Beware, Chickens....Beware!

Howdy everyone! We are having ourselves a fabulous Thursday. Hope you all are too :-) This morning, we went to the grocery store to pick up a few items. Unfortunately, the store is in the middle of a re-model so I couldn't find anything since most of the items I was there to get had been moved to some random location. Not to mention, I think there may have been a power failure at some point because the seafood section stunk to high heavens. It was bad, folks. I had to hold my breath to make it through the store. I was not in the best of moods by the time we were ready to leave. That is, until I walked out the door and discovered that in the 45 minutes I had spent in the store, the sun had come out and it was now in the low-40's. It was magical, I tell you, MAGICAL.

Soooo, I high-tailed it home and Ben and I went outside for about an hour or so. He loves being outside, but it has been so cold and snowy lately that the yard and sidewalks are basically an ice-skating rink which makes it too dangerous to take him out. He was so pumped to FINALLY be outside.....

Notice the snow already starting to melt???......ahhhhhh!!!!! I am not a fan of winter but I will say this.....it certainly makes you appreciate the nice-weather days that much more!!

After being out for awhile, Ben found our (empty) watering can in the garage and decided the plants needed some "watering". Well, they do look a bit brown.....

Another funny "Ben" thing I have been meaning to tell you all about is the strange thing he does with his chicken nuggets. He knows that chickens make a "bock bock" sound. And anytime he sees a chicken, he says "bock bock". Well, for awhile now he has been saying "bock bock" at his chicken nuggets. Funny, yes... But the kicker is, in the last couple of weeks he has been looking at his chicken nuggets, saying "bock, bock", hugging them, saying "awww" and then promptly stuffing them in his mouth and eating them. I don't quite know what to make of this. It is hilarious, if not somewhat disturbing.

He also brought his Barney doll to breakfast this morning and tried to give him some of his milk. It was so sweet, but given the chicken nugget incident, I half-expected him to then bite off one of Barney's limbs. Much to my relief....he did not.

In less interesting news, I decided to switch training plans to prepare for my upcoming races. I have always used the Hal Higdon training plans to prepare for races, but I wanted to try something a little more challenging to see if I can really improve my times this year. The new plan I'm using is called the FIRST plan. The awesome part is that instead of running 5 days a week, I will only be running 3. This will give me more time to fit in cross-training. The not-so-awesome part is that the sessions are longer and A LOT harder. I have a somewhat scary 6 mile tempo run planned for tonight. I won't bore you further with the particulars of a tempo run....it's basically running at an uncomfortable speed for anywhere from 3-10 miles (depending on what you're training for) to help make you faster. Well, would you look at that, I guess I DID bore you further with the particulars :-)

I'm looking forward to getting outside for my long run this weekend. I have HAD IT with the "dreadmill". We're supposed to have another 40-something degree day tomorrow so hopefully the snow will be almost gone by Saturday.

Have a lovely weekend, everyone!