I made a sad realization the other day when Scott and Abel were getting packed up to go to Maine; that this is the first year in ten that I won't make it up to Vacationland. There may have been one year while we were in Las Vegas that we missed, but I am pretty sure we made it up at some point when we were home for a visit. The first time I visited Scott's family we had just started dating and it really was that long ago, ten years! I remember thinking, people actually live here all the time? A place like that is what I imagined books were designed from. Next year I will have more time and already looking forward to the blueberry pancakes and rambling through the streets of Portland. So sad. :)

I am still here. I forgot to update on the running. Hope no one thinks I quit after that last terrible post from weeks ago. Although, it probably would be believable. Nope, still trucking. This past Saturday we did 14 miles, our first half marathon plus! I was very proud of us. Especially since I had a gruelling week at work due to my defensive tactics training being every day all day and that included running and physically demanding drills on top of my running schedule for the week. We plugged through it and have been testing the waters at walking through our water breaks and prepping for how we will actually run on the big day. We haven't decided if we will walk for a minute after every mile or every two. Still trying different techniques.

Abel had his birthday party on Saturday due to the big Maine trip this week. After running 14 miles we dragged the party over to the church building and set up and partied. Then we came back to our place for a family dinner. We had a great time with Scott's family being in town at various times during last week too. Abel had an absolute blast! It was so nice to relax on Sunday after all the fun. Then packed up the punks and off they were to Maine.

Pretty soon I will have some time off. Only a few more months! Before that we have many more miles to go, literally.

This was half like me today on our 11 miler. I was sweating but indeed I was not happy. This was my first bad run, not bad as in, "wow, I am bad, I just killed 11 miles!". This was bad in the too literal sense. We got lost and grumpy in the first few miles, never a great way to start. Then we got into a groove but suddenly we were lost again. I hate stopping when you are in a groove. Then to have to actually think while your stopping in order to register where you are...no good. By mile 8.5 I was ready to give into the lure of walking. Oh, it would feel so good to give up sometimes. Today was a day were I had no motivation to complete the run. This was weird and a first time thing for me since starting the formal training.

Another mistake I made was trying a new form of psychology. I now know that I can run 5-6 miles without busting anything and following a pretty good pace. So I visualized I was running one 6 miler and then one 5 miler in a row. This worked "splendidly" for some girls in our book but not a good way to go for me. After the six miles my body started shutting down and wanted a lawn chair not another 5 miles. I had pushed through to the number 6 when I should have just stuck with the number 11.

So we stopped a few times and life savers were no longer any kind of motivation. Sometimes they work. We walked some and I would have never finished if it wasn't for Scott. He kept on plugging. I slowly hunkered after him. Not pretty. Ah, well, lesson learned hopefully. Know where you are going and keep the actual goal in mind. Mind games don't work on me, at least not when I try them on myself.

A friend got a new mac and one of the photo options is this distortion tool that makes you pee your pants continuously while you mess around with it. This photo is a little example. Abel was unsure how to take this cool gadget. He kept looking back at us to see if that is how we really looked. Some of them are very weird looking, so I just wanted to share one of the milder ones so as to not scare the children.

For the past week I have been painting my bathroom but right now I don't feel much like working on it. I didn't actually start putting paint on the walls until Monday night because it took a few days to get the prep work done. Old creaky homes require a little more attention to detail like patching holes and sanding. In a bathroom? Especially when the last person to paint these walls thought it was a great idea to paint over thumbtacks and the like. This project has been another one that was a long time coming. I have wanted to do it since we moved in four years ago this month. But the little guy in the next room (who is unsuccessfully trying to sleep through the booming fireworks) came around and was a little more interesting and demanding of attention than an eye-sore bathroom.

Slowly we are making improvements. We painted the kitchen and second bedroom when we moved in. Later we painted and fixed up the dining and living rooms, followed by the front porch (which is half done) and the front hallway. Now we have to finish the bathroom, paint the small hallway by Abel's room, redo our bedroom and do something interesting to the basement. All in good time. This is in addition to painting our rental properties, adding carpet and light fixtures to those and Scott fixing shingles and siding on the other house.

I will post before and after pics soon. I hope to have it completed by Saturday!

Running is going well and I was pretty proud that I finished my first 10 miler last week. It was a bit of a struggle at the end but we pulled it out. Just a brief update for now. Very interesting for sure.