He's home!!

Mark is home!! Finally!! He got home Monday at noon. My work was nice enough to let me take the afternoon off at short notice (didn't find out about Monday's return until Sunday morning).

We have VERY MUCH enjoyed being together again!! It's almost like we just got married. We joked that we felt a little like we should have some kind ceremony before we could just go home together ;) Funny! Since Mark has been home he's enjoyed time off and relaxing, catching up on sleep and movies.

Mark got me a gift on his trip. An 80gig iPod!! My 2.5 year old 20gig busted a few months ago and we've missed having all our music in one place, especially on trips. That was a super fun surprise!!

This picture is Mark at his pre-op appointment for his eye surgery that we went to this morning. He's all assessed and approved to move forward with the surgery scheduled on Friday. We're very excited (although he's pretty nervous)! I'm taking the day off work so I can take him to the appointment, home, and take care of him.

If you are wondering about my hair appointment, it was just as fun as normal! If you're interested about how the color turned out, you'll just have to wait until you see me sometime. It's a little more red than last time.

Right now we are at Barb's. Just had a nice dinner and are going to catch up on the past 2 weeks of The Office.

Happy Halloween!

Thoughts in my head today...

I wonder when Mark is coming home? My current prediction is Tuesday (at the earliest). You know, all last week I prayed that God would bring Mark home on Tuesday. But I meant last Tuesday. I wonder if I didn't make that clear and God misunderstood?

I'm excited to eat the yummy spinach dip I made for the fun girlie ceramic party thing tonight that Jos organized. Although I'm not creative so am not looking forward to having my stupid creative thing look like a 5 year old did it.

While Mark has been gone I feel like I've been fairly productive with my time, now I'm ready for a break and some non-productive time.

I wonder when the strange knee, heel, and arch pain that I get randomly before/during/after I run, will eventually go away completely? Should I be doing special stretches? Na!

My good friend Raychel gave me some one-on-one attention the past two weeks and it's been SUPER fun to hangout with her. Love you friend!!

I have a hair appointment on Tuesday and I'm SO excited!! Do other people get as excited about hair appointments?

Pondering. On life and God.

Right now I'm at Barb's during my lunch break, eating left-over pasta and using the Internet. On the way here, I squealed my tires around a tight corner. Other than my purse, sitting on top of some boxes in the seat next to me, sliding into my head, it was super fun!! Sometimes a girl who owns a Mustang just needs to take a corner a little faster here and there.

Those of you in the blogging world might be wondering, "why the sudden influx of blogs?" Well, it's because my life and debriefing buddy is still overseas and me being an extrovert and verbal/written processor, needs an outlet.

When I started blogging I told myself I was not allowed to blog during periods of emotional instability. That is why there is sometimes long gaps in my posts. But in a moment of weakness today, I thought I'd share some things I've been thinking about over the past few months...

I've been pondering an idea about life. Do some things just happen? I believe God knows all and although we have free will to choose what we do with our lives, He knew what we'd choose (although this is hard to wrap the mind around). He's all knowing. I also believe that God does not "react" to things, why would He need to react? He already knew it would happen. So nothing is a surprise to our God.

The question is, does God always have some big huge plan in everything that happens in our lives? Or are some things just circumstantial, the effects of other people's lives rubbing off on us, or just life playing out?

I get stuck on these questions. If God does have a big huge plan for every single thing that happens to us, then are we wasting all these opportunities to learn or grow? Does he hold something back from us until we figure out what he's trying to teach us? What if we never get it? We will always be without the thing he thinks we need to be without to learn the "lesson" he has for us? And why do these "lessons" always seem to be hard, painful, and uncomfortable? Or are the lessons also good things but when it's good we don't notice it as much?

I guess you could say the opposite could be true. If God doesn't have a super big reason for everything bad that happens to us, then it's the same for good things. Good things just happen and are out there. For some reason, it's easier for me to believe the good things are direct from God and the bad things are just life. Maybe it's easier to believe because I don't feel like I deserve the good things and good things don't always happen to me (although God did give me a good thing in my super wonderful amazing and handsome husband!!). But how about all those little things that happen? Like having enough money in your budget to make it to the end of the month, or getting an unexpected refund check, or going to a meeting where your favorite cookies are available on the very day you were craving them. Are those things from God or just life?

There might not be an answer to these questions, but these things I wonder. On some level, I'd like to believe that the hard things are specific occasions God has set up for us to learn something, but when I believe this, I get afraid that I'm not learning it so the hard thing will last for a really long time!! Or at least until I get my slow wits about me enough to figure out he's trying to teach me something and learn it.

Is God all about just trying to teach us lessons? I feel like God is the only place in my life I can go without fear of failure and if I believe that I can fail in how I do a relationship with God, then where can I go? And where did these feelings of failing and never doing good enough come from? I feel like I can never do things quite good enough. I'm never putting my full effort into it, I'm slacking, I'm capable of more. I always feel like I'm failing. I could do better at my job, could keep my apartment cleaner, could make myself look better, could workout harder and run faster, could cook more often, could eat healthier, could be nicer to people, and on and on. Underlying everything I do is this feeling that I could be doing it better, more quickly, sooner, with better quality, more often, or less often. And after a while, it all just makes me tired.

Half Marathon

Sunday morning Trisha (my running partner) and I ran the Girlfriends Half Marathon in Vancouver, WA. This was a GREAT event, for a number of reasons.

Before every race, we talk about whether or not we want to run for a good finish time or just for fun. We normally settle on just having fun and if we beat out time, excellent! Same thing with this event. For me, it's two weeks after the Portland Marathon and for Trisha, it's her longest run for a couple of months so we both had potential handicaps going into the event.

The event was promoted for only women and advertised having cute men (who ended up being firefighters) hand out chocolates and food at the end, as well as a gift from a local jeweler. We didn't really pay too much attention to all of that when signing up, but it turned out to be pretty neat.

This was the first year for this event and they were very excited to get 400 participants. Both Trisha and I have done very small events before and didn't have very good experiences so were glad this wasn't shaping up to be one of those.

As it turned out, the run was GREAT!! We did a personal best of 2:17 and some seconds (see my previous post for other half marathon finish times). Although, shaving about 7 minutes off our previous time seems almost too good to be true so I'm almost wondering if the course wasn't measured correctly. But either way, we both did well and felt pretty good, only walking a couple times. It was a low key event with great weather! And as promised, there were men passing out chocolates, little charm necklaces (see picture) and water and other snacks at the finish.

And as an added surprise, I had a voicemail message from Mark when I finished, telling me how proud he was of me!! That was really neat because I love how supportive he is of my running and really missed having him there to cheer me on.

You can view our finisher pics here.

It was really neat to do this race with Trisha and run well and at a good pace. It was our last race of the season and really felt like a great finish to a really good running year! Another thing that was neat about this race is that the 13.1 miles carried me over 703 miles so far in 2007. 702 was my total mileage for all of 2006, which is something I had hoped to do, beat my distance for last year. So that was awesome!

While Mark has been gone

Last week I blogged about the things I hoped to get done while Mark was gone. He's still gone and here's the progress I've made so far.

Updated as of 10/22
1) get most/all of the wedding Thank You cards written (my plan is 10 per day)- Half way done. Hope to finish them this week.

2) get more caught up on scrapbooking (I'm breaking it out tonight to make headway on the big event I want to finish before starting on the wedding album)- Started, but it's a slow moving project.

3) try and eat through food in our freezer, cupboards and fridge, saving on grocery money (e.g. chips and dip, frozen crock pot meal, pb&j, and whatever else I can find) - I've hardly eaten at home, if that counts. And only spent money on 1 meal out so far.

4) try a few bread machine recipes that Mark might not care for - tried one and it was okay. I realized there aren't too many that Mark wouldn't eat that I want to try.

5) clean the apartment - DONE

6) try and "set up" the second bedroom, complete with making the desk functional, organize the bookshelf, hang pictures, update filing - I updated filing but otherwise didn't get any further on this list.

7) hang more pictures - I won't get to this.

8) plan a few social activities I might not otherwise, hangout with Barb, run a half marathon on Sunday, etc. - I ran the half marathon and did a personal best!! I've hungout with Barb and had dinner with my friend Raychel on Thursday night. But otherwise I mostly worked out and worked on my projects at home.

Being husband-less is lame!!

That's all I have to say about that today.

Today I saw...

While at Starbucks during my lunch break today, I ended up in line behind a beautiful woman! She was probably about my age, though could have been younger, dressed casually with straight brown hair, nicely made up face. She had a very cute 2-3 year old little boy on her hip and a little girl about a year or two older, in a wheelchair. The little girl obviously had some type of physical and/or mental disability.

I couldn't tell if the woman was the mother or care taker. Honestly, I was surprised to see such a beautiful woman with a disabled child. I'm not sure why.

Sitting across the room, I watched, trying to gage the level of interaction this woman had with the kids to possibly determine her relationship with them and/or her feelings towards the disabled girl.

Throughout the 30 or so minutes I sat there, the young woman never seemed to smile. She engaged very well with the little boy, but not as much with the girl. She fed her a Starbucks pastry of some kind and wiped her mouth at one point while talking sweetly to her, but most of her attention seemed to be on the little boy. At one point, I heard one of the children making a loud noise and I looked up to see the woman hugging the little boy in her lap with the little girl yelling for what, I assumed, was a desire for similar attention. In fact, it seemed almost obvious that this little girl wanted the same type of attention.

I struggled to try not to judge the beautiful woman, thinking she was mostly turning her attention towards the cute little boy and not enough of her attention towards the disabled girl. After all, the girl deserved just as much love and attention as the little boy. Just because she couldn't communicate or function like a "normal" child her age, didn't mean she wasn't aware of the attention being shown else where.

And then the thought occurred to me. What would I do if I was the care taker of these two little kids? In all honesty, I would have had trouble taking the job to begin with. I might have felt self-conscious when interacting with the girl in public (wondering if people like me were watching and judging). It would have been awkward for a while as I developed a relationship with the girl, which I might have done timidly. I might have felt like I was "scoring" more points because I was taking care of someone who needed special care.

I'm not sure there was a point to this story other than how I was struck by my own quickness to judge others. Whether that woman was the care taker or the parent, she was really trying and who am I to think I could do better in a similar situation? I probably wouldn't, which is why God didn't place me in that position. I'm left feeling like I should pray and should have looked for a way to encourage this woman, no matter how much I may have been a little intimidated by her beauty. She was really making a great effort and that is certainly more than I have ever done!!

Running...

I have a love hate relationship with running. Sometimes it's the hardest and last thing I want to do and other times I love it and wish I could do more!! The latter are few and far between feelings ;) Although tonight was a good run. I changed at the gym after my workout and put on my Portland Marathon finishers shirt. I've worn this shirt more proudly than any other race shirt I've ever earned! We trained, we ran, we ran well, we finished!

One thing that always makes me feel inspired, is doing races. A while ago I decided to start keeping track of all my races. I went back to try and remember as many as I could. I started doing 5 and 10ks in 2001 and 2002, but could only remember enough to start tracking from 2003. Here's the run down...

'03 32:15 5k race
'03 1:02 Bridge to Bridge 10k
'03 Bloomsday 12k 
'04 2:38 November Seattle half marathon
'05 BolderBoulder 10k - couldn't find results
'05 2:17 June Columbia River Gorge "half marathon"(12.2)
'05 Oct Race for the Cure 5k - couldn't find results
'06 Mar Heart & Sole 10k - couldn't find results
'06 2:35 June Governor's Cup half marathon
'06 6:20 June Mayors Marathon
'06 6:41 July Gateway to The Pacific marathon
'06 Aug Hood to Coast Relay -
'06 Sept Austoria Assault Adventure Race
'07 2:25:02 April Whidbey Island Half Marathon (time was actually a few minutes less)   
'07 2:24:52 (actual) June Helvetia Half Marathon
'07 5:24:23 (actual) October Portland Marathon

And speaking of the feeling of accomplishment, here are our marathon finisher pics!

He's gone!

My wonderful, darling, super amazing husband flew out this morning for almost 2 weeks in Taiwan on business. Here was his final text message before turning of his phone for the last leg of his journey, "Lov u got to go call soon". 'Soon' being 15+ hours from now. We actually hadn't really figured out how he was going to call me. So 'soon' could be more like 24+ hours.

When talking about Mark being gone, some people's response is, "you'll be fine" or "oh, it will be over before you know it". To those people, can I just ask that you NOT comment on this post. You are correct on both counts, but "you'll be fine" and "he'll be back before you know it" won't be the warm body sleeping next to me at night.

Don't get me wrong, I'm working on ways to stay 'fine' and pass the time quickly...

1) get most/all of the wedding Thank You cards written (my plan is 10 per day)

2) get more caught up on scrapbooking (I'm breaking it out tonight to make headway on the big event I want to finish before starting on the wedding album)

3) try and eat through food in our freezer, cupboards and fridge, saving on grocery money (e.g. chips and dip, frozen crock pot meal, pb&j, and whatever else I can find)

4) try a few bread machine recipes that Mark might not care for

5) clean the apartment

6) try and "set up" the second bedroom, complete with making the desk functional, organize the bookshelf, hang pictures, update filing

7) hang more pictures

8) plan a few social activities I might not otherwise, hangout with Barb, run a half marathon on Sunday, etc.

But I would trade ALL of that list (no matter how much I love a sense of accomplishment), to have my husband at home again!!

By the way, his trip got postponed 2 days so instead of leaving Saturday morning, he left today, which gave us the weekend to have lots of quality time together before he left. We had a really good time of running some errands, working on little projects together, and just being with one another before he left. It was wonderful!!

Mark's birthday

We celebrated Mark's 29th birthday yesterday. It was a wonderful day!! We both took the day off work (partly because he leaves on Saturday for a 2 week business trip to Taiwan so we wanted to maximize our time together). In the morning, we ate breakfast, drank coffee, cuddled on the couch, and enjoyed a morning with no agenda. We had lunch at a little cafe using a gift certificate our friend Marla got us as a wedding gift, (Thanks Mar!), made all 3 bank stops, enjoyed birthday celebration afternoon massages at GiGi's salon & spa, ate a brownie from Elephants Deli, dinner at Benihana's and an all around wonderful day!!

While at dinner I gave Mark his birthday gift, an appointment to get eye surgery on the 1st of November. He was so surprised that he hardly knew what to say. I've learned something from Mark about gifts, lie, lie, lie!! We have a rule that we cannot lie to each other unless it's for the sake of a special occasion. So every time Mark had mentioned a desire for eye surgery in the past 5 months, I'd tell him how we couldn't afford it, wasn't in the budget, etc., when I had been planning it all along. I was so convincing that he honestly thought we couldn't make it happen. He laughed when he realized how well I had played off the letter he'd gotten from the eye place a couple of weeks ago confirming his appointment. - He hadn't opened the envelope by the time I came home so I quickly opened it and hid all the important information just leaving the brochure and then gave him a hard time about looking into it or getting on some mailing list when we couldn't afford it yet. I "fake" threw the envelope and brochure away (after asking him), but kept the brochure to scrapbook later. - He had NO idea, it was wonderful!!

Now we are trying NOT to think about how we have Mark's trip looming before us and only a few more evenings to enjoy together before he's gone. I've decided that pretty much everything can wait until after he's gone so I can enjoy our last few days together.

On a separate note, I've been reading through some of the Old Testament, and just finished 1 & 2 Samuel. I read 1 Kings chapter 1 today and was surprised to read that king Solomon was the son of David and Bathsheba (the woman he had an affair with while her husband was off at battle and later had her husband killed when he realized he got her pregnant). As a consequence, God killed off the little one they had born in sin and after David repented, God gave them another baby. I don't remember if the name of that child was mentioned but I feel a bit silly for not ever knowing that Solomon was the son of David and Bathsheba. I honestly thought the account of the Bathsheba story was just a random one and didn't realize how much it tied into the history. That's what I like about reading the OT, I always find the connections to the stories I've always heard that I never knew were connected.

Marathon pics

Our pre race meal at Macaroni Grill.

The morning of the race. Ian asked Mark to help pin his number on.

The runners before the race started.

Mom and I between mile 1 and 2, we were doing good so far ;)

Finish pics coming soon. They are on Uncle Jerry's camera.

Finishers!! 2007 Portland Marathon

It was my 3rd marathon, but the first one I was able to run the entire thing.

It was good!! We (mom and I) started off at a decent pace. The beginning is nice and distracting because there are so many people around. I was a little nervous to see how my knee would react. Around mile 3 I felt a few pains and got kind of scared. Mom suggested to just keep going and as long as I kept a mostly straight line it wasn't too bad. The pain eventually went away and I was SO excited that I was finally able to think about the rest of the race.

We saw Mark and Aunt Andrea (Uncle Jerry was also running) around mile 2 and 5 (we had a loop early on). It was fun to see them. And scanning for them in the crowd was a good distraction. Mark kept snapping pictures of me and had a huge smile on his face.

My running partner (Trisha) jumped in with us at mile 6 and ran with us until right before mile 17. At mile 8 there was a 4ish mile out-and-back that was flat and some what boring. But the fun part was looking for Jerry and Ian (my cousin, also running) coming the other direction. Again, a nice distraction. We eventually spotted them and met in the middle to high-five each other. At this point I was still feeling pretty good.

By the time we came out of the out-and-back, around mile 13 and 14, I was feeling pretty tired. There was a bridge around mile 17 and I heard we had to conquer a huge hill right before hand. With mom and Trisha's encouragement, I just pushed through my tiredness and knew that once we got to the bridge would start to be able to countdown to the end. 9 miles is still a long ways to go, but it's better than 17!

Trisha left us at the bottom of the hill and we chose to walk it since it was steep and long! We got to the top and ran across the bridge and down the other side and mom started lamenting about her joy in getting to mile 20, which was still 2 miles away. From mile 18 to 20 we were starting to hurt a little more. The scenery was nice and there were more spectators. All the water stations were a life saver!! And Red Bull was handing out cans a little after mile 18. We shared a can and chugged it down. The cold and fizz was SO nice!!

Between mile 20 and 21 we started talking with a guy running next to us. He was from California and on his 4th marathon. That was a nice diversion. About this time we were getting more and more tired, but no serious injuries, only the kind of aches and pains you'd expect from running 4+ hours. We decided at the 21 mile marker we'd start walking a little at each marker (we had walked a little at the water stations, but not much more than that). We ended up walking up any hills that were very dramatic, which weren't many and walking about half of mile 21. But we ran most of mile 22, which was partly downhill. And by that point, we were hurting but getting excited about finishing! Even though you only have 4 more miles left, it still feels like forever away!! We weren't quite in the home stretch, so were getting excited, but not too excited.

Between mile 22 and 23 we saw a MAX train that had been stopped because of what, we think, was an accident with someone on a bicycle. We kept going but were walking a little more frequently.

At the end of mile 24 and beginning of mile 25 we were crossing yet another bridge. At this point you couldn't believe how long 1.2 miles felt!! We ran off the bridge around the corner and then walked a little. Mom was really struggling so we decided to run/walk between the lights for the final stretch. We had about 8 blocks to go before we turned for the final 3 blocks. We ran from one stop light to the next and then walked the same distance and then ran again and continued that pattern until the turn. At the turn onto the final 3 blocks, we started scanning the crowd for our people. We saw them in the second block, Mark, Aunt Andrea, Aunt Cindy and her gang (Ian's mom and family) all shouting for us!! That was pretty cool. We turned a slight left and there it was, the finish!! We ran across at about the same time and then looked at each other as we started walking to the places were they take our timing chip off. We both felt pretty proud and thrilled! I had my chip cut off first but waited for mom before we walked any further to get our medals and space blankets. After that was about a 2 block loop that took you through a bunch of food stations, where I think we grabbed 1 of almost everything. The little cups of OJ and oatmeal cookies were especially good!! Then we walked out to meet our people. Mom called dad and was a little emotional. I was almost too as I realized we'd been trying to do this race for 3 years and were SO excited that we finished and were able to run the entire thing!! Both of us were skeptical about actually running the entire since we hadn't been able to before.

Today's quad and knee pain definitely seem worth every bit of the 26.2 miles that we ran yesterday!! Although going down stairs is rather uncomfortable. I truly feel like we accomplished a great thing and doing it with mom and accomplishing a goal we've had for 3+ years was something I'll never forget!!

Momma #3062, thanks for being a great race buddy and cheerleader all along the training process and running route! Your excitement and encouragement to keep going kept my feet moving!! As with the Anchorage Marathon, I won't forget the moment after the race started, before we got to the start line, as we looked around and at each other and wondered what the next 26.2 miles would hold. Love you!!

Jerry, #3054 now is time for your 'thank you' speech! Thanks for saying that I was the reason you were out there running, that meant the world to me! I'm SO thrilled for you!!

Ian #3984, I'm proud of you!! Only running up to 16 miles beforehand and going out there and pushing yourself the extra 10 was a awesome!! Good job!! And I can't wait to hear how the Tokyo marathon goes!

We are looking forward to next year's race... we've all (not sure about Ian yet) talked and plan to run it again ;)

Mom and I had PRs (Personal Bests) at this race! If you read my previous post, I noted that our first marathon time was 6:20 (we walked half). Our time yesterday was 5:24, just under an hour faster!!

You can view race results, runstats, and pix (which aren't up yet), here. My number was 3059. I'll post a few of my own pics tomorrow.

Another highlight was having my new name called as I crossed the finish line. Fun to have my first race as a married woman be a marathon!!

Marathon week!!

So, the knee saga continues. After Saturday's bomber of a run, I've been icing and taking it easy. I did a bit of a test workout on Wednesday and did 15 minutes walking on the treadmill and 15 minutes on the elyptical. My knee(s) didn't hurt, but I "felt" them more than normal. Who knows!! It sucked to be on the treadmill and not run. I was jealous of all those running around me and hope they appreciated that they can run.

The little 30 minute diddy at the gym was my only semblance of a workout this week. It's kind of nice to have extra time on my hands but lame to not be able to workout. I didn't realize I actually sort of enjoyed it until I wasn't able to do it any more.

It's helpful to have a cousin that's a Physical Therapist, so I called Chante and got her thoughts about my knee over the phone. After two conversations, we decided that it didn't sound like much, there was no major trauma to the knee and since working out at this point won't help my marathon training, continue to take it easy, ice (which I'm not good at remembering to do), stretch (which I'm not good at doing either), take lots of anti-inflammatory and just see how it goes. If I can get to at least over the half way point before I start to poop out, I'll be happy. I just want to run most of this race since I haven't run more than half of a marathon (this will be my third). My best marathon time was 6:20. I know, pathetic!! Don't judge.

Mom flys in today for the marathon! Tomorrow my aunt, uncle, and cousin are coming up from Salem (although cousin Ian is all the way from Japan where he's stationed), to pick up our race packets, eat a yummy pasta dinner, and then sleep in preparation for the big event!!


This picture was taken last summer when mom and I did our first marathon in Anchorage, AK. Mom got injured at a half marathon 2 weeks prior so we weren't sure how the race would go. We ended up running and walking half of every mile.

Other news from the week:
- I used my new KitchenAid mixer for the first time, making chocolate chip cookies for Mark (and me). Thanks again, Mom!!

- Tuesday was our 1 month anniversary ;) It seems like an eternity ago since the wedding, but life with Mark is still fantastic! We've had a few little "blips", but they mostly have to do with my always fluxuating hormones. Mark has been SO sweet and sensitive all the time!

- We're starting our new budget this month. After some "haired" conversations about different elements (but are in agreement about most of it), we finally hashed out a plan. We're a bit behind on implementing and trying to live off a more limited budget, but should be good in the end. We're "this" close to paying off our second (and only other) credit card, which is VERY exciting.

- Speaking of exciting, Mark's bday is on Tuesday (the 9th). We're both taking the day off, which will be super fun!! He'll be the big 29!!

- Not so exciting is that Mark flys to Taiwan for work on the 13th, which is part of why we're taking the 9th off, for a little extra time with each other. If all goes well, he'll be back on the 5th.

My weekend was fantastic!!

Other than my knee issue rising in time for my run on Saturday and cutting it short so I didn't make it worse, it was a terrific day!! Mark and I stayed home, ate yummy chocolate chip pancakes and watched our first Netflix, disk 1 of Heroes. We enjoyed the first 2 shows so much that after pushing ourselves to clean for a while (our little place hadn't been cleaned since before the wedding), we walked down to Albertsons for groceries and the next 2 discs of the show.

We came back, made nachos, threw together our very own bean dip with refried beans mixed with salsa, sour cream, and taco seasoning, and proceeded to watch both disks! By the time we were nearly finished with the third disk, we took a break for me to make brownies and Mark to walk down and get the next two discs. He came back and we returned to the show until we fell asleep after midnight.

All in all, a great day!!

Yesterday we went to church, lunch with Barb, and finished the next 2 discs of Heroes before heading to Barb's for dinner and hangout after she got home.

Again, another terrific day!! Relaxing, time together, and no agenda, just what we needed... a little slice of heaven,

Speaking of heaven, I'm reading the Randy Alcorn book about Heaven and am very excited to see what he says on the subject. Honestly, I never much cared to learn about heaven. I used to think that being in a world without sin would be wonderful enough so I never took it much beyond that, assuming we wouldn't be able to imagine and it was all speculation on what it would really be like. But since marrying Mark, I want to know more about it because now I don't really want to be away from Mark and trust that God is trustworthy in that heaven will be better than life with Mark (or at least a life where I'm not in a married relationship with Mark), but it's hard to imagine. Alcorn says that it's our imagination that helps us think about heaven. He was saying in the chapter I read today, that we need only look around us and imagine everything as perfect, and that's what heaven will be like!! That's a fun thought! He even mentions something about how we'll have work in heaven... so, will we enjoy our work?

All very interesting... I'm curious to see what he says about our relationships with each other in heaven. I've only started the second chapter so am only at the beginning!

Oh, and I have to mention that another super cool thing about this weekend is a finally got my bread machine bread recipe book and tried 2 of the breads, potato bluecheese and pumpkin pecan. They are SO fun!! I'm in love with my bread machine!! Thanks again, Mom!!