My darling Kirra. She just cracks me up every day. Today she went back to Tally’s, and she seemed to have a GREAT day! She got to see all of her old friends again. When I picked her up and we were on our way home, she was just a little parrot, repeating everything I said, so we went thru the usual, and then I went, “Ello Governa”, and she responded, “Ello Governa”, and I laughed hysterically, and so did she, so then I went, “Ello Miss” and she went “Ello Miss”. I laughed SO HARD that I was hitting my knee, and my steering wheel, and so I look in the rear view mirror, and Kirra is laughing hysterically hitting her knee.

Well I was going to do another 10 mile run today, but I asked Coach John, and he said to do an 8 mile tempo run instead, where you run an easy 1-2 miles, and then from there pick up the speed little by little, and keep maintaining that pace. (the faster one). It felt really great! I’m planning to do two more 5 mile tempo runs, and then its race day in 8 days!!! I actually trained for a race, and had fun doing it! My next race is Lumberjack Days 10 Mile, and i’m excited for that one too.

A year ago I would have backed down, and tried to do the 10K, or the 5K, but i’m back, and it feels so good!

I taught pre-schoolers at church tonight, and that was actually SUPER fun. I’m so glad I made the switch. Its fun to do different things, and these kids make me laugh!

Jason did Tattoo today for one of his good friends Lisa. She got the Tree of Life (Celtic) on her back in the same place as my cross. I think it looks great! We’re trying to get Jason’s business moving a little bit, so hopefully he can even do 1 per month!

Jason and I were doing some spring cleaning, and I found this piece of writing I did back in high school,and I absolutely love it! Enjoy.

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The sound of metal driving its way into the ice like a piece of celery breaking is the sound of a figure skater softly and gracefully gliding across the ice.

I love this sound, and I love the frozen pond. The fantasy fairy tale land that give me the chance to express myself both fully, and freely, like an eagle who gets all the space he/she wants to express themselves.

I love to listen to a song,and do whatever comes natural to me,whatever I do is okay ,because I am usually all by myself when I skate,so I don’t have to feel embarrassed or stupid.

The most exhilarating thing that I have ever done was to go out on to the bond on a cold Friday night when the moon was full and skate all by myself with no light but the moon.

The feeling you get is like there is nobody else in the world, but you and the pond. Nothing else seems to matter because you are by yourself, and nobody is around. You really get to find out whom you are inside,because you get to spend quality time by your self.

The moon is my flashlight shimmering brightly like a candle in a dark musk like cave,or like something else that i can not explain. Everything is so still at this time of night, and if you listen close enough you can hear the little snores of the beavers or the sneezes of muskrats.

Sometimes… I like to imagine that I cam out in the middle of a competition, and that there are millions of people coming to watch me as I do my greatest routine ever seen by anyone. When I get done with the routine I stand around and imagine that the crowd is going wild,like people at a rock concert or a super bowl football game when everyone finds out that the team they were rooting for has won!

Then I listen to another song as I go out once more for an encore,for all of my screaming fans which just happen to be the frozen reeds and cattails in the pond.

When I go out and skate all of my fears, my worries, my dreams, my hopes are expressed… solved or forgotten out there. I go out there to think about life and how they relate or interweave into my skating routine.

Sometimes I just skate for fun out on the pond too. I practice my jumps, spins, and other fundamentals that are a major part of skating, and just relax as I enjoy the elements of skating.

I love to let the wind and emotions take over me like a ghost trying to enter my soul whether or not it will be a good ghost or not. I feel like something is there because i just go with the flow and forget about all of my problems with family,friends, school, work, etc…..

Sometimes i like to just lay down on the ice and stare at the stars like the wise men when they were looking for baby Jesus, or when Moses was looking for his way home.

Although I love to skate at night,sometimes I forget where the cracks and divots are in the ice and i end up tripping or falling on a jump, or getting messed up in a spin.

Every once and a while I get kind of lonely and sad thinking of how the world is turning into something like a trash dumpster. Everything is messed up, dirty, and not nice looking or friendly looking. People and stories on the news are hopeless…

Sometimes I think that maybe this is how the world is going to be in the future. But then I think of the pond, and how it makes me feel so safe and then I forget all about the world again, and concentrate on the effervescent feeling that I get when I do something cool out on the ice.

I love to imagine that i am an olympian out on the ice competing an artistic impression routine for all of the people (reeds) in the stands (snow banks) and do some showing off!

Often I go on to the pond without the intent to skate at all. Believe it or not I really just love to lay on the pond and stare at the sky and talk to God without using words. I just lay there and open my soul, and God knows what i need, and what I want. Usually I do this at night. I think about the world, or every once and a while think about absolutely nothing at all.

When finally it is time to leave the pond I feel refreshed and new and had long forgotten about all of my problems that I may have had in the past.

I know that someday soon I will be returning to the place of enchantment… the fairy tale land and the fantasy that I endure every time I go out on to the frozen pond in the woods.

Well today I went out and previewed the race course,and ran the first 5 miles of the race and turned around and came back to my car. It was hilly, but mostly rolling hills which I find to actually be somewhat entertaining on the run. Makes things interesting and fun. I was getting pretty pooped out,so I am glad I got in another “hilly run” before the race in two weeks.
Afterwards I treated myself to Starbucks 🙂

Meet our newest family member… Breeana. She is a Tortishell Manx cat mix, although our vet thinks she did have a full tail at one point.

Last Saturday I went for my run with Sara around White Bear Lake, and I made it the whole way without walking,so I was pretty proud of myself. Once I got home, Jason asked what I wanted to do for the rest of the day, and I said, “I don’t know, what do you want to do”. And he said, lets go look at dogs and cats…

So off we went. There were so many nice kitties at the Humane Society, and nice dogs as well. We wanted to check Petco out as well to see what they had on their adoption day, but in the end we went back to the AHS. We “visited” 3 or 4 cats, and settled on Breeana.

We came up with her name by going off some of the names we were going to name Kirra, and what she could pronounce. Plus she just looks like a Breeana to us!

We even found a new vet, and we’re really happy with them thus far. I think we’ll be bringing all the pets to Dr. Dan. We actually had to put Breeana on antibiotics already because she is sneezing! So we called the vet, and she has an upper respiratory infection. Poor kitty.

We’ve been keeping Breeana in our room and locking out Tyler and Kip, because they’re not all fully aquainted, and we didn’t want Breeana to get scared and hide in the basement ceiling, so for now, we’re housing the new kitty in our room. It seems like Tyler is kind of sad, but he’s been dealing with it pretty well. Breeana actually really likes Tyler, but she isn’t too sure about Kip yet. Kip would like to get to know Breeana, but she just hisses at him….

I’ll tell you what tho… since we’ve closed our bedroom door at night, I sleep a heck of a lot better!!!

Here are some photos to take a peak at Miss Bree. (Breeana)

Almost looks like she is smiling…