Long Time No Post

I lost my oomph for blogging (obviously!) this summer but mostly because there was so freaking much going on. When so much comes at me, I get caught up in figuring out what to post about and before I decide, whoosh here comes something else. Before you know it I am abysmally behind - but having a great time. So there you go. Here are a few highlights from my summer:

We celebrated some birthdays and had some of our "other kids" come visit. (You know five just isn't enough so we've semi-adopted a few along the way.)


We fed people.


We fed people A LOT. Lots of people, lots of food, at many random times. I'm telling you, our kitchen is THE place to be.


We took this crew to the beach. The good news is everyone was fed and nobody drowned.


The bad news is that not everyone listened when I said to reapply the sunscreen after getting in the water.

We celebrated our "triadiversary". Yay! We still love each other!


We went to a party that had a swimming hole - which is so quintessentially summer, don't you think? Much fun was had. There were also some big changes around our place.


Before:


After:
Gotta love that Cash for Clunkers program! My beloved, yet 14 year old Isuzu Rodeo getting 13 mph, was replaced by a cute, little (affordable!) Honda Fit. With three teenagers eligible to drive and another one next year, it seemed smart to get a car that has top of the line airbags, doesn't roll over, and which wouldn't be crazy hard to fix/replace if it got crunched. Just saying.

Another Before:


After:


And After That:
He shaved his head. Not entirely sure why but, hey, it's his head. I think he misses his hair already though. I bet he grows it back out.

We had some new beginnings too:
Isn't he cute trying to look all tough? He's taken skills classes before but this is the first time he's played on a team. He's mostly on offense, but he loves when he gets to play defense. Why? "Because tackling people is AWESOME!" he tells me. Sigh. NFL and Fantasy Football started back up. Woo hoo! I warn you - do not even think about friending me on FB if random chat about football bugs you. This is such a GREAT time of year!!

I had some personal new beginnings. I got a part time job at a local gym. (Yay!) And then before I even finished getting trained, the guy I was replacing came back. So I'm back out of a job. (Sad.) I'm filling out another dozen applications this week. Wish me luck. In the meantime, I got back into tri training consistently. (Which is a good thing. Do you see that counter up to the right ticking off the days ever so quickly until the B2B half iron?!)

We did the Hillsborough bike fest. I'm on the left, Donna in the middle, and our friend from TN is on the right.


Look at this spread! There was incredible support at this ride.

And oh, how I love North Carolina. Not only did they have trash and recycling bins at the ride, but there were compost buckets out too! How smart and eco-conscious is that?

And finally, I got a new look:
To go with my new career. I started school again - today! (That's the profile picture for my class website.) I'll be in school until May, and eek - it's terribly new-fangled. Online forums, teleclasses, videos for homework: it's all veeeerrrry different from the last class I took*. I'm training to be a life coach. I want to specialize in weight loss coaching and in working with blocked artists. Warning: next semester I'm going to need some peeps to coach so I can get my certification. Once I have some tools to pass on, I am going to need guinea pigs. Keep me in mind if you know anyone who could benefit from working with a (soon to be) fabulous life coach! Peace.

*Which was a graduate level Existential French Literature seminar btw. I promise you my life coach training is going to be a billion times more fun than that one.

TODAY I LOVE: that back-to-school feeling