Running Again

So a couple of weeks ago we had our family camp-out at the beach. The Oregon Coast weather can be extremely unpredictable. It can either be super sunny and nice or freezing cold, windy and raining. And we are talking about in the middle of August. Phil and I decided we would take the opportunity of a little get away to go on a couple of early morning beach runs. After all, it is not every day that you get to run on the beach. We were greated our first morning with this kind of weather:







The first run was amazing. Hard but "good for the soul" type of run along the ocean with the perfect music on the iPhone. The dog came with us and she enjoyed herself immensely. I love her ears in this picture:







The second day we changed our loop a little, but it was still a really great run. Felt really good to get the legs moving again.



I was never much of a runnner. In fact, totally the opposite. In high school and early college, I HAD to run for dance team and it was pretty much the most hated thing I ever had to do. Combination of asthma and low blood pressure made running kind of a scary thing for me. I did want I had to, but never enjoyed it and NEVER chose to do it as a form of exercise. After I signed up for the Nike Women's Half Marathon (thanks to a small moment of insanity and motivation from my marathon-running friend, Karla), I realized running had to be a new hobby. And I liked it. But the race was hard. I didn't have the right shoes when training, got a leg injury a month before the race so I had to STOP training. Losing that last bit of training made the race super hard.



I had read that after a race, you should wait to start running again until you REALLY want to. So I did. I haven't really run much since last October. I did kickboxing, spin class, yoga, weight lifting, even swimming for a little bit. Everything BUT running.



I'm back now.









We have run a few times in the mornings before work. Saturday we ran a 6 mile loop.



I thank the beach.







Love, Mrs. Janney

Busy Lately

Oh man... to say that things have been hectic lately is nothing short of an understatement. Things have been less than ideal these last 2 weeks.

Without going into too many details, Phil's dad had a medical emergency (I'm not sure how much information Phil is comfortable with putting out there). Since family is pretty much one of the most important things to me and because Phil IS the most important thing to me, I sent Phil to Virginia right away to make sure he could spend time with his family. He was gone a week.

At the same time, I was trying to prepare for my best friend Joanna's baby shower. I had been looking at ideas and trying out recipes for a couple of months. I wanted it to be just right... classy and unique. Well Phil and I had planned on getting a lot of work done around the house to prepare for having people over for the shower, but he had to leave suddenly. So I had to try to figure how to do everything I had orignially planned AND get the house ready all at the same time by myself. I mean, I could have cut back on the stuff I had planned for the shower, but I really wanted to do it the best I could for Jo. I feel like amazing friends deserve amazing things.

On top of that stuff, I was dealing with trying to be supportive of the stuff Phil and his family (who I have not always gotten along with the best) were going through and trying to wrap my head around the changing circumstances of my new family. Money got thrown into the mix too but we won't talk about that.

I survived the week. Thanks to some help from my parents and LOTS of work by Phil once he got back, the shower was exactly what I had in mind for Jo and her baby on the way.

Also during last week, massive hiccup at work. All I will say is a combination of my being REALLY stressed, passive aggressive co-workers, and total lack of sensitivity caused a MAJOR breakdown for me. Even now after it has been "dealt with" I am still kind of knocked back from it. I don't bounce back from some things very well and I can tell this is definitely one of those things.

Even now I feel like I could burst into tears over everything right now. To say that I am a little depressed is an understatement. I am trying to pull myself out of it, but it is hard. Exercise has been helping. I guess it is good that my desire to lose weight trumps my bad feelings. :)

In other news, I have taken a step backwards when it comes to my coffee consumption. I had started drinking my coffee black to cut back on the calories and because sugary cofee kind of grosses me out now. But the other day I decided to get a soy misto from Starbucks (a past favorite of drink of my friend Karla). They use the Vanilla Soy Milk. It is SO GOOD. And I have had one everyday since. I stopped using soy milk a while ago (I used to put it in my tea) but stopped because of the estrogen mimicking effects of soy. I figure I will have to stop when we start having kids so I might as well enjoy it now.

The baby shower forced us to finish getting the house looking nice and I LOVE IT!! We bought an area rug for the living, mainly to cover some stains on the gross carpet. We used a belated wedding gift card to get one from Target (thank you Alan and Jen).

We got our thank you notes so now I have to start getting those done. I will be glad to have those done. I feel like a bad person for not having gotten to those yet. But it is kind of bad timing because I registered last week to sit for the PE Exam in October. And I HAVE to pass it. Well I don't have to, but I REALLY REALLY want to. So I have to start studying for that. I figure if I can do like 10 thank you cards a day, I should have them done in a little over a week.

We are leaving for the family camping trip tonight and I am so excited. Seriously. I am super excited. I am not so sure about being excited to be around my family since the last time I went I left early because they were so mean to me. I am hopeful though that this time will be better. I just really need a little break. Actually I think I could use a long break but I will have to settle for a short one. Gotta take what you can get.

Anyway, I will post some pictures from the baby shower soon. I really need to download them because I want to give them to Joanna. I will leave you with this picture of the Mommy-to-Be. She has about 4 weeks until her due date and she is pregnant OUT IN FRONT. Like she has not gotten any wider and you can't tell she is pregnant from the back. The baby is OUT IN FRONT. Totally worth all the work to have a shower for this lovely lady. :)





Love, Mrs. Janney

The Latest about ME

So I thought I would follow up my last kind of serious post with a more light-hearted one. It is just a bunch of stupidness. Nothing like boring all 3 people who read my blog (and 1 of them is my husband).

Anyway... Here are the latest facts about me:

- I now drink my coffee black and like it.

- I am going through a lemon phase right now. Yesterday I made lemon bars (from scratch), lemonade and then had a lemon-lime Crystal Light. And my menu for this week has 2 different lemon chicken dishes in it. Don't know what the deal is about that.

- I am back into eating healthy and that feels really good. I put some flax seed in my non-fat Greek yogurt for today. Not sure how it will taste. I will keep you posted. In case you were wondering, I also put fresh blueberries and honey in my yogurt.

- I've been working on some stuff for Joanna's Baby Shower. So far, things have turned out super cute, but I can't give any details or pictures because I want it to be a COMPLETE surprise for Jo. :)

- Phil has been super busy lately with school stuff so I have been trying to make sure all he has to do is bath himself. I've only really had issues with this a couple of times in the last 2 weeks. I was hoping I could be more supportive than I have been, but I am not perfect. In fact, I think I have figured out that I am a little more needy than I originally thought.

- We've gotten the house decorate a bit with our wedding stuff. The hutch we bought will get put together this week I think so we can put our dishes away in it. And after that, we will be able to get the rest of the house organized.

- Working out has been challenge lately for a few reasons: (1) I have been wanting to take of things around the house. (2) We have had social engagements as of late and I refuse to give up the little time I see some of my friends so I can work-out. (3) Allergies have been affecting my sinuses and asthma so I haven't been feeling the best. Nothing like feeling like you can't breath and have a headache to make you want to go sweat. But I am hoping I will be able to turn that habit around this month. I have some definite fitness/weigth goals and I would feel a lot better about myself if I would just GET CRACKIN' on them. So... on the agenda for tonight is either Group Ride and some weight lifting OR running and some weight lifting.

That's it for now. What can I say? I am a old-married lady now. :)

Love, Mrs. Janney

Church Lesson without going to Church

Phil and I were really good about going to church before we got married. We made it a super priority along with several other very good habits (eating well and working out). But since we got married, life has just be CRAZY. I am not even sure why or how it happened, but things just haven't been "settled" I guess you could say.

So last week we were working on fixing that and we went to church. Well... it was one of the most depressing sermons I have heard in a while. The last we were in church before that was at our wedding. Happiest day of our lives. Bright future ahead of us. Sunshine and daisies. You get the picture. Then the sermon was about loss, grief and death. Losing your spouse, having a young child die, stuff like that. Basically Phil and I were both just trying to not burst into tears in the middle of church. Talk about having your worst nightmare thrown in front of you. Now I know life doesn't offer a guarantee good time, and that grief and loss are a part of life. But I don't really want to have to think about it too much until I get. I am not totally selfish though. I understand that there are tons of people (unfortunately) in the congregation that needed to hear that message. So it was good for them. It made me want to cry.

So back to this Sunday...

We had every intention of heading to church, but we just weren't super jazzed about it after last week. Plus, Phil had a super big important meeting today he needed to be uber-prepared for so it was ok for him to have some extra time during the day to work on that. While he worked, I did house stuff and I watched some TV whilst doing so. It just so happened that pretty much the only thing that looked remotely interesting on was The Devil's Advocate.




It was super interesting. Not sure why. Towards the end of the movie, the Devil (played by Al Pacino who makes an excellent villian) has a monologue where he talks about how he has been on earth, doing work to create this evil society where people think God doesn't care about them and that they should give into every temptation they have because they can basically. He talks about how easy it is to do that and how difficult it is to please God and talks as if God is a huge prankster for giving us free will and then laws to abide by. And as I am listening to this, I am realizing how right on most of it is. Obviously I don't believe that God doesn't care about his people. But the part about how the Devil has been working on turning the society towards sin is so true. And it was kind of a good eye opener. The whole movie gives example after example about how society has turned towards sin. Avoiding sin is hard. Giving into temptation is the easy thing to do. But we are supposed to avoid sin to be closer to God. And it is no wonder that society in general feels so distant from God when sin is what pulls you away from God. It is basically just a downward spiral away from God if you think about it. The more you sin, the further you get from God. The further you get from God, the less you avoid sin, thus pulling you further away from God. I wonder how much society would change if we (collectively) could pull away from temptation?

I won't give the ending to the movie away, but it was also a good lesson about how even after we learn lessons and choose righteousness over sin, the Devil is right back at it, working away and challenging us all over again.

I don't know if I was just open to the message of the movie or what, but it was definitely a good lesson for me. It spoke to me. Just something to think about.

The movie also tries to paint lawyers in a very bad light, but I won't take that message to heart. :)



Love, Mrs. Janney