number 12

a few months ago, i mentioned to betsy, my roommate from college, that it would be fun to run the indy mini-marathon together.  she surprisingly said yes quite quickly and we both signed up.  almost immediately after hitting "register", we both felt a pang of fear and "why did we think this was a good idea?"  regardless, we trained, suffered pains our non-runner selves weren't used to, and made it to the start line on may 5th.

our goal was to jog the whole thing and finish.  we did just that.  but the funny thing about both of us is that we are pretty competitive people.  not necessarily with each other, but just knowing that we could have do better.  betsy immediately was saying, "we could have easily shaved off twenty minutes of our time.  it was just too crowded!" and i felt the strong desire to get in a faster corral and beat my time (2:38:39) next year!  i have to admit that passing each person brought such joy on the track.  i know that i came in 18,303rd, but it felt good passing the person that came in 18,304th.  i'm pretty sure i was just beaming the entire time, looking like a fool thinking "i'm doing this!  i'm doing this!  holy crap!  i'm doing this".  instead of this being a "cross this off my life list" type of thing, i think it has turned into a lifelong competition with myself.   and i am even thinking of signing up for a marathon.  now that is just crazy!

oh, and number 12 was to run 30 miles in a week.  i ran:
sunday: 10.7
monday: 2.63
tuesday: 2.50
wednesday: 1.07
saturday: 13.1!

number 6

 a couple weeks ago, i donated my hair.  i know on the list of 30 before 30, it says to donate to locks of love, but that just wasn't happening.  i had signed up to cut my hair with my mops group, so there was a specific date that everyone would do it together.  i kept growing it out and letting it go since september, assuming that i would have beautiful long and lush hair and that locks of love would say, "wow, we've never been given this much amazing hair.  you win!" (i really like to make everything a contest). instead, it wouldn't grow and i missed the ten inch mark.  luckily, one of the other girls found pantene beautiful lengths, which only requires 8 inches, so off my hair went to someone who might be blessed by a beautiful wig.  what do you think?

by the way, i loved the curls that day, but have yet to replicate it.  however, i don't even have to dry or straighten it now, so i do love that part of this hairstyle.  it appeals to my laziness.

30 before 30: katie edition

i am working on my list of 30 things to do before 30. like josh, i'm having a hard time figuring out 30 things to do, but i thought i would at least start the list and hope that you may have some suggestions that i can add to the list. i have 2 years to do these, so i'm trying not to add things that i know we won't have the money to do. these aren't necessarily my lifelong desires, but my short-term bucket list, if you will. things that i know will keep my life interesting and make myself committed to doing a lot of living in a short period of time.

here goes.

1. project 365
2. shoot a gun
3. go to a rodeo or monster truck rally
4. be tech silent for 48 hours
5. sleep outside
6. donate to locks of love
7. go to a dairy farm
8. go to a winery
9. eat 30 new things
10. read 30 books
11. watch best picture winners since 1984
12. run 30 miles in 1 week
13. read the entire bible
14. host a party
15. be on tv
16. eat vegetarian for 1 month
17. cook an entire meal from the garden
18. take a cooking class
19. find something to volunteer for
20. blog daily for 30 days straight
21. go to the harry potter theme park
22. pay off all debt except mortgage
23.
24.
25.
26.
27.
28.
29.
30.

a second round

a few weeks ago, i apologized for the lack of posting and made up some lame excuse about how nothing exciting was really going on and how i guess i was just busy with the mundane day-to-day stuff. i'm sure this is partially true, because i am frequently and currently drowning in the day-to-day. but there's also another reason for the hiatus. i had news to share that made all the silly stories feel unworthy to write about. news that i just wasn't ready to share until today.

i feel like i'm screaming, "ATTENTION WORLD" almost as loud as oprah scream-announces her guests.

this little family is growing! come january, we will be welcoming another little bundle of joy. yes. january. another stupid winter baby. the stupid part correlates with the winter part, not another baby part. i was built for the summer. i can stand outside in 80+ weather and enjoy every moment of sweating my guts out. but winter. blah. i just want to hibernate. sleep, eat, sleep, wear clothing directly out of the dryer, eat, sleep. add a baby to that, and i think the sleep part might be a little affected. but i'll sacrifice. we've waited for this to happen for a long while and it did. we finally heard the heart beat last week. it was strong and the doctor said things looked good!

so now you know why i've been ignoring sharing my life with you. it's because everything we do reminds me of the fact that i'm pregnant and stories are hard to tell without mentioning it. every restaurant we've gone to is because "baby" is craving it. every weekend away has been emphasized by sharing our news with family and friends. every activity we have done has been thwarted by me wanting to vomit my brains out. and oh the cute-cute stories of finn telling me he doesn't want a baby brother OR a baby sister. or how he pokes me in the belly button and screams "baby"in public. or how he sees babies in strollers and gets so giddy that i know he'll eventually come around to wanting one of his own. or how we've been working on his new room so he can move across the hallway into a big boy bed. oh, the things that i can tell you now. i'm so excited you know.

finally, we can cross number 16 off the list.

we got to be a part of it

i surprised him. i surprised the crap out of him. the day before left for new york city last saturday, which happened to be friday, we were out to dinner with my family and i handed josh a early birthday present. inside we the following: new york cheddar chips, a card that said "josh turns 30 TODAY", and a frommer's guide to nyc with broadway tickets inside. oh, and the card had the today show logo on it to make a little more sense. it took poor old josh til the tourist guide to understand that he was leaving the very next day for a birthday vacation. a SURPRISE birthday vacation. i nearly peed myself with the excitement of waiting until moments before leaving to tell him. the best part, everyone else in the family was is on it. including my dad who was watching finn while we were gone. the same dad who still said, "wait, i thought you were going to chicago?" moments after the reveal. oh dave, it must be since you're nearing 60 that your brain cells are failing you. i'm glad to have accidentally surprised him as well.

needless to say, my breath was taken away by new york city. there is something about the bustle and charm and other-worldliness that makes me forget the stench of urine and piles of trash lining the streets. ah, new york. we spent most of our time just wandering the streets pretending to know which direction we were going, even though 90 percent of the time we would get the next street and turn 180 degrees and head back. lots of unnecessary exercise. which is good since my gym membership hasn't been used in about 4 weeks. and without finn. bliss. do you know how good it is to wake up at 8am without the sound of a child screaming for you to wake up? just the fact that you can relaxingly reacquaint yourself with the world after 9 full hours of dream-slumber makes all the difference in the world. single people and those without children, relish in that liberty. oh, i missed him, don't get me wrong. but i didn't miss the work. not one little bit.

we ate. we went to a couple broadway shows. we ate. we went to a museum. we ate so much more. we shopped. we had dessert. it was the perfect 4 day vacation from the day-to-day and dieting. i highly recommend it. i think i'm going to write about a couple of the restaurants soon. it needs that much attention. for now though, here's a few of the pictures. the very few pictures. why is it that we nearly always face our camera at our little one and never at ourselves or the rest of the world? oh, duh. because he's so darn cute.

out in the wilderness

our friend andrew told us about geocaching and whoop, we love it. that's right. WHOOP!

the thing about geocaching that i love so much is that you never know if there is a cache right near where you are and you just don't know about it. it's like a secret society. we didn't have a clue about it until we were told to check it out. see, you go to the website and search your area. it gives you the gps coordinates of all the caches, which are water-tight canisters with a logbook and sometimes some fancy trinkets to claim. then, you take your gps device (or in our case, josh's geocache application on the iphone) and go search it out. a couple weekends back, josh and i went out to search for a few in the plymouth area and found 7. some were in the woods, another was in an old cemetery, and one was in the parking lot at lowe's. who knew! it helped me see areas of plymouth i would have never gone to.

my mom and dad went out with us for a few of them and really got into it. it was so pretty precious. i so wish i would have videotaped it, because in the midst of the first hunt, my dad was all about galloping (okay, just walking briskly) to the location and finding it before anyone else. a 50-something man so excited to be on a modern-day treasure hunt. at the end of the day, my dad was like, 'yeah, i guess that was okay.' oh dad, too proud to say how awesome geocaching is. so awesome. you should try it.

lady gaga: take 2 & number twenty six

after she canceled the last concert and the additional two weeks of waiting, lady gaga took the stage. she was amazing. i cannot express it enough. she was one of the best concerts that i have ever been to. it was complete performance the entire time. some of it, i didn't quite understand, like the woman puking blue goo all over lady gaga in a white dress. all i could guess was that it was a statement about vanity, but seriously, she's a little wild. at one point, i dancing with the music and turned to josh to see him standing completely upright, arms crossed, with a slightly confused look on his face. he felt a little out of place, though more in place than the 55 year old man ten rows behind us with two 14 year old girls. oh dad!

one thing that made me feel incredibly old was that i kept complaining that it was too loud (which it was). the next day at work, i had to tell everyone to speak up because i couldn't hear a word they were saying. apparently, my ears ring at the same frequency that most people talk.

19. Read 5 Classics (Post by Josh!)

Since it seems that I'm not crossing off many of these 30 things before 30 goals, I've decided to fill you in on a few of the ones I'm currently working on. I'll start with #19. Read 5 Classics.

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The first book I decided to read was 1984 by George Orwell. Katie and I had a little debate about whether this was indeed a classic. And since the debate happened after I had finished it, I decided it was.

One reason I read the book, other than I always thought I should, was because of the new Muse album The Resistance. A lot of the songs reference 1984 and I wanted to know what they were talking about.

Overall I really enjoyed the book, and although I had some notion of what it was about, I really didn't foresee the ending.

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The second book I read is The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson.

I don't think I've ever read a book as old as this (published 1886). The language in the book seemed odd to me, but the more I read it the more I enjoyed it. Really, the only thing I knew about this story was from the movie The League of Extraordinary Gentleman and I know it was far from what the novel originally was.

After reading I really enjoyed it. It unfolded like a mystery and part of me wishes I knew nothing about it going in.

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The book I just finished, thanks to my 6 hours of being delayed in an airport yesterday, was The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling.

I honestly had no idea what to expect with this book. I have seen the Disney movie, but don't really remember it and after reading this I'm wanting to watch it again to catch the differences.

I had no idea that it was actually a collection of stories. I thought it was just about Mowgli and the jungle, but it also had one about a seal, an elephant, a conversation amongst animals, and Rikki-Tikki-Tavi (a story I have read, but didn't realize was from this book). It think so far this book is my favorite.

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The book I just started is The Jungle by Upton Sinclair. I know it shares the same word in the title as the last book I read, but I know enough about it to know it's not about the same type of jungle. I'm looking forward to reading this and what got me thinking about it again was a documentary I just watched called Food Inc. It covered the corporatization of the food industry and part of it talked about the meat packing plants. I'm one chapter in and so far am enjoying it. I'll keep you posted on what I think about it.

number 3 and 25

a few weekends ago, just after finn had his 1st birthday, josh finn and i went to chicago for a 2-night stay. we got to see santa, go to the aquarium, do a little shopping, and visit the willis tower, which you probably know as the sears tower. we had such a great time- weather was good, finn didn't mind the shortened naps, i got to eat a lot of garrett's popcorn. perfect little weekend. i guess since chicago is so close, we just don't realize how awesome it is. we don't really need to travel far away to see an amazing shoreline, have awesome shopping, and get to visit some really neat museums. i think we're going again in the summer when walking a mile doesn't seem so ridiculous.

one note on the sears tower glass walk-out. it really was an amazing experience. while i was beyond terrified and shaking when i took the step out, it was such a neat way to see the city, not to mention get an awesome picture of me conquering my fears.

number 23

on november 1st, the last day it was open, josh finn & i ventured through the corn maze in lafayette. it was insane. i initially thought, "okay, let's spend 30 minutes inside this thing and never get lost and zip through and cross it off your list." boy, was i wrong. next year, we are going to invite everyone to go with us, because it was absolutely confusing and fun and could have taken us so long to get through the whole thing. if it hadn't been for daylight savings time (which i hate), it wouldn't have gotten so dark so quickly and we could have maybe made it through without icicle fingers and red noses. let me just tell you, it wasn't creepy until the sun started going down. suddenly, ideas about children of the corn came rushing through my head and i was certain we would die in the middle and no one would find us. didn't happen. we're alive. and we'll go again next year.

number twenty two

we went to the indianapolis colts game on sunday when they played (or demolished) the seattle seahawks. it was josh vanvactor's birthday celebration, so the entire family, minus babies, packed themselves up and went to cheer on our favorite team. we had great seats, but i was as terrified as i was excited. there was a barely hip level piece of glass separating me from uncertain death. i nearly peed myself trying to get to my seat, as i had to climb over about 7 men to get to it. we all survived. no one plummetted the 30 feet down onto fellow colts fans/cement. it was a good day. go colts.

number seven

the powder room downstairs is finally complete. from the moment we moved in, i hated how ugly the vanity was. we immediately found out that it was also disgustingly dirty. so, naturally, instead of cleaning it, we redid the bathroom. the vanity and sconces are from menards, lighting from lowes, and mirror from pottery barn. the wallpaper...oh the wallpaper! it is amazing. it is a textured fake tile that you paint over. i saw it in potbelly's and was on the search soon after to find the exact paper. found it at lowe's! if you ask my grandma, "that wallpaper is...interesting!" i think she doesn't like it but i'm in love!

number six

#6...check. josh shaved his head! well, i shaved his head, while laughing hysterically!

josh's list

if you were unaware, josh is currently in his 30th year of life. before he turns the big 3-0, i asked him to come up with a list of things he would do before his birthday. the goal is '30 things to do before i turn 30.' it sounds easy enough, right? it is actually quite hard. to come up with things that are possible, interesting, not too expensive, not too lame, not just something to check off the list...it's quite a challenge. we will keep you updated on what his goals are and what he has done on the sidebar.

any suggestions to complete his list?