What's up???

HUH! So I DO have a blog? I really haven't forgotten about it, we just haven't had time to really sit down or do things people normally do. Everything is starting to get closer to normal, but there's still just SO much to do, and so little time in a normal work day. It is starting to look more like a normal house and less like a storage facility, which is GREAT! (On a side note, of course Blogger isn't taking my photos so I hyperlinked the two I wanted to upload below!)

So, where to even start??? I just want to say the people we bought this house from were DIRTY. And I hope they read this blog, because they need to know. We knew the house was in need of some major TLC, but seriously. Our new neighbors love us. The guy had not mowed the yard ALL YEAR. And in TN, between the heat and rain, you mow once a week starting in April. Brent's been going crazy chopping down random things in the yard, and the neighbors are thrilled. I've been stuck inside going through bottles of cleaner with bleach like most of you guys go through Gu. If they hadn't mowed all year I'm thinking they've never cleaned, swept or vacuumed. They had 2 cats and 1 dog but with the amount of animal hair you'd think they ran a kennel. Between some air fresheners and a lot of cleaner you wouldn't even know they ever lived here.

Pippin is fully adjusted to the new house and totally loving it. We make time to sit on our porch and enjoy our swing every day, if even for just 5 minutes before bed. He loves sitting on the swing with us and he loves stretching out on the front porch and watching cars and people go by. This is a really active urban neighborhood, so there's always people walking, running, biking, and tons of people parading their pampered dogs around every day. He's finally stopped freaking out when we leave, so he has free reign of the house all day once again. Since most of the living area is on one floor, he has multiple couches, chairs and other random spots to snooze all day, and lots of windows within that reach to look out from.

We haven't gotten to really start painting yet, since most of our efforts have just been on massive cleanup and then unpacking. Tonight we finished building a pantry in the kitchen, so once the food is unpacked, the bookshelves are loaded with all our books and Brent finished hooking up the surround sound we should be mostly settled. I am freaking out about the clothes situation right now. I'm pretty anal and keep my clothes organized by color and style, but we're going to completely re-do the closets asap so right now they're just shoved into the guest closet. Ugh. Hopefully this weekend we can tackle that.

As far as running goes.....there hasn't been a ton of time for it. We are starting back on our routine though. We've missed so many long runs I think we're going to skip the Twin Cities Marathon. I just don't think we can be ready by then. We are still going to do the local one here in November, and I'd like to add another marathon in December (maybe Memphis, Huntsville, or Vegas would be cool!!) We did our first run in the hood weekend before last. We ran from our house to the Titans stadium (1.5 miles) across the Woodland St bridge into downtown, down 1st Avenue, and then back across the Shelby Street pedestrian bridge and back home. All that and it was only 6 miles!! The views were awesome, and the bridges really took care of some hill training! I love running in this neighborhood. Saturday we ran 4.25 miles by running through our neighborhood, and circling past the mayor of Nashville's house. He lives in a beautiful 3 story Victorian about 4 blocks from us. Sunday we ran 5.3 miles by running from our house to Shelby Park (.5 miles) and we ran parts of the greenway and nature trails. It was just HOT. Miserably hot. We stopped a few times in the shade just to cool down. Since we can't go home for lunch now I did head over to the company gym one day at lunch and got 4 treadmill miles in. It wasn't too bad - it gave me something to look forward to all morning and then I felt energized all afternoon. I plan on doing that a lot more often now. We don't have any races coming up soon, but I should probably pick one just to stay focused!!

Well, there's just so much more I could say, but I really want to work some more on unpacking our food. We've been cooking (with gas!) for a week now, and just digging through boxes to find ingredients. It's so difficult to pick where you want everything to go when you've had that figured out for so long!

Hopefully I can start finding more time to blog soon. Tomorrow night is a block party in our neighborhood, so I'm looking forward to that. I hope you're all doing well and running strong!

Rachel