Wedding vs Marriage

"Wow!!! Its been a year already"...I have heard that from so many friends and family when I tell them that this week Daniel and I are celebrating our 1 year wedding anniversary. In so many ways this year has gone by VERY quickly, and I too often find myself thinking "a year already" how can that be? This time last year I was putting the final touches on our special day and getting ready to say "I do" and think that a year has already gone by blows my mind. The year leading up to the wedding seemed to take forever, and this one has blown by. This got me thinking about wedding and marriages...

My friend Miriam asked me before we got married why we were getting married and what was the purpose of a wedding. I told her that it was a day to show people how much we care about each other and that we planned on spending our lives together. Her response was simply, I plan on doing that with Greg and we don't need a special day to make that happen. Fast forward 1 year...and they are getting married in August (and even though I wont be there, I am SOOOOO excited and happy for them). So what changed for them? After many years together, they just wanted to make it "official" in every sense of the word.

To Miriam and Greg, and to Daniel and I, a wedding is just a day while a marriage is how your live your life together. Many people get so carried away in the "wedding" that they forget that it is only a day, mind you a very special day, but it is one day in your life. If people spent as much time planning the marriage as they did the wedding, I think a lot more married couple would be much happier.

So much time and effort goes into planning the wedding and then no planning goes into the marriage. A successful marriage takes effort and compromise. Its tough some days! There are ups and downs that you go through and if you aren't working together, it will fall part and quickly. Trust me, I have been there. My first marriage fell apart in less than a year! I am so thankful for the lessons that I learned from that marriage, because now I know what it takes to really love someone and to be loved back by them. I am so thankful everyday to have someone in my life who I can just be me with, someone who doesn't judge me if I am having a bad day, but instead knows just what to say to make it all better.

I would say that I am lucky to have had a beautiful wedding and (so far) a great marriage, but I don't think luck has anything really to do with it. Both have been a lot of work and I am receiving back from it what I put in.And like our wedding, our marriage wouldn't be a success either without the support from our family and friends...so thank you!!!

Why set goals?

This week my brain has been "spinning" with all the ideas that I have learned from colleagues at a recent Pro-D day. I was really inspired about blogging and how I could integrate that into my kindergarten class...but that will be a whole different post and a whole different blog!!This blog is all about me and the goals that I am currently working on achieving! 

Today I was out for my weekly run (I have just begun training for a 5km) and what better time to think than during a run? I have always been a BIG believer in setting goals and then working to achieve them by setting smaller goals along the way.

Back in January, a group of girls who I train with at Peak Fitness decided to compete in Femsport Kamloops. As I had already successfully competed in this event once, I decided that this year I would set personal goals for each event. I sat down and looked at my previous times and then set realistic goals for each event. At the end of the event I was so proud to not only met my goals, but beat them by what I considered a wide margin.I didn't care where in the standing I placed, because I did what I set out to do.

My kindergarten class knew that I was competing that weekend and when I came back on Monday they asked me how I did. I replied "I beat all the goals that I had set for myself". I was met with confused looks and was asked again, "but how did you do?" I tried to explain to this group of feisty 5 year olds that  doing your best was as important as getting an award, but they just wanted to know if I got a trophy or not! The fact of the matter is I did place 10th and my team came in second, but those were not as gratifying to me as taking 15 seconds off my box jump time was.

This picture was taken after doing 50 box jumps (onto an 18' box) in 54.5 seconds - 15 seconds faster than my Aug 2011 time. I am very proud of this picture!!!

                             Chris (our amazing trainer!), Kaeli, Kristen and I with our 2nd place trophies! :)

Femsport is done, goals were met and beat...so now what???

 I have never considered myself a runner. I will say I am built for speed and power and my asthma has always held me back when it comes to any kind of distance run. So my "now what" is to run a 5km race. For many, this may not seem like a huge goal but for me it is monumental! As I said, I have asthma and running is a MAJOR trigger for me, but I also believe that with some training (and lots of support form the people I care about) I CAN do it! 

5 weeks ago I started training for a 5km. People asked me what race I was entering and my reply has always been that I am not training for a race, I am training to complete it! This doesn't mean that I wont enter a race (those who know me, know I am super competitive) but for now I am training for the satisfaction of completing a personal goal at the end of June/early July. 

Today I met a new personal goal, which was this inspiration for this post! Up until now, my 5km training had me running sets of 800m (or 2 laps of the track) and today was the first day of 1200m (3 laps) and I will admit I was worried. To make matters worse, I left my inhaler at home and that freaked me out a bit! I am very proud to say that not only did I do my 3 sets 1200m, I did them and didn't NEED to use my inhaler. While I was running I kept thinking about how far I have come and how I had just reached another personal goal and that feels amazing! 


I leave you this....if you don't have a goal (personal, professional, fitness) what are you working towards and how do you know when you have made it?


My fitness goals - a 5km run on June 24th....whats yours???