What Were They Thinking??

Last night around midnight, a friend and I made a trip up to Walmart to grab a couple of things. As we walked past the women's clothing section, we just couldn't pass it by. I mean, there were so many things that were just begging for commentary - we just had to oblige! Regretfully, we did not have a camera to document the antics. Here are a couple of the items that we encountered (photos courtesy of walmart.com):

1. Fluorescent things. Lots of them. It seriously seemed as though we had just walked back into 1989. Ironically, though the actual store looked like cans of shockingly bright colors threw up everywhere, finding a suitable example of this is somewhat more difficult when looking online. Please visit your local Walmart store for full effect.


2. Ridiculous swimwear. Again, for full effect, please observe selections in person.

3. Shorts that would not fit my left thigh. Exhibit A:
Now, while the items above are certainly worthy of some amount of commentary, this is nothing compared to what is still to come. Here are a few of the items that I would put into the category of "Seriously...what WERE they thinking?!?"

1. The following T-shirts:

Ummm...seriously. No one needs bird eyes located there on their chest or a flower growing from there. No one.

2. The bodysuit:

A bad idea in the early 90's and a worse idea now...

3. (my personal favorite) The romper:

It is my personal (and strongly held) opinion that the term romper should only apply to pieces of clothing worn by babies and toddlers. No exceptions. For some particularly hilarious commentary on the subject of rompers, click here.

Seriously, friends...grab a friend and take a trip to your local Walmart. You will be glad that you did.

This Makes My Heart Happy

Can't wait to be able to be back in Lima loving amazing, talented youth like these!

Creative Juices are Flowing...

Can't you tell by the mess??

At least there is a new collection of Thank You cards to show for it:


(Thanks Aimee and AJ for your help!)

Mountain Extravaganzas 2 and 3

It's hard to believe now, but there once was a day when I did not appreciate the beauty of the mountains. It's true. Starting back when I was in elementary school, my family started taking regular vacations to the mountains of North Carolina. For a little while, I thought it was fun. I mean, there were fun parts... Mostly the part where mom would drive us over to Franklin to go mining at a place that was seeded so that we were sure to find lots of treasures. And the part where we would drive down to Commerce and go shopping at the outlet mall. Not so much the part where we would go walk around in the woods or climb up things. I wasn't a big fan of that part. After several years, my sisters and I even started deciding that we would rather just stay home. These days, I LOVE being in the mountains. Being in the midst of beautiful Creation and being reminded of the glory and majesty of the Creator is one of my favorite things. In the past month or so, a friend and I have made several trips into the mountains to enjoy the beauty of Spring. Here are some pictures from Amicalola Falls and Caesar's Head State Park:

Amicalola:



There were stairs. Lots of them. Like 650-ish.

Cali did not like the metal-grated stairs. After watching her look pitiful for a while, AJ decided to help her out a little...







Caesar's Head:

I wish that I could better communicate how amazingly gorgeous this enormous wall of mountain rock was. This picture does it no justice. Standing in that place, I was reminded that God is an amazing Creator, and that I am so small!

Automatic timer attempt # 11. Cali decided to put her backside in several of the prior attempts. (Hence the reason she is being held captive here.)

Sitting on a suspension bridge directly over the waterfall. Amazing.

"Pretty Place" at Camp Greenville just past Caesar's Head

Strawberry Creations, Part 2

Homemade Strawberry Ice Cream. Yummy.

Shout Out

This is my friend Lauren. As I have mentioned before, I think that she is pretty great. Lauren was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes last year. This fall, she and her husband Trey are planning to fight back against her disease by riding in a 72 mile bike ride around Lake Tahoe to raise money for diabetes research. They have started a blog to document the journey toward their goal. You should check it out! They are also having a huge garage sale next weekend to help raise money. If you live in the Atlanta area and have junk treasures that you would like to contribute, just let me know!

Strawberries, anyone??

One of the fun things about where I live (which is about 50 minutes east of the city and has been described by some as a bit "rural") is that there are strawberry fields right outside of my neighborhood. Prior to living here, I had never picked my own berries (of any kind, actually). It is super fun to go and pick your own, and they are quite yummy! I went with Aimee and AJ on Friday. We each picked our own bucket, which pretty much means that there are mass quantities of strawberries to be consumed around here! Which is going to require lots of strawberry creations in the coming days!

buckets o' strawberries!

Strawberry creation #1: Strawberry cake (quite delicious!)

Strawberry cake: Cali aftermath (she licked the icing off of this side)

Cali's sweet "but-Mommy-it-was-so-yummy-I-couldn't-resist" face

More strawberry creations to come!

Mission Accomplished

A couple of months ago, a couple of good friends of mine decided to sign up to run a 10K. One of the girls decided that I should run it with them, too, and she printed out a training schedule for me (despite my vehement insistence that it would never happen). If you know me, you know that I am not particularly athletic, and that I am definitely not a runner. I mean, I have tried running for exercise at different intervals in the past, but I am always quickly reminded of how much I hate to run and of the ways that my body seems to reject the activity. So, I just don't run. Regardless, I put the training schedule up on the refrigerator...

...and then decided that maybe I would give it a shot. Maybe.

I was fairly certain that I would never be able to run 6.2 miles at one time. In the past, the farthest I can really ever remember running is 1.5...maybe 2 miles. And I pretty much hated it. This training schedule started at 2.5 miles. I was pretty sure I would need another entire schedule to get me to that starting point. But, I decided to give it a shot anyway. So, I did. And found that little-by-little, I was able to check off the boxes on that schedule. I mean, I was running those miles slowly (still am), but I was running them...

So, a few weeks ago, I decided that I would sign up for the race. I still wasn't sure that I would be able to run the whole thing, but I decided that I would give it a shot. I made sure to maintain a healthy level of non-commitment when discussing it with my friends - both because it was more fun that way, and because it left room to change my mind :-) But, I kept training with the only goal being to be able to finish the race.

And I did. Yesterday, I successfully finished my first 10K! I managed to run (albeit slowly) from start to finish. I was pretty proud of myself. Here are a couple of pictures from the day:

Before: smiling and wondering internally why I decided this was a good idea...

After: much sweatier, but proud of our accomplishments! And ready for some Flying Biscuit!

AJ and Lauren even placed in their age groups! They were totally surprised and found this pretty hilarious. I was proud of them!