What's your love language

When my husband and I began dating, one of my friends handed me a book called "the Five Love Languages and insisted that I read it. "

I sort of buried the book under a pile of others on my I'll-read-that-never-if-not-much-later pile and told myself I didn't believe in self-help books like this. When we were engaged and found the church we got married at, our pastor reccommended the book, and I thought to myself, Hmmmmm. . . I think I already have this book. Well I did what she said and read the book. I immediately felt changed. I truly believe that there are no 2 people in the world that can completely understand the thoughts and actions of one another. I often think to myself, What was he thinking? or What is he doing? Not because I don't approve of his actions, but because I truly wonder what is going on in his mind. This book, by Gary Chapman, truly forces you to not only identify the love language to which our significant other uses, but also learn to accept and appreciate their way of loving you. Chapman identifies the five different love languages as: Quality Time, Words of Affirmation, Gifts, Acts of Service, and Physical touch. It sounds ridiculous, but when I thought back to all of the things that I did/do to show my husband, my friends, and my family how I love them, I notice a trend. Whether you hug your loved one, hold their hand, mow the lawn, or simply just spend time with him/her, we all have different ways of how we show our loved ones just how much we love them. I ask you all, how do you love? What is your love language and how do you go about appreciating the other languages?

. . . Getting my run on

Whew. It has been quite a while since my last blog post. Life has been pretty crazy. Summer has been pretty eventful: weddings, showers, bachelorette parties, birthday parties, family get together. And here we are- the summer is 1/2 over and I feel like I haven't even really enjoyed it!

One thing that has become a recent fixation of mine, is running. I was influenced by the other incredibly avid runners in my life, and decided that I needed to start running again. I used to run a lot on college. I could step on the treadmill and easily run 4-5 miles without hesitation. Now. . . . not so much. I don't know if my age has caught up to me, or what but I have begun training for a 5K. I am convincing myself that after the 1st race, it will all get easier. We (yes we. . I talked my husband in to accompanying me in the race) are now less than 2 weeks away from what will be my first official race. I'm really excited about my ambition towards starting a healthier lifestyle. I hope to keep this incorporated into my daily life, because I have already started feeling like a have more energy and just overall feel better about myself.

We ventured to Run N Fun this weekend, where my fitness really was inferior to um. . . EVERYONE in the store. Conversations flew around about when people were running their next marathon, who was running a triathalon and who was just running a 10K the following day. I could've bolted out of the store in embarrassment, but I decided to stick it out, get what I went there for, and go home and get ready for a run. It was almost 100 degrees and about 90% humidity out, but I still ran. I have decided that I'm not doing this to lose weight or to look better, because I'm comfortable in my skin. I need to FEEL better. I want to wake up and feel energized and excited to start my day and not feel like I need my typical 10 hours of sleep a night. Hooray for making a positive change in my life! I really hope that by the end of summer, I will have enough endurance to run a 10K and its looking promising. . . Wish me luck everyone!