Monday, September 7, 2015

One Bean of a Team

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BEANS. 
We have this really funny story about how beans are our new thing on the girls cross country team, but I won't waste the time telling it. You wouldn't think it was funny. It was one of those times that you just had to be there.
But anyways, "Emily Lord is beans!" -Maggie Layer
And that's where it all began. 
If you look at any social media page of one of our runners, it mostly involves running and doing things with other people on the team. You probably think we get sick of each other, but we don't. Not even after camp. We are better than friends, better than family, we are beans. We should be allowed to edit the definition of bean in the dictionary.
Some combination of us are together every day. We get into some of the silliest situations possible, and we don't even know how. There's never a dull moment!  That's what I love about these girls. We have so much fun, and we never have to worry about it being something that can get us in trouble or make us feel guilty. We're always looking out for each other and keeping each other accountable and honest. We can speak the truth to each other without being offended.

I love to do destination runs, so I got up a whole group one evening in July to do a two-a-day to dinner and dessert!  We started and finished at Bonangles, running for 30 minutes wherever we chose. This led to some interesting places...including inside Food City. Don't ask me. That wasn't my group!

We took some silly group selfies before heading out.

After eating a winner of a chicken dinner, we went next door to TCBY for some dessert!  I had a coupon to get 20% off if you come with your team in uniform, so all the girls wore our tye die tanks that we made before camp.
Katlyn and the crew in her car are always jammin, and it spread through the parking lot. I joined the jam and got featured on another girl's snapchat story!
They love my frozen yogurt enthusiasm. It's a special treat, so I make it worth it.
 

 
Zails and I love our TCBY.
The girls also find it amusing when I send them a snapchat every time I eat beans. Another thing you would see if you looked at our social media stats, we are all each other's snapchat best friends and some of us have some really long streaks!
Yeah I love my beans as in teammates, but I have also been eating some sort of real bean almost every day. They taste so good, and there are so many varieties!  You can fix beans with basically everything. They are also super healthy. Mom is all for beans, too, considering the protein and iron content. 


Another yearly team thing..the car wash..we dread it and we love it at the same time.  This year I was a little more motivated for it considering the weather was beautiful and I never have to do it again.  We girls always have fun making signs.  This picture was our social media advertisement.
It also helped get me ready to spend most of my day at Advanced Auto thanks to a run with Chantal and Cherie at the park before they left for college the next week followed by a destination run to the car wash with Danny!  We even matched and didn't plan it!
Abby's car wash signs were my favorite.  She's so artistic!
Human car dryers.  At least they were having fun with it!
This isn't beans, but my girls know how amazing my dad's spaghetti is.  Just thought it would be another good thing to share.
Yeah, we ran in that.  It poured, the thunder roared, lightning struck and shook the ground while we were out in the middle of the woods with nowhere to go.  Katlyn, Maggie, Jessica, and I screamed and sprinted at a couple of those instances as adreneline pushed us to run for our lives.   It was quite a run.  Just another crazy thing for most that we consider normal.
This is Julia, one of the freshman on our team this year!  We share a lot of the same loves, like ice cream, barbeque, Sub Debs, the lake, beach, farms, goats, cows, etc.  I drive her to practice about every day, too!  One day, we spent all evening running (literally) back and forth across town!  It started out from school to practice, Buddy's BBQ for dinner, TCBY for dessert, then finally to a friend's house for a sub deb meeting! 
My obsession with color coordination strikes again.
We call this "Double Trouble." 
Two girls, two plates each. 
This year I have become especially close to one of my other seniors and captains, Emily.  We share so many of the same things in life, it is crazy!  We each have our unique struggles, but we relate so much, you know God gave us each other.  We even have almost the exact same class schedule this semester, too.  Both first periods are dual-enrollment, second period peer tutoring an Algebra II class, then we are in the same finite math class with Mr. Hayes, lunch, then yearbook, and obviously cross country.  We also have lots of doctor's appointments and health issues and frustrations, but are on the track to being beastly beans this season!  Most importantly, we share the same God to get us through it all.
The annual Waterville run and picnic was the best one for my senior year!  A huge group of girls came, and we had a blast.
God sent me Ecclesiastes 7:8 the morning of the picnic to remind me that even when these long days come, this is where I am, and this is where He wants me to be.  "The end of a matter is better than the beginning, and patience is better than pride."  Like the tiny inchworm, who takes such small scrunches, we have to make the most of every step to live the life God has called us to.  When we make the focus on finding joy in the journey and in Jesus, we don't even have to focus on finding it; it just comes.
When you have to sign papers in front of an official, but you're in the middle of the mountains, your head becomes a table.
This is a real table, not my head!
Guess what!  We ate beans together this day. We're pretty good at cramming way too many people at one table.
Totally different kind of bean than what we usually refer to, but hey it's a bean!  Lots of the girls love jelly beans. I don't, but I do love pancakes and maple syrup, so this photo was taken in honor of my beans. 
Another thing a couple of us decided to do at camp was create a club.  It's a fun club.  I'm the secretary, so I created our Twitter page.  Feel free to follow for lots of f's including but not limited to:  faith, fun, food, fitness, farts, fails, fruit, and more!
Somehow, this picture from freshman year came to my mind last night when I woke up around 3:00 to go to the bathroom.  
Great things come to me when I sleep.
Little did Emily and I know that these snapchats would come back to be so relevant.  Check out the top right.
 We also like to make puns.  We like having Emily and Jessica with us so we can always say we have the Lord/s with us.  He/They is/are also good, and provide.  Like on this day, poor Katlyn, the walking struggle, had no hairband, but Jessica came to the resuce.
 If you didn't hear about our crazy weekend of the Eye Opener meet, shew you missed it.  We're blessed to be alive.  Basically everything that could've gone wrong did, and we still came out with a 2nd place finish at the race!  Even in the middle of so many stressful things happening, we still sat in Olive Garden for dinner at 8-9 pm laughing until we couldn't breathe and were in tears.
 Emily and Elizabeth are dessert buddies, and now it is pumpkin cheesecake time at the OG!
Megan put this lovely photo of me on her snapchat story.
Oh, there were lots of beans in the minestrone soup.
 Table squads 1 and 2.
 This is our pinata James Marshall Marie.
 After being in an interstate accident, late dinner, lost to the hotel, losing a kid, waking up late, the hotel not having breakfast, getting to the course with 40 minutes before the race, we came out with some hardware.  However, we couldn't have done it without the grace, protection, and provision of the Lord.  We all seemed to have a bit of peace in the midst of it all.  These things were totally out of our control, so they were totally in God's control.  Being there and being strong is our testimony.

 "A friend loves at all times, and a sister was born for adversity."  Proverbs 17:17
 

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