2015. Wow, that was fast.

It has been a really long time since I published anything here. I have seen it written in a lot of places that a person writes what they know. There are some interesting challenges in finding things to write about when you are not allowed to talk specifically about two of the biggest areas of your waking life. About five years ago, my wife, and I became foster parents. Over that time span, we have had 19 kids come into our care. A lot of them have been infants with all different kinds of medical needs. Most of them went home to their parents, or other family members. That is, except for four of them.
At the end of October, my wife and I adopted 4 girls and our forever family has grown in a very short period of time. They have all been with us for quite some time and we have treated all of the kids in our care as though they were ours, but these four will be with us forever and share our last name. Nice thing is that, I can talk a little about them if I choose to without getting in trouble. I am not turning this in to a parenting blog, but I can refer to them as I write about the occasional family adventure.
As far as work stuff, I spent 7 months taking classes on export law compliance. I was not able to find any blogs or podcasts on the subject and I can totally understand why. Unless, it is something that you have to work with on a daily basis, it is the kind of thing that would put a person to sleep in no time. I have discovered the cure for insomnia.
In between work and kids and life stuff, with a little bit of sleeping in between, I got serious about running and started to do it on a consistent basis.

What scared me straight?

What put reality in my face and cause me to take some changes seriously?

It was the scale.

Our scale is not something special, or unique. It doesn't yell at me like a drill sergeant and call me names. It just sits there. I stand on it and it tells me a truth that I could not ignore. In June, it told me that I was really close to being 300 pounds.  Between that and the size of my pants, I knew that I had to change things. I was getting ready to adopt four children and I knew I had to make sure that I was around for them.
So, it started. I started. I started to get up at 4 in the morning. Every day. At a time, when rock stars are starting to think about the second party of the night, I was thinking about the road ahead of me. I realized that running was going to be the easiest form of exercise for me to take up. I live in a small community and there were no gyms any where near me. I could swim in the lake, but I didn't want to be mistaken for a wayward walrus. I do have a bike, but it is in need of some repairs. I had the shoes, the clothes and found the time in my schedule to make it happen, so, away I went.
It started slow. I did more walking than running. The key for me was being consistent. get up at 4 everyday and putting the miles in. I also setup a play list on my phone to listen to during my run. I think a lot on the road in the morning and I needed to have something else going through my head than my day ahead. Over time, I worked and I got to the point where I was running more than walking. Later it got to where I was running the whole thing. I now running the whole thing for about 3.5 miles every morning. Some days, I feel like going farther and I have a route in my neighborhood that gets me there.
I have come to really enjoy it. For some people that my sound like crazy talk, but that is where I am. The girls, except for the little one, came out with me on Thanksgiving morning. They did not go as far as I did, but it was more about the memories than the miles. I had fun with it too.

This mornings run was my longest of the year at 6.27 miles. I even went up this intimidating hill for the first time that is behind our house. It is something that I am going to have to spend some time in 2016 getting stronger at.
I want to get back in the habit of writing here too. Two term papers a week for 7 months as well as my normal work kind of pushed away any fun writing, but I feel like I have something to say that may help someone and I won't find my voice if I don't start talking.

Happy 2016 everyone!!