SLC 5K Race Day

We did it! Gary, Ellen, and I ran the Salt Lake City 5K today. We woke up in the early wee hours this morning to be on time for the 7:30am start time. We met up with Brigitte, Roxanne, Charie, and the lovely Davis sisters (Charie and Rox’s Mom and Aunts) just in time to have a quick chat and good luck pep talk and then it was off to the races. Ellie was all decked out in the trusty B.O.B jogging stroller. She was a little unsure about being in a crowd of people and the crowded shuttle ride to the start line was uncomfortable for us all to say the least. But once we got going and found our pace she seemed to enjoy the ride. She was talking our ears off the whole way. I’ve never participated in a organized sporting event like that and I must say I really enjoyed myself. I think the energy of the crowd helped give me and extra boost because I felt great the whole run no stopping necessary except once to help Ellie get the bunches out of her jacket. We finished just under 40 minutes. I think we did pretty well considering our lack of discipline on the training, pushing a stroller, and having to start in the way back thus causing a few traffic jams and hang ups.

The best part of the whole event was having my husband and baby by my side and reuniting with some good friends. Gary was a good sport all day. He is not a fan of big crowds and he dealt with it well all day. Gary and Roxanne’s husband Ryan were also very good to patiently wait for us and watch over the kiddos while all the ladies gabbed and laughed about the good old times we shared in the various houses we rented in college together. I had not seen Charie since our wedding and I can’t remember the last time Roxanne and I got together. All the ladies got together the afternoon before race day for some catching up. Another good friend Sara came down to join us for dinner. With a group of 9 adults and 7 children ( 4 months, 8 months, 1 yr old twins, another 1 yr old, 2 yr old, and a 4 yr old I think I have it right?). It was a symphony of baby cries, grunts, screams, coos, and gabbing ladies. CRaZy to say the least but oh so much fun. I have truly missed having these ladies in my life and am so grateful that we have rekindled our friendships through our blogs. So glad I got to talk, laugh, run, and just be with you all the last two days. Thank you and I love you girls!

Getting Off the Fence

Ok, I have an emotional grip now I think. Gary and I have decided to mix things up a bit and relocate ourselves in the Ithaca, NY area for a while. We made the decision way back in January when we were on the long drive home from our visit over the holidays. Believe me it was discussed thoroughly as we had hours to spend on the topic while watching the yellow stripes pass by. I felt good about it for a while but I will admit that once I got home I found myself getting back up on the fence and avoiding the topic. I was finding that for every good reason to go to NY there was and equally good and opposite reason to stay. Family and friends being the best example of this. My heart aches when I approach the subject with my Mom or when our friends say how much they will miss us. Then I hear the excitement in Gary’s parents voices when we talk about the real estate we have been looking at and I get goose bumps over the prospects of being close to his family and discovering a new place. (emotional grip is lost as I have a big lump in my throat now) So we had another long talk the other night and we realized that we should do this. We are in a unique situation with Gary’s job (he works from home) and we should be taking advantage of the freedom it allows us to choose where we want to be and we should be doing it while Ellie is young. So who knows maybe in another three years I will be writing about our next big move to the coast of Oregon or the mountains of Montana or the beaches of the Great Lakes. The future is wide open…

THPPPT…

…a conversation with Ellie.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t74aU2L3nzM[/youtube]

Spring Clean

Oh yes, it’s that time of year again. Time to clean and I mean CLEAN. Months of dust and grime have accumulated in the Marcoccia home and with a fresh change in season comes a fresh home. Granted our snow is still here and apparently isn’t leaving anytime soon, but we are doing what we can to encourage things to come back to life. A few other motivators for this cleaning festival that I should mention as well are that we listed our Timberlakes home for sale this week with a realtor. I will write more about this when I have a better emotional grip on it, but for now we are scrambling to get this place “show ready”. Another motivator is to SIMPLIFY yes! I love to simplify and I was inspired to do so last night by this blog I discovered here good stuff.

So here are some highlights from our Saturday cleaning festival. First we discovered that our bathroom light fixtures are kind of cute they are frosted on the tips. Huh we had assumed the whole glass thingy was frosted the entire two years we’ve been here! This is bad I’m totally revealing what a bad housekeeper I am and how lazy I am. That light fixture has been screaming to be cleaned and polished from the very first time I saw it. Procrastination is a terrible thing.

Gary volunteered to watch Ellie as I attacked the bathroom. It was a little quiet after a while so I stepped out to see how they were doing and this is the scene I found…

Daddy’s little helper. She was content in the backpack for over an hour! I think we have discovered a new way to clean the house without interruption. Not sure who was more proud Daddy or Ellie.

Human Thing

Here is an inspirational song/video from The Be Good Tanyas that I found on one of my favorite blogs. I really like the animation, the quilts on the line, and the couple dancing with the mountain scene in the background. Those are my favorite highlights…oh and the song isn’t so bad, either. 🙂 Don’t be afraid to check out “The Littlest Birds” as well.

Enjoy.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gd1Ie370rHk[/youtube]