Dance for a Chance

If you’ve known me longer than, say, 2 minutes, you know that these two things are a given: 1. I’ll do practically anything to help a child and 2. I’m on a perpetual quest for a fitness concept that keeps me entertained and that actually works to get me back into those jeans that have been relegated to the back corner of the closet.

Saturday was a perfect opportunity to combine these two things!

My sister-in-law, Karen, and I joined her friend Natassha at Dance for a Chance, a Zumba marathon to raise money to help Johnston County Partnership for Children and The Miracle League build a ball field for children with physical challenges and a playground where children of all abilities can play together. I’d tried Zumba before and unlike Shakira, my hips do lie when they try to tell my brain that I can move like the people on the Zumba videos. The great thing about Zumba, though, is that when you get lost in the choreography, you can just dance around until you find yourself again. In a live class, Zumba participants are about the most fun-loving and unassuming people I’ve ever met- if you’re having fun, and getting your cardio groove on, they don’t really care if you’re in step with the music or dance like a frog in a blender.





For two hours, we lived William W. Purkey’s quote of “You've gotta dance like there's nobody watching” and let me just say, it may not have been pretty but it was FUN! Fun to the tune of 1000 calories burned and 4400 dollars raised for a great cause!

I can’t wait to see the playground and ball field when they are complete; thanks, Dance for a Chance, for helping to make sure that kids of all abilities can share the simple joys of childhood- swings, slides, and sportsmanship!



One happy little Zumba crew!



For All the Marbles

When Robert deployed, I immediately started counting down the days until he will be back home. Everyone said time would fly by. Everyone was wrong. That time that’s supposed to be flying is apparently stuck on a tarmac somewhere; it’s been replaced by seconds that tick by at a snail’s pace and hours that stretch out before me like a road I’ll never get down.

To help with passing the time, my niece and nephew (with some help from my awesome sister!) gave me a jar of marbles, the number of which matches the number of days he’s scheduled to be gone. Every night, I take a marble out and when the jar’s empty, he’ll be home. And as much as I’m a “glass half full” kind of girl, I’m excited for a glass completely empty!

Since I believe everything happens for a reason, it's no coincidence that the jar was filled with marbles as opposed to something else (like chocolates or pennies). I hear the phrase "it's for all the marbles" from time to time; it means that you believe in your choice so strongly that, no matter what, you're willing to stand by it for the long haul. You're willing to do anything, risk everything, and hold back nothing, in support of your choice. You wouldn't trade it for anything, and nothing in the whole wide world could make you change your mind about it.

My bedside jar of marbles shows me daily that our marriage is bigger than the momentary trials and challenges that will come with a deployment during our newlywed year. The marbles remind me that there's a very long Happily Ever After waiting on the other side of this temporary deployment. They are an unspoken promise that love and committment are stronger than the distance and the time. They are an encouragement that this too shall pass. They are the markers of time that tell me that day after day, we can do this and it's going to be all right. I guess you could say the marbles are keeping me from losing my marbles. :)

Lucas and Linde

Yesterday, I received a message on facebook from Melissa, one of my most favorite folks in the entire world. She asked me to share a link with my blogbuddies...Please Pray for My Aunt.

Lucas, the little one in this youtube video, and his mom are Melissa's friends and they need a little help. Lucas' aunt Linde has cancer and could use a little encouragement (couldn't we all?).

So, please check out the link, send up a prayer for Linde and her family, and if you have 44 cents to spare, drop an anonymous card or note to Linde just to tell her you're in her corner as she's in the fight of her life.

The address, in case you can't see it on the video, is:

Linde B.
PO Box 1245
Virginia Beach, VA 23451

A random act of kindness, a prayer said for a family, a note sent to a friend you haven't met yet. Isn't that what it's all about?

Over the Edge

I hoped 2011 would be the year I’d get out of my box, away from my comfort zone, into some new adventures. Oh, when will I learn to be careful what I wish for??

A few months ago, some officemates asked if I wanted to participate in Over the Edge, a Special Olympics fundraising event that consists of rappelling down a 32 story building in downtown Raleigh. I thought it sounded fun so I agreed to join in; it wasn’t until people started asking if I was scared that I wondered if maybe they knew something I didn’t. Should I be scared? Should I back out? I gave it serious thought but finally decided that if I walked away from everything that scared me, I’d never try anything new and that would defeat the purpose of my 2011.

Oh, that's a long way up... or down.

So, I found some sponsors and some cheerleaders and Saturday, in the windy cold, we headed toward downtown. As we drove, the butterflies in my belly morphed into pterodactyls but I hoped their wings would come in handy, should the ability to fly become necessary.

When I saw the rappelling harnesses, I instantly felt better. They were just like the ones we’d used for ziplining earlier in the year. My new-found confidence disappeared quite quickly when the equipment manager told me that rappelling was nothing like ziplining. Uh-oh, this isn’t good. But, I already had the free t-shirt so quitting was not an option.

In my very attractive helmet, gloves, and harness, I headed over to the parking deck to practice. After a short tutorial on the equipment and what to do, I was doing it! And it was fun! A one-story rappel, no problem! I’ve got this, or so I thought…

Trial run...

I headed back up to the roof of the Capitol Center. And I made the cardinal mistake- I looked down… way down, to the specks that were people waiting in the courtyard to watch. Uh-oh, maybe Robert was right when he said this wasn’t a great idea. But by then, I couldn’t let a good case of helmet hair go wasted so….

I hooked into my ropes and hopped up on the edge of the building. I heard my cheerleaders screaming, took a deep breath, leaned back until my legs formed a 90 degree angle with the building, and began to walk down the building; no turning back now. I was really doing it!

Over the Edge... the first step is BY FAR the most difficult.

No turning back... this might actually be fun!

Ready to have my feet back on solid ground... very, very ready.

And I did! For 32 stories, I rappelled down a building! There were some moments that I crept along, and some that I cruised a little more quickly than I intended; some where I dangled facing away from the building and some where the wind was blowing me around like the pendulum on a clock. Jessica, the rappeller beside me, and I raced a little… with my dad cheering me on to pass her and my mom sending me subliminal messages that “this is not a race”. Rappelling was fun but to be honest, I was pretty excited to finally get my feet back on the ground.

When I got to the bottom, I found out that my sister-in-law had emailed Robert the live streaming video of my rappel so he was able to watch from the other side of the world. I love that he supports everything I do but I think he’ll be happy to hear that I have no dangling plans for the foreseeable future. J

Over the Edge was a GREAT experience and Special Olympics continues to amaze me with their creativity and ingenuity on fundraising events. From the Polar Plunge where people jumped into freezing water to the Over the Edge where people dangle from a skyscraper, I wonder what they’ll come up with next. I also wonder how much convincing it’ll take to get me to join in on a crazy adventure. Not much, I’m guessing, outside my box is turning out to be a fun place to be. J