August Goals

August 5, 2013 by · 4 Comments

And now for what we hope to accomplish throughout this month!

Teal –

1.  I HATE doing weight lose goals because I always disappoint myself because my body clearly loves all of its fat (and you probably roll your eyes that this is another stupid weight goal), BUT this month is the month before my birthday and  IF I lost 5 pounds I would weigh what my goal was for 30. So it would have taken me until 31 and a rather roller coaster year for my weight but it would be off! SOOOOO there you go, lose 5 pounds and make my 30 year old goal weight (not really what I want in life just what I wanted at 30) but really do it at 31!

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2.  I changed my half marathon training plan slightly from Beth’s because I don’t want to burn myself out like I did last time so my goal is to make my runs! This is totally doable because I have basically started an “I am a newbie and haven’t run” training plan to not destroy my love of running again!

Beth – 

1.  To get up once a week and do a workout before work.  If you follow me on twitter you pretty much know that usually on Tuesday & Thursday mornings I am up at Private Training Zone by 6:00 a.m. to get in an hour of weights with Johnny and the other ladies in my workout group.  This goal would mean I have to get up an additional morning to do a workout on my own.  There was a time when I would do this with yoga, but that has been awhile and I know I just need to transition into this type of routine.  Let’s hope this makes a habit of it!

2. Finish yet another project at our house.

3. YOGA! Haha, my goals are back and the idea for this month is to get in at least 3 yoga classes a week. 🙂

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Wish us luck and we’ll be back with our report card at the end of the month!  What do you do to make sure you accomplish shorter term goals?

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July Report Card

August 2, 2013 by · 2 Comments

Our one idea for changing up our goal posts was to divide them up, so here’s how we measured up for July and August goals will be up next week…

Teal-

1. Clean out the garage.  This thing is a mess and has just become a catch all for whatever crap I don’t want to look at in the house.  We have stuff everywhere and half of it is not even needed.  I have attempted twice to have a garage sale but because I work every Saturday or if I am off we are usually racing, I don’t have time for that.  So my goal this month is to get the garage clean. And not just clean, an organized clean so that it won’t continually get messy.  Then I think I will have to walk my husband through what I did because he will just start putting stuff wherever. 🙂

A+: I mean I don’t even think I have to say much. Just check out these pictures. I will also note that I did this all by myself in the Texas heat. Yea clean garage.. or at least as clean of a garage as I can get!

the before shot

the before shot

the after

the after

2. Create a headboard for the guest bedroom and fix the weird paint job.  When my brother lived with me forever ago he painted the guest room navy blue and got the paint on the ceiling.  I would like to fix that and then add a headboard to the new bed.  I went cheap (sorry guests) and just bought a bed and the lower frame, so it needs something to spice it up.  If you follow Beth’s sister, Kate, she recently re-did the room Beth used to live in and created a headboard.  I literally want to copy her and do the same thing!!

Big FAT F: So basically all I got to on this was reading Kate’s blog on how to do it. That’s it. I didn’t even so much as buy cloth or paint to fix the ceiling. I shall try this again, but not next month because next month is just insane!

Beth –

1. We have a couple of blank walls in our house that I know what I want to do with them but I haven’t really moved forward in the execution of the plan in my head.  One will be a long collage wall so even acquiring 50% of what I want for that wall will be an accomplishment for this month!  I also keep hearing over and over in my head my husband saying, are you going to put any of our wedding pictures up in the house??

A:  Right after our initial post I made a trip to a local thrift shop and picked up a bunch of frames for under $13 and was so proud of myself for finally doing that since I’d been meaning to for awhile.  I still need to do this a few more times to get everything I need and I just can’t afford to buy new everything.  I give myself an A because the only blank wall I really finished was on in our bedroom that was not going to require much, but hey, Brent and I also hung up the curtains we got months ago in our bedroom too.  We are getting there! Slowly….but we are!

the 3 frame collage is the new addition to this wall

the 3 frame collage is the new addition to this wall

2. Lose 5 pounds.  Yay, for bringing back the weight loss goals!! :)

A+: I did IT!!  Now to keep it off and maybe shed a few more of those lbs.

Joint Goals –

1. Get caught up!  We’ve been working on this one pretty hard lately – can you tell?? ;)

We are soooooo close to caught up! So close so we give ourselves an A- here!

2. Today marks the third time we’ve redone a half marathon training plan for ourselves and this time we are going to actually DO the runs!

Well, you’ll see from our August goals partly we we give ourselves a…..let’s say C here.  One of us might be doing something different and the other missed 2 runs. Oopsies!

Have an awesome weekend!

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Must-Dash 5K

August 1, 2013 by · 4 Comments

Basically the whole mustache incorporation for this Father’s Day weekend race made it necessary for us to run this 5K! 🙂  This was kind of an interesting morning for us as a whole as well.  Beth ended up having a flat tire so we got there by way of her husband’s car.  You know how sometimes little things like that can throw you off your game?

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We got there and ended up having about 20-25 minutes to kill before the race actually started, so we grabbed mustaches that were being passed out and then took pictures with them.  Naturally. That’s what you would do too, right?  Being a June morning in Texas it actually wasn’t really that hot outside….

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….until you started running and it was pretty humid. 😛  This was a new area for us to be doing a race so it was definitely nice to have new to us scenery. Neither one of us ran our best 5K, but we ran it and it was worth it!  Only complaint would be that whoever put the 3 mile marker sign down really put it at 2.75 miles.  If you weren’t wearing some sort of GPS and decided to give it your all for the last .1 well then you misled and still had .35 left to go. Ha.

We even ran into one of our NTX Runners buddies, Clara!  NTX Runners are eeeeverywhere! We love it!

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This will probably be our favorite race tee for awhile!

 

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Tie Dye Party

July 31, 2013 by · 16 Comments

We spent last Saturday night tie dying. Yep, that’s right, we channeled our inner hippy and joined the amazingly sweet yogis from Sunstone Yoga (North Dallas/Addison location) for a tie dye party. One of the instructors at Sunstone along with her husband would be leading the entire workshop. We debated if this was weird and decide it wasn’t in the slightest, and even if it is we WANTED to do it so that then takes it back to not weird. 🙂  See how that works?

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We left our boys at Flying Saucer to hang out and drink beer while we headed over there. Pretty sure both of them asked us how long it was going to take because we would be holding up dinner. We both responded with “ it most likely wont be the entire time so chill.”

The tie dye party was from 6-8 and we both thought back to our childhood tie dying and thought, No way can you dye a shirt for 2 hours. WRONG! Not only did we stay the entire time, we probably could have stayed for 2 more hours! We quickly learned that tie dying is in fact a true art. We have never met anyone more passionate about the art of tie dying then Jeremy.  He has been tie dying since the 80’s and basically is a walking encyclopedia of how to tie dye. We are not kidding and we had no idea this was actually the case. You have to check out his website if you don’t believe us – Tie Dye Guide. 

We spent the first 30 or so minutes getting the basics like how to fold your clothing item, how to decide colors, what the different folds are and insider tricks to making it look good. He can relate everything back to Davinci or the meaning of the swirl in life, which is actually very impressive and interesting!  We can only hope we retained all the information Jeremy and Jen shared with us!

When we tie dyed as children we just stuck rubber bands on a shirt and dunked it in dye, not giving a flip as to what would actually happen.  We decided to do the spiral method because Jeremy told us that was the easiest one to start with and since at this point we felt a little scared of what would happen we went with it.

Here is what our process looked like! The spiral twirling part is a little hard since your shirt has a mind of its own. Turns out that in the end it doesn’t so much matter (at least to us newbies) You couldn’t tell our swirls where lopsided or raised!

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The actual dye part is somewhat complicated especially if you forgot the color wheel from like elementary Art class. We all pretty much know yellow and blue make green and what not, but trying to figure out secondary colors on tie dye made us worried we would end up with brown shirts. Jeremy and Jen basically helped us make sure that didn’t happen and we both stayed with colors that would not allow any poop brown to show up!

See picture of us intently working. Ha

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We took our shirts home at the end of the night and washed them out in the morning. Voila! This is what we got! We love them and they turned out WAY better than expected.

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Just as a reference of how awesome the real tie dying was to the tie dying we are used to. Here is a picture of a recent tie dye job one of us did… yea…. Spray tie dye…. Not so much!

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We do want to say a BIG THANK YOU to Jeremy & Jen!  We loved the tie dye workshop and are SO glad we made it into yoga to hear about the workshop at the end of class! Our shirts are also displayed on the Sunstone Yoga North Dallas facebook page which is fun! AND we heard that Jeremy & Jen will be leading more tie dye workshops in the Dallas area in the next few months! Be sure to check Jeremy’s page for updates!

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Wounded Warrior

July 24, 2013 by · 5 Comments

Something crazy has been going on in Texas this summer and more specifically in Dallas as I can’t really speak for the rest of the state. 🙂  It’s called rain.

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I was in top 500 or something like that so I also got a hat with my registration and every year they give you a pair of socks in addition to your race shirt.

I woke up race morning and this race really isn’t that far from my house though I was running behind and my fellow NTX Runners who were also running Wounded Warrior had planned a meet up for a pre-race picture.  Just a few minutes behind I was making my way over to packet pickup and juust made it under the awning of the building when all of the water from the sky began to pour down. All of it. Luckily, I’d found some of my NTX people so I wasn’t just standing their by myself since Teal wasn’t able to run this race with me due to high school graduation where she works.  We got a couple updates from a human being that the race was delayed 15 minutes and then another 15 minutes as there was just a massive crowd gathered together trying to stay dry.

For this race they have two distances, a half and a 10K, and per usual I was sticking with the 10K which started after the half did.  It’s too darn hot to be doing a half in June, amiright?  Except for this rainy race day.  I also began tweeting with some other local runners who were hearing the delay was even longer than what I had heard.  Eventually I knew I had 5-10 minutes before my race was to begin so I made my way to the start line in the rain.  I’d already made the executive decision that I was not going to even begin to mess with my phone and Runkeeper for this race.  The life of my phone was more important than music and having exact info on my race.

It rained for half if not more of my race.  They actually had to do a detour on one part of the race that runs on the Campion Trail because it wasn’t just kind of flooded over it was REEEEALLY flooded over.  As in if I ran through that I think the water would have been up to my hips, but I’m also short if you have noticed from all the pictures where I stand next to Teal. 🙂

Throughout the race I didn’t really know how I was doing and was just excited every time I passed a mile marker.  With less than a mile to go I spotted some friends on the course, Lisa & Lucy (who I still had not meet IRL until that moment).  That was  nice little boost at the end.  And then the race was over.  I was drenched and had no clue how I did, but was excited to have my 10K bling! 🙂

 

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I absolutely love this race!  It’s for an awesome cause, it’s close to home and I get a medal for running a 10K!  I didn’t get to stick around too long after the race as some friends of Brent’s were in town and I need to get to brunch. Priorities, people!  But I did get to see quite a few people at the end which was very fun!

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Julie and me

 

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Jesse & me – love his shirt!

I was pleasantly surprised to find out later that day that my naked run at Wounded Warrior was only 15 seconds behind my 10K PR!  I finished in 54:46 which was 9th in my age group.  Not too shabby!

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Ironman Texas Volunteering

July 18, 2013 by · 1 Comment

Two months ago today we were in  Houston for a weekend of volunteering, frunners, cheering and spectating greatness!  We made the four hour trek from Houston the night before with Beth’s sister, Kate.

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None of us left work early and then we decided to all sit down to eat dinner instead of making Teal have to eat and drive at the same time, so we were really setting ourselves up for a late arrival into Houston.  By the time our heads hit the pillow that night we knew that alarm clock was right around the corner. 🙁

But it was so worth it.  We met up with the DFW Crew that was volunteering and the rest of our volunteer group for wetsuit peeling (but let’s call it what it really is wetsuit stripping).  All of us volunteers watched the elites start the swim and then made our way over to where we’d be stripping athletes. 🙂  The worst part of the day was being present at the swim finish when people didn’t complete it in time and were stripped of their tag and done for the day.  Talk about heartbreaking!

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The crew with Mike Reilly

Once our stripping duties were over we got second breakfast/super early lunch, whatever you want to call it, before making our way over to the canal area to find the perfect spot to hangout and later cheer for the athletes.  We were there before the elites had started their marathon portion and man was it amazing to see all of them.  Where we were spectating enabled us to see the athletes 3 times on the run part.

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oh, race signs!

Or really since they ran along the other side of the canal you could say we saw runners 6 times…

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We had a lot of time out on this portion of the race and some time to kill, so we ate a lot of goldfish (shocking), maybe had a couple adult beverages and enjoyed the company of our frunners. 🙂

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A part from the people our group knew racing that day Teal had a friend Derek out there that she also got to cheer for – if only this picture of Derek wasn’t blurry!

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Thanks to the one company that had people passing out cowbells for spectators and a couple of the awesome ladies with us we had tons of stuff to cheer with and/or entertain us.

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We were both so excited and pumped to get to cheer on the power couple of Heidi & Brian. 🙂 These two worked their butts off for months preparing for this day, their hard work showed and paid off!

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Heidi minutes away from being called an Ironman!

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Brian minutes away from being called an Ironman!

The accomplishment of all of the athletes we encountered that day was inspiring!  You won’t catch us doing an Ironman, but man what a feat and such a neat thing for us to be a part of as volunteers and cheerleaders!

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A none blurry picture of Team Leub after they rocked their first Ironman!  Congrats to you both….two months later! You two impress us with your dedication, strength and accomplishment!

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Apparently this is what you look like after covering 140.6 miles each!

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Goals: They’re Making a Come Back

July 15, 2013 by · 8 Comments

It turns out when you do goals for a whole year then decide to take a break and consider revamping them you end up just taking an all out break.  So goals are back!  Yes we are halfway through this month, so we are starting small and we had each already been working towards these goals for this month anyway so now it’s in blog form.  Let’s see if we can remember how this works:

Teal-

1. Clean out the garage.  This thing is a mess and has just become a catch all for whatever crap I don’t want to look at int he house.  We have stuff everywhere and half of it is not even needed.  I have attempted twice to have a garage sale but because I work every Saturday or if I am off we are usually racing, I dont have time for that.  So my goal this month is to get the garage clean. And not just clean, an organized clean so that it won’t continually get messy.  Then I think I will have to walk my husband through what I did because he will just start putting stuff wherever. 🙂  

teal garage

2. Create a headboard for the guest bedroom and fix the weird paint job.  When my brother lived with me forever ago he painted the guest room navy blue and got the paint on the ceiling.  I would like to fix that and then add a headboard to the new bed.  I went cheap (sorry guests) and just bought a bed and the lower frame, so it needs something to spice it up.  If you follow Beth’s sister, Kate, she recently re-did the room Beth used to live in and created a headboard.  I literally want to copy her and do the same thing!!

Beth –

1. We have a couple of blank walls in our house that I know what I want to do with them but I haven’t really moved forward in the execution of the plan in my head.  One will be a long collage wall so even acquiring 50% of what I want for that wall will be an accomplishment for this month!  I also keep hearing over and over in my head my husband saying, are you going to put any of our wedding pictures up in the house??

2. Lose 5 pounds.  Yay, for bringing back the weight loss goals!! 🙂

Additionally, we have a couple of joint goals for ourselves as well:

1. Get caught up!  We’ve been working on this one pretty hard lately – can you tell?? 😉

2. Today marks the third time we’ve redone a half marathon training plan for ourselves and this time we are going to actually DO the runs!

See you on the grading side of goals! 🙂  Happy Monday!

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The Vineyard Run 5K

July 12, 2013 by · 1 Comment

The Vineyard Run basically popped up in our email, most likely because we have run our fair share of Mellew sponsored races. Teal really wanted to run this race because the Vineyard run is set at Delaney Vineyard where Teal got married!

Plus it offers a few more bonus points such as a free wine tasting and live band.  Although we didn’t actually enjoy any wine while we were there. But it’s at a winery and since that is somewhat rare in our parts it’s a nice change of scenery!  We should also mention that it was actually a little chilly that day! Hello cold day in May in Texas, what?!

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Brian you are all over this blog now!

We headed out together as normal and perhaps our need to be at races super early is dwindling because we really almost missed this one. Oopsies! We hadn’t picked up our bibs and the cut off was like 30 minutes before the race. We thought we left in time but due to the fact that one of us updated our phone to the stupid new operating system that brought with it a horrible update to google maps, and its lame, and the fact that the area around the DFW airport is the biggest cluster of construction, we found ourselves driving in circles trying to get to the stinking race. We finally figured it out and ended up getting in the back way and then running to packet pick up. Apparently that is a way to force us in to a pre-race warm-up?

We made it and got to hang with our fellow NTX Runner Brian for a few minutes before the race started. He was out there volunteering for the race! We might add that he was wearing his 100 miler sweatshirt. Show off 😉

Waiting for the race to start

Waiting for the race to start

SOOO really we ran a 5k. It was flat, it had 2 kind of annoying hills but nothing we couldn’t handle and then it was over. Also we might add that it was in no way our fastest or our slowest race, so we can call that a win right!? How do you like that for a recap?? Recapping 3 miles is much easier than 13.

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Fairview Half Marathon

July 1, 2013 by · 4 Comments

fairview half

 

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This year has been a little scattered with our running as you might have noticed. We are seriously behind on recapping races and really surprisingly enough we are currently only registered for a 5K and one half marathon that seems like forever away. When we get asked what we have done this year we seriously have to think about it. We both keep forgetting the fact that we have run 2 half marathons this year. We told you about Sugarland already so here is our “this is what we remember” recap from the Fairview Half. Get excited!

As you may know The Fairview Half is put on by the awesome Libby Jones who runs The Active Joe, and she is also the creator of our running group NTX Runners!  She is responsible for the New Year’s Double, Showdown Half, and her newest race, The Fairview Half. She gives awesome perks to repeat runners of her races and also those that volunteer. We were able to get in super early and for super cheap because we have both run and volunteered for one of her races!

This race is actually a very pretty race. It runs through some very fancy neighborhoods in Fairview, through what feels like the middle of the country, and it starts and ends at the Fairview Town hall. Our only disclaimer for this race is it is HILLY. Not as hilly as the ZOOMA race we ran last year (we don’t think anything is that bad hill-wise) but this one is a somewhat distant second. Really that is about all we remember! Great scenery, hills, and the BEST PART is tons of our fellow running friends were at this race. So we will just go ahead and skip to the fun part…Post race pics of all the fun people we got to see and some awesome race bling photography!

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We might add, we don’t have a picture of The Unlikely Runners but we saw them out there volunteering the crap out of this race! And also big props to Ninja for making it out to one of the steepest hills to cheer us on to the top! You were a great site on that hill around the mile 9-ish marker!

As soon as the race was over we booked it out of there to pick up Beth’s sister and then make a 4+ hour drive to San Antonio to see our friend Rebekah and hang out for the weekend! We clearly like to jam pack as much as possible into a race weekend.

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Beth’s the Big 3-Oh!

June 24, 2013 by · 2 Comments

In honor of Beth’s 30th birthday we just wanted to remind her of we loved having her around the last 30 years.  Here’s a little bit from your closest friends and family:

Beth (not Beeper)- Congrats on turning 30! I look forward to more Stars, Rangers & Aggie games, sake bombs, Jurassic Park watchings, BYOB Thai & Greek places and our standard Thursday nights. Keep on truckin! Love, Brent

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Thirty years of memories: thankful God knew best our family expansion should not stop without Elizabeth Anne . . . that He wanted there to be “Beth”; destiny . . . a lady of many nicknames: “Beeper” . . . the giving of that nickname . . . youngest of the cousins . . . “The Beep” . . . precious drawings, especially the one of the person with king things in her hair . . . dress-up times with big sister  . . . “Wumpus McDougal” – where did that one come from? . . . at 5 years old sitting on a cooler in the kitchen at the farm asking “Mommy, how does Jesus come live in my heart?” . . . “Beeper Sue” . . . The threesome: Granny, Beeper and Lauren – poor Lauren, no nickname! . . .  softball – so focused and intent; awesome first baseman . . . Sky Ranch with Scott, almost not . . . “Beepster” . . .The blessing of being/having siblings . . . Wilderness with Kate . . . “If ever I win a certain award/honor I want it to be for having compassion – He answered . . . times of worship . . . brief time wanting no nicknames L . . . “Dizzy Daisy” . . . Fish Camp Director – ER survival . . . a beautiful bride gifted with a very good man for a husband . . . the Wonderful , Amazing bridesmaids/friends . . . an “Esther” . . . and now so many more memories to come . . . I am a blessed mom . . . love you much, “Elizabeth Annie” . . . oh, how many nicknames did I leave out, “Squeaky Beepy”? How many are yet to be added? . . .

Love you, Mom

Beth & Mom

When I think of Beth, I always laugh because she will tell people that we didn’t get along when we were younger. I think this is probably because I was the uncool younger cousin, and until my brother came along, I stole the thunder as the youngest cousin on the Lynch side of the family. I think this all changed when we decided we were going to be cousin/friends because we’re not just cousins, but we’re friends too. Cousins nor friends teach you to drive a car with your knees, only cousin/friends do that (I hope my mom didn’t read this). Beth has always been a great cousin/friend… even one time driving from College Station to Austin just to pick me up to go to dinner with her and her dad. I can’t imagine anyone else who I would want to be my cousin/friend! Happy birthday!

Beth & Chase

Happiest Birthday Seester!  I have been blessed to have a younger sister that is also a best friend.  We may not see each other every day now, but I don’t feel like we ever skip a beat.  I can’t believe my little sister is finally 30!  I promise Beeper,  it isn’t that bad. I can’t wait for 30 more years of traveling, family gatherings, wine drinking and fun.  I wonder if everyone will still think you’re my older sister now?  Love you; mean it!

Katers

Beth & I

Since Wesley & Easton aren’t quite old enough to write out their own message they wanted to make you a video:

Happy Birthday EA.  I took 30 pretty tough so as a way of saving you the Google crying session I figured I would tell you things you should not Google when turning 30.

1.      What happens to your body when you turn 30

2.      30 things everyone should do by 30

3.      Is there really a biological clock and when does it start ticking?

4.      Am I allowed to still act like I am 20 when I am 30?

5.      Do you suddenly become and old person when you turn 30?

6.      Can I still buy clothes in the Jr’s section?

7.      How do you stop the wrinkles?

There. You’re welcome. I promise you don’t want to know the answer to any of that. Happy Birthday Beth. Live it up and I can’t wait to see what the next 30 brings. Hopefully more miles, more laughs, more wine, and more friendship!

Love you to my favorite running buddy and friend, Teal

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Happy Birthday Beth Lynch Holland.   As the years pass by and we grow older our memory starts to falter I will always be there for you when you “lose” your car in a parking garage.  So happy that you have been in my life the last 10 years.  Can’t wait to see where the next 10, 20, 30 years leads us and the fun adventures we will have.  Let’s never forget the best lesson we ever learned in college from a very wise woman in the bathroom of a bar, “sometimes you just got to sh*t it out :-)”

Love you! Mandy

Beth & Mandy

HAPPY BIRTHDAY BETH! I am so blessed to have you as a best friend, and I wanted the blogosphere to get a sneak peek at just a FEW of the pictures of some of our fun times together! Enjoy your 10,950th day of life, and just remember how hard I resisted using the song “Friends Are Friends Forever” by MWS. You’re welcome. Here’s to many, many more memories. LOVE YOU.

RAWE

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sxvm5SkOw5o&feature=youtu.be" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sxvm5SkOw5o&feature=youtu.be</a>

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