KP Corporate 5k Run/Walk

Link

This year Brian and I did the KP Corporate 5K run/walk with my company. We've done this same race in the past, but we missed it the last 2 years. It was fun to go out and run around downtown and see coworkers doing it too.

It was even MORE fun this year, because I'm in better shape than I have been in the past. In the past I'd say that I walked more than I ran. This year I ran almost the entire thing! We estimate that I walked about 0.5 mile of the race, but we averaged about 11 minute miles, finishing up in just over 33 minutes, which is great for me!

Now I need to start doing 5Ks at 30 minutes and run the entire race. :)

Soon I'll post about my "improvements" to my Military Fitness Test. Next week or weekend I'm going to retest myself on my 2 mile run time, sit-ups and push-ups. I haven't been working out as much as I should have been, but I know I've at least improved on my push-ups and running. I'll attempt to do a pull up, but I haven't really been working on that strength at all (oops). :)

Dining Room Project!

Two weekends ago we spent the weekend painting our dining room. The room we think was a bright pink or red that was painted over with a white or cream before we bought the house. When we bought the house the room was a slight pink hue. Needless to say I didn't want a pink dining room.

Here's what it looked like before (I forgot to get one before we started taping off).:)

We also painted the chandelier in the room (which came with the house). We didn't really like the silver with gold specks.

We rigged up a paint booth for Brian to paint the chandelier. :)

Then here are our "final" pictures of the space. The chandelier is now a dark gray color. :)

And the room is two tones of gray. :) We already had great molding and chair rail, so we just avoided getting gray paint on it.

We want to add window treatments in a bright yellow with a yellow/gray/black pattern. We found some fabric we like, but it's quite expensive...so we'll see what we find.
We are happy with the result. One day we might buy furniture for in there...

One another note, we're getting really excited about going back to South Africa!! If you want to be on our email list for updates on our trip (and prayer requests) just let us know.

~Lindsey

Gun fire

Well earlier today I got an email from my mom earlier today that they went to go see Captain America (and she liked it). She said as they were backing out of the parking spot when they noticed a bunch of teenage-ish people running to the end of the parking lot. Then they heard 6-10 gun shots fired in the theater parking lot!!
They even saw a guy walk in front of their truck that appeared to be carrying a silver pistol in his hand!!! AHH!
They were ok, but a bullet did hit their truck.
So scary! I'm thankful God kept them safe.

She said only one person was injury and no one was killed, per the news.

But goodness, that is not an email you ever expect!

August!

Maybe I'll be better about blogging this month! Maybe not...we'll see.
Anyway, this month started with a work trip to Bethesda, MD. I had a conference there at NIH (National Institutes of Health). It was actually a really good conference.
It was also fun just being around DC. Monday night we went into DC and walked around the mall and at dinner down there. DC is really pretty nice and the Metro made it really easy to get around.

Then the weekend after that trip I went to KY to visit my sister. :) Thanks to work and going to South Africa, I had enough skymiles to fly there for free. I got there Friday and that night we saw Crazy, Stupid Love; which was good. Then Saturday we went to the Louisville zoo, but I forgot my camera. :(

Then we drove over into Indiana just because we were that close and could. I do have evidence of that thanks to my sister's phone, well the picture of us coming back into KY.

Then that night we did a 5K that started at 8pm. It was all around the city while the sun was setting. It was fun.
So far it's been a fun and travel-filled month. :) We'll see how the rest of the month is! We have plans to make over one of the rooms in our house...hopefully it'll actually happen and I can get some before and after pictures.

July Update

Hey Friends!

Well this July has flown by! The best part was an AWESOME vacation with our friends to St Thomas! We spent LOTS of time at the beach and snorkeling. It was so relaxing. St Thomas was gorgeous, definitely reminded us of God's phenomenal artistic abilities.

Enjoy a few pics....

This was the pool at the wonderful place we stayed (thanks friends!!)

One day we ventured over to St John and hiked down to a gorgeous deserted beach. It was fun! We didn't take an "after" picture of our feet though.

This was at Magen's Bay. We checked out a lot of other cool beaches too.

This was our first night there. This is the beach at the place we stayed. :)

This was our view out the window. :)

My brother had his b-day while we were gone and he passed his comps too! He gets to continue on with his PhD program. :)

Emily (b's sister) and I hosted a wedding shower for some great friends at church. It was fun to just hang out with them and celebrate their upcoming wedding. :)

I made some cupcakes:

Emily really did most of the work. She did a great job!

Then I had a project due for work, but it wasn't as stressful as deadlines usually are! I thank God for that. I think I'm really learning to trust Him more and worry less. :) Hopefully I can keep learning that.

We also got to celebrate our friends Jason and Lindsey's wedding this month. Their wedding was beautiful and the reception was lots of fun! I forgot a camera though...

It was also fun to see friends from Tech that we hadn't seen in a while.

Next on the agenda is a trip to KY to see my sister and do another 5k. :) Hopefully we'll do more than one post next month. :)

Busy life...

Oh the busy life we live. How hard this makes it to be consistent and much less remember to post, even just once a week.

Right now work for me has been pretty busy, a good busy as I feel challenged and that I am doing good work and I can tell my boss and team appreciate the work I am doing.

Along with work we are busy preparing for our trips. Vacation first then our next Hope2Africa mission trip. We are blessed with the chance to return to Cape Town and continue loving on African youth who live is such terrible conditions. We are also enjoying being the team leaders for this trip for our church. Lindsey is doing a wonderful job leading and I am enjoying supporting her. We have a great team and I am excited what God will do through us. Praying that we will be filled with His Holy Spirit and ready to be poured out to the youth. Also praying that our team will put away our own expectations and our own fears/pride and just allow God to use us in whatever way will bring Him the most glory and help develop these future leaders all the more to continue to be men and women of God in their community.

We attended Lindsey's work Summer picnic last weekend. A fun lunch complete with face painting, open mic, slip 'n slide for the kiddos, and good burgers and dogs. It was fun to see some of the people that Lindsey works with every day and get a chance to catch up with the ones I actually know.

We also just hosted our H2A team for a team dinner at our house. I made marinated chuck roast, bacon au gratin potatoes, green beans, salad for an army and french bread. It was a lot of fun around the table. I enjoyed the fellowshipping and as our H2A youth coined the term, swallowshipping. It was fun, even though we did miss some of the team that couldn't make it.

Hoping to see my family on Saturday, but will for sure see Lindsey's sunday afternoon and monday for the 4th. Also Lindsey will be working at the Atlantic Station celebration on Sat that our church volunteers at. Anyway still lots of other things going on as well, but I think I hit all the big ones. We will try to get some pictures up soon.

Oh if you want details on how to support us in prayer or otherwise for our trip to Cape Town, send us a note and we can get you the info.

US Military Fitness Test (for Lindsey)

I've decided to use the military fitness testing as my workout for this summer. It all started with some guys in the office making a little wager with each other using this military fitness test as a guideline. A coworker of mine and I almost joined them until we realized that they are probably spending between $40-$80 just to participate in the wager.

So I decided to just do it on my own. Basically I gave myself a "baseline" test last week. The test included how many push-ups (boy push-ups), sit-ups (all the way up so my elbows touch my knees) and pull-ups I could do along with how fast I could run 2 miles.

Then there were these charts online of "scores" for how many reps you could do (here's the charts I used and the guys at work are using). So I gave myself a score after my baseline test.

Now I'm working out to improve my run time, and increase my reps of the other exercises. I have 90 days (so do the guys at work), before I will "test" myself again to see how I improved.

Here's my baseline results:

Push-ups: 6 (equals 25 pts for me)

Sit-ups: 21 (equals 34 pts for me)

Pull-ups: 0 (equals 0 pts for me)

Run: 21:35 minutes (equals 10 pts for me)

Baseline Score: 69 out of a possible 400

*Oh, I should mention that the pull-ups are something the Marines add in. They aren't included in the link above. The guys at work basically made up their own scoring for pull-ups.

Now I'm working out and running to try and improve my score. I don't think I'll reach 400 points ever, nevertheless in 90 days, but I want to at least be able to "pass" by the army standards.

Passing means I need a score of 60 in each category and a minimum score of 180 (excluding pull-ups). That means, at a minimum, I need to be able to do:

Push-ups: 17

Sit-ups: 45

Pull-ups: 5 (my own personal goal)

Run: 20:30 minutes

I think it's all very possible. I actually want to be able to do the run in under 20 minutes. Well i want to exceed all of these "passing" scores. We will see! I'll update in mid-August. :)

Has anyone else ever tried this type of workout?

Lindsey, PE

I know Lindsey will likely write more later, but last night we found out wonderful news, she passed her PE exam and is now (save completing some paperwork) a professional engineer.  We are both so very thankful to God for His blessing in this and that this was all in His hands.  I am so very proud of her for all the hard work she has put in to get to this point, and that she has stayed faithful to where God has placed her.  Very exciting.
Short and sweet post, but wanted to get the news out on the blog.

Exercise

Today was the first day I braved the cooler morning temps to start riding my bike back into work.  I did pretty good, although I didn't push myself.  Thankful that no one tried to run me over with their car today.  I have been working out a bunch lately.  Any of the readers who have seen me recently might have noticed, as most people have lately, I probably have lost close to 25 lbs.  Still not in the shape I want to be in, now the weight isn't really an issue, but just where it is located.  Now I am more focused on building muscles and trimming fat, so really more redistribution of the weight I have.  Been pretty happy with the results so far.  Our upcoming vacation is definitely a great motivation as I want to be ready to be on the beach and feel comfortable, which I think I will now.  But yeah life is still pretty busy lots to do at work and at home and the many other volunteer things we do with church and KLife.  I will try to take photos as Sunday will be the last small group for the semester with my sixth grade guys.  I am making pancakes in honor of the IHOP men we are trying to be, men of integrity, honor, obedience and perseverance.  Other than that not too much exciting has been going on, but there will be more posts to come I am sure.

Cheesecake cupcakes, birthday and hair do's

This weekend was very fun! It started Friday night with Chick-fil-a at Klife, including a bounce house for the kids, so that was fun. I love Chick-fil-a, and Brian and I hadn't had any CFA in a while, so I was happy.

Then I went home and made cheesecake cupcakes for Anna's birthday! She said she liked chocolate cheesecake, so I kind of made up a recipe. I made 6 chocolate, 6-8 regular, 2 swirled, and 2 chocolate chip cheesecake cupcakes.

Brian and I woke up Saturday and cleaned up around the house and did some much needed laundry.

Then around noon I styled hair for a friend from church's sister for prom. She wanted a low, side bun that was kind of messy. It was fun to do hair again. I'll put a picture up on facebook or on our picture page with my other hair pictures.

When I got home, I wanted to play with my hair, so I gave myself a fun little side bun too, buta little neater with a braid.

We celebrated Anna's b-day on Saturday night and the cheesecake cupcakes were a hit and we had a great time with friends.

We'll have to post again later with our Mother's day events. :)

Secret Confession

Once, in Mexico, I sang in the worship band for the student ministry El Pozo (through Globalscope), thanks to my friend Whitney's encouragement. Not only was it singing in front of people, but it was singing in Spanish. At the time, I knew almost no Spanish. But it was so much fun! I don't have a rock star voice, but that's my secret confession: I wish I did have an amazing set of pipes and could sing

I don't want to be a famous singer or anything, I just want to belt out great songs and it sound awesome. Actually, if I'm in the car by myself, I'll still belt out the awesome songs, but I don't really know that it sounds awesome.

just wanted to share...

Do you have a secret confession?

Brian's Birthday

I have the best wife in the world.  No you can't argue with me over it, she simply takes the cake, yes intended since it was my Birthday weekend. Lindsey just was super sweet to me and I had one of the best birthdays I can remember.  A beautiful relaxing Saturday with my family. Me and Dad, yep beards are totally in now.

It started with some Wii with the family, while waiting for some of the others to be done with work/studying etc. This is me after playing probably the strangest game on Wii Fit Plus, that involves being a flying chicken and flapping your arms...  I was the only one who played it, and it was for everyone else to laugh apparently.  I still had fun, cause it was funny.

We also played Carcassone. This was the beginning:

I think they let me win, although I won because I luckily got the very last tile and it played perfectly for me. This is the board after we finished.

It was loads of fun.  We also played some Sorry Sliders, a few of us went for a walk to enjoy outside.
Once everyone got to the house, we were ready to go to dinner, to Ted's Montana Grill we went. This is the whole family, yes several them aren't technically related but they are family to us. :)

Dad and Eldest Daughter, aka Super Nurse:

Lil Sis aka Artist Extraordinare and Lil Sis' boyfriend/ our roommate

Having some fun with the complimentary reading glasses they brought to Dad before the food gets there:

This is me and my Kitchen Sink.  Oh so good.  I mean how can you go wrong with grilled mushrooms and onions, bacon, ham, cheese, fried egg all atop a B E A utiful bison patty. yummy.  Oh and you can see I had the broccoli instead of the fries, gotta be a little healthy. :)

A little healthy because I knew what was coming next.  Free Cookie and Ice cream dessert!  Pictured here is a snickerdoodle with vanilla ice cream

Then we went home and had real dessert.  My awesome wife, remember me telling about her?  She made from scratch a totally delicious Oreo Cheesecake for my BDay.  Here it is in the oven:

About to cut into the goodness.

After that we still had some daylight so we played a little KanJam, which you should all know about now.

Lindsey planned all of it and took such good care of me.  She really made it such a wonderful day and I totally enjoyed it.  She is awesome and has mad cheesecake making skills.

Easter in the Park

So this is a week late, well more by now, but wanted to share and actually show pictures of our Easter. We had a busy weekend for Easter, because Saturday we volunteered at Hop in the Park, which was Atlantic Station's Easter event.  There were all kinds of things going on, lots for kiddos to do.
They could make bunny masks:

Side walk chalk!

The ever popular bounce castle thing:

Ballons!

All sorts of games, complete with sugary prizes.  Parents I know you appreciated us hopping them up on sugar. (Pun intended)

Popcorn!

Bubbles! Bubbles and more Bubbles!

How many jelly beans are in here?  

(also our invites for our outdoor Easter service the next day)

We also for the first time in our 3 year partnership with Atlantic Station were able to both wear our church logo and actually talk to people about our church and what we are there for.

This is Karen and Connie. Connie is our director of mobilization and did a great job organizing everything for our event.

So you may be asking yourself, well what did you two do?
Lu was a face painter for approximately 4 hours.  Here she is hard at work.

I was sweating and working hard. Working hard? as a volunteer?  Yep.  This was me for the first hour or so.
Ready for my close up with and kiddos or puppies that wanted their picture made.  This was the humane society's booth and thankfully I only had to help out for a little while. :)  It was pretty fun though cause I was making crazy faces and you couldn't even tell.


All in all it was a lot of fun.  We had a blast and we sure were blessed the next day to see the fruits of our labor as we had around 370 people show up (kids included) to our Easter service outside in the park. It was a great day of celebration and the word was preached, several hearing for the first time.  My favorite thing about our outdoor service is that some people unexpectedly end up at church as they are just walking by and decide to stick around.  God is so good and our Easter was really great.


Wanted to share a little with you guys to get a taste of our service.  We opened with Revelation Song mixed with a Spoken Word piece by Celita Lewis.  Hope you guys enjoy.

Our 3rd Anniversary!!

As Friday morning (4/15), I knew that we were going to be celebrating our 3rd anniversary by going out of town somewhere and that's all I knew. Brian planned a surprise getaway for us, and I was very excited. I found out on the drive out of Atlanta that we were going to Tennessee near Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge. Brian had rented a cabin up there for us for the weekend. :)

This was our front porch, complete with rocking chairs.

This was the view out our back porch.

When we got there Friday night, we put a pizza and appetizer in the oven and unpacked. Brian surprised me with a 1 pound bag of Skittles (favorite) and with the information that he had picked this cabin/resort because there was a spa we could go to, if we wanted. :) Then we popped in a movie and enjoyed our pizza and spinach artichoke dip.

Brian had surprised me AGAIN and borrowed Disney's Tangled for us to watch. I had been wanting to see it! We had a very relaxing Friday night.

We even had a pet squirrel for the weekend :)

Saturday morning we woke up and decided to go on a hike at Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Well Brian made muffins for breakfast first, then we went out for the hike.

We went to Rainbow falls.
It was 2.7 miles uphill to the waterfall (5.4 miles round trip), and it was a gorgeous day to be out in the park. The first part of the hike was beside a creek/river.

Then we got to cross the river/creek about 3 or 4 times.

At this point (thanks to the heavy rains the day before) we had to swim across. Well not really, but it was fun trying to decide which rocks to cross over on.

Then at other points there were these nice man-made bridges.

But we made it!

We enjoyed a packed lunch up here and then headed back down to the car. We kind of made our own routes back down. :)

We also saw this cool guy under the water.

After our hike we went into Gatlinburg. Oh, good ole downtown Gatlinburg. :) We drove through Pigeon Forge and they have an upside down house

and the Titanic (iceberg and all) along with lots of other carnival/touristy things.

We wandered around and also played mini gold at "Adventure Golf", complete with pirates, dinosaurs, and alligators!

As you can see behind me, we were held up, so we had some fun taking pictures.

Brian, in the "jungle".

Brian humored me and took a picture with the other alligator.

Saturday night Brian took me out to a nice place called The Peddler. It was a neat steak house where there Peddler comes to your table to "sell" you your steak and shows you the cut you'd be getting.

Us outside the Peddler.

That night, unfortunately we ran into a unwanted adventure. Stay tuned for post #2 for that story and more pictures.