Feeding it....

Well my addiction to books that is...I am continuously feeding it.  I hadn't made a good book purchase in a while and decided to use a portion of my money I received for Christmas to make a book purchase. I also bought a new reading journal to track what I read.  If you don't do this and are a reader, I highly recommend it.  It doesn't have to be anything fancy.  I started doing that a few years ago and love being able to look back at what I have read.  I thought it also might be something fun for my kiddos when they are older to look back at what their dear old mom was doing when they were asleep or in the bath or in the other room or really any second I can find that someone isn't asking me a question. 

I just love having an actual book in my hand.  We own a Kindle and i have in fact read some books on it, but boy oh boy do I get excited when I buy a new book and can hold it and flip through the pages.  And here lately I have really been utilizing our local library just to save on the money going towards my book reading addiction.  Boy do I love the library.  I really love the smell of it...that old book smell.  Wow, this is getting awkward.  I am revealing way too much about myself! 

My other obsession with reading and books is this awesome line of books from Penguin that are all hard back and cloth covered.  Yes, I adore these books.  They look amazing on a shelf.  Maybe one day I can have a library in my house with a sliding ladder that I can stand on and slide from shelf to shelf singing....umm anyways. 

Well I have some reading to do.  I hope you all had a fabulous Christmas.  We are all just recovering from the present opening and goodies we over indulged in.  We never seem to learn our lesson!

13.1 Because I'm Only Half Crazy

"13.1 Miles 'Cause I'm Only HALF Crazy"....I saw this on the back of a vehicle the other day while I was driving in to work.  And it made me laugh because I thought I am full blown crazy.  This last week Big Daddy and I signed up for the Indy Mini Marathon.

Go ahead...sign up...you know you want to.

I am not sure what to say about it other than that I am a big combination of emotions right now.  I am excited, scared, nervous, worried, proud for wanting to do this....and the list goes on.  I can already imagine the nerves I will feel come race day.  I do think this will be fun a thing for the hubster and I to do together.  I think it will be fun as long as we don't get too competitive with each other...which we sometimes do.  Truth be told, I have been wanting to run this mini since I was in junior high.  No joke.  Why has it taken me around 12 years to sign up for this????  Who knows.  Probably just plain laziness. Anyways, we are going for it now.

I even bought these lovely ladies for the occasion.  I am super excited about running in them.  Especially since my other shoes were in serious need of retirement.

Check them out

This is my first foray into a minimalist style shoe.  Or at least a beginners minimalist shoe.  I am hoping this will help me with my heel striking, which is a serious pain in my legs.  I have been trying to learn to run and land more forward on my foot and it's kind of like trying to learn how to ride a bicycle differently than you always have.  I am not sure if that is a good analogy, but basically I have ran one way pretty much my whole life and now I am trying to do something different.  These shoes actually have a slight slope that is supposed to help direct your foot one way.  So I'll keep you updated there.

I will try and update you all on my training as it goes along.  My goal is to finish and not get picked up by the golf cart of shame.  Which I have decided that if I were to get picked up for running too slowly, I may suddenly be overcome by an injury.  Ok, maybe I won't fake an injury.  Maybe...actually let's just hope for no golf cart picking up injury or otherwise.  And maybe it's not the golf cart that is so shameful.  What did it ever do anyways.  Ok I am seriously getting side tracked.  So, wish me luck!  I will probably need a few prayers and a some TLC...both the band and tender loving care.  

What have you wanted to do forever that you haven't??  What's stopping you?

Friendship

Last weekend we celebrated Thanksmas with some good friends. Oh you don't know what Thanksmas is? It's our combo Thanksgiving and Christmas get together. This was our fifth year of doing this. Let me tell you it is great. It is a wonderful time to laugh and have fun with friends we don't see that often. You should try it out.

This really got me thinking about friends and how important they are. As I get older I cling to that need of friendship more than ever. I am past the overwhelming number of friends most have in high school and college and have worked it down to the best really. The friends from Thanksmas are friends that go back to elementary school. These are people who I have been through good times and bad. Good times we still laugh till it hurts about...hungry like the wolf anyone? Bad times that we can't remember what even made them bad in the first place. And bad times that still hurt when we think about them. The best part is that we can go months without seeing eachother and it is as if no time has passed. We can talk about our successes, our failures, our dreams and our age and know that the others understand. We lapse right into making plans for our next dinner and make plans to get away from it all. These are people to hang on to.

I am definitely not saying new friends aren't great because they are just as fabulous and just as precious. Friends come into our lives and we have an option of cultivating that relationship and letting people in or we can avoid it. My opinion is let 'em in.  One day you will long for friends and relationships. One day you may want or need people to stand by you to celebrate or mourn or just to be there. Don't pass up those opportunities now, bloggies. And remember it isn't too late to start new traditions and to make good excuses to get together.

The Beast

Good morning bloggies!

So if you missed it we got a dog about four weeks ago, maybe it was five.  Anyways, her name is Apple.  She is a basset hound and beagle mix.  She's super cute and growing like crazy.  So what is the downside???  She's a wild beast!!  Seriously!  She is wreaking havoc on our house and the kids.  Someone I work with got a puppy a while back and I heard she would say she had to go home to release the kraken, when she was talking about the pup.  I laughed at the time and thought "It's just a puppy."  Now I find myself thinking...."RELEASE THE KRAKEN!"

So maybe you aren't familiar with a kraken, so here's a description I found on monsters.com. (Yeah there is a website called monsters.com...no I have never visited it prior to this.)

"Probably no legendary creature was as horrifying as the Kraken, a giant sea monster. According to stories this huge, many armed, creature looked like an island when motionless and could reach as high as the top of a sailing ship's main mast with its arms deployed. 
When the Kraken attacked a ship, it wrapped its arms around the hull and capsize it. The crew would drown or be eaten by the monster. Kraken were mostly noticed  in the seas of Scandinavia. Fishermen said that huge amounts of fishs gravitate around Kraken and the boat that succeeds to fish around the monster without awaking it will take more than possible to carry aboard."

So maybe it's a bit dramatic to say that Apple is horrifying because I can still pick her up. Though, it does seem possible that she could bring a whole ship down.  No...maybe not.  Ok maybe she is just a puppy.  Her biting and wild tenancies will  eventually calm down.  I mean she is a good portion basset hounds.  Basset hounds usually don't have too much pep to their step.  And it would probably help if my kids didn't turn themselves in to walking chew toys by running and screeching at the dog.  She just can't help but try to chew on them then.  She also spends a lot of time barking at Waffles, our rabbit.  It's not in a, I want to eat you kind of way.  It's more of a please come play with me type bark.  Eventually Apple will learn that Waffles does not want under any circumstances want to play with her or anyone else for that matter.  He just wants to eat and hop around and chew on things. 

Any suggestions??  This is the first dog I have owned on my own and needed to train.  I have several books on training dogs and have been reading online, but I just can't figure out the best plan of attack.  I know several of you have dogs.  How did you do it?  Is this just normal?

Your Mission

I totally did not take this picture...it's from the dip recipe

So, I recently took my Pinterest love to a new level.  And by recently I mean today.  And by a new level I mean I acted on something I pinned.  Gasp!!  It wasn't anything fancy or overwhelmingly complicated.  It was a super simple recipe that I just whipped up.  This yummy little pumpkin dip.  I actually saw something on Pinterest, pinned it to a board and then turned around and made it.  My relationship with Pinterest moved into like the exchanging of a class ring phase today.  What's even more exciting is I have plans on making something else really soon that I have been pinning ideas for.  Oh be still my crafty heart! 

So my challenge to you is this, put one of those pins to work!!  What are you making that you found on Pinterest or have pinned to Pinterest?  If nothing make a goal to get to working on something.  Let me know how it's coming.  I would love to hear about it and see the finished results!