Giveaway!!

Hi friends,
As April is nearing, I'd like to ask you to revisit my recent post about "3ELove" and consider pledging your vote for the Pepsi grant. Actual daily voting will begin April 1st. I would LOVE to have as many people as possible pledge their vote prior to April and to motivate you I'd like to have a GIVEAWAY!!

If you leave a comment on my 3E Love post (or this post) you will earn 1 (one) entry into the giveaway drawing.

If you follow the provided link and pledge your daily vote and tell me that you pledged your vote, you will earn 1 (one) entry.

If you share this link http://www.vote3elove.com on either your facebook, twitter, or blog and tell me about it you will earn 1 (one) entry for each place you share the link.

All in all you could have up to 5 entries in the giveaway drawing. So please pledge your vote now and comment on my post by Wednesday at the latest!!

By pledging to vote, you are doing your part in starting the conversation about the social acceptance of people with disabilities! So, thank you for your involvement!

Run for a Purpose

Today Ross and I ran in the "Run for a Purpose" 5K in Mckinney. Our friend, Lindsey, was the race director and volunteers with the "Rexanna Foundation".

I ran the race in 32:36, which means a 10:33 mile pace. It's an improvement and I'm shooting to cut off another 30 seconds to a minute in my next 5K.

More baby shower!

For some reason I couldn't get these pics to post in the other post. So, 2 blogs in one day, lucky you! :)

The diaper cake-who would have thought, edible diapers, mmm!

Lindsey and Melissa sampling some of the strawberry cupcake goodness. Aren't they precious?

All the preggos at the shower. My friend, Jane @lifeontherowlandranch (black v-neck shirt) is on her 7th! Keep this super-mommy in your prayers as she is due any day. I look up to this woman and her husband so much. Isn't she gorgeous?

And finally, a pic of all the hostesses with Chelsea.

Baby Baby!

On Sunday I celebrated and honored my dear friend Chelsea (@paisleyleather) and her baby on-the-way, Laila. I met Chelsea about 2 years ago when Ross and I joined a young marrieds small group at our church. I knew from the start that I would love Chelsea as she is so relational, cheerful, and heartfelt. Time spent with Chelsea is always delightful and I'm blessed to have her in my life. Chelsea and her husband Trevor will be first time parents very soon (but hopefully not TOO soon) and I know that Laila is so blessed to be their child. Please pray for Chelsea as she is about 33 weeks along and little Laila is quite excited to make her way into the world. Chelsea is currently biding her time on bedrest. Here are some pictures from the shower!

Hanging from the mantle is a homemade banner that Crystal made. It made for perfect shower decor and will go well in Laila's pink and green paisley nursery.

The shower's theme was pink and green cowgirl as Chelsea is a cowgirl at heart and coaches the equestrian team at SMU. Each cupcake has a cowboy hat label stamped with an L. Cupcakes/labels/cupcake tower-all prepared by Alison Sykes-AMAZING! The same woman who made Melissa's cake one year ago. (See my post "Rock-a-bye-Baby Shower")

Me with the precious Mommy 2 B.

Me with another hostess, Lindsey V. @lifeintexas

3E Love

Embrace Diversity.
Educate your Community.
Empower Each Other.
Love Life.

This was Annie's slogan and the way she lived out each day. Annie was a friend I met in college at University of Illinois. She was an entrepreneur seeking to change the perspective that society has on people with disabilities. Annie was innovative. She came up with the idea to replace the traditional "handicapped" symbol that you see in parking lots and on license plates with the "wheelchair heart symbol" in which the wheel is in the shape of a heart. This symbol was first tattooed to Annie's shoulder and now is worn by people all over who want to show that a disability is not something to be ashamed of or to hide. Annie's "Symbol of Acceptance" replaces what society deems negative with a positive emblem to be worn with pride. Although the symbol hasn't officially replaced the international disability symbol, it can be found on t-shirts, bags, buttons, stickers, and tattoos.

Annie passed away in January 2009, but her passion and zeal in advocating for people with disabilities did not. Her brother, Stevie, continued to pursue Annie's dream of spreading 3ELove and its symbol. Currently, one of 3ELove's goals is "Project Everywhere". This project's first aim is to spread the wheelchair heart logo ("Symbol of Acceptance") to every zipcode in the USA and then beyond! The idea of spreading the symbol is to facilitate conversations with people. What kind of conversations, you ask? Examples: Talk about what the symbol means to you. Talk about the civil rights of people with disabilities. Talk about breaking down the barriers in society (both physical barriers and social barriers) Talk about what it means to see past the outward appearance of a disability and get to know the actual person! And so much more...

Maybe after reading this blog you feel like getting involved in the social project. Glad you asked, because I have a simple way that you can help advance the vision. Visit this website and sign up to vote for a grant from Pepsi. This grant money will give 3ELove some financial support to spread the symbol of acceptance throughout the world. Please consider pledging your vote for this cause and let's see how society's perspective on disability might change! It would mean so much to me and to the entire 3ELove community.

To learn some more about my friend Stevie and 3ELove follow this link to one of my blogs "A trip to say goodbye" from last May and then follow the links provided there.

Sooo sore from Squats!

This week I decided to start gearing up for the Beach to Bay Relay in Corpus Christi on May 15th. Ross and I will be joining a few our our Southwest friends to form a marathon relay team.. The 6 of us will each run about 4.5 miles to complete the relay. I haven't formulated my goal time yet, but I just know I want to improve my speed. I'm thinking about an 11 minute mile pace goal, but I'm not dead set yet. I'm sure after talking it over with Ross he will encourage me to shoot for just over 10 minutes...so we'll see.

This week I'm trying to run 4 days and complete a cardio/bodysculpt DVD 2 days. Yesterday I completed level one of the DVD "Biggest Loser-Cardio Max" and OMG I am feeling it today. I actually woke up in the night and said "Oh, my buns!" and Ross thought I said "Oh my, God!" and was like "What's wrong??!!" It's a good burn I suppose, but I'm a wimp when it comes to pain tolerance. I probably did 500 or more squats throughout the 25 minute workout. I'm not sure I'll be able to handle it again tomorrow...but I will try. Today I'm hopefully going to go for a run and work out some of the soreness.

Spring has Sprung!!

I'm so happy. Today begins my official Spring Break Week! So far, I slept in, checked email (nothing there), went on a run, read some blogs, and ate a piece of cheese... I'm taking things slow...don't want to get worn out on my first day of break or anything..haha.

Anyway, what a beautiful weekend we had here in Dallas! Ross and I have spent a lot of time indoors watching movies (Up in the Air and Food, Inc.), so it felt really nice to be outdoors a lot of Saturday and Sunday. Saturday we moseyed on over to the Greenville St. Patty's Day parade. We just caught the tail-end but really that was sufficient. We met up with Southwest friends and walked all the way down Greenville to Dyer St. Bar for one drink and then over to Desperados Mexican Restaurant for lunch. At that point, we were all pretty zonked from walking in the sun and wind all morning and I took a nap the rest of the afternoon. That evening Ross and I watched an hour and a half of Barbie and the 3 musketeers with our niece. Trust me it's SOOOO hard to say "No" to someone this precious.

On Sunday, we got up early and got a Pearl Latte at the Pearl Cup...my fave!! Then we watched runners just past mile 10 at the Rock n Roll 1/2 marathon. Every race that I run I am so motivated by the crowd's cheers. It really means so much to a runner and it helps keeps us going. So even though I didn't get in gear enough to run in the race, I wanted to go cheer. I knew a handful of people that would be running and tried to figure out what time they would be running by mile 10. Even with thousands and thousands of runners passing by me, I found all three people I was looking for! It was pretty exciting. Ross and I cheered for hundreds of runners we didn't even know and I loved it. Runners would run out of their way to give us high fives and say thank you. We got told so many times how awesome we were and how thankful they were to have us cheering. People who run are so positive and I love it. It's a great crowd to be in. I'm planning to run the race next year...already registered, yikes!

After cheering for an hour or so, we drove over to church and walked around uptown for awhile before church began at 11:15. It was a fun little morning. We spent the afternoon watching Casino Royale and all the special features (one of Ross's favorite things about movies..).

All in all it was a fun weekend spent with my sweet sweet husband. I am so blessed to have him by my side and to do life together. He is the best.

Awesome and Not

I'm trying something new that I saw in someone's blog recently...

Awesome: My class made it through our dress rehearsal/video taping for Spring Program! We've been practicing for over a month and tomorrow is our big day! No more practicing!!!!
Not: Today was the first day with the stage lights turned on and the majority of the class was either turned around staring at his shadows or holding his hands over his eyes and yelling "Ms. Barry!!!! When are the lights going to get turned off!!!" throughout the entire 6 minute performance (which we had to do 2 times through)

Awesome: Warmer weather and wearing short sleeves!!!
Not: Inside recess today due to wet grass and mud means cranky-wild boys!

Awesome: A late birthday present from a friend! Wine, chocolate, bubble bath, and scented candle!
Not: Flights are sold out for this weekend from Dallas to St. Louis so we can't make it home to visit my family

Awesome: Just got Food, Inc. in the mail!
Not: I'll probably be really grossed out and scared to eat food unless I know where it came from.

Thoughts from a slow girl... :(

I just got an email from the Cowtown 10K with all my stats from the race last weekend. It was kind of cool, but it just got me thinking how SLOW I've become in the past couple of years! I didn't help that sometimes they refer to the "gun time" instead of the "chip time" when I started the race 15 minutes late! (Couldn't find the starting line...oops)

How has this happened!!?? Well, I'm pretty sure it can be narrowed down to weight gain and lack of consistent training...yep, I'd say that's the culprit. Anyway, now I'm just embarrassed that my stats are up on the world wide web for anyone to see. I've actually added over 2 minutes to my mile time in about 2 years. I didn't know that was possible, but apparently I did it.

Now my mission is to find another 10K in the next couple of months and make it a goal to beat my time from the Cowtown. Anyone know of a good 10K in the area? I'm desperate to beat this time so I don't have it lingering over my head any longer.

Fun February

I've realized that I post about once or twice a month. Is that a big no-no as a blogger? I don't really know what the appropriate amount of blogging is. Is it just supposed to be consistent? Well, if that's the case I guess I should meet my February quota...wait February is over, you say??? Argh. Well, I will dedicate this post to the second half of February, since it was a wonderful whirlwind.

Ross and I were able to host 3 sets of visitors in February. Ross's roommate from college and his fiance from Chicago visited us for a weekend. We were able to hangout in downtown Dallas and visit the Nasher Sculpture Garden, Dallas Museum of Art, and the Crow museum of Asian Art. We hit up all of our favorite restaurants and coffee shop, The Pearl Cup. Can you say yummmm? :) If you frequent the Pearl Cup, don't you just love the vibe there? So chill, funky, and artsy all wrapped into one! The Pearl Latte is to die for! It's apparently a special/secret recipe and if you haven't tried it yet, you absolutely must!

One of the sculptures in the Nasher garden: "Walking to the Sky"

Mid-month we were graced with a visit from our friend Guillaume from Paris. This is Ross's buddy he met while studying abroad. We ate 3 full meals of Mexican while Guillaume was here and had a "Crepe Party" in honor of his French-ness. We had a blast showing him Texas. He was only upset that we didn't make it to a shooting range so he could fire a gun. He felt that would be the ultimate Texas experience.

Guillaume and Ross making crepes for the party.

This past weekend, my lovely sister flew in for a short weekend to visit us and run in the Cowtown 10K with us. We also had a blast even though we were sore and exhausted for most of the visit. Besides the experience of running 6.2 miles with my sis, the other highlight was having her come to school with me on Friday. It was so fun having her there to meet my students and get to know them. She LOVED them and thought they were so sweet and adorable. Obviously, they had her fooled. Only kidding!!! I think they are precious too.

Our other exciting news from February is that we started a small group/bible study at our house for young married couples at our church. We've been a part of a small group/bible study for the past couple of years and our group recently decided to split up into 3 groups in order to accommodate the growing number of young married couples in our church. So, Ross and I decided that we could take a group. We were sad at first to disband our group that we had grown to love so much, but we are excited for this new venture. Both Ross and I felt led to do this in order to reach out and connect with other couples at our church who may not feel as connected to the body. We were blessed so much with rich and genuine friendships by being able to be in a couple's small group and hope that we can provide that opportunity for other couples who are looking to connect with others in the church and work on their marriages at the same time.

And, there it is...the month of February all rolled into one blog. How'd ya like that?