Long time no blog

What can I say??? I've been busy (oh, and the weather has been PERFECT in Ohio). This leads me to not be on here much. But Tom and I have gotten so much done around the house, lots of training in outside and have enjoyed many nights already on the deck. I think the end of winter is in sight, although I'm hoping to not jinx myself. Our new roof is almost complete, we've painted the shutters black (they were a light green before), painted the white front door red, got a new mailbox, mulched, started a stone path by the deck and done a lot of planting. Here are some pictures to show off all our hard work. This is what the front porch looks like now. I did the hanging baskets myself and am darn proud of how they came out!Tom made these planters for either side of the deck. I love them and can't wait to stain them the same color as the deck. (and yes, that's my girl Charlie hanging out and my hubby in the background, although he'd kill me for including this picture of him so pretend like you don't see him!) And the little miniature looking house is out dog door - yeah, they are spoiled like that!We found this planter at Big Lots and I had to have him to remember my times in Tahiti. So we bought him and planted his "hair". He's now sitting on our back table and I am in love with him. And finally - I have to write a little about this. My mom found out that she has skin cancer. Two spots on her face needed to be removed. She is going through a procedure called MOHS to have them removed. They knew that they would have to do the two spots in two visits. The first was this past Thursday. We thought that it was going to be a simple procedure and she asked that we don't come to the appointment because it would be nothing. Luckily my sister took the day off because it ended up being a big procedure - the doctor said probably the most difficult he's ever had to do. He cut a piece off her nose about the size of a dime and then had to try to stitch it back up. She ended up with 8 internal stitches and 34 external, running from her nostril to her eye brows. I ended up meeting them at the doctor's office just as she was getting released (darn me living 45 minutes away!) and was able to bring her to her house and spend some time with her that day. She was in a lot of pain, was swollen and just miserable - the paint pill did finally kick in. We saw her last night and she was doing great. She is starting to get a pretty nice shiner, but she feels good. She too will hate me for putting this picture on here, but it's definitely the picture of a fighter and I'm so proud of how she's handling things. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE be extra careful in the sun. Especially all of you athletes that just don't think about it when you are working hard in the beautiful weather.

So that's pretty much my week. We had a tough 50 mile bike on Friday and a really hilly 8 miler on Saturday. Today I took a day off knowing that I'll have another hard week ahead of me - Coach Tom just informed me that we have 14.5 hours this week! And I'm on day 3 of weight watchers and doing well. I really think I'm going to be SUPER successful, although it's hard not snacking on everything in site. My first weigh in will be on Thursday - duh duh duh... I'll let you all know how it goes. We did go to Whole Foods today for the first time and found lots of good thing (high fiber cereal, whole wheat cous cous, steel cut oats, lentils, etc.). We'll be back there soon to see what else we can venture to buy.