The Forever House!

Oh my gosh. Words can’t even describe how I feel about finally moving into “the forever house”. Although it is overwhelming to now live amongst boxes and mess everywhere, there is such an awesome, overwhelming feeling of “home”!

Organizing the kitchen was difficult (we are still rearranging!).

The “Great Room”

Box by box, we will get there! I have to remind myself of that often, as I very much like a clean and organized house – and unorganized piles and mess like this stresses me out a bit. Someone gave me the advice: think of it as training! Take it one day at a time. (Thank you, KPW! What a totally true and relate-able analogy!)

Greta helping Kristin, a coworker, unpack jackets and shoes. Kristin says, “Boy, your mommy sure has a lot of shoes!”

You can actually see floor in this picture. Amazing.

Greta on our front porch. Too cute!

Meanwhile, Jerry has me putting in two big weeks. I loved trying to figure out ways to put in the miles. For example, I knew I couldn’t just tell our move crew that I would be back in about 3 hours because I needed a 20 miler on Saturday. Instead, I took off early from work mid-week and knocked it out. Doubles were finished sometimes in-route to last-minute appointments or to take care of errands.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: if I didn’t want this, it would be SO easy to find all sorts of reasons why I couldn’t fit in my workouts.

Instead, I logged two weeks in the mid to upper 80s. Because it is the first time I’ve been logging this many miles, most of my runs were base mileage.

Week 1

Week 2

Workout highlights in the last 2 weeks:

Informal 5k as part of a Food Shelf fundraiser – 20:43. This did not go well. It was the first day I felt somewhat normal after another round of mastitis. This infection was the least pleasant of the three I’ve had. I had a fever for over 36 hours and my temp spiked to 104. It still wasn’t super painful (high pain tolerance? IDK), but I was barely functioning as a human in terms of day-to-day activities. I slept a lot. Gross. All things considering, a 20:43 isn’t so bad.

400 meter “repeats” after the 5k. These were terrible! I could not move! They were done in about the same pace as my average 5k mile pace. Yikes.

4 miles hard – 26:10. No paces given, and I was running this solo. I clocked the first two miles in 6:39 and 6:35 and then thought: let’s play a game! Can I continue to drop ~5 seconds/mile for the rest of the workout? That totally changed my attitude and willingness to push and hurt. I would look at my watch (especially the last mile) and think: ahh! I still need to find another few seconds in me! C’mon!

Splits: 6:39, 6:35, 6:31, 6:25.

I ended that workout with a smile on my face. Note that I ran a faster 5k in this 4 mile workout than the 5k effort.

20 mile long run. My longest long run in a long, long time! This was hard to start, mostly because my brain was yelling: that’s a long way! It will hurt! But, I convinced a few friends to meet me for part of it, and then just kept putting one foot in front of the other. 20 miles later, I felt so good about getting this done.

Plus, a few stroller miles, some strength work, and some strides! Taking things one day at a time.

Good thing the girls like it in there! Greta sings or talks about the things she sees (A puppy! A bridge! A car!) and Anna screeches. It’s pretty amusing to listen to.

My first strength workout in our home gym. Greta and Anna had to be part of the action.I am in LOVE with it! I was surprised by how much I missed a workout room while we were in temporary housing.

All for now, folks! I have some unpacking to tend to!