Update on how my goals are coming along

So, things have been going pretty well. I have been keeping a journal most nights, but my writing is so awful I don't know if I will be able to read what I've written. I have noticed the scripture reading and prayers have helped me to have a better attitude each day, at least I think so. My family might beg to differ.
I've been able to work out 5 days a week, whether it's been walking or weights. Luckily the weather was good for this. My friends and I meet at the high school track and walk for about an hour, which is so much more enjoyable than anything else. Once the rain hits hard, I will have to go to the gym, so I am outside every chance I get for now.
And my eating has been going well. I have been really disciplined until I went on and overnight camping trip with my girlfriends and didn't have my own food. But I resisted the sweets and only ate small portions of the food, and no pop. Saturday I had a cheat day because of breakfast at the campground and then a candle party, which I hosted. I made this pumpkin/ginger snap snack and could not say no. But today I was back on the wagon and will do my weigh in on tues. Wish me luck!
I am glad that I set these goals because it has helped me in more ways than one, and I know I will feel so much better about myself and my life.

Summer Fun

We had a pretty relaxing summer. I had to work 3 days a week, so the kids were with Adam's sister a lot. We weren't able to do a lot or go anywhere really. We had a camping trip to Loon lake and it was a nice weekend, except for getting eaten alive by the mosquitoes. We also made a trip down to Grants Pass to check out the school in Ashland. We were thinking of moving there and now I wish we had given it some more thought, or I wish I was on board more. But there is a reason we decided to stay and I hope it's because I get into the program I am going to apply for.
The kids and I went on some nice hikes, we have a lot of hiking around our town, which makes it nice and the kids love to do it. And its a fun way for me to get a workout without killing my body.
We went swimming some, did crafts and basically just chilled and got ready for the start of the school year.
Garrett working on the potty training. He is doing so good now, and it is a joy to be off diaper duty all day long. We are still working on the nighttime routine. He is so happy wearing his big boy undies!

Natalie had an eventful month. She is our clumsy, accident prone kiddo and we deal with a lot when it comes to her. Adam was gone and she split her eyebrow open after getting out of the shower, so I called my work and they got her in. I wasn't sure if it would need stitches, but the doctor recommended it. And the dermatologist that is in our ward just happened to be at the clinic for one of his patients, so he did her stitches and it looks great! No one can even tell it was split.

She also lost 2 teeth, this on if for the first lost tooth. The tooth fairy forgot to come at night, but in the morning she found her money and a nice note from the fairy apoligizing for the mistake. The tooth fairy sure has a lot of trouble remembering to bring the kids money for their teeth! Oh, and she literally lost both of her teeth when she put the first one in a cup and Adam dumped the cup full of water in the sink, and when she lost her second one, went to put it in the tooth jar and dropped it and lost it. When the tooth fairy actaully remembered to bring her money during the night, she didn't even remember to look for it or that the tooth fairy was coming!

The summit of Spencers Butte, one of our favorite places to hike.

One of the crafts we liked to do this summer, paint rocks for yard decorations. We did these for my mom's birthday and it was super fun! We had some friends over and did some for our yard. Painting them was very theraputic for me and we will be doing this a lot more.

Races, and more races

This summer I was able to work 3 races in, a half marathon, a 10K and a sprint triathlon. I had the half marathon goal in mind, and thought "hey, I will be in such good shape, I should work in an Olympic triathlon as well". That was a hilarious thought. First of all, the half training just about did me in. I was trying to run ridiculous amounts of miles a week (ridiculous for me, anyway) and really started getting some bad hip pain when I had just turned over a new leaf in my training, so I went to the doctor and had to back of the training to keep in shape so I could finish it. The half was in June, in sunriver, and was the most perfect conditions for a race and a wonderful weekend to boot. I had Adam give me a blessing for my hip to heal, and I doped up on medicine and was able to run the whole thing pain free, and no pain that whole weekend, when I can run 4 miles and be paying for it for 2 days. It was seriously a miracle. Brynne was all set to take off and decided to stick with me because I was able to keep running. That was a huge accomplishment for me and I have the proof of that on my car. We spent time with my brother Chris and sis-in-law Kim and niece Hannah, and that was fun. Also got to see my cousin Marlow and her kids who live in Louisiana because they were visiting my aunt and uncle in Bend. It was such a great time.
Brynne and I after the half marathon.

Me smiling afterwards-(side note- we wanted to shout out to Eugene so we bought these tye-dye tshirts and Brynne had drew wording and a picture on the back that said "Sole Sisters" with a running shoe. Everyone loved them and it was fun to represent Eugene.

I also decided a couple days before a 10K to run it, basically so I could hang out at this cool festival called "the Scandinavian festival". Lots of yummy food. I ran with my friend Stacie and it was a good run. Nice and flat course. Went back to the festival later for food and it was about 100 degrees that day. Yuck! Needless to say, we didn't last long!

Then was the tri in Forest Grove Oregon. Brynne and I convinced out s-i-l Kim to do it with us, and she did! It was one of the hardest races I've ever done! I don't think I was totally in shape to do this, and the course was so hilly. I hate to swim and so the 1/2 mile swim was hard, but I think I beat my last tri swim time. The bike was the hardest part. I wasn't used to steep hills, and just wanted that part to be over, when usually it is my fav part. Kim was on a mountain bike so we felt bad for her. We all finished, Brynne got first in her division, and I got first in my division-the big women division-but there were names under mine! So that was cool and we were so proud of Kim finishing with a big smile on her face!! What a way to end the summer!

Me getting close to the finish line.

This is before the torture, I mean, race started.

# 1 in my division, baby! It is amazing the limits we can push our bodies to and succeed in something that seems to unachievable. It is a great feeling!

I love this Day!

I felt the need to post today about how it went. Today was a wonderful day. The sun was shining, the air warmed up, and I felt the Spirit so strong at church. I know it is because I have been trying to change my attitude, pray to my Father in Heaven more and read and ponder my scriptures. What a difference that makes in my attitude and outlook on life. I was happy today, social at church (usually I do my calling and avoid conversation), and enjoyed my kids-ok, except this morning when I was trying to work on my lesson for church and the kids kept coming in for "mom" this and "mom" that. Don't you realize you have a father as well? Sometimes I think they forget. Or maybe he happened to be hiding at that time. Anyways, the kids were good at church which makes me happy, and then my lesson went really well. I teach the 10 year old girls. We had good discussion and I felt the spirit. Oh, and the talks were awesome! A girl in my class' parents spoke and they did a wonderful job. After church we had the missionaries for dinner and we didn't know we had signed up, but I was able to make a dinner of fried chicken breasts, mashed red potatoes and it was a hit. So that felt good of course. And I loved having the missionaries over. We talked about getting more involved in missionary work and it was great to sit and talk with them about that, because that is what they do every day, of course. We really love our friends and family and want them to feel the happiness we do. So that was fun to get pumped up. Then after dinner we went on a walk, talked to the girls about their new school-they are in a spanish immersion school and I was so sick with worry over how Emma was going to like it, but she says she does, even though she doesn't understand much right now. It eased my mind to talk to them and we will continue forward for at least a month, and then reconvine.
I have been doing a good job journaling and that has made me very happy. I realized I hadn't written in Natalie's journal since Dec of 2008! Hello, mother failure of the year! I cannot remember anything that happened in the first part of 2009. Luckily I made this goal and can now get back on track with this. My hand got really tired though-what having a computer will do to you!-and so couldn't write for too long, but the little I did made me feel good.
I felt extremely happy today, and that was good because it has been a long time since I felt this happy. Hopefully I can keep it up for awhile. And lose some weight-that would make me
happy-er!

More to come

Yes, I will post pictures of our happenings this summer and then talk about our lives as of now. Till then you wait on the edge of your seats with suspense!

Oh, the woes of digital cameras!

Let me explain...I love digital cameras. They are so convenient, so accessible, so user friendly. But oh the amount of pictures they produce! I have 3 photo albums from my youth. Three! And my mom was amazing at capturing it. She is one of the most organized, with-it gals I know and I will never live up to that. She had all 5 of our memories organized into boxes, (not 5 memories, 5 kids' memories) folders for each year with our artwork, our achievements. All of us have baby books filled to the max, and we all have journals that she has keep of our lives as youth. Yes, that is right, all five of us!
So, the challenge I find nowadays, is the amount of pictures I have of my kids, and I only have 3! And the amount of family pictures to boot. My kids will each end up having about 10 big albums to their names with all the pictures I have. Or it could be more...And I am not a snap happy person. I see an opportunity, I take it, but am not taking a billion pics of everything. I recently, FINALLY, had some pictures printed out. Because what good are they if they stay on the computer, never to be looked at again? 50 bucks later, and 6 enormous envelopes of pictures, I have some, but still have a ton to print out!! And they just sit in a shoe box because I don't know what to do with them. Should I try to scrapbook, or just start buying the ridiculous amounts of albums to start shoving them in? I don't know, but I am slowly but surely on my way to something. What happened to the good old days when you had 24 precious pictures per roll? Sigh...

Turning Over a New Leaf

In lieu of fall approaching, I feel compelled to start afresh. I am going to set some goals, to actually be achieved, goals that I feel are important to my health and well-being as a mother, wife, friend, and daughter of God. I was struggling this summer in my relationships with my family- constantly being rude to them, disrespectful, wanting to spend time apart from them. I always seemed to lose my patience at the smallest thing.
I went and saw that movie "Eat, Pray, Love" and had kind of an awakening. Yes, motherhood and wifehood are the hardest things I've ever done, I have droned on before about this. I do need to get this out right now for my own benefit. I was not born with the need to have a family, as my mother can tell you. I wanted to be an only child, wanted nothing to do with my family, thus making me not at all interested in having a family of my own. I don't know why I was this way, but that is how it was. I always wanted to be the cool aunt, taking my nieces and nephews for the weekend, spoiling them and returning them to their parents to be expertly taken care of, which I knew I could never do. It wasn't until I turned 21 that I felt the need for a family of my own, to take my own little ankle biters to the store, and cuddle up to my husband on the couch.
I am truly thankful that I had this change of heart, because I do love my family very much, I still struggle sometimes with the "ifs". After seeing this movie, I was jealous of the authors ability to just up and leave, not to leave her life, but to be able to go on a journey of self discovery but traveling abroad. One of my biggest dreams in this life, which it has always been, was to be able to travel the world. My dream job would be to work for a travel magazine and get sent all over the world and to write about my journeys. Well, since that will never happen, I have decided to go on my own personal journey. And the fact that I am writing it down will help me stick to it. It is a journey to finally accept and love myself, which I have not been able to do and which I know is a big contributor to why I have been so horrible to my family. I can't truly love them without truly loving myself. So here goes...
Oh, and my goals to achieving this:
1. Journal or blog every night-in my kids journals and mine-I am talking at least just a paragraph.
2. Reading my scriptures morning and night, along with prayer.
3. Exercising at least 5 days a week, and I am not talking grueling workouts every day that will burn me out, I am talking walking, hiking, cycling, anything that gets me moving.
4. Eating smaller, healthier meals and snacks
So this is it, wish me luck!