11.02.2011

Clay and I have spent quite a few weekends traveling lately, and I am getting really excited about the few weekends ahead where we get to stay close to home.  This last weekend we headed down to Asheville, NC where his sister and her husband were in town visiting and had rented a house.  Clay's parents also came down.  It was a short trip but I was very glad to see Asheville, what a cool town!  We went to a farmers market Saturday morning (it was spitting snow!) and got some unpasteurized apple cider.  Yum! So excited to drink it.  Clay also got some lamb sausage which he is quite excited about.  We also visited a bike shop, the outdoor store, and went for a run on the Mountains to Sea Trail.  Here is a picture I took from my run.
I had a nice run by myself.  Clay ran with Jimmy and Kara ran with their parents.  It was a great to visit with them though it was a short trip. 

Last weekend we went down to the Amish close to where Clay's grandma lives, and bought a bushel of apples.  I love homemade applesauce so I figured I would make some.  I also like to use applesauce in my baking.  I needed to get a new foodmill since the one I have seems to drip a black liquid in the sauce..ewww.  We ordered one on amazon and it just came today, so I will make lots of applesauce this weekend.  I may also try making some apple pie filing and freezing it.  Clay and I are always the ones in charge of making desserts for the holidays with his family.

My running is coming along nicely, today I ran the fastest I ever have a a short 4+ mile trail near the house that we run most weekdays.  Clay was pretty excited for me :).  I am thinking about Promised Land 50k this spring, which is a tough one, but I think I will be up for the challenge.  I definitely don't want my first 50k to be easy and flat!  Just hope that my feel and IT band stay healthy!

Happy Fall Everyone!

10.20.2011

Here We Go

So... No race report from the Boulder Marathon except ran well for not having a long run at all leading up to the race. Also fought some tightness and work issues which took a big bite out of training time/schedule. God is good though, He blessed me and the family time and I managed to run a 3:08 and a few seconds which somehow got me into Boston this year!

Now all my running is centered on long runs and getting ready for Lookout Mtn 50 mile. Ran 3.5 hrs on the 8th and this past Saturday had the opportunity to travel up to Beverly, WV and go for a solid 5hr run at Spruce Knob with Adam Casseday. This weekend looks like a long run on the AT and then a 4 mile night trail race in Roanoke, VA with Caitlin on Saturday, followed up with another long run on Sunday.
Happy Trails!


The falls on Seneca Creek.

9.18.2011

Fall

Fall has begun in West Virginia, despite my pleading for several more weeks of warm sunshine filled mornings.  We have already had temps dip down into the forties, and I turned the heat on a few nights ago.  There is an oak tree outside my office at work and everyday I see more and more leaves turn.  The trail near our house that we normally run during the week has more and more leaves on it each day, which drives me crazy cause I trip on the rocks and roots hiding beneath them.  I have a love hate relationship with the fall.  After living in the eternal summer town of San Luis Obispo for five years its hard to when the reality that winter is coming which means being cooped up indoors sets in.  Sure, we will go run/snowshoe/hike etc, but you can't enjoy a lazy afternoon in a lounge chair, or a cool evening watching the fireflies.   But the cool weather and the crisp breezes remind me of the Falls in the mountains of northern California that made Fall my favorite season as a kid.

Clay ran the Boulder marathon over Labor Day, and did really well for not having a lot of training him.  He is still working on a race report.

Our life has had some curves in it the last month or so.  Clay's dad went to the doctor about a month ago with some chest pain.  We thought it was maybe a cracked rib or pulled muscle.  It turned out he had a mass in his lung.  After several appts. with the world class facility at University of Virginia in Charlottesville, they decided that everything in his lymph nodes was ok, but they thought the mass was probably cancer, and needed to take out the middle lobe of his lung.  They did the procedure on Friday, Clay went with his mom to wait with her, and to our answered prayers, once they got the mass under a microscope, it appeared as just an abscess, not cancer.   He still has a long road to recovery will be at UVA until at least Tuesday, but he did sign up to run the Boston marathon again this year so having that to look forward and work toward will keep him going, he really is a very talented and motivated runner.

After Clay's long day waiting at the hospital with his mom, he drove him, getting home at 10:30.  We woke up the next morning to drive down to Kingsport, TN for a 15 mile trail race.  I have not been running much lately so I did not run.  I have been battling some plantar faciaitis for nearly a year now, but hope and think I am recovering and starting to talk with Clay about hopefully doing my first 50k next fall (2012).  (I want to run a 50k before we have kids).  Anyways Clay ran a really great race for having a long and emotional week.  He got 2nd place, getting beat by a mere ten seconds or so.  He held first place for quite awhile but got passed in the last mile.  The race was held at Bays Mountain Park which is a sort of nature park with wildlife exhibits (wolves, deer, bobcat, river otters, owls, etc).  They have lots of great trails and a lake.  I just hiked around and sat and read while Clay ran.  Below are some pictures.  Also, on our way back up to Beckley we stopped and ate at our new favorite restaurant! The Harvest Table, is located in Meadowview, VA and is associated with Barbara Kingsolver and her book, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle.  They specialize in serving food produced locally.

Clay finishing the race



A lilly pond

8.31.2011

Rhode Island and Learning about Families


Jenna as she dropped me off at the airport to fly back to WV. We had quite an adventure on the way to the airport with the mattress tied to the top of her car. Her dad tied it on there in a hurry so that I would not be late to my flight, and we didn't make it 50 yards down the road before I knew we it needed to be fixed. The result was us pulling over multiple times to tighten the rope, and going 40 mph on the freeway with everyone staring at us :)


Quahoging - clamming for little necks. Of course we forgot the bag so were do we put them? In our bathing suit of course!



Jenna's dad and her nephew Aiden on her dad's boat


Jenna and her niece Lilly out on her dad's boat.

I never did get around to posting any pictures from my trip to Rhode Island, so here we go. The purpose of my trip was to spend some last minute freedom from my good friend Jenna who was about to start Medical School in Vermont. Her parents hosted us at their lovely home in Briston, RI where they live right on the water. We had such a blast going out on her dad's boat with her little nephew, eating and cooking amazing food, going quahoging (Rhode Islandese for clamming for little necks), going out on her neighbors big fancy boat and tubing, visiting the amazing Christmas Tree Store, seeing Newport, and eating more amazing food.

Her parents threw a party for her in celebration of this next phase of her life and her brother was a gigantic pot of chowder, it was sooo good and there was sooo much leftover! So I decided to freeze 5 quart size bags and put them in my carry on and check my carry on. I figured that much home made chowder was worth the twenty dollars. I was nervous that it wouldn't stay frozen since I flew home on such a hot day, but when I got in that evening they were still solid....yea!

It is always a new experience when you spend time with another person's family. Seeing the way that the family members relate to one another, communicate with each other, and how their actions/moods affect everyone else. When Clay and I were dating and I was getting to know his family there were things that I thought were absolutely crazy, just because I hadn't been exposed to it in my family (like how they talk more about their dogs than anything else!) Now as Clay and I are starting our own family which will hopefully grow down the road, I realize how important it is to set a precedence on what our family dynamics will be like. Will we be quiet and reserved and not overly affectionate? Or will we be loud and touchy and not afraid to yell at each other? Will we tell our family every day that we love them, or will be just assume they already know that? Clay and I both come from pretty similar families as far as how our parents treated us, communicated with us, and expected of us. Being around Jenna's family, I saw people that truly love each other, but express it much differently. They don't hesitate to get involved in each others business or yell at each other to let it be known that they are upset. I myself being raised in a much more quiet/non confrontational household, it felt someone unsettling/akward at times, until I realized that this was how they function as a family. And while there may be more or less constructive ways for families to operate, I think it is all in how you were raised, are familiar with, and what you want your own family to be. So I guess the whole point of my rambling is to realize that there may not be any one right way for a family to work, and probably no one has it perfectly figured out. But as we start our own families, we need to set a standard (as parents) for how we want our family members to interact.




8.02.2011

I returned Sunday from a wonderful long weekend in Rhode Island with my wonderful friend Jenna Arruda who was a roommate of mine at Cal Poly in SLO.   I will post more about that trip later as I have been sick since my return and just have a couple of photos I wanted to share.  Clay is out in Illinois doing bat surveys.  I never know how long he is going to be gone for, because if they happen to catch an Indiana Bat they have to radio tag it and follow it to its roost due to it being an endangered species.  Monday night was their first night out and of course they caught several.  So now their return has been pushed back from this Saturday to next Thursday....that is of course assuming they don't catch any more before they finish the rest of the survey.

While I was gone Clay worked more on the bathroom floor...


And last week I made a yummy pizza with veggies from the garden (red onion, broccoli, zucchini)

7.17.2011

Our Garden and other things

This Saturday Clay and his parents spent the day at the Kanawha Trace 50k outside Barboursville, WV.  Clay swept the race while his dad ran the 10k first and ran with Clay afterwards.  I opted to stay at home with the dogs and the peace and quiet.  While I love having Clay at home, I also cherish the moments I get  the house to myself.  It gives me a chance to catch up on my housework and not feel as though I am just following Clay throughout the house picking up after him!  Needless to say I got a decent amount of cleaning done and also organized a closet! Yay!  It's amazing how long it has taken for Clay and I to get settled in this house.  I guess since this is our first house, and me coming from across the country and not bringing any furniture, we have just taken it a little at a time.  When I think I have it all taken care of, I find another box of stuff to go through, or a new organization challenge to figure out as Clay and I are still figuring out our life together and whose responsibility is what.  I have to say I have definitely  come to realize that there is NO WAY I could be the wife and mom I want to be, and have a full time job, and have time to take care of myself.  I can barely do it now excluding the mom part!



Another thing I have noticed is that since becoming a homeowner and a wife and being in charge of the majority of the cleaning and organizing, I have been way more willing to get rid of stuff than before.  The Christmas before we got married Clay drive a minivan full of my stuff from my parents house in northern California, to Beckley.  And while going through stuff, I didn't want to get rid of anything despite Clay looking over my shoulder saying ' do you really need that?'.  As soon as it went from being clutter in my parents house to clutter in my house, it magically went from something I wanted to keep for my grandkids to see, to something that is taking up space.  Also I made the mistake of storing boxes of stuff in our unfinished basement which gets very wet and moldy.

It seems like we will have a never ending list of projects to do around our house, but each time I whine to myself about it, I think about how lucky we are to be homeowners!  Clay has a beautiful garden in and here are some squash, zucchini (the round things) and some cucumbers.  We have also already enjoyed beets, snap peas, and lots of lettuce!

Also, we have been re-finishing the floor in our bathroom.  When we bought the house, it was pink carpet.  Yuck!  We knew there was hardwood floor underneath but Clay wanted to wait to refinish it until the weather was warmer so that when he stained it we could leave the windows open for ventilation.  Well last winter I left the dog water bowl sitting in the bathroom and sure enough it got knocked over.  At this point we knew we had to rip the carpet up to keep it from getting moldy.  To our surprise the wood floor underneath was covered in glue.  At some point in time there had been linoleum on top of the wood floor which was attached with glue.  So we spent many days scraping the glue off.  When that was finished it was still winter so we covered it up with plastic and it has been that way for months.  As soon as the weather warmed up I started nagging Clay about finishing the floor so that I wouldn't have to vacuum dog hair off the plastic anymore.  He started on it a little bit today.  The wood is really beautiful.  I am sure it will be a long process since he is using a small sander, and there is still a bit of glue on the floor, but I am so excited to have wood floors in the bathroom!


Also here is a picture of our blueberries! I think I will try to go back this week and get more as we decided on purchasing a chest freezer this week!

7.11.2011

Our Blog!

So we decided to start a blog! With so many friends and family all over the place we thought we would start sharing stories and photos online.  Clay will also probably be blogging about some of his races.

Last Thursday, Clay, myself and his mom Sharon went to Blueberry Hill, a u-pick blueberry farm just a few minutes south of Beckley.  Clay and I together picked close to 10 lbs of blueberries and at a cost of $1.89/pound we hope to go back and get enough to stock up the freezer. I have also been picking wineberries down along the river (The New River is just a short drive from the house!) and today while Clay was at work he picked blackberries and I am just about to pull some blackberry bread pudding out of the oven!

I haven't downloaded the pictures from my camera from our blueberry excursion yet so I thought I would put up a picture of Clay's race he ran several weeks ago.  The race was the Highland Sky 40 miler located in Canaan Valley, WV.  It was his farthest race he has ever ran and his brother Jonathan came down from New York and ran with him.  Here is a picture from that weekend.  His dad is also in the picture.




That's all for now but we promise to update regularly!