On Joy

Joy is....

- getting to the halfway point in the week (noon on Wednesday!)
- even better, Friday (2.5 days away...)
- Autumn and fall leaves
- grape crush harvest time at the winery
- my sweet adorable wonderful husband
- quiet walks by the pond at lunchtime
- a countdown started to my first anniversary (and little weekend getaway!)
- a new slipcover for the sofa
- wonderful friends
- a jack rabbit running across our path on a jog last night
- temps in the 80's, in September
- sweet prayers at night with my husband
- answered prayer
- a job well done
- items scratched off my to-do list
- memories of wonderful places I have been and friends made

:)

I am blogging over at Kyla's Joy today - check it out!

What does "joy" mean to you today?

On Teamwork

Weekends - oh my - we pack them in something crazy and arrive at Monday exhausted. Anyone else do that?

The 17 mile run on Saturday was awesome. There was a great crowd of about 500 that showed up to run the Indian Summer Half Marathon. We took off running at 8am and finished 3 hours later. We had to stop from time to time to get rocks out of our shoes and walk a bit, but for the most part just enjoyed a leisure pace. It was not a chip-timed event, so much more relaxing. Now, running past the finish line and continuing to add on nearly four more miles - that was harder! Thank goodness the weather was perfect and lots of friendly faces on the trail. By the early afternoon we were home, showered, and chowing down on some Pizza Hut. ;)

Matt has a huge paper due every Sunday night, so we have a new routine: Saturday afternoons and Sunday's - all day - he devotes to his grad school work. It is hard on him, as he is social and likes to relax too - but it is new chapter in his life. It really is a team effort - I will hold down the fort with chores, yard work and meals. Matt will study his rear end off so he can land an awesome job down the road that allows for me to care for children (God-willing!). They are short-term circumstances, but will have long-term benefits.

I was a busy bee! Prepped meals, lunches, laundry, shopping, organizing, yard mowing, weed pulling, and other cleaning. I really do love it...

I hope you all had a great weekend and are enjoying some fall activities!

Weekly Roundup

WHEW I am SO ready for the WEEKEND!

This week flew by for the most part. The prior weekend had wore us out, so Monday night was purposefully a restful one.

Tuesday night I attended a local Invisible Children event - they are a group that is dedicated to helping end the war in Uganda and rehabilitating schools for children there. It was so moving to see video of Gulu, where I was blessed to visit in 2008. Such a beautiful place. Wonderful presenters, too!

Wednesday night we were rested enough to get a run in and then Matt tackled a paper while I attempted to get some chores done...

Thursday night I had fun organizing my new-to-me Craigslist shelves...that turned out to be much smaller than they appeared....but still oh so cute! We also enjoyed watching the season opener of "The Office" at a friends house. We love that show...

Tonight is date night, which will be a quiet night in - we have an early start in the morning!

Tomorrow we have a half-marathon race here in Tri-Cities. We are running to and from the starting line in order to get our miles in for the week. = 17 miles total. We've done it before, will we be able to do it again? Hmm....

So that was my week and why I am so tired today...

Have a great weekend everyone! :)

On Love Languages...

According to author Gary Chapman, there are five love languages: quality time, physical touch, gifts, words of affirmation, and acts of service.

My love language is "acts of service." When people do things for me, I feel so loved and appreciated. When I want to show someone that I love and care for them, I will usually do something for them.

This morning I was browsing Craigslist, as I have been searching for some simple cute shelves to help with storage in our house. I saw this cute pair on sale for cheap:
They were at a local salon, and needed to go fast - I could have them if there early enough.

I was stuck at work, 40 miles away. I knew Matt had an hour long lunch, so I thought well, why not ask him to pick them up for me? I felt bad as his break time is for relaxing...but also felt it was safe to just ask. I shot off a quick email and got the response I wanted to hear so badly, "Sure, I can do that! What is the address? Love, Matt"

I did a little dance! He popped over to the salon, paid $15 (!) for them, and packed them in the car easily. Calling me up a few minutes later, he says "Peice of cake! No problem."

I.Love.That.Man.

It is funny how the "little things" can mean so much.

What is your love language?

Our Busy Weekend

I remembered to take pictures on Friday night, at least!
Dinner Friday night: Pita pizzas! Our favorite. It's become a Friday night tradition already...
Matt surprised me with flowers! I loved this because for the first few months of marriage I would have been furious if he'd spent that kind of money...but now things are a lot easier, so it was lovely :)

He got a sweet kiss for that gesture :)
(please forgive us. We take a lot of kissing pictures!)

Friday nights' date night was pizza, shopping, and a movie. Just a quiet night, and much needed too after a busy week. Saturday I went to play Bunco with some girlfriends from church while Matt hit the books. Poor guy studied all day! We took just a small break to attend church and so Saturday night he was writing a paper and I did our grocery shopping. What a secret - shopping at a WinCo on a Saturday night is much easier than the insanity during the day! Woo!

We had an Epic Run on Sunday. I wish I'd taken before and after photos. Before - happy and excited to go on a 15 miler, even with a little rain. After - cold, shivering, worn out, messy hair and hungry! We survived though. 3 1/2 hours in total, and we did not start out until 10am so as to wait out some of the rain... so after hot showers we napped from 2:45-3:45! Hit the spot though. I wish I'd paid better attention to time because I did a Starbucks run afterwards and did not realize we were enjoying our Grande Americanos at close to 5pm! It was fitting though - Matt was writing a paper on Starbucks for his grad class so, you know, it helped the writing :)

(Plus caffeine helps open the capillaries after a long run when you are sore, right? :)

Sunday night = meal prep. I prepared moo shoo chicken and a veggie casserole dish so they would be oven ready for our busy week. I sure made an insane mess of the kitchen, but it's been nice to come home and just throw one of those in the oven!

It's Tuesday already - yesterday totally got away from me. And, Matt always has to help me get photos off the camera, so a delay there...

Have a great day, all!

Friday Fun

I love that song by the cure, "It's Friday, I'm in Love". So the photo is fitting!
(My vitamin is COFFEE!) :)
How soon is too soon? "Studies have proven that babies who start drinking soda during that early formative periods have a much higher chance of gaining acceptance and 'fitting in' during those awkward formative pre-teen years." (!!!)
Happy Friday everyone! We are supposed to get some rain this weekend, which is a big deal since we live in the desert...

A 15-miler is on the schedule for Sunday, so pray for us! :)

Homekeeping

I cleaned the living room up nicely and then snapped a photo with our cheapo camera. :)
Finally got the DVD shelf all organized, yes in alphabetical order :)
What the kitchen looked like as I started making sesame chicken...
...the mess after...
...the finished product was well worth it though!

I love tackling one project at a time. I just scratched a couple things off my list, and that is a great feeling. What's on your list?

Happy Wednesday, all!

Advertising That Doesn't Work Anymore, #1

Got this from my uncle, Matt laughed his head off. Too funny!

Time at Home

Ohh what a wonderful trip home! We left on Saturday morning and spent the day with Matt's brother, Ireland, and family. We stole some photo moments while at Red Robin celebrating Ireland's birthday:

Of course we embarrassed him with a little birthday song...
Sunday morning was a 10K race for us, plus 3 miles of running home from the starting line = sore today!
After the race, we went over to Rue & Anne's house where she made us a great lunch and we stole some more kissy time. I found some photos on my dad's Flickr page and stole 'em!
Little Dan Dan is getting ready to walk!
Having a bad hair day - me, that is. Matt's hair always looks awesome!
Seriously. What do I need to do to tame the 'fro? Frizz Eaze? Hair grease? More gel?
What a fun weekend. I drove there and back (four hours each way) so Matt could work on his grad school paper. What a trooper - he was up until after midnight!

I hope you all had a fun weekend...I sure got my family "fix" so I am so grateful :)

Getting Organized

Since Matt started grad school, I have some more free time to work on house projects. Woo have I had FUN!

We laid the sod last weekend, and Monday was an off day we spent getting all sorts of errands done: car stuff, house stuff, lawn care, etc. I did a ton of deep cleaning too, as I like to do the first weekend of a new month.

Tuesday Matt had a ten hour day at work. We tried to go to Bible study in the evening but were too zonked to stay! We left early and called it a night by 9pm. I was itching to do some furniture re-arranging, but it would have to wait until Wednesday night...

After work yesterday, while a casserole was baking, we set out for a quick 3 mile run. There was a gorgeous sunset beginning, it was so beautiful. The run was great for Matt as he hit the books right after - and I started an organizing project! I switched out Matt's tall bookshelf in the living room with two smaller ones from the office, which really made the wide open space look better. I will take some photos tonight. It was good exercise lifting and stacking all those books!

So this morning while the coffee brewed, I was eyeing the layout of furniture in the living room and realizing that if I switched a few pieces around, it would look better. And thanks to laminate floors, I quietly did the switch right then and there :) Matt did not even hear it!

Next project: the DVD shelf. It is full to bursting! We are packing tonight for a weekend trip home, so...not sure if I will get away with it, but I will try :)

What do you need to get organized?

Happy Thursday, all!

Finally Took Some Photos...

Here was the sunset Friday night:
Here was the view from our dinner table:
Here are our dear friends that gave us some lovely sod for our lawn:
Here is breakfast Saturday morning. Yes, we mix 7 types of cereal for breakfast!
Here is Matt plugging away!

Here is part of the sod we got from our friends:
The other sod that we got, to cover the remaining part of the lawn was found on Craigslist, for FREE! And, it is gorgeous:

We have a LAWN! Now, neighbors: come and talk to us again! :)

WHEW. We are BEAT. We laid the sod yesterday and today, and also ran 13 miles. We are pooped to say the least...

Have a great rest of your Labor Day weekend, all!

YIPPIE!!!

I am slightly excited, for a few reasons.

1. Three-day weekend starts this afternoon. Yeeehaw!

2. Matt turned in his first grad school assignment last night and he did an awesome job. And, he finished at 9pm instead of the projected 11pm. Way to go, Matt!

3. Last night on Facebook, I saw the status of a local friend that had some extra sod - 400 sq feet of it. It was up for grabs for free! I jumped on that so fast and got word that we could pick it up tonight. Now, we have tried once already to seed this specific patch on the front of our house. Weeds overtook it all within one week. We were so discouraged - it was hard work!
So as you can see here, this area behind us in the picture is going to look so beautiful with that new grass! And, the neighbor right next door is getting ready to put his house on the market, so we knew that getting our lawn done on that side would really help the sale of it. All we will have left is the other side, which I will go on the weed attack this weekend. It is good exercise!

4. I get to spend time with this guy this weekend:
I saw this photo on my dad's Flickr page, he must've snuck this pic when they were visiting with us recently. Matt's folks visit my blog from overseas often, so I like to put up pics of their boy on here...well, and it is for my enjoyment too :)

5. Date Night tonight! I think we are catching a movie, and one of Matt's co-workers also owns a frozen yogurt place so we are hitting that up :)

6. I am excited for a 13-mile run this weekend - because it is always amazing that we can pull that off. (Marathon is 8 weeks away!)

7. We will get caught up on stuff this weekend. This holiday weekend is a "staycation" for us for just that reason. To get ahead in house work, lawn work, school work = more time to just hang out and rest together later!

I hope you all have an awesome Labor Day weekend! ;)

Helloooo September!

Goodness! Autumn has arrived. Ah, bliss. I love cooler (running!) weather, fall colors, changing leaves, and all those new coffee drinks that come out about now...

So - I have realized lately that my work computer does not show any blogs with images from Flickr. So, if a blog is written where the photo is pulled from the Flickr site to write a post around, it is just blank. It may be blocked. This is annoying because it means no Pioneer Woman and a few other favorites that I like to read. So weird because all the writing is there but no images. Annoying!

Matt started school yesterday and hit the books for 3 hours last night. I overdid the yard work thing on Monday night, so I went to bed at 8pm - exhausted. I hope to bounce back in time to be productive tonight :)

I see a three day weekend ahead and not a lot of things planned for the long weekend. This could be a good thing...