Latest Blogs

After meeting with farmer Ray last week, everytime it rains I think of him. He shared with me that he can't harvest the soybean crops until it dries out, and this rain just keeps coming! His house is mortgaged for it, and he could lose it all if they can't get those soybeans.
It's been his most challenging year, and it has really brought the issues of the farmers to the forefront of my life. He's...

    
Figuring out my goals for 2012... this year it was to run a marathon and we chose Chicago. It feels great to set a goal and reach it, it seemed like most of my running this year was all geared for Chicago, so now when I run, I get to do it for fun and to fulfill my other goal of 1000 miles for 2011, I am getting close, with only 142 miles to go! My plan is to get to 120 by November 1st and...

And so, I met with him again the other day. Finally he was out in his yard when I was going by. I came walking up, trying to be obvious and not startle him, since he had his back turned.  It seems he's always doing something on the farm. Whether he's on the mower, the tractor or just walking about, but with all the rain recently this is the first I've caught him outdoors.
We talked for a few...

I've gotten better at not picking up every new treat bag for Halloween, knowing my kids have grown out of the "Halloween treats" like I used to make, but I can't help but come up with something, and the girls always seem to love them.  
So I decided to put together some candy boxes for Chelsea and her roommates, and as I had hoped... they were a hit!  Here are a couple of the designs...

Since...

The other day I got the mail and left it on the passengers seat for the entire day while running my errands. When I got home and started sorting through it, I found the Christmas edition of Better Homes and Gardens Scrapbooks Etc and tore through it to find my page!
They emailed me a while back, mailed me a check for $100 and here it is!  I was even more surprised of the two pages!
 
Oh...

about my race...
How do I say I was disappointed, when I finished? Or that it was harder than I thought when I trained for 18+ weeks? Yet, it was amazing and invigorating, painful and emotional!  All of those things and more.
They say you learn about yourself when doing a marathon, your strengths, your weaknesses and so much more, and now that I've run it, it makes sense.
Chelsea, me, Jill...

It was amazing, overwhelming, empowering and defeating! Yep, all of those things and more! The range of emotions you go through when running a marathon, I never thought possible!
So much to share about the weekend, and after having a few days to reflect and not feeling as sore, I think I have a little different perspective of the accomplishment of running 26.2
It started during the training, when...

I've been taking photography this semester, I really wanted to learn more about my camera. So far I can say I've learned a lot and have been taking most of my pictures on manual, although all that I learned with aperture priority can confuse me. Trying to retrain my brain...
As we take our photos and edit we are also learning editing through photoshop, which now makes me want to take a photoshop class...

Challenge has been my word of the year and I had no idea how many challenges I would face, now leading to one of the biggest challenges, running 26.2 miles in Chicago.
The idea began in 2010 as we enjoyed dinner with Jill, Jennifer, our spouses, and Chelsea, Ben, Zach.  Talking of races past and races future brought us to the challenge of Chicago.
We booked the hotel in JANUARY and signed up...