It's the little things ...

Random bullets and photos today!

My (biggest) Little Man getting his muscles on... 

We have no idea who he is dressed up as. Probably everyone else reading knows, but we don't watch TV (except for the Amazing Race and Survivor over the internet). He wants to be called "Eagle Head".

Freshly painted lines on the road. 

I LOVE this. Much easier to see the fog line while running with the headlamp.

I think I saw a swan on my run Friday. I haven't seen swans in the wild before. Not sure what type it is, since my camera doesn't have a lot of optical zoom. I think it might be a tundra swan since we are in the right range.

Saw an elk herd the same day. Definitely in their native area, still cool to see though. 

We played a game of "sneak, charge and run" again.

The tree in our yard is one of the prettiest around here!  Most of the trees in our area are evergreen, or go straight from green to brown, skipping yellow, orange and red. This one flames up very nicely! It seems to be a different color each day.

These are just a few of the little things that bring me joy!

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• Racing announcements:  

Half marathons
I am looking at a half marathon sometime in November or December. Super bummed not to be able to do the first year of the Runaway Pumpkin half, but I (am still in detention) don't think that's going to work out. Several options are out there. We shall see what comes up!
Marathon
I am about 90% sure I will race in the Eugene Marathon in May (barring that I am uninjured, etc...). I will try to sign up as soon as I can (to get the discount). As much as I would like to train using a Jack Daniels marathon plan, I have ran into a stumbling block there. Don't get me wrong...I LOVE Daniels Vdot training and think it has worked well for me- just not sure any of his marathon plans will work for me.
I may expand on that in a future post.
OK...the truth is...I really have no idea when I am going to race again. Life is a wild roller coaster ride and I am just hanging on for my sanity. But, I will run as if I am training for something...sometime. I do still have a free race entry for Turkey day... :)

• Training Run-down

The newest fad is learning to run with 9 toes.
If you ever wondered, the little toe is really not essential to running an easy pace. I might have taught my kids a few new words when I accidentally kicked the sofa yesterday. So far so good, though. Looks like I am able to proceed, as long as I don't try to do any side-to-side running. You also aren't likely to see me in a basketball stance, though that wasn't much of an issue before either...

• Blogger upgrades

I have been playing around with the blogger templates and thought I might change to the new "DYNAMIC" templates. But I noticed a few things that kept me from doing the change-over: No header photo, no font / color options that I could find, no gadgets (?) and the HTML scripts I use for my training tab are not supported- so the instant mileage posting would be non-existent. Boo. They do have a nice look to them though, and the flip cards, etc...are pretty cool!

• For believers

Reading John, Ch 10 gave me a serious recharge the other day! You can read or hear it HERE. I really enjoy listening to the Bible read aloud when I am loading the dishwasher or folding laundry. Then I go back as I have time and read it. It seems to sink in better that way for me.
I heard this in a podcast on this morning's run, and the truth of it hit home :

"There are two kinds of people: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,'  and those to whom God says, 'All right, then, have it your way.' " - CS Lewis
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 What are the little things that bring you joy?
If you have tried the new blogger dynamic templates or interface, what do you think about them? 
Racing anytime soon?
Have you read or heard anything lately that really impacted you?