Monday Meme and weekend

Holy cow what a weekend. First, the end of last week was really hectic. Work stuff came to a head and really sucked up a ton of time. I had to skip my normal thursday night brick and ended up coding until about 11 pm instead.

Friday was the same way. I pulled myself away from the laptop at 5:30 knowing that I still had to take a shower, eat dinner, get dressed and get to the church by 6 (it's a 15 minute drive) and help Kelley get the kids ready to go too. Turns out, we were supposed to be there at 6:30, and ended up arriving at almost 7. But Bigun had her "end of the school year" program. Tomorrow is her last day of her first year of kindergarten, and here in the bible belt 3 and 4 year old kindergarten programs are all done at churches. Her class sang several songs in the concert, and we all had ice cream and cookies afterwards. it. was. ador. able.

Saturday Kelley went up to visit her cousin in NC for the day, and they had a freezer day. If you have never tried this, it is awesome! The two of them were just hanging out with no kids around and cooking all day long. They made meals in disposable containers for the freezer. So she came home with 3 lasagnas, a couple of shepard's pies, several quiches, four soups.... the list goes on. and having those frozen diners handy is awesome. There are always days when the kids just won't leave you alone to cook something and you can just throw one of those frozen treats in the oven, done. Make it all up with a friend and spilt the results, you'll have a fun day and it will save your ass later.

Sunday was my dad's birthday and Michael's first wedding anniversary. We had dinner with the folks, Morgan and my grandmother were also there. it was a blast. Morgan's girlfriend (whom we love) graduated from law school thursday in mississippi, and moved back to Greenville. So that was incredibly hectic for Morgan. He was pretty worn out sunday night.

And I finally got in my long run for the week sunday afternoon. Sort of. I got to the gym with minimal time, and did 9 miles on the treadmill before I had to hit the showers and get everyone ready for the dinner. I was supposed to go for 12, but ran out of time. it's nuts. But the splits were pretty good, I got the first 6 done in 57:21, and the next 3 done in 30 mins even. No knee braces, everything felt great, I kept a nice steady pace the whole time. and with no running since my intervals wednesday night, it felt GREAT just to get back out there.

The lovely and gracious Teacherwoman has tagged me as a masked mommy apparently. But my blog is super! She's fundraising right now for diabetes for her upcoming Tour de Cure ride, please support her if you can. Stacy's a special ed teacher in North Dakota, and really had me worried during the flooding a few months ago. And I truly admire people who have the patience and wisdom to do things that I can't. And that certainly includes working with children with special needs. She's a good egg, cool chick, and great athlete.

The rules are: tape the award on your blog somewhere and pass it along to 5 fellow super bloggers. Then comment on their blog to let them know how lucky they are today! When you present your Super Blogger awards, link back to the Super Blogger who gave it to you :)

I have a tough time picking 5 people to pass the award onto and remembering who hasn't already gotten it. but I shall try.

1. Jess at Run Girl Run. She's recently paid a visit to South Carolina, and actually talked her boyfriend into running a half marathon with her. I love people of influence. She's awesome.

2. Caitlin at Healthy Tipping Point. Caitlin has always been a runner with bad knees and a cool food blogger. But now she's stepping it up a notch, having just signed up for a sprint triathlon and a metric century bike ride! It's very ambitious. Also a few months ago, she ran 3 races in one weekend totalling just over 25 miles. very cool!

3. Healthy Ashley. She takes the multisport lifestyle to places other than triathlon. A nutritionist and personal trainer now, she also recently graduated college at age 20. I love smart people. She's into kayaking, river running, trail races, and of course plenty of road running and racing too. Very cool.

4. Amanda on the Funny Farm. A fellow South Carolinian, Amanda runs all over charleston. Her husband Rich runs a lot too. Together they are funny and interesting. She's got her first marathon coming up on her birthday, and I think it's fun to get and provide encouragement from someone like her. love it!

5. Calyx Merideth. She's a North Carolina chick who's doing the B2B with me in November. She's just awesome. plain and simple. Her cool blog has weight loss, triathlon, running, biking, some good racing, and tons of great pics. Chappell Hill is a great part of North Carolina for multisport, and she takes full advantage.

Other random thoughts from the last few days:

• I closed the back door onto my middle finger of my right hand on saturday. It really hurt, and the end of the finger swelled up with a huge blood blister. I am really paranoid about my hands since my job is to write code. Typing is an important part of that. so boo
• The girls picked several dozen strawberries from the garden yesterday. And the peas are really setting tons of good full pods too. Sweet!
• We've got blueberries on the bushes now. It's going to be another month or so before they ripen, but this is looking much better than I expected.
• Today's may 18th. That means it's less than a month until the marathon, and only a couple of weeks until the oly. Training is coming down to the wire here, and I've got to kick it up a notch for a little while longer.
• Yesterday at the gym I weighed in at 197. It's the first time since christmas that I've seen it fall below 200. Nice!
• Thanks for all the smoothie recipes a few posts ago. I'm blaming those for breaking 200 again.

Have a great week! congrats to anyone who raced last weekend.