Workin' it

I'm liking my new job a lot, but getting out of there in time for any of the 5 or 5:30 classes at the Y has been close to impossible, even when I do come in early ... just too much to do at the end of the day, and 5pm always comes too soon. I think I've made it to three or so classes since starting six weeks ago... sometimes I'm so mentally exhausted that I'm just ready to go home and take care of everything there, instead of heading to the gym after work and starting things at home an hour later.

Luckily I'm still running some Mondays and Tuesdays with Gail, I don't think we've missed more than one Tuesday night in the past eight weeks. But she's gone to a training for her work over the next two days, so left to my own motivations, I played the mental game of "should I run or shouldn't I?" all the way home from work...

But I did it - 2 miles, outside, EVEN without my iPod (dead batteries). Woo hoo!

Visiting Tare Tare and Robbie Bobbie (The Sug)!

Had to put this picture at the top of tonight's post... I spent time with two of my nephews and my niece this weekend... little Miss Eva is enjoying her special place as the only little girl in the family (well, of course we have Paige now too, but we didn't know her when she was this little!). After all these boys (Jace, Landon, Payton, Sam and Isaac) it is so fun for all of us aunts to buy little girl clothes and ohhh and ahhh over Eva!

Tonight I'm busy with chores at home, after being gone for a long 3+ day weekend visiting Tara and Rob and their families. We all always try to get together at my parents' home for major holidays- Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter - but actually going and spending time one on one at their homes was wonderful. It was great to be able to hang out and visit, and just spend some time hearing about their lives and talking ... we don't do that enough.

Jace and I headed to see Tara, Luke and Isaac (Ike) on Thursday afternoon, a five hour drive. (Dave headed to Bristol on Wednesday for a long weekend at the races with some friends.) I had hoped Jace and I could start our trip on Wednesday night and spend two nights at each house, but he and his dad had the United Way Day of Caring on Thursday. They have worked together on that for the past four years, and I didn't want him to miss out this year, it is a great experience. So we hit the road Thursday afternoon, and arrived in Quincy about 8pm that night.

Isaac has started walking, which is a change from when I last saw him at Easter. He turned a year old in June, and he is a pistol, just like his cousin Jace was at that age. He's got a great personality, and was so much fun!








Luke, Tara and I stayed up late on Thursday night, just talking and listening to music and enjoying a little vino. Then Ike was up early Friday morning (I've forgotten how early babies wake up, and this weekend SURE reminded me of that!) so we were up (fairly) early, too. We ate lunch at a great cafe in downtown Quincy, and then Luke gave us a tour of some of Quincy, including the spot down on the Mississippi where he asked Tara to marry him... awww!

Our visit was to Quincy was short and sweet; Luke and Tara had a charity rodeo they were volunteering at on Friday night, and Jace and I were heading to Galesburg to see Rob and family next.

My brother Rob and his wife Michele live about two hours east of Tara and Luke; they've only lived in Galesburg a few months, as Rob recently took a CFO position at the hospital there, a promotion within his company. The town of Galesburg is about 30,000 people, and they live in a great little neighborhood. Sam turned three in May, little Miss Eva is going to be two in October, AND they're expecting Baby #3 in November. Whew! But I was amazed at how they handled everything while we visited, and the house is as neat as a pin! (Go Michele, you rock! Oh, and you too, Rob.) Here's a few highlights of our visit:

We headed for home early Sunday morning; it would've been great to spend a day or two more at both of their homes, but we had to get back home and get ready for a busy week. Thank you, Tara, Luke, Rob and Michele, for taking time out of your hectic schedules to spend some time with us. Time goes by so quickly, and we need to get together more often. Before you know it, your kids will be Jace's age! And speaking of Jace, he starts school tomorrow, AND he turns 12 on his first day of 6th grade - my little boy, almost a teenager, but still a fun-loving kid!

Go Ahead, Make My Day

I spotted a reference to one of my favorite annual lists on MSNBC a couple of mornings ago, “Wear a wristwatch? Use e-mail? Not for Class of ‘14” – it’s the Beloit College Mindset List, providing readers the cultural pulse of this year’s incoming college freshmen. And yes, I again felt OLD (almost 40 – make that ANCIENT!) as I read many of the things… here were a few of my favorites.

For this year’s incoming college freshmen:

1. Clint Eastwood is better known as a sensitive director than as Dirty Harry.
2. Leno and Letterman have always been trading insults on opposing networks.
3. Computers have never lacked a CD-ROM disk drive.
4. Benny Hill, Sam Kinison, Sam Walton and Tony Perkins have always been dead.
5. Email is just too slow, and they seldom if ever use snail mail.
6. “Go West, Young College Grad” has always implied “and don’t stop until you get to Asia… and learn Chinese along the way.”
7. They never twisted the coiled handset wire aimlessly around their wrist while chatting on their phone.
8. Fergie is a pop singer, not a princess.
9. Unless they found one in their grandparents’ closet, they have never seen a carousel of Kodachrome slides.
10. Colorful lapel ribbons have always been worn to indicate support for a cause.
11. Russians and Americans have always been living together in space.
12. Nirvana is on the classic oldies station.
13. Rock bands have always played at presidential inaugural parties.
14. Beethoven has always been a dog.
15. Having hundred of cable channels but nothing to watch has always been routine.
16. The Post Office has always been going broke.

Take a look at the full list, and let me know - what were some of your favorites?

Blog Procrastination

You know how you feel when someone gives you a gift, and you think “Oh, I need to sit down tonight and write them a thank you note” …. but then life gets in the way and pretty soon six weeks have passed by, and by now you’re pitifully late on sending the note, so you wonder if you should even send it… you know you’re already so tardy on the thank-you, it is painful to even think of sitting down and writing it because NOW you will have to apologize for being late on top of thanking them for the gift …. Ack!!!

I know some of you would never let this happen, but others of you – you feel my pain. I’m a procrastinator at times, when it would be SO much easier to just do it. I know it is a fault of mine. And I’ve worked (and continue to work) on it, and definitely improved in some areas of my life. But this is how I've felt about my blog for the past three weeks.... first, I didn’t want to post again until I could fix the template on my blog, because I changed it to a newer Blogger template and can’t get the old one back!

Sooo, I thought I would just take the time to do that first, but it just hasn’t been high on my list. And then comes the fretting about the backlog… “Oh, I should sit down and blog tonight…. but geez, I’ll need to catch up and put pics from the STL Cards game a couple of weekends ago… AND tell about the saga of my running shoe purchase… AND update on my new job…AND, I can’t forget that funny story about Jace… oh god, I don’t have time for this. I just won’t blog tonight.” And that, my friends, is why I have not posted anything on here since July 27th. Happy Friday!