It's been too long, but I've been busy.

It's been too long since I last posted. And I'll readily admit that there's not enough hours in the day combined with the fact that I was too tired to divide my attention between watching Scandal and writing blog posts.  Some things just deserve a person's full attention.

Ya know?

Along with my commitment to JLSA (winning JLSA 2012-2013 Board Member of the year! what?!)

Justin's first JLSA meeting EVER!

                                               

The award!

helping a dear friend raise funds to beat blood cancers ($130,000+ for the LLS Man and Woman of the Year competition),

Justin, Bryce, Erin and me celebrating Team Bryce!

focusing on my running (which has gone past a jogrun to an actual run),

Beach 2 Bay half marathon relay team: Coastbusters (Lake, Erica, Matt, Mireya, Justin and Me).

#AintFraidOfNoCoast.  We finished in 4:43:21 with an avg pace of  10:48.

                                   
going to community events at awesome places like SAMA,

Justin, Elizabeth and me holding art we liked. Duh.

                               
keeping my Mom happy on Mother's Day (don't knock the bowling),
                                      

and visiting my best friend, Amy, in San Fran,

They have happy hours at places with views of things like the light show on the Bay Bridge. (Me, Tori and Amy) #LivinsEasy

                                   
I've also maintained my sanity by watching TV that makes the hubs retch (no pics of the poor programming choices or pics of Justin looking ill are necessary).

But I also go to Scorpions games with him, so you won't hear any real complaints.

They won!

So that's a quick recap of the last month.  What's new with you?

LLS 1st Annual San Antonio Herothon

We have some close friends who are big supporters of The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. So when they innocently asked if we were going to do the 1st annual Herothon event in San Antonio, we heartily agreed.

This was before Spain, France, Christmas and a whole mess of time that meant we lacked the proper preparation because we did not make time to adequately train, even in a half-assed manner. We walked Wookie! 3 times last week. That and a 3- mile run our first day back from Europe is about all the working out we'd done. 

So when we were in the car at 5:50 this morning Justin calmly said "this is a stupid idea. We are going to die." 

I replied "You're driving the car, literally, so you can turn it around."

He didn't. 

We got to the parking lot and before forking over the $10 parking fee (a drop in the bucket in comparison to the race registration fee) he asked "are you sure about this, I don't want to disappoint you."

"You can decide, we have 4 hours to finish, I think we've got this," I said.

We paid and parked. 

And when we were under 15 minutes per mile for the first mile, Justin got pumped up. We weren't going to take 4 hours. No way. Even with a porta potty break at mile 1 (the lines right before the start were way too long). 

We were jovial enough to smile in front of the Alamo between miles 2 and 3:

And then we saw our pace at the mile 3 marker and I mentioned, that not only had Justin never trained for something like this, but he was rocking it, kicking ass and we might very likely beat my time from the SA R'n'R half this past November (3 hours 25 minutes)

Cue the competitive light bulb.  Justin was determined that I was going to set a personal record and he was going to make sure we did it together. 

In fact we were feeling so great between mile 5 and 6, when we saw a friend outside his house with his little one cheering the runners on, we stopped and chatted. 

Then we hit mile 8.56789 or something like that. Way more than half way complete, but still almost 5 miles from the end. It was the wall. But we we kept moving.

Mile 10-11, had signs from families cheering on runners and named those they loved and for whom the ran in honor, or in memory.  Then there were the survivors participating alongside us. 

Those last 3 miles were the hardest, but those constant reminders of why the event was happening were immensely motivating.  

We jogged the downhills, including the last big bridge (that we hit at the beginning too!), and into the finish line at 3 hours and 17 minutes.

And we were still smiling:

Justin received his first half marathon medal (my third):

And then we took a nap. 

Inaugural JLSA's Resolve for a Better SA 5K

Alternately titled: One of the many reasons I haven't posted much in the last year.

This morning the Junior League of San Antonio held it's inaugural Resolve for a Better SA 5K. Behind the name- it's still fairly early in the new year and getting healthy/being active is a common resolution and making a better SA is what JLSA is all about.

I was fortunate enough to be on the planning committee for this (in addition to other responsibilities for JLSA), but when you believe in something you make it happen.

And did these ladies make it happen. It helped that we took a couple of 5K planning trips to Port A, that really got our gears turning, and we all completed the audacious 12 races in 12 months. So we've done our race research.

At our last run- Color Me Rad, from left to right: Our fearless leader Mireya, Erica -Communications Extraordinaire, Kristen- Master of Volunteer Coordination, and Me- "We can always move the table later" Ariana

We had a veteran community runner in our midsts and he posted about the run on a Runner's World Forum. Thanks to Scottydog for supporting our event! You can read his post on the forum here.

Thanks to everyone who came out to support the event (almost 300 registered runners and walkers), signed up to fundraise and donated to those who fundraised!   You are helpling JLSA support over 60 Community Agencies with volunteer time and money. Things like this don't happen without people supporting them and awesomely patient spouses who let them get planned.

2012 Year in Review.

What to say about 2012?

It had it's ups and downs.

My family mourned the loss of my paternal Grandmother early this year. She lived a long full life and because of her we are all here. She was a mother, a traveler, an ice skater, a storyteller, an artist. She loved and is loved and she will always be remembered.

In comparison to that the other low points are not even blips on the radar. Her long full life is a reminder to constantly go and create my own stories and I definitely did my best this year.

I completed my second half-marathon, this time properly training and beating my first time by almost an hour. Thanks to a lovely group of ladies (and one of their committed husbands and the constant cheering on from my own) I completed one race a month, besides the half along with all of them.

I've had the honor of being on the Junior League of San Antonio Board of Directors as the Community Council Chair for the 2012-2013 year (the fun continues until May of 2013).

Justin and I traveled. Mostly together, sometimes separately. We went to Minnesota to remember my Grandmother, Leakey on the Frio River to celebrate friends, San Francisco to celebrate the 4th of July with Amy and Doug, Las Vegas to celebrate birthdays, Madrid/Toledo/Paris/Brussels/Barcelona to celebrate Christmas.

I went to Cabo and Rockport/Port Aransas to celebrate friendships and Austin to celebrate music at ACL.

We renovated our kitchen. Not with our own hands, unless writing checks counts. We are smart enough to know our limits. So soon we will travel to our dining room to celebrate cooking in our house.

It's been a year to remember. The ups and the downs.

Seven days until finish two.

One week from today I will be done with my second half marathon (2012 Rock 'n' Roll San Antonio).  Because my first one was so awful (due to improper training- my mom was a rockstar, I was a weakling) it's almost like this is the first one.

I am stoked. I am ready to go out and rock this thing. I am ready to work on my running speed after this is over, since I won't have to focus on my distance.  Saturday mornings will be all mine again.  You see when your jogrun is at about 13:30 minutes a mile (just under 4.5 mph), even the longest run done so far, at 10 miles, takes you over 2 hours.

Last time it took me over 4 hours to finish, and my mom was a trooper with me the whole way.  Justin even provided me moral support by walking a couple of the last miles with us.  He should have just signed up for the whole thing.

This time will be different. With my fully charged iPhone, my awesome mix of music and a little voice telling me to go faster (literally, with an app on my phone).

All I have to do is follow the path shown by the purple line:

Want to pay to get text messages to see where I am on the course? Go here. I swear these people think of everything.

Please send me some positive race day vibes!

City Solve San Antonio- Winners

My friends and I entered a Photo Scavenger Hunt for fun.

Four unassuming young women from the Junior League of San Antonio.

For fun we solved the clues, ran around downtown and Southtown San Antonio in the rain and took multiple pictures with all teammates in them.

I fell behind the group as we ran towards the finish line, but saw the cute couple team, The Tortoise and The Hare, behind me and knew this was no time to walk.

Must keep jogrunning.

We ran into the back porch of The Friendly Spot to check in at the finish line and there was no one else there.

We were the first team to get there and we maxed out the bonuses to further reduce our check-in time.

We couldn't believe it. We just didn't want to be last and we had no clue where we were in the game because teams could go to whatever spot they wanted in whatever order they wanted. All 68 teams.

And we came in first. Can't you tell by the smiles on our faces?

Miami Championships here we come?!

Pinterest Cauliflower Pizza Dough

I have to tell you the truth. 

I'm addicted to Pinterest.

But, and this is something to consider, I've actually made stuff from there. Not as much as some, but more than others. So at least there's that. Which I guess isn't really much. You know what is really something though?

Cauliflower Pizza Dough!!!!!!

I'd seen it and pinned it, twice actually. Here and here.

For this little kitchen experiment, I went with pin numero dos. Which links to a pretty cool site that I haven't spent much time on, but I want to give the Cook Lisa Cook blog the credit it deserves for making this a pretty successful endeavor.  Again, I didn't change the main part of the recipe so please go to her site and give her the hits it deserves. But if I can do it... you know what comes next.

I didn't take pictures of all of the steps, but it looks pretty similar to what you'll see on the Cook Lisa Cook blog when you go for the step by step. 

This was mixing the riced cauliflower with the egg and cheese to bind everything together.

Justin walked in I was mixing the dough. He later told me that when he saw it he was "less than enthused" because he hadn't enjoying the pureed cauliflower experiment that I did not document. Let's just say it has to be really hot to be enjoyable and comparable to mashed potatoes.

The dough all spread out on the countertop convection over tray.

The beef cooking up. I am a meat eater. (Not a "that's what she said joke.")

The dough all crisped up and ready for toppings! I was getting excited at this point.

A bad picture of the finished product, but still tasty looking! Loaded with part skim mozzarella and about 2 ounces of beef on each side of the pizza.

 I do think I would cook it in the big over next time, or use less dough, so it is thinner and crispier throughout.

But even Justin said it was a lot better than he expected, so I'd say it's a win!

Do you think you might give this recipe a spin?