Hello, World

We have embarked on a journey to become healthier and happier. One way that we are going to achieve these goals is by traveling bike trails and hiking trails throughout the state of Illinois. There are 60 bike trails (from this book) and 107 hiking trails (from here) that we plan to take prior to moving back home to Missouri (hopefully in about 4 to 5 years).

We are not outdoors-type people. We have never been camping. We would have no clue what to do with a fish if we caught one (except attempt to throw the poor thing back in). We have never really been hiking and we have only just begun to take up biking. This will be an interesting journey for the both of us, which is why we have decided to create a blog to document it.

Immanuel is a 26-year-old PhD student studying mathematics. He has Type-I diabetes, which makes our trips more difficult as his blood sugars must be closely monitored. He is currently looking over my shoulder tearing apart my grammar and questioning my every word choice.

I am a 27-year-old speech-language pathologist working in a long-term care setting. I am a chronic worrier and I catastrophize just about everything. My mother-in-law once told me, "Ya know... you're not the 'glass is half-full' kinda gal or the 'glass is half-empty' kinda gal, you're the 'oh my god, we're running out of water and we'll all going to die' kinda gal."

We do not have children yet, but we plan to and I'm sure part of that journey will wind up on this blog as well. We do, however, have 4 fur children.

Petra, our "first born" is an orange tabby who is quite lazy, but love-able. Sonya is a calico who is very well behaved and likes attention on her own terms. Thea, who appears to be somewhat calico and somewhat tabby, is incredibly moody and stubborn. Tesla, their canine brother, is technically the oldest, but was acquired after the above mentioned felines.