I would walk 500 miles...

Let me be the first to say that I am completely aware of my tendency to set unrealistic, 'feels good in the moment' type plans. 

My dad calls those kind of plans mental masturbation. Yes. Now you will have that phrase stuck in your head just like I do. You're welcome :) 

ANYWAY

I might be being a little unrealistic but I am making a plan. Because I feel like this this the time in my life to push myself.

 I've hit a wall with my diet and exercise. I haven't done either consistently since my half marathon at the end of March. It's been a little over 2 months of drifting along, snacking constantly, and walking (AT MOST) once or twice a week. I've gone to the gym a handful of times. 

But as of today I have 77 days until my next half marathon. And I want to take 30 minutes off of my time. 

So, here is my 75 day pre-marathon plan.

 It consists of 2 things only.

1. Walk 300 miles total. (or run..I would love to run as many of these as possible). I think 300 miles in 75 days should push me past this wall and get my body ready for the 13.1 on August 24th. 

2. Go to the gym 3 times a week. Not as often as serious athletes go, but I think this is realistic for me now. 

Of course I plan to eat better and everything. I try not to talk about dieting. It jinxes me :) 

So..the 75 days until the half marathon plan is going to OFFICIALLY start on Monday. Wish me luck. 

I will post my daily miles and something inspirational on my instagram. For accountability and also to look back on my progress. (my instagram is lori.ann.forever)

Wish me luck!!

Lori Ann 

Ain't it beautiful?

This thing has been making me laugh a lot lately. 

Here are some of the things she has said that I never want to forget. 

"Thomas, your precious tail. It's growing back!" (sadly, his tail is not growing back but I didn't have the heart to tell her)

She lost a tooth today and so I asked her what she thought the tooth fairy did with the teeth she collected. "I think she makes pretend humans and puts our teeth in them". She actually painted quite a creepy picture of the tooth fairy with this one!

I asked her what she thought I did for a job. She said "You work". I can see she has been hanging out with my dad of the 'work is work' fame. 

My dad also apparently taught her to say "knucklehead". I've never met a 6 year old who knows and uses it as a daily insult until the Kat. 

My mom has various mannequins and CPR dummies in the backseat of her car right now. Random heads and such. Which prompted Katy to ask me "Why does Nana Terry always have body parts in her car?" 

There were a few others but I wrote them down at the office and don't have them in front of me. :(  I can always amend this post later on :) 

I love you, crazy Katherine Danielle Monroe. 

You do the name of family baby proud!

Aunt Lori

p.s.- Apparently she was sharing with my mom her thoughts on wealth distribution earlier today. She leans a little communist from what I hear. (No one tell my dad. Katy is not ready for his patented 3 hour 'capitalism and the free market system' lecture)

Like summer wine

You have to listen to this song as you read this post!

Every couple of posts, I want to write about
moments of perfect happiness
in my life. I tend to be a whiner, but every once in a while I am able to step back and recognize that God has blessed my life with some incredibly perfect moments. 

Here is the first moment of perfect happiness. 

I love music. And especially song lyrics. They are more my poetry than traditional poetry. 

A few years ago my sisters (and nieces and nephews) were driving home to my apartment. When I lived in Chester county. The sun was setting and this Mary Black song 'The thorn upon the Rose" came on and we all (my sisters and I) ended up singing it. It was from a Mary Black album that my dad used to play on repeat track all night when we were kids. We don't really sing in my family, but that song is part of the fabric of our childhood. (along with a million others!) We told my sister's kids about how Grandpa would play music all night and in that moment, my childhood felt like a magical place that I missed so much. 

I doubt my sisters remember that night.

But it was a moment of perfect happiness for me.

Lori Ann

boots with the fur

I've been thinking about changes I want to make in my life. 

So that I am happier, more at peace, more confident, and more Christ-like.

I am a firm believer in personal revelation. That God speaks directly to us and any question we have, He will answer. (if not always in the way that we expect..yes, I am quoting Luna Lovegood!)

Anyway, I've just had a reoccurring thought over the last few weeks and I've decided to act on it. 

It might seem silly and strange to others but I am ok with it. 

I've decided to only wear skirts and dresses.

 (except for working out and/or cleaning the house)

This may seem trivial and random to some. 

But it means a lot to me.

I've always been a skirt wearer, since my youngest days. 

I feel confident and free in a skirt. 

I feel more attractive and more focused. 

I've also never found a pair of jeans that I really liked. 

It also reminds me of my missionary service. 

It is a visual trigger for me to remember God and to live a Christ centered life.

I know, just wearing a skirt does that?

For me, it does. 

So..here is to the era of skirts and dresses. 

Wish me Luck!!

Lori Ann

Dreams that had never come true

Things I want to rant about right now...

I feel really restless. I have been feeling this way for a few weeks. Like I just want to get away from my life and my daily routine. It's probably partially related to the fact that it's summer now.

I've had a tough week client wise. Of course, I can't really share details but there are some people I can't help and who make me feel anxious and overwhelmed. Like I just want to run screaming from this profession.

I rarely smile for pictures but I swear this is how I've looked all week. Tired and mildly anxious and just done. 

I wonder if that is how God feels when we are hard to help. I am sure He is calm and patient and just waits for us to find our way back to Him. I couldn't do His job. 

Lately I've been relying heavily on my Heavenly Father to get me through the days. I find myself praying between appointments, asking for His guidance and some of His strength.

I love this one. He looks so happy that we are home. 

I keep waiting for my tattoo to finish healing. It's kind of scabbed over and muddled right now. I can't wait until it's healed and clear. I need the reminder to take it 'one' thing at a time.

I feel so lost when I think about the direction our country is going in. Gay marriage is legal in PA now. Now..you all know I love gay boys. (men, sorry). I've provided counseling for gay couples and I've met some amazing gay people in my life. It's hard for me to even voice dismay at this latest development because I get that it has made a lot of people happy. It's just that I feel like we are increasingly turning away from the plan of God and following the false idols of 'equality' and 'nonjudgement'. I always used to laugh when I would read the scriptures and hear stories about people worshipping false idols. "How could they be so stupid as to dance around a brass calf?" I would wonder. Now I get it. Satan makes false idols so persuasive. He takes ideas that come from God- love, happiness, family, non judgement- and he twists them just slightly.

There are no 'haters' in the great and spacious building. Just come as you are, have a glass of wine, everything's ok.

I remember after 9/11 wanting to literally wrap myself up in the American flag because I felt so lost. I want to wrap myself up in my religion and my testimony. I feel like we are all a little lost. 

This whole post is coming across as kind of depressing. I really do think I have something like seasonal affective disorder when summer comes. I hate it so much. 

My idea of heaven is an eternal late October Day in PA. Drinking apple cider and baking pumpkin cookies with Danielle's kids. With a chilly breeze and the smell of burning leaves. And that feeling of being more connected to my American heritage. That's my heaven.

Hopefully tomorrow I won't be so morose. 

Lori Ann

Where have all the flowers gone...

Memorial Day 2014

 A Picture Post

Every year or so my mom and Danielle's kids have a lemonade stand. This year they added cotton candy. And flag cookies. (which were actually really cool)- Rumor has it they made 37 dollars. Mostly from grandpa :) 

 Then there was just a lot of running around and not getting much done and it being too dang hot all day.

Then we moved on to the Memorial Day portion of our day. First with a strange barbecue and then each one of the kids pairing up with their 'birth order' partner to learn about the American Wars. 

Jack and Jack had the French and Indian War. Which big Jack used as a platform to talk about his views on the French and their cowardice. Quite amusing :)  

Another oldest child team, my mom and Jr covered what we think was the Revolutionary War. They wore matching shirts, beat boxed, and rapped to something they found on youtube. I asked my dad later if watching this presentation was similar to what it feels like being on an acid trip. I have some of it recorded. It'll be on youtube by tomorrow!! 

Team Civil War (Danielle and James) seemed mostly interested in asserting the superiority of their 'second born' status and rewriting 'guggles' into the civil war. Also, there was talk of shooting baked goods and Gettysburg being the true start of the war. I found it to be historically inaccurate. I did like it when big Jack referred to it as "the war of North Aggression" :)  

Things took a decided turn when the third borns got up. Elly and my dad. In one piece of poster board my dad had chronicled the entire first World War. As you can see. It was epic. We learned about trench warfare, a 2 year battle in one town, and the death of a random 300 Japanese that no one can account for. And a lot of other stuff.

Next was Katy and I, the family babies. I have no pictures of our World War 2 presentation. But it was life changing. Trust me :) 

Then, per tradition, we went to the cemetery to leave flowers at the war memorial. I love this war memorial. It has a lot of meaning for me.

Katy said the prayer at the War Memorial. It was so sweet. She said "Dear Heavenly Father. Thank you so much for the soldiers who died for us so that we could be free. Please bless that there will be no more war".

I'll never forget that prayer. 

Katy standing at the grave of a Revolutionary soldier

This was the oldest grave we found. We're pretty sure it says 1709. I know there are older ones but we left fairly quickly once the church bells started ringing. It freaked the kids out. :) 

We found graves of soldiers from every single American War (up to the last 2) 

Then I found this little one. How sad. 11 days. 

I am so grateful and proud to be American. And never more than on this day.

Lori Ann

Just wanna live

I almost missed one of the most important events in my life as I skimmed through my years in graduate school.

My trip to Europe

I went to Europe in the late winter of 2007. February into March.

I went on an 12 day tour of like 9 countries. It was an incredible deal. Somewhere around 2 thousand for EVERYTHING- airfare, hotels, breakfast, everything except dinner and some lunches. It was kind of a wild tour bus-(it's called Contiki)- but it was such a great deal, I would recommend it to anyone. 

ANYWAY

As I recall it went something like this...

England to the Netherlands to Austria to Switzerland to Germany to Italy (Rome, Florence, and Venice) and finally to France. 

I know there were other countries. I just can't remember. 

I saw Paris and Rome and Amsterdam and London and Munich and a million other amazing places.

Me at the top of the Eiffel Tower at night!

I could regale you with story after story about how amazing it was and how much it changed my life. Because it WAS amazing and it DID change my life.

But rather than make this an insanely long post, I want to just share the most defining moments and what I took away from my European tour as a whole.

Moment 1

 Seeing the Anne Frank attic. It was breathtaking and sad. It was also a lot bigger than I thought it would be. I saw her actual diary and the pictures she put on the wall. I think it hit me hard because I had just had a niece born the year before (the lovely Elly Mae) and it made me sad to think of her, locked up in an attic and eventually dying young. All of that beauty and potential lost.

Moment 2 

Dachau- it's a lesser known concentration camp just outside of Munich. You can see WW 2 all over Germany. (the way you can still see the Civil War in the South). I thought being in  concentration camp would have an overwhelming feeling of sadness or evil. It just felt so empty. I'll never forget that feeling.

It says "work shall make you free". They wanted the prisoners to think it was a work camp.

Moment 3

 Seeing Belgium (we drove through it) and parts of France and Germany that reminded me of PA. It made me realize how hard it must have been for my ancestors to leave. They tried to bring a sense of their home with them and you can see it echoed all over where I'm from in PA. I can't imagine ever having had the strength to leave such beautiful places, much less my family.

Moment 4

Staring up at the Sistine Chapel. It's the only place on Earth (in my experience) that has the same feeling as a Temple. I thought it would be a grandiose cathedral (like much of the Vatican is) but it was a simple, wooden church- with this stunning, breathtaking ceiling. I could feel God in that tiny, crowded Chapel.

Moment 5

  Florence. It wasn't a city I knew much about and it was just kind of a 'eh' sort of stop. Until we got there. You could feel the history. I felt like I'd taken a step back into the Renaissance and I wish I could have stayed for months and months.

A piazza overlooking all of Florence. Me looking like the worst sort of tourist

There are so many more little moments- Gondola rides, running through the streets of Amsterdam, the AMAZING spaghetti in Italy, one really cool Australian girl:),  etc, etc, etc.... but my overall take away was this (after the pictures)...

The Pantheon!

Me and the aforementioned really cool Australian girl :) 

What I took away from this life changing trip is that I love visiting other places but am deeply attached to where I come from. I felt a little lost every moment I was gone from America. I got delayed a day in returning (and got to stay at the Heathrow Hilton, no less) and I just started crying. I wanted to go home.

Seeing where my family came from was incredibly powerful and there was a part of me that felt like France, England, and the coast of Ireland (which I could see from the plane) were places I had always known, and had just forgotten for a while. 

I loved Europe and I hope to go back someday. It reminded me that I come from a line of incredibly strong people. People who left these beautiful places to start over somewhere new. People whose convictions were stronger than any nationality, history or family even. Hinsdale's left France for religious freedom in the year 1632.

 That makes me a 13th generation American.

It's in my blood. I only feel completely safe and at peace here. I could never live anywhere else. So, in that respect, I am not as strong as my ancestors were.

Lori Ann