Bucket List 2014

Hey... look at this!  I've blogged twice in one week!  I'm off to a great start on item #1 on my 2014 bucket list!

Alaina's 2014 Bucket List

1. ACTUALLY BLOG AGAIN!  2013 proved to be a poor showing of my blogging abilities.  I'm ready to step my game up.

2.  Get a job.  Yeah.  That's gonna definitely need to happen soon.

3.  Camping trip to either Yellowstone National Park or Glacier National Park with Landon.

4.  Get the heck out of this apartment and into a house.  Or townhouse.  Or cardboard box on the street.  Just not an apartment.

5.  Complete a certification in personal training and start doing part time personal training at my gym.

6.  Actually, really, seriously, FINALLY make that dog-gone t-shirt quilt that I've been talking about for 2 years!

7.  Become involved in the student ministry program at Concord Church (our new church family).

8.  Take a few steps back from my iPhone.  I've become a little too addicted to having the internet machine and social media (I'm lookin' at you, Instagram....) right at my fingertips.  I really want to back off the phone and enjoy my personal time with people more intentionally this year.

9.  Learn to love St. Louis.  I really, really want to learn to love this city.  I want to love its people, the area around it, and the culture that it has to offer.  I really miss California and find myself thinking about the ocean far too often than I would like to.  I want to hike, explore, find markets and cool restaurants, and go to as many sporting events as possible to enjoy my time here.

10.  Go to as many professional sporting events as possible since there are so many of them easily accessible from St. Louis.

11.  Skydive.

12.  Be more intentional about memorizing scripture.

13.  Show a horse again!!!!


And to carry on the fun tradition from last year......

2014 Fitness Goals

1. Some sort of fitness competition.  Run a 5k, powerlifting meet, something!

2.  3 minute plank.

3.  10 pull-ups unassisted

4.  Raw 1 rep max deadlift: 225 lbs

5.  Raw 1 rep max squat:  180 lbs

6.  Raw 1 rep max bench press: 110 lbs


I'm setting fewer of these goals this year in case I get injured again....which is probably inevitable.  Ha.

But there you have it.  Probably more for my knowledge than for your reading pleasure, but I'm glad I have goals :)

AC

Bucket List 2013 Recap

Remember that 2013 bucket list that I posted last year?  (side note:  do you remember me period??  Its been a while, but I'm alive.  And as you will see below, bucket list item #1 focuses on y'all, my wonderful readers! .... If you haven't given up on this blog yet.... ha.)

I have enjoyed making these lists and recapping them because it reminds me of all of the wonderful things that I was blessed with the year before.  2013's bucket list was an EPIC fail, but 2013 was, so far, the most wonderful year of my life.  Funny how that works out, eh?

Bucket List 2013 Recap:

1.  Go to a San Diego Chargers game - I'm beginning to think that this will never happen :(
2.  Make a t-shirt quilt - No excuses here.  I just suck at doing this.
3.  Become a certified equine appraiser with the ASEA. - Currently working towards this goal.
4.  Revamp my horse brokerage business - In the works!
5.  Live within 200 miles of Landon. - Big fat check!  Cuz we got married.  And are now in St. Louis.  More on that later.
6.  Hiking trip in NorCal - CHECK!  Thanks to Davys :)
7.  Hiking trip to Joshua Tree National Park. - CHECK!
8.  Ride my mule on the beach - In hindsight, this was a rather lofty goal....
9.  Be more punctual. - Check-ish.....
10.  Being better about not over-committing myself. - Now that I'm unemployed, I'm finding this one to be much easier!  Haha.
11.  Go to a Wolfpack basketball or football game - CHECK!  I went to a UNC- NCSU football game with my daddy the weekend before the wedding.
12.  Some sort of very large adrenaline inducing thrill chase. - Fail.  Unless you count chasing the cattle through the Cal Poly campus a thrill chase???
13.  Serve my campus in a greater way through prayer and service projects with other faculty. - Not so much on the service projects, but CHECK on the prayer time!
14.  Go to both DisneyWORLD and DisneyLAND  - Epic and very sad fail.
15.  See an orca. - Epic fail.  But maybe since the whole "Black Fish" movie came out this is an OK thing.
16.  Have an individual rider from one of the Cal Poly teams that I coach place in the top 5 in their class at Nationals. - Nope.  But the teams did phenomenal this past year and I couldn't be prouder of them!


2013 Fitness Goals!
1 . Run a 5K - Fail.  I can currently only run 1/2 mile very slowly thanks to the ankle reconstruction that took place in March.  

*Side bar - this incident put a huge dent in many of my fitness goals, since I am still only at about 90% now and recovery was pretty long

2.  Raw 1 rep max deadlift: 165 lbs - CHECK!  Currently at a 200 lb 1 rep max
3.  Raw 1 rep max squat: 145 lbs - Almost.  Currently at a 130 lb max due to ankle instability.  But numbers are going up!
4.  Raw 1 rep max bench: 95 lbs - Nope.  At 80 lbs for a 1 rep max right now.  
5.  Do more yoga.  And stop hating it so much. - Check....ish????
6.  Increase flexibility, especially in my hip flexors. - Fail.
7.  SDHP 115 x 5 - CHECK!  Now at 130 x 5
8.  Swim more! - Fail.
9.  18% body fat - Fail - 22%
10.  More suspension training. - CHECK!

But for all I did not accomplish this year, so many many wonderful things happened (funny how that works, eh?). 

I had many wonderful adventures with friends who came to visit me in California.

I got to do so many incredible hikes this year, despite the fact that I had ankle surgery.

I went on an amazing cruise with my family.

Landon proposed to me when we went hiking in Yosemite National Park.

Ben came out to take care of me when I had surgery.

I left my job at Cal Poly and took a 10 day road trip with Ryan that was awesome.

I moved home to NC for two months and was overwhelmed with love by all of my friends that I had missed so much!

I got married to Landon on November 9th (a whole other post on that, I promise!).

We went on an amazing honeymoon in Mexico.

And moved to St. Louis Missouri to start my new chapter in my life together with my husband (<---who says that!!?? Woah.).

So even though my bucket list turned out to be very different from my actual list, I'm pretty pleased with how this year has turned out.

Stay tuned for my 2014 bucket list (and I promise you won't have to wait two months for another post about it).

AC

"We are cool girls. We do fun things!" - Part 1

Recall that I said I would be reliving two past road trip adventures.

Yes, I know that this particular adventure with Davys occurred 3 months ago.

But we all know that I am terrible at remembering the little details of things, and this was an insanely fun and hilarious trip with many adventures, so I would like to document it here for my sake and for your amusement.

Davys came up with the idea that we should both go up to Seattle, WA to visit our friend from college, Stafa, who is doing his medical residency there.

I came up with the idea that we should rent a car and make a camping road trip of it.

The result:  an amazing trip :)

I think Davys summed it up the best when (during a particularly cool part of our trip) she stated that "We are cool girls.  We do fun things!"

Truth.

Three states.  SLO to Seattle.  One car.  One tent.  Two showers.  2,449 miles driven.  In 7 days.

The trip started out in our little rental car, Jenny, with 782 miles on the odometer and a "can-do" adventure attitude!  BRING ON THE FUN!!!!

We drove up the historic Highway 1 along the CA coastline, stopping in Cayucos CA for some brown butter sea salt cookies.  Then northward to Cambria, CA to find the zebras and the elephant seals (but not together)!!

We eased our way through the Big Sur area, stopping for lunch (yay for juice boxes!) at McWay Falls.

For dinner we headed to Monterey, CA and had quite a lovely walk and clam chowder sourdough bread bowl date.

Our goal was to find a new place to camp every night.  We had a tentative (VERY tentative) plan of action, and we flew by the seat of our britches most of the time.  We were hoping to just find a decent state park to crash in for the first night, and we ended up at a WONDERFUL place:  Henry Coe State Park.

This place was amazing!  Beautiful drive high up into the mountains, with time for a lovely sunset hike.  And it was beautiful watching the fog roll in in the morning.  I had to pee circa 3 am and can not put into words how breath-takingly beautiful the sky was that night.  I have never seen so many stars, or the milky way, so clearly.  

Day 2:  Operation San Francisco, CA.  We met up with Davys' D.C. friends who were randomly in San Fran on vacation for some awesome coffee.  We, of course, had to make a famous Dynamo Donut run, before heading to Petalouma, CA for some fabulous beer at Lagunitas Brewery. 

And when I say beer, I mean the whole enchilada of 20 samples.  

We continued northward on the coast following 1 to a place that Davys picked out for us to eat in Samoa, CA.  The old Samoa cookhouse used to be a dining house for loggers back in the day.  It still functions that way, with a one-price-one-menu-freaking-huge-portions-of-food style menu.  Needless to say we were not hungry.

That night we camped at a little random redneck filled ATV-riding-in-the-dunes island.

We did a little exploring, made a little driftwood fire, and got serenaded to sleep by a homeless guy and his guitar (which was much preferred to the wine-drinking-super-excited astronomers at Henry Coe State Park the night before).

 And those are the first two days of adventures, folks!  Stay tuned for more blasts from the past ;)

AP

A Tale of Two Road Trips

Also known as "Yes, I am Alive: The Blog Post."  Thanks for the blogger-slacker shout-out by my Phines over at 2Phines.  So its been 2 months since my last post.  So sue me.  (actually I am really sorry y'all.....sheepish grin....)  But lets be real here.  I'm not exactly winning any blogging awards with this site (do these even exist??  Probably.).

I haven't had too much going on lately.

Just been planning a wedding that involves people from 13 states and 3 time zones.

And packing up my entire house and moving it across country and dumping half of it in Missouri and half of it in NC.

And training a new person for my job at Cal Poly.

And leaving Cal Poly.

And driving across the country to live in Wake Forest, NC until the wedding.

But other than that, things have been chill.

Honestly, only 2 really neat things have happened in the last 2 months.  Davys came out to visit me (AGAIN!!) and we took a really, really awesome road trip from SLO to Seattle, WA and back.  I really want to fill you in on our crazy adventures and document them for myself, so those will be my next postings.  And then my brother Ryan flew out to SLO to help me pack and we had another super awesome road trip across the country.  Hence the title of this post.  Two road trips.  Clever, no?

Prepare yourselves to be ambushed with road trip photos and antics for the next few days.