Continual State of Becoming

We don't really do a lot of beach vacations... mostly because we are mountain-snow-stay at home people.  But we decided to visit a beach that Matt went to as a kid and we had a great time.  Oh, the beach was in New Hampshire (remember that state?) and it was so cold we wore sweatshirts most of the time.  We LOVED it! First glimpse. Our hotel.  We all crammed into one small room.  Not the best idea, but we made it work. Cool texture in the sand at low tide. My beach walking partner. We maybe ate our weight in sea food.  It was so good. The water was basically too cold to swim in, but we still had lots of fun on the sand and rocks. View from our room, on a day without fog. Fog starting to come in. The fog rolled in and kept us from making it to Maine (we couldn't even see the end of our car from the front seats).  So we stopped and got lobster rolls here in NH instead, the were good! St...

Total Miles for the month: 105.1 Total Miles for 2014: 331.9 Longest run: 13.1 miles Fastest mile time:  Still the same. Well, I conquered the Virginia Wine Country Half Marathon a couple days ago.  It actually wasn't too terrible.  I think I prepared pretty well so it didn't completely overwhelm me and I've recovered just fine.  The race itself was GREAT.  Beautiful weather, well organized, and a beautiful course.  Lots of shade and lots of rolling hills (I'm not saying I loved the hills, but I am happy that they weren't worse than they were).  My finishing time was 2:23:21 which made me happy because I was really hoping to finish in under 2:30:00, but wasn't sure I would due to bad allergies, hills, heat, etc.  So that gave me an overall 10:57 pace.  Which is awesome, in that I broke an 11:00 pace.  And even more awesome when I look back at last May and see that I ran a 5k with an 11:16 pace.  So it's not that I'm necessarily ...

Total Miles for the month: 61.0 Total Miles for 2014: 226.8 Longest run: 10 miles Fastest mile time:  Still the same from last month. Wow, I'm really starting to rack up the miles.  61 miles this month?  Pretty impressive, especially since I had a minor surgery and didn't think I'd do much running at all.  Fortunately there was no pain post surgery, so I didn't really miss that much of my running routine.  (Though I was surprised by how long the tiredness from the anesthesia lasted).  Which is a good thing because I didn't have too long to lie around doing nothing since I have that half marathon coming up... one month and a day from now.  Eek.  :)  Nothing too much to note overall with running this month.  Other than extending all of my runs just a tad bit (and intentionally running up more hills) I'm pretty much keeping to my routine since that worked out well for the last race. Push Ups: So the surgery did keep me from my push up...

I'm done with the 365 project.  It was getting to be too much of a time commitment for me.  Either that or I'd rush through it and not really like the pictures I was taking, which made me feel even worse about this whole project.  I'm glad I made it this far, I definitely see some improvement from where I was 6 months ago. But I feel like I really need to relax on the picture taking for a while.  I've hardly used my camera in the last 2 weeks and it's amazing how much more productive I've managed to be in the rest of my life.  I am still going to work on improving and having fun with photography.  But for now I'm going to go back to a more "natural" pace. Here's a little snapshot from earlier today.  Just playing with bubbles, sticks, balls, and anything else he could find on a beautiful spring day!

About 2 weeks ago I was at the bus stop waiting for Dylan to come home.  Usually he's the only kid who gets off at this stop, but occasionally there's another mom who picks up her daughter there as well.  So of course, she happened to be there that day... the day I just barely finished a 6 mile run on the treadmill and was still dripping sweat as I ran outside to make the drop off in time.  When she saw me she said "oh, are you a runner?" To which I said "no, I'm just training for a race."  Huh, isn't that a little contradictory then.  What a weird way to answer her.  But I just wasn't ready for that label... I mean, I've only been running for a little over a year, and I'm not fast... aren't runners supposed to be fast?  Isn't that what people would assume of me? So a week later I ran the Cherry Blossom 10 miler.  It was a great race.  I was really nervous when it was about a week away.  Mostly I just didn't want to trip and...

This was the month for me to really push things while running.  And I'm really proud of how well the month went.  I managed four easy 9 mile runs (as in, I let myself run easy, not that running 9 miles is easy), worked on speed, and worked on my ideal long run pace.  I don't know much about official training routines, but I think this has been working for me.  I did get REALLY tired toward the end of the month, and would have loved to take a week off to rest and recover a bit, but I'm so close to the 10 mile race that I made myself push through it.  Which was hard, but I managed.  Besides I'm having a small surgical procedure in 2 weeks which will require time off from exercising, so I will get my (well earned) rest soon enough :)  And then I'll start running again as soon as I get the okay... I've already got a few races in mind for late spring, so I really hope I can be ready in time. Total Miles for the month: 65.2 (wow, that's higher than I expec...

Bedtime story. I have been struggling with my fear of failure a lot lately.  I feel like I'm not improving enough or getting to be good enough in various areas of my life.  Especially with the things that I have been putting effort into.  Photography is one of them, but not the only one... I have my 10 mile race in less than 2 weeks and while I feel pretty confident that I can run 10 miles at this point, I worry that I'm too slow.  Maybe not so slow that I won't make the 2:20:00 cut off, but slow enough that it's kind of a joke to even say I'm running.  So many people (and running articles) make it seem like I should easily be able to keep a faster pace than I do, but I struggle with even running a single 10 minute mile.  So instead of feeling proud for what I can do, I feel ashamed of what I can't.  And I feel like my pictures are stuck at mediocre... and I can't figure out what I need to do to break through this level.  I see what other peo...

Aaron's favorite indoor activity... bath time!  We both had fun this night... he got to splash in the water for as long as he could stand it, and I put the flash on my camera and treated the bathroom like a giant soft box.  This is probably one of my best people pictures to date. ***I am wondering if I should just call it quits with this 365, I've been missing days every week lately.  I'm not quite ready to completely give in, but it may happen soon.

I thought I'd try something a little different today.  I've been playing around with some of the video functions on my camera and I really like it.  I just cant figure out how to compress the video enough to get it so I'm not trying to upload a 100MB file.  So this is a test.  Other things I haven't quite figured out:  1- which focus mode works best for video, 2- My "good" lenses don't have vibration reduction, so the footage is super shaky, and 3- lots of the camera noise is picked up by the mic, so it's probably better to watch without sound.  But...  when I do manage to get decent focus, it looks so good.  I'm probably not really going to much video, but I figure I should at least learn how to use it in case I want to from time to time.  Hopefully the video loaded correctly here, if not...  well, just more to learn.

In an effort to eat more produce (without making my grocery trips unbearably long) we've been getting weekly fruit and veggies delivered.  Most delicious mail ever!

Just a quick snapshot from today.

Happy St. Patricks Day!!! A couple days ago we spent hours at the playground with no jackets... today we woke up to 9 inches of snow.  It's been quite the winter.  I love it!!  Once last (maybe) chance to practice taking snowflake pictures.  They didn't turn out as great this time as last time, I'm not sure why exactly, but maybe next winter I'll figure it out and get some really good shots.  Since Dylan was home with a snow day (#14 for the school year) we had time to make some green cupcakes, and he even edited one of the pictures with me.

Taking a walk with the little one while his dad and big brother are at the movies.  I played around with color on this... just for fun.  The grass isn't really that green, but the dead brown color was too drab.  I think I need to start learning how to do nice clean, simple edits soon, but for now I'm still having fun experimenting.

An absolutely perfect day for the playground.  Sunny skies and just warm enough to play.  We even ran into a lemonade stand.  Too bad this weather won't last.  It was nice to get some good outside shots again though.  I'm especially happy because I was able to get one decent shot with both of the kids together (the last one).  That is much harder than I anticipated.  I don't know how professional photographers manage to get such nice shots of families all together.  I may need to learn some new tricks.

Two more from yesterday.  Aaron is becoming quite the bookworm.

One for each kid today.  It was too cold to be outside today so we spent the afternoon in Dylan's room.  A nice lazy day.