Memorial Day Weekend and other updates

Well as always 3 day weekends are great! I enjoyed mine without having to do any paperwork for work, which is always nice. I don't have pictures yet for this post, but we will soon have some before and after pictures of the front yard to show. Here's the run down of weekend events:

Saturday was packed full: I got up early to join A.M. for a morning run by the lake, followed by a girls prayer brunch with some girls from my small group at church. I returned early afternoon to the house to help Ryan work on the yard to plant flowers and do other much need up keep to get ready for summer. That evening we grilled out chicken, asparagus and mushrooms. yum!

Sunday, I taught bible class and then headed out after church to B.A. I took the nieces to stay the night with my mom. We grilled out hamburgers and then slept in and enjoyed hanging around the house and visiting since to our disappointment none of the pools were opening till this coming weekend.

Monday we returned to OKC. I returned to a giant hole in the garden bed, Ryan and I had briefly discussed the possibility of a small gold fish pond before I left, thats a project thats been worked on every night since and I think is nearing completion, I must say I think its going to be pretty cool.

I am gearing up for plans to do a major painting project to start this weekend to paint my living room, dinning room and kitchen, yikes! I've wanted to paint it for two years so its time to do it!
Also Ryan got news he passed one section of the CPA!!! 1 down 3 to go!

Well that brings you to speed for now.

Fun in the Kitchen...

Chloe and Allie spent the night Thursday and Allie and I made home-made Pizza's, Chloe preferred to watch Sponge bob instead, fun was had by all:

I've been looking for raspberries for a while now to make some yummy raspberry lemonade, finally today Target had them in stock:

5 Years of married life!

Well its kind of hard to believe its already been 5 years ago we were married. We celebrated Saturday night by going to the melting pot, which was so amazingly yummy. Our real celebartion will be our Key West trip to Florida at the end of June.


Here's 5 highlights of those 5 years together:
1) Vacations together: Cozumel, Tree house cottages in Eureka Springs, Chicago, Bahamas, ITALY!
2) Buying our first home.
3) Adopting our Rory pie. (1st dog together).
4) Both finishing graduate school and finding jobs in our respective fields that we actually like for the most part.
5) Finding a church home.

I can honestly say I am really looking forward to what the next 5 years hold for us. After 5 years I know marriage isn't always smooth sailing, it takes an ongoing commitment to make a million small choices to make your relationship not only work but be fulfilling for you both. I love Ryan and I love our life together and look forward to this next phase of our married life.

Cinco De Mayo and runing update.

Well its 3:30am and I am regretting taking the cold medicine that still has me awake. So guess I will do a blog post. Today was cinco de mayo. Usually I would not be aware of such a thing but this year I was acutely aware as apparently most of the OKC area celebrates this to my surprise. For me it was more like Cinco de ruin my plans day. Book club was suppose to be tonight and we unknowly planned our dinner at a mexican restuarant down town, we realized during the day half of OKC, a radio station and masses of others might come there from the facebook and gazette adds to celebrate Cinco De Mayo here would not make this a good place for our book club discussion. So book club is postponed and a few of us that decide just to meet for dinner somewhere else and I had the bright idea of going to this great Italian restaurant. Italian right, should be safe from Cinco De Mayo craziness!? Well think again. I pull up walk up to the door and the sign says "Sorry we are closed for a private Cinco De Mayo party". We try for a third time and find luck this time at Olive Garden where to my satisfaction there appeared to be no cinco de mayoing going on.

On a second note I have faithfully kept up my 5K training plan. First week was pretty easy this week is getting mild to moderate in difficulty. I jumped ahead in the program to get ramp it up a bit. However, today I am feeling not good at all, cold, soar throat, ears hurting tomorrow is a running day and I really don't want my sickness to affect my training plan, I might trade days and run Thursday instead. I just hate to already altering my training plans but whatever it takes to keep on track and momentum going.

Couch to 5K.

Well call me crazy because I think I might be. I am doing something I never thought I'd do and am training for a 5K run with in 7 weeks and counting. I think I will blog about it to keep me accountable. I am following a running plan called couch to 5k, its seems easy so far but thats probably because I'm not starting from the couch since I've been working out about 3x a week for a long time. I am not forging this alone so that helps as I've enlisted some of my girl friends, So here it goes I've put it out there in the blogging world, no turning back!!

Feedback and Growth...

You know how there are intense times that life experiences condescene in a small space of time together and you think wow God is trying to teach something here or all arrows are pointing this is an area I should be growing in. The last couple weeks I have been in one of these times and wanted to share it:

A friend shared with me a good pondering question that they were themselves pondering, "Who do you have in your life that can give you real feedback about yourself?". Spirtual, professional or othewise? and that spirals into lots of other questions, why is it so hard to give and get real honest feedback from others? If we open ourselves to it, it could an incredible opportunity to grow, develop and change tremendously. This is basically how therapy works to a degree, you present your preceptions to someone else because they might can see the things you can't see about yourself and your interactions and help give you a mirror to see that in yourself. I'm not saying everyone needs to get into therapy but we do all need mirrors in our life to truely develop and grow. How do we develop those mirrors and allow God to place those mirrors in our lives? What do we do when they reflect back not just strengths but flaws? and how do we take that feedback to expose and work on our growth areas more effectively. I want to love the people in my life enough to do this for them and have the humility enough to receive this myself but wow that is hard to do!

From the Farm to the Big City....

Well I enjoyed my time off and trip to see family in small town northern Missouri to the big city of Chicago. We had a fun time and I think it will best be told in pictures of our travels:

We stayed at Holiday inns there and on the way back, one of my fovorite things as a kid, stoping where there's an indoor pool!

The cousins, these guys are still best buddies.

Family girl pic from left to right: sister, soon to be cousin-in-law, sister-in-law and cousin.

Egg hunt on the farm.

My Aunt Elaine made this awesome easter cake.

First stop in Chicgo Ed D's. This is one of those restaurants they are rude to you on purpose. Chloe and Allie were very confused, I laughed a lot.

Taking a break in between outings at Lori and Matt's Apt.

Alot of our outings centered around eating great food, this is all of us at little 50's diner by Wrigley field.

We went to the field museum and the zoo. I love how this picture came out that I took of Chloe and the Polar Bear.

Me and Jen on the last day, downtown by the bean.