Thanks to your guys’ encouragement, I think I’ve broken through the mental block of my setback. Tuesday’s run was a bit better than Monday’s, and then yesterday morning I felt amazing. I don’t want to get ahead of myself and overdo it, so I’m going to either take a rest day today or go to a power yoga class this evening. I want to do a ten-mile run either tomorrow or sometime this weekend, so fingers crossed that will go well too.

Waiting for the sun to rise.

One of my absolute favorite ways to spend an evening is to pack a picnic and a bottle of wine and head to the beach with Jeremy to have a sunset picnic. Ninety-five percent of the time, I make a kale super salad to eat for the beach dinner. It’s the perfect picnic food; it’s super easy and so delicious (I just follow this recipe and leave out the pomegranate arils). Now that our trip to the South is over, I feel like we can finally start planning for the big Europe Trip 2014. We brought our notebook and started jotting down everything we could think of to start preparing for this huge next chapter in our lives. Our replacement at work started this week, which makes everything seem that much more real. It’s kind of (actually, very) overwhelming to think about where to begin, but as long as we write down everything we have to do and start tackling things one by one, we can totally handle it. We’re even getting close to buying plane tickets. I am starting to get REALLY excited. We want to have one of these beach picnic planning sessions once a week. There’s something about being on the beach that helps your thoughts make more sense, and things seem a little clearer. A glass of wine helps too.

The best kale salad.