What a cutie!

Although I was really bummed that I missed my sister and nephew at Christmas by two days, they had a wonderful time. She is such a good mom and he is just so cute! I hope to make another trip to Seattle to visit them soon...

My beautiful sister and her cute kid...who is distracted by the animals at the Reid Park Zoo



Just don't fall off please...



Chatting with some javelina at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum



This is really the best picture of them all...see what he is holding? Yep, that's a soccer ball!

Girls Group

We finally managed to get a group picture of our girls group today at our little New Years Shindig (the unofficial title). I can't believe 5 of our gals are graduating high school in May . They are just growing up so fast! :)

Serious picture...



Goofy picture

Random squawking

So a few weeks ago, I think my neighbor bought a bird of some type. It's very loud. And the noise it makes is a cross between a cat coughing up a hairball and someone stepping on a duck's tail. My cats freak out every time...it's starting to become white noise to me, but every so often, I just have to giggle....

New Attitude 08

I just registered for New Attitude. What's New Attitude you ask? It's a conference sponsored by Sovereign Grace Ministries for young adults, singles, and young married couples. This year the following men are speaking:

CJ Mahaney
Josh Harris
John Piper
Mark Dever
Al Mohler
Eric Simmons

And it is about "God's Word". Let the learning and challenging begin!

Check out the video for more info. I went to this several years ago and it was fantastic!

Weekend Summary

This weekend was all about catching up with some of my families.

Friday night was the Smythes and they introduced me to a new game: Sequence. So fun!
Saturday was sleeping in, a trip to the recyling center and then some time sewing/quilting.
Sunday was church, lunch at the Millers (another new game: Qwitch) and then the McFerren gals came over to watch PBS's Masterpiece Theater: Northanger Abbey (yay for Jane Austen!)
And today (gotta love 3 day weekends) was spent at the Van Wrights visiting with Sonya and the kids and hanging up stuff on her walls. And I finished another block on my quilt... pictures will follow once the quilt top is done (it's just a small size one, lap/baby quilt). And now...I'm off to run!

Houston EP5K stats

I got my official 5K results:

• Division: Female 25 to 29
• Gun Time: 33:31
• Chip Time: 32:50

The difference between the gun time and the chip time is the time it took me to get to the start line after the race started (there were a lot of people!). The chip time is my actual race time.

• Place within division: 85 / 230
• Place within gender: 376 / 1315
• Place overall: 1011 / 2398

Houston EP5K!

I'll have more on my race results in a couple of days(stats, etc-for some reason I can't find the same stuff Lisa did), but I have seen two different times for my Chevron Houston Marathon EP 5K: 32:50 and 33:30...either way, I definitely met my goal of running an 11 minute mile, my pace was 10:46! I am soo excited!

To put that time into perspective, the first time I ran 3 miles (back in October), my time was about 43 minutes, about a 14 minute mile. I improved my 5K distance by 3 minutes per mile! And I am feeling great (no sore joints or other crazy stuff). I have deemed Lisa my official running buddy and our next challenge is the Seabrook Half Marathon Relay in March (one person runs 6.4 miles, the other 6.7 miles- total of 13.1 miles).

The experience today of all of those runners: Olympians, world record holders/breakers, people who wanted to challenge themselves...it was just amazing. I really want to run the Half Marathon in January...wow, that's a scary statement! Below are some pictures of today (thanks for running with your camera Lisa)!

Ready to run!

At the starting line. It was sooooo cold!

Just think warm thoughts...

3.1 miles later!

We got finisher medals! That is my first athletic-type award EVER!