Almost Fall Racing Season

37 days

That is how much time I have left until my first big race of the season. I added this one so I can use it as a (hopefully) better proof of time for the marathon. I wasn't too thrilled with my last half time, and so I am hoping I can better it to move up in the corrals. My goal is to shave 10 minutes off my time, but if my training runs are an indication, it won't happen. I am becoming faster with my runs of 6 miles or less, but anything over that and I am still struggling to keep my pace under 10:30. I tell myself it is the heat, and once it cools off I will run my target pace. (It felt like 88 degrees at 6:30am when I left for my 9 mile run Saturday morning.) Or it could be this is the pace my body is set to run and I won't be able to change it. Either way, I will keep pushing and see what the cooler weather holds for me.     

The house

I have been trying to write this post for days, but by the end of the night I am too exhausted to write. I have been working on this post for 24 hours, and I only have two sentences written. That is how hectic life is right now. The girls are pushing their boundaries lately, and the dogs are destroying everything. Lightening struck near my house and fried my television. Everything else on the power strip was okay except for the tv. The bright spot of this week is E bought a car. We are now a two car family again which means the girls and I aren't stuck in the house all day. It is nice to know that we can leave any time of the day, and we don't have to worry about E's schedule. 

I took a few pictures of the house. Disclaimer: I did not clean or pick up before I took pictures so what you see is usually how my house looks while the girls are awake. I have found that cleaning works best at night for my family. Also, Hannah kept jumping into the shot so you will see her in some of them. 

The kitchen. The previous owner renovated it. We have done nothing to it.

Hannah jumped in

This looks into the dining room which we turned into a playroom

The playroom is a disaster most days. They don't follow my clean up before your next toy rule. We are working on it.

The office/guest room. The futon is from E's single days.

The living room. Hannah threw her hands up as I took the picture.

Meeghan's room

Hannah's room

The only rooms we painted are the girls' rooms. For now we are using old stuff until we have more money saved to decorate accordingly. The plan is to put French doors on the office to close it off, and we are going to pain the playroom pink (Hannah's choice). Our focus has been saving money for a car since we needed one before Hannah starts school. Now that we have done that, we are going to start saving for house projects. 

The New House!

It has been just over 2 weeks since I closed and 1 week since I moved. I have been busy! I am so glad to have this closing business behind me. It was interesting. When I bought a house in Kansas, it was pretty simple. I signed some papers with my lender, and then my agent handed keys to me. Easy peasy. I guess on the East Coast you have to go through attorneys which takes forever. We had to take the girls with us, and we were in there for ninety minutes right smack in the middle of nap time. For some reason, the money wasn't wired on time so we had to wait. And wait. And wait. The good news about the whole thing is we actually received money at closing. We went from thinking our closing costs were going to be around $200 (which is awesome) to receiving a check at closing. I was pretty happy. It helped cover our moving expenses, and other costs. I am glad to have all that behind us so now we can make this house our own. The girls have light purple rooms (chosen by Hannah). We are trying to organize and plan what to work on next. I am terrible at decorating. Terrible. I have no idea what to do or where to start. If any of you have some great ideas, please let me know. I looked on Pinterest, but my eyes started to glaze over after I mentally calculated the costs of most of those projects.