The last thing I wanted to do

When I woke up this morning, I felt terrible.  Like I had been hit over the head with a brick, stuffy nose, headache and just plain tired.  Even though I had gotten a good amount of sleep it just didn't feel like I was rested at all.  The last thing I wanted to do was work out, so I laid in bed until after 10 am.  Yes, I have two kids and they both let me sleep in until 10.... I know, I am VERY lucky.

I finally had to roll out of bed to get my daughter ready for preschool.  Because I had to leave the house I decided that even though I didn't want to do a darn thing I should head to the Y while she was at school.  I grudgingly put on my workout clothes and got the kids around and away we went.

Remember my run on Sunday when it was 9 degrees?  Today it was around 50 degrees - seriously, what is up with this weather.  While the temperatures were nice, the weather itself was not... it was very windy and there was a drizzly rain.

If you see the picture to the right, you can see the gloom sky in the background. I still opted to run outside though. I was running at a fairly easy pace, and there were times when the wind was so strong I felt like I was running in place, this was especially true in mile 1 and mile 4 which shoes in my splits below.  Those miles included a stretch of nearly half a mile running straight into the wind.  My plan was to run two laps of the trail, 3.5 miles. When I hit 3.5 miles though my body wasn't ready to quit so I ended up running another lap for a total of 5.16 miles.

Split	Time	Distance	Avg Pace
Summary	44:58.7	5.16	8:43
1	9:07.2	1.00	9:07
2	8:26.0	1.00	8:26
3	8:30.6	1.00	8:31
4	8:56.2	1.00	8:56
5	8:37.4	1.00	8:38
6	1:21.2	0.16	8:28

That's the end of my "running" blogging for tonight, so I apologize for the long off topic post below! :) Feel free to skip it if you aren't interested in my weekly challenges!

This weeks challenges have been going well.  When Audrey at A Mama's Goals announced the "cleaning/organizing" challenge it sparked something in me, so on Sunday night I actually cleaned up my daughter's room and then put away the three loads of clean laundry I had been avoiding.

Monday morning I decided to tackle the task of deep cleaning a bathroom.  I started with the half bathroom downstairs.  I took a long time doing that: scrubbing sink, scrubbing toilet, cleaning the outside of sink and toilet, cleaned the mirror, cleaned off and organized the shelf, as well as taking apart and cleaning the two potty seats that are in that bathroom.  After getting that bathroom done, I decided to tackle the others.  So both the guest bathroom and the master bathroom were done as well.  Both included the same level of deep clean of the half bath.  The master required the most work - our vanity is ALWAYS a mess.   I didn't take many pictures yesterday because lets face it, bathroom cleaning isn't all that interesting.  But, I am including a picture of the finished kids' bathroom.  After getting all the bathrooms done, I was still feeling motivated so I picked up some of the random mess sitting around the house and did two loads of laundry. Plus, I got a 30 page document scanned for my homeowner's association.  I have been putting it off for a while, finally I decided to get it done because I couldn't clean up the stack of stuff on my desk without scanning the document. These challenges are really motivating.



Today's cleaning was actually not as involved as yesterday, but quite frankly I was definitely NOT looking forward to it.  When I went grocery shopping this weekend I stocked up on several things that were on massive sale so I just shoved everything in the fridge. So, the fridge was a HUGE mess.  So, to put it off even longer, I started on the cleaning the pantry.  Our pantry is actually also our laundry room - so it was a combo deal for me.  I organized all the food in the pantry portion (again, I stock pile when things are on sale).  I also organized the several hanging baskets for misc stuff and then organized all of the laundry essentials.  While doing all this I washed another load of laundry.  To finish off the laundry room cleaned off a bunch of junk that was piled on the dryer and took 20-30 hangers up to our room.  We keep some down there for air drying our clothes, but they had started to take over the laundry room.  I wish I had taken better pictures, but my original plan was just to clean the pantry portion so I didn't photograph the rest of the mess.

Pantry BEFORE

Laundry AFTER

Pantry AFTER

After getting the laundry room done I had nothing left to keep me from cleaning the fridge so I couldn't put it off any longer.  I not only organized the fridge and freezer, but I also wiped off the shelves and cleaned up any messes.  I had to throw some things out, but not too bad.  I try to keep up with my fridge and freezer, the worst problem I have is that when you stockpile its hard to keep things organized!  I also wiped off the outside of the fridge and rearranged the stuff on top of the fridge.  Again, didn't take a picture of the top because it wasn't part of the original plan, but here's a picture of how it looks now.  We keep our meds up there, so I rearranged them to a kids bin and an adult bin with the most frequently taken things sitting on the very edge.

And now, the before and afters of the fridge/freezer.... I swear I did more work than it looks like! 

Freezer AFTER

Freezer BEFORE

Fridge AFTER

Fridge BEFORE

Stay tuned, I plan to update more this week as I complete more of these cleaning challenges.