Lighthouse Run 5K

This past weekend, my friends and I had the opportunity to participate in a semi-local 5K to benefit a historic lighthouse on the Gulf of Mexico, near Sabine Pass. This race has been going strong for 5 years and although they had to make some changes this year (with the number of registered participates due to COVID and dates of the race due to two hurricanes), they made it work! 

As a joke the night before, my friends and I all decided that since we were running a race on a beach, we should wear our Castaway Cay 5K shirts!

...and so we did!

In order to get to the start line, we had a pretty lengthy and early drive on our hands. I live in Lake Charles, Louisiana which is about 35 miles or so from the coast. This race took place literally ON the Gulf of Mexico and right near the location where Hurricane Laura made landfall (and not far from where Hurricane Delta also made landfall). Driving there, I felt a nervous energy - mostly about the unknown. I'd heard this area was "flattened" by the storms and although I live in the destruction all around me every day, there's just something about seeing a new area or new community that has also experienced the same thing. It's tough.

Thankfully, this drive was pleasant and a beautiful one due to the nature of the land - mostly marsh and swamp like areas!

Once we arrived, we picked up our packets, then began a seashell hunt on the beach! 

It was truly a beautiful morning! The sounds of the waves were so relaxing and the sunrise was beautiful!

Spending time with my friends was fun, too!

Back at the start line, the race director announced that they would have awards for the top overall 3 male and female winners. In my mind I thought, "uhoh"...because in a small race like this one, you start to count the amount of runners ahead of you and yeah, well, it can play games with your mind.

After we began running, my mind went straight to that - counting the amount of ladies ahead of me. There were only three ahead of me, making me the number 4 lady. Well, there's no award for number 4, so I knew if I had it in me, I would do everything in my power to pick it up towards the end. 

While running, I kept a relatively good pace behind the runner in front of me, but I knew that my slacking on running in the past couple of months since the storms were going to do me in....and I was right. At one point, there was a core group of about five of us ladies running for a while when one of the backed off, leaving me in 4th once again. 

During mile 2 on my way to mile 3, I knew I wasn't going to be able to push any harder and I had truly given this race my all. My lungs were hurting (almost to the point of wheezing) and my heart kept threatening to jump into PSVT. Sadly, I had to let any chance of passing anyone go to the wayside. 

...and that's what happened. I crossed the finish line as the 4th overall female. Whomp whomp. 

So, I decided I could take it one of two ways - I could either allow myself to feel defeated for not training like I should have or I could decide that despite the circumstances of the past few months, I gave this race my all and I should be proud of that. Just like in life sometimes, we can be upset with ourselves or we can be proud of ourselves for giving it our all. I chose option number two, because I literally had zero regrets out there. I truly gave this race everything I had in my tank! 

I wasn't too upset about my pace, either! I could definitely feel the lack of conditioning in me this go round but that just means I'll do better next time!

A couple of things about this course affected my pace as well - we were running on sand the entire way and although the sand was mostly packed, it's still a different feel! Also, 95% of the "packed sand route" was at a slant, so we were running at an angle. 

With all of that being said, I LOVED this race. It was different, it was beautiful, the sound of the waves/ocean was incredible, and I can't wait to run this one again in the future! 

We really had a great time!! My friend's mom did this one with us as well and used the opportunity to collect shells along the way. She crossed the finish line with an armful and was literally a hit! It was too funny!

Our friend Kenzie was at the race as well (and baby Asher). She served as our photographer!

Back to the devastation in the area - I'll be honest, I was surprised (happily) to see structures some standing at all. Most of them were damaged, but still stood strong despite the insane winds blasting their way during Hurricane Laura. One thing that struck me as odd about the photo above was the random blue door, still intact on a home that has lost everything! It was sad, yes, but seeing those who were rebuilding and getting their homes back together made me smile. I'm grateful for the strength and resilience of our Southwest Louisiana communities. We've been hit hard this year, but we are coming back - even though it's a slow work in progress, it's still progress!

After the race, we had breakfast at Cracker Barrel and it totally hit the spot! It was the perfect ending to a great morning spent with my friends!

Have you ever run a race on a beach? What were your thoughts on the experience? 

It's Been A While - An Update!

Hello hello hello! 

LONG time no "see"! I have good reason, I promise and I have several new blog posts coming in the next few weeks. Boy, I've missed this! 

I figured since it's been so long, a little update was in store. My area of the world has been through a whirlwind of a past few months (if you follow me on instagram, you know what I mean) and I do plan on sharing more on our "life" during the storms and after in future posts. I love where I live and have absolutely no intention of moving, but this year has been a doozy on all of us. First corona and shut downs, then hurricane season...I'm more than a little ready to move beyond this time in our lives!

Hurricane Laura impacted my hometown and personal home back on August 27th (also my birthday - and one I'll never forget)! Three weeks later, Hurricane Delta hit our coast just 12 miles from where Hurricane Laura made landfall. Thankfully, we had no additional damage to our home from Delta, but a lot of friends and neighbors did. It's sad to drive around and see devastation everywhere. Even now, two and a half months since the storms and things still look rough and likely will for a long time. Debris litters the roadways, homes have blue tarps on their roofs, exposed beams, or no roofs at all. In several instances, only a concrete slab remains where a home once was. Some say it's going to take years to get back to "normal".  To top all of this off, the insurance companies have made the struggle of repairing homes insane and ridiculously difficult. I don't want to get into it all here, but there are facebook group after facebook group that describe the over the top struggles we are having to face, just to get our homes repaired. Yes, I realize insurance companies are a business, too...but y'all, these cases are just downright absurd. 

My intention for this wasn't to be all doom and gloom, but I wanted to paint a picture of our current situation - this is literally where we are at in this place in our lives. Yes, we still function. Yes, we still continue on with our lives, work, church, etc because it's our "community" that is so important - we need each other in these hard times. And yes, there is still a lot laughter. :) 

Needless to say, my running groove has taken an impact since the storms as well. Downed fences means lots and lots of stray animals. Debris in the roadways means sometimes only once car can pass and it's just simply not safe. Jason works at an oil and gas refinery and they have spent countless hours in the past two months trying to get everything back up and running so the rest of the US can carry on as normal. This means he hasn't been home as much and running consistently with a 40+ pound four year old isn't my idea of a fun time, especially with the roadways as they are. Thankfully, Jason's schedule has slowed down a lot and I am just now (this week) seeing more opportunities to run so YAY for that!

As far as damage to my personal home - we are going to need a new roof, new soffit/fascia around a lot of our home, new window screens, a new sing set, repairs to our shed, new deck rails, and a new chimney on the roof. We finally have everything set in motion, we are currently on a list, waiting for our turn for repairs. In the grand scheme of things, our damage was SO minimal and I'm grateful for that. It truly is sad when you drive around town and witness some of the damage others homes have sustained. 

On a positive and incredibly random note, we are still planning on going to WDW in February on what should have been the Princess Half Marathon weekend. I'm also still planning on running the races around the resort property so that should be fun! Our plane tickets were officially purchased last night! Anyone else still traveling to WDW during that week?

Well, there's my update! I'll be back with more from Halloween shindigs to belated birthday celebrations, evacuating for hurricanes, Brayden 4.5 year update, and more! 

As always, if you'd like to stay up to date with our current lives, you can follow us over on instagram!

I hope you all have a fabulous weekend! 

4th of July Race Fun

When you think of a memorable race experience, what do you think of? For me, I think of our local 4 miler on the 4th of July. It's always hot, always has a good turnout, always hot (did I mention that already), and it usually brings around a good story or two to share.

I've run this race six times so far (this year will make seven) and each experience has been incredibly different from the previous.

I ran this race in 2009 with my sister in law and oddly enough, I formed this blog just a couple of weeks later! Happy 9th blogiversary to my little corner of the world!

The race that year was my third to date and her first ever! I had just began running in January of that year and she followed suit not long after. Every time I think about this race I giggle. It was freaking hot, we walked a lot, and were some of the last ones to cross the finish line. The course even "re opened" while we were on it and we were asked to push to the sidewalks by the officers. My oh my how far we've come!

In 2010, I had a broken foot and missed out on the race, but I was back in 2011 and so was Kayla! This race turned out to be much better than the last and I ran it with a few of my "super hero" friends! We had a blast!
 

 

After coming back from my initial IT Band injury in 2012, I attempted to beast mode this race and literally threw up after crossing the finish line. Thankfully, a trash can was nearby. Never beast mode when it's 100 degrees outside, people. Learn from me.  

In 2014, I way overslept and a text from my dad woke me up..."hey, are you here?" I've never jumped out of bed and gotten ready for anything so fast in my life. Ever wonder what it's like to be inside the mind of a runner? Well, check out this race recap and wonder no more! 

For 2015's race, several friends of mine and I decided to complete our area's "Triple Crown" - a series of races that falls between March and July. We also received a special medal for doing so! Participating in all three races with them was so much fun!!

 

 In 2017, I ran this race and knew I was going to majorly bomb it. Well, as a HUGE surprise to myself, I actually ran very well and somehow achieved a 30 second PR! I was incredibly shocked to say the least!

What does 2018's race have in store? Well, here's a new one for this year - there's RAIN in the forecast! We shall see what new and exciting experiences Wednesday has to bring! 

Are you running a 4th of July race? How far is your distance if so? Have fun and have a Happy 4th!

It's the Tuesdays On The Run Linkup with Erika, Marcia and Patty. 

Junkin Gypsies

I know y'all know I love to craft and make projects! Well, a new-ish "experience" opened up in my area and since I'm all about painting and making things, my sister-in-law talked me into going! This place also used to exist not far from my sister-in-law's home in Texas but recently closed. So, since Kayla (my sister-in-law) is obsessed with this place (she's seriously been like 7 times...maybe 8? and she's going again next weekend...) we decided to give it a try together!

Since I've shared my Painting With a Twist trips with you guys (also here, here, and here), I thought I would share this one as well since I seriously enjoyed this WAY more than Painting With a Twist. Don't get me wrong, I do love Painting With a Twist, but I seriously suck at drawing straight lines and flat out "painting". When I heard that "stencils" of a sort are used with this class, I was all over it!

We signed up for an "open" class, so everyone in the room was designing something different. Both of our ideas came from the Junkin Gypsies facebook, but our instructor said that people send in pinterest ideas all the time as well.

For starters, Kayla was given boards, nails, and a hammer! You seriously do EVERYTHING for this class besides cut out the wood yourself. Mine was just a door hanger, so there weren't many pieces or parts to being with.

We began by staining the wood. Stains were available in several shades of brown as well as blue and grey. I chose a dark brown and wiped it on super thin.

A lot of time in this class was waiting for paint to dry. In the mean time, we ordered Buffalo Wild Wings on Waitr! I also made sure to stain the sides and back of this design as I'm a little OCD in that manner...

We also chose our actual paint colors while waiting for the stain to dry. I chose grey, mint, and turquoise.

The above photo is with just the grey paint and the below photo is with mint paint. As I applied colors, I went behind them and wiped them off with a paper towel. I wanted the colors to be thin so everything would dry faster and I also wanted my design to have a marshy, swampy, Louisiana look to it!

Kayla stained, painted, and sanded her board to give it a rustic look.

We were also given our  "stencils" while we waited for our paint to dry. Kayla's was more elaborate (above) while mine was more on the simple side (below).

These stencils were basically cut out from a silhouette machine onto sticky vinyl.

We arranged our stencils on our boards as we liked, then filled them in with our paint color of choice.

For my door hanger, I chose a fleur-de-lis as well as the word "Bienvenue" which means "Welcome" in french.

Oh yes, and Buffalo Wild Wings arrived just in time! We were starving!!

Instead of painting in the stencils with an actual paint brush, we stamped them in with a sponge brush.

I also chose black for my design so it could be seen from the road.

Filled in, now ready to peel! I thought we would wait for the black paint to dry before peeling up the stencil but she told us no!

Unfortunately,  my under coat paint wasn't dry enough and the vinyl pulled a little bit of paint up from around the stencil site.

With a flat head paint brush, my instructor showed me how to "fix" the error. Thankfully, it worked!

I love love love it!

When I say you get to do everything with this class, I mean it! I even had the chance to use a power tool to cut holes in my board to turn it into a door hanger! We also had a ton of ribbon to choose from to make a bow!

All done!

Kayla and I with our designs! I love them!

The finished product hanging on display!

I absolutely love my new door hanger and the concept behind this class. I left the class with the idea of returning as soon as possible and already decided on my next creation! If you have something similar to this in your area, I highly recommend it. The price is affordable for what you get and it's very simple and easy for anyone to do! I'll definitely be back!

A Twister Tale

Happy Good Friday! If you have an extra long weekend off from work, I hope you enjoy! We don't have any major plans except Easter dinner at Jason's parent's house and I am getting together with a few high school class mates for dinner sometime over the weekend! Oh yes, and there will be running...I'm super excited about that!

This long weekend is a nice, much needed break for us, especially after the experience we went through on Thursday. Even though I've been through my fair share of hurricanes, I've never experienced an isolated tornado event like I experienced on Thursday morning.

Around 4:45 a.m., I heard a LOUD commotion outside. Since I was in a sleep delirium, my first thought wasn't to go grab Brayden and jump in a bathtub...my first thought was "what the heck is going on out there?"

So, I looked out the window and saw wind and rain blowing in a million different directions and it was LOUD. After about 20 seconds, I heard a loud BOOM and thought it was our deck chairs being flipped over the deck. I moved to the back door so I could see a little better and noticed something that looked like a giant concrete planter with a foam roller sticking out of it. I could not for the life of me figure out what was going on. Thankfully Jason was still home before leaving for work so I hollered at him to come check it out. I even opened the door and debated on going out but common sense got the better of me. After Jason came to the door, he said..."Umm..that would be our CHIMNEY!" 

OUR WHAT?!

Yes, our chimney. What. The. Heck. Just. Happened??

We went into the attic to make sure water wasn't pouring inside and once the rain slacked up, we went outside to survey the damage. Thankfully, the storm had left about 3 feet of chimney IN our roof and it was just raining into our fireplace (that was manageable)!

After the sun rose and the rain stopped, I went back outside to survey the damage and when I looked up, I realized that our little Rubbermaid shed was GONE!

The part that baffles my mind is the fact that it took the shed but left all of the contents, including the hammock pillow. Yes you read that right, the hammock pillow.

At this point, I changed out of my work clothing and into a rain jacket and boots and began the neighborhood trek to locate pieces of Jason's shed. It was then that I realized that we must have had a tornado pass through our back yard. What. The. Heck.

You could even follow the path it took which also baffles my mind. This tree was down across the main road near our neighborhood.

If you turned around, you could see that the tornado hit the neighbor's fence and their tree...

After passing there, it then hit my direct neighbor's fences (the below picture), took my chimney and shed, then crossed the street and went on from there.

It also damaged the roof of several of the houses behind mine and bent a trampoline in half. Shingles are EVERYWHERE.

Trees are down everywhere and electricity is out all over the place. We knew a storm was coming but had ZERO warning that it would get to this degree in our area. (I'm not saying this is on the meteorologist part, I'm saying it's amazing how fast and furious this thing hit.)

Parts of Jason's shed had been flung OVER our fence, through our neighbor's yard, and onto the main road behind us. See that trampoline? It flew over a house and was a the top of the tree line at 5:00 a.m. until it finally fell down. Pieces and parts of Jason's shed were all in the ditch near the trampoline.

Right before leaving for work, I noticed something else missing - our trashcan. Our trashcan sits at the FRONT of our house. The contents had been emptied and it was flung into our neighbor's backyard. How this storm picked some things up and left other things really baffles my mind. I'm just so grateful that all of the damage is fixable and nothing major happened to our structures.

...and you can just call me Jungle Jane...covered in mud and soaked to the bone! It took me a good hour to pick up the pieces of Jason's shed and I'm sure I didn't even get them all. Thank goodness for Dopey Finisher rain jackets, though!

What. A. Morning.

Once we returned home from work that evening and could further survey the damage without the rain, we noticed that the storm did this....

It literally twisted the metal of our chimney!

Yesterday evening, the National Weather Service FINALLY confirmed that a category EF-1 tornado passed through our neighborhood (and covered a path of about 1.85 miles) with wind speeds up to 110 mp!

Our damage could have been SO much worse and I'm so thankful it wasn't!

You know when you've had "one of those days" and just need to see a bright spot in it? Well, these were mine...

Brayden had an Easter party at Mother's Day Out and was so precious dressed in his little Easter outfit! He came home with so many goodies, too! Let's face it though, he's always the bright spot in my day! :)

Yesterday was also Opening Day for baseball and the Astros and Rangers started it all off! The Astros won, so of course that made me super happy!

Anyway, here's to hoping the weekend ends better than it started! I hope you all have a great weekend. Don't forget the real reason we celebrate Easter! :)

Have you ever experienced a tornado?