How the heck do you name a person?

For a long time, we Timmons' created little dudes.  I've got a brother (whadup, Kev!), my dad has a brother, and his sons are Craig and Derek.  Easy, right?  Almost.  Craig has a couple kiddos with his wife Joy, but they bucked the trend.  Eve and Augustine, while both awesome, are obviously not guys.  We didn't want to put a lot of thought and time into finding "the" name only to find out that he was a she or vice versa, so initially Ruth Ann and I decided we'd wait until we knew if the lil' bit was a he or a she before we started playing the name game.

Well...that's not so much working according to plan.  This pregnancy thing is pretty exciting, let's face it.  I've been pretty good about putting off the name talk for the most part (I do have a few thoughts so far), but Ruth Ann is ready for game time and wants me to play too.  As a teacher, she has a bunch of names that are just no's by association.  One bad Sally or Timmy and that name's no good.  She likes the idea of a unisex name, and I'm game for that with some names, but some are just a little too funky for me.  And heck, is there some kind of website to test names for inadvertent comedic value?  I don't want to set my kid up for Seymour Butts jokes all of his/her life.  Not only that, but at least on some level, a name defines a person.  This is going to be tough.  So a simple question readers, how to you name a person?!?

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Fulbright Manor

This past weekend, Ruth Ann and I got to spend the weekend up in the mountains at Fulbright Manor (sounds fancy, huh?).  Our friend Sara's family has land and the great house you see above just outside of Lake Junaluska.  Sara's grandfather built this house back in the day.  With his hands.  It's a great house and there's all kinds of family history and you could say that it's...pretty cool.  She, Mike and Ben invited us, Nathan and Stephanie, and Anthony, Thea and Alice up for some R&R.  We've been lucky enough to spend some great times at this house and this trip didn't disappoint, but it was a little different.  More on that later...

But first, what kind of mountain trip do you have without a good ol' mountain tale?  I mean, if you look the right way, you can see THE Cold Mountain from the house (although there were no sightings of Renee Zellweger).  We spent a lot of our time this weekend talking about Utah mountain, which is also nearby, and the story of Nance Dude.  The way the story goes, back in the early 1900s while under hard times (and at the age of 65), Nance took her two-year-old granddaughter into a cave on Utah Mountain, barricaded the entrance and left her there, where she died.  Nance was tried, found guilty, and sentenced to 30 years of hard labor.  She was released after 15 years, and returned to live out the rest of her days mostly alone until she died at 104 (!).

Here's Nance:

The book is a "based on true events" novel - gleaned from historical records and mountain legend, so it's not exactly non-fiction, but it's truthful enough.  Of course with all the mystery and such a wild story, we talked most of the weekend about finding the infamous cave.  A couple brave souls actually ventured out to find it (not me, I was napping).  Mike supposedly knew the way, but there was some debate as to whether he'd even get out of the truck if they found it, and alas the explorers came back unsuccessful.  I think on our next trip we may put a little more effort into the mission.

So what did we do when we weren't chasing legends?  We chased kids.  Or more specifically, the parents of the group chased kids and we just assisted.  Since we'll join their ranks pretty soon, I feel like I was a little more observant than normal and I've just gotta say....wow.  Ben is almost three and Alice is one and change, and it was pretty impressive to see our friends in full-blown effective parenting mode.  Those kids are both super cool, but man are they busy.  And patience?  Let me just say that they take it to the next level - kudos, M&S and A&T.  A little kid time was just another reminder that Team Timmons needs to get ready to step our game up!

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Bring It

(This is not me)

Those of you that are familiar with P90X (or have been around me for more than 10 minutes or so in the last couple months), you'll know what that title's talking about.  Bring It is just one of the many classic catchphrases that you hear in the program.  Other favorites?  How about "I hate it, but I love it" or everyone's favorite "do your best and forget the rest".

If you haven't seen the infomercial, P90X is a 90 day at-home fitness program that consists of 12 different workout routines that get shuffled around into different phases to keep your body from getting used to doing the same thing to achieve big results.  Muscle confusion, they call it.  I'm not typically a sucker for infomercials/at home fitness, but after some YouTube searches of real people getting results, coupled with some friends that did it and swear by it, I thought it'd be worth a try.  90 days to get me through the winter and drop me off in the spring when the weather's decent enough to get back out on the bike.

So back in January, Ruth Ann and I decided to give it a go.  The program is basically an hour a day, 6 days a week.  There's a yoga component that's a bit longer (can you imagine me doing an hour and a half of yoga?).  And the ab ripper.  Sheesh.  It's an extra 15 minutes of agony 3 times a week.  We decided to go all in.  We went to the store to get supplies (some weights, pull-up bar, etc.), did the fit test to see what we were able to do (that'd be 1 pull-up for those of you keeping score), we took our "before" pictures (password-protected in an undisclosed location), then it was go time.

For the first three weeks, we did the plan religiously.  Even RA, who's no morning person, got up early on the days where we had stuff in the evenings to knock out the workouts.  After the third week, there's a recovery week where the workouts are slightly less intense.  I'm so proud of my better half's dedication for that first phase - she sweat, cursed and pushed right along with me the whole way.  After that third week it was time for her to take a well-deserved break (see previous post).

Now I've just started the 9th week of the plan and I've gotta say, I like it.  I don't think I'll be a crazy musclehead at the end of my 90 days, but it's definitely a great program.  I've seen improvements and have (for the most part) enjoyed it - can't ask for much more out of a workout program, right?  Has anyone else tried P90X?  What did you think?

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We're Growing

So there you have it!  Come September 25th or so, this 12-legged family will gain 2 more.  Legs, that is.  We are having a baby!

Wow.

Lil' Bit at 9 weeks:

Ruth Ann is doing great.  Not too sick, but pretty tired so far (although going into week 12, she's felt a little more like herself).  For the record, she's chasing around a bunch of Kindergarteners all day, taking two grad school classes, and growing a friggin' HUMAN BEING.  She's a trooper, and I probably don't tell her that enough.  Maybe she's reading this...

I think we're both still kind of processing this whole thing, but I can tell you that we're pretty excited to join the parenting ranks of Charlie Sheen, Britney Spears and Dina Lohan (wait, those bad examples, you say?).  In all seriousness, we feel very lucky to move into a new chapter of our lives.  And if you're reading this blog, you can expect a fair share of baby-related posts in the coming months.  Hey I'm reading those baby books, shouldn't I share?

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I'm Baaaaaaaack...

Well it's been a minute, hasn't it?  As you can see from every post prior to this one, my initial blogging efforts were strictly dedicated to documenting my training for, and successful completion (woohoo!) of, the Big Sur International Marathon back in 2008.  Even now it's kind of fun to stroll back through those posts, I can only imagine how interesting they will be in say, 20 years.

After some retooling, the ol' blog is about to get some new life.  I kind of like this writing thing, and from time to time, I might even have some interesting things to say.  That, coupled with some inspiration from my talented blogging buddies Ginger and Ouida and voila, the new and improved Team Timmons is born!

What can you expect to see here?  I'm still into the fitness thing, so you'll probably get to hear about the latest crazy race/event that I'm trying to get you to sign up for.  I like to laugh, so I'll probably share fun stuff from the internets on occasion.  And you know, sometimes everyday stuff can be kind of interesting and when things happen, you'll hear about them here first.

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