Intro!

Well, hello! I am new to this whole blogging world. I have been wanting to start one for a little while now and finally sat down to do it! Now if only I keep up with it...

Anyways...my name is Kimmy and I'm almost 27 years old. I grew up in Florida and loved it, until I saw what else the world had to offer. I have a wonderful husband named Chris who is prior Army (hooah!) and we met about 6 years ago working at McDonald's together. we just celebrated our 5th wedding anniversary. When we got married he had just been stationed in Colorado so off to the cold we went. I don't like the cold, but I LOVE seeing seasons, and I absolutely love the mountains. He was injured in combat and was discharged last year. We moved to North Carolina to be closer to our Florida family but stay in the mountains/seasons area of the US.

We have a daughter named Kylie who just turned 2. She is the light of our lives. She has the most hair of any girl her age you will ever see. Its all anyone who meets her talks about. People have asked if its a wig. People have thought she was a doll when she was a baby until she moved. Its just all the hair. I spend more time on my child's hair than my own. Kylie loves the Cars movies and My Little Pony. And every other animal on the face of the earth. We have a 90 pound chocolate lab named Zeus, and Kylie thinks she is bigger than him. They have alot of fun together.

So, since I was in 7th grade I have been a runner. Well at that point I did the 800 meter race in track. I loved racing though. A friend convinced me when we went into high school to go to a cross country practice with her. That first 3 mile practice I thought I was going to die. And then I just fell in love with it and never looked back. I ran in high school and community college. In college I had the opportunity to run in the NJCAA (National Junior College Athletic Association) national meet both years I ran with my team. Best running experiences of my life thus far. I love competing. And yet I haven't done it in over 5 years since I got married. I think I've done maybe two 5k's since then. I stopped running completely after moving to Colorado because of the altitude. See, my lungs kind of hate me and I have asthma and grew up getting bronchitis several times a year. But I was determined to run anyways. But in Colorado I just could not run, not for a few years. I would do a short run here and there. Finally after Kylie was born I took up running again, but it was still very sporadic and I didn't keep up with it like I should have.

This past year I had to have half of my thyroid removed. I had a lump on it, and biopsies could not determine if it was benign or if it had cancer. It had grown, so I opted to get it removed. Thankfully after it was removed they determined it had not been cancer. But now I am down half a thyroid, which is what helps your metabolism and all sorts of other fun things. Well I opted not to go on the medication to regulate your metabolism. I wanted to try and keep my weight down on my own without being on a pill the rest of my life. Within a few months of my surgery I gained around 15 pounds. Around August or September, I realized that not working out and not eating right were not going to help me keep my weight under control. I wasn't overweight to begin with, only around 10 pounds above where I was before getting pregnant with Kylie, and before her I was very fit. But being more than 20 pounds above my pre-pregnancy weight just wasn't good for me. I felt sluggish and lazy and just wanted to eat. Which is a side effect of not having half a thyroid and not going on the medication. I decided I should start running again. So I started going to the little gym in our apartment complex and hopping on the treadmill a few times a week. I was very diligent in going and in eating better. Not perfect! No one is perfect. I am far from it. I love food. I will not starve myself to be skinny. I will not give up foods I love to be skinny. If I can still eat what I like sometimes and be fit, that is good enough. Sometime in October I had fallen back in love with running again. I had long ago had a goal of running a half marathon (not a full....I still don't know if I'm crazy enough for that!). So I thought, "what better time than NOW to set that goal again?" So I did. I started looking at races and training schedules. In mid-November I picked a race for March. Then I hurt my ankle. I was glad I didn't pick the one in January I had been looking at!

The Half Marathon Training Schedule I created!

After Thanksgiving I started running again slowly and created my own training schedule that was based off of one I found online. My father-in-law let me borrow P90X and so I am using some of the videos for my cross training. I am so excited for this goal, something that I am doing for me and me only! For anyone who is a mother, you know that everything you do is for your child. And if you are a stay at home mom like I am, you can go a little batty watching cartoons and singing "Itsy Bitsy Spider" all day long. So having something to do that is only for me, and having this goal that is my goal to achieve on my own, it is amazing! Every person should have something they do just for themselves. Reading, sewing, etc. Exercise is great because it is for yourself mentally and physically. And for me emotionally sometimes too! Today is 8 weeks from my very first half marathon and I am so excited to be counting down! I plan to keep posting my updates on my training, but I am sure this blog will also involve lots of things about Kylie and food, the two other things I love the most. Every day that I run I post about it on Instagram, which you can find here. I will probably post a summary on the blog weekly. Or more if I get bored. Oh and if you can't already tell I tend to babble when I get on a computer, so I hope you like to read my ramblings!!!

Goodnight for now!