TEAM IN TRAINING

CAN SHE DO IT???

So I have decided to do another marathon. I will be training with Team in Training again. I tried twice last year (unsuccessfully) to find motivation to do a marathon on my own. I'm sure that since you know me, you know that I am not in great physical shape (understatement of the decade!!), and without a "real" purpose for my training I found myself very unmotivated and uncaring about whether or not I actually did the marathon. I LOVE doing marathons, so this surprised me somewhat, but the more I think about it, the more I realize that I love doing a marathon with a purpose, not just for my own personal gratification. Soooo...that being said, I have no doubt that I will train for and run the San Diego Rock 'N' Roll Marathon in June with no problem. :) I'm so excited!!! Below is a copy of my fund-raising letter that I sent out this week. I am a little nervous about the fund-raising aspect this year (even though I never had any trouble with that part for my last 5 events) because of the state of the economy. I know times are tough for everyone right now, but I'm hoping people are still willing to be a little generous with what little they have.

Dear Friends & Family,

I have once again decided to train for and run a marathon for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. This will be my first marathon in almost 4 years! I'm scared!! I will be running/walking the San Diego Rock 'N' Roll Marathon on June 5th. This will be my first marathon since having my beautiful daughter Isabelle, and I am very nervous since my body has changed so much since I've had her. Now I imagine those who are participating in marathons for their lives - coping with cancer every day, enduring years of doctors' visits, months of chemotherapy, and the endless needles that cancer patients endure. To the hundreds of thousands of blood cancer patients, every day is a test of endurance that I cannot imagine. Their race is much longer and more grueling than what I'm training for.

This will be my 6th event with Team in Training, the country's longest running, and most successful endurance training program. Even though this program is geared for preparing people like me to complete a marathon, the main goal is to raise money for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, a non-profit organization that raises funds for the research and treatment of blood-related cancers. The mission is to cure Leukemia, Lymphoma, Hodgkin's disease and Myeloma, and to improve the quality of life of patients and their families. These diseases strike 102,000 Americans each year and kill 60,340. Every week there are 1,900 new cases. The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society has made great strides in the research of curing the diseases and the survival rate has improved significantly over the past 25 years. Progress has been made, but there is still more work to do.

I will be competing in memory of my cousin, Nathan Clah, who lost his battle with leukemia in June of 2001. He was like a brother to me, and since I have been raising money for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, it has really helped me to deal with the loss of him. I still miss him every day and I am sad that my daughter has not had the chance to meet him. I know that we will be together again one day, and that Isabelle will get the chance to know him and love him as I do, but it is still hard. With Team in Training I feel like I am making a difference, and if my efforts mean that one family will not have to go through losing someone in their family to blood-related cancers, all the training and fundraising will have been well worth the effort. So, for each mile I train for the San Diego Rock 'N' Roll Marathon, I will be inspired by everyone ever affected by blood cancer; the patients themselves, but also their families, friends and loved ones. I will complete this marathon in honor of all individuals who are battling cancer. These people are the real heroes on our team, and we need your support to cross the ultimate finish line - a cure!!

I have set a goal of raising $5,000.00 every year I've participated in Team in Training, but I have never been able to achieve it. Please let this year be the year!! I am asking for your help. Any amount helps, whether it is $5 or $500. I will be donating a lot of time, sweat and tears while training for this marathon, and I hope that you are willing to donate a little of your hard-earned cash for such a wonderful cause.

I also encourage you to pass on this letter (or my website) to anyone else who might be interested in helping the cause. There is a link on the right side of my blog to my fundraising website. The website also has an option to share it through facebook. Please share it with all your friends!! Remember, all contributions are tax deductible, and I can mail you a receipt if you need one, just let me know.

I am excited to be a part of this program and the research and patient services that the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society provide. Thank you so much for your generosity and support!! Your donation truly does make a difference.

Have a great day!!

I know I haven't posted anything in a while, and this is really random, but this really made me laugh today so I had to share it. :) You have to watch them in order. :)

APRICOTS!!!

My parents & Kae came over last night and picked 5 buckets of apricots. I'm so excited!! I'm going to process our share tonight. I'm going to can them all this go around. We'll be picking more on Saturday (assuming some more are ripe by then). This will be my first try at canning, and I will admit that I am nervous. My mom gave me all the instructions, and it doesn't seem TOO complicated, but everything always sounds easy until you actually have to do it by yourself. It's like "Minute to Win It". I love that show!! All of the challenges look so easy and you think, "Man, I could totally do that!!". But, as I realized at our last Mary Kay Big Quarterly Event, I am not very good at the challenges. Out of the 12 that I tried, I could only do 3. It was a very humbling experience. :) Anyway, not much else is going on at the moment. I've got 3 Mary Kay parties scheduled in the next week and I'm excited for that. Matt made more apricot ice cream on Tuesday. It was really yummy. He not only put blended apricots in, but he also chopped up some apricots so the ice cream would have apricot chunks in it too. Delicious!! We finished the rest of it last night, so I'm sure I'll be making more tonight. Love it!!!

Isabelle got a box of books yesterday from Grandma Hunter and she was so excited. I took some video of her taking them all out of the box and she was reading all of them. So cute!! She got excited when she could identify some of the pictures in the books. She must have spent at least an hour just reading and re-reading them. Maybe I'll post some of the video if I can figure out how to do that. :)

I suppose that's all of the excitement for now. Have a great day!! Oh, and don't forget that my birthday's next Thursday. :)

This is the lovely ice cream maker we have, given to me by Matt's mom for my birthday YEARS ago. I don't even remember when, that's how long ago it was. :) I love it. Anyone who knows me knows that I love ice cream, so this was the perfect present.

I made the apricot ice cream last night and it was SO YUMMY!! Luckily I still have enough sugar soaked apricots to make at least 2 more batches. My parents & Lora came over and we ate it ALL. It was so good. So tonight I'm definitely going to make more. I think we need to invest in another thingy that you freeze for the ice cream maker so we can make more than one batch at a time. As it is now, we can make one batch, then we have to empty it and refreeze the bowl thingy before we can make another batch. Oh well, I guess that keeps us from eating too much ice cream all at once. :)

THE WEEKEND

So this weekend wasn't too exciting, but that's ok. On Saturday we had a yard sale at my parents' house. We got rid of a lot of stuff and we made about $130.00, so that was GREAT!! I made a Mary Kay delivery then went to work for a few hours. Saturday night we didn't do much. We went to Blockbuster and got a few movies. I watched "Precious" while Matt was working out in the garden. I didn't like it at all. It was just depressing. Do people like to be depressed? I often wonder about that because all of the movies that get such high praise from everyone are usually the most horribly depressing stories ever. Like the book "The Glass Castle"....everyone praises that book like it's the best book ever written. I finally read it a couple of months ago and I hated it. Way too depressing. People say these stories are inspiring, but I don't know. They're 95% depressing and 5% uplifting, in my opinion. Anyway, maybe people do like feeling depressed, but I don't get it. :) To each their own, I guess. Sunday was pretty uneventful as well. We did pick some apricots in the evening though, then my parents came over and picked a bunch more. I got them all cleaned and halved and froze a bunch of them. The others I am going to make some homemade ice cream with tonight. I'm excited about that, it should be really yummy. :) I love homemade ice cream, it's the best!!

Isabelle has been obsessed with this ladybug book that Matt's mom sent to her a little while ago. We have to read it to her about 10 to 20 times a day. It's the cutest book. Every page you turn gets rid of one of the little lady bugs. She is starting to learn her numbers with this book. There's a number in the corner of every page for how many ladybugs are on that page. As soon as you turn the page she points to the number and says a number. She's usually right. :) I'm so glad that she loves to read, because so do I.

Anyway, I guess that's it for now. Have a great day, everyone!! Oh, and don't forget that my birthday is next Thursday. :D

ANDY AND ISABELLE

Here's a short post about my brother-in-law who lives with us. His name is Andrew and he's the best. He's always excited to see Isabelle when he gets home and he's always willing to take her on a walk when she's having a meltdown. My favorite thing is all of the scientific things he tries to teach her. When I walked out the door this morning there was a drawing of a circle with the radius drawn in (they like to draw on the porch with Isabelle's sidewalk chalk). I'm sure he was explaining the whole thing to her. It makes me smile when he does these things, it usually happens when he sees something on TV and then he'll explain the whole thing to her in adult terms and she'll just look at him like he's crazy. Ha ha! It's cute.

Not much happened last night. I made tortelloni soup with garlic bread and Matt made a salad. We watched a little TV and then I started sorting through things for the yard sale on Saturday. Tonight I've got my Mary Kay unit meeting and then it will be more sorting. Fun, fun, fun!! :) Have a great night, everyone!!

Wow, a new post twice in one week!! What's the world coming to??? Ha ha!! Well, we tried picking some apricots last night. Apparently they were not as ripe as I thought. :( We still got a couple of bowl fulls though, and they were DEEEEElicious!! It also gave us a chance to hang out. My sisters & my parents came over and we roasted some hot dogs and marshmallows in the fire pit Matt made a few weeks ago in our back yard. Fun was had by all. Amber bought some bubbles, water balloons and water guns for the kids. Isabelle had so much fun with them. I'm pretty sure she just dumped out the bubbles. Ha ha! As for the water balloons it took her a few tries to throw it hard enough to break it. Then she just squished one in between her hands and it got water all over her. She didn't seem to mind. The funniest thing was when she had the water gun. She saw Jordan & Tyler shooting people with theirs so she would go up to people and touch them with her gun and they'd have to pretend she was shooting them with the water. She thought it was sooooo funny. So cute! She was pretty worn out by the time everyone went home so she was happy to get her bath & get to bed.

As for me I've been staying up late reading. I started reading The Hunger Games last week and finished it in a few days. Now I am on to the 2nd book of that series, Catching Fire. I really really like the series so far. There's a 3rd book coming out sometime this year. Hopefully it's soon, I'll have to check on that, because I'm sure I'll be finishing this 2nd book in a couple of days as well. Other than that, Matt and I have been working hard getting our house clean. We finally broke down and made up a chore chart, it just wasn't getting done otherwise. Things are starting to get under control in that department, so that's good. I'm going to start sorting through our storage stuff for a yard sale at my parents' house this Saturday. It's always good to get things sorted through & organized, plus to get rid of things that are no longer needed. Matt always makes fun of me for watching "Hoarders" and "Clean House", but it really helps me to get rid of things that I clearly don't need but am hanging on to for some strange reason. Anyway, I suppose that's all the news for now. Have a lovely day!!

Oh, one more thing. I have decided that I'm going to plant some of these in our yard sometime. They're blooming everywhere now and I just love them. :)