Thirteen Point Freaking One!

On January 7, my brother and I ran our first half marathons! And what better place to torture yourself for 13.1 miles than the happiest place on earth - Disney World!

I would easily put this 13.1 mile run down as one of my top five life accomplishments. So why am I just now blogging about it? Well, because it took over a month and a half for my parents to figure out how to download the photos off my mom's digital camera and get them to me. Welcome to life as a LaSelva kid. 

I've heard that for your first race you shouldn't set goals, but with my and my type A personality, that just wasn't an option: 

Goal #1: Don't die!

Goal #2: Don't get picked up by Mickey Mouse and his golf cart - when I signed up for the race I read through all of the fine print of the waivers and agreements and noticed that runners had 3.5 hours to complete the race. Any runner unable to keep a pace resulting in a 3.5 hour finish or more, would be picked up by a golf cart and driven to the finish line - it doesn't get much worse than that folks! How humiliating! I swear I spent the last few months of training having nightmares about Mickey Mouse and his friends chasing me through the Magic Kingdom with me yelling over my shoulder, "please just let me finish!"

Goal #3: Finish in less than 3 hours

After months of training, race weekend finally arrived and I was pumped! Because the race started so early, and because having our entire family in the same room is somewhat monumental now days, my parents decided to make a mini vacation out of it. 

We arrived in Orlando the day before the race and immediately went to the race check-in and fitness expo. As we walked past lines of cars with stickers from not just half marathons, but full marathons, triathlons and iron man competitions, I started to panic. Here I am having never run in my life before six months ago and now I'm standing here getting ready to run a half marathon. I felt so intimidated, like everyone was looking at me knowing I had no business competing in their race. 

The next morning the alarm went off at 3:30am. Even though we were staying at a Disney hotel, we still had to be on the bus at 4:00am in order to get to our spots at the starting line by 5:00am. The fact that I'm not a morning person coupled with the fact that any excitement had turned to absolute panic, kept me almost silent all morning.

My parents might have been more nervous than me, and rightfully so. Just a few years before they were sitting in doctor's offices looking for answers as to why their daughter's lungs weren't functioning normally (more here) and now here we were, me getting ready to run a half marathon and them never having seen my months of training and progress.  

Also, even though it's Florida, it was still basically the middle of the night in January and we were freezing. My brother and I kept our jackets as long as we could until we had to hand them off to our parents in order to line up with the other 27,000 runners - yes, I said 27,000 race participants! 

Around 5:30am Josh and I made our way toward the starting line. We were in different waves so we parted ways about 30 minutes after saying goodbye to the parental unit. Our other brother J.J. decided to just stay asleep in the hotel and Sam spent the night in his apartment (he goes to college in Orlando) and meet us after the race was over. 

My wave didn't start until around 6:30am so I was standing in the cold for quite some time before I was even able to start. In fact, when I was finishing mile #1, there were people from the first wave already passing us on their way back, which was mile #11 for them. Talk about discouraging! 

As soon as I crossed the starting line, I turned on Needtobreathe's new album and just focused on getting into a good rhythm and decent pace. Thankfully, unlike my Turkey Trot experience, there was plenty of room and it was easy to get around people. 

By the time I hit the 0.5 mile mark, I was feeling confident and was grinning from ear to ear. For at least the first 8 miles, I couldn't wipe that goofy grin from my face even if you paid me a million dollars. 

Plus, my parents who couldn't seem to figure out how to download photos, somehow mastered Disney's runner tracking system so they could see me and my brother (who was about an hour ahead of me) at different points in the race. 

Having my parents there made the whole event so special. Living so far away from them is hard because we rarely get to share even the big moments like Thanksgiving or seeing my new house, so being able to share this achievement with them was incredibly special. 

I could not have picked a better race for my first half marathon! When you see people at every mile stopping to take pictures with characters, it's hard to psych yourself out or feel intimidated. Everyone (at least in my wave) was so encouraging, kind and relaxed. It's easy to forget about the pain when you are running right through the castle at the Magic Kingdom and just when you start to feel discouraged, you look up and see the sun rise right over the ball at Epcot. In fact, I was so entertained/distracted by the characters, bands, and sights and sounds of the parks, that my music had stopped playing for at least a mile before I even realized it.

Running at sea level compared to the Rocky Mountains of Colorado where I had done all of my training was awesome! I never once had trouble catching my breathe. However, despite the elevation, your body (or at least my body) does start to break down at a certain point. My smile started to slip away right at the 10 mile marker. 

About 2/3 of the race is on major roadways and right after I reached mile 10, the course led us straight up a freeway embankment. This is what I know - I drive a 6 cylinder SUV and even it would have had to switch gears in order to make it up this thing. I was already pretty tired and in the final three mile stretch so I shouldn't have been surprised when my body pushed back and my knee gave out. I didn't fall or anything, but I sure could feel the pain shooting down my leg with every step. At that moment I knew my nice pace was totally blown and by mile 11 I was starting to have doubts I would even finish. This was no longer fun, but I was determined to finish and I was determined to cross the finish line after running (not walking) the last mile. 

I am happy to say, tweaked knee and all, I made it AND met all three of my goals!

Final Time: 2 hours and 50 minutes (I was hoping to be closer to 2:30 than 3 hours, but for my first half marathon I am thrilled to death to meet my original goal of 3 hours with some time to spare!)

Final Race Stats

Registered Runners - 27,000 total

Runners Who Completed Race - 22,421 total (I finished #14,716)

Women Runners - 12,322 total (I finished #7,071)

My Age Group (25-29) - 1,889 total (I finished #1,184)

Josh finished at 2 hours and 15 minutes. What a stud!

Come Thou Fount

Well, it finally happened. I knew it would. Pintrest disappointed me. However, I do have a new piece of art hanging in my home, so I guess the endeavor was not a complete loss. Either way, last week's simple project quickly turned into a traitorous journey.

Thanks to Pintrest and HGTV, my living room is finally filling with unique touches that make it feel like my home. However, as I stand back and look at my creation, it becomes more and more obvious that my house is seriously lacking in the area of inspiration; meaning there are many things that add style, color, beauty, warmth and conversation topics, but few things (if any) that offer encouragement, affirmation or personal challenge. I realize I could be asking a lot from a canvas and paint, but I do know this - God's Word changes people and I would rather live in a house where the walls change me then in a house where the walls change to match a trend.

My journey began when I found a perfectly cut piece of particle board in my garage. I knew it would be the perfect size and shape for a new project. I know particle board is cheap, but it has a really cool look to it and I was excited to see the transformation.

Because the board was not quite the shade I wanted, I stained it with one coat of cheap wood stain I got at Wal-Mart.

Then I made a heart shaped stencil out of paper and taped it to my board.

After that I painted around the stencil just to give the heart a little depth and dimension (and because that is what someone did on Pintrest and I really liked their end product).

Next it was time to fill in the heart with red paint.

After that came the tricky part. I knew I wanted one of my favorite lines from Come Thou Fount (an old hymn) next to the heart and I saw a Pintrest tutorial on easily transferring words/letters/phrases to wood. Unfortunately, when I got to this part of the project I realized my printer was out of ink and then when I bought new ink I realized my printer (that hadn't been used since 2009) was in fact broken and didn't have the setting I needed anyway. So I ended up creating and styling the phrase in Microsoft Word and then emailing it to myself at work so that I could just print it out on Monday morning.

Thankfully I started this project in my home office so I could leave everything out, close the door, and come back to it later in the week.

After printing out one of my favorite lines from one of my favorite hymns and using a printer setting to print it backward, a Pintrest tutorial said all I had to do was place the print out face down on the board, paint over it with water, and then rub over the letters with a marker cap.

Unfortunately, when I pulled back the damp paper, I realized the letter transfer didn't work at all. What a bummer.

I was pretty determined to salvage the project though so I grabbed some tracing paper, copied the words by hand onto the tracing paper, made stencils out of the words, and then traced them on the board using a black pencil. Not ideal, but a workable solution.

Thanks to a few years of art classes throughout my lifetime, I have acquired a pretty steady hand along with some nice paint brushes and I was able to fill in the letters pretty easily using some watered down, black, acrylic paint.

Not as great as I was hoping for, but not too bad for basically free handing the whole thing.

Finally, after letting everything dry, I rubbed some sand paper over the whole thing to rough it up a little bit. Then I combined a few drops of white paint with a clear gloss and brushed it over the entire board.

Just to add a little more interest, I added some twine to the top. Helpful hint: buy the real twine not the craft twine because it's a fraction of the price.

I wasn't thrilled to death with the final product, but I spent basically nothing so I can't really complain.

What do you think? 

Update: Mantel Makeover

You may remember my mantel makeover from a few weeks ago. After a few more trips to Hobby Lobby and finally unpacking a box that was originally packed in May of 2009, I have made a few additions.

What do you think?

I'm no quitter

I'm am blessed to be part of an amazing small group comprised of five unbelievable women. They are all so different and so special to me. We started meeting before our new church officially started small groups. We just knew it was something we all needed and decided to go for it and see what happened. That was sometime in the spring of 2010. Here we are, February 2012 and still meeting together.

Last year we read through the book One Thousand Gifts by Ann Voskamp. I think the consensus is that this is still one of the group's favorite books. I didn't hate it or anything, but it just wasn't necessarily my style. It was a little to touchy, feely for my taste. But still, there was a great message that I was able to take away and for that I am thankful.

Basically, the premise of the book is that all gifts, large and small, are from God. When we start to look at all of those little things in our daily lives as gifts, it changes our attitude completely. It keeps your mind in a constant state of thankfulness and opens your eyes to further understand the depths of God's love for you even in the most mundane, everyday things.

For example, all of those green lights on the way to work are no longer a coincidence or fleeting thought, but a blessing from the Creator of the universe. The sweet word from a friend is not just a kind gesture or confirmation of a friendship, but an encouragement from the Lord that your friend so graciously delivered.  

The challenge of the book is to not just start to recognize these gifts, but to write them down - keep a running list - and just to put a number to it, the author challenged us to make it to 1,000 gifts and then to reflect on how our life and our attitude has changed. She said over and over that thankfulness always proceeds the miracle.

Months ago me and the other lovely ladies in my small group started our lists. I made it to #125 and then just stopped. I didn't stop on purpose, it just happened.

I've had a rough past few weeks and my attitude has been everything except for one of gratitude. At the end of the disappointment and frustration, I was just left feeling so incredibly weak. This weekend, I ran one errand, went to a baby shower, to church, and to lunch with a friend. Other than those few hours, I was quite literally laying in my bed both day and night. I even type this not from my usual space in my office, but under the comforter of by bed. That is how weak I have felt!

Thankfully the Lord had a few fresh insights for me today and I'm ready to leave my bed come tomorrow morning in order to face another week. He challenged my heart with a few things and one of them was to continue the recording of gifts. After all, I am a lot of things, but a quitter is not one of them.

This evening I rescued my notebook from my bottom drawer (conveniently right next to my bed) and started to record gifts. This time I will reach 1,000.

Will you join me on this journey? I promise not to overload you with my personal list, but at least by throwing it out there in a blog there is some form of accountability. Every once in a while I'm going to post my latest few gifts until I get to 1,000. I hope they encourage the heart of someone somewhere out there in cyberspace.

#126 - popcorn for dinner
#127 - Valentine's Day roses
#128 - Florida oranges
#129 - the love of my parents

Pintrest Inspired: Flower Power Art

Thank you Pintrest for giving me inspiration and ideas for DIY art pieces for my house, particularly my living room. Almost a year after moving in, my living room walls are still pretty bare. It's just hard for me to find things that 1) match my decor 2) I like enough to hang in my house and 3) don't cost a billion dollars. Anyone else with me?

After the recent Pintrest inspired success of my mantel makeover, I was ready to tackle another "pinned" art project.

First was a trip to Wal-Mart and Hobby Lobby for a few supplies.

Second was trip to the garage for another shelf that formerly belonged to my built-in bookshelf.

Next I painted it white. It took three coats to evenly cover the brown paint.

Before I started to add anything else to the front, I figured I should probably go ahead and add a sawhook to the back so that I could hang it when I was done.

Next up, gluing crayons to the bottom of the board. I used a hot glue gun and it worked really nicely.

Then it was time for the most risky part of the project. I had my doubts this would even work. The goal was to use a hairdryer to melt the crayons and then have the colored wax naturally drip down the length of the board to create a cool design (hopefully). 

To my amazement, after less than 2 minutes the wax started spilling down the board.

What I did not account for, was the fact that there is a little bit of a technique to it. Plus, wax splatters, a lot! If you are going to recreate this project yourself, I would strongly recommend that you melt the crayons outside or in the garage.

Anyone know how to get wax out of fabric? 

I couldn't figure out how to get it out either. 

So I just turned it around. Shh...don't tell.

good as new :)

After a little clean up from the out of control splatters and waiting a little bit for the wax to completely dry, it was time to glue flowers to some of the "stems" created by the wax drips. I bought three artificial flowers from Hobby Lobby, cut the stems off, and then used the glue gun to hold them in place.

I have to say I was pretty impressed when it was all said and done. 

The best part of this project: 

board - free

white paint - $2.47 (and I still have at least half of the bottle left over for future projects)

crayons - $2.37

flowers - 83 cents each (half off at Hobby Lobby - for real, if you learn one thing from my blog, please let it be this: DO NOT EVER pay full price for anything at Hobby Lobby!)

Cost of entire project = $7.33

Proverbs 3

My son, do not despise the Lord's discipline, and do not resent his rebuke, because the Lord disciplines those he loves, as a father the son he delights in.

Provers 3: 11-12

Sunday was my one week each month that I volunteer in the kid's ministry instead of going to the adult service - or "big church" for those fellow Southern Baptist folks. Each time I teach the kids it's an adventure. There was that one time I taught them about Joseph and the one time I taught them about Noah. This week, I got to teach them about Jonah - more specifically, the Lord's discipline as it relates to Jonah's life. It all seemed pretty easy and straightforward and the kids were really getting it. Games went over well and the kids seemed involved during the Bible study. 

Then it came time to teach the kids this week's verse. Throughout the month of February, our entire church (including the kids) are memorizing Proverbs 3:1-12. The kids are learning it two verses at a time. This week I was supposed to teach them verses 11-12. We taught the kids hand motions that correlate with the words of the verse. I had the kids repeat the whole thing after me the first few times. Then when I felt they were ready, I stayed quiet but did the motions to help jog their memories. 

motion #1

Kids: My son...

motion #2 

Kids: do not...

motion #3

Kids: despise...

motion #4

Kids: Tebow!

my reaction

my words: Oh my gosh! Are you saying that because I'm teaching you? Tebow is not in this verse!

one of my four year olds: But in the Bible?

me: No, Tebow isn't actually in the Bible.

Apparently when I did this...

my sweet kids thought of this...

and now they were substituting Tebow for the Lord's. Great. What parents is going to believe that I did not in fact teach them this? Although I realize it is probably positive reinforcement for questionable behavior, I quickly grabbed my phone to get a video of my kids and their scripture memory. I mean, can you really blame me? I have to admit, my heart welled up with pride as soon as my kids said Tebow's name.  

That night I received two texts from parents asking why their four year old wouldn't stop saying Tebow. 

Can you get kicked out of kid's ministry?