The Traveling Kind

Usually before Ryan and I move to a new place we research the poop out of it. Especially Ryan, he can tell you pretty much every useless piece of information about our new city than you ever wanted to know. However, we really didn't do that with Baltimore. We just knew we needed to be in this general area to be close to a wedding, so we really didn't get that excited about it and didn't know much before we moved here.  I've definitely enjoyed the history in this area the most for sure, but my second favorite thing is the hiking. I had no idea Maryland was so beautiful. The city of Baltimore is so green! There are trees everywhere and it is so hilly. The city itself is beautiful but the Maryland countryside is gorgeous. A coworker of mine got us started hiking here and I'm so glad she did! Thanks Karen! These pictures are from our hike on Monday in Gunpowder Falls State Park. Ryan, Karen and Karen's friend Beth, Scout the Golden Doodle and Pearl ...

Ryan's mom came to town at the end of September and we did all kinds of fun things! We showed her around Baltimore a little and then we spent a three day weekend in Washington DC. I loved seeing all of the monuments I read about in history! We walked down then entire National Mall and saw the Capitol building, Washington Monument, WWII monument, the Lincoln Memorial (uh-mazing) and Reflecting pool, and the Vietnam Memorial. We also visited FOUR museums, the National Botanic Garden, the Arlington National Cemetery and saw Driving Miss Daisy at the Ford Theater. In order to keep this from getting super long and boring I'll just dump my favorite photos from the week. I'll also include photos from our trip to Gettysburg at the end of her stay. The leaves were already starting to change in Pennsylvania so it was absolutely beautiful! I can't wait for it to look that here in Baltimore. The White House! Because of the Copperas Cove guy there was an extra security fenc...

...and I am a food addict. It's a nasty, nasty fact, but it's the truth. I'm sure it doesn't come as a surprise to anyone who's known me for more than a week, but I just had to say it out loud (figuratively). I use food as my comfort, reward, and my stress reliever to name a few. Since about 2010 I would have considered myself sober until this past spring when I relapsed (can you tell we've been watching Intervention?). I worked so hard. I had control of my eating and I never missed a workout. Last winter I even trained for and ran in a half marathon. Just this past January I ran 13.1 miles because I WANTED to. I included everyone in my journey. I was proud of my accomplishment and I loved blogging about it. Well, I'm sure it's been noticed that I haven't been blogging about running and my cheeks in my recent pictures are noticeably chubbier. I truly feel like all the hard work I put into the last 4 years of my life has been completely wasted. I'...

I've basically been singing the entire soundtrack to Hairspray since we got here, and I have to admit, I don't hate it. Ha! Ryan and I are really liking Baltimore. It's definitely not NYC, it's a little more boring and normal, but let me tell ya, I love it. I love everything about being in a normal city, like a 780 square foot apartment, a kitchen, a couch, driving, seeing normal people wearing normal clothes, and not having to worry about someone yelling at me if I'm walking to slow. I do miss my Mike's Bagels though. Ha! We've actually done a lot since we've been here. I think we've hit all the major touristy things. Next week Ryan's mom comes into town and we'll hit up DC and Philadelphia to finish off our "bucket list". Yesterday we went hiking and saw the beautiful countryside of Maryland. It's so amazing how big our country is and how much it has to offer. Each coast is completely different from the other and they're...