What's in a new year for you?

So there's a lot going on for my family possibly in the new year some of which I'm not sure it's going to happen so I can't really talk about a lot of it. One thing I can tell you about now is a new job for me! I'll still be in contracts but a different type of contract. Still with the government but a different group... and HOLLA Momma got a raise! But I want to go beyond the obvious changes. Yes I made that change and it's a needed one, but there's deeper changes that need to happen so that when these kind of changes don't happen, it's okay. I need to know that I will be okay.


Now is the time many start talking about new years resolutions. I mean we all have thoughts of "what I'll do" right? We all have thoughts of what we want to do better. Here's what's been weighing heavily on my heart lately... because I really think a change has to start there if you're going to have any chance of it starting anywhere else.

I will lose at least 25lbs this year. I feel like not reaching this goal in the past has really hurt me in other areas of my life. I feel like I'm letting myself down and so then I allow (key word allow) myself to be let down in other areas of my life too. I can go through the million and one ways that I'm going to do it, but I don't honestly know and you know what? It could be a million different ways, I don't care as long as it happens!

I will cut out on buying extra crap just to buy. I'm not saying that my family won't buy something random for the house or I won't purchase an extra shirt here or there to feel pretty for something important. But I'm going to be smart about the purchases and I'm not going to be emotional. I will not go shopping because I want to cover feelings of hurt or anger. Instead I'll try to put those feelings into those previously mentioned 25lbs.

I will spend my time more wisely. I'm done filling up our calendar with get togethers with people I feel like we should get together with. Instead I'm going to concentrate on people that I need to get together with for the sake of my happiness. Luckily God has blessed us with A LOT of amazing friends, but I want to work on seeing the amazing friends that I have been taking for granted. I also want to set aside time for just my family. My goal is to only plan one "outside of the family" activity a weekend. Sometimes this won't happen (birthday parties, etc), but my goal will be that if we had a busy Saturday then we need to take it east Sunday and visa versa.

I will get my family more involved with our church. Sunday morning service alone isn't doing a service to anyone. We need to up our game to some Sunday School action and other family activities to really bring God to the root of our family and to show my children what it all really means when we pray every night.

I will blog more. This is my diary, scrapbook, sounding board all in one. I can keep my children's memories and let my feelings out on here. I've been slack this past year because I've been slack in general. I've been spending too many days in a whoa is me mode. I've been praying too many prayers asking God to fix it rather then asking him to fix me. I've been looking at what I don't have more than what I do have. Often when I get to sound it out on here, I realize my err and snap out of it. I will Blog more.

So what are you planning for 2014?

She's 4...

Somehow my sweet first born is 4! Today is her birthday and it's actually hitting me hard. Normally I spend so much time on celebrating birthdays that I don't have time for it to emotionally hit me... but today, her birthday is in the middle of the week. Her party isn't until Saturday so I have all day to sit here and think about how my sweet baby girl is FOUR! 

This past holiday weekend my family came up for Thanksgiving and since they couldn't be here for Kinsley's actual birthday they did a pre-birthday celebration with her. It was awesome, she walked around all day telling us it was her pretend birthday and she could do what she wants!

Mom took her to ICE! I don't think she really got how amazing it was, that EVERYTHING was made out of ice, but she enjoyed it and we were VERY impressed! 

A little pre-gaming on the train!~

These are backwards for some reason but whateve, enter: ICE

Here's the life-size nativity scene! 

 Huge Taxi with her Grandmas!

 New York New York!

 The theme was the Night Before Christmas (wish i would have made it down last year for Madagascar!) It was fun! These coats were ridiculous on her! Her Uh Seph helped out~

 She's into snowmen~

 I mean it's ALL ICE people! ALL of it! And there was a 2 story Ice slide!!!

 Afterwards Uh Seph (she called her uncle's "Uh" when she was little and my brother has tried to keep it going for him at least) took us to Gingy's house to decorate cookies... Kinsley had us all decorate one. Can you pick out the one she decorated?

Then this morning I had this all set up for her to take up to:

I think it went over well! 

 

And now my baby is four. This weekend we're having a huge Ariel Under the Sea blowout for her, I still can't believe in a year and half she'll be in Kindergarten!

I love you sweet Kinsley Grace. For all that you are and all that you will be! You are such a sweet and caring little girl. You're thoughtful of your friends and family. You never forget anything and are amazing at learning everything. God has blessed our lives by letting you into it, Thank you for sharing your sweetness with us!

COLOR RUN!!!!

A while ago I got the itch to run (pre-injuries) and asked some friends if they wanted to do the color run with me, they said yes, were ecstatic even? AND Despite the fact that we all hover somewhere above or below 30 we thought it was the best idea to do the Color Run in Tutu's!  You know the color run, the run where they throw color powder on you? The "Happiest Run on the Plant".

 

So here we are in our tutu glory!

Best part? Got to run it with my future sister-in-law!

Well somehow these girls kept my big butt running and despite having not run in WEEKS, they got me to finish that run in 32minutes! SAY WHA! That was a PB!

Aren't we cute? Above is us before the actual race even started! Below is after the race... amazing!

I'll tell you this was a HAPPY and FUN run. Little congestion, awesome music, and everyone was so fun and friendly! It was an excuse to just have fun and be silly and I totally dug it and totally needed it! AHHHH!

 

Then commenced the longest shower of my life, and i still have color on my hands!

Sorry I'm late

I have to tell you that I'm very sorry I'm pretty much always late now. I use to be a very punctual person. It was even a pet peeve of mine when people weren't on time. The women's fraternity i was a member of in college even had it as one of the "rules". But, now... Now I have kids, dogs, and a husband.


So next time we're to meet up and I'm late, here's a few reasons why:

1.My son started crying at 4:30 this morning and threw all of our lives into a tizzy... sorry I know it's now 6pm tonight.
2. I told my daughter she couldn't have candy for breakfast so she had a meltdown, which led to a pee accident which led to a wet wipe bath...
3. It's too dark out
4. My son thought his juice would look better on his head
4. My daughter's foot is dying
6. THE flower dress is dirty, enter meltdown
7. The dog got out of the house (via knocking over the kids and bolting out the door)
8. I can't find my keys (left them in the door LAST night)
9. We need to find sunglasses
10. Despite telling everyone 31 times that we are late we REALLY needed to stop and read a book.
11. We needed boo boo ice for the dying foot.
12. Despite "I'll be better tomorrow Momma" they weren't
13. We needed a princess bandaid for our bug bites
14. We had the wrong color headband on... clearly matching is wrong
15. We needed a snack, and juice, and now we aren't hungry for the lunch we were going to have with you.
16. The dog decided to throw up a sock at that moment
17. My Son "found" the throw up sock
18. My son decided to "hide"... on top of the throw up
19. My daughter needed to change my son's diaper
20. My son bit my daughter because she was trying to change his diaper
21. The sky is blue
22. My son put his only clean coat in the toilet, so now he's wearing his sister's pink one
23. Because Sally's Mommy lets Sally.... clearly I'm a terrible Mom
24. Because "I'm just going to be sad now"
25. because i locked myself in the bathroom to scream

A time in life

There come times in your life where you just want to give up. Whether its give up trying to lose weight, or be the perfect Mom, or run a half marathon. Or you just want to curl into a little ball and sleep for days because you can't figure out what the point of it all is. 

Don't get me wrong, I know what the point of it is!

She's the point. This feisty little, soon to be four year old is the point. Her questions and amazement are the point.

This wildly sweet 20 month old is the point. With his mumbled words and fearless nature, he's the point.

 But half the time I get so caught up in life I often miss THOSE points. Luckily I have this woman (Chris's Mom) near by that gives me enough of a breather that I get moments of clarity like these so I can remember the point.

My most recent source of frustration is our house. We were getting married, had been in Maryland for 8 months. Working new jobs. Tired of throwing money away on an apartment and so we bought. We bought a simple LITTLE townhouse as our starter home in 2006. What we bought that tiny little, fixer upper townhouse for then, could buy us a pretty cute single family now. If we weren't upside down on that little starter home, we could afford a pretty nice house with property now, especially since the market is now in our favor! But we're stuck.

This is what I want to do to the housing market! (Dang isn't she cute!)

 

 (This is my sweet little girls first Karate test, Holy crap when did my kid get big enough to take karate and speak Korean? Obviously she's effected by the housing market!)

But you know what? She is. She can't invite all of her friends to her birthday party because we don't have the room. She's inviting quite a large number, considering the size of our humble abode, but I didn't have the heart to tell her no to everyone. We'll make it work, albeit close!

 So by now you're thinking "At least you have a home Erin" and I agree. We are lucky. We have a home. Each child has their own bedroom (although Parker's is a glorified closet). We have no problem making our bills. We are very lucky. We are blessed. But it isn't our dream. We keep working harder and harder to reach our dreams but we keep hitting road blocks along the way and I keep wondering, when is SOMETHING going to give??

You like what I did there don't you? Kinsley made it give!  She broke through. HA I sleigh me!

I know God has a plan for our family. I know he has a direction for us to go in and just because we're stuck in a house that's too small and too old and still needs too much fixing that we don't have the time or money to put into it... there's a reason we're still here. Maybe to make us appreciate what we do have. Maybe to test us (because Lord knows that house is starting to test me with two crazy kids, two annoying dogs, and my love for entertaining). Maybe it's because something better is coming at just the right moment and if it happened now it would be too soon.

We bought this townhouse too soon... one more year and we would have paid at least $30,000-40,000 less than we did and we would have been able to move by now. So now I need to be patient and know there's a time and it's not always going to be MY time. But if you know me, patience is not one of my attributes. So pray for us. Not that we get a house, or win the lottery (although that would be okay with me) pray that we find contentment and happiness. Pray that we stop looking at what we don't have or could have and start looking at what we do have. Pray that it stops feeling like a beating (not just about this house but life in general) and starts feeling like what it is... a blessing.

 

We're the one in the middle... this is circa 2009, improvements have been done since then~

Primal update

So today is the start of my second week doing the Primal Blueprint. And I cheated this weekend. I didn't cheat A LOT but I did cheat. Friday I had a small glass of red wine. Saturday I had wine and dessert. Sunday I had union straws(the kind that's fried) in my salad (didn't realize it until it was too late) and then i had a few mini brownies.
But honestly... that's ALL the cheating I did! All my other meals were clean! Even eating out (McDonald's and Cracker Barrel) I ate clean! OH AND Dunkin Donuts... now I'm sure there it wasn't 100% clean but i had them give me the turkey sausage and egg on the side and I gave Kinsley the bagel! WIN!

I Felt GOOD about my choices too!
Here's the thing that's really blowing me away, I'm NOT hungry! SURE i could eat a huge burger and fries because I mentally want it, but I'm rarely hungry! Saturday I had coffee, turkey sausage, an egg, some raw veggies, a salad with grilled chicken, and then broccoli for dinner and i was STUFFED! I was going to have steak and broccoli for dinner but the steak was gross and then I realized i wasn't that hungry so broccoli it was. Honestly, could have gone without the salad too.
I'm not trying to starve myself, I'm trying to listen to my hunger cues and without the crash and burn of carbs, there isn't much of a cue!
So I made my Fritata again and I'm ready to go for another week of eating clean!

Man My Timing ROCKS!

Man my timing ROCKS! Like seriously Rocks. I've decided that I need to really step it up with the efforts to lose the weight I hate and I really have bought into this whole, primal, clean eating way of it... so I'm doing my own version of the 21 Day Primal Blueprint/ Whole 30.

I've seen many people, people that I ACTUALLY KNOW (not just some face on a website) have a lot of success with eating clean. Not just have they been able to lose weight (come on the reason we really are going to do this) but they sleep better, have more energy, had health issues solved, etc. AND they have amazing poop babies, come on you all know that's a BIG plus!

Still reading after that doozy?

So I'm going to walk you through the ins and outs of my detox from refined sugars and carbs! I have a MAJOR addiction to it all so this should get good! And like with any good diet/life style change I have impeccable timing!  But really, is there ever a good time? Just because Halloween is this week and we have friends coming over for a BBQ on Saturday... that means NOTHING! (OMG I already miss all the candy and beer I'm not going to get to have!) But I will be able to enjoy Thanksgiving because it'll be done by then! Sliding in for a win, VICTORY!

Here's my thought process on this day 1. Prepping and being "ready" for this is HARD. I'm so used to convenience and being able to just grab something, or drive through and get something, but on the detox portion of this I can't even have steel cut oats! So you really have to prepare yourself. I already have enough on my plate so lets add this in. I'm not looking forward to salads EVERY DAY, so I'm going to try to cook bigger dinners so i can reheat. I'm not pumped AT ALL to workout, like AT ALL. But I'm going to try to get something in! Maybe. Oh God now I'm already giving up.

Yesterday I made a Frittata that I then separated into slices so I could bring them to work this week easily for breakfast! And it's not a cold breakfast and it's pretty filling! Lunch is a salad, I have an apple and banana for snacks, dinner... no clue.

So right now I'm okay. But it's also first thing in the morning on day one. gulp.

Parker Thomas

Parker is my wild man, a non-stop eater, a fixer, a drummer, and a lover.

Parker is now 20months old and he throws us for a loop every single day! He is nothing like Kinsley, we were so unprepared for him! Where she was quite, he screams. Where she would sit and play, he climbs. Where she would watch Mickey Mouse, he drums on the walls.

Did i mention he eats? A lot. Like might put some teenage boys to shame! Last night alone he ate 2 packages of muffins, a large banana, and his dinner, that's pretty normal for him! 

 He is also perpetual motion. The only time I see him sit and "rest" is when he's pretend reading a book, and OH does he do it with FEELING! Really I should record it. While we've been worried about him here and there with his speech, I've never worried about his intelligence. He's SHARP! He wants to know HOW everything works and he's an extremely good and determined problem solver. Even 15months he was figuring out how to get a stool, move it, and climb up to grab the doctor's computer. Even though it took him a few tries to get the placement, he did it! The doctor just laughed in amazement.

Parker was plagued with ear problems from a VERY early age and had about an ear ache a month until he got tubes at 16 months. Because of these ear issues, and because he's the baby and we let him get away with grunts, at his 18 month appointment he was behind on his speech. We made appointments and met with specialist. By the time he tested at the age of 19 months we what we found out was astonishing, but very Parker. In all of  his developmental areas (besides speech) he is functioning at a 25-26 month old. They were floored too by his attention span and were able to do far more with him than a typical 19 month old. But his speech? Not behind for his age, just his development level! They said he was just barely at the 19 month old level for speech but they would like to see it on the same level of his other areas. And they were impressed that he was so incredible at getting what he wanted because he found other ways to communicate his wants to us! I mean I knew he was smart! ;)

 One of Parker's favorite pass times is dumming. Anything ON anything. To the point where I'm terrified that he's going join a band, get discovered, go on tour, and then do a stent in rehab before he even gets out of diapers! His favorite "stick"? A plastic golf club... yet Thanks Aunt Jessie and Uncles Dan! ;)

Did I mention he likes to eat?

 Parker is a silly, fun little boy. Where Kinsley was blatantly obstinate, Parker is just curious. He is constantly making us all laugh! He's been a grunter since the day he was born and we love to hear him confirm what you're saying with his little Tim the Tool Man grunt!