At Home with Heather

This year Thanksgiving took place at "our" house. Minus a few members of the family, my dear other half, Sam, my brother Sean and my brother in law-Eric, they had to work. =(
So it was just me, my sister-Katie, my brother-Brandon, my nephew-Adien and my dad. We still had fun even though so many people were missing from our family.
Sam bought me a new camera so we took lots of pics, but the lighting didn't really turn out on a lot of them. And there is also a pic of our semi-Thanksgiving dinner-the table wasn't totally set. We did have the traditional Thanksgiving meal though-minus the cranberry sauce. For some reason we never did cranberry sauce in our family. =) And I have to admit-my dad did most of the cooking.

I am really looking forward to next year when Sam will be home for the holidays. Believe me I would have never thought at Thanksgiving last year that I would be married to the love of my life, but he would be away at war! It's really crazy when I start thinking about it.

It was fun to have Thanksgiving at our house for the first time, but I am really looking forward to next year when the whole crew will be present and I will be able to spend Thanksgiving for the first time with my husband.

So, I realized I have not given a "marathon training" update. Here we go:
Since the weather has gotten so cold, I have to admit I am slacking. It is so great to just go outside and run and let your mind wander-that is a lot harder to do on a treadmill that is counting calories and distance. And with working two jobs, sometimes it is hard to fit in the time to run 8 miles.
Nonetheless, I am still determined to train and hopefully after this crazy Thanksgiving week I can get back on schedule.
While I was in WV, the kids mom got me a week pass to her gym and also a private pilates lesson. She is the one that got me into yoga too. So, I had an hour long "lesson" in pilates-which is very similar to yoga, yet very different in many ways. The girl giving the lesson, also named Heather, gave me a physical assessment. She said yoga has helped a lot with my flexibility, so I am very flexible, but she also I noticed I had a "runner's body." She said I had very strong outer thighs but very weak inner thighs and that contributed to my knee problem-whenever I bend my knees they make a *beautiful* cracking sound. So she gave me all these tips on how to strengthen my inner thighs and give my knees more support. She also noticed that my left elbow-hyper-extended and asked if I have ever injured anything. Well I broke my left wrist when I was 11, and she also told me how to fix that. It was really cool. I know how I can strengthen the weak parts of my body and how to adjust so that I can continue running for a long time.
I was able to run a lot this week at the gym. Needless to say I am looking forward to the cold weather leaving and the warm weather coming back. Outdoor running is SOOO much better! Hopefully the next time I give an update it will be to report I ran 10 miles straight without stopping in record time! ;)

It's time I wrote a new post too. =) Sorry, to say I do not have any pics either!

I am in West Virgina visiting the family I nannied for in Charlotte. They moved here about 6 months ago because their oldest daughter was diagnosed with Leukemia. Their family is here and the hospital here treats many children with the same condition. She is actually doing really well and has grown two inches of her hair back. They also have two rambunctious boys, who I also love. I was with the youngest when he was 3 months old. He's kinda my baby. We have a special bond and I have missed him so much since they have left. Now he is 2 1/2 and he can say my name and speak in full sentences and he is crazier than ever! I love it. I have had so much fun with the kids.

They are all sooo smart too. The oldest is 6 (She doesn't want their names exploited on the internet=) She is homeschooled for now, but she has a 4th grade reading level. It is insane. "The baby" knows all his sounds, letters, colors and numbers. I am not joking. I've witnessed it with my own eyes. Both of their parents were #1 in their class though, so I'm sure some of that brain power was passed on. =)

Well, since the kids don't go to school now, they sleep in, so this has been like a vacation for me. Sleeping in, hanging out, having fun. Whoo hoo!!! I am going to be sad when I have to leave them on Friday.

This week has gone by sooo fast, actually this whole month has. I can't believe it is already Thanksgiving next week and then Christmas is just around the corner. I was telling Sam though, that things may go pretty slow after that, because I will just be counting down the days until March when he gets to come home on his R&R. It just seems so strange we are living such different lives right now and then he'll be home and everything will be "back to normal." I think it will be way more of an adjustment for him than for me. I will just come home or wake up and he'll be there. I'll be living in the same place, doing basically the same thing, but he will be by my side. He will have to change everything, but from what I can tell it will be a much better, positive change. =)

Anyway, I have gone off on a tangent. Hope everyone is great! =)

About four days ago our computer monitor decided to give it's last "breath" and go out on me. So Sam spent some time researching monitors. He found one on Circuitcity.com, ordered it and said all I had to do was pick it up from the store. If only it would have been that easy...
I arrived at Circuit City to find they had no record of the order and had no idea what I was talking about. At this point I could not call Sam on his phone for various reasons, so I had to wait for his phone call to explain what was going on. Also, I could not email him for the information I needed because we did not have a computer monitor.

Sam called me later on in the day to tell me he had a confirmation number and they would be waiting on me at Circuit City to give me my monitor. Yeah, wish that would have happened too. They couldn't track the order and because the emails didn't match on the order and the credit card. They were telling me my credit card was reported as "fraudulent." Wow. I don't deal with these things very well and I hate to say it, but I'm not great with dealing with stress either.

So I texted Sam to tell him what happened and he called me in the morning to tell me, the money was taken out of our credit card, he called circuitcity.com, got a very rude "customer service representative," who told him that she did not have a supervisor and that the store was closed because it was a holiday. Does anyone know of any "holiday" on November 1st??? He called Discover for like the 10th time and Discover TOLD him THEY personally talked to Circuit City to verify our credit card was not fraudulent and that they had already received payment.

So then I go into Circuit City for the THIRD time and ask to speak to a manager. The woman at the front desk informed me they were all in a meeting. Wow. Just my luck, huh? Well, I had my husband who is in the military FROM KUWAIT on the phone and he needed to speak to someone A-SAP. I seriously was on the verge of tears at this point. How hard can it be to pick up a monitor that was ordered online?? Seriously.
Luckily, I talked to a supervisor, who was polite and willing to help. Basically, I handed the phone to him and let Sam explain the situation. After a whole bunch of craziness I FINALLY got my monitor and a $24 Circuit City gift card for waiting WAY over 24 minutes to receive my order placed online.

I am leaving many details out to spare you all from stress I incurred from the situation.

Wow. Needless to say, I have just recovered from the migraine this has caused. Sam was trying to make it easy for me, by just buying it online and sending me over to pick it up. But no, it couldn't be that easy. Plus, it's really hard to communicate when you are a million miles apart and the situation is beyond crazy on the other end.

All I can really say is that I am very happy I have my monitor and therefore online access now and I hope I never have to go through anything like that again. I think I need a week of yoga straight to recover from the stress this all caused!

When we moved into this house we also "inherited" a refrigerator and a stove among other things. The stove was unused, which is really nice, but the refrigerator was a little bit on the older side. At the beginning of last week, I noticed that the light in the refrigerator was flicking on and off. I didn't think it was a big deal, I just thought, "well it's ok, I don't NEED a light." It was actually a sign that the refrigerator was going out.
A few days later, I noticed my water was luke warm, even though I had taken it directly out of the frig. The strange thing was that the freezer was still working.
I told Sam we needed to do something, because all of the stuff in the frig was getting bad. So he told me to go out and compare prices and research reviews etc. I did just that, non-stop for two days. I must admit it was a bit stressful for me because I am not good at these kind of things, but I didn't have a choice.
I had found some sales and looked at reviews and Sears was having a big sale on appliances the very week the frig went out. So I found the above Kenmore side-by-side refrigerator on sale and we would save $150. Sam made sure that I found out if it had a changeable filter. It does. =)
Before I actually went out and bought it though, Sam's dad came over to see if he could fix the refrigerator with a ten dollar part, because if it was only going to cost ten dollars, we definitely wanted to go that route. It turned out to be WAY more complicated than expected and we just decided to go for the new frig, since the one we had was pretty old anyway. I appreciate that he tried to fix it though.
I wish I had a camera to take a picture of the old refrigerator. This new one has quite a bit more space and it's just new, which is always fun and cool.
So I am very happy and thankful we were able to get a new refrigerator AND proud of myself for feeling good about the one I chose. =)

I have been looking for a second job for awhile. Well, actually thinking about getting a second job for awhile. =) I went into the Carolina Place mall last week and decided to scope out some of the stores that I would potentially want to work at. I have worked retail many times in my life and liked the experience for the most part, I just wasn't crazy about the pay.
So, I went into New York and Company, because I saw a lot of cute stuff in there a few days before. Plus, my husband would love for me to move on from wearing "teenage" clothes and onto "grown up" clothes. And New York and Company is known for the business/business casual look. So I applied, got a call a few days later and got a job. I even got the Store manager to pay me a little more than most retail stores and he told me to "keep it confidential." =)
I started on Tuesday and it was actually a lot of fun! PLUS, I get a discount on clothes-MY DREAM COME TRUE!!!! For serious. I am really excited about that.

I wanted another job to keep me busy at least until next semester and while Sam is gone. So this is something fun and low-key at least for the holiday season. Plus, did I mention I get a discount on clothes???!!! =)

I have been running for about 10 years.
I started running with my dad when I was 14 and have continued to run since then. I was a sprinter in high school track.
I have always enjoyed running for all the various benefits. The health benefits are wonderful. It helps tone the body completely, especially the legs. Running is great for your heart as well. Also, running is great to clear your head and send happy endorphins to your brain. When I am really upset about something often I will just go take a run and feel much better and have more clarity about any given situation. I can't tell you how many ideas have popped into my head while running. If I don't run for a few days I miss it and my body starts to feel sluggish.
So it has always been my life-long goal to run in a marathon. Recently, I realized that I was running between 4-6 miles 6 days a week, which puts me right at between 24-36 miles a week. I know I can run a marathon. So I looked into it. I thought it would be wise to run a half marathon (13.1 miles) first, rather than just jumping into 26.2 miles for a full marathon. I looked up training for a half marathon and it actually was advising me to run significantally less than I have been. This is actually a relief because I was beginning to get burnt out of running so much.
There is a half marathon in Charlotte on April 18 that I am going to run in. I am really excited about it. I also hope to one day run in the famous Chicago Marathon.
I feel really focused and encouraged to be doing this.

Running gives you a high like no other. I hope to be one of those people that runs throughout their life. I was able to conduct an Aid Station in Hawaii for the Ironman. I saw people of all ages doing this triathlon. Talk about inspiring! I hope to be in my 60's and still running strong.
If anyone wants to come cheer me on, on April 18th-you are more than welcome. I'll keep everyone updated on the training!