Running for my life week 8

This week took almost 2 weeks to finish. I started off with a short run with the babies (7 and 9) on Friday. My 9 year old’s legs needed a break after 10 minutes so we walked after that and that was ok with me since I’d just run 25 minutes nonstop the day before and I still had a cold. It was a good day to not run for 28 minutes. I forgot until I was on the sidewalk that it was trash day so 10 minutes of dodging trash cans on the sidewalk was enough for me. Maybe I’ll take the kids to a trail for my next Friday run. Just saying.

Saturday I did Jillian Michaels 30 day shred level 1 day 1. I’ve been thinking about restarting that program for a while, but didn’t want it to impact my running. Turns out that was a valid concern. I was sore all over afterwards for days and I didn’t even do it nonstop. I stopped every few minutes to drink water and cuss at Jillian.

Sunday I did my first 28 minute run before church and then we took our kids for a 4 mile walk at Heritage Park after church. It was a great time spent exercising as a family and making happy memories, but I overdid it. I was already stiff and sore from the 30 day shred and running so the combo resulted in the soreness continuing for days afterwards.

Monday thru Wednesday were rest days because Monday and Tuesday I was still sore and stiff and Wednesday I woke up with a migraine. Thursday and Friday I started some spring cleaning and decluttering and didn’t end up doing anything else.

Saturday I went bike riding with my hubby for date night. We rode 5 miles and we also beat my fastest 5 minute segment. I did 1.07 miles in 5 minutes and my previous record was 1 mile in 5 minutes. I didn’t beat it by much, but I’m going to celebrate the little I beat my PR as much as I can.

Monday I didn’t do anything. I don’t even remember why. Tuesday I did my second 28 minute run and yesterday I finally finished the c25k program. Kinda. The final run was 30 minutes nonstop. It was *supposed* to be a 3 mile run, but I only ran 2.11 miles in that time, which means I can run a 14:13 mile at this point. I also continued to walk when I was done until I got to the 5k distance (3.11 miles). I might not be able to run the whole thing yet, but I can get used to going the distance with each timed run.

It’s a little anticlimactic to finish the program and also a little surreal. I didn’t finish it in 8 weeks as designed, but I finished it in 10.5 weeks, which is a lot faster than I finished it in last cycle. I’m so proud I finished it even if it took a little longer than it should have and even if I don’t run as fast as the program thinks I should at this point. I finished it and I feel a sense of accomplishment for it.

And I’m not done yet. I’m still running for my life. I still need to run. Those days when I can’t run or don’t run, I feel it. It definitely affects my mindset and my mood in a bad way and it gets worse the longer it stretches out. I don’t plan on stopping anytime soon.

What I do plan on doing is trying to run at least 3 times a week, 2 runs increasing the time I run without stopping and 1 run to work on speed. And I’m going to try to incorporate the 30 day shred at least twice a week. It sucks and I hate it, but it works and I love the results. Once my kids start school again, I’d also like to incorporate bike riding at least once a week for cross training and just because I love it.

I’m going to keep posting my results and my progress only now I’ll *really* be posting it once a week. I feel more motivated and accountable knowing that I’m going to have to post what I do and don’t do every week. I need that accountability. So thanks for reading and holding me accountable. It helps me more than you know.

Running for my life — week 7

“This week” consisted of three nonstop runs of 25 minutes each. This was by far my worst “week” this running cycle.

I ran Tuesday then my period roared in and kicked my butt so I wasn’t able to run again until Sunday. At the tail end of that, I came down with a summer cold and spent the next week in bed and didn’t run again until the next Thursday so this week’s worth of running took me 17 days to complete. 😬

It was awful. The runs themselves were good, but the amount of time between them was awful. Immediately before this, I ran or biked 9 days in a row (and one day did both) which I loved.

And who gets a cold at the beginning of the summer anyways? Maybe it’s a mom thing. Maybe the kids save the worst germs until the end of the school year, I don’t know. I eat healthy, I’ve been active, no one else in my family got sick at all, but I was down for the count. I spent a week in bed with something upper respiratory, no energy and no appetite. I was almost sick enough to go to the doctor.

It’s been 10 days now and I still feel a little sick. But the last couple of nights I’ve had a tough time sleeping again and I haven’t been sleeping during the day so I felt like it might be time to run again. I thought that running might help me sleep so I coughed my way through it. And I was right, it did help me to finally get a good night’s sleep.

It was hard, but I got through it. After a 10 day break, I crushed my run. Not only did I successfully finish it, running 25 minutes nonstop, I also threw 8 – 30 second sprints in there for funsies. I ran in the afternoon and definitely should have gone earlier in the day or (more likely to actually occur) waited until later because omg the heat and I’m not enjoying the sunburn, but it looked like it wanted to rain so I didn’t want to wait and miss out on my run. I thought I was going to die when I was done, but I got it done and it didn’t feel that tough while I was doing it compared to some of the runs I’ve done this cycle.

Today’s run reminded me of the importance of a good foundation and I reread that post today. It’s funny that at this point in my last c25k program, I was also unable to run for a couple weeks. That break was preceded by a fall not a cold, but when I continued running at that point I also had no problems with completing my run. It sucks not being able to run for a bit, but it is a nice test to determine if you’ve developed a good running foundation. If you have, you can totally take a break if needed and pick right back up where you left off without any endurance lost and that is definitely reassuring.

I’ve got one week of runs left. I will definitely be running at a cooler part of the day and may take longer than a week to complete those 3 runs to ease back into it and let myself finish kicking this cold and heal a bit from the sunburn I got yesterday. Or I may go for another 9 day streak because honestly I need a good night’s sleep like I get after a run every night.

Last night’s sleep reminded me of the “this sleep is power” commercial. Seriously. I’ve suffered from insomnia off and on for about 25 years now so running on the daily to be able to sleep is more than worth it to me. I *can* function on bad sleep because I’ve had to, but I’m a lot nicer to be around when I get a good night’s sleep.

Now onto the best part. During my time off, I had 2 non scale victories. I was finally able to put my engagement ring back on that I haven’t been able to fit on my finger for over 17 months and I haven’t had to take it off for a couple days due to my fingers swelling like I had to do nightly for a couple months there the last time I was able to wear it. And I was finally able to fit into a pair of jeans that I wasn’t able to fit in 2 weeks prior (and for about 2 years prior to that when I didn’t even try). I definitely feel like I lost some weight being sick and I could feel the difference in my running. It felt easier.

It’s taken me a while to feel like I’ve made some fitness progress, but I finally feel it and it’s such a great feeling. I hope I can keep it up and continue making progress. I also hope I’ll be able to keep the weight I’ve lost off and continue to lose weight and inches once my appetite comes back.

The likelihood is that after 10 days my stomach has shrunk and my appetite will not come back 100%, which would be fine with me. But it would be nice to get hungry sometime before dinner time. Or at dinner time. I know my body needs fuel to function well, to fight off summer colds, to run, and to build muscle and burn fat and it’s a lot easier for me to give it that fuel when I actually feel hungry. Otherwise I have a tendency to do the mom thing and take care of the kids and realize at dinner time all I’ve eaten that day was a banana. Oops.

I can’t believe I’m almost finished with this c25k program. I’ve got 3 more runs (2- 28 minutes non stop then a 30 minute run) before my final 5k nonstop distance run and then my goal is the same as it was last run cycle — to work on my speed for a while before I start training for a 10k. I’ve got a much better app to use now that has some speed runs built into it, which I’ve already been using, thanks to my cousin.

And this time I’m determined to actually run a 5k race. This will be my third time completing the c25k program and I’ve never run a race. I really wanted to do the March of Dimes 5k this year for Maggie, but I started training too late to finish by then. I’ll probably run at least one 5k this summer and then run a 5k in her honor in October. Being that it’s infant and pregnancy loss awareness month I’m willing to bet there will be a 5k for that cause somewhere near me. And then I can run the March of Dimes for all my lost babies next year.

It feels really good to have some longer term running goals and they feel attainable, which is also a nice feeling, but running is still work and I’m still running for my life. To make it worth living. To make me want to get out of bed. To have something for me. To feel like a person in my own right, not just a mom. To feel alive and unburdened for a couple minutes. To fight off depression and anxiety. To have a good quality of life. That’s still why I run.

Running for my life — week 4

This week, I ran Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. I can’t believe I’m halfway done with this program.

The week started off pretty crappy for running, weather wise. It rained Sunday and Monday. Tuesday it was still drizzling, but I decided to run anyways. I dropped my oldest off at school to finish a project and went to the park by her school that I like to run at. And I found it completely flooded. Like the stream I like to run by was flowing over about 1/5 of the path. So I decided to run on the sidewalks by the park instead.

It was a little weird because it was a new spot to run, it was drizzling and my glasses were wet so I couldn’t really see and everything was wet and slick. I was running extra carefully so I wouldn’t slip and fall, which slowed my pace a little, but I finished my run successfully and I didn’t fall. It was my first run in my new shoes in the rain (and possibly my second or third run in the rain ever) so that was kind of new and exciting. The rain felt nice on my face once I started getting hot.

Wednesday the sky still looked like this: It wasn’t raining yet, but on the off chance it could rain all week since it is mid-April and April showers are supposed to bring May flowers and all that, I decided to run again. This time, the sidewalk was relatively dry and I was running on one of my normal paths so I was able to do 250 right footfalls in 3 minutes and 375 in 5 so I upped my pace a bit on the 3 minute runs. I spent the whole time counting steps and praying to God not to rain on me and He didn’t. All in all, it was a nice run.

Thursday it rained all day again so I didn’t run. I made sushi instead. Friday, it was a beautiful day and a beautiful run. It was also a unique run in that the 5 minute segments of running actually felt easier than the 3 minute segments. They both started out hard but there was a point in the 5 minute run at which it got less hard instead of more hard. It was pretty cool, but it was weird. Also one of my neighbors said I inspired her to want to run so that was very encouraging. It’s nice to think that my change for myself could inspire change in others.

This week I did better as far as the sleeping goes. Friday thru Tuesday I was up all day and fully functional which was nice but exhausting. Wednesday thru Friday, I slept until 11-12:30 and was fully functional after that. I was also having some trouble sleeping those nights for some reason so I think I just needed a little extra sleep.

I’m not where I want to be yet as far as wakefulness during the day. I’d like to get to the point where I can be awake from 6:10 when I get up to make my hubby breakfast and lunch and just stay upright and awake, not lay back down while the kids get ready for school. I’d miss the morning cuddles they give me, but that’s all I would miss. I feel like I’d get a lot more done and feel better about myself if I could function like a “real adult” and stay awake all day. I’m not there yet, but I’m making progress in that direction so for now, that’s good enough for me.

I’m dreading and anticipating next week’s runs. I remember week 5 really sucking last time. Up until that point, all the runs gradually increase in length while the walking gradually decreases. Next week is not gradual at all and all the runs are different. Run 1 has 3 segments of 5 minutes of running. Run 2 has 2 segments of 3/4 mile running (or 8 minutes) and run 3 is 2 miles nonstop. I’m pretty sure I can do Run 1, but the other 2 are going to be challenging. I just hope I’m up to the challenge.

Until next week, thanks for reading and encouraging me by following my running journey. It’s great introvert accountability, knowing people are following your progress but not having anyone actually contacting you or directly putting pressure on you to follow through on what you’re trying to do. It doesn’t sound functional, but it works for me and I thank you for being part of it.

Wooden Anniversary

On this day, 5 years ago, I married my best buddy. We had been dating for about 3 months after about 13 years of refusing to mix friendship with romance. Refusing to even consider it, on my part at least.

We met in high school and I think he was a little bit in love with me then. But he was my friend and I’d seen (and experienced) too many friendships die in the name of romance, so I was not interested. At all. He was my friend and that’s all he could ever be, in my head at least.

Then I grew up and realized married women don’t have guy friends like that. It’s a conflict of interest. It’s hard to know where to draw the line and what not to share. It all gets complicated.

I’m not saying married women can’t have guy friends. I’m just saying the dynamic changed. For me a least. Somewhere along the way, my best guy friend from 3rd grade became the hubby of my new gal pal, who’s now one of my close friends and I now talk to her way more often than I talk to him and that’s ok. I’m just saying somewhere along the way, I decided it was ok to date a friend.

When my first marriage went to crap in an epic way, I was done with men. I was going to be a single mom to 4 kids for the rest of my life and that was ok. For a while. Then I got lonely.

Then I realized the hardest part for me, if I ever got into another relationship, would be trust. How do you trust a new guy when the last guy you trusted left you 34 weeks pregnant with your 4th child for a woman he met at a bar on your birthday while away for job training? And then I realized it wasn’t just the other person I would have problems trusting. It was also me — my own judgement. Because I picked that guy. I married that guy. I trusted that guy. I thought we were happy. And then it all blew up.

A couple years later, enter Eddie, stage right, someone I had already trusted. And I still trusted him. I just wasn’t sure we would have any chemistry. Because I’d never allowed myself to test that.

He asked me to date him. I thought about it for about a month, because I wanted to see where it went but I was scared it would blow up and I’d lose a friend.

We talked a lot that month and for the months that followed. We would talk sometimes until we fell asleep and I’d wake up hours later, hearing his breath on the other end of the line. I wonder if he ever woke up and heard me sleeping. We just never wanted to end the conversation.

One day, we were standing in my grandmother’s kitchen and I took a line from Are You Gonna Kiss Me Or Not and told him he was about to miss his chance because he had about 15 seconds until one of the kids came in the kitchen. I think it was really about 10. He kissed me and there were fireworks and right then, I knew all I needed to know.

A couple months later, he asked me to marry him and I said yes. He met my grandmother, aunt, uncle and cousins in Alabama. They loved him. And my grandmother drove back to Georgia with us to see us get married.

I was late to my own wedding. I drove from Jasper to Tucker to pick up my sister then we got our nails done and drove to the Jasper courthouse. I’ll never forget the look on Eddie’s face when I got there. So much relief and happiness. Like up until that moment, he thought I’d changed my mind.

It wasn’t a magical wedding. My parents didn’t come. My aunt and my sister only came to object. The judge cut the tension with a knife and offered everyone there a slice of “support this couple so their marriage can succeed” and my aunt walked out. I didn’t know for about 3 years that my sister had been planning to object, too. Rory pooped halfway through the ceremony and the stench filled the entire room. It was not the wedding of my dreams. But it was the start of a beautiful marriage.

Today, we’ve been married for 5 years. My parents have come around and I hope my sister did, too, before she died. It’s been a hard 5 years. We’ve had good times and bad, happy times and sad, sickness and health, we even almost got parted by death. . .

And there’s no one I’d rather do life with than my husband. He makes every day better just by being there. He fills my life with music and dances with me to it. He is the best husband to me and the best father to our kids. And even when he drives me crazy, there’s no one else I’d rather drive there with.

Our life isn’t perfect. We have disagreements. We have lulls. We have peaks and valleys. We have dead babies. We have inappropriate jokes to cope. There’s no one else I’d rather laugh with (and possibly no one else who would laugh at them with me). I love him just the way he is and he loves me well. I have been richly blessed by God in my husband and I am so thankful.

5 years ago today, I took a leap of faith and my life has been all the better for it. I’ve never regretted it for a second. Today, I thank God for 5 beautiful years with my husband and ask for 50 more. Or 60. 70 would be ok, too. The more, the merrier. . . Although, I do have to admit I’m really looking forward to 15 years. After all, 15 years is big metal chickens.

Happy anniversary, hubby. I love you to the falls and back.

How to enable your body to fight off illness quickly and naturally

We haven’t had a lot of sickness here this school year, but with 4 girls in public school, going to the ymca and attending a gigantic church, we definitely get our fair share of exposure and we’ve certainly had our share of sickness in the past. I have a whole slew of natural healthcare remedies that prevent sickness and a list of things we do once we become sick to get rid of it fast and hopefully before it spreads beyond the person who brought it home. I’ve been sharing these tips with friends for years, whenever anyone I know isn’t feeling well and I wanted to take a few minutes in the midst of this sick season to put all my tips into one post and share them with y’all.

Whenever the sick season kicks into high gear and I know we’ve started being exposed to illness, we start taking elderberry syrup. Adults take 1 tbsp a day, kids 1 tsp a day. Elderberry syrup is easy to make, lasts for months in the fridge and is wonderful for boosting the immune system and helping us not to get sick. If for some reason we get sick anyways, we take our daily dose several times a day, sometimes hourly while we are awake. I will caution you that this can cause loose and frequent bowel movements if you take too much, but this isn’t necessarily a bad thing as many of the germs we fight settle in our gut and cleaning that out can help us get better faster.

We also take lysine to prevent illness. Lysine is an amino acid that our bodies need but can’t produce so we have to get it through food or supplements. It is antiviral and helps strengthen our immune systems and prevent us from catching viruses. It also lessens the severity and duration of viruses if you catch one. I was told to take it last year when I was pregnant and had shingles because it would lessen the severity and duration of the shingles and that is how I learned about lysine. Now, my daughters take it when they get cold sores to get rid of them fast and I take it daily to boost my immune system.

Vitamin D is another necessary nutrient to keep viruses at bay and help us fight them off once we catch something. In the summer, 10 minutes in the midday sun gives us all the vitamin d we need, but in the winter we can’t get enough vitamin d from the sun and this deficiency leaves us vulnerable to illness. Vitamin d supplements help with this deficiency. They can help prevent us from getting sick and help us recover quicker as well, so we take it daily. It is estimated that 85% of Americans are D3 deficient and a vitamin D deficiency leaves us much more susceptible to illness. So we take a daily vitamin D supplement, especially in the winter when we know we won’t get enough sun.

When we get sick, I make chicken soup from scratch. I often make it when we aren’t sick because it’s yummy, it’s full of veggies and it helps keep us well. I like to keep some in the freezer for when illness strikes so I have some to feed whoever is sick right away while I’m making a fresh batch. I save the skin, bones, and peelings and ends of veggies (basically whatever doesn’t get used in the soup) and make bone broth in my pressure cooker the night after I make chicken soup. Bone broth is not only super nutritional, but it’s also very easy for the body to digest which makes it an ideal thing to have around when anyone is sick.

If the sickness is stomach related, I have activated charcoal capsules. Activated charcoal pulls toxins into it to flush it out of the body. If everyone in the house takes it when the first person gets sick, it reduces the chances of anyone else catching it and helps the person who brought it home recover faster. Fortunately for me, everyone at my house can swallow capsules. If you are not so fortunate, there is a great recipe for activated charcoal gummies that I only haven’t tried and posted because everyone at my house can swallow capsules so it hasn’t been necessary here.

Also, for anything stomach related, we have a family remedy called a toddy. It has 1-2 tbsp apple cider vinegar with the mother, 1-2 tbsp honey (to taste), a dash of cinnamon (optional to mask vinegar smell) in a cup of boiling water. It’s good for anything stomach related from eating too much food to having a stomach bug, although when you can’t hold anything down it’s best to drink a tbsp at a time, every couple of minutes.

For anything drainage related, we have Gramese’s cough and cold relief recipe. I’m also a fan of Vicks vapor rub and we use a lot of that when anyone is congested. We also drink echinacea tea with honey, as well as other herbal teas.

Anytime we are sick, we stick with room temperature or warmer liquids as they are easier to digest and more soothing. We avoid sugar because it depresses our immune system and helps germs multiply faster and we avoid dairy because it increases our mucous if we have something with drainage and it doesn’t digest easily if we have something stomach related so either way dairy is a bad idea.

Finally, we take Juice Plus daily to keep our bodies nourished, but when we know we’ve been exposed to something icky, we double up for a few days. We give our bodies extra nutrition to use to fight off the ick. And for us, it works.

I hope this post has given you some good ideas for taking care of your family in the event of sickness. I am not a doctor unless the title of Dr. Mom counts, but these are the remedies I use for my family and this is what I recommend to my friends if they are sick or their kiddos are sick.

I do want to caution you not to mix over the counter medications with natural remedies. Natural remedies help your body to fight off germs, while over the counter medication fight the symptoms of sickness so if you’re natural remedy is boosting your bodies ability to fight off a cold by increasing your temperature and your over the counter medication is trying to decrease the cold symptom of a fever, the two are just going to fight each other in your body. I did this once and it did not feel good at all.

If you’re interested in some tips on how to help ward off illnesses before you catch them, I posted those here a couple days ago. If you have any tips to share, I’d love to read them in the comments. Here’s to a happy, healthy year 🙂

What I learned from posting what I know about Job

I’m going to be honest and vulnerable for (another) minute. I wrote this post about what I learned from Job a couple months ago. At the time, I had it in my head and heart to do a series of posts about how the Bible speaks to my loss. So I wrote the first post about the book of Job. . . And then I kept postponing sharing it.

I don’t know why. Well, that’s a lie. I know some of the why, but it’s not just one why. It’s a combination of:

• The insecure thought of “what if I misinterpreted Job and share my take-aways and sound like an idiot?” So basically fear of being ridiculed for my beliefs or just plain fear that what makes sense to me won’t make sense to anyone else.
• The worry of sharing my beliefs with a primary audience of parents of children who have died who may be clinging to God or may be angry with God or may not believe that God exists, which also carries with it the fear of unintentionally offending a fellow grieving parent and heaping more pain upon them, which is something I would never want to do.
• Fear of not knowing enough to be able to share confidently, which carries with it the fear that someone will ask me questions I can’t answer because even though I have read my Bible cover to cover several times, I’m not a Bible scholar. I don’t have a degree in theology and I don’t know everything and I know that and that’s fine when I’m in Sunday school, but a little scary when I’m blogging about my beliefs.
• I was just plain nervous because I don’t frequently share about my beliefs in an open forum and it was just a little scary because it was something new.
• And finally, I had so many other posts I had written that were flowing from my heart that were just easier and felt safer for me to share.

So I wrote this great post about my beliefs and how they still speak to me in my grief. . . And then I let it sit for months. But like any great Biblical lesson learned through the pain of loss, it was still in my heart and in my thoughts and I found myself sharing some of it in my grief support groups.

And no one ridiculed me.

And me sharing my beliefs didn’t seem to cause my fellow grieving parents more pain.

And when people asked me questions, I wasn’t confused at the answer.

And some people thanked me for sharing my beliefs because they either agreed with my beliefs or they had never considered it from that perspective.

And I became less nervous about sharing. And the same topic kept coming up. I remembered my post. I reread it and I realized it was something that I had needed to read. Again. I thought maybe it was something others needed to read as well. Then I decided it was time to finally post it. So I did.

The response was largely positive. It brought about a couple conversations with strangers in which I was able to share further about my beliefs with fellow believers who were struggling in their beliefs in their grief, as I have at times. It not only renewed in me a desire to share the parts of the Bible that speak to me in my grief, it also inspired me to reread the Bible from the beginning, asking God to use His word to speak to my grieving heart, not just to comfort me but so I can pass that comfort onto others who also need it.

And now I believe I can. Because I shared what I learned about Job, I’ve learned that sharing is not as scary as it seems when you hesitate. I’ve done it and it’s not new and scary anymore. It is doable now.

I don’t know how often I’ll be sharing about what I learn. I suppose as often as God speaks to me. As often as I learn something that helps me in my grief journey. . . As long as I don’t let myself get psyched out again. But I have a feeling sharing my thoughts about the Bible and the way I feel it speaks to me in my grief and comforts me or teaches me a new lesson is going to be kind of like riding a bike. It’ll get easier every time.

Thank you for joining me in my journey to finding comfort in my grief from the God of all comforts, who comforts me in my trouble so that I may comfort others with the comfort I have received from Him. It’s going to be a wonderful journey. I can tell.

The Great Present Dilemma

If you have more than one kid, you’ve probably experienced gift comparison. So and so has more presents under the tree than me, etc. You may even have dealt with one or more of your children trying to peek or shake or squish a present to try to figure out what they are getting. I know I have. It almost seemed unavoidable. Until I figured out how to avoid it.

A couple years ago, my sister decided to use reusable wrapping paper. She was a seamstress so she made bags or wrappings that she could reuse year after year and each kiddo got a different fabric so they knew which presents belonged to which kid just by looking at the fabric wrapping.

I am not a seamstress. I knit and crochet and am so much not a seamstress that just sewing in the ends of the yarn annoys me. So I wasn’t about to sew reusable Christmas wrappings and knitting them was out of the question as well, but her idea did give me an idea that I felt like I could use that would change how we did gifts.

That year, I decided to wrap each kid’s presents in a different wrapping paper and not label any of them. I put a tiny square of their wrapping paper in the bottom of their stocking. On Christmas Day, after we read the story of Jesus’ birth in the Bible, the kids get their stockings first and then they get to discover which wrapping paper is theirs. But until then, I don’t see my kids shaking or squishing packages or trying to peek because they have no idea which presents are theirs.

This year, we took it a step farther. My 7 and 10 year olds were both getting stick horses and those came in big boxes so I wrapped all the other presents for them and shoved them into the box with the unwrapped stick horse. Then I wrapped the box. I also found a large box for my 13 year old and my 8 year old to wrap all their presents in. By the time we wrapped all the presents, we didn’t have enough paper left for the big box so on a couple we did a patch job and put the side with their paper toward the wall or we used a different paper for the big box.

When the kids opened their stockings this year, they were a little confused so we let them try to figure it out for a few minutes and then we helped them find their boxes.

This was also the first year that the kids decided to do their own Secret Santa. They chose names and made something for a sister, which snowballed into them making one or more things for all their sisters and then me and their dad and their aunt. It kept them occupied in the days out of school leading up to Christmas, they were focused on giving and they were excited about it, so it was all good in my book.

When it came time to open presents, though, they had to give out the gifts they were giving before they could open the gifts they were receiving. This not only put an emphasis on giving before receiving, it also resulted in my kids finishing giving at different times so instead of each opening one present then each opening another until they were done, they got to open all their presents at once so while they were opening, they were focused on their gifts, not anyone else’s. They weren’t counting how many gifts each person got. They were just opening and oohing and ahhing over the gifts they received.

We’ve been using a variation of this system for a couple years now and have had some great results. I’ll probably change it a little again next year, to keep them on their toes, but I fully intend on using some variation of this system for the foreseeable future. It works for us.

I hope you all had a very merry Christmas and if you have a gift wrapping system that you’d like to share, I would love to hear all about it in the comments.

It’s a Musical thing

It all started with a song.

Well, it all started with a question.

And before that, it started with a bunch of kids in all black, under the stairs. But that was the start of a beautiful friendship. A question and a song started something much different.

When I was a broken, sad-mad kid, feeling unloved and looking for someone to change that for me, I came to mistakenly believe that having a relationship with a friend would be a bad idea. Instead of considering that having a relationship with a friend could deepen said relationship and make something even more beautiful, I feared that it would crash and burn and destroy said friendship and that, to me, was not worth the risk.

Fast forward many, many years through relationships that could not hack it and becoming an adult and realizing that once you get married, opposite sex relationships just don’t work the same. . . After the end of my marriage and the decision that I was done with relationships because men couldn’t be trusted. . . Then I got back in contact with my friend, who I already trusted.

After a while, there was a question.

“Would you consider dating me?”

And a most unexpected, likely far too detailed answer that ended with some very clear expectations of what dating would mean to me and a question in return.

“Can I think about it?” And I did. Some days, I had a hard time thinking about anything else.

We started talking. A lot. Long, random conversations, some of which ended when we fell asleep or our phones died.

And one day, another question.

“Which song do you like better, Crazy Girl or Are You Gonna Kiss Me Or Not?”

And my thinking went to a whole different level. I couldn’t pick one of those songs that I liked more because I really loved Crazy Girl because I am a crazy girl who still needs to hear that song on a regular basis. It just makes me feel loved. But I also really wanted him to kiss me.

Then one day in my Grandma’s kitchen, I issued my own challenge. I told him he probably had about 30 seconds before one of the kids would come into the room. . . (I was wrong, it was about 15). He kissed me and the rest was history.

And then one day, he asked me another question.

“Will you marry me?”

And I said yes. And the rest became our history. It’s been 5 years today since I agreed to date him and almost 5 years since we got married and I still think that’s the best decision I’ve ever made.

Today, we have 145 songs. We still find new songs that we love that we add to “our songs” because we still look for new songs that describe how we feel about each other. We listen to the songs when we’re together. Sometimes I listen to them alone with a goofy smile on my face. We listen to them on road trips. Sometimes we dance to them. But my favorite times are when my husband sings them to me.

And it all started with a song. Or a question. Or both. And I’m so glad it did. It’s a musical thing and I hope the music never ends. . .

Racing myself inside

I had a bad run the other day. I ran less than a mile before I stopped and walked a bit then alternated walking and jogging. It’s funny, when I first started running, I was thinking about how good the weather was for running. It was finally feeling like fall. No more heat of summer, no freezing legs of winter, just a light breeze and a comfy outside temp.  

I was concentrating on running up hills that day, so when I got to a hill I sprinted up it and then continued jogging. That was definitely harder than my usual running, as that day I made sure I was going up all the hills and down all the slight declines so that took more out of me. 

I was also really distracted by the clouds. On the ride to the y, we went through a storm and came out the other side and the clouds followed us. I kept thinking it was going to pour anytime, which you’d think I could use to motivate myself to run faster so I could finish my run without getting rained on, but it didn’t end up working out like that.

I ended up doing about 4.5 miles outside before the rain hit and I went to the inside track, where I did 2 more miles. I used my handy tap-a-lap app and developed a renewed appreciation for running inside. 

The good thing about running inside and using that app is you can see how fast your lap speed is. At the end of every lap, you tap to end the lap and then it shows what your mile time is based on just that lap. Just that lap. So if you screw up on one lap, no biggie, you just do better on the next one. 

The first mile, I jogged and walked and tried to improve my walking speed. The second mile, I alternated one lap walking with one lap running as fast as I could. At one point, I was running at a 7:48 mile speed. Yes, that was only for a distance of 1/18 of a mile, but for a girl whose current personal record for a mile is 12:27, knowing that I can run that fast even for small amounts of time is very encouraging. 

Sometimes in running, I find I’m apt to get bogged down and discouraged and feel like I’m not improving so why am I doing this, but running inside really helped me over that hump this time. 

Even though I still really dislike running inside because the scenery never changes and there’s less room to maneuver around other people, I’m tempted to make running inside a weekly thing and continue to challenge myself to run faster laps.  It’s so easy to see how fast I’m running and encouraging and I think running sprints more often and increasing the amount of laps I sprint at a time will really help me shorten my 5k time. 

That’s my current game plan. I’ll keep you updated on how it works. 

Simple changes can produce great results

Sometimes you try something new and you’re so excited and you’re pretty sure you’ll see good results and then you see results that are even better than you expected. Our family experienced this recently and it’s pretty great. 

My husband and I were pretty fit and healthy when we got married. And then life got a little crazy and we cut back on working out and didn’t eat as well as we should and tended to follow convenience over health when things got hectic. Which was frequently. 

Then we found out we were expecting and we were so excited. A couple weeks went by and during a run at the Y, I started bleeding. A couple days later, I was still bleeding and started feeling some pain and that pain just got worse and worse. We went to the ER and learned we were losing our baby. From that point on, I had a hard time going to the Y, so I began to go less and less and my fitness began to suffer.
Working out was something we loved doing together so when I started going less, my husband started going less, too. So his fitness began to suffer. 

As our diets bowed to convenience and our workouts became nonexistent (in my case) and less frequent (in my husband’s), we both gained weight. 

3 years later, almost to the day, we found out we were expecting again. I developed a very unhealthy nightly craving of zebra cakes and milk or Oreos and milk or Girl Scout cookies and milk which my husband catered to and participated with. 

January came and my sister departed. February brought with it shingles. And March took our sweet baby to heaven to be with her aunt. At first I didn’t eat much. I had no appetite. Then I ate too much salt because my taste buds stopped working. In May, I lost 2 teeth due to infections. That was kind of a wake up call for me. I started drinking more water and eating better but by this point, I had gained 45 lbs since we got married and my husband had gained 55. And it took 4 years to get there. So despite those changes, I wasn’t really seeing any results. 

About 5 weeks ago, my husband had a gout attack. We researched it and saw that many gout attacks are caused by diet. So we realized we had to make some more changes. We cleaned up our diets some more. Then my good friend Leigha invited me to a weekend in Blue Ridge, learning about health and nutrition. I learned about making simple changes and decided to make a couple more changes to our diet. I was really excited about the changes  we were making and expecting to see some great results and I have not been disappointed. 

Four weeks ago, my husband went to the doctor for his gout attack. This week he went back to the doctor for his annual visit. Not only has he lost 15 lbs in 4 weeks, but his uric acid level is back in the normal range. This is despite the fact that 2 of those weeks he was unable to work out due to car issues. In the past 3 weeks since we made our most recent set of changes, I have lost 6 lbs. We have both also stopped drinking coffee, which we never restarted. I am so pleased by our results, so thankful that we made the decision to change our diets and excited to see what will happen next. 

If you would like to find out more about the simple changes we made to our lives that produced such great results, please visit my “contact me” page, fill out the form and I’ll be happy to email you. Until then, I’ll be celebrating our great results with my husband and continuing along our path of health and wellness, fitness and wholeness.