Cleansing...

So, I decided on a cleanse. It's called Genesis Pure and it's 7 days. The stuff should come today, so I can start it. I will keep you all updated on everything that is cleanse oriented. Ha! I know y'all are excited...

We took pictures( which you will most likely NEVER see),  measurements, and weight, so we can keep on top of it! :) We have about 8 weeks until we leave for Jamaica... so wish me luck! :)

All I want to do is a ma zoom zoom zoom and a boom boom...

Just shake ya RUMP! This morning I ventured out into the cold for the Rumpshaker 5K. In case you didn't know, March is Colon Cancer awareness month. Parking was kind of an issue. They had to delay the race because it was so bad. Plus, it was colder than I expected. So, shorts and a t-shirt didn't really cut it! I ran with my best friend, Jana and her sister Haley, who is a super runner. I knew I probably wouldn't be able to hang with them b/c Haley is a super runner! Anyway, about 200 yards into it, there was a hill and I was progressively getting behind them, until finally Jana turned around and waved. Ha! I always forget how hard the transition is from treadmill to road and it was kicking my tail. My legs were going numb b/c of the cold and wind-which was killer! I had to stop at one point and take off my shoe to adjust my sock b/c it was cutting circulation off. I was extremely happy to find a water station about halfway through. The course itself, was relatively flat, but nothing to look at, since it ran through not the greatest part of Birmingham. Jana and Haley came back through to run the last little bit with me and informed me that Jana tried to outrace a walk/runner with the name "Goose" on the back of his shirt, so she sprinted the last bit and as she crossed the finish line, she vomited in her hands. But, she beat "Goose" so, I guess it was worth it? I finished around 34 minutes and Jana was around 28 and Haley at 27- good thing I didn't try to hang with those two!

Lots of Goodies and two free t-shirts... so you can't beat that!

Me and Jana-Post Race

Jana and Haley-Post Race

Jana, Me, and Haley- Post Race

After the race, we went to check Jana and Mark's new house  that they bought, but haven't moved into yet. It's super cute, just like Jana!

All in all, it was a great Saturday!

Passing the Time...

So, I am trying to pass the time until the UPS man brings my new camera, so I decided to entertain you win my Top 5 Celebrity Girl Crushes..

Excited, no?

Reese Witherspoon.. she is wholesome, has amazing style, loves her kiddos, and bags some of Hollywoods hottest men. 

Jennifer Garner.. seriously? She is about the cutest thing ever. 

Julie Bowen is super hot! Have you seen her on Weeds? Wowza... and now, Modern Family? Highlarious

Jennifer Aniston... this is a no brainer. What was Brad thinking?!!?

My number 1 girl crush is Carrie Underwood... O.M.G. She is so gorgeous! She has awesome hair, phenomenal style, and a rockin' body. Plus, the girl can SING!!!

Alright.. I'm going to make myself pretty for my new camera. I want to make a good first impression. :)

Life... Updated.

I swear. I have been such a slacker blogger lately. But, I haven't neglected your blogs. I'm going to try to catch you up quickly. 

Baby shower for Taylor.. I love my girls!

Addison listening to her iPod.. which is John's old one. Don't think we went out and bought her her own iPod. 

I got a new car and it's awesome. 

I had another dinner with great friends! 

Man alive, I love these ladies! Can you say Sista From Another Mista?

I also enjoyed my very first green beer. Fun times. 

In other news, John has given me the go ahead and quit my other job and concentrate on photography full time. {Insert squealing here.} Sooo... if you need a photographer.... :) 

Digging for Gold

As most 3 year olds and any child for that matter, Addison is constantly picking her nose. She does it a lot when she is getting embarrassed or trying to avoid doing something. Like, picking her nose is the hardest thing to do in the world and she couldn't possibly be bothered with picking up her toys because she is doing important work by digging for gold. 

She has been having a really hard time taking naps lately, and is fighting them with all her will. So, I expected no less when I picked her up from pre-school on Monday. Only, she fights them there, by taking our her rubber bands and chewing on them until one of her teachers takes them away. When she got in the car, she told me that she stuck a rubber band up her nose. I told her that we do not stick things up our noses and and she nodded like she totally got it. 

The next day John was putting her down for her nap while I was blog stalking, and he called me into her room. "What does this look like to you? It looks like a rubber band" 

Me: "Well, she told me yesterday that she put a rubber band up there, but I assumed she got it out."

John: " Go get me some tweezers, please."

On my way to get tweezers, I grabbed my camera( what? this was totally a blogging moment!) When Addison realized kinda how serious this was, she started getting scared. And crying, just because she was scared.

John was able to get it out, but I informed Addison the next time we might not be able to get it out ourselves and it would involve a trip to the ER with lots of needles and poking.

I think she understood, but now she has some strange freak out around anyone with a white coat. I don't know what that is about. 

General Updates

I realized that there have been some things that I had lacked in blogging about. I didn't realized that I hadn't talked about changing my hair color until after I posted all the Disney pics. I went dark, peeps. And I like a LOT more than I thought I would. It's darker than what I had in mind.. I wanted more of a Carrie Bradshaw in SATC movie, but got more Selena Gomez. But, it's cool! It didn't fade as much as I thought, but I dig. I hope you dig too! :) 

( P.S. Addison just came over here and asked who this girl was and when I told her it was me, she stated, " But.. it doesn't look good!)

Also, the night before we left for Disney, we went to go see Rascal Flatts and Darius Rucker in concert. It was awesome! We ordered our tickets through the fan club( nerdy) and so we didn't know where we were sitting until we picked up our tickets at will call. Well, people, we were on the second row!!! Philly said my my face was priceless as we were walking down to the floor. Being our normal chatty selfs, we got sucked in to a convo with the peeps next to us, and I felt a kindred soul in the 13 year old sitting next to us. She loved RF and was so excited to be there. I took it upon myself to make sure she had a good time. These 16 year old skanks ended up in the 3 seats directly in front of me and tried to sneak two of their friends in those seats with them. *Note to skanks- 5 people don't fit in 3 peoples seats. The 13 year old couldn't see, so I, told upon myself to find my inner bitch( trust me, it wasn't that hard) and tell those girls ( who had already been told by security to move ) to get back in their seats. She wanted to say something, but thought better of it since I was giving her the stern mommy look. It doesn't work on my kids, but it totally works on other people. I also had to call security on those biatches later because they tried to sneak back!! Seriously?!!? 3 times they got into trouble. Sounds like someone's parents have their work cut out for them.

So, do you like the hair? Any more thoughts on the cleanse? Tips to get me back on my running game? I'm planning on running the Rock N Roll half marathon in Nashville... who's with me? Also, I'm setting a goal of 25 miles a week running wise. Who's gonna help pump me up?

Curses...

Soo.... Today was the day that I was hopping back into my running shoes after the big 13.1. I wanted to take a full week off and it almost killed me. All this beautiful weather to run in! I cheated on Friday and took Addison out for a jog in the BOB, which I honestly haven't ever done. And lemme tell you, that is hard! It was much harder to run a mile pushing that stroller than to run 3 on a dreadmill.

I guess after the 13.1 I got the big head with the whole, "I can do anything since I ran 13.1 miles." Well.. I guess the running gods didn't like that and they wanted to put me back where I belong. I even wore my Princess half marathon shirt and my new shorts that my mom got me before the race. Well, I hopped up there and started running, my iPod was kinda bothering me.. I'm not really feeling that band. Which makes me have the major sads since I just "knew" I would love it. Plus, I like being able to track my progress and show other people. Some may call is narcissistic, but whatevs. Anyway, the run started great, I was pushing it up to 7.5 from 6.0. It felt great... then iPod started coming off my fat arm. It ended up coming disconnected from my ear buds, and falling on the treadmill and TiK ToK was blasting for all the peeps to hear. Kinda embarrassing... Anyway, I ended up getting a major cramp in my leg, in an odd place- the shin muscle. It completely tightened up and I was in PAIN. So, I had to stop and stretch and then I was all bummed about the run and left the gym. I only ran a mile and a half and I had this new goal of running 25 miles a week. I have hit a wall weight loss wise and cannot lose this last 10 lbs and it's driving me bonkers!

So, as kind of a kick start, I am thinking of doing a 2 week cleanse. It's not one where you don't eat anything, it's basically a strict vegan diet of vegetables and fruits- no caffeine. YIKES! So, has anyone ever done one? Know anyone that has done one? Think I am crazy for considering this? Let me know your thoughts!

Sharing is Caring...

I tend to have those stupid moments. You know the moments when a second after you do something or say something, you think, "That wasn't my best idea".

Well, I had another one today and since I am so nice, I'll shall share with you so you can have a good laugh.

I don't know if any of you watch CougarTown. I love it. Well, last week, Courtney Cox waxed her armpits. Today is my waxing day. You know, the day where I wax my eyebrows and my lip( don't judge me). Recently, I decided to purchase some bikini wax. You see, I get Brazilian waxes, and although they hurt and include a stranger looking at your nuni, I don't have to worry about that area for about 6 weeks and me likey. The downside is, they are pricey. And, I thought, I could cut back some expenses by doing it myself. I must say, I have only done it once or twice, because lets face it, I am not that flexible. Back to the story at hand, I needed to shave my pits, and I thought I might try my hand at waxing them. I had the sensitive area wax and thought I'd give it the 'ol college try. I heated up the wax, slapped it on, and thought, "This is really hot!" I wasn't very quick with putting the strip on there, and when I ripped it off, I saw spots. It HURT. Not only did it hurt, it ripped skin off. And I was bleeding. Not only was I bleeding, but there were still patches on wax attached to hair that didn't come off on the strip. I almost cried. Have you ever had to pick wax off of your body? With hair attached to it? It was awful. I hopped in the shower in hopes to warm up the wax so it would come off easier. Now, I still have wax on my armpit, it's bleeding and it's too sensitive to shave off the hair that is still there.

I want my mommy. :(

Disney World 2010 with a half-marathon twist!

Disney World was a blast this year!! Now get ready for a long story and a LOT of pictures!

We had a pretty good flight... Addison was a little iffy at times, but overall did really well. That may or may not be due to the fact that she fell asleep. We were supposed to take the Disney Magical Express to the hotel since we were staying the resort and lots of wondering around the Orlando Airport later found us in about a line with about a two hour wait to sign in to get on the Magical Express. We quickly decided that a taxi ride was in our best interest. We got the hotel( we stayed at the Port Orleans Riverside). Went to the room, got our bags and headed to the Wide World of Sports where the Expo was for me to pick up my packet and get my race info.

This was right before Addison shook up her drink and it spewed all over the place.

The entrance for the Expo... this is where I will tell you that the hotels had no idea what was going on with the Expo and they told us that there weren't any buses going from the host resorts to the Expo.. you had to go to other places and get on other buses to get there... not cool. But, we happened to ask a bus driver and he informed us, that YES there were buses going from our resort to the Expo...

The entrance to the Expo

Mom walking into the Magic Kingdom for the first time

Of course we walked into the park when a parade was going on... Don't BoomPa, GiGi, and Nana look excited to be here?

John, Dad, and I went and rode Space Mountain first and Dad lost his sun glasses.. he was a little bitter about it. We went and ate at Tony's Italian Restaurant for a lupper, and then went to see Princesses.

Waiting in line for Ariel

Me and Mom

BoomPa and Gigi

I'm not gonna lie.. this Ariel was a little scary looking.

Then we went to see the PhilharMagic which was awesome!

And rode the carousel

And then watched Wishes... can I talk about how cold it was? It was COLD.

P.S. This picture is so freaky I had to share it with you... Look at the ghost man!

Beautiful sunrise on Saturday Morning!

We went to Hollywood Studios on Saturday

Me and Minnie Mouse... Addison and Minnie's pictures disappeared from this post...

Me and Mickey

Mom and Minnie

Addison watching the High School Musical parade

We ate lunch at the 50's diner which was awesome! P.S. Order the pot roast.

Dad trying his hand at photography

Delicious onion rings!

We ate dinner at the Rainforest Cafe at Downtown Disney.. somehow Karen worked her magic and got us seated right away, I think wait was somewhere around an hour or longer... she wouldn't share her secret. This was how we felt about Addison during dinner... She ended up not eating and passing out on John.

Sunday was race day. I had to wake up at 3:30 am and get ready to get on a bus at 4 am. EARLY. It was probably in the 30's when I was waiting outside. It was COLD. I ended up taking John's windpants from the 90's to wear to the race and I was SO glad to have them. I wore those pants, a long sleeve t-shirt and a sweat shirt over my race outfit. We got dropped off around 4:15 or so and I waited in line for a port-a- potty for 20 minutes or so. I had to drop off my bag of crap and said goodbye to my sweatshirt and John's windpants and was super sad about it. I kept the long sleeve t-shirt with me. We then had to walk another 20 minutes or so to our corrals. There were 5 different corrals which had different start times. There were over 13,000 people registered for the race. I was in corral D which meant I started around 6:18. My legs were so cold they were numb. My joints were numb. I don't think I mentioned that I had almost completely lost my voice and sounded like a 12 year old boy going through puberty. Our fairy godmother was there to start the race and they did a fireworks start for every corral. It was a sea of people. I couldn't really start running until mile 2 or so because there were SO many people, but I couldn't feel my legs moving anyway. There were port-a-pottys about every 1/2 mile or so, and there was always a line! We ran the four lane headed into the Magic Kingdom. Between miles 3 and 4 I stopped and took off the long sleeve t-shirt and tied it around my waist. I didn't want to just toss it if it wasn't going to bother me. The family was at the Magic Kingdom waiting for me and I gotta tell you, it was so awesome running through there! I must say that they had characters about every mile and you could stop and get your picture taken with them. I didn't take a camera and was super sad about it. I saw everyone you could imagine!

The guy with the spiky hair ran in a blue tutu. He passed me about mile 2 and John said he came through the Magic Kingdom a good 45 minutes before I did.

Hey look!!! Here I am!!!

I wanted to stop and talk, but there were too many people in my way to get over to the side.

I wasn't able to run as fast as normal, A- because of all the people and B- my legs were so numb I couldn't feel them . I hit the wall around mile 8. It was so weird. Mentally, I was fine through the whole race. I knew I could do it, because, I am going to honest, there were some women in there that looked like they hadn't ever ran a day in their life. But, my legs wanted to run away from my body. My hips ached, my knees ached, my ankles ached. My neck muscles were so tight. I stopped and got some Bio-Freeze for my knees a couple of times and that seemed to help. I stopped and got a couple of Clif Shots and those seemed to help. I also stopped and stretched and that felt amazing!!! Mile 8-10 were on a 4 lane headed out of the park and there were TONS of people coming through the other way since the parks were opening. They would honk and stuff. Don't you know there were thinking, "What the crap are all those women doing running in tiaras and tutus?" Mile 12 was through Epcot and it was the hardest one. There wasn't a big running area and the park was open, so people where trying to get places, but also there were a lot of people cheering us on! It weaved a lot too. Knowing how close I was was always an inspiration. I was hurting all over, but tried to give myself that physical push. As I saw the finish line, I was looking for my family. I wanted to be able to see them. My dad and Karen were the first I saw of the group and I'm going to be honest, I teared up. I didn't run the whole way, was way past the time I wanted to finish in, but I did it and not a lot of people can say that. I ran 13.1 miles and have lived to tell the tale. I missed the medical tent with the ice and I could have definitely used some. My mom was the first person I spotted after the finish line, when they were coming to see me. I was proud that she got to see me do it. I was surprised she actually came because she hasn't been that supportive of the running. Karen has probably been my biggest cheerleader about it. The first thing Addison said was that I didn't wear the shorts that she picked out. I guess you can't please everybody!

Minnie and Mickey at the finish line!

How cute are these girls? Who's with me for next year?

What about this guy? He passed me at some point. The back of his shirt said "Running 13.1 miles for a kiss from a Princess."

Oh look! There's me!

All in all, it was an awesome first half marathon. I would totally do it again. I am already thinking of my next one... maybe Nashville at the end of April?

I gotta tell you this awesome story. Before the race, they showed a girl would had broken her ankle and couldn't run. They let her husband, who was in the Army, run for her. He ran in his Army fatigues with a sign on his back that said he was running for his injured Princess.

Also, something else I must share. There were 3 men to cross the finish line before any women did. I think that is super tacky, as it was a Princess race and no men got a medal of any kind. Most men were running with their wives. Stay with your wife and let a woman cross first!!!

After the race, we went back to the room and I showered and told my muscles and joints how sorry I was. Then we headed back to the Magic Kingdom. We headed to see TinkerBell.

Addison and Tink.

Addison was scared of Terrence, but I wasn't!

Me and Addison in Minnie Mouse's house.

John and I rode Splash Mountain, and the Big Thunder Railroad and I gotta say, that may have been my last Splash Mountain. The water was COLD and I got soaking wet. Not a fan.

John and Addison getting some candy before we left.

Monday, I felt and looked like an old lady walking around, but it was totally worth it. I'm ready to do it again. So, I think I can officially call myself a runner and say I am quite addicted. A BIG Thank You to all of you who supported me, tracked my progress online, and all of your well wishes. It is an accomplishment, but I think with running there is always a longer race or a faster time. I wanted to finish sub 2:45, but my official time was 3:04:58. I was 8237 out of like 11,000 finishers. A full hour ahead of dead last. I finished!!!