sugary sweet

Thanks for the support, dear readers. I realize I might be certifiably insane by registering for another marathon but it's very exciting as well. Nate is taking the whole thing quite serious as he just informed me about two new book purchases from Amazon: 1. something about yoga for athletes, and 2. Something about nutrition for endurance athletes. He tells me he really wants to avoid an injury this time around and he hears yoga does the trick....so he's going to read about it and let me know. He's such a nerd sometimes, but you gotta love him.

Okay, so onto the sugary sweetness from last weekend.

#1 After Nate, Keri and I went to the runners expo on Saturday Nate informed us that he has a 'secret errand' to run and was really creepy about where he was taking us. I, of course, automatically accused him of forcing us to enter a golf store where he most likely bought golf-related items behind my back, knowing that I would not approve. I figured he ordered something from a St. Louis store without me knowing about it and had to pick it up during our trip. I'm not sure why this was my first thought but I'm sure it symbolizes something deep about our marriage when I assume he bought golf crap without my consent.

He pointed the car towards the Central West End while Keri and I threw out guesses left and right: was he taking me to get a new puppy??? [his look of disdain told me this was not the surprise]. Was he taking us to Straabs? [besides being weird and totally unnecessary, going to a high-end grocery store was not even on his radar]. Was he taking us to church at the Basilica? [again, very odd and not likely but we had to guess SOMETHING]. I kept saying that there were no golf stores in the CWE, thus adding to my confusion. He just smiled and drove on, letting our imaginations run wild. I think I'd convinced myself he was taking us to Bar Louie to slam shots and dance on the bar---at 4 pm, by the way---when we rounded the corner and saw this sign:

So then I was all, "OMG....you ordered us cupcakes for our upcoming wedding anniversary! How thoughtful for you to remember we got our wedding cake from The Cakery, which has the same fabulous owners of The Cupcakery! {Ericka rules!} I bet you even got us the same flavors as our wedding cake!" Then I realized that although I love my husband dearly he just isn't one of those ultra-sensitive guys who would do something like that.

As we walked into the store Nate finally admitted the surprise: my mom had ordered me cupcakes for my birthday. But not just a dozen cupcakes would do----it's my mom, afterall. She just HAD to get me 28 cupcakes for my 28th birthday despite Nate trying to talk her out of such an obscene number. And let's remember that these cupcakes are neither small nor cheap, which makes 28 of them even more ridiculous. Here is her sneaky cohort with the motherload: yes, they required two whole boxes. And yes, my husband is a cutie:


During Nate's pleading with my mother on the phone, he asked her what in the heck we would do with 28 of these monsters? To which she replied, "I don't know....hand them out to your friends, take them into school/work, do what you want. But I'm buying 28 of them." You know it's a lot when you can't even fit all of them in one picture:


But you guys, they are so freaking amazing it makes my eyes bulge out of my skull. Can I get a little Will Farrell {a.k.a. Frank the Tank} here? "It's so good once it hits your lips." We managed to leave St. Louis with 18 of these babies and I was quite proud of our distribution skills to rid ourselves of 10 within less than 24 hours. It's a horrible problem to have, really....too many cupcakes, too little time:


Nate got to pick out the flavors and I must say that the "Tuxedo" might be one of my top picks. And as an FYI, we did have dark chocolate cake with vanilla buttercream for half of our wedding cake....and these cupcakes are JUST as good as the real deal wedding cakes. I think it's the real butter....


The "Red Velvet" might be one of the prettiest and of course it's like a tiny bite of heaven melting in your mouth, with all that cream cheese icing. This is the flavor that made Nate grunt the loudest.....inappropriately, of course:


I think the french vanilla cake/vanilla buttercream "Confetti" combo is the loveliest in pictures....don't you? Our other half for wedding cake was similar to this minus the confetti, plus raspberry fruit filling between layers. Mmmmmmm.....


But the "Peanut Butter Cup" with peanut butter buttercream/dark chocolate cake is probably the richest and therefore my favorite. A girl can't have too much PB in my book...

I could have taken a picture of each and every cupcake because they are just that beautiful, but I don't want you to be too envious of me. And besides, we attempted to freeze about 14 of these babies so that we can enjoy them on my actual birthday. We want to avoid a sugar overdose this week even though it's quite tempting to down one of these suckers every night after dinner. Isn't my mom the best?

#2 Speaking of moms and sugary sweetness, meet Clare:



My first real baby to shoot! My hands started tremoring as soon as she entered the room because all I saw was a new photography subject! One that isn't a dog or a flower or food. Yippee! In my honor she blew me some wicked bubbles, possibly gassy here?



She is about four months old and just the most squeezable little thing around. Her mommy and daddy are our good friends from college and we are so happy for them. I think they special ordered the most well-behaved baby in existence and I'll be picking their brains on that procedure some day. I want one just like this:)



I realized that shooting real live babies are tougher to capture than dogs. She was just so wiggly and adorable....it distracted me to no end. Also, my 1.8 had a hard time focusing on her in a lower light condition, which I find frustrating. But then again some of her shots turned out just fine. I personally love this one of Clare's daddy feeding her. If you could see the look of sheer adoration in his eyes it might make you feel a little weepy...or maybe that's just me:



Chunky thighs! In a pink outfit! With the most adorable booties ever! Squeeeeeee!



I had to include this picture because it makes me chuckle. You have Michael, who shares my love for photography, trying to capture Clare's beauty just like me. Then you have Conor, holding his lovely baby with pride. And then you'll notice a certain white dog in the middle looking utterly perplexed. He was beyond frightened of Clare and yet he was completely intrigued. He'd stare at me while I held her like, "WTF, MOM?!? What are you doing? Put that thing down! Don't you know she is a mutant human who is impossibly small? She will take over the world!" I'm sure he was jealous but instead, he took on the role of pensive Henry....as seen in this picture. He couldn't stop smelling her feet and really, can you blame him? I'm sure they smelled divine. Oh, I can't wait for the 'first born syndrome' to kick in with our little Henry someday when he has to share his parents with a little monster like Clare. What fun that will be.


I think Clare was staring back at Henry in this picture which probably made him lose his mind. Please tell me her eyes aren't the most precious things ever. Those lashes!


Tiny little tongue and her baby blues...


She finds my camera quite enthralling, obviously.


When she got all bundled up in her carseat/carrier thingy and went outside into natural light, you better believe I whipped out the SLR yet again. This one is a touch overexposed but I love it anyway. I tend to like my images on the brighter side anyway...so sue me:)


I had a hard time justifying making any of Clare's images black and white, just because we'd lose her gorgeous blue eyes. But this one was screaming B&W to me for some reason. Her mouth in this picture is my fave.....a near smile, I'd say:


Agh, babies. Why are you everywhere? And do you have to be so freaking cute all the time [or at least for the 1-2 hours I get to see you?]. She made it look so easy, that Clare. I just want to eat her up!

And with that I think I'll go defrost another cupcake.....if I can't have the sugary sweet baby I think I'll settle for second best. This one just so happens to have about a bajillion calories, of course. :)

AGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

Dude, I'm totally freaking out over here. Please observe:

My husband and I will be two of 45,000 lunatic runners taking on the dreaded 26.2 this October. Holy crap, I can't believe I'm going to do this again....especially when I'm still still exhibiting a wicked pimp walk from a mere 13.1 mile run.

Also, that 'whooosh' you just heard was $250 flying out of our bank account with this registration. Nobody ever claimed torturing yourself for 4 hours was free, you know.

So I'm a little bit scared, a lot a bit nervous, and a teensy bit excited. Does this mean I'm addicted to marathons now? In the year from October 08-October 09 I will have done two full marathons and one half. My grand total will be 2 and 2 [fulls to halves, that is] in my lifetime. My running resume is still completly puny compared to most other runners out there and yet, I think I'd qualify as a 'marathoner' now....right?

We promised our friends we wouldn't become that psycho marathoning couple and yet, I think we've morphed into that very couple without even noticing. Oh well. I'm okay with that, I guess.

Here we go again...eeeek!

visual evidence of the weekend

{warning: long post alert, full of pictures and some narrative. come back later if you so choose.}

I got the perfect surprise today at work: I didn't have to stay past lunch and let's just say this was exactly what my body needed. I had big plans for my afternoon off [laundry, groceries, cleaning...all of the stupid stuff that can't get done when you are away all weekend long]. What did I do instead?

Treated myself to a little Panera for lunch and then passed out on the couch for a solid two hour nap, snuggled up next to a very tired fluff ball named Henry. Both of us slept so hard that we were a little delirious when we finally awoke. It was one of THOSE naps, you guys....the freaking bomb, even though I still have a pounding headache that is going strong since yesterday. I'm not going to let my neurotic self imagine it's brain cancer, or an aneurysm, or something else completely fatal. I'm going to use my realist side and say it's probably just fatigue, still, right?

Okay, so let's move onto the pictures. I was all ready to say, "I didn't take that many this weekend, and it felt kind of good not to be pressured to snap away the weekend." And then, I uploaded my pictures to find a total of 135 images. Whoops! Guess I did manage to go photog-crazy as usual. It was just odd to be without a camera at the actual race, but more on that later.

Our drive down: I got off work a tad early so we hit the road by 3:30 which might not seem like a big deal but it literally made the weekend SO much more tolerable. Arriving at 9:30 instead of our originally planned midnight was freaking huge.

Our family spends the six hour trip as follows: Me, the shutterbug:


Nate, the annoyed driver:
I must say this: I won 'wife of the year' by offering to drive halfway on the trip home. That was a stupid idea on my part, considering the horrid weather and my extreme fatigue. What can I say, I'm quite the catch---and he owes me big time. I hate that drive with a passion....but let's move on.


And finally Henry, the ever-stressed world traveler who pants the entire trip as if to say,"Where are you taking me, you crazy humans? Let me out of this forsaken car!" At least he's cute when he travels.



Should we take this as an omen for the upcoming race?



The sunset was only decent on this day, but I took pictures anyway. Nothing like a little farmland to make a scenery shot.


Once we finally arrived at our destination on Friday night, we chatted with Hannah and Michael until the wee hours of the morning. It happens everytime no matter how tired we are. It's just so good to be in the presence of old friends again. Sigh.

Speaking of, on Saturday Keri came to town. Hannah, Keri and I went to eat lunch at McGurks and I almost passed out from the intense love I felt towards my Three Grilled Cheese. Then Keri and I went to get a pedicure, praying we wouldn't run it off the next day. I sometimes forget that Keri HATES when they use that holey stone thing to scrape the bottoms of your feet. She freaks out and squeals and giggles. And thus, I took pictures.



Now I don't know about you, but I think it's official: Keri got her groove back. Her eyes have that sparkle again, her laugh has that familiar happy pitch to it, and she looks freaking amazing. I'm so proud of my friend and I miss her dearly. Again....old friends just make my heart feel warm and fuzzy inside.

Speaking of making my heart happy: it's definitely a season called 'Spring' in St. Louis. Which is funny because as I type this, it's a measly 39 degrees outside. And the forecast calls for the 'S-word' tomorrow. I cannot even type the word S-N-O-W without gagging in my mouth a little bit. So let's move onto a better climate: The STL, shown via these pretty images I loved taking:














Love it. Can't wait for flowers of our own up in The Great North.

Also, going with my favorite themes of dogs and flowers....here is another cute dog for your viewing pleasure. His name is Sampson, he's a Wheaton Terrier, and he is Hannah and Michael's dog....so I guess that makes him our host dog. He and Henry grew up together as puppies when Hannah and I lived together [before we each got hitched] and the dogs are obsessed with each other. Also, Sampson is obsessed with the camera and is a total poser. He rushed up to me as soon as he caught a glimpse of my camera and smiled for this shot:


Oh, the boys. Seemingly innocent, aren't they?


For our pre-run dinner we opted for Vitos and although it was pure torture to order anything besides their bomb pizza, the spaghetti and meatballs dish was pretty tasty and full of adequate carbs. I did not take pictures and I think Hannah was immediately disappointed in me, questioning how I would write a decent weekend post without pictures of my pre-game meal. She is right, you know. I'm a slacker:)

So we went to bed nice and early only to awake at 5 a.m. the next morning: half marathon morning. Did you know it's still dark out at 5 a.m.? Yep, sure is.


The eluisve self-timer picture taken at 5:30 a.m. Do we look pumped?


One really cool thing about being up before the sun is the gorgeous light. I believe this would be 'twlight', right? Love this shot of my boys:


This shot is a little blurry [darn 1.8 lens doesn't like low light conditions much] but I still like it. I spy bokeh!


The race began at 7 a.m. and the rain started at 6:15....of course the weather men were right on this occasion, right? All I kept saying was, "At least it's not cold AND rainy....it could be 40 degrees right now and that would be pure hell." Instead it was a nice 50-60 degree day albeit sopping wet. Here is our view from the start line taken with Nate's wannabe iPhone camera:

So apparently there were 15,000 runners at this race which was freaking insane! It was awesome to run with so many people but a little challenging, too. Not a big fan of dodging other runners throughout the course [and all I kept thinking was that Chicago would be about 3 times as crowded]. I can't believe how many spectators there were enduring the horrible conditions to cheer us crazies on---I love big races for that feeling of unity, the knowledge that every runner has a story and every spectator has a desire to support these runners. It's so freaking awesome, you guys. Even when it sucks. :)

Because of the sheer number of people and the mad chaos in the morning of the race, I didn't get to meet up with Keri which is a bummer but I knew she'd be in good hands with her sister and some other friends. I know Ker was nervous about finishing but of course, she kicked major A and pushed through like a champ. It was her first half marathon and I bet she'll catch the bug and do more in the future. Again, so proud of her!

As far as our run goes, I am very pleased with our 1:57 time, which is a little less than a 9 minute mile pace as an average. In our 2005 half marathon we clocked a 2:10 time, or a 10 minute mile average, so this race we shaved a full minute off each mile...I'm impressed! I really didn't feel like I was pushing myself until mile 10 when I figured out we could actually go sub two hours...then it felt like we sprinted the remainder of the course. Which is probably why I'm the sorest I've been since my full marathon....except I'm actually functioning today instead of hobbling around like a cripple. I'd say it's only a slight limp today so that's good:)

Here is the only picture we have of us together at the race, and this is right after we finished. Again, Nate's camera phone isn't quite the same as my SLR but I didn't think running for two hours with a giant camera slung around my neck would be a good look:)

We were very wet and started getting cold after we stopped running, and I must say that showers taken after half and full marathons are pretty much the best thing ever.

Here we are back at Hannah's before the shower. We don't even look that wet, do we? But I promise we were. Even Henry was annoyed with us dripping all over him.


We cleaned up and my appetite came out to play with a vengance. We chose Square One Brewery for the specific purpose of order thier amazing pancakes. This meal DID deserve a photograph simply because it was so mouth watering.


And after that we were back in the car for the world longest drive. If I ever try to pull this stunt again....running a half marathon and driving all the way home in the same day....someone please talk some sense into me. I knew it would suck but I had no idea how badly. I should know better, I'm practically geriatric with my birthday next week.

I have one more post full of even more pictures waiting in the wings---if you can handle it. I'm not sure posts like these are even interesting to most of you readers but I'm still running low on my 'witty tank' at the moment. Do forgive me:)