OK, here is the recap of our weekend away when we FINALLY visited our wedding venue and met with our wedding planner almost exactly a year after booking it!!!! This is a wordy post, be warned

Friday

Friday morning we dropped Chloe off at the kennel bright and early at 7:30 AM and got on the road to the coast, which is approximately a four hour drive. We were about 30 minutes out of town when I literally gasped out loud and screamed “the hockey tickets!!!” So back to Kamloops we went… I bought these tickets back in September and paid a pretty penny for them. SO GLAD I remembered before we were further out, or worse, already in Vancouver!

Anyways, since we got an early start we still made our 1:20 PM ferry over to the coast despite the delay. Once we got across the ferry it was about a 45-minute drive up the coast to our venue! A beautiful drive along the ocean I might add:

We started at our wedding planners where we saw a mock set-up of our tables for the reception and met with the bakers who will be doing our cupcakes for the dessert table. Both meetings went great and I am so excited about the decorations we’ll have at the reception and the delicious desserts for our dessert table!

Then it was time for the long awaited venue visit! You guys, it was stunning. Eric and I were both so pleased. It was just as amazing and gorgeous as we’d imagined it would be.

The approximate area where we will be doing our first look:

The view from our upgraded honeymoon cabin that night:

We met with the wedding manager at the resort and talked some logistical things, met with our JP and talked some more logistical things and took a tour of the resort. It felt good to get some decisions solidified and every single person we met was fantastic!

After saying “see you in 3 months” to our wedding planner we headed back to the cabin to freshen up and then up to the resort restaurant for an amazing dinner. Since we are doing a buffet we weren’t able to try the exact things that are going to be on our menu but we did get a chance to see just how delicious the food is there!

We had a few glasses of wine and enjoyed watching the sun set over the exact spot we’ll be getting married in a few short months. It was a fabulous night!

Saturday:

After a very restful sleep in our cabin with the sound of waves crashing against the rocks to lull us to sleep we went up to the resort for breakfast. Again, the food didn’t disappoint! I had eggs benedict with smoked salmon and Eric had crab cakes eggs benedict.

We got a tour of one of their amazing tenthouse suites before getting on the road back to Vancouver. I admit I was a little sad to leave and can’t wait to go back in three months for the wedding!

We checked into our hotel in Vancouver and headed downtown for some shopping before the Canucks game. Unfortunately it was POURING rain and walking around outside was not the most enjoyable thing so we actually ended up at the arena and hour early and enjoyed a few drinks before the game started. And we visited one of the team stores so Eric could purchase some Canucks apparel!

We had so much fun at the game despite the extremely obnoxious and drunk guy beside us who felt the need to repeatedly tell us he was from Washington but had been a Canucks fan his whole life and then would apologize for being soooo drunk every five minutes. After the first period I told him maybe he should eat something and when we came back from getting more drinks and using the washroom he was eating a hot dog and calmed down a lot for the rest of the game. Thank god!

The Canucks won in overtime, by the way! We had SO much fun at the game!

Sunday:

As I mentioned yesterday I woke up tired and a bit hungover on Sunday morning. Luckily Britt was a trooper and met me for a run anyways and I did get to run the gorgeous seawall in Vancouver and preview the last 12ish km of the marathon course which was really fun. Even though I felt like crap it did get me pumped up for the marathon!

After getting back to the hotel on Sunday Eric and I went for breakfast and got on the road just after 11 am. I saw several people posting photos on Facebook of SNOW in Kamloops (Mother Nature’s April Fools joke?) so Eric and I decided to take the back way home from Vancouver. Further and not a freeway, but also a lot lower elevation and better road conditions.

The drive was GORGEOUS and the roads were completely bare but it took us a full 6 hours to get home from Vancouver (it usually takes about 4 – 4.5) so we were home later in the evening than we originally planned. I was exhausted Sunday night and planted myself on the couch where I stayed until Game of Thrones came on and then went straight to bed at 9 PM!

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And that was our weekend! Insanely busy but also very enjoyable. I love getting away with Eric. We always have so much fun together and I always miss him a little bit that first Monday back to work after we take a vacation together and spend a few full days together.

It was SO great to finally see our wedding venue in person. I can’t wait to be back there saying “I do” in just over three months!!

Question of the day: How was your weekend? What did you do?

The truth is things haven’t been that great for me lately. It might be stress, it might be a bit of a spring/March funk, it might be both. I’ve felt a little bit like I’m drowning lately and this week I have been so, so tired.

One side of the coin: I’ve got a great new job that I really enjoy and challenges me daily, I’m marrying a man I love very, very much in three months time, I’m young and healthy with a huge support system and I have a home that I love in a city that I love. We are incredibly lucky to be relatively debt-free and make enough money to not only support ourselves / get by, but also save for bigger purchases.

Other side of the coin: I’m very busy at work and this leaves me mentally fatigued by the end of most days. Wedding planning is incredibly stressful and with only three months to go we have A LOT to do and A LOT more money to spend. I struggle to fit in my marathon training and cross-training. I constantly feel like I’m slipping when it comes to my duties as a friend and relative; not returning phone calls, bailing on dates, being hard to schedule time with. My home doesn’t feel like a “calm” place lately. It feels crowded and dirty and not somewhere I can truly relax because I’m always fretting about the mountain of laundry to be folded or the dust building up on the stairs. It sometimes feels like we will never have enough money to pay all our bills, save for traveling and vacations AND also tackle all the home reno projects that we want / feel like we need to do in the next few years. Unexpected car-related expenses have been popping up lately.

I feel like I’ve been climbing, climbing, climbing a really big hill the last several weeks with no breaks or downhills in there. Luckily, I think I’m just about at the top.

Tomorrow Eric and I are driving to the coast to see our wedding venue in person for the first time (!!!!) I’m hoping this is exactly what I need to get excited about wedding planning again. We are then spending a night in Vancouver and going to a Canucks game and Sunday morning I’m doing a 24 km run along the marathon course with Britt, which I’m hoping is just what I need to get me excited about marathon training again.

We have a very busy and packed itinerary this weekend but I’m hoping the weekend away will be what I need to get me out of my funk. And then next weekend is a 4-day weekend for Easter and I have very few plans other than using it to rest and recharge.

Sorry to be a downer at the end of the week. This is just kind of where I’m at lately and it feels good to share and get it off my chest. I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend! XO

I’ve done a couple Day in the Life posts before, as well as a guest post on Emily’s blog so I thought I was due for another one. This time it’s Day in the Life – Marathon Training edition and will chronicle my day on Sunday when I did my longest training run yet; 20 miles / 32 km.

1:59 AM, 2:31 AM, 3:42 AM – I sleep really fitfully the nights before long runs and these are all times I can remember waking up and staring at the clock that night. I was in bed for a solid 8 hours but spent a lot of that time tossing and turning.

5:17 am – when I actually woke up and got out of bed. I then spent some time getting dressed, lubing up with body glide (I have a chafing problem), taking the dog outside and preparing my breakfast.

5:50 AM – sit down to eat my pre-run breakfast (toast with pb and jam, coffee and OJ) and read blogs.

6:30 AM – pack up my fuel, fill my camelbak and get ready to go.

6:45 – 7:00 AM – drove to the park (and saw a beautiful sunrise) to meet my friend and start running.

8:45 AM – say goodbye to first friend and meet up with running room group for the last half of my run.

10:00 AM – still running…

10:45 AM – done my run! 20 miles in 3:38:46. I ran the last 10 miles in just a t-shirt, which was glorious! My knees and feet were pretty achey but overall I felt good. Walked about 0.25 – 0.5 miles back to my car to stretch and chug chocolate milk.

11:15 AM – arrived home and got in an ice bath.

11:30 AM – shower.

12:00 PM – lunch! I try to eat as soon as possible after my runs but since I had chocolate milk RIGHT after my run I wasn’t as ravenous as I would usually be.

12:30 PM – worked on blog posts for the week and did some stuff on my computer while finishing up my coffee.

1:00 PM – headed up to the bedroom to lay in bed and read. I was asleep within 5 minutes of my head hitting the pillow.

3:00 PM – wake up from an epic nap; still feeling very sleepy.

3:30 PM – 5:30 PM – ran errands with Eric. Got the oil changed in our car and gassed it up, went to Walmart and Zellers to pick up a few things.

5:30 PM – ravenous when we arrive home from errands so eat a bowl of cereal.

5:45 PM – 7:15 PM – make dinner with Eric: handmade pasta rolled with ricotta and spinach and baked with a handmade marinara sauce plus mussels and garlic toast. Divine!

7:45 PM – settle in on the couch to watch Game of Thrones / work on blog posts and read.

9:30 PM – bed time!

Gosh, it’s kind of sad to see how much of my day is ate up by prepping for, running and recovering from a long run. Basically 5:30 AM – 12:30 PM on Sunday was all about my long run! Guess that’s what happens during marathon training.

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Questions of the day: What did Sunday look like for you? What does the day after a big workout or long training run look like?