Running Army Wife

Heh. I definitely just had a flashback to listening to Relient K a whole bunch in early high school when I typed out that title. But that's what I'm doing. Pressing on. I got a job co-teaching a class in Chicago once a week, and I'm currently trying to find a part-time job to occupy me for the rest of the week. One thing I can say though.. people tend to treat you pretty well when you've got a husband deployed. Since I'm not living by the base, the YMCA offers free memberships to military wives whose husbands are deployed reservists, national guard, OR if the soldier is active and the wife has relocated (like to live with family.. like me!). The point is to give military wives a community during deployment if they are not near the military community. SO. I got my membership and went to my very first cycling and very first pilates class yesterday. Wow. First of all, the cycling class was really hard. 30 minutes into the 1 hour class, I was really starting to wa...

Well. I had this whole post written up about how difficult it was to say goodbye on the day that my husband left for Afghanistan. But I decided to wait to post it, because of OPSEC . He's now to his destination safely, but I still have to decided to not post that original thing I wrote. It was pretty long, emo, and no one would have wanted to read it. In short, it was the hardest day of my life to date. The best word I can use to describe how I feel now is surreal. I dreaded it for about 6 years and then it finally happened. Kind of like when you wonder for years what it will be like to be married and then you're standing there with your new husband, having just walked back down the aisle hand-in-hand and you're like Wow, we're married . I'm left here thinking Wow, he's actually deployed now.  This little comic sums up how the goodbye was: Right now, a year seems like a really long time.

So this is long overdue, but my life has been a bit crazy lately. Well, I was hoping for a 1:57:30. I felt more prepared for this half than I was for the Chicago Half Marathon in September (1:59:20), so shaving a couple seconds off each mile didn't seem too much to hope for.  I guess I underestimated the hills. Eek. We have some hills around our apartment, but nothing compared to this course we ran downtown. I was on pace for the first 5 miles or so, but then it started catching up with me. I finished at a 2:02:38. So an average 9:21 per mile, compared to Chicago's 9:06 per mile. Crazy how 15 seconds per mile adds up so much. But considering the hills versus the super-flat Chicago course, I decided I'm not too upset.  And of course, it rained. The weather was actually not to bad. Around 50 degrees, which is perfect for a race like this.  My wonderful hubby took all the pictures. This is the second half marathon that he's run with me as my photographer/sh...

Here is one of my Christmas presents to my hubby. Since we celebrated Christmas early, I can safely post this. I spotted this project on pinterest a couple months ago and I thought it was the cutest idea. Then I started thinking... my hubby is going to be gone on his deployment for a year. 1 Year= 52 weeks. 52 cards in a deck. How perfect! So yeah, he missed the change over to 9 month deployments and that sucks BUT at least the year-long 52 weeks works perfectly for this little project. Gotta count the little positives! But I put my own little spin on it.  On the outside, it looks the same:  I still printed out 52 reasons why I love my hubby. Some silly, some a little more serious, some I wouldn't post online ;). And attached the little slips of paper with packing tap since we've got plenty of that laying around recently. NOTE: You MUST put packing tape or contact paper over the regular paper. Otherwise, the ink will get scratched off with the paint and...

Oh man. It was a good weekend. We celebrated Thanksgiving, Christmas, and our Anniversary all in a few days. We visited Bainbridge Island, ran a Turkey Trot, made Thanksgiving Dinner, exchanged presents, and then ran the Seattle Half Marathon. Whew! I didn't take any pictures at the Oly Trot because it was rainy and we were both racing, but we did get these fun arm warmers instead of a shirt. I have plenty of race shirts, so it's kinda fun to have something different.  We then made Thanksgiving dinner together. The hubby made soft pretzels instead of dinner rolls. They were amazing.  I also made roasted green beans with cranberries. And a little sweet potato casserole, made with two potatoes.  And here's our complete little dinner for two!  We then exchanged presents. We then finished up the weekend with the Seattle Half Marathon. Hubby was my photographer and sherpa. :) So thankful to have a hubby that loves me so much....

We attended the brigade's deployment ceremony this week (these are normally held about a couple weeks before deployments). It was held outside, and the weather was absolutely miserable. James's Aunt and Uncle attended with us. I was proud that we were one of the few that braved the weather. They had a small number of soldiers stand in formation to represent each battalion within the brigade. Then the brigade commander and the commander of the base gave some really inspiring speeches. It made me so proud of my solider. Later, there were a lot more family that made it to the battalion farewell ceremony, which was indoor.  Of course, James looked absolutely dashing in his multicam uniform. I saw that one of the ladies was wearing a little lapel pin with the brigade's crest. I asked her where she got it and she told me to go talk to the commander's wife, who was also wearing one. I did, and she gave me the one she was wearing! I guess she has a bunch of them so she didn...

The weather outside is frightful.  Well, maybe not  frightful , but certainly gray and rainy. But the fire is so delightful.  Oh yes. I'm loving my electric insta-fireplace.  I was going through some things today and I found these Christmas CDs. No, I don't actually still use a CD player, but I saw them and thought "Okay.. maybe I will just jump on the bandwagon." But, "What is this mysterious blank CD? Maybe it's a Christmas Mix I forgot about." So I popped it into my laptop and low and behold it is my wedding recording that has been misplaced forever. Okay, not forever. But I cried a little bit when I found it (I've been a bit of a basketcase lately, don't judge). For some reason I never put it on my itunes. Or even labeled the CD for the matter, apparently. I knew it was somewhere but I was beginning to worry about it. So I listened to my half-hour long wedding this mornin...

I have been wanting a little Camelbak for a little while now for my long runs. Sometimes it's hard to plan out water stops, so I figured this little guy would be perfect.  Isn't he cute? When he's filled up with water, he weighs less than 5 pounds. Because my dad flew in on Saturday morning, I decided to move my long run to Friday instead. I thought hmm perfect time to try him out.  I joked with hubby that it's my baby ruck sack. So.. I realize that it was my longest long run that I've done in a while.. and it was also the first one I did by myself in a while.. but it was not fun . I ran almost a 10 min/mile pace versus a 9:20 pace that I did for my last long run. I thought I would barely notice the backpack but all I wanted to do was throw it away into the bushes the whole time.  I can tell you one thing.. I will definitely not be wearing it for any races.  The good news is that I got it done and now it's taper time for my race on the 27th.  ...

Well, hubby's vacation is over and he went back to work this morning. After a long week of sight-seeing and non-stop touring with family, we decided to take his last day off and have a lazy day together. It was wonderful. We visited Mount Rainier and it was snowing on the top. It was my first bit of real winter this year. Here is a falls that we hiked to. Be-a-utiful. On our drive down, we saw a fox on the side of the road. He was gorgeous. I think he must have thought we were going to give him food, because he stopped and didn't mind when we took pictures of him. Or maybe he just knew he is that good-looking. "Make sure you get my good side" - Mr. Fox We also tried out a few new coffee places. We recently earned enough stars for our Starbucks gold card (should I be proud or ashamed of this?), so we didn't feel obligated to go there when we wanted coffee.  This was my favorite cappuccino.  It was fro...

Holy cow, it's been a busy week! We've had family in town so we've done a lot of sight-seeing. I feel like I've hardly been at home. My poor cat is probably really lonely (or really happy to have the apartment to herself, who knows?). My favorite was Kalaloch Beach. I think it's probably the most beautiful beach I've ever been to. My dad flew in yesterday, and we all went to see Lincoln Brewster in concert. He's is definitely the most amazing guitar player I have ever heard live. My favorite song of the night was "Today is the Day." Even though I've heard the song a million times, it didn't really mean that much to me until last night. Funny, how that happens sometimes, isn't it?  Today is the day you have made I will rejoice and be glad in it And I won't worry about tomorrow I'm trusting in what you say Today is the day Maybe that can be a mantra for when James is gone. Today is the day you have made, I...

Well, it's been pretty busy. After a little over a week of the Army getting our hopes up that the deployment might be delayed and shortened, we found out that it wouldn't be. He won't be home for Christmas, and he'll most likely be gone 12 months. Dangit. At least I can say that training went well this week. (btw that 22 is a bike ride , not a run.. just fyi) My in-laws are in town and will be for the rest of the week. It's been pretty crazy and we've been doing lots of stuff with family (hubby's aunts and uncles are all local here near fort lewis). I love family, but I'm so glad that I signed up for this half marathon so I have an excuse to have a few minutes to myself in the morning. A little part of me wishes that I could just have my husband to myself these last couple weeks.. but I have to remind myself that it's their son, nephew, and grandson leaving for Afghanistan, not just my husband. I kind of feel like we're standing on a divi...

James and I decided that we would start a new tradition .. making limoncello for the holidays. If you haven't heard of it, check out  limoncello quest . Basically it's a really sweet Italian liquor that you make with lemon zest and everclear. You let the zest sit in the everclear for a while (like weeks) and it will take on the taste of the lemon. Then you add simple syrup, let it sit a while longer, and then filter it. It's amazing. And you need a lot of lemons for it.. last time I made the mistake of zesting all the lemons at once. Seriously, that's a lot of lemons. Anyway, after you zest them, there is nothing to hold the moisture in and they go bad really fast. So.. since the zest is supposed to sit in the everclear for a while anyway, I decided to just zest them as I used them. And they do make a pretty centerpiece until I use them all. So far, I've made strawberry lemonade. Don't be jealous of how good this looks.  Okay.. you can be a little je...

Happy Halloween! :)  Last week was good. I technically had two long runs in one week, since I had to postpone the long run in week 1. So I sort of combined my long run with what was supposed to be a 6-mile run.. but I should be back on track now. This week's mileage should hold steady and come out to be around 24 miles as well.  I decided to move around some things in my plan. I had my bike day on Monday before, but I decided that doesn't really make sense since Sunday is a day off. Bike day should be a rest/cross training day. So I switched the Monday column with the Friday column. I got my pace tat for the Seattle Half Marathon. Omygoodness I'm so excited. I'm going for 1:57:30. That's a 8:57 mile. I ran an average 9:06/mile at the Chicago Half Marathon. So basically I only need to run 9 seconds faster per mile.. but it's on a hilly course. And the Chicago Half Marathon was totally flat. Hmm. My wonderful hubby said that he might run with me...