This Weekend - Brady

Friday:

- Dinner at Joy Yee in Evanston with prospective grad students.

- The Green Mill.

Saturday:

- Yoga! For the first time in months.

- Walking around the apartment without my cast.

- Sandwiches from Pastoral with Kevin's parents, here at our condo.

- A little bit of work.

- A nap.

- The Descendants with my friend Cassie, followed by frozen yogurt from Red Mango.

- Dinner with Kevin and my in-laws at Mixteco Grill.

Sunday:

- A good workout while watching an old episode of Gilmore Girls.

- Breakfast - leftovers from Friday and Saturday night with an egg cracked on top.

- A Unitarian service.

- Cinnamon coffee.

- More cast-free walking.

- Work

- The Oscars. Just need to find somewhere to watch them.

Hope you had a good weekend, too.

Guatemala - Kelly

As I mentioned in my earlier post I have quite a few exciting things going on in my life right now. Once of the big ones is a 7 day yoga retreat in Guatemala I'll be going on in mid-April with three good friends.

The picture above is a note from one of the girls, Alysha, who is going with. It's kind of a joke but in all honesty this is kind of how the trip went down. Aviva, the instigator of this whole crazy idea, threw the idea out to me last Monday, I mentioned it to Erin and Alysha, and by Wednesday we all three had booked the trip!

The trip is 7 days and 6 night at a resort on Lake Atitlan in Guatemala. We'll have access to unlimited yoga, will get three hour long spa services, will be served three home cooked vegetarian based meals each day, and will be free to hike, swim, and explore as much as we want. We keep referring to it as our "Eat Pray Love" vacation and are so excited to spend some time relaxing and reconnecting in such a beautiful location. You can google "Lake Atitlan" to see more but here are a few of my favorite pictures:

I'll definitely share more details as the trip gets closer!

Race Training - Kelly

Hey blogger world! Sorry I've been so absent. Since the holidays I've been all over the place for work and with visitors in the city and just haven't been able to devote a lot of time to blogging. There is quite a bit going on in my world so I'll work on posting about all the changes over the next week or so. For now I'm going to post about something that started up again for me this week.... race training!

Right now I'm training for the Indianapolis Mini Marathon (13.1 miles on May 5th) but will go straight from that race into training for the Chicago Marathon (in early October). Click here for a link to my training schedule. Just looking at it makes me tired!

I really loved training for the marathon last spring and am pretty excited about being in training February through October this year. One major change from last year is ALL my runs have to be outdoors now since I got rid of my gym membership when I became a member at my yoga studio. Most of my runs were outdoors after March 1st last year anyway but it's been hard motivating myself to run in the dark 30 degree weather some mornings! Soon enough I'll be complaining about it be too hot to run so I should probably just suck it up. :)

Here's a quick picture of me after at 14 or 15 mile training run last spring:

Ah, memories of bloody socks and an appetite that can't be filled! I'm also going to start blogging my training on the blog Brady and I used last year: http://runchicago.tumblr.com/. Instead of doing an update every run I think I'm going to do a weekend recap every Sunday so you can follow my progress there!

Seeing as I'm running in the morning I probably should call it a night. More updates (travel, work, juice cleanses, moving) to come!!

Life These Days - Brady

Seriously, I am in a blogging rut. I feel like I'm just kind of waiting...for my cast to come off, for spring, for my trip to Siesta Key in March. Life has just been very calm, very routine recently. So here are some little, shorter term things I'm excited about.

- I'm going to La Porte this weekend. Kevin's in Denver skiing with friends, so rather than hang in Chicago alone, I'm going to spend Friday afternoon through Sunday night with my parents and grandpa. Also on the docket is the first Slicer basketball game I've attended in a long time.

- My "work group" at school. A couple of other grad students and I have banded together to hold each other accountable for getting stuff done. We meet once a week for two hours. Every other week one of us presents some writing we're working on, and the other weeks we just work. I don't allow myself to check email or blogs or Facebook or anything during that time...two hours of pure effort. I do get a lot done AND I committed to presenting five pages of this long-term project I have to do for my grad program at our next meeting. There's no way I would have written five pages of it yet if I hadn't been part of this group. So that's fun. Or, maybe not fun, but good for me.

- I'm sleeping over at Kelly's tonight. Awesome.

- The weather's been mild.

- I saw a light show/public art exhibit called "Luminous Field" at Millennium Park last night and then got a spontaneous glass of wine with Kevin and my friend Cassie. I love this city.

- In general, school's just going well. I like not being in classes. I like the direction my research interests are going. I like my schedule.

- I get to go back and see Amy's kids next week. I visited her class about once a week last school year, and this year I just haven't gotten to it. I can't wait to see how much they've changed.

That's about it! Life's quiet but good.

Chicago Marathon... holy moly! -Amy

So, I've officially committed to running the Chicago Marathon in October. Kelly talked me into this, and I'm not going to lie, I'm slightly terrified. However, I am really excited for this challenge and know that I will have a GREAT training partner (who has been through a marathon once already, mind you) and an AWESOME super fan (Brady, who has also been through a marathon!) in my corner. I think I will be just fine... I hope.

Any who... the marathon registration filled up in record time, so I went on a search for charity foundations that I would like to run for. I am actually really glad that I was forced to pick a charity rather then just pay my own registration because I think it will be that much more meaningful for me as I train and run the marathon and it's a great opportunity to give back to something I feel strongly about. I decided to go with "Team Sweetness" which is running for the Walter Payton Foundation. This foundation provides support and positive influences to children with backgrounds of abuse and/or neglect. Being a teacher, I am obviously very passionate about children, how they are treated, and the opportunities they are given. I was immediately drawn to and excited about this foundation!

Soooooooo here's my pitch. I would LOVE if the wonderful readers of this blog would be able to help me reach my fundraising goal. I would really appreciate the personal support (for running the race) and the support of a cause that is so important and meaningful to me. Any donation, big or small, will mean so much! The link to my donation page is below. Also, if you could pass it along to anyone you might know that would be fantastic!

http://www.active.com/donate/teamsweetness2012/AmyJackson


Thanks so much, and HERE GOES NOTHING!

Bathroom Redesign - Brady

A few days ago I got it into my head that I wanted to repaint our bathroom and maybe do a couple of other small tweaks. Problem is, Kevin and I are awful at making these kinds of choices. Just ask us about the rug debacle of 2011. We agonize and we second guess and it becomes a big, emotional decision that's no fun to make at all.

So I'm hoping you all can help me. Below is a picture of our bathroom now.

See the gold-ish paint on the walls? That's what I want to re-do. And maybe get a cool shower curtain (oh my goodness, I can't believe I just wrote "cool shower curtain") or something. We've also talked about adding knobs to the cabinets or even getting a new light fixture (which you can't see here) or mirror.

What color would you paint it? I think I want it to be lighter than what's in there now... maybe something more neutral...even kind of beachy. I don't know. Any thoughts? Kelly? Want to come over and be my personal interior designer? Amy? You have a cute bathroom. Ideas? Anyone?

Little Steps, Big Steps - Brady

Like I said in my last post, I'm turning boring.

The big news in my life this morning is that I think I may go run an errand - unassisted - today. The plan is to hobble down the two flights of stairs in my building, out the two gates, down one block to the CVS where I will buy some body lotion. If I'm feeling crazy I may walk an additional block to the Intelligentsia to pick up some coffee for the French press that Amy bought me for Christmas.

Then I'll limp back to my building, through the gates, up the stairs, and home.

Big things are happening, people. Big things.