Sweet Stace

I am so blessed to have not only a great mother who birthed me and raised me and filled me up with so much love it spewed out my ears, but also a wonderful mother-in-law who did all those things for my husband and welcomed me into her family like one of her own.

Me and Stacy at my bridal shower

On Mother's Day weekend, Tanner and I went to Eldorado to spend Mother’s Day with Tanner’s mom, Stacy, as well as his dad, Mike, sister, Mindy, and her husband, Tye. Let me tell you something about Eldorado: There is not much to do there. Let me tell you why that is awesome. We end up doing things like piling in bed with Stacy and just talking. We paint each other’s nails, talk about decorating and fashion and do hair (girls only!). We clean gutters, rebuild porch swings and trim trees together (boys only!). We make an event out of going to church. We sit on the porch and chat and pet the cat.

That is, until Tanner gets the cat so riled up that it’s attacking everyone. Nothing makes me laugh and fill with fear at the same time like that crazy look cats get – when they flatten their ears to the side and bug their eyes – right before they jump and wrap their front legs around your tender foot and bite the heck out of your big toe.

Now let me tell you something about Stacy. She’s one heck of a woman. Tanner and his Eldorado crew lovingly dubbed her “Sweet Stace” back in the day. She’s tender and nurturing. She smiles, all the time. She takes time to compliment everyone. She writes thoughtful notes. She sends gift cards and pocket money for no special occasion, just because. She calls for no special reason, just to catch up. She asks thoughtful questions. She listens. She cares – about everyone. She never speaks a bad word about anyone.

Tanner and Stacy at our wedding

She’s also one tough cookie. She brought two children into this world – with no medication! – and is there for them every moment of every day. She faithfully supported and carried her family through trials and struggles without complaint. She made a small house, in the early years, a home, and guided four people to peacefully coexist while all sharing one bathroom. A-ma-zing. She works full time, then in her spare time, she helps with the bible study at the church, volunteers with Lions Club and helps several people manage their rental properties, businesses and finances. Despite this busy schedule, every person she runs across feels like they have her undivided attention.

Stacys also got faith, and God gave her an extra helping. No matter the circumstance, she does not worry or doubt. She is a rock, but a tender one. During the passing of family members, Stacy is the one who comforts everyone. When someone is sick, Stacy cares for them, and she takes care of the things no one else can. She prays for her family, reads her Bible and lives out her faith in ways great and small. She will be the first one to tell you she’s not perfect. No one is; we all know that. But she’s about as close as it gets!

Every day for Stacy should be Mother’s Day. Unfortunately, we don’t always take the time to tell her how much we love her, so that weekend was a great opportunity to do just that! And we loved every minute of it.

Tanner and Mindy with Stacy on Mother's Day 2011!

This last weekend, Tanner and I had another chance to celebrate another woman who’s conquered the world and more, my mom! We visited my parents, enjoyed the River Haus and had another Mother’s Day! More to come...

Runner's Knee

Last Sunday, Tanner dropped my off at the trail head in Weatherford. I was nervous. First of all, because I had decided to wear only a sports bra -- no tank top or T-shirt -- and was worried about my hate love handles bouncin' around and acting a fool. And they did. I watched them as my shadow ran in front of me.

The second reason I was nervous was because I had eaten chicken wings and drank a beer the night before with Andrew and Jenna at Buffalo Wild Wings. My stomach does not like chicken wings and beer. My love handles, however, they need them to survive.

The third reason was because after Tanner dropped me off, I was committed to the task before me: running 10.6 miles of wooded trail from Weatherford to Garner. Get a chicken-wing-induced, three alarm stomach flip flop? Too bad. Get attacked by a wild turkey? So sad. Break both your legs, fracture your arms, get a nosebleed and pop your eyeballs out? Oh well. No cell phone. Deal with it. Finish strong!

Well, I did finish. The first four miles of the trail were fairly busy, much to my chagrin. My overly excited love handles, just happy to be out and about, were wigglin' and jigglin' and waving "Hi, y'all!" to everyone they passed. After Mile 4, the crowd started to thin out.

I had my earphones in and my audiobook playing. It was a beautiful, sunny day. (I have the sports bra tan to prove it!) Reaching Mile 5 was a little bit of a bonk moment, only because it hit me that I was less than half way to my destination. But I knew in reality I could make it at least 8 miles, so I got over it.

At about mile 8, I was lectured by a cute, old cyclist man that Tanner and I have seen frequently on the trail about how I should have brought water with me. He pretty much insisted/forced me to drink some of his water, which ended up really being a nice treat for me because I was super thirsty. He then raced off to Garner and gave Tanner, who was waiting for me at the trail head there, the same lecture.

By Mile 10 my knees were killing me, but I still felt cardiovascularly great. When I saw Tanner waiting for me at the trail head in Garner, I even found a reserve to sprint gloriously to finish. When I was done showing off, I sat down and couldn't get up. Just kidding. Sort of.

I felt great, but I haven't run since then. The pain in my left knee lingered through out the week, and after some research, I'm almost 100 percent positive that I've developed runner's knee. No, this is not a cool, sexy, svelt knee that only the elite running crowd develop. Grossly oversimplified, it's chronic pain resulting from the knee cap not tracking correctly in its groove. There are lots of potential causes listed online that could weaken support around the knee cap or cause it to travel an irregular path, and they read like a checklist of all the reasons I should not be a runner: over-pronation (my feet roll in because they have no arch), wide hips (thanks, German heritage), and poor conformation of the groove the knee cap moves in (should look like a "V", mine looks like an "L" and my kneecap has dislocated three times).

So I took this week off, and hit the trail again this evening for a 6-miler. The knee started out creeky, but didn't give me too much trouble. I'm looking into options to manage/prevent the pain as I go back up in my mileage. Because I'd like run far. Far, far away. From my love handles.

Around the Dinner Table

I am a perfectionist, a neat freak, and control freak.

I know, I know. You're thinking, "Maaaaann, I wish I'd married her. Sounds like a charming, pleasant, laid back kind of gal."

Too bad. You missed your chance.

The upside is I get all our bills paid on time, my editor doesn't have to correct much when I turn in my stories, and you could eat dinner off our kitchen floor.

The downsides, oh, they are like numbering the stars. Or like numbering the June bugs Happy has eaten in the last two day: a lot.

What?

Just one of the downsides is I haven't wanted to have people over to our house until it's finished, just so, perfect. Like, after I scrape all the popcorn off the ceiling, repaint, tear up the 1980's carpet and lay down wood floors, replace the rotting trim, install crown molding, pull up all the weeds outside, hang stuff on the walls and replace all the generic pictures that came in the frames with pictures of our own, fabulous selves.

A week or so ago, our friends Andrew and Jenna invited us over to their house for dinner. It was so sweet, so thoughtful and so old-fashioned hospitable of them! We had such a great time. Jenna made tacos and smores bars, we sat around and chatted and looked at the adorable wardrobe accumulating for soon-to-be-born Baby Borne, and the boys went outside and made fires.

I left thinking, "We have to do this again!" You know, at their cute house. The one with decorations and pictures of people who actually live there in the frames. How many times could we eat there before they would start to wonder if we lived in a van or had 18 cats or really were the couple they thought they recognized on Hoarders.

Then I got to thinking. What we loved about that night with the Bornes was the fellowship, the sharing stories, the laughter, working together, whether in the kitchen or out in the shop. Jenna's home is precious, and she should be proud of it. The comfy surroundings added to the joy of the night, but it wasn't what made it. What truly made it was just being able to be loved on by our friends and enjoy time together. It was the act of Jenna and Andrew welcoming us into their home that warmed our hearts, the fact that the home was adorned so nicely and kept so well by Jenna was just a bonus. Besides, there are probably imperfections Jenna sees in her home that her guests would never notice. (Or, it just makes me feel better to think that.)

So I decided funky carpet, popcorn, junk room and all, I wanted to welcome the Bornes to our home and hopefully give them the same joy they gave us. So, last night, they joined us at the Haynes house for dinner.


Don't get me wrong, I went into manic mode and cleaned the house from top to bottom the day before they came. Tanner caught a dose of my crazy too. But it was nice to know I was cleaning it not so I could get a gold star on my OCD chart, but to make it welcoming for our friends. Life is to be shared after all! Faults and all, we're proud of our home. I'm proud of how hard Tanner has worked and how fiscally wise he's been so that we could afford this home. Mostly, I'm grateful for God blessing us with this house and such wonderful friends to welcome to it.


We made cheesy tortellini casserole (Tanner's favorite), Jenna brought a delicious spinach salad, and the boys grilled up some monster steaks. Butterscotch cookies warm out of the oven were enjoyed with fresh roasted coffee - Jenna roasted the raw beans that day! Us girls chatted around the dining room table and the boys played outside with Andrew's potato gun. From what I could tell, everyone was comfortable and happy, and no one noticed the creaky floorboard where we hide our collection of embalmed medical specimens.

JUST KIDDING!

Sweet Dreams and Beauty Cream

Recently, Tanner has made several comments about my nighttime routine. They go something like this: “What the HECK are you DOING in there?”

The first few times, I answered him literally.
“Well, I’m currently staring at myself in the mirror and sucking in and flexing my “abs” and rearranging my belly and hip pudge so I can get an idea of what I could potentially look like if I stopped eating a pecan praline, four Girl Scout cookies and one square of dark chocolate a day.”

Then I realized he was trying to make a point. I hate it when they do that.

The point being, what could anyone possibly be doing in the bathroom that would take 15-plus minutes?

Eek. Don’t answer that.

What non-toilet-related things could anyone possibly do doing every night that would take that long?

So I got to wondering if my nighttime routine is excessive, or if it is only excessive compared to Tanner’s:

-Take off clothes. (optional)
-Put on shorts. (no comment)
-Turn off lights and pull back sheets. (optional)
-Collapse on bed. (mandatory)

Mine goes something like this:

-Brush teeth (BORING, and does anyone else have such trouble keeping the toothpaste foam from coming out all over their lips?)
-Wash face
-Cringe while removing a cotton pad from the bag – egads! I hate cotton balls and cotton pads and Q-tips – then apply toner
-Apply wrinkle cream to forehead, neck and chest
-Apply eye cream
-Stare into the endless, black abyss of my pores
-Do the blubber rearranging thing

If I remember:
-Put cellulite cream onto unnamed areas. And no, I do not do this while eating a praline.
I wait until I’m done.
-Floss (BORING)
-Use mouthwash (BURNS and BORING)
-Take vitamins and probiotics

-Put on PJs
-Check every door in house 3 times to make sure it’s really locked and click the remote lock on truck keys until the truck horn can be heard CLEARLY three times
-Put the dogs to bed and give Happy pills if he needs them. Lay on Happy’s bed with him and speak unspeakable, sappy, ridiculous, humiliatingly corny baby talk to him.
-Get in bed.
-Put lotion on legs.
-Put lotion on feet.
-Put on chapstick.
-Put in mouth guard and, if the fan is on, my satin eye cover, beauty sleep thing (because I swear I sleep with my eyes half open and the fan dries them out).
-Snuggle into bed.
-Realize I have to go to the bathroom.

That pretty much sums it up.

You?

P.S. Sweet Dreams and Butt Cream was my original post title.

Run, baby, run

When I was young, I called all athletic shoes "tenni-shoes," as in tennis shoes. Then, when I was about 12, I moved to Canada, donned a toque, ate ketchup chips, subsequently becoming brainwashed and started calling athletic shoes "runners" because that's what all my friends were saying.

I also called my dear ol' mama, "mum." It was a dark time.

Now, I call them tenni-shoes or "sneakers," for some bizarre reason. I don't know where I picked that up.

A couple of weeks ago, I got a new pair of watchamacalits at Fort Worth Running Co. They put me on a treadmill, video recorded my gait, and played it back for me as they explained why kind of running shoe I needed. I have no arches and over-pronate, so I needed support. My new Brooks have seen a lot of miles in the last couple of weeks, more than my old tenni-runner-sneaks saw in a whole month.

For the last couple of weeks, I've consistently been running six miles on the Mineral Wells Trailway in Weatherford. My great aunt Alene always tells me she was, is and always will be a two-drink gal. Well, I was a four-mile gal for a long time. Then, something inspired me, or my brain shorted, and I upped to six miles.

I love running, and it's the only athletic endeavor I've ever been even remotely talented at. I'm not fast, at all, and I don't have anything near perfect form. But I have endurance and guts and a sickening addiction to finish no matter what. It's one of the things in life I always see to the end, no matter how ugly that end may be.

I remember when, as a 8th grader, I was running in the 800 meter race (two times around the track) at the city track meet in Edmonton, Alberta. The gun sounded and we were off. The rest of the field was pacing pacing themselves, but since speed have never been my strong suit, I knew I'd never had a chance if I waiting to battle it out in a sprint to the finish. So, I took a chance and pushed out ahead of the pack. At that age, I was usually painfully aware whenever eyes were on me and not too fond of it for a host of reasons including but not limited to acne, sweaty armpits, a bad Jennifer Aniston turned Hanson brothers haircut and overarching, all-encompassing insecurity and self-loathing. But in that moment, it didn't matter. My pounding of my feet on the track, my legs swinging powerfully, the air pushing in and out of my lungs, I felt confident and alone, in a good way. Everything else was a muted blur.

Everyone caught up to me toward the finish. I remember pushing my body so hard and realizing that no matter how much you try, sometimes, there's just nothing left. My dad had once told me that if you pump your arms faster, your legs will follow suit. So, on the home video, you can see me in my Vernon Barford Blues track uniform with my face red as a cherry, my long arms pumping furiously like pistons in an engine, and my gangly legs struggling in a disproportionally slower lope, like a gazelle in slow motion. I was all limbs, then. Still am. I'm the torso-less wonder. Still, I finished third and earned a spot on that podium.

I'm still not fast. I'm an undisclosed amount of pounds heavier. I've dislocated my knee twice. I've broken my sacrum (the back of my pelvis). But I've still got guts, carnsarnit!

This Saturday, I was headed down the trail on the back half of my six miles when a runner came from behind. He was slowly gaining on me. It didn't help that I had to stop periodically to tell Happy it was OK to slide under a fence and get a drink from a creek/pond/puddle/stagnant swamp. I can't really tell if Happy enjoys running with me. After the first couple miles during which he frantically and desperately chases squirrels, rabbits and apparitions of grandeur, he spends the rest of the time frantically and desperately searching for any body of water he can plunge in to.

Anyway, the mystery runner kept closing, which gave me a renewed inspiration to push myself more than I had in a long time. I felt like I was back on the jr. high track. Minus the acne. Well, sort of. As I could hear the closer's footsteps getting louder, I opened up my gait and really let myself fly in the last half-mile stretch. I probably opened up to early because I was audibly weezing and gasping as I gallumped past several other trail-goers. But I did it! I surged ahead and finished a good 200 meters ahead of mystery man.

After I vomited, I thanked the other runner for pushing me and assured him I didn't think he was trying to run me down and attack me. I asked him how far he had run, and he said 8 miles.

8 miles. Hmm. That got me thinking.

So yesterday, I gave it a try, telling myself that if worse came to worse, I could start walking on the way back at what would have been six miles. I headed out, and I'm actually really proud to say, I did it! And, the extra two miles were much easier than I thought they would be. Granted I was running anywhere from a 10-15 minute mile at times and was there half the day, I didn't tire cardiovascularly and only had to momentarily stop twice, once when Happy caused a biker with a dog on a leash to crash and once to balance the universe by personally returning some water to the earth in light of all that Happy had removed.

It's the ciirrrrcle of liiife, and it moves us aaaallll.

Sometimes very inconveniently with no toilet paper available. And poison plants abounding. Nuf said.

What did make it difficult toward the end were my ankles and knees. But I did it. I ran 8 miles, and I think I'll try again this weekend.

Twenty-Seven

Tanner and I each turned 27 recently. The kids I babysit inform me that this is "wow, really old."

I use anti-wrinkle cream. And eye cream. Twice a day.

I regularly use denture cleaning tablets (for my mouth guard).

I drink Sleepy Time tea.

I fall asleep almost every night on the couch between 9:30 pm-10 pm. For Tanner, 8:30 pm and 9:00 pm.

I go on bird watching tours.

I wear socks with Crocs.

I wear Crocs.

Anyways. We are both a year older. That is great, and I am very thankful for all the blessings and the struggles we received in our 27th year on this earth. They brought joy, thankfulness, refinement and growth.

I lost my job. I found a new job. We celebrated a year of marriage. We found a church in Weatherford to attend. We made new friends and watched others drift away. I lost my cat, Striker. We both worked long, hard hours and many weekends. Tanner's Grandpa, Bud Haynes, passed away. We enjoyed Christmas celebrations at both of our parents' homes. We bought a house.

Through it all, God was faithful to us and worked in His perfect will, through valleys and mountains, to continue us on a path of loving Him, each other and the people around us.

To the test the integrity of our ever-degrading, nearly middle-aged teeth before we're forced to wear dentures or gum stewed prunes, Tanner and I each chose to celebrate our birthdays with impressive carnivorous displays.

For Tanner's 27th in January, we, along with some good friends, went to Texas De Brazil in Forth Worth. It's a Brazilian-style churrascaria where they bring meat (beef, pork, lamb) to your table and shave off portions for you. They also have a killer salad bar, which was my favorite part.

At Texas De Brazil

Carter and Brandon

Jenni and Ryan

Adam and Tanner

After dinner, we went dancing in the Stockyards. Jenni and Ryan drove up from Beeville and stayed with us at the Hyatt Place in the "historic Fort Worth Stockyards." It was a great time, with added atmosphere due to the FW Stock Show and Rodeo going on.

Out on the town

For my birthday, this weekend, Tanner and I went to downtown FW to enjoy one of my FAVORITE fares, boiled crawfish! We got 2 lbs a piece, nice and spicy, and all the boiled taters and corn that come with it. We also had some delicious crawfish fondue and bread, all courtesy of Razzoos Cajun Cafe. I loooove when it's crawfish season.

At Razzoo's

Sunday night, Tanner made me dinner! He whipped up some huge ribeyes, mac and cheese, wedge salad and french bread, and got me a nice bottle of wine, too.

By the time the weekend wrapped up, I was full of thankfulness.

And protein.

And birthday donuts.

And brownies.

And I ran 12 miles.

Really, I did.

The end.

Birthday Makeover

Babysitting last night was awesome, as expected.

We started out by playing duck-duck-goose on the trampoline. I couldn't catch anyone. Our circle was so small that by the time I got up from the seated position, the goose was already around the loop and sitting down again. When I playfully asked, "Why can't I catch anyone?" I knew the logistics of our small circle were to blame, but the girls also informed me, "Because you're old!"

When I told them that this Sunday is my birthday ("27!? That's so old!"), they decided they needed to host a birthday party for me. I picked out outfits for everyone and did their makeup. Then, while two of the girls "decorated" the living room (draped scarves over the TV, hung an open, upside-down umbrella from the chandelier, set stuffed animals up on the couch), I got a makeover for the party. It was epic.

Five applications of lipgloss, most of which ended up INSIDE my mouth. Glitter stick all over my face and neck and chest. Red and blue hair mascara. Neon pick blush on my cheeks and jaw. Perfume. And "eyeliner." When they were done the first time, the verdict was, "Oh my word, that does NOT look good. You're a mess."

A case of Wet Wipes and three do-overs later, I was presentable for the party.

I was treated to a Miley Cirus dance party ("Party in the USA" on loop), then half of the guests left early to go play Barbies, then the remaining guests performed a 20-minute ballet to Kelly Clarkson's "Breakaway."

Best birthday ever.

Check out that eyeliner!