Growing Up

One of the hardest things about hanging out with family and old friends is that they have known you for a long time.  That means that they have seen you at your worst.  Childhood screw ups are never forgotten.  I am so glad I didn't have to live through puberty in an age where these things are posted somewhere on the internet, but I still have brothers who remember me when...I don't really want to talk about that. They still do, but hey, they are my brothers so I deal with it. 

Am I saying I only want to display what is perfect?  No, I mean, why would I blog my struggles if I only wanted everyone to think that I'm perfect? 

Here's the thing that I would like to assume about everyone who has known me for a really long time: you have grown since then.  Why?  Because guess what? I have grown. I'm not the same as the kid who bit her brothers growing up.  I'm not he same kid who put on an innocent look and lied to get her brothers in trouble.  I'm not even the same as the angry, stuck up girl I was in high school.  I've grown.  The Holy Spirit had a lot of work to do with me, for sure, but He's really good at His job.

Okay, I've put a lot of this on my brothers, but really, I'm reminded of this topic because of my grandmother.  She's 90 years old and she can't remember that I'm in my 30's, not 13.  I don't blame her.  Life seems to go by in the blink of an eye when it comes to my kids.  It gets real when my daughter starts borrowing my shoes.

The thing that we all need to remember as we watch others grow up and grow old is that they can actually learn from the things that they did that were wrong.  For my kids, if I look, I can see where the Holy Spirit is working in them.  I assume that they are growing and I have to allow them to do so.  Sure, as a mom, I remind them of what the Bible says as I am working with them on their character, but I can't assume that they are still going to be whining when they are 30.  I have to assume that eventually they will either learn by my teaching, the Holy Spirit's guidance, or at the very least through experience. 

I guess I'm just saying, as a person with a bit of a pet peeve, please allow room for growth in old friends and family.  You never know, they may be awesome people that you want to hang out with now.

Run for Fun?

I know I'm overweight.  It's no secret.  I'm fat.  I'm partially okay with that.

Basically that means that I'm okay with who I am and my image of myself isn't bad.  I'm a strong, beautiful woman.  My problem is that my weight is affecting my health. 

Recently Micah ran a race where he had to have a parent go with him.  He had a blast.  It was supposed to be me going through the race, but since I was unprepared due to a miscommunication and people forgetting stuff, Tony ran with him instead.  Tony couldn't really keep up. 

So here is me, the lady with health issues who needs to shed some pounds (I've gained 20 lbs. over the last 6 months), and my husband, who wants to be in better shape so he can keep up and have an easier time as an umpire, and my kids who fell in love with running and doing the obstacle course (which is what the race that Micah ran was).

So, we decided to start running together. 

Okay, this was kind of a difficult start for me because we had the flu raging through our house at the time, but we started anyway.  Tony got an app on his phone for a couch to 5k training, and we started.  I was exhausted at the end, and I didn't even do the whole thing (I walked instead of ran a few of the sets). The girls have been doing workouts in the mornings every day for a while, and they are doing well with that, so they didn't have as hard of a time, but the flu still took a toll, so they didn't always keep up either.

I've decided that as soon as I have the money, I'm signing us up for a 5k color run that is coming up in March.  Paying the money for it will hopefully help me to get as motivated as Tony is to do this thing.  I need to, the kids want to, and Tony is pretty determined to be in shape.  We'll see what happens.  If nothing else, I'll walk the 5k, but I want to be able to run it.

I told the kids that by next June (not the one coming up, but the following one) I want all of us to be able to do a triathlon (well, Tony doesn't like water, so he gets to train to just run).  It means that this summer we will be doing some serious swim training, bike rides as a family will be more common, and we are going to do the family walks/runs to gain some more stamina.  We want to be one of THOSE families.  The ones that can get things done without wiping ourselves out.  It's going to be a long road, but we will get there. 

Christmas Trip

We are on our way back from our week-long, not-so-planned, awesome trip to Arizona that started Christmas day.

Maybe I should explain a bit more about how this thing came about before I go into the details.

I was feeling horrible.  For the first time in my college career,  I failed a class. I knew it was coming,  but I couldn't do anything about it.  There was literally nothing that could fix it. This was happening in the midst of a bunch of other things that kept keeping me from focusing and being able to do what I needed to to finish the class. Anyway, I was feeling down and Christmas was coming and I couldn't wrap my brain around it. My house was a disaster, nothing was decorated,  I had nothing for anyone.  I didn't have time for my class, and Christmas wasn't on my list of things to prepare for. I just wanted to get away from everything. I wanted to take my family and just run.

So, enter my mom's timeshare thing. She has this timeshare that has different locations and she has to just use her points to go and stay wherever has an opening.  I asked her if I could use her points to go somewhere and she was okay with it (she always has too many and gets desperate to book something before they expire). I started looking for anything within driving distance that we could escape to on or around Christmas.  I found one in Arizona.  It was the middle of nowhere,  but in the mood that I was in, that sounded perfect.  Later I found out that it meant that it was 30 miles to the nearest grocery store,  and that wasn't as good, but it appealed to me at the time of booking.

Tony was good with it. He's usually up for my crazy ideas, and knew I needed something to feel better. 

We left Christmas day. We stopped by my grandmother's apartment and saw my mom and grandma,  they loaded us up with breakfast, snacks, and crayons and coloring books, then we were on our way.

The best thing was that I got excited planning the trip. I had this idea to give the kids little gifts every hour that they could enjoy. I set a timer for 1 hour, numbered the gifts, and put them in a basket where they could search for the right one to open when the timer went off. It was the best idea for traveling on Christmas. It wasn't an original idea or anything,  my sister-in-law did something like that with her kids while we were traveling last year up to Oregon.  I adapted it to fit my kids and it worked out well.

We got to the resort and vacation really began.

There are so many things that I am thankful for over this trip. Here are a few in no particular order.

1. I got out of my funk.  I am determined to do what I need to so I can graduate this Spring.

2. Tony was amazing.  He is so good about rolling with anything.  No plans? No problem!  We planned as we went and told the kids when we figured out what we were doing. 

3. Tony and I got back to our tag team Micah parenting that has been out of whack lately.  Probably my fault,  but it's better now, so I am just going to be thankful.

4. We took the kids to 2 National Parks. That was cool about being in the middle of nowhere,  everywhere was a long drive,  so going a bit further to see really cool stuff wasn't a big deal.

5. The fact that my kids are impressed by rocks, animals, museums,  random facts, and historical stuff.  It's cool to have my kids impress the park rangers with their intelligent questions.  The Junior Ranger thing was one of their favorite parts of the trip. 

6. The little church in Overgaard, Az that made me feel at home in the middle of nowhere the Sunday morning we went. I wouldn't want to live there, but it was good to have the "family" feel even though we didn't know anyone.

7. The random couple my kids decided to talk to on the shuttle bus at the Grand Canyon.  They were really nice to my kids and when we kept running into them, my kids remembered them and they always said "hi" and asked the kids about their adventures that they were having.  I don't know your names, random couple, but thanks.

8. Gas prices in Arizona.  Paying a dollar less a gallon after passing the border was so nice.

9. The great staff at the Grand Canyon Inn where we stayed our last day because we just couldn't bear to go home after only a few hours of the Grand Canyon.  When Zoe left her souvenir in the room and we realized it far later, they let Tony go back in the afternoon,  several hours after we checked out to see if it was still there, and then checked with the housekeeper to see if she saw it. We never found it, but they were extremely accommodating and helpful.  That made up for the fact that their "free wi-fi" was horrible.

10. The park ranger that went over Micah's work with him as he was earning his Junior Ranger badge. She didn't flinch when she saw his writing, treated him like the 12 year old that he is when he was showing off his autism flag, and just respected him as an intelligent person. He recognized her attitude and responded to her as well as he could being so excited.  That could have gone very differently if she had been any other way.

11. The native couple we encountered on our way up to the Grand Canyon who saw all our kids and kept piling up gifts upon us from their little shop. They were such lovely people.  They spoke with all of my kids and were so sweet to us.

12. The cool trails that were not far from us in Overgaard.  There my kids looked for wildlife and saw quite a bit of it. Elk, squirrels, wild horses (!), deer, several birds, and whatever else I can't think of right now. It was cool to see their eyes light up. When they weren't seeing wildlife,  they learned quite a bit about pictographs and native lifestyles from long ago from the info in the tour guides and signs.

There's so much more, but we are almost home, so I should stop. Pictures and stuff to come later.