5 Years of Wedded Bliss

5 Years!

  What better to do than explore a portion of the wonderful wines North Carolina has to offer?

We headed out to visit 6 local vineyards along with our friends who just happen to share the same anniversary.

They like us so much they made us part of their life plan.  We are that cool. Yep.

It was really a great time.  Not only did we take some wonderful wines for a test drive but we also had some great food along the way.

Napa Valley/Sonoma are on my perpetual "to do" list but we truly have some wonderful wines here in the great state of NC.

After you try all the wines on for size you may just end up taking pictures of yourself on a well?  Not you?  Ok then maybe just me.

Do your vineyards have Llamas?  No?  Ok then.

Hmmmm, maybe NC isn't so bad after all :)

And I'm almost out of wine.  Time for another trip!

Beer Run

My running buddy and I goofing off before it was time to line up for the race.  

*Please excuse the cheesetastic smile on my face.*

Overall, this was a really fun race that I plan on doing again next year.

It was a little warmer than anyone imagined it would be for a 5.2 mile race in March.  The high temp reached 78 degrees with a humidity of 78%.  It was warm, humid, and sunny which all combine for a beautiful day as long as you have not planned to run hills at 3pm.

About those hills.  According to Runkeeper, the total elevation gain was 293.  Lots of hills.  Rolling hills, long hills, and every so often a downhill.

And we were off.....

The plan was to run together as long as possible. 

My paces were mess.  The only mile I was really happy with was the first one.  Mile 2 wasn't bad.  Miles 3-4 were when the wheels starting falling off. As the number of hills grew larger and the temperatures climbed so did my paces.

12+ minutes miles.  Where did that come from?!?

Final time was 59:28 for 5.2 miles.  An overall pace of 11:31.  Incidently, this is about 2 seconds per mile slower than my pace at RNR Savannah back in November.  It is also slower than I've been running as of late so I'm blaming this one on the heat and the hills.

All of that aside, I felt like I ran a solid race but it was tough.

Next up...Cooper River!

	Pace (min/mi)
	10:26
	11:16
	12:07
	12:13
	11:40
	12:09

Pigtails and Personality

This little lady is 17 months old!

She is bubbling over with personality.

We can now ask her for a hug and she comes over to give it to us which I just find adorable!  Who cares if all 27 inches of her are hugging my knees.

I'm also loving that she understands when we ask her to do stuff now and DOES IT!  This is awesome.  The word NO is surely right around the corner but for now we are soaking it up.

Lauren, please take out the trash.  Done.  I never knew just how much it would come in handy to have a toddler around to help with household chores.

A word explosion also appears to be on the horizon.  Just today, she spotted a couple walking in our neighborhood and said "who is that" in toddler talk.  I could have misunderstood but this has been happening a lot lately so I think she is actually starting to pick up more words.

The other day when I asked her where Tonka was, she said over there pretty clearly as well while also looking in his direction.

She definitely doesn't say these things all the time but we can really tell her little mind is hard at work.

Right now, her independence is really fun.  I just love being able to have her help do stuff like get herself down the steps and into the car each morning with beside her instead of carrying her.

It will be fun to see what month 18 has in store!