Happy New Year everyone!!!

I am glad to be back in Kilkeel after a nice a wee holiday break in Stevensville with the family. After my holiday I feel refreshed and ready to go! And good thing, my first week back to Kilkeel has been awesome. I've loved catching up with all my kids and getting back to work.

On thing I have started since I've been back is running.

Most of my team (Megan, Jason, Peter, Keri and I) are doing the Belfast Marathon. It is in May and we will be going the distance of 26.2 miles. Sounds intense I know...but none of us plan on running the whole thing. I mostly just want to do it to say that I finished The Belfast Marathon.

I have been running 2 miles everyday since Tuesday and yesterday I ran 4. My plan for training is to run 2 miles Monday through Thursday, rest on Friday, run 5 miles on Saturdays and then rest on Sunday. As I progress I will start to run further distances. My hope is by March to be running 5 miles Monday through Thursday and 9 or 10 on Saturdays. For the marathon I will start by running the first 5 miles, then walking a mile, then running a mile and a half, then walk a mile, ect.

I am very excited for this. I think it's gonna be some craic. Already I am seeing progress in my running time. I can get the 2 miles in about 22 minutes. The hardest part so far is psyching myself up before I go running, especially on cold/windy/raining days...like today. The weather was rubbish but the run was the best time yet for me.

Like I said it's been great catching up with my kids and my friends. Everyone has so much energy after the break we've had. Both Friday and Saturday night we had 50+ people in; and it's just been great energy. Friday night one of the girls decided to give me a few new hair styles and before I knew it there was a queue for kids to mess with my hair. An example of one of the many hair styles that graced my head.

Saturday night I got go out with Nite Lite and it was great. (Nite Lite is an outreach programme we have each Saturday night. It aims to draw along side young people who would not normally use our facilities; in effort to build positive relationships and help young people make positive choices.) At Nite Lite Saturday night, my group(David Henderson, Peter and myself) came across this young man we've gotten to know pretty well from doing what we do. He was very drunk (not unsusual) but he really wanted to talk to us. So we went back to JIMS with him and just had a really great chat with him about God. He was really upset because he understands that God loves him and forgives him, but he said that he didn't deserve it...he felt like he owed God his life...like a debt that needed paying off. I don't know how much of our conversation will stick with him, but I hope and pray that God will continue to do big things in his life.

That's all I got for now.

Until Next time.

Ellie O'Connor