Life Recap!

Wow! I'm blogging! I don't believe it myself. :)

In all seriousness, I think part of my blogging problem is that I wait forever to blog and then sit down and work on ONE for like over an hour. So then I don't blog for another month almost because I never have one full hour to commit, and before you know it, a thousand different blogging topics have come and gone, and I feel the need for a long post.

But today I am breaking that habit! From this point forward, I'm attempting the shorter posts, more often! We'll see how it goes. :)

What's new???

Well, the 4th was great! My family and I no longer celebrate The Fourth of July as we now celebrate the "James of July!" James is our baby brother and he's this big, grumpy, intimidating guy! He bought a bunch of fireworks for our party, and we were calling it that to put the pressure on him for a big show. A big show he put on indeed! One of the teenagers accidentally ran over one of the fireworks, so when James lit it, it blew up causing all of the other fireworks to blow up at the same time! It turned into 2 small fires, one of which was very close to a car and almost blew up the car. Drunk individuals + fireworks= trouble! But, it was so much fun!

**Oops!! :)

**Ahh!! Gracie and her Daddy!

**Cooper and his cousin Tate

**Is it possible for Miss Lily Lu to get any cuter??



**Me and my babies!


**Gracie wanted to make "snow angels" :)

In other news... I actually RACED this past weekend! First race in about 8 months. I haven't done anything as much of of 5k, fun race in the pool, NADA. So part of me was nervous, part of me just in it for fun. It ended up being a good day! I didn't pr or anything. Honestly, all of my splits were pretty much exactly where I thought they'd be except for the swim. It was a little better actually. :) So, now that I've gotten one race behind me, I've been reintroduced to the race bug! I'm ready to do it again, and do "better." Isn't that how most of us get sucked in?? :)

**The kids at the race! WAY cuter than me! :)

AND... I've actually had 3 1/2 solid weeks of training missing only 1-strength workout! For some of you, this may not be much of an accomplishment, and for the 2003-2008 Kellye, missing workouts was a RARITY! But, this year has been a little different and I'm on my best streak YET! So, I am FINALLY starting to feel like my old self again. Maybe a little too late for Wisconsin. Still planning on racing Wisconsin, but I'm a realist and realize it won't be as pretty as I would have originally liked. But... hey, it's Ironman nonetheless, and hopefully, if I can knock off a few more 3 week segments.... Florida might be a decent race afterall!

**Look! This is my adorable mom holding the keys to her new, cool, hip condo in downtown! Can anyone say, "Hello Babysitter Grandma Peggy!" :)

**And look... this was our afternoon today. The kids got new umbrellas and a "Miracle" happened according to Gracie! It actually kind of rained. :)

Here's to hanging on and working through! Yeah!! :)

Trip to Dallas!

We had so much fun in Dallas, that I didn't get a chance to blog about it until now. :)

This was a particularly fun trip because we actually FLEW this time! After who knows how many 14+ hour drives from Atlanta to Dallas, TX, we wised up and caught an airplane there. 1:45 travel time beats 14+ hours every single day of the week! :)

Well because of this, this happened to be Cooper and Gracie's FIRST airplane ride! And boy, did they have fun!!

Then in Texas we did ALL SORTS of fun stuff!!

We played in Aunt Kellie's awesome pool!

We got all sorts of new clothes that our Grandma Ellen made for us. She even made clothes for Felicity (Gracie's American Girl Doll!)

We went out to eat at cool restaurants. Those that even had cool rides...

GIANT Bears!

And cool Doors and Accessories!

We went to Grandma Ellen's and Grandpa Ed's cabin where we got to....

Ride in the back of a truck! (One of Gracie's favorite parts :)

Go Fishing! Cooper caught TEN fish!

*Look at those big, strong muscles!

*Gracie lasted all of about 3 min. out there :)

Make Minnie a new Dress because she was brutalized by Aunt Jenni's dog :)

AND shot a BB gun!

Then we even went and ate at Medieval Times! The kids LOVED it of course!

It was lots of fun and now we're back to enjoying our summer full of sun, pools, fun, oh... and Ironman training if I can squeeze it in! ha! :)

Happy Summer!

FREE Shoe Give Away!

Hey Guys!!

I got an invitation to go online and register to win a FREE pair of shoes from onlineshoes.com
and you guys can go online and register to win too! I actually order my Saucony's from them A LOT, and have always been happy, so it should be a great deal!

All you have to do is go to one of my blogger friends websites: Steve's! You know, the really funny guy from way up North where it's really cold! :) http://iwannagetphysical.blogspot.com/

Post a comment, and you're in! Good luck everyone!

Oh, and I'm in the land where everything is BIGGER! Texas! So I'll update more later. :)

Happy Birthday Lucy Lu!

Today is Lucy Lu's designated Birthday!

It is designated because technically we don't really know when her birthday is. But, since she was found on December 12th and claimed to be 6 months old at the time, we decided that her birthday shall hence be June 12th!

She's definitely been A LOT of dog to handle! :) Much bigger than we expected her to be, yet she thinks that she is a lap dog!

BIG puppies can get in a lot of trouble. Think... "Beethoven", "Marley and Me." Yep... I am definitely her saving grace, because if it were up to Adam, she may have been on family #3 by now. But I LOVE her! And honestly, I think he loves her too even though he would never admit it. :)

So despite the chewed up shoes...

The holes she is digging in the backyard...

This is her hole she is digging in an attempt to get to her next door neighbor friend Delila!

The stair she ate. YES, she is eating the carpet on our stairs and the carpet man is coming tomorrow to repair it!

The numerous times Adam has fixed the molding from where she's chewn it up...

And all of the other little things she's done over the past 6 months... :)

I love her with all of my heart!

So Happy Birthday big girl! :)

Just a Normal, Perfectly Normal, kind of day!

For the most part, life is generally so busy that I hate dealing with the laundry, dinner and all of those other must-do tasks that constantly need attention yet you never seem to have enough time for.

But... ever so often I find myself actually enjoying some of those things. Because some times it is nice to put all of those other crazy parts of life aside and do those simple tasks. They require very little thought. You can just zone out, turn on some mind-numbing t.v. show and fold away. :)

That was my kind of day, and I honestly found myself just soaking it up. :)

My pneumonia finally seemed to go away, and life has settled down quite a bit.

School has ended. No teaching for the moment, no homework, no early mornings. It's been nice. :)

Adam and I even got away for a long weekend to Hilton Head. Ahh! Our first time there, and what a beautiful place! I brought my bike, because this place is supposed to be like biker's paradise, and yes... people were biking everywhere. But at that leisurely I'm on vacation pace. :) I was doing some workouts you know where my hr was supposed to be X, etc. and therefore stuck to the road. But then I actually got pulled over by the police on my bike! Yep, no biking on the streets in Hilton Head. I was like... ok... thank goodness I only had 5 more minutes to go in my workout anyways. So I hopped on the bike path and toodled my way back to my hotel like all the rest of the "normal" people. :)

Lauren and I went to a No Doubt concert, which was a ton of fun!

So today, instead of being a teacher/coach/mom/wife/housewife/dog owner/lord knows what else (ha!), I played mom/housewife today. My day consisted of...

Laundry, Laundry, and more Laundry!

Actually baking dessert! Mississippi Mud Pie! Hmmm!! With all the sugary, buttery, marshmallowy goodness I could squeeze in!

Gracie seeing how many of those delicious marshmallows she could shove into that HUGE mouth! :)
I took my kids to the pool, and then sat in a chair on my back porch cherishing summer and all it has to offer afterwards!

It was the PERFECT normal day! And even those can be exhausting sometimes! :)

Happy Summer!

The Poster Child for NOT Recovering! :)

Ok, now imagine that same commercial, except "This is not enough rest, too much stress, and trying to do too much at one time. This is YOU not rested, stressed, and beat down. Any questions?" :)

Because that would be me! ha ha

Ok, not really funny, but true nonetheless. You know how you read about, your training partners talk about, and your coach harps on you about that big word... RECOVERY. You know, the most important part of endurance sport. The phase in which you actually get stronger. The one in which ignored, you'll end up "Fried?" Well listen up my friends, because what they say is TRUE!

If you read my blog even as regularly as I've been keeping it up lately, well then you know that I've been a mess this year. I actually went through and added it all up....

In February, I was sick 5 days in which I didn't do ANY training. I bring up the training part because there were days I was sick, like getting there and worked out anyways, "to get it in." So I was really sick even more than that 5 days. Then, with the passing of my Dad, I missed 6 more days in Feb. of training.

March... 5 days no training due to illness. And I was sick the entire time I was out in Tucson, so that didn't help things. :)

April... 5 days no training due to being sick. In the bed as soon as I could get there sick!

May... Thought I had kicked it. Thought there was no way I could be sick ANY more. Thought, ok, allergy season is behind me, right?? Well, when you take a body that works too much, doesn't eat well ALL of the time, trys to keep up with everything and has been beaten down just a bit too much already... the smallest things send you right back to base 1. So, what started as an allergy attack, turned into full-blown asthma. I tried to be aggressive. Went to the Dr. and "showed them" by demanding my steroid shot to make this thing once and for all go away.

But then something really weird happened. I've had asthma for years, and even at it's worse, that steroid shot seems to make things all better. But this time, it didn't... this time it got WORSE! So, I kept working, finally took a day off to rest because I found I couldn't really breathe. An important necessity in life! :) Had to go back to work, because well... sometimes you just have to. And finally after not getting a return phone call back from the Dr.'s office on Friday, (probably bad karma for being "difficult" earlier in the week! :) I was at dinner with the family when I knew something just wasn't right. I could NOT stop coughing and was having a hard time breathing and decided to stop off over to the Urgent care center for a quick chest x-ray.

Which confirmed Pneumonia... Yep.... that dang infection that I knew I could tell was there by Friday. So... I automatically knew... no race on Saturday, which of course had already been blown off at this point. No 1/2 Ironman in Macon on May 30th. As a matter of fact, I've YET to race this year. No 10k, no 5k, NOTHING!! :)

Good thing I signed up for IM Wisconsin and then even IM Florida and not CDA! :)

I know it will get better. I know I've definitely learned a lot in the past 5 months. I have 4, yes FOUR more days of teaching to go before... I'M FREE!! To coach, and workout as needed. To enjoy my summer vacation yes, with my children, but also the liberties of camp if need be ;). My dear Coach Jen... oh, she's been so patient with me. I know that all my drama has been a HUGE pain in the rear. She has eased my paranoia and said that IF my puzzle will finally come together June 1st, the rest of my season should be fine.

My first few races may suck. I think it takes awhile for your lungs to fully recover back to full capacity from pneumonia. You know, all that VO2 max stuff us anal triathletes worry about! :) ha ha!! But, deep down I know it will all work out just as it is supposed to...

I just might could use a few extra prayers tossed my way if you have any extra left. :)

Thanks guys for all of your support and putting up with all of my doom and gloom this year. I PROMISE that my next post will be FULL of positive info. So let's hope it comes really soon! :)

"Difficult??"

Have you ever seen that Episode of Seinfeld where Elaine gets quoted as "Difficult" in her Dr's file?

Elaine at the doctor's
Attendant : The doctor will be with you in a moment .
Elaine looking at her chart
Elaine : Difficult ?
Doctor : Elaine . You shouldn't be reading that . So tell me about this rash
of yours .
Elaine : Well it's , it's ..... You know I noticed that somebody wrote in my
chart that I was difficult in January of 92 and I have to tell you that I
remember that appointment exactly . You see this nurse asked me to put a gown
on but it was a mole on my shoulder and I specifically wore a tank top so I
wouldn't have to put a gown on . You know there made of paper .
Doctor : Well that was a long time ago . How about if I just erase it. Now
about that rash ......
Elaine : But it was in pen . You fake erase .
Doctor : All right Miss Benes . This doesn't look to serious . You'll be fine
.
Elaine : What are you writing ? Doctor .

That would probably be me! ha ha!

No kidding! Believe it or not, I actually had a "file" at Blockbuster Video one time. It's a long story, but the just of it is that the lady manager and I about 8 years ago got into a dispute over a late fee. I actually PROVED my case that I had gotten the video in on time by reminding her that I greeted her on the way into work that morning. How else would I have known that she had worked that particular morning unless I had actually dropped the movie off and seen her go into work?? So "yadda, yadda, yadda" her and I got into an argument. And apparently she wrote something in their system about me because from that point forward, anytime we checked out movies, all the employees would read something on the screen! :) I was not pleased to say the least. I KNEW I was right! ha ha. And I will note that she was ultimately fired not due to me but because at the time Blockbuster was going through a huge lawsuit over late fees and apparently maybe she had something to do with that. In my eyes, I won. :)

Well, today I thought I just may end up with another one of those files! This time, in the Dr's office like Elaine on Seinfeld.

See, right after my Dad passed and about a week before I went to Tuscon right around the first of March, I got sick with my usual allergy/asthma/ sinus related illness. I get it roughly twice a year, and then have asthma problems periodically through spring, summer, and fall. Typically, I have an inhaler I use to get me through these rough time periods. I'll go into the Dr.'s office, he'll write me an Rx for some sort of sinus infection medication, I'll feel like I have the flu for about 5 days and then life will resume. More often than not, my shoulders will get screwed up in the process. I cough so hard that I'll totally blow out my shoulders to where they're all cricked up! It's really rather unpleasant.

But generally things suck for 1 week, maybe 2 and then life eventually gets settled again.

Due to a combination of things... my 1-2 weeks worth of suffering has turned into a 2 month battle with a week or two here and there where things are getting back on track only to get hit again right afterwards.

For one, my recovery has really sucked over the past several months. It is what it is. I'm no longer in that "boo-hoo I am feeling sorry for myself" modes. I am seeing the light at the end of the tunnel and doing the best I can. That's all any of us can do. :)

#2- It's been a really rough allergy season around here. Lot's of rain, which you would think would be good, but actually more stuff growing.

#3- The Dr. I went to this time was all about long-term, preventative medicine. Ok, good if you actually are capable of following through. The Rx he wrote me would have cost me $200 to get filled at the grocery store pharmacy. $20 if I do it through the mail order system. So, of course I decided to go through the mail. By the time I actually got it IN the mail and the 2 week turn-around, the flare-up would have gotten a little better through rest, and some breathing treatments, but then flared up again.

After yet ANOTHER flare up again this weekend, to the point last night where I considered going to the ER because I couldn't breathe, I went into the Dr.'s office today with one thing in mind... Steroid shot!

After a 2 hour visit last time, I knew this guy wasn't going to just hand over the good stuff. I explained to him that I definitely agreed with him that I needed to focus on the long-term, preventative stuff. BUT, I've been sick now way too many times for way too long and I wanted something NOW! :) I could tell he was going to give me a little bit of a fight. Look, I appreciate all of you "bigger-picture/ we give too much meds" folks out there. BUT... one thing I actually do pretty well is know my body. And I know what works for ME. And I was done... over it... My shoulder just got to feeling better and if it goes into another spasm, I'm checking myself into the loony-bin for a few weeks. :)

So here's my new system.... Full of quick-fix stuff and the long-term preventative stuff. Oh, and I got my shot as well! :)

Let's hope This keeps me away from That! :) Oh, and the green thing, is this special self massager thing for your shoulders so I can hopefully take care of the knots before they get TOO bad! :)

Hopefully by this time tomorrow, I'll be well on my way back to my usual self!! :)