Life on the "Res": Day 1

Day 1 on the Reservation was pretty packed!!

Before I get into our day, I'll backtrack about the previous night. We arrived at Motel 6, and found ourselves presented with a "swapportunity". In our room (yes, we are sharing a room for the 5 week stent), there was one double bed and one twin bed. We were settled on who would get the big bed--I lost--but before we turned in for the night, our "neighbors"....the 2 people also living in motel 6.... mentioned that they both had rooms to themselves and that their rooms contained 2 double beds, one that was not being used in each room. They offered to switch us beds, but then we discovered the spare room was unlocked. We decided to swap the bed in the spare room with the twin bed in our room. We only took the box springs and mattress and left the frame in case we needed to move it back. We didn't hear of anyone else moving in, but you never know.
....But then you find out. Monday morning, probably about 30 minutes into our first day, our preceptor comes strolling in asking to take one of us back to motel 6 with him to move the beds back. Apparently, we caused some serious friction between the housing guy and our preceptor. No one thought it was a big deal besides the new "roommate"/"neighbor" and the housing guy, but they were not backing down. Everything was our fault and we were so out of line for touching that bed. To use their exact words, "It's like a hotel. You don't go stealing things from someone else's room!" Whoops. What a way to start off the week.
On to the rest of the morning....
We got to spend some time in the dialysis unit which was very interesting. We got to speak with a lot of the Natives and find out a lot about their culture. The healthcare team that was working decided to order some homemade "Indian tacos" for us for lunch! We didn't know what that entailed, so I took a picture to share - it is homemade "bread" on the bottom, with typical taco fixings on top. It was pretty good, but didn't necessarily agree with my stomach the rest of the day. :( Add that to the list of things that went wrong today.
That was really the only interesting part of the day, so I'll skip to after work.
Just to throw this out there, we are dead set on losing weight and getting fit out here. Mainly, because there's not much else to do. Really, there's nowhere to eat or drink anything safe, so we are living off tuna, granola bars, and bottled water. We brought our little friend Insanity to help us along the way. Today was Day 1, and between the out-of-shape bod and the churning stomach, it pretty much kicked my butt. But I did it. Well, most of it. We'll see how this goes. There's really no excuse to fall off the wagon out here, so that's a plus.
Another big goal for the trip was to go hiking a lot. Major problem with this plan- we had been warned numerous times about the not-so-friendly people, the rattle snakes, and the buffalo. I'm not sure how most people feel about that nice little trifecta, but it doesn't sit very well with me. I was definitely nervous.
We headed out and started our mission to find a hiking trail. We spotted a lake and slammed on the breaks. The weather could not have been more perfect. Here are a few pictures....

Looks like Heaven!

Ghost Hawk Lake

Our first adventure on the Res

Buffalo?

We decided to hike up the hill to get a good workout, but I think we walked too slow to burn any real calories. We were too afraid of snakes to look up from our feet most of the way up! We are so pathetic. It was pretty steep for the first 10 minutes, so we got a little workout in :) Both of us were huffing and puffing by the time we got to the top. But it was so rewarding! Beautiful views all around....

From the top!

Enjoying the weather and view from the top

My treasured items since I've arrived:

Life on the "Res": The Beginning

Okay everyone, here goes the shortened version of the most shocking trip of my life....
 I left for Rosebud, SD last Saturday.
It got interesting much faster than I thought it would.
Sidenote of the start to my day -I got major highlights in my hair right before we took off (this was a MAJOR change. I haven't had blonde in my hair in over 5 years. And no, I did not plan a hair appointment right before we left. We moved up our plans and left early..).
 Back to the story :) - Most of the drive was pretty boring, it was corn fields the majority of the time. I made it somewhat interesting for myself, however, because I was on book 2 of the Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy, Fifty Shades Darker!! It was my favorite of the three (I am now done with all of them). Poor Katelyn drove most of the way jamming out by herself. I'm such a rotten passenger. I plan to make it up to her on the way to Texas in a couple weeks, but more on that later.
We stopped in Lincoln, Nebraska for the night to break up the long drive. It was dark out by the time we arrived, but we were starving. There was a few places near the hotel, so we decided to just risk it and pick one. Big. Mistake. We tested out the hotel bar, called something along the lines of "Sky Bar" or something. They not only had no one working, but they also had no food. The two creepers nice men at the bar turned around and gawked informed us that they had chilli dogs earlier in the night, but that we were too late. Needless to say, we left rather quickly and tried another place. The next joint looked pretty promising from afar, but as we got closer, we noticed a man walking along the street towards the front door....wearing a kilt and tall leather boots. The name of the place was called "Lucky's" something or other, so we thought, "Oh, it must have an Irish theme"........WRONG. I'm still not sure where that guy came from, but he stuck out like a sore thumb. We met another man on the way in the door, Harlan, which was...less than enjoyable. They were having karaoke and he offered to sing us a song. He even told us that we could choose from his hundreds of songs, but we hesitated, so he picked "a beautiful woman", which I still think he made up. We hurried to the bar and got a drink. And a lot of food. Best part of the day hands down. We had a couple of beers, learned about the game "Keno", and headed back to the hotel.
The next morning, we got up bright and early and took off. We quickly left civilization and were back to the open road. It was just as dull as the day before, so there's not much to say about that.
Anywho, out of nowhere, we start to see new landscape emerging..... The Sandhills!!! HOORAY! Out of Corn Nation!! By this point, we only see another car every 45 minutes or so, so a change of scenery was more than welcome.We were a bit worried about being able to find a gas station when we needed to, so when we came upon this little treasure, we were sure to stop and fill up.The gas pumps were too old to be digital... I had my doubts that they actually worked, but we went with it.
Little did we know, people DO still pump your gas and wash your windows for you! It was very unexpected, and to be honest, a bit awkward. We had to get out of the car for our potty breaks anyway, so we may as well have filled up the car ourselves. Oh well. We headed inside and it was quite the site. It had a couple of booths for people to sit and eat (although I didn't see any hot food, just a few gas station snacks), and this wood burning stove...I think that's what this is?!

There were also some nicknacks that I am 90% sure were locally hand made. One of the things I saw that caught my eye was an "egg separator". In case you aren't aware, you pour the egg gently into the device, and then tip it to the side. The egg white slips out a small hole, while the yolk stays in the bottom. Who would have thought? I was feeling awfully touristy, so I decided to take pictures of it all.... You're welcome. :)

Egg separator in the back right

The girl that pumped our gas turned out to be a big sweetheart and gave us a lot of helpful information! She told us a few places to stop on the way as a last resort before we were REALLY in the boonies. She also told us about a few fun county fairs in Nebraska. Unfortunately, they are too far, because she mentioned rodeos and a tractor demolition derby! I would have loved to have witnessed that, but on to Rosebud it was. Before we left, I spotted this nice little booklet full of traveler's information, so being in the touristy mood, we signed it. :)

ONWARD! We were finally in the home stretch.......

There wasn't anything very exciting from there to Rosebud, so I'll spare the details. We did find a Subway/Ice cream place, so we made our very last pit stop before the final destination.

Drumroll please......

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HOME SWEET HOME!!!!
This is our new house. For the next 5 weeks. They call it "Motel 6". More pictures to come....

"MOTEL 6"

Time to "size up"

I heard the term "size up" a couple of years ago and it just came to my mind again while I was looking in the mirror getting ready. Unfortunately, it means (in case you haven't figured it out already) that your clothes are too small and you look horrible in them. The muffin top is back, the shirts seem to be shrunken, and I can see every lump and bump on me! AHH! Since I ran the half marathon I have completely fallen off the wagon! My body was pretty beat up so I took a week (or 3) off of running. And working out all together. And eating consciously. I have been bad bad bad!

I have gotten back on the wagon and I have decided to take it slow and steady. No crazy diets, no crazy workout regimens, no herbals/vitamins, etc. Good old moderate diet and exercise! I am trying to take small, easy steps to cut calories. Here are a few of my REALLY SIMPLE tricks:

1. Don't put cheese on something if you won't be able to taste it.
2. Instead of having something on a bun/wrap, put it over a bowl of lettuce.
3. Instead of condiments for flavor, use fruit and veggies (i.e. tomatoes, onions cilantro on a sandwich instead of ketchup, ranch, or mayo)
3. Sub water for soda/lemonade/etc
4. Sub black coffee + Splenda and skim milk instead of a latte! --> THIS IS A HUGE ONE FOR ME!

Along with my attempt at these diet modifications, I am back into working out. I have given up on work out partners and resorted to having my boyfriend be my "trainer". I have him make workouts for me and he asks me about them daily.... so, pretty much I have to do them or I'll feel super guilty having to tell him "no, I was too lazy today to work out". My knees have been giving me hell lately, so I've been doing some swimming instead of just running every day. He gives me a few strengthening exercises to do in the morning, and then a cardio workout in the evening. Here are a couple of examples..... you can join my regimen if you'd like!!

Yesterday Morning-

• "Crazy Ivans" - ab exercise from Nike Training Club app
• "Fire Hydrants" - I don't know where the name came from, but I think most people call it this? leg-lift sort of move
• Mountain Climbers

Yesterday Evening-

• Swimming 20 laps

This morning-

• Burpees
• Push-ups
• Sit-ups

Tonight-

• Nike Training Club workout (30 min calesthenics/cardio)

I have been back on my on again off again relationship with the My Fitness Pal app also. I have my calories set at 1000 per day, and I loosely go by that. As long as I'm under 1200 (net, so subtracting my workout calories burned) I am happy with it. Anything less than that is not very sustainable long term for me.

Anywhoo... that's all I have for now, I'm hoping to have some success and smaller love handles by my next post!

Cinco de Kentucky Derby!

I am  having a horrible time keeping up with my blogging, so although this was a really fun trip, it's going to be a short and swee post!

Craig recently bought a new tent (larger than the last two). He was pretty excited about it, but we didn't have a camping trip planned until late August (Wyoming!), so he wanted to plan a short weekend trip somewhere. He also was itching to go hiking, so I suggested southern Illinois. He hadn't been there, so we agreed to "book it". Slowly but surely, this trip went from a camping trip for the two of us to a fun filled camping/winery/Kentucky Derby/Cinco de Mayo trip with lots of friends and family!! I love it when things like this turn out amazing :)

The only campers we had Friday night were my parents, Jen's mom Julie, and Craig and me. It was a pretty good time, but the real fun started the following day. Craig and I got up early to go hike while the rest of the gang slept in. I only took a few pictures, but it was very pretty!













The rock structures were really cool. They created a lot of what I am going to call caves :) and some cliffs that were a little bit scary to look off of!  The first "cave" that we came up to was of course calling Craig's name. He immediately started climbing up on the muddy rocks and going back deeper into these rocks. I ended up going up the other side, which was a little bit more open. As I started to climb up, we both heard this whooshing noise and alarmingly looked at each other. Neither of us saw anything, but both of us heard it. We weren't sure what it was, but we knew it was some kind of huge bird. I was hurrying him to get the heck out of there, but he kept looking around up there.
As soon as he decided to continue hiking, these little guys caught his eye. I'm not sure if you can tell, but in the center of this picture there are two little baby birds huddled up next to each other. They have HUGE beaks for such little birds!! We both realized that what we heard previously must have been momma! We also realized that momma was probably not very far away and most likely keeping an eye on us and her babies. Sure enough, we looked up to find this.
I tried to get a closer picture, but failed. In case you can't tell, it's a giant turkey vulture!!!!!!!! You know, those awful looking birds that always play the mean scary characters in kids movies!

EEEEKK!!

I was completely ready to move along at this point.

That was the most exciting part of the hike. The rest of the hike pretty much consisted of us realizing how out of shape we were!! We agreed to start training before we went to Wyoming.
Anywho, we headed back to camp to cook breakfast and start getting ready for the day.


I was navigator all day, so I of course had to look up all of the addresses before we got out of cell range. (what would we do without iphones?!!) We started with Von Jakob, which I don't have a picture of for some reason, but here are our other three stops!

I only have a few pictures of the day so far. If I remember, I will try and update it more later! It was such a fun day. Not only was it Cinco de Mayo, but the Kentucky Derby was also on this day! That meant major celebration!! Here are a few pics :)

The Punke & Jeffers girls at Von Jakob with out Kentucky Derby Hats on!

Without our mommas!

This last picture was pretty funny. The cutting boards for the cheese ended up becoming paddles and turned into a huge, hysterical, practical joke. It invovled betting people that they couldn't reach from one end of the table to the other without bending their knees (so they were bent forward at the waist). Just as they discovered it was a pretty easy task.... WHACK! Liz unfortunately got the brunt of it.... she ended up really hurting afterwards, but it was SO funny while it lasted. Sorry Liz!

Definitely a day to remember and to be repeated. It was such a big group of fun people!

Race Day!

WARNING!!!! I LOOK HORRID IN EVERY ONE OF THESE PICTURES!!!!!

I realize most people don't look very cute when they are running, but for some reason I look very odd in these pictures! Maybe it was the cold/sleepy/exhausted mix I had going on, but I wasn't (I'm still not) very excited about how these turned out. Oh well. 

We were running pretty late due to traffic, so we hurried and met up with my mom before the race to give her our bags/coats. To set the scene a bit, it was sort of spitting rain and it was in the low 40s. It was also 6:30am. We had to ditch Matthew (Katelyn's boyfriend) with the truck and run the last few blocks to the race start because of the traffic. Not the best start to the day.

Pre-race picture

 The course ran around Urbana. We checked it out beforehand to pick spots we thought my mom would be able to beat us to and watch us run, but she ended up missing me the entire time. Whoops. She did see Craig and Katelyn, so I guess that's a plus! She got a picture of me running through the finish line...

HURTIN' FOR CERTAIN!

So happy it's over!

 Craig finished the race in about 1 hour and 45 minutes. (Woohoo!) He is a huge sweetheart and came back through the race to find me. He ran with me for a little bit, but he was hurting pretty bad so he just met me after the race.

He closes his eyes in EVERY picture.

Katelyn and Matthew

This is the professional picture that I borrowed from the site :) Shh...

This is my FIRST EVER 1/2 marathon race bib and medal!

So, to sum up my first 1/2 marathon ever, it sucked. It was cold, crowded, I was out of shape, and my body pretty much fell apart. Both knees (one worse than the other) were killing me, my toes were cramping the entire time, and my quads were burning like a banshee! My goal time was 2 hours and 10 minutes, and I ended up finishing in 2:19:50. I wasn't very happy with the time, but the entire time I was running I was thinking I would be proud of myself just to finish, so whatever. I also swore that I wouldn't do it again, but of course, I've already changed my mind. I guess there's something addictive about it. I couldn't be happier that it's finally over, but I am already starting to plan my next training regimen :)

Jennifer's Birthday/Winery Trip

It seems like everyone gets busier every year, but somehow most of us managed to meet up one random weekend! It started with Jen asking if I could come down for her birthday weekend. I happened to be free, so I told her Craig and I would plan on coming. Then she asked Kayla, Nikki, and Elise, and they all ended up being free, too!! (Kate and Cassie ended up coming, too!!) I still can't believe that we all ended up being there with such last minute plans!

 Craig and I followed Elise and Cassie down to Carbondale Saturday morning and got there around 1pm. We all gathered our things and headed out!

First stop: Blue Sky Winery!

Blue Sky was so much fun! It is beautiful outside, but it was pretty chilly, so we snagged a table inside. It was pretty calm, we all split a few pitchers of their white sangria (DELISH!) and chatted for an hour or two. Nikki spilled her wine, which was super funny - it seemed like it happened in slow motion, but also ended up being a nice ice breaker with the table behind us! They ended up giving us some of their extra bread and oil when they left and joked around with us about cutting her off. Kayla was also a life saver and brought us food! We had cheese, pita chips and hummus, chips and salsa, etc. She's the best and always comes through with the food situations. :)

Stop #2: Owl Creek Winery

Owl Creek was pretty short and sweet. We got there about 30 minutes before they closed, so they couldn't sell us glasses of wine. They could sell us tastings and closed bottles of wine, so we did both! We snuck out to their back deck and secretly opened the bottle of wine that we bought and all shared it before we headed out. shh :)

Stop #3: Rustle Hill Winery

 Rustle Hill  is so cute outside! They have tons of outdoor seating in kind of an amphitheater feel. Again, we stayed inside for the most part because it was nippy out there! Here are some more pictures...

The only picture of us at the wineries - whoops!

FAVORITE PICTURE OF THE TRIP!! (thank. you. instagram.)

 After the wineries, we headed back to Jen's to regroup. We all freshened up, got some food in us, and started preparing for the night! It was such a long day. Here are a few more pictures before we headed out...

The Birthday girl and me :) Love this one!

Silly...

I have to say, I'm a fan of this one too :)

The trip was so fun and I am SO glad I went! It may not have been such a good choice to eat and drink the weekend away when the 1/2 marathon was the following weekend, but it was worth it :) I miss those girls and really wish there was more free time in life. Sigh. 

Fun Day With the Girls!

I finally got to see my nieces!!! They are both perfect so I have to brag a bit!! I don't have much to say, just some pictures from our photo shoot :)

This is my fav!

Hadley being silly, as usual!

Ash actually sent me these next few, but I had to add them :)

Turned out funny because I took a screen shot on my phone :-/

Sisterly love!!