Friday, December 31, 2010

Goodbye 2010, Hello 2011

Another year in the books (almost) and along with most of the other folks I know I am looking back at the good, the bad, and the ugly of 2010 and looking forward to 2011 and hoping and praying that it will be a great year for my family.
Some of my highlights of 2010 -
Fisher had no nose surgeries in 2010. He was scheduled to have several but I struggled with deciding to do more or not. He had four nose surgeries in 2009 which opened his nose up enough to breathe, and then the ENT totally it up to me to decide if we should do more. He said I was the one that was around Fisher all the time and understand his breathing more than anyone else. So I brought in 2010 by canceling a nose surgery and then sitting on pins and needles for weeks wondering if I did the right thing. I am glad to say, I did! Though he will likely need more surgery in the future, he did awesome without it this year and is a truly happy, healthy, thriving, little boy. I think going with my gut and making this decision helped me get my parenting wings and I am a more confident, more self assured mom now going into 2011.
Shawn also came into his own as a dad. He matured and grew throughout the year and learned a lot in the process. Shawn had his first experience being alone for multiple days with Fisher early in 2010 and he did great. Since then I have taken many, many work trips and came home to two happy guys each time.
We also found out this year that we will be moving to Knoxville for my job. We are excited about living in Knoxville but have been busy and stressed getting our house in Kentucky ready for the market. I am happy to say that it is now officially listed but I will be even happier in 2011 when I can say it is officially sold.
In 2010 I also said goodbye to my Nana, I still have a hard time thinking about living in Knoxville without her there. I know we will miss her a lot in the coming year as we can established down there.
So what does 2011 hold for me and my family? I pray 2011 brings good health for me and my entire family. 2010 we have dealt with miscarriages, leukemia, heart problems, and multiple other ailments in my family. I hope that 2011 is a much healthier year all around! And I hope that sometime in 2011 Shawn and I will have things stable enough to try for our second son or daughter. We hope to have two children (though I seriously want three, but we can't really afford it) and would like them to be close together in age. Plus we aren't getting any younger :) So we will see. We have to get this move behind us and Shawn needs to get a teaching job in Knoxville. I guess that is why people like the New Year - there is always the hope that this year will be a great year. A year of health, happiness, and fruitfulness. I hope all of my friends and family have exactly that and even more.
Happy New Year everyone!

Tuesday, December 28, 2010

Randomness

I am in the mood to write. Probably just a last ditch effort to procrastinate on working on the house, but whatever I am going to roll with it for a few minutes.
Speaking of the house. Oh my goodness, I feel like getting this darn house on the market has been drug out for years. In reality it has been drug out for about a month and a half thanks to our neighbors and their junk. The good news is, the junk is cleaned up! The bad news - our house is not ready - we need to put all the Christmas stuff away, super clean again, clean the carpets and the sun room. Which we can hopefully get finished today....if I get off the computer and get my butt to work!
But first -
We had a nice Christmas. It was definitely different doing Christmas at my own house and not at the farm with my parents and sisters. Having a toddler this Christmas as compared to a 3 month old last Christmas is about one million times more fun! Even though he doesn't really understand all the Christmas happenings he does understand opening presents and he did get excited about each one. He also ripped into a few of his presents early, which of course we just thought was cute. Fisher did get sick on Christmas day. Actually, he started getting sick a few days before Christmas. I noticed on Christmas Eve,Eve he was pulling at his right ear. I called my sister (a nurse practitioner) and she said that even it if was an ear infection it was probably viral and we probably needed to wait it out. Fast forward to Christmas day. We noticed after lunch he was a little warm and started giving him some tylenol. By five he was even warmer and I decided I better run to the only drugstore that was open and get him some ibuprofen too, just in case. I am glad I did because we battled a 102 - 103 fever all night long. It was a really rough night, he was up every hour or two screaming inconsolably. He slept with us for a couple of hours and then woke up burning up. I monitored his temperature all night, telling myself that as long as he didn't get to 104 then he was ok. Thankfully, he didn't. On Sunday I called my sister and she said that having a temperature that high was not normal for a virus and it was probably bacterial and I needed to get him checked out. So we went to urgent care and sure enough, he has an ear infection in his right ear. This is his first ear infection and I have to say - I am surprised how sick it made him!
I guess my random time wasting should come to an end. I hope everyone had a great Christmas and an even better New Year!

Friday, December 24, 2010

A Christmas First.

It hit me today, that this is the first Christmas in my 31 years that I have not been at my parents house. This year we did our traveling to visit family the week before Christmas and met up my sisters at our parents farm the weekend before Christmas. We did all of our usual family Christmas traditions (eating Chinese food on our "Christmas Eve", the full Christmas meal, presents, etc) just a week early. Which means that Shawn, Fisher, and I are own our own at our own house this Christmas. Which is actually really nice in a lot of ways, we had the most relaxing Christmas week ever, since all the stressful last minute shopping for family, for food, traveling, etc was behind us. Ironically, I sprained my ankle and then got a virus, so I spent the majority of the week resting and recouping. I am so glad that we had the traveling behind us, there is no way I could have traveled this week being as sick as I was.
Anyway, I digress....so it is Christmas Eve and it is the three of us for the first time. We hung out and watched some Star Wars movies, which Shawn says is our new tradition - we will watch Star Wars movies on Christmas Eve, if you know Shawn you know he is always looking for an excuse to watch Star Wars movies. I made steak for dinner and whole wheat chocolate chip cookies for dessert. Then we played some music and we danced. I love to watch Fisher dance, he cracks me up, I could watch him dance all day!
After Fisher went to bed we put together his toddler 4-wheeler Santa got him and now we have cleaned up and are ready for tomorrow. Tomorrow we plan on opening presents (of course), making Christmas dinner, and spending the day in our pjs again!
Part of me likes doing the Christmas thing, just us. But part of me misses the familiarity and comfort of the Christmas traditions with my parents. However, I know that we will develop our own family traditions and that is exciting to me.
I hope everyone has a very Merry Christmas!!

Monday, December 20, 2010

Busted week ahead :(

I just got back from a 10 day trip to Arkansas and Western Kentucky visiting my and my husband's families. I was excited to get back home and get moving again on the 30 day shred and I was planning on resuming my Coach to 10K program. So this morning I wake up motivated to get my day rolling - I dash outside to start my car and hit a solid sheet of ice on the top step and twisted my left ankle royally and fell down the 5 stairs into the snow. I knew immediately that I had hurt my ankle, and stayed in the snow for a few minutes imagining trying to get the house on the market and taking care of a 15 month old on crutches. Then it hit me that I was laying in wet snow and I very slowly and gingerly got up. I could put weight on my ankle, but every time I did I got nauseous. Not a good morning. So I ended up getting it xrayed, and very thankfully it is not broken. Seriously, thank God for that! It is majorly sprained in a couple of places, so I have an ace bandage and air cast on it, and I am suppossed to be off of it for about a week, and then slowly get back to "normal". Crap.
So I not be doing the 30 day shred for at least another week. However, I am going to make sure I eat well this week. No eating out (which should be easy, since I am actually HOME for a while!), eating clean, etc. Except for Christmas, when the hubs and I are making a couple of casseroles, mashed potatoes, and rolls. ;)
Merry Christmas everyone! I hope everyone has a great Christmas and week!!

A big shout out to @christidarty for being SOTW this week!!

I hope to see everyone tonight at Mamavation TV at 10pm ET, this weeks guest @tribalenergy4u. Two winners of the carnival will win a Tribal Energy Cardio DVD.

Sunday, December 5, 2010

Feeling the Mamavation!

This was a great week as far as eating healthy and working out goes! I made both a priority and it feels great!
I started the 30 day Shred with several other Mamavation moms over twitter. This has been a lot of fun and I am so glad I joined in. I did the shred 4 days this past week, which I am proud of because I have of course also been working and preparing our house to sell. I definitely needed a day or two break because after a break, I felt so much stronger and was able to really push it. This is a an awesome workout for those of you under a time crunch. And having the other moms supporting me through twitter was awesome. I looked forward to doing my workout each day just so I could post it on twitter :)
We ate clean most of the week. The one exception was on Saturday when we ate typical football food. I had more energy this week and was less hungry.
I will do my official weigh in in the morning and post my results. I am hoping I lost a pound or two. I lose really slow as I have a thyroid disease - either way I feel great and I am proud of myself.
This week my goals are to - Shred 5 days, eat clean, and drink more water.
I am going to be joining Mamavation TV Monday night to talk about yoga. I am excited about this, because I have always wanted to get more into yoga, maybe this will inspire me.
Also, I would LOVE to win some Earthfootwear shoes!! They help you tone and are oh so awesome looking. I really like the Central boot.

Thursday, December 2, 2010

Like I don't have enough to deal with...

I am so frustrated right now. Shawn and I have been working our asses of to get our house ready to sell. We have been working on the house all day, every day - organizing, decluttering, packing some things, moving stuff around, spiffying up, working outside, and fixing any tiny problem that surfaces. We are very close to having it ready to go on the market, which to me is a pretty awesome considering all the work travel I have been doing, Shawn teaching, dealing with his own graduate classes, and taking care of our own personal 14 month old tornado.
And now we are held up...
One of our neighbors that lives directly beside us are in the process of getting foreclosed on. A few weeks ago they had a yard sale and their crap is still on their front porch! It looks awful. They assured Shawn and I that they were going to clean it up, but they have recently moved out of the house and apparently abandoned the mess. It definitely brings our property value down - it looks awful. I know when we are looking for a new house, we always do drive bys and check out the neighbors and the neighborhood.

I took this picture with my phone, it doesn't show enough detail to do it justice, there is trash over in front of that yellow car (that apparently is a junker, they left it and it is also chock full of crap).


So I talk to my real estate agent and she really thinks we need to have their house cleaned up before we try to sell in this market. I agree and understand - but then, what do we do? I am afraid to just go remove the stuff, which is what I really want to do. However, I would not put it past these people to try to get us for stealing or something. So, I called Code Enforcement and they sent someone out to take a look at it. They are giving the folks 10 days to clean up. They put a note on their door and also tried contacting them by phone. The note was put up yesterday and it is gone today, so someone has been over and removed it. Now we wait....and we pray that they actually clean it up. I don't know if they will or not, since they are in the process of losing the house and aren't even living there.
I am not sure what we will do after 10 days - but I guess we will cross that bridge when we get to it. All I know is that this process has been hard enough without this extra stress. And I know that I have to be in Knoxville for my job April 1st - whether we have this house sold or not. I am hitting my frustration tipping point.