I know this might seem like an odd post for us to write but we wanted to just give you a glimpse of what has been going on lately. As you may know, life doesn't always go the way we plan. This past week has been a roller coaster of emotions...(please excuse any grammatical errors) ;-)
We aren't perfect and never claim to be but we do try to make the best decisions no matter what we are faced with. We are both so mentally and physically exhausted (and Scott hurt) that rotisserie chicken was our "food prep" for a few days over the weekend. Life happens. Unexpected things happen. Make the most of each situation you are faced with. Instead of ordering pizzas or cramming our face with more junk we decided to buy a few rotisserie chickens from Whole Foods. We pull and then use the chicken on salads, mix with sweet potatoes (which I actually did prep but didn't take a picture), or eat plain. Eating junk food, even though it would have been convenient, would have just made us feel worse.
Normally we share pictures of our food prep taking up our entire kitchen counter but this was it this weekend:
We knew these last two weeks before our hiking trip were going to be REALLY busy. We were releasing TWO new workout plans, releasing our re-designed website, building content for a new website (40isthenew65.com), preparing for a local food prep seminar, and I am taking my dad and dropping him off in NC to start hiking in the Smokies (and I was going to hike a day with him too!)...along with all the normal day-to-day stuff...
So The Craziness Begins...
Workout Plans
Last week Pam (founder of Moms RUN This Town) and I released our two new workout/run training plans after two days of almost no sleep because we kept coming up with more ideas for the plans! We were so excited about the plans and absolutely loved the way they turned out so we wanted to go ahead and film some videos for those plans. I went to her house on Wednesday and we worked on the plans and filmed videos all day. We had a ton of fun and got some awesome pics and videos!
Scott's Accident
She lives about an hour and half from me so I waited until traffic died down in Atlanta (because I have to drive through there) before making my trek back home. I sent Scott a text message that I was leaving before I pulled out of her driveway. I didn't hear back but that wasn't unusual. I figured he was at the gym or something. I always put my phone in the holder on my dash while driving so that I am not tempted by it and because I usually have Waze (the traffic/directions app) pulled up while driving. About 10 minutes after leaving her house Scott called me. He said "You need to come home I've been hit" and then an officer got on the phone. I was shocked. I didn't know what to do. I felt like I was going to throw up in my car. Was this a joke? It couldn't be a joke because I spoke to an officer. The officer told me that Scott was on his road bike and was hit by a truck. He flipped over his bike and into a ditch. The officer told me that he had a hurt leg and told me to drive safely home. I wasn't even in the right frame of mind to ask any other questions. How injured was his leg? Were there any other injuries? Where were they taking him? I immediately called my dad and he couldn't understand anything I was saying for the first few minutes. Finally he made out that Scott was hit and said he was on his way to our house. That drive home was the longest of my life. I seriously had no idea what to think. Was he okay? Was he in a lot of pain? Would he be able to do the things he loves again (lift weights, hiking, biking, skiing)?
I made it to the hospital, saw my parents and lost it. I've never seen Scott in a hospital bed before (I don't think he's been to the hospital since he was a kid). I'm used to seeing him in the gym. Not a hospital bed. After a few hours in the hospital we were told there were no broken bones! He has injuries on his back, both arms/elbows, and his left foot is really bruised and swollen. I still cannot believe that he was hit by a car while on his bike. It's something that I feared every single time he left the house but also thought it would "never happen to us".
I posted a little bit about this on Facebook and I'm not going to go into everything from the accident but you always hear that life is short and things can change in an instant and that is so true! I could have lost Scott. That still scares me. Just know that each and every time you get in your car, that it is a huge responsibility. We all take it for granted because it's just such a normal part of life now but try to start taking it more seriously (myself included). Get rid of all distractions - emails, text, phone calls, etc. Nothing is worth the chance of hurting yourself or someone else. With the nicer fall weather coming many people will be out walking, jogging, and biking. Pam sent me an article where two ladies were killed while running on a sidewalk. A truck hit them on Saturday. On a sidewalk. Their third friend was airlifted to the hospital. Again, I don't know the circumstances of that accident either but we can all do a better job of removing all distractions while driving.
Scott is still sore but is healing. We went to the doctor this morning and they took more x-rays to make sure that he didn't have any broken ribs (they didn't do that at the hospital for some reason). It's a good thing he is strong or I think he would have been hurt even worse! Now we are having to "play it by ear" about our hiking trip that we were supposed to leave for on Saturday. We've been planning this trip for a year and now we will probably have to cut a lot of our hikes short or even not do them because of this accident. It's amazing how one turn of events can have such a huge impact on so many things!
It's fascinating to me how animals know that something is wrong! One of our cats, Rambo, wouldn't leave Scott at all on Thursday!
Website/Brand Re-Design
While all of this is going on we, of course, get little to no sleep again. I'm going on about 10 hours of sleep for the whole week and we are still planning on releasing the new website on Sunday, August 30th. Not only is the look and branding of the website completely changing but so is the platform. All of those pin it buttons you see on our posts were manually added by me on our last platform. There are so many working parts to websites that most people don't even realize! So we switch the website over but on Sunday morning a lot of the links don't work. We knew this could happen but we were hoping that it wouldn't! We have a temporary work-around with the search bar but it's still pretty stressful! We have to go back through over 800 posts and make sure that everything is correct! I know it will be worth it in the end - it already is but it's stressful and time consuming!
However, I love looking at the site now and it's very user friendly and FINALLY works well on mobile! Yippie! We are hoping to have everything (including all links) up and running ASAP but until then you can still use the search bar and use the social sharing options on the left of your screen (or at the bottom if you are on mobile) to share the content.
New Website - 40 is the new 65
We love the community that we have built with He and She Eat Clean but we are also more than this website. We both love finance and helping others reach their personal financial goals as well as their fitness goals. We truly believe they go hand-in-hand. We didn't want to take away from this website though so we created a new one, 40isthenew65.com! What does this website name mean? Well, the traditional thought of retirement comes at the age of 65, right? We don't believe you need to wait that long! We feel that if you can exercise financial discipline and live below your means in your twenties and thirties, then you can have the freedom to "retire" from your 40+ hour a week job by the age of 40. If you are already over 40, don't worry we have tips for you too!
This new website will not only offer personal finance tips and tricks but also chronicle our hiking trips, and our top blogging tips and resources. We planned on having more posts ready for this launch but with everything going on that hasn't happened. We will be posting weekly starting in October!
So, that is what is going on in our life right now. We appreciate all of your messages, comments, and emails about what we have already released (about the new website and Scott!). If it takes us awhile to respond to you, please forgive us! We will reply as soon as possible!
As always, thank you for your support!