Weekend Update

Happy Monday everyone! It's a big week around here - it's half-marathon week. Which means I am supposed to take it easy and rest up for the big race. Unfortunately my work has other plans for me. I'll be heading up to Cincinnati tomorrow and potentially Columbus on Wednesday night / Thursday. At least if I end up going to Columbus I will get to stay with my parents - they just happen to live right down the street from my company's office in Columbus. (I don't think I've told my parents about this yet since we will decide at our meeting tomorrow if I even need to go to Columbus later in the week and I don't want to get all excited about going home and then not get to go - I haven't been there since Christmas and I miss it lots!)

Anyways, before the busy week gets started I thought I would do a little weekend recap.

Friday night we had our young life leadership meeting. Followed by a 3 hour dinner with some friends at Shamrocks. Shamrocks is one of our favorite restaurants, but the service is a little slow if there's just 2 of you. So when we had a table of 13 (I think?) we were there. forever. But we were with our friends and didn't have anywhere else to be so we enjoyed the hangout time.

Saturday morning it was supposed to rain. So I decided that I would do my long run on Sunday instead. It didn't rain, which was good for Derek's soccer league and he didn't have to cancel any games. I slept in until 10:30. I never wake up at 10:30. It was glorious. I had some breakfast, spent a little time in the word, and proceeded to head back to bed til 1:00 when Derek was done with soccer. I have no idea what made me feel the need to sleep this much.  Anyways, Derek came home and we ate lunch, and then he proceeded to fall asleep. I couldn't sleep anymore, so I went over to my friends Jenna and Holly's apartment where friends were watching 10 Things I Hate About You, (which I can't remember the last time I watched - it's hilarious), and crafting.

After that I went home to try and get a little house work done, since usually I try to do this while Derek is at his soccer games, but clearly all the sleeping did not leave time for cleaning. Well, instead of cleaning I decided that I wanted to try roasting a chicken for dinner. A whole one. I found th recipe on Pioneer Woman's blog  and have wanted to try it for a while. So I went to the grocery and got my shopping for the week done, as well as bought the chicken. I got home and began rinsing it and getting everythng ready when I found out that Derek was going to go out to eat with some high school guys from his Bible Study. So now I have a whole chicken ready to roast and no one to help me eat it. So I called my friends Sarah and Katie and they came over and ate with me. (Except Sarah brought her own food because she didn't want chicken - but she still hung out while we ate.)

Ok, so roasting the chicken was an adventure. First of all, the raw chicken itself is just kind of gross. Rinsing it off and stuff is not my favorite part. Luckily preparing it was pretty simple. I stuffed it with half a lemon, half an onion and some garlic. Then I used herbs from my garden mixed in canola oil to rub on the outside of the chicken. I'm not sure if I used too much oil or what happened, but when I put that sucker in the oven, smoke immediately started coming out of the oven. The oil was popping and smoking, which made me nervous because I have a gas oven, and it set the smoke detector off twice while it was cooking. Luckily a fire never started in the oven, although I got out my fire extinguisher so I would be ready just in case, but the whole downstairs was filled with smoke. I had doors and windows open, fans going, and it was still so smoky. And the thing had to cook for an hour and 15 minutes. My house smelled like chicken the rest of the night and Sunday morning too. I smelled like chicken the rest of the night too. Lovely.

Anyways, the chicken did cook, and it was delicious. We made mashed potatoes to go with it, and Kaite brought over some spinach and artichoke dip for an appetizer. It was all very tasty. (Ok, wow this post is long - sorry I didn't realize that the chicken story would be so long. I'll try to speed it up.)

Anyways, after dinner the three of us headed out to Old Navy and Target because I needed to go swimsuit shopping and what girl ever turns down a trip to Target? Old Navy didn't have much in the way of swimsuits. Target had more, but none of them fit me very well. I was trying to find a tankini or one piece for young life camp. One pieces are pretty much impossible for me to find because I'm tall and have a long torso. And it's hard to find many tankinis that are cute. So the bathing suit mission was a fail. But I did manage to try on about 20 other things, mostly dresses that were too short, again because I'm so stinkin tall, but I did end up getting one really cute brown dress and a pair of nicer sandals that I could wear with it and many other things. They also had cute black leggings for $6 which I couldn't turn down (even though I don't have anything to wear with leggings, but I'll figure that out later).  So Target was still a success. And I had a gift card that paid for all of it - holler.

Our friend Donielle was at a wedding that night, but since Target is open til 11 and we managed to walk around there for 2 HOURS, Donielle was able to meet us there. After Target, Katie went home (since she had to wake up real early and drive to Nashville) and then Sarah and Donielle came back to my house where we found Derek and Keith. They had just finished hanging out with the LCA guys so the 5 of us decided to go to Drakes (at like 11:30). We hung out there til like 1 or 1:30, and I'm sure we looked kind of funny. Derek, Keith and I were totally not dressed for going out, we were super casual. Sarah looked nice, and Donielle had just come from a wedding so she was way dressed up. We probably looked funny. But we had a good time.

So, finally getting to Sunday, Sunday morning rolls around and I have to get up at 7:15 to go for an 8 mile run before church (since I decided to sleep in on Saturday). Which is awesome considering I went to bed around 2. So I imagine it was probably a combination of the fact that this was my last long run at the end of a 10 week training program, 5 hours of sleep and walking around target for 2 HOURS the night before, but the Sunday morning run was no fun. My legs felt like cement blocks. I never got into it. I willed myself to run 8 miles. And it took me 5 minutes longer than the last time I did it 5 weeks ago. Awesome. I talked to some friends who have done this before and they say that is normal. Thank goodness. I was beginning to get worrie that if I could barely make it 8 miles this Sunday, how in the world am I gonna do 13 next Sunday? But everyone assures me I'll be fine.

The rest of Sunday consisted of church, lunch with our friends Eric and Rachel after church, then home to prepare a talk for campaigners (our Sunday nigh Bible study with LCA students).  We had a meeting for our young life summer camp trip and then campaigners with high school friends that night. And then, just when you thought I was done, my poor puppy got sick in the middle of the night. What a great way to end a weekend!

When I started I didn't feel like that much happened this weekend but apparently I have more to share than I thought. That or I am incapable of being concise and to the point and share WAY too many details. (Also, isn't it fun how many of my friends have blogs?)  If you're still reading, I am impressed. I'll stop now.