Me, Inspiring? Who knew!

Holy Cow! I’ve been nominated by Happier, Healthier, More Fit Me, for The Very Inspiring Blogger Award!

The nomination comes with some responsibilities.  I need to:

1. Display the award logo somewhere on the blog.
2. Link back to the blog of the person who nominated you.
3. State 7 things about yourself.
4. Nominate 15 other bloggers for the award and provide links to their blogs.
5. Notify those bloggers that they have been nominated and of the award’s requirements.

So, I’ve displayed the logo here in this post.  Not sure if I need to have it on the home page somewhere or not.  I will look into that.

I’ve linked back to the blog of the person who nominated me.  A bit of background for that…the blogger who nominated me is my sister, Erin.  Her blog is awesome.  She writes about life as a busy mom, trying to eat well, stay fit, and enjoy the chaos of life with 2 young kids.  She has great recipes for healthy dishes and if you haven’t already, you really should check out her blog.

7 Things About Me.   Really, I’m not that exciting, but let’s see if I can come up with 7 things:

1. I used to be a teacher.  I graduated from Teacher’s College in 1992 (20 years ago!!!) and at that time, jobs were in short supply.  I taught for 2 years at a small private school in Toronto and did one year of long-term occasional work with the Durham board.  I liked teaching, but the jobs were scarce.  I ended up going back to school, getting an MBA and have been working at my current company for 15 years.  I do miss the summer’s off that came with teaching, but I don’t really miss the rest of it.  I love my job and there are some exciting things on the horizon at work that I will share in a future blog.
2. I have 2 cats:  Crosby and Ovie.  Can you tell we are a hockey family.  We got Crosby the day after the Pittsburg Penguins won the Stanley Cup in 2009.  The kids love Sidney Crosby, so we named the cat Crosby.  We’ve had Ovie for almost a year now.  It only seemed fitting that with a cat named Crosby we stick with the hockey theme and Ovie seemed to suit the crazy little kitten!
3.  I have an irrational fear of sailboats.  I’m pretty sure that in my previous life I must have drowned coming across the ocean or something.  I do not like the feeling that a sailboat is going to tip over.  My husband, who is a bit of a sailor, assures me they won’t tip and if they do, you can just pop them back over.  All that reassurance does nothing for me.  I don’t like them.
4. I love to golf.  I am not good at it, but I still love it. I play every Tuesday evening in an EWGA league.  I’ve played in the league for 3 years now and have improved my game quite a bit, but I’ve still got a long way to go.
5. Two years ago I learned to snowboard.  I’ve been skiing since I was about 12 years old and used to be an instructor at the hill in North Bay where I grew up.  In university, snowboards were just coming onto the scene and a few instructors tried them out and said how hard it was.  So, based on that I stuck to my skis.  Now that my kids are skiing and boarding, we put them in lessons on Friday nights at Snow Valley, a small hill in Barrie.  This hill is a bore for me to ski.  It’s small, not that steep, and bored me to tears.  So, I bought myself a snowboard and took a lesson in Vermont during our March Break ski trip in 2011.  This year when the kids had their lessons I boarded at Snow Valley and got to the point I could board just about any hill there.  I even boarded on the big hill in Vermont this year.  I took a couple pretty good wipe outs, but I still had fun.
6. I’ve been to Israel.  In 1990 (at least I think it was 1990) friends of ours got married.  Rob was from North Bay and went to school with Rory, and Irit was from Israel.  They met in Australia when they were both travelling.  Their wedding was in North Bay and Irit’s parents and brothers came to North Bay for the wedding.  I was dancing with her dad at the party and he mentioned that Irit really wished I could go over to Israel for the wedding they were going to be having over there a couple of weeks after the Canada wedding.  I said that would be super, but not likely to happen.  Later that night Irit comes over to me and says “Guess what, you’re coming to Israel!”.  Her dad decided that I needed to go.  He bought my ticket, arranged a place for me to stay and told me to get a passport!  Less than 2 weeks later, I was in Israel!  It was awesome.  I was there for 8 days I think, took 15 rolls of film pictures (this was way before digital!), saw all the highlights (the Dead Sea, Masada, Ein Gedi, Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, the Wailing Wall, and probably a few other places that I am forgetting).  It was a great trip and some day I would like to go back.  This is the only trip outside of the Caribbean that I have ever taken.
7. I love Corona!  I mean I really love it.  I’m trying to cut back since I’m trying to eat clean and train for another half marathon.  On a hot summer day, sitting down on the dock, nothing beats an ice cold Corona.

Now, for 15 blogs that I enjoy reading and find inspiring:

DrinkRunYoga  With a name like that, how could it not be great!

Trials In Food  A great blog with some very tasty recipes.

Ingredients of a Fit Chick A blog about the love of food and fitness.

Running Haiku A blog written mostly in haiku.  Always good for a laugh.

Skinny Taste  This is a great blog with healthy recipes.  I’ve made a few from this site – love the overnight oats in a jar.

Joy in the Day A blog about running, food, fashion and just about everything else.

CultFit  This is a fitness and workout blog that has some of the craziest posts ever.  I don’t do the workouts (they are way too intense for me) but I get a kick out of reading their blog.

MyThinEats   A blog about eating well and staying thin.  Isn’t that the goal!

Bubblegirl  A blog by a friend of mine who crochets the most amazing baby items, and lately has gotten into Photo of the Day challenges and has posted some really neat pictures.

Dont’EatCrap A blog about eating well and working out.  I’ve found some great recipes on here.

Inspiring Healthy Living. I juzt recently discovered this blog and really like it. It’s got lots of great recipes and tips about how making small changes can help you lead a healthy life.

Jerome’s Kitchen another food related blog, but this one has a lot of cakes and baking. Some yummy stuff, for sure!

365 Days of Healthy Eating.  This is a fairly recent blog discovery, but the more I poke around the more I like it.

Beautiful Body Bistro. This is the blog written by Trainer Trish who is the creator of the Couch to Half Marathon app that I used to train for the Toronto Women’s Half Marathon.  She has great motivational pieces, super workouts and so much more.

Megified  My sister put me onto this blog.  I think it’s written by a friend of hers.  It is a site full of delicious recipes with a focus on being a bit healthier, but still taste great.  Her slogan is “sinful made heavenly”.  Yum!

There you have it, 15 blogs that I enjoy and spend countless hours reading.   Seems to be a bit of a food theme to them…hmmm.  Many of them I am just lurking on so far.  I’m still fairly new to this whole blog world so don’t comment all that often.  I guess I should embrace the blog world and jump right in and start “interacting” more with other bloggers.  I’ll give it a try.

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