Square to Square

At the beginning of this month Chris ran in the unofficial official ultra marathon called Square to Square.  The reason it's an unofficial marathon is because it's an untimed race with no medals, no time chips, and no entry fees.  It started last year when a group of runners meet at the Bentonville square and ran to the Fayetteville square for fun.  I think 40 people ran it last year and 140 people participated this year.  Mike Rush from Rush Running heads it up.  Since it's not an official marathon it means that there are no aid stations or porta potties.  So Greg and I were Chris's aid stations.  We drove and met him every 5-6 miles to make sure he had plenty of water, GU, gatorade, and whatever else he needed.

The whole group before they started.

He started off really well but as the morning progressed it started to get hotter and hotter.  When we meet him around the 11th mile he asked if we could get him some Aleve. The next stop was at the 15 mile mark and you could tell he was in was major pain.  He said that his IT bands were starting to act up because he really needed new shoes but he didn't have time to break them in before the race.  He said he wasn't sure that he'd be able to finish but Greg and I told him that he could.

5 miles in and going strong. 

11 mile mark

15 miles in. 

You could tell when we saw him at mile 20 that the Aleve had kicked in and he was feeling a little better.  He finished the race in 5 hours and 50 minutes but that also included the 7 stops he made with us to refuel his water and eat.  I know that he's disappointed with his time but I'm very proud of him for finishing it.  Not everyone can say that they finished a 27 mile race especially since only 50-60 people actually finished the race.  The next marathon he has planned is the Rock n Roll marathon in St. Louis this October and I'll definitely be there to cheer him on!

20 miles 

Finally making it to the Fayetteville Square.

Running fanatic

Chris has been a running fanatic the last few weeks.  March 30th he ran the Hogeye half marathon again.  He really wanted to be able to run the full marathon this year but his injury from December set him back a few weeks.  He crossed the finish line in 2 hours and 12 minutes.  He was really excited that he shaved off 20 minutes from last year's race. Right after he crossed the finish line he asked me if I was off the following Saturday because he wanted to run the Bentonville half marathon.  Thankfully I was, so he signed up for it.  I was a little worried since he's never done back to back halves before.

We woke up bright and early picked up Kathleen and headed to Bentonville.  It was colder than the week before but we still met him half way to cheer him on.  He told us he stopped and ate a donut that someone gave him so that upset his stomach!  Even with that he finished 30 seconds faster than the week before.

I'm sad I didn't get a good photo of him crossing the finish line but there were tall people standing in front of me.

Last month he ran in the Russellville half marathon. He decided to run this race since the majority of his coworkers were running and this was their first half marathon.  Plus he really liked the way the metal looked.  He finished this race in 2 hours and 11 minutes.  He really wanted to finish in 2 hours and 10 minutes and he followed the pacer but the pacer was off by a minute.  He realized the pacer was off when he rounded the corner heading for the finish line. Since he's run in 3 half marathons in the last 90 days he qualifies to be a member of the Half Fanatics.

I loved the start line for this race. 

Doing our part

By now you probably now that I love to shop and it really doesn't matter what for either. Chris and I really love to support local businesses but our local town doesn't really have a lot of places to shop or eat.  It's really sad but our town is the only town in Northwest Arkansas that doesn't have any major shopping or restaurants.  We see all of these major businesses going in all over Northwest Arkansas but it seems like our local government isn't trying to recruit any of these companies.  Chris has taken it upon himself to contact businesses like IKEA, Garden Ridge, Pei Wei, and several other companies and let them know about this area.  Several of the companies have replied to his emails and seem pretty interested in this area.  Since our town doesn't have a whole lot of places to shop and eat at we take our business to other neighboring towns. I thought that I would share some of my favorite local places that we frequent

You've probably remember me mentioning the Cellar Door Antiques which is located in downtown Springdale.  The owner is one of my coworkers and her store is so cute and it's filled with antique furniture, artwork, glassware and so much more.  If you're ever in town make sure and stop by.

I really love to shop at local boutiques.  You get clothes that are unique and the owners are all personable and they remember who you are.  The Pink Tomato boutique is located in Bentonville.  The owner is a wonderful lady who always takes the time to say hi to me and tell me all about the sales and new items that has come in.  Another boutique that I really like is located in Springdale called Whimsy Whoo.  They have clothing and small decorative items.  When we go to Mena I love shopping at The Rage.  They have a website that you can shop from but I love shopping for clothes in person since I'm such a hard person to size.  Last but not least is my mother in law's consignment shop located in Mena called The Allure.  They sell name brand clothes for the whole entire family.

When we eat out we really try to eat at local places.  Some of our faves are Slim Chicken and they have several locations in Northwest Arkansas.  We love Mojitos in Fayetteville and of course our favorite in Springdale would have to be Susan's, Chris loves their eggs Benedict.

If you have local places that you like to shop or eat at please feel free to leave me a comment and let me know.  Chris and I love to try new things especially since it's helping support local businesses.

Love and baseball

Last Friday was opening day for Razorback baseball and this year it fell on Valentine's Day.  You couldn't ask for a more perfect day in my opinion.  Chris and I took the day off so we could enjoy some time off together.  Chris did have to go to a work breakfast so I got to have breakfast with my parents.  After that we met up at Brandon Eye Clinic to get Chris some new hipster glasses ordered.  He's wanted new frames for a while now.  We meet up with our baseball crew at Sassy's for some lunch before heading to the game.

My annual opening day picture with Ribby.

The game was pretty cold and since we were winning we decided to leave in the 6th inning.  We spent the night shopping and eating at our favorite fried chicken place.  We really didn't want to go somewhere fancy since we were going to Melting Pot with friends Saturday night in Tulsa and Chris had just booked our vacation to Rivera Maya, Mexico that day. If you've never been to Melting it's totally worth driving over to Tulsa to eat at. Just make sure that you haven't eaten a lot that day so you can enjoy all of the food! All in all it was a perfect way to spend Valentine's weekend.

May can't get here fast enough!!

Fun with color

 

We really didn't do much in January because it's just been so cold. We've had quite a bit of winter weather in the last couple of weeks so we've just been spending a lot of time at home. This means I’ve had a lot of time for Chris to do craft projects and redecorate the house. For the past several months we've been buying painted antique frames from our favorite antique store, The Cellar Door. Chris has been saying that our living room needs more color. He wanted to paint the living room but I decided we could do a colorful photo wall gallery of pictures of places that we've traveled to.

We finally had enough picture frames to complete the wall. We first started with tracing out the outlines on newspaper and placing them on the wall for placement. I left them up on the wall for a week that way If I needed to move them I could before they were hung. After that Chris hung them on the wall.  I love how it turned out and it's just the right amount of color. 

We also found a bright red sofa table at one of the local shops here downtown. I think with the added pops of color from the photo gallery and the sofa table we now have plenty of color in the living room. 

We've been searching every where for photo books to store our pictures and we finally found them at Garden Ridge in Tulsa.  You can't see the middle one but it's for New York City.

Spa like

We've been in our house for several years now and we haven't changed our master bedroom since then.  I've wanted our bedroom to feel more spa like and relaxing.  So I used some of my Christmas money and bought a new bedding set.  Once I bought that I realized that nothing really went together anymore.  I was going to paint the room grey but decided that would be way to much work.  We found some curtains that hopefully go with the paint color.

Before the curtains.

After Chris hung the curtains the bedroom still didn't look right.  I've wanted to do a monogram above our bed for a while now and when I found the perfect antique wooden picture frame from the Cellar Door, I knew I had to have it.  We went to Hobby Lobby and found some metal letters to put on it.  We thought we could just glue them onto cardboard with scrapbook paper but the paper wasn't heavy enough.  So we ended up going back and getting fabric.  I blame Pinterest for all of these wonderful projects that we have been doing.  I really love how it turned it and I think that it completes the room.  The next project for the bedroom will be to get hardwood floors but that is long ways away.

The completed look.

Happy 2014

I'm a little behind on my blog posts already for the new year. I've had this post written for weeks but I haven't been motivated to blog lately. January has gone by in a blur. We went out with friends for New Years Eve. We all went out to dinner at Farrell's before heading to Willy D's to ring in the new year. I'm just so thankful we have amazing friends that looked after us. That's all I'll say about the night and from now on I'll stick to being the designated driver!