Ready to Run

Over the weekend I completed my 2nd Half Marathon! The first one I ran was the St. Jude Half Marathon in Memphis in Dec. 2008. It was very cold and I ran about 9.5 of the 13.1 miles in right about 3 hours. So my goal for the Rock 'n' Roll Phoenix Marathon this weekend was to run the whole thing and finish under 3 hours. I did both! I felt good about my training knowing that I had worked very hard and the weather was perfect. Here are a couple pictures from the weekend!

At the race expo the day before, just picked up my registration packet.

Pre race at 5am. Jeremy ran the full marathon and his race started an hour and a half before mine so we were there earlllllly.

And a post race picture. We both walked funny for the rest of the day but were feeling fine by Monday.

It was fun and I'm ready to hit the Rock 'n' Roll St. Louis Half Marathon in October!

Open Hand

I had my first real open hand experience last night I think. You know, open hand, almost a test of faith to see if you're holding more tightly to the things of this world or if Christ is really the center.

There was a fire in my apartment building. Someone on the 3rd floor (I live on the 1st) had a stove fire that set off all the alarms and the sprinklers in her apartment. It turns out this 3rd floor apt is directly above mine. The firefighters were here checking my apartment for leaking water. I walked through and only found one sprinkler leaking, in the kitchen. Then I did a second walk through and as I walked through my bedroom I heard water running down in my closet. If you know me, you know there are two things I love: shoes and watches. Both are kept in the closet. I opened my closet door and tried to turn the light on to no avail as the power to my room was turned off. All I could see was that the carpet in the closet was a darker color than the bedroom carpet. Meaning...it was all wet.

The firefighters came in, cleared out the wet stuff and set buckets and containers underneath all the leaking points. A little while later the water had been shut off and maintenance took over. They cleared everything out of my closet and I began going through the wet stuff. After that the carpet cleaning company came in, sucked up all the excess water, sprayed to prevent mold and mildew and brought in huge blowers to blow under the carpet to dry the padding. I had to turn the heat way up last night and sleep with the blowers on so needless to say I didn't sleep well.

I've got a lot of cleaning and laundry yet to do but at the end of the day, nothing was ruined (I don't think). All my shoes are wet but drying, my watches still tick, and the majority of my clothes are just wet and washable.

When I heard the water rushing down in my closet I had a little time to think as I waited for the firefighters to get down here. I thought all of my stuff would be ruined but I didn't freak out, I didn't cry because it's just stuff. I hope that my peace was in direct relation to knowing that this world is not my home and not due to the fact that I have renters' insurance. In reality, it's just stuff and there is so much more important.

Holidays

Well, the holidays are over and time marches on. I left Washington on December 22nd and spent the next 12 days traveling - 3 days of flying with stops in 6 different states and 3 time zones!

I spent Christmas with my family in Pinckneyville, IL. My mom's birthday is Dec. 23 so I always try to make it home in time for that. I woke up on Christmas Eve with a sore throat and ended up with the worst cold I've had in a while. It kept me from running for a whole week which wasn't good for my training and I'm still trying to get over it. Nevertheless, I had a great Christmas.

My cute pregnant cousin Whitney and her husband Jonathan were able to join us for Christmas Eve and Christmas morning this year. All the way from Houston, TX! Whitt and I are only two months apart in age and I think this was the first time I'd seen her since her wedding in January of 2009.

My Aunt Freda made each of the adult women in the family an apron. Very cool. I love to cook and I always make a mess so this was a great gift.

Other than Christmas Day when we were out and about I spent the majority of my week in Illinois laying around on my parents couch. However, I did get a white Christmas which was awesome, and I did don the camouflage overalls so I could hop on the four wheeler with my brother to play in the snow. Love that! Thankfully there are no pictures. On December 29 I hopped on a flight to Phoenix to spend a few days with my boyfriend before heading back to work on January 3rd.

Right after I got into town we headed to Buffalo Wild Wings to watch the Illini play in the Texas Bowl. Of course I outfitted Jeremy in orange. He's an Iowa fan so after he put on the Illini shirt he made me promise not to put this picture on facebook. But he never said anything about posting it to my blog (which he doesn't read). Shhh, don't tell him! He's a good sport.

And for New Years Eve we headed out on the town with J's best friend and others. I think this is the first time I did not spend my NYE in on a couch somewhere. It was a nice change. The whole time I was in Arizona I don't think it got about 45 degrees though. Not exactly what I was expecting. Praying that it is warmer next weekend when I go back to run!

Hope you had a great Christmas and wonderful start to the New Year!

Thanksgiving

Can't believe we're already in December! I had a GREAT Thanksgiving this year encompassed by a trip back to the Midwest. And even though I had my camera with me the entire trip, I only managed to take one picture. Oops.

My trip started out in Memphis for, you guessed it, a wedding. A former co-worker of mine got married on Saturday, Nov. 20th and then I was able to spend a few days in town catching up with friends and relaxing. I don't know when I'll be back in Memphis so it was a very nice visit, not to mention I had Jeremy with me the whole time which made everything even better.

On Tuesday before Thanksgiving we headed up to Southern Illinois with the help of my good friend Mark Anderson and my loving Father who transported us along Interstate 55. Had a great visit in Pinckneyville with all my family. Thanksgiving was at my mom and dad's house as it has been for the past few years and it was a full house. I think we had 25 people there this year with toddlers running around for the first time in about 15 years. So fun!

Here is the one picture I did take. My wonderful brothers on Thanksgiving.

I watched a lot of football, played Phase 10 with mom and Jeremy (I won of course) and let my little brother Joey beat every single one of us at Connect 4. Seriously, it's true. We used to play that game with my grandma when we were little and my mom bought one for our house. So, Joe pulled it out and preceded to go through the family, including Jeremy and Joey's girlfriend Kelsey, and beat all of us. Multiple times. He very much enjoyed doing it too.

On Sunday I headed back to Tacoma and will be here until going back to Illinois for Christmas and momma's birthday. Looking forward to Jeremy's visit to Tacoma in 5 days. Hope you all had a great Thanksgiving as well!

Airports!

The theme of my off season is most definitely going to be airports. I'm getting very familiar with Seattle Tacoma International Airport and am going to be spending a fair amount time in several others this off season. But, airports always seem to mean something good is either coming! So here's a rundown of what's been going on lately.

For the last weekend in October I made my first trip to Phoenix, AZ to visit Jeremy. It was a short weekend but it was nice to get to see his world and his new house and the sunshine of course!

Last weekend, my good friend and former co-worker at the Memphis Redbirds, Mark Anderson came out for his first visit to the Pacific Northwest. He was quite the tourist while he was here and Ben and I were quite happy to join him when we weren't working.

On Saturday we took a day trip down to Portland. It's just over a two hour drive so it's pretty easy. On the way down we stop at Mt. St. Helens. Unfortunately it was too foggy to see the actual mountain but we did take this great picture. Mark is on the left, Ben on the right.

Sunday we headed up to Seattle for some good eats, Pike Place Public Market and the Underground Tour. The Underground Tour was something I've been wanting to check out since I moved out here. Basically, when Seattle was first founded they were too low and kept flooding and having trouble with waste and tides and such. But then there was a fire that pretty much burned the town down after which they rebuilt 10 feet hirer. It was pretty cool.

Mark left Tuesday and I've been relaxing the last couple nights. It's been wonderful. Today I picked up the keys to my new condo. I'll be moving in to the condo in January with my friend and co-worker Mallory. She's moving in this weekend. I'm really excited for our new home. It's got lots of space and an awesome view. I'll post pictures of that soon.

So, my next trip to the airport will be next weekend when I head to Memphis and then on to Pinckneyville for the holidays. Jeremy is meeting me in Memphis and joining me for the week. I'm really excited to go home and see the family. I was there in July and briefly saw my parents in September so I'm ready.

I'm Baaaaack

Well, after a long hiatus, I am officially back on the blogging train. I never meant to lay off long as I did but well, baseball happened. To be honest, I probably wouldn't have started again if not for some nice (Abbey) and straight forward (Breana "your blog sucks") prodding from friends. So, since my last blog was in April, let's do a little recap:

Baseball season! I made it through my first season with the Rainiers in the old Cheney Stadium. The day after our last regular season game, construction started on the $3o million renovation that is taking place at 'ol Cheney this off season. I'm pretty pumped about that. Really looking forward to a new press box. To the left is the single wide trailer we called a press box during the 2010 season. Look close and you can see all the stairs I had to climb multiple times a day. I believe there were 60 of them and I went up and down at least 5 times on any given game day. Reason #1 why I didn't gain any weight this baseball season.

This turned out to be no ordinary season, our young, home run hitting team had it's ups and downs that turned in to ups at just the right time as the Rainiers defeated none other than the Memphis Redbirds to win the Pacific Coast League Championship. You may recall that the Redbirds won the PCL title in 2010 so this is my second championship in a row. 2 rings for me! I'm thinking about adding "wins championships" to my resume. I was fortunate enough to get to travel to Memphis with the team for the championship series. It was so fun to get to watch games at AutoZone Park and visit with all of my old co-workers while introducing my new co-workers to the city that I love.

I was actually fortunate to make a couple trips back to Memphis this year, one at Memorial Day, another for the championship series and a third just a few weeks ago for my sweet friend Michelle's wedding. Michelle's wedding weekend was an incredible time of fellowship and encouragement with my church friends from Memphis. I miss them so much!

I'm still searching for a church to call "home" in the Tacoma area. I think I've got it down to just two and am learning a great deal through this search as well. Thankfully, the Lord has blessed me with a women's Bible study that has been such a blessing and nothing short of an answer to prayer.

Also over the summer, I found me a boyfriend! We met through an unusual set of circumstances that make for a great story and so far it's been a lot of fun. Unfortunately for me, he lives in Phoenix during the off season. With his flexible work schedule he's been able to come up to Tacoma and I'll be making my first trip to Phoenix this weekend. A little sunshine to break up the gray Seattle winter can't be bad, right? :)

I'd be lying if I said I was completely accustomed to the area. I'm not. But I'm getting there a little more each and every day. The seasons are one of the most noticeable differences. The summer here was so short and cool I didn't really know what to do. But I didn't really miss the unbearable heat and humidity that the Midwest and South are famous for.

I promise to be more consistent with blogging. Hope everyone had a great summer! Looking forward to seeing everyone during the holiday season.

Cribs

Well...it's been a while since my last post. Blame it on baseball. I took these pictures of my apartment about six weeks ago probably and am just now posting them. But I promise to recap the last month soon. Until then, check out my crib!

First the bedroom...


and my very own bathroom which is inside my room...yes it really is that small,


our living room...
and the kitchen. That's my roommate Melissa over there but she didn't want to pose for the pic.