three things thursday, take 2

blogger kindly removed this post when they went down last thursday. ugh. here it is again!

train 4 autism update!! wooooot woooooot! i finally was able to nail down a charity that i am going to be raising money for while i train for mdi (yes, i WILL be training for mdi...positive thoughts my friends, positive thoughts!). i decided to go with a place called springy pond farm. this is a place where my brother takes horseback riding lessons in the summer. its run by an amazing women named jennifer cammack who is an occupational therapist. she was actually the one who suggested to my folks that zach see a developmental optometrist (they seriously have those things!?) because she said the reason zach isnt reading yet (13 years old) is because he doesn't track left to right and top to bottom, his eyes wonder all over. annnnnnyway, she rocks but like alot of businesses these days she needs monitary help to stay open. insurance companies don't pay for these lessons and it can be expensive on top of all the other bills that my family, and so many other familes who have autisitic children have. i've set a lofty goal of raising 5,000 over the spring and summer to help her out. i'll be running for train 4 autism and im putting together a team to run with me on oct 16. im going to have a post telling you more about jennifer and springy pong farm soon but in the meantime, i wanted to share this with you! i have a donation page set up and you can go here to donate if you would like to help out.

a new piece of art is in the process of being made at my house! ruddley and ty took a trip to the craft store and picked up some supplies. then ruddley stripped ty naked, squirted some paint on the canvus and set him on it. it was fun and messy and awesome. this is only the first step. he is planning on adding to it, ill post a picture of the finnished project.

im a crew member? uhhh yeah, so a few weeks ago i volunteered to crew for some of my NERT friends who are running the vermont 50 miler in september. then i realized i have no idea what that means. what am i supposed to do or how i do it? i know being a crew member is super, duper, uber important and i don't wanna mess it up. im sure there is nothing like being at mile 40 and hurting, tired, feeling like death and you really need your crew to help you out and they have no idea what they are doing. so i was chatting with someone on twitter about it and he told me i really need to know my runners and what they will need. he also told me not to ask stupid questions (like, are you tired? do you hurt? do you want to quit?). i don't really know the runners needs as far as running is concerned. i do know what kind of beer they like, does that count? i figured i should probably fix that problem. an opportunity came up to crew for some of the same NERTS at a ultra marathon relay in july. i figured this was a little less intense and i could practice my drinking crew skills here and get to know what these runners will need before i crew for the vt50. i really have no idea how this is going to work..like, do i really have to be awake for this whole thing? will they be nice and let me sleep? i mean, i know they are running the entire time are they aren't going to be able to sleep but crewing takes a lot of effort (ummm, i think), i should probably get a nap:-) haha, clearly im going to be an awesome crew member, duh. hopefully i don't get fired before race day!

do you have any brilliant tips for me?

happy thursday/ monday