Mamavation Monday - Valentine Edition

This week was moderately successful considering I didn't work out much. But I did stick with my plan of eating healthy and not turning to fast food as we prepare for our upcoming move. I lost 1 lb this week.

I am leaving today and will be traveling for 6 nights for work. I have a conference to go to and luckily it is in the town where I will be moving in less than two weeks! So I am going to be able to use the traveling time to do the conference as well as hopefully find a place for us to live and get Fisher on some daycare waiting lists.

So this week I am out of town all week and next week is the big move! I can't believe everything is happening so fast! I am getting super excited about moving to Knoxville. I went to college there and never really thought I would be able to live there as an adult because of the job situation, but after several moves, twists, and turns I have a great job in a town I want to live in! Definitely not something I take for granted in my profession. I am very much looking forward to getting established down there and taking advantage of all the awesome outdoor activities!

I hope everyone has a fantastic Valentine's Day. Since I will be leaving this evening for Knoxville Shawn and I will not be together on Valentine's Day. I don't think we have spent an actual Valentine's Day together since we have been married (almost 6 years). We are going to go to dinner this afternoon before I leave but since we don't have a babysitter lined up it is going to be a family event. Oh well. Maybe next year. lol

What a long, strange trip it's been.

In two weeks I will be a Tennessean again. It is finally starting to set in and I am getting excited. I know this isn't a big deal to most people, because they live and work where they want - but in my profession you rarely get that opportunity.
I went to undergrad at the University of Tennessee and majored in Wildlife and Fisheries Science. The professors were awesome but very honest in telling us that in order to "make it" in the wildlife world we need to be prepared to move for jobs. Wildlife jobs are not that numerous and very competitive. So your best bet is to have your bags packed, apply for every job you see, and jump at opportunities. Sounds fun and exciting when you are a 20 year old college kid - but fast forward to real life with bills, family ties, possibly a spouse,house, and children - and this is HARD. Unfortunately, the majority of people that start out in wildlife don't end up with jobs in the field, life gets in the way. And those that do end up sticking it out with a wildlife profession are often living in places far from home. Which is why I am in shock and grateful for the long, strip trip my life has taken me on.
I went from UT to Arkansas for graduate school. In graduate school I met Shawn who is now my husband. It takes a very special man to be married to a wildlife biologist who asks him to move every couple of years and I am super thankful for him. I landed my first wildlife job in Southern Florida - south of Miami. This was my first "foot in the door" job and I am very glad I did it - though it was hard to be away from Shawn who was in Arkansas in college. After we got married (yes we got married when I was living in Florida and he in Arkansas!!) I looked for a job closer to him while he finished up college. I got a job in Oklahoma, which was 2 hours from where Shawn was in college. So I moved to Arkansas for the weekends and was in Oklahoma during the weeks for work. We had such an awesome time and were so thankful we were able to spend every weekend together. As Shawn was finishing up college I started looking for a new job. I had a great time at my Oklahoma job but I wanted to find something where I would have more opportunities professionally. I applied for a ton of jobs all over the Eastern United States and I ended up getting the one that I have now, which is with a federal agency dealing with wildlife disease. I was stationed in Kentucky and was super excited about that, because my sisters are only two hours away and my parents are five hours away. After being 16 -20 hours away, this seemed too good to be true!
So I have been in Kentucky for the past three years and I have loved it. I love my job, love my house, love the family that Shawn and I have started. But then things fell in place to move to Knoxville for my joba. Knoxville has always felt like home to me. It is where I spent the first 10 years of my life, where I went to college, where my grandparents live, where we spend every Thanksgiving with family.
So I was cautiously optimistic about moving to Knoxville. Yeah, it would be great and all - but we had this little thing called a HOUSE to sell in Kentucky first. I was so worried about selling our house in the down economy in a down region. But things lined up better than I could have imagined. Our house was bought by the first people to look at it, with cash.
So now we are two weeks away from moving to Knoxville. And it is starting to hit me. I will soon be back in the area that I want to live in. An area with family, friends, mountains, and ample outdoor activities. I can't help but be thankful and a little in awe of how things have worked out. I honestly never would have imagined it and feel like God is directing our paths in that direction.

I am a house selling Mama!!

This week was absolutely insane. Since my last Mamavation Monday post, I SOLD my house and it has already CLOSED!!! Amazing, huh??? The buyer paid cash, so we agreed to an offer last Monday and then we closed on the deal on Friday. We don't have to be out until the end of March - but the house is no longer ours. It is very bitter sweet, I wrote about some of the awesome memories we made in this house here.

I continued with the Cinch! plan for the majority of the week, but mid week I was down another pound and a half...but it was back as of this morning :( I am definitely retaining water right now so I am just ignoring the scale for a few days and focus on eating well. I am going to be honest now - I have to be out of this house in three weeks. One entire week I will be out of town for a conference. And I have to find us a place to live in Knoxville. I am highly doubting I will be working out too much until we move. And I am going to counteract that by making sure I eat healthy each and every day. I am not going to overeat and not going to to turn to fast food as we get crazy busy.

This week’s blogging carnival is sponsored by Chef’s Requested. Two blogging carnival participants will receive a grip of Chef’s Requested steaks.

Mamavation TV - Our guest this week is a relationship expert. She has valuable tips for all of us whether we have been married for years or are still looking for that right someone. It is good to know what you have to offer and what you want in a relationship to make the most of your experience.

Special Guest: Allana Pratt (@allanapratt)

Question: What are you doing to keep your heart healthy?

I am cutting crap out of my life - eating clean, not fried. Working out and laughing as much as possible.

Ode to my first house

Today we closed on the sale of our first house. What a bittersweet process. I love this house, I loved this house when I stepped in the door way 3.5 years ago and knew it was our house. Though the house was built in 1941, we were only it's second owners. The original owners were also the builders and they built it with love and attention to detail. When we closed on the buying of the house the old man took me around the property and told me lots of stories about it and then when he left he said to me "I am so happy you bought this house, I hope it will be a great place for you to start your family" And it truly has been. In the three short years we have lived here our lives have changed and been enriched in amazing ways. This is the house where Shawn and I passed the all important test that led us down the road of being parents. We stood in the kitchen and couldn't believe that we were going to be parents and couldn't have been more excited.

This is where Shawn and I watched my belly grow and we documented it in front of the arched doorway to the dining room.
Here I am at 37 weeks -


This is the house we brought our amazing baby boy home too. This is where the three of us got to know each other as mother, father, and son.

This is the place that many of my friends and family first met Fisher. One memory that is a favorite of mine is when my aunts, Teresa and Jonna, brought my grandmother, Nana here to meet Fisher for the first time. I was so proud to show off my little boy. My Nana has since passed away and one of my favorite all time memories of her is the picture below - her rocking her first and only (so far!) great grandson.

And of course all the big firsts in Fisher's life - rolling over, crawling, walking, talking took place here. The big first birthday bash was celebrated in our little house.


So yes, it is just a house but I am obviously emotionally tied to it. We no longer own the house but I know the memories that we have here will last our lifetime. I just hope the new owners don't burn it down while frying a turkey like they did their last house.

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.

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.

Overwhelmed

Excuse my whining but I am completely overwhelmed. I just got back from being gone for work for two weeks. I return to a house that needs to be on the market right now, but isn't close to being ready to list. I want to have it looking perfect before we list it because I want it gone!
I want to be able to concentrate on the house and get it ready but that is proving to be impossible with a toddler whose middle name is Destructo. Combine that with Shawn being super busy with school work as it is the end of the semester (in other words, he is no help!) and going out of town AGAIN on Wednesday for Thanksgiving and the amazing amount of work for my job that I need to be doing and I am feeling more overwhelmed than I have been in my whole life. I keep walking in circles. I walk into the kitchen to grab a cup of coffee and I notice the pile of dishes so I start loading the dish washer, go rescue Fisher from whatever eminent danger he has gotten himself into, go back to the kitchen, realize the milk was left out, put it in the fridge, get side tracked by the banana on the floor, set the milk down to pick up the banana....you get the idea. Basically I never do get my coffee!! I feel I need to be super productive this weekend and I have gotten absolutely nowhere.
On top of all this I am meeting with a lawyer tomorrow about Fisher's birth injuries and I think that is adding to my stress. I am just a mess of emotions and frustrations which is not helping me get things done.
I wish I could just have one week alone in my house to get things ready but that isn't going to happen. My family all has their own stuff going on, so there is no help there. So I will just continue feeling sorry for myself until Fisher takes a nap and then I will bust my butt, probably running around in circles getting too little accomplished.

Our next adventure - Knoxville here we come

It is almost official, things are starting to fall into place...
We are moving! We currently live in Eastern KY and are going to be moving to Knoxville, TN for my job. I am currently the Kentucky Rabies Wildlife Biologist but for the past few months I have been serving as both the Kentucky and Tennessee Rabies Wildlife Biologist because the TN biologist took a new job. It has been decided that covering both TN and KY is going to be a permament job duty for me and logistically it makes more sense for me to work out of Knoxville, TN than where I live now. I have been driving down to Knoxville (5 hour drive) at least every other week and will be spending the majority of Nov and Dec down there. If we live in TN I will have less travel and will be home a lot more.
There are many positives to the move - I love Knoxville, I went to undergrad there, we have friends and family that live there. I look forward to spending time in the Smokies, hiking, fishing, camping, aaahhhhh. Right now we are having to drive 2 hours to Fisher's nose specialists, so hopefully when we move to Knoxville that will be much easier. And there is this whole issue that we want more children but we sure as heck aren't going to have another child where we had Fisher. I was planning on driving 2 hours to Lexington the next time we get pregnant, which I wasn't looking forward to.
I have to admit though, the idea of moving is bittersweet. There is this tiny thing that we own and must sell....our house. That is super scary to me. The cost of living is higher in Knoxville and I am worried about having to find Fisher a new daycare. His daycare he is at now is such a great fit! I also really love working in Kentucky. I love my coworkers here and my supervisor, I wish I didn't have to change that side of things.
And the hardest thing is that my Nana lived in Knoxville and she passed away just 2 months ago. The first thing I thought of when it became "official" that we were moving was "I can't wait to tell Nana!" because Nana would have been more than thrilled. When the idea of moving to Knoxville started getting tossed around Nana was in the hospital and we were thinking that she would be going to a nursing home. I was excited about the possibility of visiting her at the nursing home once a week for dinner. I could imagine Fisher looking forward to our weekly visits as much as she did. I think that this move becoming official has resulted in me greiving for Nana. I really miss her and I am sad for all the future memories I won't have with her.
But I am hoping and praying that a year from now things will be settled down. We will have sold our house in Ashland, bought a new house in Tennessee, Shawn will be teaching, and Fisher will be adjusted to his new day care. Knoxville has always felt like home to me and I am excited about living there with Shawn and Fisher. There is so much to do, so many people to meet, so many trails to hike. I never thought I would have a wildlife job in a state I wanted to live in (TN or KY) much less an awesome town. So bring on the adventure, let's see what Knoxville holds for our family!