Monday, January 24, 2011

I need some grease


We made it through the weekend. Our preparations for yesterday's church meetings were a little more extensive than normal, but it was all good. Singing in the ward choir, speaking in sacrament meeting, and teaching in Relief Society (me) and Deacon's Quorum (Ryan).

Good, because it's over. And good because the spiritual preparation is always worth it no matter how the end product gets delivered. And good, I guess, because I only cried during about a third of my talk instead of the whole thing. We had some great discussion and participation in my RS lesson on Larry Lawrence's conference talk, "Courageous Parenting." I was feeling super humbled and a little inadequate to teach that lesson directed to the parents of teenagers since we don't even have one official teenager in our house yet. She's close, but still not official.

I was grateful for the good women in our class with much more real life parenting experience than I have who offered their thoughts and shared experiences about how they've raised their teenagers in our challenging times. I was blessed to be among such good women.

So now it's on to the next thing: preparing for our stake RS mini conference coming up in two weeks. I've got to get busy on my talk for my class and figure out what I need for my display. I don't think I'm really a display girl when I teach. I never bring my own tablecloths or flowers. I rarely ever have props or pictures. And I never have. How did they let me in as a RS teacher anyway? JK. Just shattering the stereotype I guess. But for this kind of a conference, I guess I sort of need a display. I have a few ideas - very few, but a few nonetheless. But I have an amazing mom who's super good at the display thing, and she's offered her help. Give me a topic like photography or family history or journaling or memory keeping (like I had when I taught at the conference four years ago), and I'm all over the display. Visual aids out the whazoo. But this time around it's a little harder. I am excited that I kept some of the props from our Love Boat Valentine's party last year. I think they might come in handy :)

Anyway, much more importantly...

We had a terrific weekend together. Awesome date night Friday night, a decent run Saturday morning, Ryan doing some service at his parent's house, Afty's first basketball game, lots of outside play time for the kiddos, friends over, dinner out at Lenny's Burgers Saturday night with the peeps, lots of studying, great Sunday meetings, a tasty Sunday dinner of chops, Caesar salad, zuchini, roasted red potatoes, fruit and garlic bread with Grandma Cindy & Grandpa Steve joining us, chocolate chip cookie making, good scripture session with the fam, getting logged into family search and indexing my first few batches of names (totally cool), happy kids, remote control car races, and three good nights of sleep.

Who could ask for anything more?

Actually, if I could ask for one thing, it would be to get my wheels back. Not that my wheels were ever race-winning wheels by any stretch, but they were certainly faster than my wheels of late. I need some grease. Ever since I've been on the mend from my chest congestion crap that plagued me in late December/early January, my running times have been less than stellar. I feel like I'm pushing myself just as hard, if not harder, than normal, but the watch tells me differently. It's like someone poured a little lead in my shoes or something. I don't know. This morning was so hard to run. It was cold and breezy and pitch black in the 5:30 am hour. I had a hard time getting up. I tried to talk myself into staying in bed, but I am glad that from somewhere deep within I convinced myself to launch. And I ran with no tunes - something I haven't done in a long time - but Rowan had borrowed my iPod Saturday night and I couldn't find it anywhere. And being the kind mother that I am, I didn't want to wake her that early to find out :)

Ryan and I are signed up to run London's Run this Saturday out at Schneff Farms and I wish I was feeling more on top of my game. Yes, I know, I'm a little competitive. But...it's in my blood. And if I'm honest with myself, I'm kinda sad that I'm not running the half marathon on Saturday. Up until the week before Christmas I was planning on it, but I never got in a long run more than 8 miles after that, then got sick, so I caved and settled for the 10k. Not that the 10k isn't a good race - don't get me wrong - every race is a great race, especially when you give it your all. But I sort of feel like I cheated myself of the opportunity to push myself a little more and do something hard.

We all need to do hard things from time to time. It keeps us focused and disciplined. It keeps us working and moving and doing and being. I got on the scale today for the first time in quite a while. Why, I don't know. I was even more frustrated that I've let the running slack a bit while keeping the winter appetite in full swing.

Some changes are on the way, though. I've got a feeling. I've got the desire. Working on the plan.

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