Depends

So at the gym tonight I was going to be all braggy and take a picture of the treadmill at mile 5 to post on this here blog, but then through Divine intervention, the treadmill freaked out on my last 10th of a mile and said I had run like 8.5 miles and that would've been a little too dishonest to post a picture of that.  So instead of posting a braggy picture, I'll just post another picture I took at the gym:

 I just. I don't. Does this really even have to be said?  Apparently so... My mom suggested I copy one of these to have by my pool.  Totally considering it.

Special Delivery!

Today Husband texted me a picture of a package I had received at home.  I excitedly called him and asked him to open it, because I am the world's most impatient person and don't like waiting for stuff.  He replied that he was no longer at home, so he couldn't open it.  The suspense was killing me!  So when I finally got home a couple of hours later, I was so excited to tear into the package!  I saw it was from my grandmother and just knew it was gonna be good!  And boys and girls, was I ever right!  Her and PawPaw had sent me a care package full of food they had canned! 

 They made salsa and tomato juice from their garden vegetables, fig preserves from their fig tree, and peach and strawberry preserves from fruit from a local farm.  We went out to dinner for my mother-in-law's birthday tonight and I was too stuffed to be able to try any of the stuff Nannie sent me, but you better believe I'll be tearing into those tomorrow!  My grandparents are awesome cooks and they're so good at canning stuff, I know I will not be let down.  I am one spoiled little granddaughter.  Thanks Nan and Paw!
And a very happy birthday to the best mother-in-law there is, Mrs. Lois! :)

The Positives! (In Pictures!)

After last week's rough day, I decided to do a post today on some positives.  Some of these are pretty small things, but sometimes it's the small things that remind us that the Lord has given us a wonderful life.  I am definitely a pessimist, and have to consciously work on seeing the positive things, no matter how small.  So here are some things I have been enjoying lately:

Pretty hydrangeas from my yard

A new "J" bookmark.  (kudos to whoever can figure out the book)

The book for our new Sunday School class

Grapes from my back yard

This awesome basket my sister brought me from her farmer's market.  

It is just begging for some Pinterest action!

A Husband who can cook!

My (half naked) niece and (fully clothed) sister coming to see me last week

In-laws who are funny and generous and love me

An email folder full of emails from my Nannie

And parents who still know how to have fun.  

(Chick-fil-a Cow Appreciation Day)

What are some things you're enjoying in your life right now?

Face lift!

Well, got a little face lift today.  Nooo, not me, silly!  My blog!  I changed some things around, and added a little more information.  Besides the change in background, you should now be able to see this at the top of the page:

These are links to various new pages.  One is an about me page, which is just a quick blurb about who I am, for those of you who are new.  Following that are links to my Pinterest, Flickr, and Goodreads pages.  I post a pretty good bit of stuff on my Pinterest (303 pins and counting) and Goodreads account (101 books rated and counting), and will probably be adding some new stuff to my Flickr photo account soon as well. 
On the right hand side of the page you'll also notice some new stuff.  One is a "popular posts" reel, that shows you my most viewed posts.  Below that is an archive section, for you to look up past posts.  Possibly my favorite new feature is below that, the "follow by email" section.  This allows people who don't have gmail accounts, to still "follow" my blog through their email.  You can enter in your email address, so that you get an email whenever I write a new post.  It's pretty simple, just type in your email address, and then you will receive a confirmation email.  Just follow the instructions in that email, and you're set to go! 
I hope these changes make the website easier to navigate.  Let me know what you think!

100 Miles!

So today, while looking at my fitness tracker, I noticed something interesting.  I just hit the 100 mile mark!  Meaning, since my birthday on April 20th, I have ran 100 miles.  So as far as my goal goes, I am 8 miles ahead of schedule.  Yay!

I wish I could say, "Oh yeah, that was so easy."  But friends, I didn't enjoy a single one of those miles!  Haha!  That being said, my body itself appreciated it, and I have been able to tell a difference.  I read a quote the other day that said something about the best part of working out is the moment when your body does something it couldn't do a month ago.  And I thought about that for a minute, and if you had told me back in April, that I would be running 4.75 miles with no problem just a few months later, I would've laughed.  But now I realize just what my body is capable of, and if I just get my mind in gear, it will surprise me.  I still don't feel like I'm a "runner" but perhaps after 900 more miles, and listening to Vanessa Carlton's decade old hit song a couple more times I'll begin to feel like that title fits me.  :)

Bad Day.

Despite the fact that my wonderful sister and niece came down to spend a couple of days with me, I had a pretty rotten day today.  If they hadn't been here, I probably would be sitting on the couch right now eating a whole tub of ice cream.  But thankfully, they are here to cheer me up, so I'm sitting here watching my niece count change and catching up with my sister instead. 
A couple of reasons I had a bad day:
As some of you may know, my last semester of college, I completed a full time internship with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.  This morning I found out that the former Special Agent in Charge of the region where I completed my internship, Denise Norman, passed away this morning.  She was always so incredibly nice to me during my internship and was such a great teacher.  She was so patient, and understanding when there was something I didn't understand, or when she knew I needed to talk through something.  She was amazing at her job and always brought a smile to people's faces with her humor and genuine kindness.  One of her fellow agents said today that "The GBI will not be the same without her!" and he could not be more right.  I wish there were more people like her in this world, and it saddens me that we are without her now.  I will always be grateful for the influence she had on me.  Please keep her family and fellow agents in your prayers.

Denise is on the far right

  As if that wasn't enough bad news for the day.  My sister called me at about 2:30pm and said "um a tree just fell on your fence."  Her and Emma were hanging out at my house, waiting for me to get home from work, when the wind started blowing and it started raining.  They heard a loud bang and ran to the window to see a huge tree on our fence. 

 The tree completely took out the left half of our gate, and attempted to take down the right half.  It split several other boards as well.  Not a hugely expensive fix, just frustrating.  And yes, I know a fallen tree is not the end of the world, it just seemed like one thing after another today.  Hope ya'll are having a better week than I am.  And I promise I'll be more uplifting tomorrow.  Might even put some cute pictures of my favorite niece! 
 

My Dad is funny

So my Dad is pretty much one of the funniest people I know.  We have a very similar sense of humor, and he's definitely one of the most amusing people to text.  He has taken up running, along with me, my mom, and sister and we're all so proud of how well he is doing.  So he texted me this morning asking me to find us a 5K race to sign up for in October so that we'll have a goal to go towards.  I asked him what kind of race he was wanting me to find, since there are so many different kind nowadays, and his reply gave me a little chuckle.  See for yourself:

Me on the right, dad on the left

Yeah, I should have noooo problem finding a race to meet his demands, right?  At least he thought of mom's prize as well. :)  But yeah, that would definitely be the most awesome race ever!    

Darien Trip!

Well I can now mark number 23 off of my 25 for the year 25! 

And warning: this is going to be a long post up in here. Like, way long.  With a lot of pictures.  But it's my 100th post!!!!!  So put on them reading glasses, and have fun!

Friday afternoon Husband and I headed towards the coast for a weekend of hot hot weather and seafood!  I took a vacation day on Friday (thanks boss!), so after grabbing some Chick-Fil-A in Thomasville, we were on our way! 

We got into Darien at about 4:45pm and checked in at the Darien Waterfront Inn.  

 We got a Living Social deal for a 2 night stay here, with gift certificates to several restaurants ($25 total), all for about $140.  It's not very often that Living Social and Groupon have getaways that are close by, so when we saw that this place was only a couple of hours away, we snatched it up!  And we're quite glad we did.  The room had a huge king size bed, nice bathroom, and little sitting area.  

 Friday night we went to the Darien River House Restaurant to use our $20 giftcard that came along with our deal.  Timothy had a huge steak with mashed potatoes and vegetables and I had grilled swordfish with a fruit salsa, rice, and veggies.  I definitely meant to get a picture but it looked so good that we both just dove in before I remembered to take a picture.  

Since we walked to the restaurant, on the way back we decided to take a little detour and go through the town square and take a couple of pics!  There will be more pics of this later!

 We saw a bunch of pretty trees!

Since the Inn was right on the Altamaha river, we grabbed the camera and headed there next, right as the sun was going down.

Pretty ominous sounding boat, eh?

And then we took some more pictures of ourself...*cue "You're so vain"*

"You probably think this song is about you..."

Ok side note: As if on cue, this stupid picture above, every single time I tried to insert it right here, it would shoot up to the very tip top of the post so that it was the first dang thing you would see.  Goodness!
Anyways!
The next morning we woke up bright and early to a steamy hot day.  I mean HOT!  And everything we wanted to do that day was OUTSIDE.  Shoot me now!
Our first stop was Fort King George, which is the oldest English fort on Georgia's coast.  It was built in 1721, and they have rebuilt some of the buildings so that it looks just like it did then.  It was pretty interesting but HOT!
Behold, some pictures!

That funny lookin top heavy building was the main building thing.  I don't remember what it was called.  I was too dang hot to pay attention.

This was the coolest spot the whole day.  This was on the top floor of that building above.  We stuck our heads out for a long time just catching the breeze.

Here I am trying to position a long gun at a lookout.  That gun was way too long for that space and was giving me issues.

Then we found a bench and took a pic

Then Husband took his 10th picture of me swatting away a bug.  He's excellent at 

taking these pictures.

And then I got a little artsy

And then Husband found an artifact, a railroad spike.

And then Husband said he "found where Jesus was born"

And we found a bunch of canons.  It was a fort, ya know?

And then Husband found a chest that he said was bought in 2003.

And then we sat in the shade a little.  BECAUSE IT WAS HOT!

And then we saw where the Indians lived before the English ran them off.  

Imagine that, Indians being run off!

And saw a monument

And some graves

And another cool tree

 After we were thoroughly covered in sweat, we decided to grab a bite to eat and use our other gift card to the Purple Pickle!!!

 They didn't actually give you a purple pickle, heck, not even a regular pickle, and it took me like 5 minutes to figure out how to turn on the faucet in the bathroom.  But the food was pretty good!  I got a huge club sandwich and pasta salad.

There was an older couple that we saw at the Inn that morning at breakfast, and then saw them at the Fort again later.  Timothy made the comment that we would probably see them at lunch too.  And guess what!  They sat down next to us at lunch!  We talked to them all throughout the meal.  They were from Athens, and since Timothy and I both went to college there, we had a pretty good bit to talk to them about.  They were so nice and helped us have an enjoyable lunch. 

And then, friends, the real fun began.  Fun in the form of "let's go look for alligators for hours in 100 degree heat" hosted by my lovely Husband.  I have always known that he was obsessed with alligators, and has been his entire life, but until this trip I don't think I fully grasped just how deep his liking went.  Once Martin (the gecko) heard of this, he was quite offended.  I mean, he's like a little fun size alligator minus the teeth!!!  But Husband will have nothing to do with him! 
I spent the entire time pretty much complaining, and taking pictures of everything but alligators...because, guess what!  There were none!  It was too hot even for these cold blooded creatures!!!!

Even the beauty of this butterfly could not distract me from the sweat dripping down into my eyes.  Isn't the snot colored algae in the background just lovely?

We finally saw two little baby alligators, but Timothy was not satisfied. (You can kind of see the tail towards the left of the frame)

We must've spent 3 hours driving/walking around that nature preserve looking in little ponds like this, for man eating animals.

I kept secretly hoping that we wouldn't see one and he'd give up.  But the sun was making me dilusional (have I mentioned it was HOT?!?) because Hello!  Have I met my husband?  He is nothing if not determined/stubborn.

Here he is scanning another pond for more gators.  

Darn you Swamp People for refreshing his love of gators!

We saw a bunch of these birds in the water, which was a sure sign to me that there were not many alligators hanging out.

 FINALLY we saw an alligator.  I think it heard my silent supplications, because I was about at the end of my rope.   See that leeeetle spot in the water.  I caught it like 2 seconds before it went under.  And never resurfaced.  Creeeepy.

After seeing this alligator, and receiving threats to his life, Husband wizened up and abandoned his gator hunting.  Several people told us to check out a local place called BJs for dinner, so we headed there about 5:15.  When we got there, there was a huge line out the door already!  We didn't want to stand in the heat for another hour, so we gave up and went to a restaurant on the river. It was pretty good.  I got some grouper fingers and Timothy got shrimps!

Us waiting on our food

The next morning, after a delicious breakfast of sweet potato pancakes, I snapped a couple more pictures.

This cool building was beside the Inn.  

Churches lined Vernon Square

The heat gave her a splitting headache.  See what I did there?

And then we went home!  You finally made it to the END!  Yayyyy!!!  Thanks for reading!  We definitely recommend this area for a laid back vacation.  The Inn was wonderful: delicious breakfast each morning, clean rooms, and nice amenities.  Hope everyone is having a good week.  Tomorrow is Friday!  Yayyy again!