Attempts at running

Joe decided a few months ago that it would be a good idea to run the Disney World Marathon in January. I've always wanted to be able to say that I had run a marathon, and in a weak moment, signed up for the race.

Oh, how I regret that decision right now!

Sundays are supposed to be "long run" days. My training plan says that today I should have run 12 miles. Now, I did complete a half marathon (13.1 miles) last month, but my lower half has not been the same since. I can run, but not for long distances. The weather today was quite nice, so I sucked it up, grabbed the dogs and set out my long run. I figured I would go for 10 miles, then see if I could squeeze out another two. Joe and Kyle had just gotten back from a 16.5 mile run, so certainly I could manage, right?

Wrong. The dogs were so excited to run a new route that they acted like crazed idiots for the first few miles. It got to the point where I was constantly pulling or being pulled, and decided that I wasn't going to continue like that for another 8 miles. I called Joe, who came and took the energetic girls home.

I set off, by myself, through the streets of Mission Hills, this incredible city just south of Roeland Park. If I had to guess, the cheapest house in the city/neighborhood is probably worth 1.5 million and would only have 4 or 5 bedrooms. Talk about stately mansions! I had never wandered by foot through the area, and was simply astounded by the sheer size beauty of some of the homes! Well, that only lasted for another couple of miles, before my knees, hips, feet, etc really started to hurt. I managed, in the end, to push on and complete 8 miles. Hmmm. 8-13 miles is the furthest I've ever run, and yet I'm supposed to go for 26 in another 2 months? We'll see about that... I may have really overestimated my own athletic abilities this time!

We conquered the garage

Our lowly single car garage became the storage place for everything we worked on this summer, from bags of mulch, grass seed and fertilizer to lumber, screening and trim pieces. Unfortunately, that meant that neither one of our cars fit into the garage at the same time. Now that we finished the first phase of the porch and the landscaping is sleeping until next spring it was clearly time to clean out the garage so we could use it for its true purpose! Earlier this fall I decided the walls needed a coat of primer as they were full of creepy stains and marks. It's amazing how much brighter it looks! We also realized we desperately needed more storage for all of the things we wanted to keep in our little garage. Joe and I spent a few hours on Sunday hanging shelves along our back wall, to complement the hanging storage system he put in a while ago. Now everything is up off the floor and we can actually walk around a car in the garage, without having to wiggle our way around everything! It's not nearly as exciting for everyone else, and certainly not something most people would even realize we had worked on, but it's one more space that's finished!

Pictures of our hard work!

As a refresher, here's what the back of the house looked like .... and this was taken while the house was on the market. There's a picture below that shows how tall most of the stuff growing around the porch had gotten. Oh, and take notice of the huge evergreen tree/shrub on the far left of the picture...

Yeah, we finally went ahead and cut that tree down! Now we just have to get some grass to grow, and pull the stump out. (All after we rake all of the leaves that are falling like crazy now!) Next spring/summer we'll continue working on the "beds," if you can call them that, around the porch. I hope that this time next year, the picture of this same space will really start to look like a nice, manicured yard, instead of the crazy overgrown mess we bought into!

Ok, so I'd be lying if I said we both spent equal amounts of time on the porch and back yard this year. Well, I focused mainly on pulling out bushes and other "landscaping" while Joe spent way more time than I did working on the porch. Phase 1 is done (yes, it's now a multiple phase project!), which means that all of the wood supports have been torn down, rebuilt and stained, the porch has been screened, the ceiling has been pulled down and carpet (for now) has been laid. What's left, you might ask? We need to rehang the ceiling fan, which will require some rewiring, installing the new ceiling, and finishing some exterior trim pieces that just don't fit right. We initially wanted to lay tie , but for the time being decided to go with cheap outdoor carpet to make it look more finished. I'm also really excited about our new doggie door - it's doing a great job at keeping most of the falling leaves out of the porch!

Here's a view from the kitchen door of the porch. My camera ran out of batteries before I could take more pictures, but you can get the idea. And yes, every single one of the vertical wood supports were replaced. The only thing Joe left was the header...

The old porch.... (note how crazy the overgrowth is around the corner of the porch! It seriously looked like a jungle out there!)

So that's where we stand. And yes I do still need to post pictures of the bathroom, but I wouldn't say it's anything incredibly exciting. We're still hoping to find the time and money to actually redo it in the future, so we're not putting much into that space right now.

What's next, you might ask? Well, this winter we are thinking about rearranging the basement to do a partial finish of the space that doesn't get wet when it rains. Around here finishing basements into a "loft style" space has become quite popular and is rather economical. People aren't putting up ceilings; rather, they're painting the joists, subfloor and other stuff above, installing track lights, then laying inexpensive carpet, put up a couple of walls and voila! a new basement rec room. Someone in the past had done even less of a finish down there, but there are electrical outlets, along with all of our new basement windows that we had put in earlier this year. So we're going to explore this option as another space for us to hang out this winter.

Ok, I lied

I forgot to take my camera home last night. Regardless, I wouldn't have captured much, since it was dark by the time I actually got home. Today, the camera's already in my purse, so I will take pics and post them!

We finally got word that the pictures taken at the half marathon last weekend are online, so I'm going to sort through them and see if I can't find any of us. For those who didn't know, Joe, our friend Kyle, Ashley, Mikael and I ran a half marathon last weekend. It was the first one for all of us, and I think we all did quite well! Our finishing times for the 13.1 miles around Kansas City ranged from 2 hours, 14 minutes to my 2 hours, 35 minutes. I don't care how slow it was, I was amazed that I finished at all, especially since I hadn't run in the two weeks leading up to the race, due to being sick.

Now Joe, Kyle and I are training for the Disney World Marathon in January.... 26.2 miles is WAAAY longer and scarier than 13, so we're going to be running non stop to get ready for that race!

What have we been up to?

Wow, I knew it had been awhile since I'd posted, but didn't realize just how long ago my last post was!

Since then, Joe and I have been focusing primarily on two things - finishing the screened porch, and training for various sporting events. After volunteering at a triathlon in mid July, I decided it was time for me to try one. I signed up for the Olathe Medical Center's Women's Only Triathlon, on Sept.13, thinking it would be a great first race and give me a few months to train. They only offered one length, a sprint, which consists of a 500 meter swim, 13 mile bike ride and a 2.6 mile run. No big deal! I started training right away, and managed to stay with it right through the end.

The night before the race we had crazy storms, torrential downpour and even a tornado near the area where the race was to be held! It continued to rain all night, and when Joe and I got up at 5 to head to the race, it was still looking ominous. (Ok, who's kidding who - that early in the morning, we couldn't see anything... but we could tell the rain hadn't cleared the area!) Joe and Kyle were planning on volunteering to support me and the others who had ventured out for the late season race. Once I got my transition area all set up, it started to pour again. 30 minutes before the race, the race director decided to cancel the bike portion, due to the weather. We went ahead with the swim then proceeded directly to the run, which had lots of standing water on the course. My times in both event were far less than stellar, but my finish time was average, and hey, at least I did it! I hope to keep racing in 2009 as I really enjoyed the training and think I would have had a much better feeling about the race had the weather not imposed.

We have finished part 1 of rebuilding the porch, which looks quite nice. I will take the camera home tonight to take pictures, esp. since I spent most of yesterday cleaning the house! Joe came home, noticed how nice it was to have everything clean, and we vowed to work much harder and cleaning up a little every day so I don't have to spend hours and hours cleaning on my day off!

It finally happened...

When we bought the house, Joe looked and me and said that it was only a matter of time before he'd leave for a few hours and come home to a different colored room. Joe's prophecy came true a little under a year later - when he left for work Monday morning, our bathroom was a lovely sponge-painted mess of three shades of green and white. When he came home just 14 hours later, the green had been replaced by a lovely shade of lavender!

I woke up yesterday morning and decided that even though we are hoping to completely redo our one and only bathroom soon, the time had come to relieve our eyes of the horrible paint job. The previous owner must have loved green, because the walls, floor and tiles in the bathroom were all ugly shades of green. Add fake white wainscoting, cream toilet and tub and a white vanity with cream colored vanity top, and it was all just a little too much. Now, we don't really like much of anything in the bathroom, but I knew I couldn't get carried away. So I grabbed a spare green tile, one of our bath towels and headed to Lowes. Figuring that purple and green are complementary colors, I went with a not too pale but not too dark shade of lavender that looked like it would work, and if nothing else, brighten up the room. I started the project around noon, arrived home with the paint at 1:00, and finished painting by about 6pm. Luckily, Joe was working late, so I had plently of time to clean up, rehang the mirror and shower curtain and put up the lightswitch plate again, so it actually looked finished.

My camera is at work, but I'll try to post pictures tomorrow of our partial bathroom remodel!

Landscaping and other house updates

Landscaping Fun

Before shots of our house, taken September 2007.

I can't believe how long it's been since I've posted anything! I guess that's what a new job and lots of house projects will do to a person. This spring and early summer the focus has been on landscaping the house. When we moved in, everything was incredibly overgrown.

I started tackling the back yard bushes once it was warm enough, way back in April. If you notice in the before picture, the bushes spread out almost to the tree next to the shed. Now, the vines still cover the back fence (I just can't kill those pesky things!), but we have gained about 8 feet of back yard space! Now we just need to finish the bushes on the corners, reseed and we'll have a great back yard.

In May we took out the first half of the front yard bushes and plants, and added flower beds under our two magnolia trees in the front yard. Inspired by the difference that made, we decided to continue on with our efforts. After our Memorial Day/anniversary trip to NYC, we returned home with a desire to continue working outside, noticing that the days were simultaneously getting longer and hotter. We bit the bullet and had a big dumpster delivered to our house for a week in early June. During that week we attacked both the front and back yards, tearing out trees, shrubs, railroad ties, and even managed to finally tear down the old shed in the back yard. Joe became my hero with that part of the project - I had absolutely no desire to tear up the floor of the half rotten building and see what was waiting below... He was wonderful in tearing the whole thing apart and sorting through the brush under the flooring to make sure I wouldn't have any creepy surprises. Which isn't to say that he didn't uncover a few himself!

We were amazed how quickly the dumpster filled up - if we had more space (and a few more days of rest in between hauling loads from the back yard to the front) we probably could have tackled even more. In the end, we were happy with how much we had accomplished.

This past weekend we continued the landscaping efforts. Sunday morning we went out and bought a bunch of plants and flowers for the front yard beds, which we had spent a few days trying the clear out. The verdict's still out on whether we were able to get rid of all of the ivy and periwinkle that choked out everything else trying to live in the beds. I finished up the planting on Monday, and besides a little bit of edging work that still needs to be done, I think we've done a great job, and gone a long way toward helping our house's curb appeal. If only we could convince our next door neighbors to do the same!

New landscaping in front of house.