Our poor little blog has suffered a lot of neglect lately. But it’s for good reasons.
Way back in July, we visited our family in CA and had an amazing time! Even though it was short, we always enjoy every moment with family, and boy do we miss the beautiful California weather! One on particularly beautiful day, we went on a hike here:
And we found a calm part of the river to swim in! It was SO hot that day and the freezing cold water felt SOOOO good!
We hung out in the water, jumped off this cliff {look really close and you can see us jumping} and relaxed on shore.
The hike back to the car was so HOT. This was the only bit of shade we could find 
Water and pools seemed to be the theme of our visit. We had the pool where Julie lives all to ourselves!
Julie has a tangerine tree on her patio. It’s really pretty, but the tangerines are extremely sour. We were going to try and put them to good use by making tangerine marmalade, but ran out of time…
Davey and I used our jet lag to our advantage and woke up early to go running every morning. I don’t know why I have never worked out in the morning before, but I LOVE IT. It’s so peaceful and quiet and it feels so so so good to get your workout over with before you brain realizes what you’re doing. This is what morning looked like:
Another thing that feels so good is setting a PR on one of our runs!!! I’m going to shamelessly brag here because despite my long legs, I’m a sloooowwww runner. But not on this particular morning! You can read about my PR here. I haven’t run that fast since, so I’m savoring the moment.
After a great few days with family, we headed to Sonoma to watch our friend Doug compete in his first Ironman Triathlon. You can read all about the race on our Triathlon Training Site, TwoTri, but to keep this post from taking you 2 days to read, here are just a few highlights:
Amazing and inspiring. Go Doug! {And Val!}
Alas, all good trips must come to an end and so we may or may not have eaten this whole pie for breakfast to drown our sorrows.
While we were away, we were really nervous about our garden because we didn’t have anyone to water our plants. But God took care of it because it rained EVERY day we were gone! Our plants were so overgrown and the basil ran wild, so I decided to try my hand at pesto. Pesto is now my new favorite thing. I sometimes make pesto sandwiches for a snack… and eat it straight out of the jar while I’m spreading it on my bread. Yum.
Unfortunately our tomatoes have some funky disease and so we bought a few heirlooms at the Farmers Market and made this: {I put pesto on this too…}
After a few long days of work, we got ready for our VISITORS!!!! Brownies for May and tomatoes for Jake. {j/k about the tomatoes… Jake HATES tomatoes. I even made him special guacamole sans tomatoes because I love him so much}
Anyway, when Jake and May were here, we went on a really fun hike…
and tasted fried pickles for the first time…
We don’t really do too many “Southern” things, like try fried tomatoes, unless we have guests and so we wanted to go out for “Southern” food for dinner one night but the wait was like 3 hours, so we found this little gem: Burger Up {which I’ve been Googling ever since to find out where they get those adorable napkins}
Thanks for stopping by guys! Ya’ll come back now! And bring Mandy and Jordan and Jonny and Mom and Dad with you!
After they left, we tackled a few projects, like finishing the inventory of a huge Orthapedic supply donation for HopeForce. Definitely NOT a glamorous job, {that black mark on my knee is dirt…} but it’s really cool to think that this donation is going to be used by a surgeon who is going to Africa this month to help lots of people!
Speaking of helping lots of people, our friends Sam and Clare just opened their Chiropractic practice just 20 minutes north of us {yay!} and so we helped them at their awesome grand opening. Check out their website: http://GoStewartHealth.com
By the way, I was always scared of Chiropractors… like, what if they snapped by neck or something? But honestly, going to the Chiropracter has been the best thing we’ve done lately! For example, the other day at work, I had really bad chest pain and I kept ignoring it thinking it would go away, but it didn’t. My mind ran wild thinking it could be a blood clot or a heart attack, but I’m only 28 and we diagnose every 20-somthing-year-old that goes to the ER for chest pain with anxiety and stress. While I do get anxious and stressed a lot every now and then, I didn’t want a concrete diagnosis labeling me as an anxious, stressed person, ya know? Anyway, we went for an adjustment the next day and Sam could tell that the place in my spine that sends nerves to the heart and lungs had edema and was out of place. 30 seconds and an adjustment later, my chest pain was GONE and hasn’t come back since… kind like my running PR I mentioned earlier, haha! So there’s my shameless plug for Chirpracters. They’re AWESOME. Especially Sam and Clare and their gorgeous new baby, Lucy Grace.
And then came August.
And our apt became a disaster area and we became hermits because we were working day and night on our Beginner Triathlon Training Product. I mean, we worked on this thing every single waking moment. So if you have tried to get in touch with me during the month of August, I apologize. I wasn’t ignoring you… I was just a little too consumed with this project. We’re almost done with it and we are SOOOO excited to launch it and help people gain a ton of confidence, get in shape and reach their goals by doing a triathlon!
I mean, looking back, I don’t know how we lived like such slobs… but I guess when you have a goal in mind, you don’t notice all the clothes on the floor… or at least we chose not to.
Anyways, I’m back dating this post so it looks like I have been a consistent blogger. Be back soon!
But we were determined not to let the lack of money in our travel fund ruin the celebration. So we decided to have a staycation here in Nashville, which included lots of delicious food.
