Dopey Challenge Training Week 17 & Weekly Recap

Happy Friday, y'all! This first week back at work after vacation has really flown by and I'm so glad I have another weekend to relax and continue recuperating from our recent travel adventures!

Although I did stay active on my cruise and complete my goal of running three days that week, I didn't complete a "long run", so I'm not counting that week as completely successful. Does the Castaway Cay 5K count? :)

I did however reach my second goal of relaxing and enjoying myself. We made up for any sleep we've lost and although we really missed Brayden, we enjoyed being just the two of us again for a little while. I truly believe that you need that as a couple every once in a while, especially since 9 years of our marriage was spent kid free! Reuniting with Brayden was so amazing, though...and we've been soaking up the moments with him ever since. I am SO incredibly thankful for my parents, Jason's parents, and my friend Kim. They took excellent care of him while we were gone and I never once had to worry. I did purchase a data plan on the ship to keep in touch several times throughout the day and that was also really refreshing to see him throughout the cruise.

Ok, enough about that....now on to my week!

 
Currently Training For:

• Dopey Challenge 2018 - Walt Disney World
• Rock n Roll New Orleans Half Marathon 2018 - New Orleans, LA

Saturday - Travel Day - I did run the Castaway Cay 5K on Friday
Sunday - I call this a rest day although it truly wasn't - we spent the morning at the park with Brayden, then returned home and finished unpacking our bags from the trip!
Monday - 3 miles
Tuesday - 4 miles
Wednesday - Rest Day
Thursday - Squats/Lunges/PT with cross training
Friday - Cross Train

On Sunday morning, we took advantage of our final day off work and slept in as late as possible. After breakfast, we took Brayden to a local park that included a splash pad. HE LOVES WATER and had a ball there!! Once he grew tired of the splash pad, we went over to the swing set to let him swing for a while. He isn't a fan of the slides yet, although I know he will be soon!

Monday afternoon after work, we spent a little time with our friend Melissa (she's training for the Wine & Dine 10K and her first runDisney event) and we completed 3 miles together! 

The weather at the beginning of this week was amazing and finally felt like fall! We even had to pull out a few long sleeved outfits, although we haven't had to use the heater inside the house just yet. Now it's back to humid and blah outside. Sure wish that weather would have stuck around!

I'm pretty sure a trip to the pumpkin patch is in order this weekend!

On Tuesday afternoon, we went for a 4 mile run together. It was another gorgeous day! I didn't try to push myself as I didn't want to overdo it, so we took it nice and easy and enjoyed the run!

Not my best but that's ok! After eating cruise sized portions of food for an entire week, I was ok with this!

Thursday was a lot of fun! Pixie was groomed and after seeing her Halloween bows, I just had to take a picture of her with the pumpkin in our groomer's front yard. Pixie wasn't having ANY of that, though. Oh well.

Last night, we went out to our local college's Homecoming parade. This is a tradition of ours since forever and we really enjoyed it! This was Brayden's second parade outside the womb and his first time to really interact with the lights and sounds!

He LOVED the bands!!

(That's our local university band passing by as a blur in the background...)

Our favorite spot to stand for the parade is in front of the President's house as this is where the judges also sit. The parade participants are always on their a-game here and they usually still have a ton of candy to throw. Oh wait...maybe I'm telling our secret now? Shhhh...keep this between us, k? 

Tonight will be spent cheering on our Astros. They are so close to playing in the World Series and they've had a great season! I am reaaaaally nervous, though! We shall see what happens!

I have a 14 mile long run on the schedule so I'm crossing my fingers all goes well for that! I hope you've had a great week and enjoy your weekend!! :)

Jamaica Me Crazy & College Football & Movies!

9/11 - a day that will remain in the hearts and minds of Americans for eternity. It's hard to believe it's already been 16 years! Where were you? I was a sophomore in college, driving to class. I remember sitting in nutrition, unable to focus at all, looking at the world through completely different eyes. What a sad sad day. Let us never forget.
---------------------------------------------------------------

For a weekend that was supposed to be spent out at sea that wasn't, it actually turned out to be a pretty decent weekend!

On Thursday afternoon after work, Jason and I were invited to the annual American Cancer Society's Jamaica Me Crazy event. We didn't have tickets initially since we weren't supposed to be in town, so being invited at the last minute was a fun surprise! This would have been my first event to miss in years so I was happy it all worked out!

Totally nerd alert here - but I was so excited to see that the colors used at this year's event were my wedding colors (teal and pink)!

When you can't physically be out in the Caribbean on a cruise ship as planned, you take out some of your pre-packed dress clothing and attend a Caribbean themed event instead!

The food was AMAZING as always.

So was the dessert! YUM!

It was so much fun spending the evening with my friends and parents! Can't wait for next year!

On Saturday morning, I woke up to amazing weather and headed out for a long run. I'll share more on my long run in a later post this week!

After the run, Jason and I made breakfast.

Again, I'm sure you can see a theme here...we pretty much decided to do as many Disney-like things we could this weekend!

This turned into more of a "brunch" since we were eating closer to 11 p.m.

Jason's parents were also gracious enough to watch Brayden for part of the day, since they were supposed to have him anyway! 

One of the things we were saving for the cruise ship was movie watching. We didn't go see Guardians, Cars 3, or Spider-Man in theaters with hopes they would be available on the ship. Well, we decided to Red Box Guardians 2 and watch with our surround sound that we hardly ever get to use! We also blacked out as many windows as possible and loaded up on the snacks! No, we didn't eat ALL of that in one sitting! (I bought the Ghirardelli chocolates because they reminded me of Disney Springs and the Pineapple Fanta reminded me of Club Cool in Epcot!) 

After the movie, we met up with Jason's parent's in town and picked up Brayden for his first football game of the season! Our hometown college team is the Cowboys, so Brayden was decked out in Wranglers and Cowboy boots! :)

He did REALLY well for the first part of the game but started getting restless closer to half time. Our team was winning, so after half time and watching the band, we decided to leave. (They ended up winning in the end!)

On Sunday morning, we went to church and had lunch afterwards with my parents.

Brayden fell asleep on the way home and he seems to transfer really well from the car seat into his bed....so once he was sound asleep, I began the fall decorating process! I was going to wait until we returned home from the cruise but since that didn't happen, I decided with the gorgeous weather all weekend, I might as well!

Fall is one of my favorite times of year!

We spent the remainder of the evening in the pool! Perfect end to a great weekend!

For the record, my comments about a cancelled cruise are seriously tongue in cheek. I know Disney made the right decision and I'm not upset at all. Yes, I'm sad we didn't get to go on our cruise for now, but I feel worse for the people on those poor islands who had their homes destroyed by Hurricane Irma. 

So there you have it - for a weekend that started off with cancelled plans and ended with a lot of fun, I'd say it was a success!

How was your weekend? Any fun plans?

Christmas, Football, and the Weekend

Last week was a bit crazy around my house. We had something to do outside of our home almost every night of the week last week and I had to plan a big church function that I oversee which took place last night. Needless to say, I was exhausted every evening and went to bed as early as possible (hence the sparseness of my blog posts last week). This weekend however, we had a blast!!

On Friday afternoon after work, I had a few tasks to complete. Brayden's 6 month pictures were ready, so I picked those up on my way home. I love them, especially considering how cranky he was that morning!

I also put together several Operation Christmas Child boxes to ready them for delivery. The girls group I'm in charge of at church sponsored these boxes with the kids bringing items to stuff them with. We have been teaching them about foreign missions and how it's possible to impact a life right here from home. I love this organization and the cause! We were planning on five boxes, but the girls brought enough items to stuff seven boxes! I'd say that's a win win!

My last task of the day was to help Jason get the Christmas items out of the attic. I know it looks like a lot of stuff, but it's stuff I've accumulated over 10 years and there's a few boxes in the mix that we no longer use. I definitely need to take the time to throw away, donate, and downsize. Maybe one day!

When Saturday morning rolled around, so did a COLD front! It was in the 40's for our run and I was at a loss on how to dress. It's been so long since I've had to deal with really cold weather! Yes, that's REALLY cold to me! 

My running buddy Heather and I ran our last really long training run before our next half marathon! We ran 12 miles and it was an amazing run...I'll tell you all about it later this week! :)

After my run, I stopped at Starbucks for my usual Saturday morning coffee. I'm so hooked on their new Chestnut Praline Latte. It's a Christmas beverage and oh so delicious! I might have also picked up a snack for later in the day. :) Yay for red cups, too!

Brayden has a few Thanksgiving outfits so he had to start wearing them early! :) This is one of my favorites. Well, I lie...I love them all! These pants are especially adorable - they have a little turkey on the butt and they have turkey faces on the feet!

I spent a good portion of Saturday afternoon and night setting up our Christmas stuff. This Mickey village takes a while to setup, so that was my first big task and I tackled it during Brayden's nap time. So far, the entire inside of the house is complete minus the tree...I'll get to that this week!

My dad and mom are season ticket holders for our local university's football games. Well, they were unable to attend the game on Saturday night, so they gave their tickets to us! Bonus: we all (my dad, mom, Jason, myself) graduated from this school! Fun times!

After dinner, we bundled up and headed to the stadium. It was SO COLD, y'all. Thankfully, I had a blanket, too.

Brayden LOVED the game. Jason and I took bets on how long he would last and we were both WRONG! He loved all of the movement on the field during the game, ate some puff snacks, then intently watched both bands during halftime (a total of 5 songs). Our band even played the theme from the Incredibles! How fitting for our little Disney guy at his first football game! :)

He started getting restless after halftime, so we decided to call it a night. I couldn't believe he lasted 2 quarters plus halftime - it was definitely past his bedtime too!

Remember that cold weather snap I mentioned? Yeah well, it was enough for us to turn on the heater AND I got to wear my hoodie footie pajamas for the first time! My dad bought this pair for me last Christmas and I love them!! :)

For our "Thanksgiving Sunday" morning, Brayden wore his fall/Thanksgiving outfit.

On Sunday night, we had a function at church for our girls program and I spent most of my afternoon working on last minute things for the program. We also dropped the Operation Christmas Child boxes off at a local church.

Whew. I definitely slept well last night!

Here's to another fun week! Hope you all have a great week! Happy Thanksgiving prep! 

10K Goals

This weekend, I will run my first postpartum race - a 10K that runs through my hometown and ends on the 50 yard line of my local University. It's also the race that holds my current 10K PR.

I am excited but I would be lying if I said I wasn't nervous at all. There's just something about race day that brings around so much anticipation...there's nothing quite like it! I also have a few goals I've set for myself for this race which only makes the nerves a bit worse.

This race will serve a few purposes...the main being a decent (hopefully) 10K time to post as a corral placeholder for Princess in February. I also registered for a back-up 10K that will be held the following weekend. I'm looking forward to both races, but I'm also glad to have the 2nd one as a "just in case" kind of race. I've also run both races before, which I think will help tremendously on race day.

With my IT band giving me a bit of an issue during last week's planned 12 mile run, I am going to keep up the PT routine and stretching throughout this week. Thankfully, I ran 5.5 miles on Saturday and had no issues whatsoever. I'm crossing my fingers that it will be the same for race day!

I set two goals for race day:

Ultimate goal: 54 minutes
Although my 10K PR is right around 51 minutes and change, that was a couple of years ago. I've also had a baby and taken a bit of forced time off from running since then...so I don't think that setting a PR goal here would be feasible. However, running the race with my mile splits around 9 minutes each does sound obtainable.

I'd be happy with it goal: 59 minutes
Ultimately, I would like to reach anything under the 1 hour range.

Although my husband has to work and won't be able to be at the race to give his support, my parents will be there along with Brayden to cheer me on as I cross the finish line. I can't wait! I'm crossing my fingers that the weather is nice for Saturday!

Bring on race day!!

Weekend Fun!

This past weekend brought around a lot of fun times with friends!

It all began with our local university's homecoming parade. It's a tradition of my friend Jane and I to attend, so we always mark our calendars ahead of time for the parade! We are all alumni of the university as well, so it's fun to see the homecoming parade year after year!

First, Jason and I had dinner at a local Mexican restaurant. We always split the Mexican nachos which are delicious!

We also like to stake out a spot for the parade near the University President's home because that's where the judges sit and there aren't a ton of people around. Those in the parade make sure to put on their best showing for the judges, too! 

We also get a ton of candy here but shhhh...don' tell our secret!

This year, a little excitement was thrown into the mix. One of the bigger floats threw a bunch of confetti off their float towards the judges area. All of a sudden, we saw a streak of green fire coming out of one of the transformer boxes followed by a loud sound of electricity buzzing. The lights around us went out and lots of people in the judges stands jumped up and began running away. It all happened so fast, it took a second to put two and two together!  

A few minutes later, I saw an empty confetti cannon tube on the ground. Apparently the float people popped the cannon right into/near a generator and made it short out. No one was hurt, thankfully...it just scared the mess out of a bunch of people! The lights also came back on within minutes which surprised me!

My love and I at the parade! 

Jane and I! Her gender reveal party is the one I blogged about yesterday! :)

I wasn't able to go for a run on Saturday because I took the week off from running. My knee (IT Band) bothered me a bit during/after the Gulf Coast Half, so I decided to give it a week of rest. Actually, it was kind of nice to sleep in on Saturday morning! :)

Someone else enjoyed sleeping in on Saturday morning...and napping later!

On Saturday night, my friend Kim and I met up for dinner and the McNeese Homecoming game. My crunch lettuce with ranch dressing craving returned, so I ordered a salad from McAlisters and it was really good!

We had awesome seats for the game because my dad was out of town and let us have his season tickets!

It was a little rainy but we were prepared with our ponchos!  Best part? McNeese won the game! YAY!

On Sunday morning, I went to church then attended my friend's gender reveal, then went back to church to work the coffee shop! Despite the rainy weather ALL day long, it was a fun day! :)

I caught someone else enjoying my Snoogle for an afternoon nap on Sunday! These dogs are so funny!

I hope you had a great weekend, too!

What was the best thing that happened to you this past weekend?