Winter

Here are my thoughts on winter....

1. It is March 5th...WINTER should be a distant memory at this point!  I should not have a snowflake at the end of a 10 day forecast.
2. I am truly amazed that we got 3 inches of snow on Sunday and then by Monday afternoon my entire driveway was completely dry but it never got above 15 degrees outside.  It really makes me question those news programs who fry an egg on the pavement to show how hot it is...apparently the sun can also melt and dry snow when it was only 15 out, and trust me when I say, it didn't make it feel warm out.
3. Apparently my mood (and waistline) is really affected by constant cold weather.  This is really the first year where I didn't think I could stand it anymore.  Normally by the time I get fed up, it is warmer a week later.  Not this year.
4. Snow is very pretty and I still get a little excited when they predict it...just not in March.  The first snow fall is my favorite and the weekend snowstorms that I can watch out our bay windows are my second favorite.
5. I realized this year how many of my activities with my friends here involve being outside...bike riding, walking, running, taking kids for walks in strollers, etc.  I miss all of it.  
6. 50 is now t-shirt weather to me...so sad.  I remember the summer I lived in NJ and was there in May where it was 50 at night and my family was sitting on the deck with t-shirts on while I had one 2 layers of clothing.  I could now sit out there with them (for a little while).
7. I am not the only one affected by winter...everyone I know that is from here has said this was the worst winter in their lifetime...I sure hope so and I hope it doesn't happen again for another 35 years.
8. My driveway is so steep that my car will not go up it, even with snow tires on it, if we get more than 2 inches of snow...this seems to defeat the purpose of a garage.  I have to park at the top if I want to go anywhere the next day.  If we ever get another house, a sun filled, FLAT driveway will be a big selling point...that or we need to put a heated driveway in at this house.  
9. I am not even sure what I would do if I had a kid...see #8.  I can barely walk up the driveway myself without slipping, how would I carry a kid and all their crap.  Plus, as a friend pointed out...you can't exactly stick a small kid in a car that is -7.  That is a lot of up and down a steep driveway in below freezing weather.
10. Everyone here has remote start for their cars...that is the one feature that our cars don't have but it would really help with #8 and maybe one day #9.
11. We have an outside kitty that has probably spent at least 20-30 nights in our basement this winter because it was too cold for her outside :-(  We have had her for 4 years and this is the first time we had to do that.
12. And finally...I am really proud that there were at least 5 occasions when I went to boot camp at 6am while it was dark and with negative temps (but no snow).  No way I would have done that 5 years ago!

READY FOR SPRING...I would even take consistent 50s at this point!

#ASSP

Ali and I love to make up hashtags...we don't actually use them on twitter or instagram or wherever else you are supposed to use them but we do use them in text messages to each other.

It all started with #wgp...we use this one when we are complaining about what would be considered first world problems...like the other day when I had to park on the top level of the airport deck and I got back in town with my leather boots on trying to drag my suitcase through two inches of snow.  This was not life shattering but at the time it sucked.

#ASSP is for Anti-Stuffed Sausage Plan.  This is what I have named my current attempt to get back in shape.  Another friend once said she felt like a busted can of biscuits.  Either would apply in my current situation and it needs to get under control.

Shortly after we got married, we starting trying to have a baby...since I was planning on getting big while pregnant, the motivation wasn't completely there to get in shape.  Then fast forward a year and a half, and I am still not pregnant and I weigh more than I ever have.  It is gross.

I do boot camp 3 days a week at 6:30am (when it doesn't snow so much the night before that I can't get my car out and when I am not out of town) and I love it.  I am definitely the type of person who doesn't push myself enough on my own and I do better in a class, with a trainer, with a friend or training for a race.  This winter weather has interfered on a lot of days but I am hoping that we are getting to the end of that.  I plan to add some other fun stuff like spin and zumba.

The eating is where I really need to concentrate!  Back in April I had some food sensitivity testing done and (no surprise) I am pretty much sensitive to everything.  Really I think that it has to do with the fact that soy, corn, and wheat are in tons of processed foods.  I can have any meat and almost every fruit and vegetable (except onion, blueberries, cantelope and a few others)...it just takes more work.  It is especially hard in the winter when I just feel like hibernating and nothing is fresh.  Some of my staple spices, etc are also on the bad list like parsley, oregano, cumin, and lemon.  Most of my recipes contain one, if not more, of the above ingredients, take out yeast, eggs, rice, almonds, dairy, and sulfites and you have eliminated a lot more (plus wine and beer).  So, as you can see, it was pretty frustrating and you really have to be on top of the fresh ingredients.  I did do it for a while though and I dropped weight fast and felt amazing.  I need to get back to it and figure out which of those sensitivities actually affect me and which ones are ok.  I found out that not all of them bother me.  I just can't remember which ones.

So, yeah, winter is still in full force here (snowing as I write this) but spring is around the corner and I need to get it together so I can fit into my spring clothes.

FOREVER...

So, it has been forever since I have posted on my blog...I am not really sure why except that I guess I got busy and felt like I didn't have much interesting to say.  Now I have decided to try to get back into it, and I think it was because I see my blog books from a few years ago and I think about how much easier that is than trying to keep an actual journal (which I am a failure at).

Anyone still out there??  HA!

I think that it is really funny that my last blog post was where I said I would keep up with our biking trip on our honeymoon...FAIL.  Whatever, moving on!

The thing that probably keeps me most busy these days is my crochet/knitting business.  In 2012 a friend of my sister's found an infinity scarf on Pinterest and asked who could make it for her.  My sister volunteered me and I set out to the craft store to find the gray that she wanted and made it for her.  I didn't have any way to contact her other than FB so I posted a picture there.  7 of my friends wanted one and I thought that was fun.  I decided to post it in my Etsy shop.  I had my shop since 2008 but mostly posted baby stuff and running headbands.  At first the scarf didn't sell and then all of a sudden 15 sold in one night...AHHHH!!!  Then they kept selling!  They take me about an hour to make and, as you can calculate, I don't have 15 extra hours a day so I recruited my mom to help.  I also kept raising the price a bit until I found a good balance.  Now, only a little over a year later, I have sold over 700 scarves and am in a local store.  I simply can't believe it!

When I was home this weekend, it seemed like a question I was asked a lot was whether I would ever do it full time.  Believe me, I have run the numbers :-)  I kind of go back and forth on this...I love my day job, but I also love my crafty side.  It is really fun to have a "second" job where I can make money and spend it on fun things...I don't know how I would do if I HAD to make a certain amount.  This Jan and Feb have been a lot slower than last year.  It could be because my scarf costs 50% more this year so I am selling less or it could just be the way things work.  Having a job that would be so inconsistent would scare my type A personality.  Having said all that though, if I ever was able to make enough to make a living consistently, then yes, I would love to do it full time.  It has always been a dream of mine to own a craft store and I think that recently that has turned into a dream to own a yarn/coffee shop...one can dream, right?

I am launching a blog for my business so I am hoping that I will blog more regularly...I will give all you parents out there an exciting glimpse in to the wonderful childless life (sarcasm).  HA!

So, if anyone is still around, shoot me a comment.  I am doing this for myself but still interested to see if anyone is reading it.

Meetup

Decided to do a little blog following of our trip so i can have a record of our trip one day. We have had wireless everywhere and have downtime every night in these small towns. Today we met up with the people we spend the next week biking with. It is a group of 14 and I would say we are some of the younger ones but it is sort of hard to judge age. I am sure I will find out more as we go on. Here are the groups so far:

-4 people who are from St. Louis and who have been on 4 vbt trips together. It is two married couples. They seem nice and open to talk to anyone. Not their first rodeo. Hope we find a couple one day who would like to do tours with us. Would say they are late 30s to 40s
-one older couple with a husband who appears to be really in shape and with a wife who isn't so much. This is their 2 vbt tour together but he has done a lot more without her.
-two ladies from NY upstate. The one lady seems like a total bitch and pretty
much snapped at the guide when he tried to explain something to her. Not sure I will like her. They are maybe in their 50s-60s
- son and father team. From CT and the boy just graduated from a boarding school (high school). This was his graduation present. They are your virgins like us. They seem nice enough.
- another couple that is not married I don't believe. The lady works for Deloitte so we chatted about that and they seem really nice! He has done several tours before her and now this is their second together. He seems like a really cool guy who will try anything once and she is very sweet. I think I will like them.
- us. You know us :)
Our tour guides are probably in their 30s and seem great. The girl can talk a lot but she has a lot to talk about so it is all good. She gets excited easily :-$

We have been told that we have to get honey mead as it has something to do with a honeymoon or wedding tradition here (still fuzzy on the details).

Today was the meeting at the hotel in Ennis and then a bus ride to the cliffs of moher and then on to lisdoonvarna where we had a warm up ride of 5.2 miles. It was a loop and most of us (including my crazy husband) decided to do it twice. Good thing because there was a drink reception followed by a 3 course dinner. YUM!!!

Looking forward to the real adventure starting tomorrow. We head out to black head and the to Ballyvaughn. 33 miles tomorrow but so far I am loving it. Will try to get pics soon!

Random Thoughts

Once a quarter isn't bad, right??

-I curse the day I agreed to a 3 month kitchen renovation 5 months before my wedding! I can't wait to have it back to normal!! It makes eating healthy a bit hard!! I also seem to find out the dy before they are taking out appliances so I thought I would have my stove longer.

- I have to travel way too much considering the first bullet point, trying to say healthy and trying to finish planning a wedding!

-SO EXCITED for my shower and bachelorette in ATL!!! Also exited to have Ali come and mix my old and new friends!! I know everyone will love each other!

- first dress fitting in two weeks. Down 7lbs from my heaviest! ( even without a kitchen!!)

- I am hiring again and might get 1-3 people...that would have me managing 8 people!! Hopefully that will mean less travl for when Baby Rucks makes an appearance at some point in the future :-)

-yeah, so Rucks will be my new last name. Kind of funny that a lot of my friends don't know that.

-after 4 months of not running due to a groin injury, I am now inexplicably able to run faster and longer...what? Groin still hurts when I run hills :-)

- C's parents at moving to Pittsburgh. His dad was laid off around Xmas and has been looking for a job. This one is actually better and pays more so I guess it all works out. They will only be 4 hrs from us. It will be nice to have one set of parents close (again one day for baby rucks). I still wish it was my mom but I am sure that is natural. His mom is great (and she doesn't work so if I did have to travel and he couldn't do it on his own she could use the guest room).

-no, I am not pregnant but I am ready...hopefully it will not be long after we at married before we start down that road. We are older and have been together 6 years and only want one so I am ready to get this show on the road!!

Randomness

Tomorrow I pick up my wedding dress!!! For some reason I am a little nervous..probably all those stupid Say Yes to the Dress episodes I have watched where the people hate their dress after they buy it...I know I won't so I don't know why I am nervous. Now to find a place to store it for the next 10 weeks until it goes to the alterations place :-)

The wedding ring we are ordered off of Etsy for Craig is going to have my fingerprint on the the inside around it. I got the kit in the mail last week and spent an hour and a half tonight making the fingerprints for it...very specific instructions!! I hope it turns out really cool.

We also designed by wedding ring on Saturday. We went last week but since we are using some family stones of Craig's, the design we picked out didn't work because the stones are all a slightly different size. The fun part is that I will now get what I wanted all along :-) Funny how things work out.

Started my third week of p90x this week. I am proud of myself because I did it every night last week...including before going to Morgan's on Monday, after going to Erin's on Tuesday and after going to Drena's on Wednesday. Before I started this time I knew I was going to be out of town for 3 weeks in a row so I came up with a plan for how to do it on the road. Luckily Morgan and Jennifer gave me water weights a few years ago for xmas. You fill them with water and then empty them to pack them up! Love them and brought them this past time. I am still ready to run again but my groin just now started feeling better so I am going to give it a couple more weeks and then start training for the half I am doing in March. I have been logging my food on myfitnesspal and since Craig's sister is doing it too it is cool because we can encourage people...I have managed to stay in my allotted calories this whole year (other than 2 days), including traveling!

I am struggling with recipes again lately. I really want to make good dinners but I have tried not to eat much red meat lately so that mainly leaves chicken and I am running out of creative ways to cook it :-(

Last weekend I had 3 of my OH friends over and we crafted for the wedding. We embossed the tags for the favors, folded tissue flowers (lots of them), made my hairpiece and my shoe clips. It was nice to get some of the creative things out of the way.

This week I am headed to Phoenix...after snow on Friday I am looking forward to warmer temps. I have to admit, we haven't had a horrible winter this year. December was unseasonably warm and we even had some days in January that were decent...a few more weeks and we might be out in the clear and not have to worry about a huge snowstorm :-) I know I have adjusted to the weather somewhat because 50 is no longer cold to me and there have been at least half a dozen times where I have run errands in just a t-shirt and fleece when it was 30 out...wow, never would have done that 3 years ago!!

I have been keeping up with my picture a day...I forgot one day and it made me sad...but I have one for the rest of the days. I haven't ordered pictures in so long that I think that I am going to compile them all for the month and then order them at once so I only have to pay shipping once. It has been fun though so hopefully I can keep it up.

Back to wokr

boo! I guess it has been almost two weeks (Dec 21st) since I have worked so I shouldn't complain. Quite honestly, I am a little ready to go back. I feel like I have gotten lazy laying around watching football what seems like every day (not really but it seems like it).

We went down to Atlanta on the 21st, spent the night around the KY/TN border that night and then finished up on the 22nd. The rest of the 22nd was spent cleaning out the condo there...ugh, that was a lot of stuff to do!! I knew I would have more there than I remembered and I did...it was random stuff like dishes and pots and pans of my moms and stuff like that. We worked for 4hrs on the 22nd and got a lot done. That night we went to Morgan and William's and hung out a bit. On the 23rd we cleaned up the condo some more and waited for my mom and sister to come to claim the goodies they were going to take home (bookshelves and TVs and stands and such). After we finished that up we took Ariyana and Maddox to Chuck E. Cheese and took a quick trip to my dad's. The 24th was spent being LAZY!! We were at my sister's and I picked up Mexican for lunch and a frozen pizza for dinner. I worked on my wedding registry, baked some cookies, and did the grocery shopping for xmas day while my sister went hopping around to her in-law's houses.

We spent Xmas at my sister's and everyone came there...it was really nice to be in one place instead of the 3 places we went last year!! The only thing that sucked was that my sister had to leave after dinner because Maddox has a hernia and it "popped out". They took him to CHOA (from Braselton) and were back with a happy baby all in two hours...I was impressed since that is at least 1:15 driving!

We drove back to Dayton on the 26th so C could have a day to relax before he had to go back to work on the 28th. We spent the 27th picking out cabinets and countertops...don't be jealous!

Since then we haven't done much at all...NYE we went to Ali's for dinner and were home by 10pm and I am not sure I can name much else that was done during those other days...lots of craft projects.

So, every year I feel like I do the same resolutions...I don't even need to look, I am sure I am right. This year I decided to focus on something different. I am still working on getting healthier, eating healthier and working out (started p90x again yesterday) but I wanted to do something fun as my resolution this year. So, my resolution is to take more pictures...not necessarily the posed kind, but just pictures in general. Some of the best pictues that people have are the everyday ones so I want more of those. I am toying with trying to take a picture of myself every day. Nothing fancy...I have asked Craig to take one the last two days so at least I have those two days down. He takes forever to take a picture, by the way. Geez, I asked him to do it yesterday and I am not joking when I say he took 5 and it took him 5 mins...I just wanted a quick snap shot of me crocheting (just cause it is what I did yesterday) and he took so long that it wasn't realy spontaneous anymore. I told him that I would be in charge of pictures of our kid one day because he will miss everything :-) Anyway, not sure I will do a photo a day of myself or not. I know it might seem silly or selfish but I think that it would be fun to see a whole year of pictures of me...especialy when I am bad about showering every day if I am just at home...maybe this will make me fix myself up a little :-)

Next weekend I am having a few of the girls here in OH over to help me with some wedding crafting. It is starting to sneak up on me...when I look at my calendar there are really not many completely free weekends after Feb...yikes! I am going to try to get as much done as we can on Sunday so hopefully it will help a lot. They said if I provided wine they would provide help :-) Easy enough!

Like I said, I started p90x again yesterday (been doing some of the workouts for weeks but mainly the ones I liked). I figured that 1/1/12 was a good time to start getting in shape for the wedding. I am sure that the 3 weeks I am traveling during January are not going to help but hopefully I can keep up with p90x. Ali and I have been doing Pilates ever since we got a living social deal to try a studio. I love it! I feel like the instructor is so good and gives such personal attention. There have never been more than 6 people in the class at a time so she really concentrates on everyone's body. I feel like I am more aware of how I should do exercie moves...like in p90x. I have muscles sore this time that were not sore the last time I did it...but they are the ones that should be sore...makes me think I was doing it wrong the last time. I had a private lesson last week and she wrote up two pages of moves/exercises that I can do in my hotel room. I like it because I could do it while waiting to go to dinner or somethign cause you can do just a few moves at a time and you don't get all sweaty (I do in the 45 min class but not for just a couple moves). We focused on the areas that I needed to look good in my dress :-)

This has been a bit of a rambling...but you guys should be used to that by now. I will try to update more often so it isn't so random each time.

Hope you all had a great holiday!