setting using a tiny pumpkin stabbed in the top with a toothpick and a name card taped to it. You can either print up the names using the computer, or if you have lovely handwriting, make it even more personal!

Add a golden glow to your table by using dried kernels of corn in a round vase with a lit candle. Candles make the home feel more cozy and what could be better than feeling even more cozy and intimate around those you love?

Another brilliant use of the pumpkin – I am a fan of pumpkins as decor in the fall! Here it is paired up with a candle and some lovely sprigs. Simply carve a place in the top of the pumpkin that the candle can sit in. Use your own decor such as leaves, corn, sprigs, berries, etc. to make it your own!

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

Photos Courtesy: www.bhg.com