Oh hey!

When I go for my runs at nights, it is still pretty dang hot, even at 8pm.  So I take a half frozen water bottle and a napkin and put them in the mailbox.  The water is to keep me hydrated (obviously) and the napkin is in there to help wipe away the sweaty mess that happens on my face. I pass by my mailbox on each loop, so putting them in there makes it really convenient and since the mailbox is clay, it keeps the water cold.  So last night when I opened up the mailbox to get my napkin and water,  I saw this:

 Husband had left me a little note on my napkin while I was running!  Isn't he just the sweetest. :)
Me and said sweet Husband are heading out to Darien (on the coast of Georgia) for a little weekend getaway tomorrow.  So excited!  
  

Emma's 2nd Birthday Party!

This weekend was my niece Emma's second birthday party.  We had a blast at the party, my sister did such a great job.  The highlight of the party was definitely the unveiling of the playhouse that my parents, grandparents, and sister and brother-in-law had been building for the past several weeks for Emma.  It is a totally awesome playhouse.  Check it out:

 She was so excited when she saw it!

My mom even made her a kitchen set from an old entertainment center.

She knew exactly what this was supposed to be.  She said "it's a refrigerator!"

There's also a loft up above that will have stairs going to it when she gets older

Emma and Nannie

Big cheesin!

Overall, it was a very successful weekend, especially for Emma!  Hope ya'll are having a great week!

Oh.

Since Husband is a school teacher and is out for the summer, he spends most of his day lazing around the house, golfing, and watching Paula Dean (no, I'm not bitter).  Since he's pretty much alone all day (well, except for Paula) he gets pretty antsy around 5:00pm.  So every day at about 5:03, I get a text from Husband with some variation of "Where are you?!"  He continues to blow up my phone until I either reply to his texts or walk in the door.  So today I decided to get a little sassy in my reply.  It definitely did not unfold how I thought.  See for yourself:
(Side note: Husband's text are on the left in gray, mine are on the right in green.  Martin is my gecko and Bing Clawsby is my cat).

What. the. heck?!  Not only did he just reply with a taciturn "Oh." when I said I was dead, he also threatened to kill my poor defenseless gecko by putting him in the freezer!!!!  Needless to say, Husband is not on my good side tonight and Martin is acting a little skittish.  Husband just might be spending the rest of the summer cleaning the house....

Happy Birthday Emma!

Happy 2nd Birthday to the sweetest little girl I know, my niece Emma!  

You just get sweeter, smarter, and prettier every time I see you!  

I love you little girl!

Happy Father's Day

Happy Father's Day to all you dads out there.  I have been so blessed with such a wise, loving, and fun father.  I truly cannot imagine having a better dad than I do.  I'm sad that I didn't get to spend the day with him, but will make it up next weekend. :)  I love you Daddy!  Thank you for loving me so much! 

Epcot mushroom

So today in completely random news: I found a mushroom that looked just like the Epcot circle thing at Disney World.  It was textured like it and everything! 

Here is the Epcot thing 

And here is the magical Epcot mushroom I found in my yard.

They're like twins!  I was just waiting to see a miniature Mickey Mouse running around.  Oh and as a side note, I just looked up what that Epcot dome thingy is called...apparently it's named Spaceship Earth.  Kinda dorky huh?

44:59

So last week, I ran the furthest distance I have ever run in one go.  I ran 4 miles in 45:01 and felt great throughout the whole run.  There was a slight mental block at my 3.2 mile spot, where my body was like "Oh yeah, we're done!  Uh wait, you can stop now, why are you still running?!  Ok, we can do this.  Ok you're totally about to finish four miles!"  I wasn't out of breath and my legs weren't even hurting too bad.

Real sweaty.

I wanted to just chalk it up to me having a good night, or the cool misty night weather, or it just being a miracle.  But then tonight, I did it again.  AND I shaved 2 seconds off of my time! (hence the post title)  I know that to other more experienced runners this time is really slow, but considering that I have only been running consistently for 4 months, I don't think it's too bad.  In fact, I'm pretty darn proud of myself. 

I think my nose swells when I run?  At least I hope that's why it looks huge

I'm hoping to start adding on an extra 0.25 mile to my long run days every 2 weeks.  So now that I have done 4 miles on my long run days the past 2 weeks, for the next 2 weeks, I'll run 4.25, then the following 2 weeks, do 4.5, etc.  On that schedule, I should be up to 6.5 miles by the last week of October.  To motivate myself I'm going to try to find a 10K to schedule for the beginning of November.  I think then I will be prepared and it will be nice and cool.  So anyways, I'm done patting myself on the back. :)  Sorry for my humblebragging.  :)  Hope ya'll's week is off to a good start!

Rainy Drive

This weekend I went up to Atlanta to see family and go to my cousin Lauren's wedding. 

Everyone got a kick out of the picture below.  I asked my dad to take a picture with my phone, and he totally cut me out of the picture.

The wedding was beautiful, as was my cousin, and I had a great time with my family.  My niece, Emma will be 2 in 9 days and she just gets cuter and smarter every time I see her.  I spent the night with her and my sister both nights and it was wonderful to spend so much time with them.
I was sad to head home, and even sadder when I realized that my ENTIRE trip home would be filled with rain.  It would pour, and then drizzle, and then pour again.  It stopped for a total of about 10 minutes, and then I saw these clouds....

 Right after that I stopped at a gas station to get some gas, and the people beside me, who looked to be on vacation, had locked their keys in the car.  The police came to help them out and they were getting soaked.  I felt so bad for them!

And here's a little video I made right before I got home.  I was a little frustrated, if you can't tell. 

As soon as I got home, it stopped raining.  And didn't rain again.  Apparently I was one of those cartoons with a cloud over my head...Probably because I was so sad about leaving my family!  In consolation though, I get to see them again in 2 weeks for Emma's birthday party! 
Hope everyone had a great weekend!

Fail.

Wellll...the first week of my blog challenge was a huge FAIL!  I'm a little disappointed in myself actually.  I apologize that I haven't written much lately.  The combination of work being pretty busy lately, Husband getting on his "summer schedule" (i.e. go to bed at 4am, wake up at 11am), and adding miles to my weekly running plan has left me feeling pretty drained.  We're trying to get back on a schedule, so hopefully that will help.  Tomorrow I'm driving up to Henry County for my cousin Lauren's wedding on Saturday!  I'm excited to celebrate this wonderful time in Lauren's life and see family.  Next post will probably be on Monday.  I'll try to catch up a little on this blog challenge.  Hope you all have a great weekend! 

L to R: Me, twin cousin Lindsey, sister Allie, cousin Ashley, 

SIL Alexis, twin cousin Lauren (the bride)

Two Years

Happy 2nd Anniversary Husband!

Thanks for marrying me.  I love you :)

Blog Challenge: Day 3

Yes, I know what you're thinking...you skipped day 2!  Plus, you're late with posts 2 and 3!  And yes, yes, I know.  And I apologize for that.  Believe me, I am just as OCD as you are when it comes to numbers in sequential order.  But you see, I'm just not feeling whitty enough to write the second post.  I could be all sentimental and put the obvious in the "10 thing I like" column, but I want to give it more thought than that. So, I'm skipping it and will go back to it! 
So day three wanted me to describe my Tumblr blog name.  Well, this post explains the girl and guy aspect, and this post expounds on the gecko and gato!  When I decided to start blogging I wanted to come up with a clever name to rival those of the cute blogs which had inspired me.  Alliteration is definitely my literary device of choice (irony is a close second), so I went with the all "G" theme.  Had to kind of dig for the Gato (cat) part, considering that I know very little Spanish and my foreign language of choice's (French) paltry comparative was "le chat."  Think the "Chat Noir."

So anyways, that's the short and not entertaining answer to day 3's question.  Sorry I'm so blah today!  It's just a Monday!

30 day blog challenge: Day 1

Today begins my 30 day blog challenge!  You guys are lucky that I'm even writing a post today, since someone (husbaaaaaand!) woke me up about 20 times last night with his snoring and I finally just gave up at about 5:30am.  But, I digress.  The instruction for today was "write some basic things about yourself."  So for all of you guys who already know me, this might get a little boring. :)
I'll just give a quick run through of my life:
-Born to two absolutely wonderful parents April 20, 1988.

I was so leeeetle!  Also, mom, please don't kill me for this picture.  I love you!!!

-Grew up in a small town near Atlanta, Georgia. 
-Have one sister, Allie, who is 3 years older than me.  She is definitely my best friend and made growing up quite fun.

I'm the one with the Yoda ears

 -Lived in a 100+ year old house until I was in high school.  I learned so much helping my parents maintain this antique house, and still miss that house even though it was a little drafty in the winter and the train made it shake. 
-Accepted Jesus as my Savior at age 8.  
-Went to public school K-1st grade, homeschooled 2-4, private Christian school 5-9 grade, back to public school for 10-12.  Pretty much the only type of school I didn't go to was boarding school. :)

Oh those uniforms!

-Moved to another town near Atlanta in high school.  Besides all of the big work, we did a lot ourselves.  We did all of the painting, inside and out (outside was a beast, huge lifts, nice tans), cut all of the baseboards, hung all the doors, etc.  Even though I'm sure I complained a whole lot while doing all of the work, I'm glad to know how to do all of these simple housekeeping things, especially now that I own my own home.
-Played basketball since I was 8.  My dad was my coach for the first 5 years (I think?).  Played basketball until my junior year of high school.  Played volleyball from 9-12th grade. 

I'm number 4!I'm still friends with some of these girls, and they'll probably 

kill me if they see this picture on here!

 -Took horseback riding lessons in high school and eventually got my own horse.  Both of those were dreams come true and I'm so thankful that my parents gave me that opportunity.  I hope they know how much that meant to me.

Me and Goose, the horse I usually rode at my lessons

 My horse Apache.

-Graduated 3rd in my class from high school in 2006.

Graduation picture

Me and my two grandmothers the night I graduated, we had been crying if you can't tell!

 -Went to the University of Georgia, Fall 2006.
-Was a couple of classes shy of minoring in French.
-Danced all 4 years of college, became a performing member of Swung, UGA's swing dance performance group my sophomore year.

Ballroom Magic 2009

 -Was on the leadership team at Christian Campus Fellowship my junior year of college. 
-Also junior year of college, I started dating Husband. :)

Us at the beginning

 -My senior year got engaged to said Husband. :)

Husband says we look like serial killers in this picture

 -Last semester of my senior year was a full time intern with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. Definitely an eye opening and slightly nerve wracking experience.  It was like a 4 month long adrenaline rush.

 Me and ASAC Maddox on my last day

-Wrote a huge research paper on Levi's Call, Georgia's child abduction response initiative.  Also an eye opening experience.
-Graduated May 2010 from UGA with a Bachelors Degree in Criminal Justice.

L to R: Mr. Tim, Mrs. Lois, Husband, Me, Dad, Mom, Allie, Emma (in Allie's stomach)

 -Married Husband June 2010.  Definitely one of the best days of my life.

- Moved to the middle Georgia area.
-Worked in the counseling department at a high school in middle Georgia Fall 2010-Summer 2011.
-Moved to south Georgia, July 2011.

Our house!

-Began working at S&L Integrated Systems Fall 2011.
-And that brings us up to date!!!