We Rocked Dallas

71 days...71!

That's basically only 10 more weeks until the wedding.

This past Sunday, to celebrate 75 days, Garrett and I ran another half marathon.

Just kidding, I was going to run it anyway.

I asked signed up Garrett to run it too just for kicks.

He was SO happy. Just kidding, he probably wanted to kill me.

Check out this snazzy finisher badge they email to you

so you can post it all over your Facebook and IG to brag to all your 'friends'.

Not my style.

I only took this one picture (technically Garrett took it).

I run with my new high-tech GPS watch (that purple thing on my wrist) now,

so I don't have my phone attached to me when photo-ops present themselves.

I'm a hot mess when I run anyway.. nobody wants to see that.

After we ran 13.1 miles in the 45 degree Dallas weather,

we stuffed our faces with Moe's.

Moe's doesn't exist in Houston, so we took full advantage of burning nearly 2,000 calories

by eating half of them back in burrito and queso form.

I cut 18 minutes off my previous half marathon time,

so I'd say I was pretty deserving of Moe's..

and the Rita's we had later for dinner.

One just opened less than a mile from our apartment..

bad news, I tell ya.

I digress.

Today is my first dress fitting.

I'd be lying if I said I wasn't scared or nervous.

I'm both.

I haven't tried my dress on since August.. August!

That was two 10Ks, a 12K and two half marathons ago.

This wedding planning stuff is no joke.

Every time I think I have some down time

I come up with 6714 more things I need to do.

I know there's a gap of about 5 months missing now.

Maybe I'll fill that in over the weekend,

or when I actually have some down time.

Only 234 more days!

...until Garrett and I get married!!!

I can't believe it, time has been flying.

I feel like we just started all this wedding planning crap like 2 months ago,

but nope, we booked our first wedding vendor way back on January 9th.

That was more than 10 months ago. what the what?

..talk about planning ahead! ;-)

But really,

I can't believe we were EVER considering getting married on October 12,

(yes last Saturday, my mom's birthday, by the way!)

there is NO WAY I could have ever done it!

Far too much has gone on this year,

I don't know where I would have found the time. (or money!)

Back to our actual wedding date...

I'm a total freak show right now... no joke! 

Garrett seems to be so calm and collected just cool,

while I'm there with candles lit and dim lights

trying not to be stressed, thinking:

"Hey, frozen yogurt could help right now...

nope, can't eat that...

MUST. LOOK. GOOD. IN. DRESS."

I always catch myself freaking out with wedding thoughts and questions in my head

EVERY. SINGLE. DAY.

A lot of them go something like this:

"I hope out of town guests start booking their hotel rooms soon,

so I can have more rooms added to our hotel blocks.."

turns into 

"OMG, people are going to wait to long to book, and the rest of the hotel is going to be booked

and I won't be able to add any more rooms to our blocks...

NOBODY WILL BE ABLE TO COME TO OUR WEDDING!!"

Cue hysterical panic mode.

or,

"I need to go to some dress shops to get pricing for the bridesmaids dresses.."

turns into

"Crap! What if they don't like the color of the dresses I want them to wear,

or their too expensive and...

I'M NOT GOING TO HAVE HAPPY BRIDESMAIDS!!"

Panic mode. 

and, the best one,

"I'm doing all this training for the 1/2 Marathon, 10K, 12K,

I'm going to look AWESOME in my gown come June..."

30 seconds later

"What happens if my Synthroid stops working and I gain all my weight back,

what if the seamstress can't do anything about it...

MY DRESS ISN'T GOING TO FIT ME!!!"

Cue massive panic attack.

 

I don't think I've reached Bridezilla status yet,

hopefully I don't,

I don't think that usually happens until the week of the wedding, though.

Right?

But I'm alive,

And it will be all worth it come June

When I get to marry my best friend!

That's right, I'm talking about you, Garrett! <3

 

Wish me luck!

Playing Catch Up

So, it's been awhile... a long while.

3 whole months to be exact!

Sorry about that...

A lot has gone on in those last 3 months

and guess what, I'm going to recap it all...

be prepared, this might will be a long one!

Let's start with May, if I can even remember that far back.

I have horrible short term memory, even though I can tell you what I ate for dinner

on my 16th birthday (which was 8 short long years ago).

--it was grilled chicken and 

my mom's awesome, famous and delish potatoes (more on those later!)...

oh, and instead of cake we had key lime pie--

Back to May.

We went to a picnic over Memorial Day weekend. That was that.

Next is June!!

The best month out of the year because:

1. It's the month I first blessed this world with my presence

2. It's the month that Garrett and I are getting married!! (next year, of course)

June turned out to be extremely busy for us, the last 10 days of the month we were on

 vacation up north!

Unlike most normal people who would fly, we drove to Pennsylvania.

Yes, I said DROVE. To PENNSYLVANIA. THROUGH THE NIGHT.

It only took us 23 hours.

Phin stuck it out like the trooper he is!

We got him a car hammock to keep him out of the front of the car...

...Turns out it worked REALLY well!  FAIL.

The drive home was probably the worst, it took just as long as the drive up...

even though it should have been 3 hours shorter.

We were just so tired by that point, 

and once we hit Louisiana we just wanted to get home!

I will share what we did on that vacation at a later time, 10 days is a lot to cover.

Not to mention it took nearly 2 weeks to recover from the whole trip.

In July...

We started our official 1/2 marathon training!!

I've also been doing a lot more wedding planning since we got back from vacation.

Between running my butt off (literally) and doing wedding things,

I didn't really have time to do much else besides try to rest and relax...

oh, and go to an Astros game! :-)

I'm not really sure when it even became August, but now it's over half-way gone.

Garrett and I registered for 3 additional races already!

In October we'll be doing The Color Run.

I guess it's pretty similar identical to the Color Me Rad that we ran in March.

I wanted to do it as a fun run before the half in November

so that I don't get too bored with training.

On Thanksgiving we are running the TXU Energy Turkey Trot, again!

Last year that 5K was my FIRST 5K EVER!

(my shins were screaming at me the entire race)

So this year, I'm turning pro and running with the big dogs in -- the 10K!

In December (before we go to Pennsylvania over Christmas) we'll be running

the Houston 12K of Christmas.

I'm excited for this one because it's downtown, and it's right before Christmas!

-I might will be sporting an obnoxious jingle bell bracelet or two,

Garrett will probably choose to run ahead of me!-

Super Exciting wedding news...

We chose our colors!!

These are "officially official" because well, now they're posted on the internet!

That makes everything official, right?

This isn't my exact vision, but the colors are spot-on!

Our Dog, Phin.

Our fur-baby.

Phin.

We named our dog after a beer.

Yes, a beer.

More specifically, the founder of a brewery, whose name was later used to name a beer.

(A favorite of ours - if you've never tried Southern Tier Brewing Company's Phin & Matt's...

you need to, you have no idea what you are missing!) 

We I adopted him last March, it was love at his first tail wag.

I was extremely blessed and so lucky with how it all came together, let me tell you how I found the perfect puppy for Garrett and I!

It was a hot and sunny (typical Houston) Thursday, March 8th.

-- HCPHES Veterinary Public Health Division posts all of their available dogs and cats on their website, and I had been watching their dog page like a hawk for over a week!

Originally Garrett and I kept looking at the photos of these tiny Cairn Terrier puppies who were about 8 weeks old, so we had planned to go to 'the pound' that Saturday to seriously look for a puppy.

By Thursday only 1 of the 8-week-old puppies was left, and I was FREAKING OUT!!

I still looked at the photos of the other dogs that would be there, a little black and white scruffy thing, a brindle-colored shaggy one, and a little grey fluffy girl were also on my radar.

My impatience led me to go by myself to the shelter/pound/kennel that day after work (I was determined to have a tiny puppy!). When I got there, I was told that the 8-week-old puppy had either been picked up by a rescue group or something.

I decided to start the search to see if they had another puppy that might suit Garrett and I.

I won't lie, Phin wasn't my first "try-out" that day, a tiny long-haired, yippy Chihuahua mix of some sort was my first. (Please don't ask me why - I was just excited to be around so many puppies)

After that didn't work out, I picked out the tiny black and white, quiet, scruffy guy sitting patiently by his door... He may or may not have been the only dog that wasn't barking!

He was sooo shy and timid for the first 5 minutes we were in the play pen, then just as I started to worry I wouldn't find a dog - little man started jumping and running circles around me.

I KNEW RIGHT AWAY... THIS IS OUR PUPPY!!

Long story short - I make arrangements to pick him up the first possible day (all dogs had to be fixed before they could be taken home).

Garrett may or may not have wanted to kill me when I got home and told him that we would be getting our little puppy just 4 days later! :-) 

..He's now wrapped around Phin's paw!

Scruffy pants the first night at home - before a bath!

He was about 9 months old when we got him, crate trained, pretty house-trained,

and HE DIDN'T BARK!!

--More on Phin, his bark and loud personality later!--

Halfway to Half Crazy!

Sooo… it’s been awhile since my last post. (oops!) I would love to say that there has been a lot going on and that I’ve been super busy, but I would be lying.

Although… on April 27th Garrett and I ran our first 10K, the green6.2! I am very proud of myself for not only finishing it, but finishing it under my goal time… I wanted to finish in under an hour and a half (1:30 for you technical folk).

Garrett was being a super awesome fiancé and ran/walked with me the entire 6.2 miles… even though the “official results” say I finished 18 minutes before him! FYI - His official time (1:26:00) is correct, my official time is what I wish I would have run (1:08:48), and I will… NEXT TIME!!

We even got finisher medals!

Halfway to half crazyyy… we registered for our first HALF MARATHON!!!!! Okay, so I’m a little super duper excited!

And even though I have an English degree, I do know 6.2 isn't quite half of 13.1 (Garrett will call me out on that one)... but what's .7 miles when you're running that far, right?

We  have officially registered for the San Antonio Rock 'n' Roll Half Marathon on November 17th!! We chose the San Antonio race over a few others because we both really wanted a reason to go on a weekend trip to San Antonio, and it should be perfect weather that time of year.

As far as formal half marathon training goes, I found a 20-week training program I plan on following to prepare the best I can… annnd, I will start that on July 1st when we get back from vacation!!

I promise I'll post at least twice this week!

Crawfish Festival in Old Town Spring

Saturday Garrett and I ventured up to Spring for the Crawfish Festival with his cousin, and other family! Won’t lie, I think I was more excited about meeting baby Ashlynn, (who turned exactly 1 month old on Saturday, and is the tiniest baby girl I’ve ever seen!) than the abundance of crawfish I could eat that day. Yes, I have a new enjoyment with eating mudbugs... as they call them in Louisiana.

Crawfish!

I should have known what I was in for going to a festival of this sort, but I was still surprised as ever to see sooo many people there! (I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many people wearing Duck Dynasty shirts at one place in. my. entire. life.)

There were two different parts to the festival, the town streets with food carts and lots of little shops, and the carnival/concert part that you can pay to experience. Sadly, Garrett and I didn’t pay the $15/person to watch a bunch of redneck kids run around screaming… but what we could have seen was Uncle Si from Duck Dynasty! Our loss I guess, but hey, there are always more redneck festivals!

As far as the crawfish goes, there were probably 5 different carts selling boiled crawfish, there were crawfish everywhere! There were also a few carts for beer, ice cones, donut hamburgers (yes, that’s right, a hamburger between a glazed donut sliced like a bagel... ) and deep fried everything!

My handsome Fiancé!

Garrett wandered off by his lonesome and about 20 minutes later, came strolling up with 4 deep fried Oreo’s, and 2 deep fried Reese’s. I have to admit, the fat kid in me HAD to try a deep fried Oreo… and it was worth all 5 of the extra miles I’ll be running this week! :-)

It was a beautiful day for the festival!

I started a blog!

For the past few months (okay, more like a year) I have wanted to start a blog… not one of those blogs that makes money, or that random people stop by and read, (not really sure what Google search this would show up with) but a way to let my family and friends in on my life.

Now that I have created the blog… what do I write about? Good thing my first post doesn't have to be anything too important, although I do have plenty of things I want to talk about to inform and remind the closest people in my life… example: Garrett and I are getting married June 7, 2014, my new-found love for running, my journey to become a healthier and happier me, oh and our life in Texas!

I’ll do my best to post every other day… that’s one of my biggest goals for this blog (I've been into the whole “finish what I've started” thing lately). So kick back and stay awhile or at least visit often!