Summa time!

pic from here

The best part about summer? The oodles and oodles of berries that are oh so ripe and juicy and a much healthier dessert than the chocolate and cookies and everything else I chow down on regularly during the other parts of the year. Last night I had blue berries with half and half (trying to be a little bit more healthy than just straight cream!), some corn flakes crushed over it and a tiny bit of sugar sprinkled on top! YUM! I'm sad that I'm missing the strawberries in California, they're going to be done by the time I get out there in July, but thanks to airplanes I've been able to enjoy some here. I heart strawberries. I can't wait to go home and go to the local produce shop and pick out tons of fresh fruit to snack on. I love me some California produce!

Books

A month ago when we moved and whatnot, I was "styling" the bookcases in our new apartment and took out all of my mom's books that I'd borrowed over the past 2 years...
We're kinda obsessed with books... and as you can see the really nerdy sci-fi romance kind. I promise I do read other more wholesome enriching type books and classics. Pride and Prejudice is my go to favorite, but I definitely have a weak spot for sci-fi nerd romance. I inhale them in a matter of hours or days.

Sometimes I forget that most people don't read 2-5 (depending on how long they are and let's be honest, how interesting they are) books a month. I think that's probably about my average, sometimes higher, sometimes lower. I definitely get this from my mom. My dad reads, but my mom devours. I used to have my books taken away from me when I got home so I'd actually do homework. I'd go to the bathroom for an hour or so because you could lock the door and read without little brothers or mom's hollering at you. We'd go to the library once a week, maybe even twice a week during the summer, with our big blue bin that we would fill up. My mom would read to us all the time when we were little. She's a theater minor, and she always had the best voices for the characters. She totally made books come alive for me. I hope I can instill that love for books in my children.

Do you love books?

The last of Boston

After the 1/2 marathon we relaxed a bit and then met up with friends at an amazing (1.5 hour wait) Italian restaurant. It was pretty stinkin good, Dan really got into his seafood medley pasta dish thing and was covered in sauce by the end. We went back to the hotel and slept! On Monday we went on a bus tour of Boston which was nice on our legs and fun to hear about the significance of all the places we'd ran by during the 1/2 marathon. It was fun, but I didn't really take any pictures. I was pretty lazy during this little vacation about really documenting because I was either nervous about doing the 1/2 or was exhausted from doing the 1/2! Definitely want to go back to Boston to really explore.

Now the ride home with AJ, Dan, Julie and I... that was entertaining! We played the alphabet game, looked for vanity plates, looked for out of state plates, according to Dan they played "let's watch Maddie and Julie drool on their pillows" game. We were tired!
Notice the score sheet on the dashboard marking everyone's points for finding vanity plates. We are that hardcore.
I'm so glad I got to play with my Julie and mom and aunt and all of our other new friends we've made here in NYC. It was a really fun weekend and a nice start to the summer!

Now I've just got to keep up the motivation to run in the awful humidity. Yuck!

Fenway Park

Fenway is the oldest baseball park in the country? I think? Maybe? Soooo for this reason, Dan condescended to walk into the park and watch a game played by his arch enemy!
Of course he wore a Yankee hat. But he wasn't heckled half as much as I've seen happen in the bleacher seats at Yankee Stadium!
Mom and Aunt Carey enjoying cotton candy and kettle corn popcorn (baseball is all about the yummy snacks and girl talk for us!)
Baseball parks always make gorgeous all american pictures I think, the colors are always so rich and perfect
Tender times!
The Sox won that night (thought I left before 9pm so I didn't see the ending at all--I had to get my sleep before the big day!). It was a fun somewhat different thing to do when exploring and experiencing a new city. I think we'll try and incorporate more baseball games into new cities we explore.

Boston (pre race)

Get ready for picture overload!

We stayed at a hotel a little ways outside of the main part of the city. It was a short 20-30 min walk into everything and it was right next to the start and finish of the race (which was a major plus!) Friday night before everyone else arrived, we walked in

And had dinner at Legal Seafood. A seafood place that is supposed to use only fresh seafood. I had a yummy shrimp stuffed with fresh crab cakes. YUM! While the momma decided she was going to try out lobster, mussels and clams...
She was a little freaked out by the fact that her food still had a face and a body and legs and whiskers... Needless to say, she's not going to get that again!
There was a beautiful flag flying on our walk into the main part of the city. Had to take a pic!
Faneuil Hall

The balcony where the Declaration of Independence was read for the first time...
Pretty buildings

Pretty red-headed mama!
Parker House Hotel--origination of the Parker House Rolls that are apparently yum-o
Super old cemetary

These were mostly taken from the somewhat lame tour we went on. The guy was a cute old man, but incredibly long winded and told us all about the architecture of the buildings when we thought we were getting a tour of the freedom trail... a little different than what was expected!

That night we went and watched the All American sport of baseball at the famous Fenway park. Pictures tomorrow!

Running 13.1 miles

This weekend a bunch of friends and family and I went to Boston to do a little run. Julie and I got there Friday afternoon and met up with my mom and aunt. Everyone else followed on Saturday. There will definitely be oodles more pictures of all the other things we saw and did, but for now I am excited about running!

It all started on Saturday afternoon when we went to pick up our packets. Here's a map of our ridiculous route (it's the really long red line).
We all got out bibs and started to feel excited...
Then that night Julie and I started to feel a little nervous. What were we thinking!? 13.1 miles? Who does that?!
But the next morning we got up and got ready...
I'm so proud of my momma, the anti-runner for doing this with me! And no pic of my aunt before the main event but I'm pretty sure she would have beat me if she wasn't keeping my mom company and telling her all about the beautiful things around them, asking police men if they were passing MIT and Harvard, and calling to talk to her daughters and husband multiple times : ) My aunt is pretty funny.
And then we started our run through Boston!
We ran and ran. It was actually probably my best run ever. I felt great and motivated and took my little breaks but felt motivated to start running again all up until mile 10... then I wanted to die because I felt like my empty stomach was starting to eat itself. I was HUNGRY! But Julie kept me going and of course beat me to the finish line that speed demon! This is after I got past the finish line and stuffed a bagel into my mouth.

These are the girls I trained with for the past few months, we did it!
My sweet sweet Julie Mack-a-doodle! We went back and forth the whole race, keeping each other motivated. I wanted to kill her the last 2 miles when she kept telling me to run when I wanted to lay down and die.
My mom and my aunt Carey. I some how convinced them to do this with me. I think my mom mostly wanted a reason to come out to the East Coast and see me but whatever gets you movin right? : )
Here's my name! On the second to last sheet of paper (there were probably 20-30+ papers). From the time I crossed the starting line to the time I crossed the finish line was 2 hours and 52 minutes (beat my goal of under 3 hrs!) with a 13.10 minute mile pace. That is incredibly slow for real runners but for my first 13.1 mile run, I'm pretty pleased and I'm much faster with shorter runs than I've ever been in my life (although those faster runs are still pretty slow compared to a real runner! : )
It was an absolutely amazing feeling to know that if I work hard, I can do it. I can do things that I (and anybody who's known me for a while) never thought I could do. Maddie? Running? Maddie being excited to run? Maddie running more than 1 mile and not complaining? WHAT?! It was also a great reminder that instant gratification isn't half as satisfying as working for a while to reach a goal.

I think I've fallen in love with running, just a little bit (and the ability to eat anything I want for the 24 hrs after I run that many miles!).

Now go! Try something you and everyone else thought you could never do!

We came...

We conquered!


More details to come!