Expected and Unexpected Adventures

I haven’t had much to blog about in the two weeks since returning from our Vermont Adventures. Life has been full and busy with catching up after vacation — being gone 10 days meant a big pile of mail to go through, mountains of laundry to do, and plenty of housework that needed attention.

I used to be a very enthusiastic scrapbooker, but in the past few years I lost my office and scrapbook area to Mark’s e-bay enterprise. During vacation I saved lots of brochures, maps, ticket stubs, etc. and determined to do a Vermont Adventure scrapbook. Mark was in full support of this and within a week of returning home I had printed out nearly 300 photos and made a trip to Hobby Lobby where I spent a good deal of cash on materials.

New scrapbook materials and nearly 300 photos!

Since I no longer have a table to spread out on, and all my scrapbooking supplies have been stored in the guest room, I had to spread things out on the guest room bed and make do with the small table in the living room for working on pages.

Spreading out on the guest bed.

Utilizing the small living room table normally used for jigsaw puzzles.

I had just gotten things good and spread out and “organized” when we had a visit from our son and daughter-in-law who live in Columbus, OH, which meant everything had to be picked back up again. I had only managed to get two pages of my scrapbook completed before work was interrupted.

Not exactly a lot of room to spread out.

I should say I’m not a fast scrapper, nor am I very good. But I enjoy it and it’s a fun (if somewhat expensive 🙂 ) creative outlet.  Hopefully I’ll have time to work on it more this week.

Saturday morning I was up early to participate in the planned adventure of the weekend – taking part in the Run Baby Run 5K in support of the Pregnancy Center of Greater Toledo. I have been training with a group of people from my church for the past couple of months, never intending to actually “run” any of the 5K. I had said from the beginning that I was going to walk it, since running has never been something I enjoyed — even in my Army days.

Of course, peer pressure – or should I say encouragement – is a great motivator and by the last training session I found myself doing some jogging. So, I was determined to run part of the 5K.

We had a great time! The day was really pretty – a bit humid but nothing oppressive. The 5K took place at Secor Metropark, a park I blogged about in the past, so it’s very pretty and plenty of shady trails.

Here are a few of us at the start of the race. My friend Juli is the one who organized our running group. She’s right next to me in the middle. Juli’s sister Sarah is on the far right and Juli’s daughter Becky is on the left.

Becky, Amy, Juli and Sarah ready to run!

I didn’t do too badly. I think I ran maybe a little more than a mile of the 3.2 miles. I would jog a bit, then do fast walking, then jog, then fast walk. I came in 111th with a time just under 47 minutes. No record breaker, but it was fun and for a good cause. I raised just over $100 in pledges. I could have done more if I had tried a little harder.

Approaching the finish line strong.

We were all red-faced and sweaty after our run, but full of smiles. (Okay, Sarah’s not smiling, LOL.)

Happy to be finished!

Hopefully my friends won’t kill me for putting these pictures on my blog. LOL

My church running buddies – Jen and Juli.

Jen and Juli have both done the Run Baby Run 5K before, but this was my first time.  This is only the second time I’ve ever done a 5K. The first was a few years ago in support of a family at my church struggling with medical bills and I walked the entire thing.  I have to say, I felt pretty proud of my accomplishment and might even keep running and maybe do another 5K or two!

Proud walk-runner!

Our two sons and our daughter-in-law left in the early afternoon to go off to some big group activity they had planned. In the evening as Mark and I relaxed in front of the television, we heard a muffled “boom” and suddenly the dogs came crashing in through the doggie door. We quickly went out to see what had happened and found this.

Ummm, this wasn’t planned!

A large wild cherry tree had come crashing down all the way across our back yard. It smashed through a part of the fence and obliterated our fire pit. This was the unexpected adventure of our weekend!  And it wasn’t even windy!!  Thank the Lord we weren’t out sitting around the fire pit and that the dogs didn’t get crushed!

Right through the new fence. 😦

It went all the way across the yard, from fence to fence.

In the morning Mark sharpened his chain saw blades and while I was at church he cut up the tree. When I got home we worked together to stack all the wood and clean up all the brushy-branch mess. It was hot in the sun and the entire labor seemed way too much like work for a Sunday, but it had to be done. Since our “kids” had been out until the wee hours of the morning, they were no help.

So, that has been my rather boring life since coming home from the beautiful mountains of Vermont. Thursday we head north for the long Labor Day weekend, so hopefully I will have some actually interesting adventures to write about later this week!

Enjoy your holiday weekend and God bless!