Full Body Rasberry for today

So the title pretty much describes my day. It started way too early, was way too crappy and I can't wait to go to bed and make it all go away.

I had a meeting this morning at 8:30 (8:30 am!!!!!). Not that I have a problem with meetings in general, it's just that when both kids are coming off being sick and it's picture day so I have to make sure they look good (not to mention trying not to look over worked and under slept), it's just a little too early for me. DH did warn me that he thought it was a bad idea for me to drag the kids to the meeting, but I wasn't about to ask someone to come over and watch my cranky kids. So we all went to the meeting and it was a totally miserable experience, I truly feel bad for NOT staying home. I'd say that for about 75% of the time we were there either one kid or both were crying, fussing or trying to pick a fight of some kind. For L, even the threat of losing all the fun things in his day (treats, fruit snacks, movie in the afternoon, etc.) didn't keep him out of trouble. Then again I should have seen the writing on the wall when L slept till after 7 and Q woke up fussing about needing apple juice. On the upside though, neither kid had a fever today!!!

Last weekend was on the whole pretty good, for a weekend when just about all the plans had to be either abandoned or changed. We picked up my mom, otherwise known as Baba K, from the train station on Thursday night and had grand plans of going to the zoo or one the museums on Friday. That was until L threw up all over this clothes, and then all over my car, that afternoon. The worst of it was that when he threw up in the car, I was stopped at a stop sign trying to comfort him when the guy behind me starts honking his horn! I think it took every ounce of self control I posses not to give the guy the one finger salute and inform him of just why I was stopped at the stop sign. The comforting though I did have was of someone else throwing up all over the nice leather of his Beamer. . .One can only hope. The whole reason for Baba K's visit was to see L in the Primary Program on Sunday and it looked like that whole plan was shot, until Sunday morning. Being the strange person that my mom is, she got up at about 5:30am go for a walk, when she got home at about 6:30am, Liam was standing in his doorway wanting to play with her. And play they did! When I got up, at a more sane time, she informed me that she thought Liam was back to normal. After talking with him for about 5 min I realized that she was totally right and our plan for the Primary Program was back on! He did a great job in the Program, to spite missing the last practice. He sang along with most of the song, even doing some of the sign language, and he said his part (with some help) and I think everyone could understand it.

As Baba V told me on the phone tonight, "I hope that things are better tomorrow". Judging by the fact that I don't have any meetings tomorrow and don't have to be anywhere in the morning, we can already count things on the positive side.

Never a dull moment!

So it looks like DH has found a new project, and it looks like it will be delivered on Saturday.

If you know DH, one of the things you probably know about him is his love of almost all things mechanical; and the fact that he'll get into something, put a bunch of time into it and sometimes get bored and then move on to something else. Since I've known him he's had a total of 6 different cars (not counting the ones that were "mine" after we got married), 2 motor cycles (counting both because the Ninja was his before it was mine) and a snowmobile that was pieced together from many others. The snowmobile was kind of a novelty item that had great uses, he could ride it back and forth to campus during the winters at the end of grad school. They had snowmobile parking on campus. It's just what happens when you go to school in the middle of nowhere and it snows, a lot. But to DH's credit, with each project his mechanical skills have gotten better, he's learned from each thing and from friends (thank you Brian) how to fix more and more challenging issues. To the extent that he took apart the engine of one of his cars and rebuilt it over Conference weekend last spring, there was an all nighter involved, but the car runs great. Anyway, he's decided that he wants to get back into motorcycles, and being the person that he is, he does not want a run of the mill used bike. He's decided that he wants to build himself a custom bike from a 70's bike and turn it into a CafeRacer. And because he has a budget, he had to hunt for just the right one. . . And found it, 3 hours south of here. So that's what we all did with our evening last night, drove 3 hours down state and found the bike. In a great twist of fate there is a mistake on the title and the guy is willing to deliver the bike, instead of DH having to ride a strange motorcycle home. I hope that everything is easy to iron out, given the things age it's amazing it still has a title in the first place. Sometime you just have to smile and realize that you're doing something for no other reason than loving someone else.

It's not my habit to be overly political but right now I feel the need to just vent. Watching the debates and Obama's new plan to fix the debt crisis and peoples reaction to it has made me want to throw things at my TV. Someone please tell me how it's fair that the middle classes are paying 30% tax while those in the upper tax brackets are only paying about 17%? How is it that we went from having no deficit under Clinton and drowning in debt by the time Bush left office? Granted, some horrible things happen with Bush in office but seriously. I also want to know who has a plan to fix the education system?!!!!! Those of us who care find the most expensive places to live so that we can send our kids to good public schools, and even those with educations and jobs are being priced out. Not to mention that the cost of a college education is totally out of control due to most public schools losing so much of the funding they were getting from the Fed. I remember the first time that happened to me, it was between semester of college, tuition went up by more than 14%. Between fall and winter semesters!!! I knew people who could not come back because they did not have the money or the loans to pay for that semester. Our country now has a higher student loan debt load than credit card load. Am I the only one who sees a HUGE problem with that????!! When you have people going 60k into debt to become a teacher and then hoping to make 45k a year, there is a problem. I know a few people who basically have the equivalent of mortgage payments every month in student loans. How are we supposed to be in a good financial position as a country if we force our doctors and educators to go so far into debt to get their credentials that they'll never be able to own a home. Or at least not till the loans are paid off. And that's best case if they don't have any other loans or credit card debt.
And please, please don't get me started on the GOP. I'm so sick of them right now I just want to puke all over one of John Boehner's suits, then make him wear it.

I guess I'm just soooo sick of all the talking heads that talk and talk and talk and talk and never do anything to solve the real problems. Sorry for the rant, I just had to get that out there.

This weeks workouts:
9/20 1hr 43min, 783 cal
9/21 1hr 25min, 884 cal

uh, the weekend . . .?

Sometimes I think that there is more to do on the weekend than during the week. Much of this has to do with being so involved in Church and therefore getting everything that others would do on both days done on Saturday. Not that this weekend was all that eventful. . .

Friday was reasonably busy. Gym, errands, lunch, school, nap for Q, clean, didn't cook dinner (yay!), bedtime. We did have some friends over for dessert and a great game of Rummycube. The friends who came over are expecting their first child at the beginning of the year. In a few ways they actually had the typical Mormon courtship experience. . . date a couple months, get engaged and get married a couple months later. For some reason it always makes me laugh to hear those stories. Maybe because it's so different from the way things happened with DH and I, but it seems sooooo crazy to marry someone that you've known less than a year and promise to be with them forever. Even growing up with this idea, it still seems a little nuts. . .But, everyone has their own plan. It was really fun to hang out and chat for most of the night. She and I have something in common, we both love shinny things! So when the guys were off talking about guy things, we were having a good time talking about all things shinny and expensive. I think a good time was had by all.

Saturday and Sunday always seem to blend together for me. More errands, playing with Q and L, trying to get them and us ready for Church on Sunday. The big highlight of the weekend would have to be sleeping in till 9 (9am!!!!) on Saturday morning. If you're a Mom you understand just how exciting this is. I did have to have a talk with L this morning about making tooooo much noise when he wants to get up and waking up Q in the process. After hearing "Mooommmyyy" about 150 times, at varying volumes, I decided it was time to go in there and have a talk about being quiet in the morning until he hears someone else awake. Hopefully he remembers this talk and I don't wake up to unnecessary noise anymore. I'm not holding my breath though.

Church was nice, I really love being in Young Womens and being part of the conversations that happen there. Although you would have to pay me many, many millions of dollars to go back and do it over again. I think being around the girls makes me feel like I'm not so far removed from being young (although the face in the mirror is starting to tell a different story ;).

As for the workouts, here we go.
Thursday: about 1hr 25min, 611cal
Friday: 1hr 6min, 718cal
Saturday, I went on a really good walk, but I didn't wear my monitor, walked pushing the stroller for about an hour and a half.

Normal days. . .

I would have to say that that last couple days have been just, normal. I spent most of Monday cleaning the house and trying to find my kitchen again after the weekend. Grocery shopping with 2 small children is always an adventure. Aunt Kimmy was laughing on the phone at Liam's excitement upon hearing that yes, in fact the fruit snacks were on sale and that yes he could put them in the cart, all 10 boxes.

I did have a moment of feeling like a really bad Mom this morning. The kids and I went to the gym as normal, but when I went to pick them up again I noticed that Quinn was walking really funny and favoring on of her legs. I picker her up and looked at her leg to make sure there was nothing obvious, my first clue should have been that the ladies at the child center told me she'd sat with a book for most of the time I was gone. So the next thing I did was take off her shoes and check her feet, nothing. Then I looked in her shoes. . .Turns out there was a sock squished into the toe of each shoe! So her poor little feet were smashed into her shoes and who knew how long she'd been dealing with it and it finally pinched her toe bad enough this morning that it caused problems. Needless to say, I felt like the worlds worst Mom! To make it up to her she got to go cookie delivering this afternoon, without Liam, so we got some time to just hang out while I was driving. That and the 35 minutes we spent on the couch reading the same books we always read. . . Ah, well.

Well, now that I think about it, this week was not quite normal. DH called me from work on Monday afternoon and said that he needed to go to Boston for a meeting. The meeting was on Tuesday. I assumed it was Tuesday of next week; nope I was wrong. The meeting was yesterday, and he got his ticket Monday afternoon. I'm glad that this does not happen very often. . .

Tuesdays workout: 1 hr 42 min, 900 cal (yes, that is 900)
Wednesdays workout: 1 hr 23 min, 611 cal

We will always remember. . . And somebody pooped!

As everyone watches the vigils and remembrance ceremonies that mark today, one can't help but think about what we were doing that day and if we lived up to the promises we made on that horrible day 10 yrs ago.

At our Young Women activity on Wednesday night some of the girls were talking about the activities the schools had planned for the week and what they were talking about in school. Keep in mind that most of the girls are in their mid teens and were either young kids or toddlers when the attacks happened, so none of them have many first hand memories. They were all talking about the facts and the time lines of what happened as well as the special assemblies that the schools had planned. As they were talking, myself and the other leaders just listened for a few minutes before one of them looked at me and one of them said "um you guys, it looks like Kari is really upset, maybe we shouldn't talk about this anymore". And to be honest I was probably looking pretty upset. I think this horrible anniversary is different for people of my generation. Before that day I think we all thought we knew the world, and we felt pretty safe. After what happened, everything changed. The way we lived our life had to change, everyone was now worried about security, within a few weeks we were at war with an enemy that, technically, wasn't a state, it was a group of fundamentalists whose only message was hate, instead of looking at the world with optimism we all wondered when the next attack would happen. Having friends in ROTC and AFROTC made things more complicated; when they joined up, they did so to pay for school; no one ever thought that they would be shipped off to the other side of the world. I'm sometimes really amazed at how perceptive those girls can be.
Explaining this whole thing to Liam is something else all together. The news was on yesterday morning and he asked me why I was sad watching and I just told him that it was because some bad guys hurt a lot of people and that made me sad. His response was "bad guys like the Decepticons?" "Yup, like the Decepticons". That's the best I could come up with!

On the lighter side of things I did spend my Sunday afternoon and evening doing exactly what I wanted to do, take a nap and then go for a walk.

And the best news of all this weekend: Liam pooped in the potty!!!!! (it was by accident, but it still counts!)

P.S. Friday's workout, about an hour and 15 min, 553 cal.
Saturday's workout, an hour and 23 min, 676 cal.

Diaper Shower and Comparing Notes

It's amazing how refreshing it is to go and just spend a couple hours being my self.
Not being "Mom" or "Hon", but just being Kari is amazingly refreshing and renewing. The diaper shower was not for me, obviously, it was for a friend who is much braver than I am and is having her 3rd boy (thus the diaper shower).

Sometime I look around at some of the other blogs and at some Moms that I meet and I tend to nit pick all of the things that I don't do that some of them seem to do so effortlessly. I think if we're all honest we know that we can do better, and on the other side there are things that we know we do well. On my brag side, I'm pretty good at taking care of myself. I can get to the gym, manage to take a shower and usually put makeup on so that I look like I actually slept (or trying to keep with the trends). I try to cook and bake as much as I can and make sure that the kids eat food that's good for them. On the other hand, I am no where near a patient mom. I want them to do what I tell them to do right now. I want them to follow directions with no arguments and just say "ok Mom". I've also discovered that I need a certain amount of quiet time; time to my self, where no one bothers me and I can do my own thing, even if it's just sitting on the couch watching TV.

Admittedly I do get down on myself for these short comings. I feel bad after yelling at my kids, I feel some guilt when I take off at night or if I leave them with a sitter for a little too long. I'm just not one of those Mom's that cries when the kids get on the bus, not that I didn't freak out on Liam's first day. I was really happy when school started early for IEP kids, for myself and for him.

It is amazing on those horrible days, when you want nothing more than to get them into bed and then die, and you're tucking one of them in and you hear a little voice say "I love you too Mom" and then you just melt. . . nuf said.

As promised here is todays workout.
It lasted about an hour and a half, I warmed up, did a weight circuit, jogged and cooled down. Burned about 630 calories.

One Craaaazy Summer

Well, here goes!

The last couple months have been really nuts. Over all it's been a good summer with lots of adventures for everyone! Over all, I realized that I need to keep a lot more people much more updated that I have the last season.

Early in the summer we were consumed with the end of the school year and the beginning of summer school for Liam. He did have a little bit of a hard time adjusting to going to school in the morning and not going his regular school. However, the Special Needs Summer School program in our district is awesome! Liam had speech therapy during the whole session, as well as the regular classroom experiences. They also had a number of really great field trips; they went to a nature preserve, an airport (and got to get into a small plane!), had some outdoor water days and made some new friends. He was not the biggest fan of getting up early to get on the 7:30 bus but he quickly got over it. He also had a good summer because he got to see a lot of his Grandparents, but more on that later.

Quinn continues to be her overly cute self. She's finally getting used to being at the gym and is now old enough to go to Nursery at church!!!!! We have only made it all the way through church one Sunday at this point but hey, progress is progress. The time that she spends at the gym has helped her separation anxiety, mostly because there are some nice people at the gym who like to carry her around when they can ; ) so she gets a little spoiled. She's getting bigger though and can finally ride in a forward facing car seat!

In July we had something really exciting happen, my brother got home from his mission! We were able to all get together as a family and go on vacation to Nauvoo. We rented the upper 2 floors of a house very close the the Mississippi and had a great weekend with my Mom, sister Kim and her husband Charlie, my brother Tristan. The last time all of us were together was about 2 and a half years ago. As is my Mom's habit, she insisted that we get a family picture done. We were lucky enough to find one here who was ok with 8 people, 2 of whom being very small children, and was willing to sell us a copy right release with digital copies of all the pictures. I'll post some of them later. I had not been to Nauvoo in about 15 years and it has changed a lot since then. It's more built up and having the Temple in it's former position is really something special. At times vacations with my family can come with drama, but this time I think a good time was had by everyone.

We also spent a big chunk of time in Detroit in July. The reason was not a great reason but these things happen. Over all I'm just glad that we were in a position to help family and keep people who needed to be distracted distracted. The kids had a good time being around their grandparents and getting spoiled while they were there. Their favorite things were going for frozen yogurt with Grandma K (a few times!) and playing with bubbles in Gampa and Grandma V's backyard.

I have to say, it was a good summer.

Now that school has started again we are trying to get back into the schedule. At the same time, I'm trying to get back into the goals that I've made for my self. Over the summer I was not very diligent about my exercise or my diet, not that I didn't make any progress, I just was not as careful as I could have been. Now that things are getting back into a routine I'm reminded of my goal for myself before I turn 30 this October. I'm not sharing the exact goal, suffice it to say that it involves being a bit smaller than I find myself to be at this point. I'm thinking that if If put this goal out there it will require me to be more honest and upfront about my exercise and progress. I have worked with a trainer a few times and gotten workouts from her, hopefully I cam get myself back into the swing of things and lost that extra size that is bugging me!

So I'm putting a challenge out there to anyone who wants to get back to their fighting shape - post your workouts in the comments and we'll see what we can get done before Halloween!
I'll try to post my workouts every day. I'm really terrible about posting food so I'm not going to try that. My goal is to go into GAP and pull on size 10(30) jeans on my birthday in late October (like I said, I'm turning 30).
Post only words of encouragement and hopefully we can all help each other!