Blessings

 Today I went for a run. This isn't unusual for me, but today's run felt different. Parker had baseball practice so I like to use that hour and a half wisely and sneak my workout in. It was a perfect day for a run, just cool enough and a slight breeze. As I was running I got totally lost in my thoughts. I thought about how blessed and lucky I really am. I thought about what a blessing Parker is, and how lucky I am that he is able to even go to baseball practice. Even though he complains about it sometimes, hopefully one day he will understand. There are a million things that can go wrong when you have kids. Even with everything that happened with being pregnant with Parker and his delivery and after he was born, he is healthy. There are so many children out there that don't get the chance to play sports.

I thought about the fact that I can run. Some days I dread it, some days it seems so daunting to drag my butt out the door. But no matter how it starts, I am always glad that I got out and did it. Even though I am not a great runner, I run, and it is such a blessing. Again, there are so many people that can't run. I thought about this journey that I am on. The fact that I am training for a marathon, and how scary that is. But I realized how lucky I am that I can do this.

I thought about my family, this weekend we were grilling out and Brian was at the grill, and Parker was sitting in a patio chair reading a book, and I was sitting on the patio shelling fresh peas. It was just perfect. The sun was setting and we were all right there having conversations, and I realized how truly blessed I am.

Sometimes it's important to sit back and think about the real blessings we have in our lives. Some days life will beat us down, but there are always blessings.

After practice Parker asked me if we could get some ice cream. He did just finish an hour and a half of practice, but I figured I would tell him that we could have ice cream if we ran "the tower". The tower is at our local nature center and it's not the tallest one around, but the view from the top is absolutely amazing! I timed us just to see how long it took us to get to the top, 1 minute 19 seconds, I think that's pretty good after my run and his practice.

We even got to see a little of nature at its best, here is a picture of a baby bunny that stopped for a little snack right in front of us.

It's no secret that I love nature and hiking and any chance  I have to share that with Parker makes me incredibly happy. He is growing up so quickly I don't want to waste any chance to share with him the beauty in nature. Today's technology world is taking over and I don't want him to miss out.

Saturday I have a 6 mile training run on the schedule and I am both nervous and very excited about it. 6 miles will be my longest run ever, wish me luck!