My First (and probably last) Marathon

Well.... the LONG awaited LONG run I wanted to try and defeat, came and went, and I'm not sure if I will ever try again. But it was quite the workout. I can now say that I have ran a Marathon. It was probably one of the hardest things I have ever done, but I'm proud to say that I finished. My goal was to finish in 4 hours and 30 mins. I thought it was a reasonable time, for changing my training program from a half marathon to a whole marathon 6 weeks ago. I originally was going to just do a 1/2 but it was full... so I said I'll just do the full. HA! I came out strong... maybe even a bit too strong, doing the first 1/2 in 1 hr. 58 mins. I had another 13.1 miles to go. I was still going strong until I couldn't feel my lower body. My quads were in the most pain I have probably ever been in, and I'm not exactly sure how they were moving to be honest, and I was only at mile 18. That's when I really felt the pain... I slowed down quite a lot. I didn't stop, which a lot of people around that time did, I kept going, and around mile 23, I found some deep energy that carried me through to the finish... Finishing in 4 hours 22 mins, which was under my goal time! Todd was there to be the supportive husband, watching and cheering me do the long 26.2 miles. I'm adding some of the photos from the long haul that he took. After the race, I couldn't really move my legs. My quads were so tight that I am having a hard time walking. I heard that I'll be sore for about a week, and I totally believe it. I can only walk a little bit, and the strain that all the miles had on my legs were quite something. I'm not sure what I'm going to do next, but I will make sure to train a bit longer for it. But YEAH.... I FINISHED 26.2 MILES!!!!



This is at the start, as you can see I'm smiling... haha!



When I was booking at mile 7.



Finishing on the track with TONS of people cheering for you. It was awesome!



That's me finishing! (My actual finish time was 4:22, they didn't start your time until you crossed the starting line and I was in the back)



I got a medal!! Just for finishing... how cool! I'm gonna sport that thing for a while- JK!!!

Thanks for all your prayers and encouragment! Love you all!

Our Remodeled Bathroom

I wanted to post this for awhile now, but have been quite lazy in this area. Lots of other stuff is going on... since it's been nice out we've been working our evenings outside instead of inside in front of the TV... it's actually been kinda fun being able to enjoy the outside. But a bit tooooo hot for me. I'm good with 70 degree weather. But it's been hitting 90 a bit too early for me. But oh well.... We decided to change the old bathroom from a dookie brown... as you can see here....





But we did a lot of work to get to the end. They had these soap dishes that were built into the wall and also medicine cabinets built into the wall as well, so we tore them out. We found some old newspaper in the wall from 1959, Crazy! We're not sure why they used newspaper back there... maybe cheap insulation? No clue... But we tore it all out, and sanded it all down, patched the holes, added 4 outlets because it originally only had ONE, and painted the walls and cabinets.




So in the end... it looks something like this.... the blue looks better in person, I couldn't get a good shot of the actual color, but it's a nice lightish-aqua blue.






Lots of work... and I've decided that I really hate painting. HA!

Love you all!!!

Owl on our Balcony

This was a few weeks ago, but I wanted to post this because I thought it was VERY interesting. Todd and I were sitting in our apt one Sunday afternoon and I thought I saw a cat on our balcony. It caught me off guard, and I said... "NO WAY!!! It's an owl!" It was very odd. It was really cute and we wanted to pet it, but didn't want to scare it away. So we got the camera out and took some photos. It sat there very calmly for probably an hour and a 1/2, then it just flew away. We did try and throw some lunchmeat out there, but don't think he likes turkey. Haha!! Oh well... it was very cool!

Alright... I'm going to get the bathroom photos ready to post. We are finished!!! So they will come next!

Love you!!! Mwaaaa....

Family Photo Shoot

We had a wonderful photo shoot this past week with a couple of our friends here in Michigan. Trevor and Michelle Prisk, and the rest of the Prisk kids all wanted to do something special for their Mama for Mother's Day.... so Todd and I went out and took some photos of them. It was a beautiful day and the sky looked absolutely amazing! They were great models, and had fun as well! Here are some of the shots we took. We had also had a great time... it was good to see our friends! We hope Mama Prisk enjoys those photos :)

Lots of Love to you all!!!

We Bought a House!!!

It's OFFICIAL.... Todd and I are now for the first time ever home owners! How exciting!!! We are thrilled and are really eager to begin moving in. We just closed on it today! What a beautiful day it was to close on it too... PLUS it's Todd's Birthday! What a great gift! We both were all smiles from ear to ear. After we closed on it, we went over and took photos and video taped it so that we would have photos/video kind of "before and after." We plan to do some changes.








The house was built in 1959 and the original owners were living there up until December when they went to visit their daughter in Minnesota and she talked them into staying there. Soooo... their son, Mark, and daughter in law, Natasha, were selling it for them. They were such a wonderful couple to work with. Both were sooo sweet and they even had flowers sent to us for when we got to the house we would get them.

But the house is a great home and one that we can "grow" into. It's 4 bedrooms, 1.5 baths, 1620 sqft., 2 car garage. It's definitely going to have some empty rooms in it for awhile, but as time goes by it will be filled. I added just a couple photos, there's so much more to the house. The photo with just Todd, he's standing next to a tree called a "Harry Walkers Widdlestick" or something on those lines... I can never remember the name, but I guess that tree and the Japanese Maple in front are worth between $2,000-$3,000. Crazy eh?! But they are beautiful!

I will keep everyone updated on the house. It's all new and exciting so I'm sure we'll have tons to keep everyone up on.

Love you all!!

Prayers to Virginia

My heart breaks for this tragedy.

I pray that God was in the hearts of the people killed. I pray that they had relationships with Jesus and knew him on an intimate level. I'm kind of spooked by this, I'm sure a lot of other people can relate to those feelings. I think I've been reading so much about it, that I feel like I was there... I keep thinking, what would I have done? Would I be playing dead on the floor, would I be shot in the body somewhere, would I be shot and killed, would I have tried to run? My heart hurts as I'm sure God's heart hurts so badly, such an awful thing to happen to all of His children. All of the people killed were all so unique, such a reminder on how God created everyone to be so different. What an amazing God He is to have created you and I, such a wonderful reminder that He gave us life and many blessings to surround the life. But in this fallen world is hurt and pain... like now. One day we will not feel this... I'm praying that all the people that were affected will find comfort in the ONE true and real God, the father of our Lord Jesus who came and died for us and our sins.

Much love to everyone!

The Blog Begins...

Well... my goal for after we got married was to start a blog so that the people who wanted to know what was going on, and cared about us but may not be able to keep in touch on a daily basis would be able to just check up and see what was new. But... life happens and you just get busy. I'm really going to keep up on this now though... Hopefully!!! :)

Anyways... the wedding was magical and our honeymoon was so relaxing! Christmas was great... flew by... along with New Yrs. Jan, Feb, and March all came and went... and it's now the middle of April.

The middle of March, Todd got a promotion at his current work place. For those of you who don't know, Todd works at a place called BBDO Detroit, they do all the Advertising/Marketing for Daimler Chrysler. He used to just route all the advertising that went out in the Nation for Chrysler... like all of those "Rock'em Sock'em Robot" commercials, he made sure that everyone that needed to make changes did so before they were published or ran on the air. But now... he got promoted and accepted an offer to go to the International side of Dodge, they do all the ads for different countries, which is cool and he's enjoying it a lot! He's doing great and is well liked by all the people he works with... but that's Todd for ya! :)

I'm still working at Life Time Fitness as the Dept Head of Aquatics at the Troy facility. My lifeguards are great, and I am really enjoying things. In December, I auditioned to teach Aqua Aerobics classes and I got my own class! I was pretty excited! The last couple months I've been teaching my own Aqua class, and have been improving greatly. It's weird how silly you fell at first when you are up there in front of 20+ people, but how comfortable it gets to be and then your personality just comes out. I find myself getting so into the music that I just want to break down and do some dance moves. HA! But I hold it in... it definitely is a great workout up there. I'm really enjoying it, and I'm working on getting my ACE Certification in Group Fitness. My goal is to take it by November. It is a looooot of studying and memorizing, like Physio/Anatomy all over again. I haven't taken that stuff since high school. But it's going well.

I'm 6 weeks away from my first marathon. I decided since I enjoy running, I was going to train for a 1/2 marathon for the end of April... and about 3 weeks ago I realized that it was a Trail 1/2 Marathon, and I hadn't been training on hills. So I looked up others... and I found one the 26th of May in Traverse City, MI. BUT... the 1/2 was full and the marathon was still open, and I said I would up my milage and just do it. My longest run so far has been 16 and it wasn't awful. I did it all on the treadmill, which sucked, but it wasn't awful. At mile 14, my knees really ached, but I pushed through it. I'll keep you all up on how it goes. But for now... just prayers is what I need.

Todd and I are still doing the photography thing. We are updating our website, and it should be up within the next couple weeks. We did change our business name from A.Faunce Photography to Veldman Photo. We were going to keep the "Faunce" name, but just seemed appropriated to change since legally I'm a Veldman now. Our summer is swamped with weddings though. One after another, it's going to be very time consuming. To be honest, I'm not looking forward to all the busy-ness, but it'll be fun! I haven't taken photos in a really long time, which is bad. Sometimes I wonder what my real passion is... fitness or photography. I guess it could be both, but I'm not exactly sure what I want to do with both. But that's something I'm giving to God.

I will now keep everyone up on what's going on, and hope that you enjoy it. If not... I'm sorry! ;)

We love you all!