found: inspiration

Sometimes, when I have a minute, I click around on the internet and search for inspiration.  Sometimes "inspiration" is a fun new recipe, sometimes it's someone's personal blog, and sometimes it's just pinterest.  Whatever the inspiration, it's nice to know there are others out there who want things similar to what I want, and who write about them. It's very encouraging.

I've been pondering life directions, recently.  I decided as my New Year's Resolution this year that 2014 was going to be the Year of Positive Life Changes.  The first Positive Life Change actually occurred in 2013: we moved from a studio apartment to a one bedroom in November.  In January, we bought a car and I started graduate school. In February, we got a puppy.

I've been dreaming.  I've been dreaming of a small-ish house with lots of outdoor space, chickens in the back yard and kids chasing them around.  I've been dreaming of flowers and tomato plants and laundry on the line and hand-ground coffee.

Some of those things won't happen right now.  At least, not that way.  We're in a one bedroom apartment just outside a major city.  I'm in grad school and working.  Husband works in the evenings. We have a puppy who is pretty high maintenance (and I'm pretty sure she knows it.)

In browsing through some blogs and other forms of "inspiration," I came across this post.  Jill writes about having some of the same longings and accomplishing some of the same things I want to do.  She has some land and some chickens and some kids and a beautiful blog.

via

Anyway, I just thought someone else out there might be looking for a small moment of inspiration.  This was mine this week. I'm happy where I'm at.  I love the people and animals around me. I love our little apartment that I took time to paint and decorate and make cozy.  I love being in school and I enjoy my job (most of the time.)  But, I also love working toward a dream.

puppy!

I realized this week that I hadn't shared one of the biggest pieces of news in our little family!  We got a puppy!

Her name is Scout.  Here are a few pictures of her.

The first week we got her. 

Two weeks ago. Happy about being allowed to take a stick inside.

Exploring in the snow last week. 

She's now 4 months old, and a sweetheart.  She bites everything (teething) and will definitely let you know if she wants you to pay more attention to her.  But, she's completely adorable and loves to explore.  She's even loved all the snow we've gotten in the mid-atlantic area, recently.

(Apologies for the photo quality -- taken with my phone! She moves too quickly to let me try and use a nicer camera.)

Happy Tuesday!

on love and marriage

"Because love is not something to wait for or hope for or look for -- it's something to do. Do not measure your marriage by how much love you feel today, measure it by how much love you've offered today. When you don't feel love, do love. Feelings follow doing, not the other way around. Lasting, true love is not about being swept off your feet. Sometimes love is just sweeping the kitchen and being grateful that there is a kitchen and a partner who is contractually obligated to share it with you forever."

-- Glennon Melton, in this post about "happy-ish ever after"

racing, racing

Oh my.  I have severely neglected this blog space. So sorry.

In the last 3.5 weeks, hubby and I have run TWO 10k races!  Yes, that's 6.2 miles. Each race.

The first one was nearby, just outside of DC.  Unfortunately, this is the only picture I took at that race, and it's a pre-race photo.

In this race I managed to totally exceed what I thought I could do time-wise, but had to stop and walk many times. The steady inclines kicked my behind.

The second race was up in Pennsylvania.  We went up to the Runner's World Half Marathon and Festival, and ran the 10k on Saturday morning. We drove up on Friday evening and immediately crashed in bed to try and get some sleep.  Saturday morning came bright and early, but we managed to be enthusiastic and reasonably ready to race.

Sadly, I committed two race-day errors.  The first: lay out all your pre-race stuff ahead of time.  I was packing so quickly on Friday that I actually packed the wrong shoes.  I packed old running shoes that had a few too many miles on them.  My hip wasn't too happy with me, but it ended up being fine.

Which leads me to the second: Don't change anything in your usual routine for race day.  Not only did I bring the wrong shoes, but I couldn't find my warm running fleece and I completely forgot about the slightly-less-useful-but-still-good skiing fleece.  And let me tell you, it was cold.  I ended up buying a lightweight pullover which worked out just fine, but, again, I wore new stuff.

After the race, we cleaned ourselves up and went back to browse the expo and attend the seminar given by Mark Remy.  He was awesome in person, and we won stuff at the Crap Giveaway! Bet you can guess what we won:

Overall, at this race I didn't beat the time from the race in Arlington (I was short about 2 minutes...bummer), but I did beat my more general goal.  This race had many more and much more steep hills, so I still had to pause and walk a few times, but I beat my overall time goal and walked far fewer times.

Feeling pretty awesome!

Happy Fourth!

We'll be spending the day with a few of the presidents watching some baseball! 

Happy Fourth of July! 

birthday weekend

Last weekend was hubby's birthday!  He spent days trying to think about what he wanted to do to celebrate, and in the end, he wanted to travel, even if it was only a little.  We haven't been on a roadtrip in months, and we haven't really travelled in forever, either.  The last time was Christmas, and before that....our honeymoon.  For two people who love travel as much as we do... that's a bit depressing.

Husband picked out a town (Charlottesville, VA), and we made plans.  I decided to show you guys a few picture from the trip.  Don't judge me too harshly; they're cellphone pictures.  I had my camera, but at the one or two places it would have been awesome to take it, I accidentally left it in the car. C'est la vie.  Next time I'll do better, I promise. 

(This post is longer than most. Sorry! But I couldn't resist sharing!)

We woke up pretty early, went on our long Saturday run (usually we run separately because of schedules and such, but this was a treat!), showered, and booked it out the door.

First stop: Barboursville Vineyards! Time to taste some wine and pick out a bottle to save for a special occassion. After some deliberation, the choice was, of course, a bottle of husband's favorite wine: Octagon.

We took a few minutes after our splurge to walk around the Barboursville ruins, which I had never seen before. The mister gave me a brief history of the place, and we puttered around the ruins of the old governor's house.

Now that we were on the move, we decided to go big, and headed to Monticello! It's one of husband's favorite places, and neither of us had been since high school. 

We bought tickets and did a tour of the house, then walked around the gardens for a while.  I've always loved Jefferson's gardens.  They're a cross between a cutting garden and a free-for-all and a well-manicured lawn, which is how he wanted them.  He liked English gardens and French food and beautiful things.  And books. Can't forget the books.

 

(not a terribly wonderful picture of me, but it was windy and it's the only one we're both in from Monticello)

That night we had dinner at a local pub/grill place, walked around the UVA campus a little, and headed back to the hotel to relax.  We'd had a long day.

Sunday morning, we slept in a little, got breakfast in the hotel, and headed to do some exploring.  The downtown stores and shops and such weren't open, yet, so we found a coffee shop and planted ourselves.  It was called Mudhouse.  It was a little bit coffee-snob-y, but when I asked for coffee recommendations, the cashier definitely knew what he was talking about.  Apparently, he'd had seven cups of coffee and multiple espressos already (and it was 10.30 in the morning)!  The art on the wall was a bit strange, but the delicious french pressed Costa Rican coffee more than compensated. 

We decided to head to another vineyard for the early part of the afternoon and then come back to the historic downtown area of Charlottesville later.  We chose a vineyard neither of us had ever been to: First Colony Winery.  The people there were very nice, and we enjoyed tasting new wines. The winery recently changed owners, and they're updating their tasting house area.  The road to get to the winery is not paved (yay gravel and sand?), which made life a bit more exciting.

Afterwards, we headed back to Charlottesville, kicked around the historic downtown for a bit, checked out the nice shops and the other coffeehouse (yes. too much coffee.), then decided to grab some Taco Bell for dinner and head home.

We had such a good time!  By the time I made it home, the tiny car we had rented had given me some pretty awful back troubles, but other than that, the weekend was wonderful.  A birthday celebration worthy of the occassion.