We did it!

Somehow, we finished 13.1 miles on the 26th! And boy was it BRUTAL! We definitely did not train enough for the hills or the heat. The high temperature was 95* (it probably got up into the upper 80's by the time we finished, but the heat index was of course much higher), and we had some pretty big hills to climb along the route. For those of you familiar with Columbia, here was the map:

Before the race:

Sunday with our medals:

Momma crossing the finish line:

Kim & I after the race:

And, I won't post my finish line photo because I literally looked like I was about to keel over, but Kim looked like a stinkin' machine crossing the finish line (in 2 hrs 11 mins, too!)

She's all ready to do more, but I think I'll take a little break before my next one!

How Does Your Garden Grow?

Here's a look at things around the garden lately. I just harvested our first round of strawberries today, which was exciting!

Playing Catch-Up

I didn't realize it had been well over a month since my last post. So let's play catch-up here on everything that's been going on...it'll take a few posts!

The month of May started out a little bumpy for us. I'm actually not working at the moment, so we're trying to navigate where to go from here. It's been nice to have a little break from things (something I haven't had in years), and I'm working to relaunch an art and design business to see where that leads. So in the meantime, I'm working on house and garden projects, trying (keyword: trying) to be a better cook - I really have no excuse not to have dinner on the table by 5:30 now!, and finishing up half marathon training. And, trying to get a little of my own work done with these two pooches under my feet:

Eric's been crazy busy at work the past few weeks...I'm hoping things slow down soon since he has about 2 free hours each night, and dinner/dishes/etc quickly fills that up. The half marathon is in less than two weeks now (May 26th) and I just got through my last "long mile day" last Thursday...12 miles in 3 hours! Definitely not a runner's pace, but I'm hoping to keep a 15-minute or under mile by powerwalking. My 5/6/7 mile weeks completely drained me - I came home so sore and exhausted, but now that I have more endurance and strength, I felt fine after the 12 miles. Health-related books and documentaries (thank you, Netflix!) have been great for getting me through my treadmill workouts. We're still working on making most of our meals 100% organic and whole foods, and those resources have been great learning tools. I'll share them soon!

Other than that, we saw Kent graduate with his Masters last weekend and had a wonderful time with Eric's family! (I'll email out my photos to everyone that was there here in the next day or two)

And, since I'm obviously not great at updating the blog very often, I've added some photos on the sidebar to the left. I use Instagram a lot (it's an iPhone app for photos), so that's a good way to keep track of the dogs and everything else. If you're one of our family members who likes getting email updates, go to this link, click "subscribe", and enter your email address!