Only Two Posts in February?

Really??? I guess this post technically makes three, but this goes to show you how slammed I've been at work. I'm hoping it's going to die down after next week. I'll keep my fingers crossed that this week is our last 60 hour week, but with the March 15th deadline two weeks away, it may be another two weeks before the craziness stops. Oh well, it's only a couple of weeks. I can handle it :)

This past weekend I went to my mom's house and hung out with Anderson and Lydia for a little bit. I had to work in the morning so I didn't get there until almost 1pm and that's about when they go down for a nap, so I only got to hang out with them for an hour tops. I hated having to leave while they were asleep. I'm sure they were wondering where I was when they woke up. I heart these kids as if they were my own.



Yes, I am wearing a Dunder Mifflin shirt. I wore it to work that morning too and got a ton of comments on it. Justin bought it for me when he went ice fishing with the boys in Wisconsin.

My mom made some cupcakes for Valentine's Day, a little late I know, but she had the mix for it so why not? They were so good. The kids loved them too. Lydia's face was permanently full of icing. Anderson was a little more careful about eating his, but little girl didn't care one bit!





Justin ran a 50k at Mount Cheaha on Saturday. It took him 7 hours and 40 minutes. He is insane when it comes to this running stuff. At mile 28, there was almost 6,000 feet of elevation gain. That's like climbing a mountain people! And he ran it!! Well, I guess he technically crawled it. He said there was a point where he was on his hands and knees because of the elevation. I wish I could run that much, but I just can't. A half-marathon is about all I aspire to do, thank you very much :)

Nothing major happened this weekend, but it was certainly great to see the kids, it's been over a month since I'd seen them last. Also we were able to hang out with friends Melanie and her fiance Wade at their new townhome as well as Yarbrough and my best buddy Carina. By the way, Carina and I are taking a girls trip to New York City mid-June. We've been saying we would do this forever but just never got around to it. We FINALLY got around to it. We've both booked our flights and Justin is using points for our hotel, but should be booking that any day now. When I have more time, I'll blog more about our trip to Rome and the mystery city in May as well as this trip to NYC, my 5th visit there :) Can you tell its my favorite city?

I'm Slacking Again

I know it's been a while since I've blogged. It comes with the territory of busy season. I've worked 60 hour weeks the last three weeks so I haven't had much time to do much blogging. I do have a couple of updates to discuss now though! Most of my friends already know this, but I never blogged about it. My sister, Jennifer, is pregnant. She came home on Thanksgiving (she wasn't supposed to be in town) to surprise us with the news that she and her husband Jeff were having a baby. Her due date is July 20th and not too long ago, she found out she's having a boy. I'm so excited for the Cowley's! My sister has always had that motherly instinct and she's going to be a great mom.



Isn't she adorable?

On February 4th, Justin and I went to eat dinner at Olive Garden with his parents and his sister and brother-in-law. It was his sister, Jennifer's (I know, confusing because my sister has the same name and all of us danced together at the same high school), birthday. After eating dinner, we all headed back to his parents house to eat cake (as we usually do for someones birthday). However, this time Jennifer got her own cake for the party....





Yep, Jennifer and her husband Aeron are ALSO expecting a baby. She was 8 weeks when she told us this. Her first appointment was the next week, and when she had that appointment, she found out that her due date is September 20....FOR TWINS. Yep, she's having twins. Which means that I went from having one niece and one nephew to soon having 5 nieces and nephews. Upon hearing the news, Justin said two things. 1) "Christmas just got way more expensive" and 2) "That's a crap ton of diapers". I am so excited for both of my sisters and can't wait to have more little ones running around!

On another note, remember when I wrote this post about starting a new prayer journey? Well, let me recap so you don't have to read the whole post. I started reading a book called Confessions of a Prayer Slacker by Diane Moody and in the book, she says we should all take a few minutes to talk to God at the beginning of the day and one of her suggestions was to read Bible scripture in connection with prayer. So after reading the book, I was inspired to start reading one of the Psalms everyday. I started this journey back in August and on Friday, I finally finished all 150 Psalms. If you've never read the Psalms all the way through, you should. I've definitely got my favorites which include this one and this one. I will say, some of them are rather repetitive, but there are reasons for it and most Bibles explain that.

So what am I going to do now that I'm done with the Psalms? Well, I really enjoy reading a part of the Bible and having my time with God everyday, it is quite literally the best part of my day. So I decided about halfway through reading the Psalms that once I was finished, I would either go back and read the gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John) or continue to Proverbs. Recently, I decided to read Proverbs next. I took a New Testament class back in college, in which we read most of the gospels, but I've never read any of Proverbs (outside of the occasional scripture quote at church). I did some reading up on Proverbs and am so excited about it. David wrote the vast majority of the Psalms, which center around praising God and praying to God. Proverbs were mainly written by David's son Solomon and they're all about wisdom. Solomon spends a lot of time instilling wisdom onto young people, which is a great example for parents who are raising children. But it's not just about that age group, any age group can benefit from lessons on wisdom. I read the first chapter yesterday and look forward to reading the rest. Proverbs is much shorter than Psalms, only 31 chapters, so it won't take me as long to read it. I wonder what I'll read after Proverbs...

Mercedes 2011

I know I've been bad on the blogging thing...my bad. It really is hard to blog when I work as much as I do at this time of year. This week is my 2nd 60 hour week and before that I had a 57 and a 55 hour week, so I've been pretty slammed the past month, needless to say. Since I've been so busy with work, I haven't really had time to do anything that's "blog worthy" until this past weekend. I ran the Mercedes 5k on Saturday morning with Carina. I honestly had no idea Mercedes had a 5K until this year. Carina came up to Birmingham on Friday night when she got off work and spent the night at my house and we both woke up bright and early to head downtown.

This was my first 5k since my spectacular fall during the Race for the Cure on October 9th. In fact, it was only the 3rd time I've run at all since falling over four months ago. I was slightly disappointed in my 32 minute time for the 5k, but I'm blaming it on the not having time to run at all...and the fact that my ankle actually still hurts a little bit. I should probably get that checked out, but don't have time. Oh well. I think it's funny because a few people I work with have said "what does it matter that you haven't run in four months?? You climbed a mountain in Africa!". Allow me to explain the difference in three little words: run vs. walk. On the mountain we were walking and at a very very slow pace due to the altitude. So even though that was an awesome athletic thing that we did, it is on the total opposite end of the spectrum as running a race.

My sister-in-law, Jennifer, walked the 5k with my father-in-law. Her husband, Aeron, was there as well as her mom, for support. Carina and I talked to them for a while before the race, but then got in line with the 10 minute mile runners (because we both hadn't run and knew we wouldn't be beating any of our previous 5k records). After the race, we had to leave immediately because I had to be at work at 10am. I don't have any pictures of that day because we didn't bring a camera, but I did take pictures of Justin doing the full marathon on Sunday.

Justin ran the 26.2 miles in 4 hours, 10 minutes and 7 seconds. INSANE!!!! That is seriously super fast for him, I mean, he runs incredibly fast already, but that's an average of a 9:30 mile for 26 miles. That's a lot of endurance! I am so very proud of him!

Aeron, brother-in-law, ran the half in just over 2 hours. Our friends Stacey and Will came out as well because Will's brother ran the full. Here's few couple pictures from Sunday:





Notice the lack of I-pod or other music device?? Like I said...INSANE.



Even though the clock above says 4:11:18, it was really 4:10:07, because Justin didn't cross the start line right when the timer started since so many people were running.



The siblings and their spouses



So proud...and kinda pissed at the same time that because of my busy season, I'll probably never run Mercedes :( I just don't have the spare time to train.

On an non-race related note, Justin and I decided on Saturday that we would like to spend way too much money and buy a bunch of toys. Justin really wanted an IPad and I really wanted a Wii, so we both trotted over to Best Buy with our friends Carina and Yarbrough in tow and purchases our toys:



Excuse the quality. The picture is from my phone.

Not gonna lie, whenever I do have free time from working my 60 hour weeks, I may be glued to the TV. I'm LOVING my Wii!!! I've never played one before, EVER. We've done the wakeboarding, waverunner game, archery, tennis, baseball, bowling, plane flying games, canoeing, boxing, not to mention the fabulous old school games such as Donkey Kong, Mario Kart, and Super Mario World. I'm loving that you can exercise on this thing too! I've had numerous people tell me to buy Just Dance II and that they get great workouts from it. I may even ask for a Wii Fit for my birthday in April :)

I hope everyone has a wonderful Valentine's Day!!! I honestly didn't think Justin would get me any flowers because I told him not to since clearly the fun toys we purchased over the weekend were enough for me :) But he surprised me anyway with flowers delivered to my work. Heart him forever :)