Our Little Family

Busy Monday!

2012-02-13T17:21:00.000-06:00

Today was a big day! I returned to work after having 9 weeks of maternity leave, Macy is 9 weeks old today and I weighed in this morning.

After spending the last 9 weeks home with Macy, and a big part of that time home with Kara and Joe too, it was hard to go back to work today. Especially because I got sick this weekend and am feeling pretty miserable. My co-workers were kind enough to fill my cube with latex balloons. I should probably mention that I have a strong fear of latex balloons...

And of course we had to deflate all the balloons, I wouldn't allow them to pop the balloons, cause I'm scared of that! So we very carefully deflated them. I was told there were about 300 balloons!!

So I survived my first day, although, I don't really remember how to do my job yet, so I should probably figure that out in the next few days.

My little baby girl is 9 weeks old today! Joe sent me some cute pictures of her while I was at work, but I can't seem to download them from my text messages... Macy is such a good baby! She is sleeping through the night, usually from about midnight to 9am! I don't know how we got so lucky to have 2 good babies, but I'm not going to complain about it! Over the last few weeks she has started to smile and coo a ton. She loves her big sister, whenever she sees her she starts smiling and talking, it's so cute! We bring her in on Wednesday for her 2 month appointment, I can't wait to see how big she has gotten!

Monday is my official weigh-in day. I am down 2.5 pounds from last week and a total of 8 pounds so far! Woohoo! I like those numbers! I have now lost 25 pounds of the 50 that I gained while I was pregnant.. hopefully those next 25 will be gone within a few months!

Last weekend we had some pictures taken with Auntie Em, here are a few for you to enjoy :)

Day 3!

2012-02-03T21:23:00.000-06:00

Today is day 3 and I am still going strong with calorie counting! It's ridiculous how quickly the calories add up once you start counting them! I am trying to get back into the swing of this and trying to remember old foods I used to eat that were healthy, low in calories and kept me full. Once I get used to eating healthy and smaller portions it's not so hard.

Tonight I went to the grocery store and loaded up on fresh produce and some healthy snacks. When I got home I made some chicken stir fry with broccoli, red pepper, onion, carrots, pineapple and brown rice, it was pretty good, but the recipe for the sauce included quite a bit of soy sauce - I'd definitely use a different sauce if we make this again!

After dinner I made a bunch of pre-packed snack bags - I think snacks are always the killer to me counting calories, I think I'm hungry and end up eating something I shouldn't have, I'm trying to avoid that by planning in advance! For my snack bags I counted out pieces to the correct serving size and wrote the # of calories on the outside of the baggie, so rather than sitting down with a bag of potato straws, I can quickly and easily grab a pre-packed bag and know that it is 130 calories. I also did some dry-roasted peanuts, dark chocolate almonds (not the kind dipped in chocolate), pretzels, celery and broccoli. I only have one more week of maternity leave - so I hope I can get in some good habits before I go back to work!

I haven't worked out in the last two days. Yesterday I was too sore from my walk/run the day before and today I really did plan on going to the gym or working out at home, but it's 9:00 and I am just sitting down! I started cleaning closets in our bedroom today - I cleared out so much stuff and have so many bags ready to donate, it's ridiculous how much stuff we have! After cleaning I went to the grocery store, brought the groceries in and put them away, made dinner, cleaned up dinner and made my pre-packaged foods... all while helping Joe take care of Kara and Macy... I think I had enough packed in to today!

Alright, that's all for now! Hoping to get some exercise in tomorrow!

Day 1.

2012-02-02T10:38:00.001-06:00

Yesterday was day 1 of my life transformation. I'm not calling it a diet, because it's not. I want to make healthy changes to have a healthy life, but obviously the goal of this life transformation is to lose weight, feel better and be healthy.

I am still holding on to about 30 pounds of pregnancy weight. I have lost this weight before, so it's kind of frustrating having to lose it again, but I know that if I don't make changes that this weight will never go away. And I know that I have done this before so I can do it again! It's also hard starting to workout again. I quit exercising while I was pregnant, so I am pretty much starting all over with that too. It's frustrating having to start from square one with things that I used to do on a daily basis, they are harder to do now both because I am out of shape and I am 30 pounds heavier than when I was doing them before. But, I started somewhere before and made it to the level that I was at, so I know that I can do this and get back to where I was.

To make these changes I am back on the calorie counting train. I lost about 80 pounds counting calories before, so I know this is an effective way to lose weight for me. I have been messing around with the apps My Fitness Pal and Lose It to track my daily caloric intake. I think I am leaning towards My Fitness Pal to be the one for me. With My Fitness Pal it is so much easier to find foods in their library, I can easily find homemade foods, store bought foods and easily add my own creations. With Lose It I have found it very difficult to find foods - I can't just type in 'peaches and cream oatmeal' and find it, everything is categorized funny. It is easy to find things by using the barcode scanner, but you don't always have a barcode to scan, and My Fitness Pal also has this feature. And the deal breaker... My Fitness Pal has beer in their food library, even Surly! I know I shouldn't be drinking beer while I am trying to lose weight, but you better believe if I have calories left at the end of the day, I will be drinking them! You can have 'friends' on My Fitness Pal, so if you're using it too, find me kristinlien04.

I also joined the gym again! They had a deal to join for $14.99/month and if I go 8 times a month I will get reimbursed $20/month by my health insurance, so I'll be making $5/month. Can't go wrong with that! Yesterday was my first attempt at running on a treadmill. It was slow, but it was a start! When I first tried running 2 years ago I couldn't run for 60 seconds straight. After nearly a year off of running I am pretty much back to where I started at. I did manage to have a couple of 2 minute and 2.5 minute stretches, which I consider a success! I did 3 miles in 45 minutes, extremely slow, I know... but I did it! The treadmill that I was on was acting kinda funny, so it made it hard to run... every time I increased the speed the belt would slip. I have to make sure not to get that treadmill again! I am using dailymile.com to log my miles, if you use it, be my friend! My DailyMile profile

I will be doing my official weigh in every Monday. But I am a freak and like to weight myself daily. I know some people say not to do this, but it keeps me in check with where I am at, so I do it!

My first goal is to run the Get in Gear 5k on April 28th, and to be down about 20 pounds by then. The run is 12 weeks away, so that should be plenty of time to drop 20 pounds and to get myself prepared to run.. wish me luck!

My overall goal is to fit into all of my pre-pregnancy clothes, and for them eventually to be too big for me!!

I know this will be a daily struggle, but I need to remind myself that it's worth it. I am ready to enjoy clothes again, to feel confident, to enjoy exercising. Every day is a struggle, but I feel so much better at the end of the day when I know I stuck with my plan!

This about sums it all up for me:

I also have a pinterest board for all these lovely motivational and inspirational quotes to keep me going.. feel free to follow it! Post Pregnancy Body board

Quick Post...Huge Milestone

2012-01-23T01:18:00.000-06:00

I just need to document a huge milestone! Last night Macy slept from about 10:30pm to 7:00am!! Woohoo! Let's hope this will be a regular thing. I'll be going back to work before long and I would love if she could keep this up and let momma get some sleep. And on that note, I am off to bed. Sweet dreams!

Where has the time gone?

2012-01-15T23:17:00.000-06:00

I thought my maternity leave was going to be a nice, relaxing time at home with my baby girl. I thought I would be able to catch up on housework, get things organized, keep my blog updated, keep up on pictures...boy was I wrong! Macy will be 5 weeks old tomorrow, I have had 5 weeks off work and I feel like I have been off about a week! Christmas is a complete blur, did it really happen?? We have been so busy and I feel like we are just getting into a routine, barely... So here is a little update of what I remember from the past 5 weeks!

When Macy was 4 days old we had to bring her to Children's Hospital Heart Center to have an EKG and an ultrasound of her heart. While I was pregnant with her her heartrate was always very high and after she was born she had a murmur, so her doctor wanted to be sure that it was a normal murmur and nothing to be worried about. Macy did really well hooked up to all those machines and in the end it was found that she had 2 small holes in her heart, but they are nothing to be worried about. It's possible that one of the holes will close over time. We go back when she is 2 months old to have her checked again. Another thing that happened while we were here - they measured Macy and found that she was 18", but she was measured 21" at birth... so yeah, pretty sure that her length listed on her birth certificate is wrong. At 3.5 weeks she is only 19.5 inches, oh well...

While we were at Children's we also had to go to the lab area to have her blood drawn to check her bilirubin levels since they had been elevated. The results came back very high! Her numbers went something like this from the day she was born 8.5 - 13 - 16.4, so they were rising, and rising pretty quickly. It was determined at this point that she needed to have a biliblanket to help break down the bilirubin in her system, so a biliblanket was delivered to our house that night. We hooked her up to the blanket and had to go back to the hospital on Saturday (the following day) to have her blood drawn again. Let me tell you this - having blood drawn from your tiny little newborn baby is the hardest thing to watch! And she had to have it done day after day. So we stopped at the hospital on Saturday hoping for a real quick in and out visit. First of all, we couldn't get to floor 3 where the Children's lab was. No one mentioned to us that the Children's lab was closed on Saturdays. After wandering around trying multiple elevators and not being able to get to the third floor we finally found some people to ask and found out that we had to go to the lab downstairs.. ugh! Why do things have to be so difficult? Her levels from this day were up to 17.8 - so she got to stay on the biliblanket for at least another day. She ended up being on the blanket for almost a full week. Finally on the following Wednesday her levels were starting to go down, so the doctor decided that she could come off the blanket. Saturday was also the day of the Adams' Family Christmas - so after our adventure at the hospital we drove out to Ramsey to celebrate Christmas and let Macy meet the Adams' Family. Christmas was a lot of fun and both Macy and Kara did great - thank goodness for Aunty Em keeping an eye on Kara for us!! :)

Macy in her biliblanket

At 6 days old Auntie Emily came out to our house to do Macy's first photo shoot. Of course this is the day that Macy decided she didn't want to sleep, because we wanted a sleeping baby in pictures. It's ok though, cause Emily got amazing pictures as always!

One of my favorite shots from the photo shoot

You can view all the images here

At 8 days old I had commented to Joe that I was so proud that we hadn't had to supplement any formula for Macy, she was 100% breastfed - which was huge cause I had some serious troubles breastfeeding Kara. I was really proud of the fact that breastfeeding was going so well. Yes, it was hard when she wanted to clusterfeed and be attached to me for hours at a time, but I knew that that was an important part of supply and demand, and I knew that breastfed babies should be fed on demand, so I dealt with it. Then day 9 rolled around. I had horrible chills to the point that I was shaking uncontrollably, my whole body ached, I felt completely miserable. I would go from having the chills to being incredibly hot and sweaty, it was horrible. After the second day of feeling like this I knew that I had mastitis. Mastitis is what made me quit breastfeeding with Kara. I got it when she was about 4 weeks old and it killed my supply, I tried for 2 weeks to build my supply back up, but it wasn't happening, so I gave up. I was able to continue breastfeeding and pumping with Macy and made it through the 10 days of antibiotics and was still breastfeeding. We did have to start supplementing with 1 or 2 bottles of formula a day, but for the most part she was getting breastmilk. And then 1 week after finishing the antibiotics I started feeling really sick again, it came out of nowhere, but I knew instantly that it was mastitis AGAIN! UGH! This happened on a Friday night, I figured I would just call the on call Dr the next morning and get an antibiotic, well guess what, apparently the answering service for my doctor's office doesn't take messages on the weekend for prescriptions.. WTF? They wouldn't let me leave a message, they told me I could go to the ER or wait until Monday. I am still a little pissed about this and plan on talking to my doctor and the clinic manager, but I haven't had time for that yet. I am almost done with my second round of antibiotics, and I'm really scared to be done with them, I just have this feeling that I am going to get sick again right when I come off them...

Other than all of the above, life has been great with two girls. Macy is a great baby. She really only cries when she needs a diaper change or needs to be fed, she sleeps good at night, she is just a good baby! I really love the newborn stage, they are so cute and snugly, I could snuggle her all day long!

Kara is an amazing big sister. When she came to the hospital to meet Macy she couldn't get in the room quick enough - she couldn't wait to hold her, it was adorable! She loves to hold Macy, help me wash bottles, she brings Macy toys, blankets, pacifiers, etc.. She calls her 'her baby' and you can't just say that Kara is her sister, you have to say 'big sister'. She does great with Macy, but has been acting out towards Joe and I.. for the most part she is good, but she definitely has her bad moments, which is to be expected I guess.

At 5 weeks post partum I have lost about 18 of the 50 pounds that I gained. So now I get to try to lose 30 pounds, that should be fun! I want to try to get into running again, I'm thinking I'll start the couch to 5k program as soon as I can. I don't have a gym membership anymore, so I will have to run outside, and that's no fun when it's cold and icy. Eventually I will get back into all my pre-pregnancy clothes, until then I will continue to wear the one pair of jeans that fit me every single day :)

Me and my lil babe

Joe will be laid off as of Tuesday. It will be nice having him home more, but it will be hard living off two limited incomes.

Joe with Macy on her first visit to Surly Brewing Co.

Macy in her Surly shirt

{Macy Amelia 12.12.11}

2011-12-22T18:04:00.000-06:00

Monday, December 12th was my first day of maternity leave and I was 39 weeks 2 days pregnant. I woke up early so that I could make it to the hospital by 7:30 am for a BPP and NST. Before I left the house I was sitting at the kitchen table eating some cereal when I heard Kara open her bedroom door and she came and joined me for breakfast. I told her that as soon as I was done eating she would have to go snuggle up in bed with daddy cause I had to go to the hospital to check on baby. At that point Kara told me that the baby was going to be born today and asked who would pick her up from daycare. I told her that grandma would pick her up, but only if the baby was born, if the baby wasn't born mommy would be picking her up... she told me that grandma would be there to pick her up, she also told Beth, our daycare provider, that grandma would be picking her up today cause the baby was going to be born. I think she has some psychic abilities.

7:30 am - Arrived at hospital. Started with the BPP, which is the ultrasound that they do to check on the baby. I told the ultrasound tech that my 3 year old had predicted that the baby would be born today, she said she didn't like to hear that. During the ultrasound she found barely any amniotic fluid, in the end the total measurement was just under 2cm, but the baby also had a full bladder and belly, so there was some additional fluid. Then I had to move on to the NST where they monitor the baby's heart rate and my contractions, while I was having this done the doctor was reviewing the ultrasound and determined that today was the day! So I had to call Joe and let him know not to start working cause he had to come to the hospital! I didn't get to leave to go home and get my things, I got to go straight to labor and delivery. Of course my doctor was on vacation, so the nurse had to try to figure out who was on call and let them know that I was being admitted.

9:00 am - admitted to labor and delivery. I was brought straight back to a delivery room to have an induction started. The plan was to get me on cervidil which softens your cervix and makes it more favorable for an induction. I was about 2 cm dilated at this point, and when the nurse hooked me up to the monitors she discovered that I was contracting every 1-2 minutes, and I wasn't feeling anything! This changed the plan, because they won't use cervidil if you are having regular contractions, so I got to wait while they figured out what they were going to do with me.

10:30 am - An IV and pitocin were started, and Joe finally arrived at the hospital. He had to do lots of running around and pick up all of our hospital bags, get Kara's stuff packed up, etc... but he was finally at the hospital with me.

11:30 am - The only thing in the world that I could think about at this point was food. I had only had a small bowl of cereal before I went in for my appointment, and I wasn't allowed to eat anything. I could drink water up until I decided to have an epidural, but that was it. I wanted a Davanni's hoagie incredibly bad. I tweeted "I sure hope my baby is born before Davanni's closes. I want a hoagie after I give birth." and guess what.. they responded and ended up sending me out 2 coupons for free hoagies and a Davanni's baby bib!! Oh the power of social media!

1:30 pm - A doctor came in and broke my water and they inserted an internal monitor to better monitor the contractions, this gives a much more accurate reading of the strength of the contractions. It was around this point that I started getting really uncomfortable and the contractions were getting pretty painful, but I wasn't sure that I was ready for an epidural yet.

2:45pm - 3 cm dilated and ready for my epidural! Getting the epidural hurt like hell - I don't remember feeling pain when I had an epidural with Kara, but this was baaaaad. I don't know if it was cause I was having contractions while I was getting the epidural or what, but it was a burning, stinging, sharp pain... I don't ever want to deal with that again! I did learn that when men get epidurals they get morphine prior to the epidural to help with the pain, women just get a small bit of numbing medicine.. WTF, not fair! Anyway, the epidural hurt like hell, but of course ended up being a life saver!

4:00 pm - 4 cm dilated, feeling much happier now that the epidural is working like a charm. Between checks from the nurse I was trying to sleep. It had already been a long day, and I was feeling pretty worn out.

6:00 pm - 5 cm dilated. Not much else to report at this time.... other than I was getting sick of only progressing 1 cm every two hours, I really thought things would move quicker. Thank God they had cable in the hospital.. I got to watch all the crappy reality tv shows that I no longer get to watch at home!

8:00 pm - STILL 5 cm dilated. At this point I was pretty sure that I was not going to be having my baby on 12/12. The doctor who was going to be delivering Macy came in at this point and decided to stop the pitocin for a while and see what my body would do on it's own. She also decided to have me sit up in bed for a while to hopefully help the baby move down, as she was still quite high. The doctor decided to head home because she didn't think that I would be ready to push anytime soon.

8:30 pm - Extreme nausea. Joe was trying to find something for me to puke in, and trying to call the nurse. The nurse came in and I told her that I felt really sick so she had me lay back down on my side. She said sometimes sitting up with all those meds can make you feel like that, so back to laying down I went.

9:00 pm - The contractions started to become extremely painful again, it almost felt like the epidural wasn't working at all. I called the nurse again, she came in and I told her what was going on, so she checked me and guess what... I was fully dilated and effaced and ready to push! So in one hour I went from 5cm with the baby still high to completely dilated and ready to push, no wonder I felt to sick! The nurse called the doctor and told her to head back to the hospital cause it was time!

9:43 pm - I started pushing. With Kara I pushed for 3.5 hours, so I was hoping for a much shorter time this time around! At this point in the day I was so worn out and didn't want to push at all, let alone for 3 hours! I pushed and pushed and pushed... it felt like I wasn't doing anything, even though the doctor and nurse said I was. It was a lot harder to push this time around and I think it was cause I could feel the pain, I have no idea how or why women decide to give birth without pain meds... maybe I just have a super low tolerance for pain, but man, I couldn't imagine going all that time without any pain meds.

10:09 pm - 26 minutes of pushing and Macy made her screaming entrance into the world! She looked so tiny to me, and exactly like her big sister! She was very covered in vernix (the white slimy stuff), she was so covered cause my amniotic fluid was so low, but she was my tiny, slimy, beautiful, perfect baby girl! She weighed 7 pounds 1 ounce and was 21 inches long. This may be TMI, but it's a part of the birth story... so I had an episiotomy (if you don't know what that is, don't google it - you don't want to know) anyway - I am glad that they allow you to hold your new baby and ooh and aah over the baby while they stitch you back up, it's a good distraction from the pain...and that's all I'm going to say about that.

Holding my sweet new baby girl.

Screaming baby on the scale

Proud Daddy

Proud Mommy

Big sister Kara meeting Macy for the first time

Our first family picture

And another of the proud big sister

So there is the birth story and a few pictures for ya. Macy is now 10 days old.. so I will start a new post on how the last week and a half has gone, it's been pretty hectic and the time is just flying by! We are loving our sweet little Macy and trying to settle in to what it's like to be a family of four!

2011-12-11T17:58:00.000-06:00

I'm trying so hard to enjoy these last few (hopefully) days of pregnancy, but it's just so hard. This last 2 weeks have been insanely stressful, so on top of all of the third trimester discomforts of pregnancy, I am also completely stressed out.

It all started the weekend after Thanksgiving, I could barely stay out of bed on Saturday and Sunday, I chalked this up to being 37 weeks pregnant and exhausted. I was literally out of bed for 2 hours, in bed for 2 hours all weekend long. I woke up Sunday night/Monday morning with a bit of a scratchy throat, went to work on Monday and felt like crap the whole day. I ended up going to After Hours care after work and found out that I had strep throat - so I stayed home Tuesday to take meds, be non-contagious and try to get some rest.

Wednesday I had my weekly Dr. appointment to check on baby. At the checkup Macy's heart rate was 175 and going as high as 195 - my doctor had been concerned with her fast heart rate the previous few visits, but it was always within the normal range, so she didn't take any further action, but 175-195 was definitely fast. My doctor said "I am going to make a few phone calls, you are going to go to the hospital tonight to have the baby monitored. Bring your bags with, if things aren't looking good you will be induced tonight. If things are ok you will be going in for a Biophysical profile and Non-Stress Test tomorrow. Either way you are not going to work tomorrow." So now I had Thursday off work too. I sent Joe a text while I was waiting for the doctor to make calls - I said pack a bag for Kara, we are going to the hospital tonight. Once I got home I frantically threw together a bag for me and a bag for Macy, luckily I had started to accumulate piles of things for our hospital bags, so I at least had a general idea of what to pack and where it was.

We sat at the hospital to be monitored for about 2 - 2.5 hours. Macy's heart rate was fast the whole time, it got up to about 210 for a period of time. While I was hooked up to the monitors they also did some labs, I'm not 100% sure what they were checking for with the labs, but they all came back negative.. so that's good... They also gave me a liter of fluid, I think mostly in preparation of possibly inducing me. In the end we were sent home and the constant appointments began.

Thursday, December 1st I had my first Biophysical Profile and Non-Stress Test, which I had to go back to the hospital for, because of course there were no appointments available at the clinic down the road from my house (with free parking). At the BPP it was discovered that my amniotic fluid level was low (more stress...). My level was at 5.9cm - I later discovered that 5cm to 25cm is considered normal, and if you get to 5cm they will induce you immediately. Other than the low fluid the BPP went perfectly, they have 30 mins to do the ultrasound and check for certain things, they saw everything they needed within the first 3 mins, so baby seemed fine! The NST went fine as well. Baby's heart rate was still high, but they were seeing the accelerations and decelerations that they wanted to see and everything else seemed perfectly fine, and I got sent home once again.

Over the weekend I developed this horrible itch all over my body, no rash or anything, just insanely itchy. It got worse overnight, to the point that I couldn't sleep - the palms of my hands and the bottoms of my feet itched like crazy, it was not cool, and of course nothing that I tried did anything to help. Put in a call to the on-call doctor, and they suggested I see my doctor first thing Monday morning. So I rescheduled my Wednesday evening appt for an early morning appt on Monday. On Monday I went in, my blood pressure was high, baby's heart rate was still high, I was still itchy, but the doctor explained that they were not concerned with the BPP and NSTs other than the low fluid.. so they would now be monitoring my fluid levels very closely. My doctor also told me she wanted me to be done working, mostly cause of the stress level I was feeling, but I told her I couldn't be off work until I was closer to my due date. I couldn't afford to take off two weeks before my due date and have the possibility of going overdue. At that time she told me that she can't see me making it to my due date, that she thought that I would have to be induced within the next week and a half due to the fluid levels, but of course she couldn't make any guarantees... Oh yeah, and she also told me that she would be out of state from Thursday thru Tuesday.... She missed Kara's birth because she was on vacation!

Tuesday, December 6th I got to go back to the hospital for another BPP and NST. Fluid level was at 7.4 and the NST was fine again, so once again, I was sent home.

Thursday, December 8th I was back to the hospital again. During the BPP they couldn't find much fluid at first, like 3.5cm at most. The lady doing the ultrasound asked if I had brought my bags with me and said that it wasn't looking very promising that I would be leaving the hospital. Well, guess what, she found another pocket of fluid that measured about 3.5cm, so that put me at 7cm...ugh! The NST went fine, baby did what they needed her to do right away, and once again I was sent home.

As you can imagine all of these extra appointments have been very draining on me, psychically, mentally, they have me very stressed out. It's very hard to try to work full time and manage these appointments in the middle of the day. I ended up having to use quite a bit of sick time, which also stressed me out cause it was cutting into my paid time that I would get for maternity leave. But I decided that Friday, December 9th would be my last day of work - I needed to take something off my plate. I am hoping that Macy decides to arrive in the next week so that I don't have to take more than a week off work before she's here.

I get to go back to the hospital bright and early tomorrow morning for another BPP and NST - I am SO hoping that they will just keep me this time and let me have my dang baby! If things are fine, I see my doctor on Wednesday evening... at which point I will beg, cry, do whatever I need to do to make her induce me!!!!

When I was pregnant with Kara I didn't mind being overdue, I worked past my due date, and I was for the most part pretty happy - at least approachable ;) This time around things are very, very different. I cannot wait to be done, and hopefully we don't have to wait too much longer!

And a few pictures...

I finally got around to adding Macy's name to the quilt that I made for her (and I also recently discovered that my husband doesn't care for Mae as a middle name...so yeah, we are trying to find a new middle name!)

Kara went to see Santa yesterday! I was pretty shocked when she decided that she wanted to wear her dress and picked out a cute little clip to put in her hair! When we got to the mall to see Santa we had to wait in line for about 45 mins. Of course the two kids in front of us threw huge fits and were screaming and crying, so I thought we were doomed... but Kara still sat on Santa's lap and even told him that she wanted a firetruck with glitter on it! She let us take a few different pictures, sat there and talked to him, it was adorable!

One last thing - my amazing sister in law took some maternity pics for us when I was 36 weeks along. I wasn't sure that I wanted maternity pics, but I figure this will be my last time being pregnant, and at some point in my life I will miss it and I should probably have some pics. Here is the link to the full album, and below are a few of my favs!

The Countdown Has Begun!!

2011-11-18T12:31:00.000-06:00

29 days and counting until baby Macy is due!! These last ~~fifteen~~ seven months feel like they have gone by really fast, but it also feels like I have been pregnant FOREVER! Only 4 more weeks to go though.. I can do it!

This pregnancy has been pretty non-eventful. My last couple of visits Macy's heart rate has been kind of fast, but it's still within the normal range, so nothing to worry about. I have started to prepare Kara's room to be a room for two. Kara wants to play with everything that we get or take out though - she likes to be a mommy to all her little stuffed animals, so all the tiny stuff for Macy has become accessories for Kara's babies. Which is totally ok with me at this point, I just hope we don't have a struggle when Macy is born and we need to take all these things back from Kara...

Like we don't have enough on our plates trying to get ready for a new baby in our house right around the busiest time of year.... we now get to do a total remodel of our downstairs bathroom! Joe had noticed that the toilet was leaking water, he thought it just needed a new seal at the base of the toilet - well guess what, he was wrong... water had leaked under the tiles, so he had to pull up all the tiles and take out the vanity. Our bathroom looks a little like this:

Pretty, huh? Joe took the day off work today to deal with this.. lucky him! He bought new tile last night, so hopefully we will have a nice, new, unleaky bathroom soon!

A few other random thoughts:

Kara was Scooby Doo for Halloween - isn't she adorable??

MY child picked out a DRESS to wear for pictures.... willingly.. it was actually her idea!!

Now the challenge is to get her to wear it for pictures and have her cooperate

for pictures. I think she can do it!

And, how cute are these matching I <3 Santa shirts I got for the girls??

I have to hope that Macy doesn't come too late, otherwise she may not be here in time for Christmas, but I'm still planning on having her early, so it's all good.

I really truly cannot wait to be done being pregnant. I can't wait to stop having crazy cravings, I'm totally over the hip and sciatic nerve pain, I want to see Macy, I want to start running again, I want to do the 30 day Shred again, and I want to have a dang beer already!!

Oh My Growing Belly! continued...

2011-10-24T12:48:00.000-05:00

I have all these pictures on my phone that I never do anything with, so how bout a quick blog post!

First is this collage that I already shared weeks 10 - 20...

And now weeks 25 - 31...

As of Saturday, October 22nd I am 32 weeks pregnant! How crazy is that? Can't believe little Macy will be here in approximately 54 days! Which also means that Christmas is in 62 days - are you ready??

One more pic... here is Macy from an ultrasound that my sister gave me last Friday. She is getting so big! Look at her cute lil profile! <3 her

I have reached the point in my pregnancy where I CANNOT sleep. no. matter. what. I'm not a fan of this, as I really enjoy sleeping. The other day I had a new record of non-sleep - I slept a whole 3 hours and then was wide awake. Really? 3 hours? What person, pregnant or not, can function off 3 hours of sleep? I'm also pretty much exhausted all day every day. I try cleaning or organizing the house and after a few hours I am just too sore to do anything else. I'm ready to get my non-pregnant body back. I keep thinking I want to go exercise or go for a run or something, and then I walk a block, or up a flight of stairs and I am reminded why I haven't been exercising.. I am out of breath and tired instantly! So yeah, I'm over this being pregnant thing!

Kara loves her baby sister and is ready for her to be born any day now. She keeps saying things like "the baby told me she wants to come out and play now". It's pretty cute, I hope Kara is this enthusiastic about her sister once she is actually born :)

A Big Week In The Lien Household

2011-10-14T10:50:00.000-05:00

This past week has been pretty serious business in our house, but all good, positive things.

1st - Kara has been sucky (pacifier) free for 3 full days/nights now! So freakin proud of her - this has been a huge, huge, huge battle in our house! We have been working at getting rid of it since she was about 18 months old, but we've never been successful.

Finally on Tuesday she threw a major fit over wanting her sucky right after dinner, and when I say major fit, I mean MAJOR fit. She got put on time out and after 10 minutes of her still kicking, screaming, etc I set my timer for 2 minutes and told her that she had 2 minutes to calm down or her sucky was going away forever. During the 2 minutes I reminded her a few times that she was making a choice, and if she didn't calm down her sucky was going away.... The 2 minutes passed and she was still throwing a massive fit, so I brought her to her room to put her to bed, even though it was at least an hour before bedtime. Once we got to her room the tantrum got even worse. She started throwing everything she could find, hitting, pushing, screaming, you get the picture.... We left her room for awhile and let her just do her thing, once she started kicking her door incredibly hard I decided it was time to go back in. I went in and tried talking to her, all she wanted to do was leave her room. So, I set the timer again and told her she had 2 minutes to calm down and then she could go out in the living room with us. I finally got her to settle down a bit and give Joe and I hugs and tell us that she was sorry for behaving that way, so I let her come out in the living room with us.

While we were out there I reminded her that she had made a choice and her sucky was gone, she did the little thing where her bottom lip sticks out and kind of quivers, but she seemed to understand that the sucky was gone and was not coming back.. It broke my heart a little, but I knew that we needed to stay strong and NOT GIVE IT BACK (and we had also lost 2 suckys that night somehow, so even if we wanted to give her one, we couldn't have... ) Kara asked if the Sucky Fairy had come to take her sucky - The Sucky Fairy is someone we made up awhile ago while talking about the Tooth Fairy. I told Kara that the Sucky Fairy comes to visit when she has decided that you are a big girl and don't need your sucky any longer, she then takes the suckys and brings them to babies who need them. Kara seemed to really buy into this idea, so I told her that the Sucky Fairy did come to take her suckys.

We sat up and read some books and then we were off to bed. I got Kara ready for bed, read her a couple more books and layed her down. She didn't once ask for her sucky! She did so good that first night, I was so, so proud! To encourage her to continue to do well on the second night, I stopped at Target and bought her a little gift from the Sucky Fairy - this is also something that we had previously talked about, the Sucky Fairy leaves a gift in exchange for your suckys. I left the gift hanging on her door knob to her room with a little card from the Sucky Fairy congratulating her on being such a big girl. Night #2 was also a success with no crying or asking for the sucky. We have now made it 3 full nights without ANY crying or asking for her sucky - THIS IS HUGE!! Granted bedtime has been extended by about 2.5 hours of stall tactics, but ya know, I will deal with this for a few weeks as long as the sucky is gone!

Now that I wrote a novel about that, lets move on to thing #2...

Thing #2 - At 3 years, 2 months and 12 days old Kara got her first haircut!! I started talking to her about getting her hair cut about a week before we actually got it done. I told her all about the hair salon and how they would have cool chairs, and she got to wear a cape and they had a tv for her to watch while she got her haircut. I tried to psych her up for it as much as I could. I told her that we would only get a few inches cut off, so that it wouldn't be that different, and she told me that she wanted to have short hair like daddy... of course, that's what she wants! Too bad I'm the mommy and I decide how much hair will be cut off :) I was really scared that if we got too much cut off that we would lose all of her curls, and I don't think I could handle that. So it was just a little trim and some long layers to help keep the curls. Kara did so good, she cried when we first got there, but after a couple of minutes she was smiling and really enjoying herself.

Here is a before pic: Look how long her hair was!!

And a during pic - once she finally started to enjoy herself!

Here is the after pic - not very good since you can't see the length in the back, I'll work on getting a better pic!

Thing #3 - I had my monthly doctor visit on Wednesday night. Everything looks good and little Macy seems to be growing right on track. This appointment marks my last monthly appointment. I will now go in every 2 weeks! AHHH!! How did that happen? Even though I found out I was pregnant at 4 weeks along, time really seems to be moving fast! Before I know it the weekly appointments will start and then Macy will be here and it will be Christmas - this is your reminder that Christmas is just over 2 months away!

I really hope time can slow down a bit so that we can have some time to prepare our house for the new baby... we still have a long way to go!

Getting My Sh*t Together

2011-10-03T13:06:00.000-05:00

Pinterest has inspired me to organize my house. If you don't know what Pinterest is, I highly suggest you check it out, if you like being inspired then Pinterest is for you! Let me know if you need an invite!

Our house is so cluttered with crap that it is never clean. Everywhere you look there is a pile of clothes, toys, mail, craft supplies, tools, you name it - we probably have a pile for it, and I'm not proud of this. We don't have a big house by any means, but we do have lots of closet space. Closet space that is currently not used very wisely. But Pinterest has shown me smart ways to organize my closets, like using an over the door shoe holder to store things like gloves, umbrellas, hats, etc... use a clear one so that you can easily see what's in each pouch.

I think that Kara and Macy's room will be the first to get the organization overhaul. We just moved a twin sized bed into their room, which basically took away all floor space...the dresser is now in the closet.

I'll be sure to post some before and after pics of what I am doing. And I AM COMMITTED TO DOING THIS!!! I'm hoping my crazy need for nesting kicks in soon, then I'll be really motivated!

My Pinterest - Follow Me!

Three Things

2011-09-29T14:22:00.000-05:00

#1 - Pumpkin season is my favorite season of the year. Ya know, the one where you can find pumpkin pie, pumpkin bread, pumpkin cookies, pumpkin lattes everywhere you look? Being pregnant this time of year has intensified my need for pumpkin flavored products! I finally found one of my favorite pumpkin products yesterday, now if I only had a nice slice of pumpkin pie to go along with it...

#2 - We have been trying to decide if we want to move Kara into a toddler bed or just make the jump to a twin bed. We figure if we put her in a toddler bed that she will outgrow it in a year or so, so we have started looking for a twin bed. I happened to come across this twin sized quilt in the clearance aisle of Target, originally $64 marked down to $16!! Score!

#3 - I am the world's best mom. Why? Because Kara has been asking for light-up Dora shoes for weeks and weeks, and I found some last night! I forgot to snap a picture of them, but I still wanted to let you all know that I am the world's best mom.

The Naming Dilemma

2011-09-19T19:42:00.000-05:00

Many, many moons before Joe and I had really even talked about having kids we decided on the names Kara and Cameron for our future children. Yet, while I was pregnant with Kara we couldn't agree on a name and finally decided on her name a month before my due date.

FF to the present day. Pregnant with baby girl #2 and our girl name has already been taken. I always preferred Cameron for a girl though, so that has been a top contender for baby girl #2's name. This whole pregnancy I have been trying to find different ways to spell Cameron so it's more feminine (I didn't want her to grow up and start a job and get emails addressed to Mr. Cameron)...there's Kameryn, Kamryn, Camryn, Cameryn...but I really couldn't fall in love with any of these spellings, and we couldn't find a middle name that we loved.

I LOVED the name Macy while I was pregnant with Kara, but Joe wasn't so fond of it. I don't want to say that I have been harassing Joe with the name Macy over the past few months, but I have kind of been harassing him with the name Macy over the past few months. I just love it so much. If I saw other people were going to use that name for their baby, or just saw it online or written somewhere I got a little sad that I would never be able to name my child Macy. I'm not sure what happened, but something changed in Joe and he was coming around to the name Macy. Now that Joe was coming around to Macy, I was set on Cameron... afterall, we had had the names Kara and Cameron picked for years and years, and they just sounded perfect together, so it was hard to think of using any other name to go with Kara.

I am happy to announce that we no longer need to refer to baby girl #2 as baby girl #2, she has a name!!! And it's......drumroll, please......

Macy Mae!!!

Yay!! So glad that we have finally picked a name, and we can start calling her Macy instead of baby girl #2!!

Summer Wrap Up

2011-09-12T12:45:00.000-05:00

We have had record high temps this summer. I'm pretty sure that spring never happened. We went from -32 and 15 feet of snow to 106 degrees overnight, it's true, that's how it happened. After a weekend of highs in the 90s again we are finally headed back down in temperature with a high of 65-70 tomorrow and a high of 55-60 on Wednesday! FINALLY!!! This pregnant lady can't handle anymore 90 - 100 degree days. I want to have the windows open and not have it be hot and sticky in our house, I want to wear sweatshirts, I want to be coooooooooold and have a nice cup of hot chocolate(with whipped cream, of course!)! I'm hoping that we have a nice long fall and we don't go straight into winter, I know Kara still wants to spend a lot of time playing outside and at the park!

It is kind of sad to think that summer is over now though. I never went to the zoo this summer, or the pool (obviously I am not about to get into a swimsuit right now), only went fishing once. I think summer seems a lot longer and less enjoyable when you can't enjoy a nice cold beer.. can't wait for next summer!

Things we did do: Joe turned 29, Kara turned 3, weekend at the lake, weekend in Bemidji, lots of time spent swimming at Grandma Julie's house, Rock the Garden, parades, Minnehaha Falls, went to Woodbury Days where I won a sweet bike, celebrated our 7th wedding anniversary, went to the state fair (watch for a full post on that with all the food we ate!). We made 4 or 5 trips to the Surly brewery this spring/summer, which was horribly difficult for me... have you ever been in a brewery and smelled the delicious aroma of hops and other people's full pints of beer and not been able to have on for yourself? It's not easy, and it's not fun.

Kara at the lake:

I brought Kara to her first rap show, and we got to take our pic with Sims!

Kara's birthday party

Things I am excited for in the fall: Having the windows open, going to the apple orchard, carving pumpkins, eating pumpkins, ~~drinking pumpkin beer~~, the leaves changing colors, fall colors, fall smells, apple cider, Grey's Anatomy! I love fall, it's one of my favorite times of the year.

As far as my pregnancy goes...I finally felt the baby move from the outside at 23 weeks. Now I'm feeling her and seeing her move on a daily basis, but I would still like to say that having an anterior placenta sucks!!! Kara will snuggle with me and lay her head on my belly and say "oh, the baby is kicking my head".. haha, I'm pretty sure that Kara has never really felt the baby kick, but it's pretty funny. Baby name = Penelope! Not really, but I'm about 98% sure that we have a first name picked out.. but I'm not going to tell you what it is! :) As of today I have 96 days until ~~I can have a beer~~ my due date, not that I'm counting or anything. I am totally set on not going past my due date this time around, so I really hope this baby doesn't have her own plans... We have been majorly slacking on preparing our house for the arrival of baby girl #2. With only 3 months to go, we should really start working on that. We have to find a way to fit both girls, a crib and a bed, and 2 full wardrobes into one rather small room. Joe, Kara and I also brewed up some beer that should be ready right around my due date. It's an Imperial Espresso Stout that we plan on calling Up All Night Stout! I can't wait for it to be ready and to try it, it smelled ridiculously good while we were brewing! After we were done brewing Kara said "The baby is going to be sooooo happy that you made her beer!" haha, how cute is that?

Ooooh... I found the most amazing onesie at Target, how perfect is this!? And it was on clearance for $1.12!!

I sewed this blanket/quilt for the baby, I love it and I want one for myself!

Hopefully Joe and I can get motivated to get the house ready for the baby soon. We did switch our computer room into a toy room, that should help keep the clutter of toys around the rest of the house to a minimum, I hope! Next I think I need to go through all of Kara's old clothes and decide what we can reuse and what we need to get rid of!

One last thing.. we have tickets to go see Yo Gabba Gabba live on Thursday night! I think it will be lots of fun and Kara will absolutely love it! I'll be sure to take lots of pictures!

Feeling Uncomfortable In My Own Skin

2011-08-18T12:27:00.000-05:00

A little back story on my weight loss journey... My weight has fluctuated a lot my whole life, constant ups and downs, but mostly ups... I was overweight when I got pregnant with Kara, gained about 30 pounds during my pregnancy, lost 28 pounds within 6 weeks after her delivery and then put 20 pounds back on my first month back to work... at that point I realized I had to make some changes, lose weight, be active and be healthy!

Me at my heaviest - Christmas 2008

I changed my eating habits and started counting calories and the pounds starting falling off!

On my way to being skinny!

Over the course of the next year I lost about 70 pounds by eating healthy, counting calories and starting daily workouts, sometimes even waking up at 4:30 am to workout!! I was doing things that I never imagined I could do.. like completing the Jillian Michael's 30 Day Shred and I started running.. me?... running? who would have ever thought!?!? I was really proud of my accomplishments!

Over the next year I maintained my weight loss and fluctuated + or - 10 pounds, but I was at about 80 pounds weight loss and feeling great! By no means was I skinny, I was still about 20-30 pounds away from where I wanted to be but I was comfortable with my weight, confident, liked the way that clothes fit me and just overall felt good about myself.

Fast forward to April 2011 - I was suddenly having problems breathing while I was running, having weird cravings, exhausted all the time and just generally feeling crappy. Why this sudden change in how I was feeling??

That's a pretty good reason to feel like shit, right? Being pregnant has pretty much put a halt on exercising and eating healthy. I have severe food cravings and aversions, constant nausea and heartburn and zero energy. Every time I try getting back on a workout schedule I survive a day of working out and then am too sore to workout for the next week... so that's not going so well. I've been packing on the pounds over the last few months, and quite frankly I am terrified to know how much I will gain this pregnancy!! I am really hoping that I am just gaining really fast at the beginning and it will slow down and I won't have much weight gain between now and the end of my pregnancy.

And a shot from last weekend @ 22 weeks pregnant ...bleh...

I am back to feeling uncomfortable in my own skin, which is really hard to deal with after so recently being so proud of my accomplishments and weight loss. I guess the moral of my story is that this is just a chapter of my life, I am growing what will soon be my beautiful daughter and a ~~little bit~~ TON of weight gain is totally acceptable right now. I know that I can get back to where I want to be, it will just take lots and lots of work after this little baby comes!

Oh My Growing Belly!

2011-08-12T14:56:00.000-05:00

I've been a horrible blogger. Here are some horrible pics of my growing belly with baby #2, hopefully this makes up for my horrible blogging skills...

And here is a picture of baby #2 from our 20 week ultrasound! Isn't she pretty? Yes, it's another girl!! Kara was right all along!

That's all that I've got for now! I've been trying to get back into sewing, and want to sew some things for the new baby... I'll be sure to post pics if I get around to making anything!

Watermelon!

2011-06-13T19:41:00.000-05:00

Today's obsession is watermelon, sweet, juicy, wonderful, delicious watermelon.

My mom makes this sauce that she drizzles over fresh fruit (don't know where she got the recipe) but it's absolutely amazing, and that is specifically what I was craving today. So here is how you do it:

Start with fresh fruit - I used watermelon and red grapes. It's also delicious with strawberries, blueberries and cantaloupe, and probably any other fruit! Cut fruit and place in bowl:

Mix equal parts of lime juice and honey:

Pour mixture over fruit, and enjoy! I especially like it after it has sat for awhile and all the flavors soak together, I also prefer it chilled.

I am going to let it sit overnight, and let all the flavors soak together... then I am going to put the watermelon chunks and grapes on skewers and try freezing them, I'm pretty sure it's going to be delicious! I'll let you know how it turns out!

Here is a recipe from Bon Apetit that I really want to try too!

Surprise!!

2011-06-13T12:29:00.000-05:00

I have been working on multiple blog posts about our surprise for over a month, but I just don't feel like finishing any of them, none of them seemed quite right... so here it is:

We're having another baby!

Here is the timeline of events:

April 13th - Positive pregnancy test
April 14th - 2nd Positive pregnancy test.. had to make sure the first one was right :)
April 27th - First ultrasound to determine my due date, I found out I was 6 weeks 4 days pregnant with a due date of December 17th. A Christmas baby!?!?! I have always said how badly I don't want a Christmas baby, but I have gotten more used to the idea over the last couple months, so I think it will be just fine!
June 1st - Second doctor appointment, at 11 weeks 4 days. The doctor couldn't find the heartbeat, so she sent me on to the hospital to have another ultrasound... you could say I was freaking out a bit at this point. Got to the hospital, had the ultrasound and saw the baby right away, moving, kicking, heart beating.. it was great! Baby measured right at 12 weeks!

So, we found out I was pregnant at 4 weeks 4 days, and kept it a secret from most people until after the June 1st ultrasound... that was a long 7 weeks! Especially since I feel like I look 6 months pregnant...

We told Kara right away, and she is super excited! We bought Kara a 'Big Sister' t-shirt and she loves it, she wants to wear it constantly! She is also obsessed with looking at pictures of the baby on my phone via the babycenter app.. which are obviously not pictures of our baby, but she thinks they are! Last week she put her hand on my belly and said "The baby kicked my hand" haha, she is too funny! Kara is 100% convinced that we are having a baby girl, and so far I am too... only a few more weeks and we will be able to find out!

Anyway, that is our big exciting surprise! Now that it's out there expect lots of posts about cravings, mood swings, etc.....

Here is baby at 6 weeks 4 days, heartrate 114, pretty much just a blob!

And here is baby at 11 weeks, 4 days, heartrate 167 - I tried to outline the baby because it is very hard to see in this picture, but on the ultrasound I could see the baby's head, body, arms, legs.. such a difference 5 weeks can make!

Life Is Full Of Tough Choices.

2011-03-27T15:12:00.001-05:00

The last few times that Rural Alberta Advantage have come to Minnesota I have missed seeing them, due to tickets being sold out before I had a chance to buy them. So back in December when it was announced that they would be playing a show on March 25th, I bought tickets immediately. Here is where the tough choice comes in.. Later down the road it was also announced that Sims and Volcano Choir were also playing shows the same night. I could be fine with not seeing Sims, since I just saw him a month ago and he is from MN, so he plays a lot of shows here. But, I would not be ok with missing Volcano Choir, after all it was their very first US tour date EVER and they only had one other show scheduled. So we had to decide if we wanted to skip out early of RAA to be able to catch Volcano Choir. Then I had the thought that we could skip RAA and be able to catch Sims' full set and Volcano Choir, and the Sims and Volcano Choir shows were right down the road from one another, so it would be easier to get from point A to point B (see picture)

I went on craigslist and found an ad that someone was looking to purchase 2 tix to RAA for $70. Face value of the tix was $12, but I paid quite a bit more than this since I purchased them through TicketMaster. I sold my RAA tix and bought tix for Sims and Volcano Choir. So Friday night we were off to the Triple Rock to see Sims... I was pretty disappointed when I discovered that he was playing 3rd that night, not 2nd like we had thought. We did catch sets by Mally and Astronautalis though, which were both pretty cool. Sims did do one song with Astronautalis though, which was pretty awesome! I also got to see almost the entire Doomtree crew hanging out at the Triple Rock! At about 11:00 we decided to ditch out of the Triple Rock to head over to The Cedar for Volcano Choir.

We had a good view of the stage at The Cedar. Joe and I both really enjoyed the Volcano Choir set. I am pretty sure I could watch Justin Vernon sing for hours and hours on end. The people behind us were pretty hilarious - I think they thought they were there for a Bon Iver concert, which it was not. They made quite a few comments that I was laughing at.... ah silly kids! A video from the show, not my video, or my view of the stage... just a video I found on youtube!

Anyway, it was awesome to be able to see Volcano Choir's first ever US show - that, we will never be able to do again, but we will be able to catch Sims and Rural Alberta Advantage again.

Next tough choice...... making a decision on whether I want to run a 10k on April 30th... well, the decision has just been made, I just registered for a 10k!! Someone save me!!! I hope I can survive. I think it would be a wise decision to start my training immediately! Anyone want to go for a run??

When you are two the tough choices you have to face are things such as:

Deciding if mommy should be the big bad wolf, a monster, a dinosaur, a baby puppy or a ghost.
To eat your waffles with blueberries and whipped cream, or just eat the blueberries and whipped cream
Should I watch Monster, Inc, Yo Gabba Gabba or Meet the Robinsons?

Oh the joys of being two, huh? I wish life could stay that simple!

One last note - my new favorite band is The Head and The Heart. Check out this video of them and fall in love with them!

That's all for now! Peace out.

Get Lucky 7K

2011-03-19T20:06:00.000-05:00

February 10th, 2010 was the day that I registered for my very first 5k, which was due to some extreme pure pressure and lots of wine consumption. When I registered for this race I had no running experience, and hated the idea of trying to run. I tried to start out with the C25K program, but I wasn't very good at following it. I remember going to the gym and trying to run, and I really had to push myself hard to run 60 seconds, like I had to push really, really hard. I still have never completed the C25K program, but in the last year I have completed four 5ks and now a 7k. I can now run over a mile straight, sometimes longer if I really push myself, my longest distance of running with no walk breaks is 2.5 miles... pretty good considering a year ago I could barely run for 60 seconds!

The race day plan was to drop Kara off at my mom's house around 8 and have Emily meet me at my mom's by 8:30. I was wide awake around 6:45 in the morning, turned my alarm off on my phone and laid back down.... and then I woke up, looked at the clock and realized it was 8! My mom lives 30 miles away from me, so yeah, I was running a little behind. I got ready real quick, woke Kara up and we were off. We ended up getting to my mom's around 8:50, luckily the race wasn't too far from her house. Emily and I took off, made it to the parking ramp around 9:30 and then had a nice 15 minute walk to the starting line.

There were a ton of people at the race, but we somehow we managed to run into Carly, Kathy, and Kathy's brother and cousin - it always amazes me that we are able to find our friends in the swarms of people at the starting line!

Emily and I pre-race:

Me, Carly and Kathy pre-race: I look like I just rolled out of bed...

Emily, Carly and I kept together throughout the race, Kathy bolted off and she was gone (she is crazy fast!). The air was cold, the temp was somewhere around 25-30. We really had no expectations for this run, none of us had trained for this distance, and I had previously only run this distance once... which was 2 days prior to the race. The last few months had been really difficult for me when it came to running, I had horrible shin splints in January, and had some really terrible runs in February - where I couldn't even run a quarter mile. It's so easy to get discouraged when training for a run, but you are not able to run.

We ran the first 1.3 miles straight and then took a quick walk break. They had flags posted for each kilometer, which was kind of nice, since a kilometer is less than a mile, so the flags came up quicker than if they had been mile markers. We alternated running/walking throughout the rest of the race, but overall did more running than walking. We hit the 5k mark right around 38 minutes, which is pretty average for us - I think it was about this point when we all got really hot, it's amazing how hot you can get when running in 25-30 degree weather. The course covered some of the same ground that was covered when we ran the Torchlight 5k back in July, we were reminded of the brutal 90 degree, super humid, ridiculously hot day when we ran that race... I would choose to run in the cold winter over the hot summer heat any day!

I was really worried that I would want to collapse at the 5k mark, I am always dragging my ass over the finish line at 5k's so I was really dreading the extra 1.25 miles we had to run. Amazingly we just kept on running! I was tracking our run using Runkeeper on my phone, it's really cool cause it will randomly tell you your distance, time and average pace - so I just listened for my little updates and we were pretty much pacing at 12 mins per mile, which is normal for us, and it was nice to hear that we were keeping on our pace and not falling behind. At the 4 mile mark we knew we were getting close to the end, I was so ready to take a walk break, but I knew I could push through - so we kept on running. It seemed like the finish line was nowhere ahead of us, we couldn't see it anywhere! When it finally came into view Emily and I both booked it to the end! Our official run time was 53:15, which I am very proud of!! Here is our race results from Runkeeper.

Here is us with our medals post-race. We Survived!!

A shot of my race number and medal:

And here is a shot of the hooded sweatshirt we got for running the race:

These are some typical comments we make while running:

Why are we doing this?
Whose idea was this?
Why do people think running is fun?
How do people really enjoy running?
I hate people that make running look so effortless.
Are we done yet!?

These are some typical comments we make after running (I think runner's high is to blame):

OMG, that was awesome!
We did so good!
I am so proud of us!
We totally kicked ass!
Let's do another race

I think the next logical step in my future as a runner is to run a 10k (6.2 miles). Get in Gear has a 10k coming up on April 30th, the Get in Gear 5k was my first ever 5k, how perfect of a running anniversary would that be to go from a 5k to a 10k in a year? I still haven't signed up for Get in Gear... but I am considering running the 10k. I think a 10k wouldn't be so intimidating if I could consistently have good runs, but it's hard to have consistently good runs when you only run a few times a month. I am going to work on running more regularly, and I will keep you posted on my training and my decision to run the 10k!

2 posts in one day, what!?

2011-03-18T21:46:00.000-05:00

Good evening, I am back with yet another blog post today. The previous post really should have been posted 2.5 months ago, so it's not like I am really blogging twice in one day... kinda.. right?

My dad came down from Bemidji for a little visit a few weeks ago. Kara was so cute when he got to our house, she went running up the stairs saying "Grandpa Wayne is here!!" Kara generally takes awhile to warm up to everyone, so that was really cute to see. While Grandma Wayne was here him, Jayla and Kara started a family band.. they have some pretty rocking songs!

Jayden didn't want to be in the band, but he did want to be a robot!

On Saturday, March 12th we had a surprise 50th birthday party for Becky, it was lots of fun! We got to see some old friends, and some family members who live out of state/out of the Twin Cities area. I think everyone had a really good time! The day before the party I asked Kara what she wanted to get for Grandma Becky and she said "a hula-hoop" so off to Wal-Mart we went, and we actually found a hula-hoop. I am pretty sure that Becky loves it! I am having some serious issues getting pictures to upload to my blog, so checkout my facebook page for all the pics from Becky's party!

Here is Becky and I at her party:

And Kara and Becky while Becky's siblings were singing her an original song about being 50. I loved watching Kara while she was watching them sing, it was so cute!

I taught everyone about 'Tranny Arms'.... Michelle and I were doing this one night and Joe meant to say "T-Rex arms", but it came out "Tranny Arms", so yeah, this is us doing Tranny Arms

Onto other things. I am running the Team Ortho Get Lucky 7k tomorrow, which is 4.35 miles. I have done absolutely nothing to prepare myself for this race, so yesterday I decided to go for a run. I ran around Colby Lake in Woodbury twice, which totaled 4.55 miles - the longest distance I have ever run!! See my running results here via Runkeeper. My total time was about 57 minutes, but I did stop at my car for a water break after my first trip around the lake. After my second trip around the lake I decided to stay on the path that goes straight to the parking (there is a split in the trail where it either goes straight to the parking lot, or around the playground - the first time I took the way that went around the playground).... I wish I would have taken the other way! I ended up going through this mega flooded path, basically a small lake in the road. I tried walking through the snow, but the snow was just slush with a ton of water under it, my shoes were SOAKED! So today my shoes got a bath and are all sparkling clean and ready for the 7k tomorrow!

I will be sure to post a full race recap tomorrow, or Sunday. I ate a Dove chocolate a few weeks ago, and this is what the message on the inside read:

I think this is trying to tell me that I should just run the 7k and have no time expectations. Although, the way I see it I will be setting a personal best time record since I have never raced in a 7k before.

And this is my race number, it's almost evil.....

Wish us luck tomorrow!! It will be our usual running crew of me, Emily, Carly and Kathy! I hope we kick this thing's ass! Oh, and we get a free beer after!!

A Look Back: Polar Dash 5k

2011-03-18T15:15:00.000-05:00

I realized the other day that I never blogged about my first 5k of 2011, which happened to be on the very first day of 2011! That's right, no time for a New Year's Day hangover for this lady, although I do remember the morning of the race I wasn't quite sure if I was still drunk, or hungover, thankfully Emily handled the driving that morning! We headed over to Carly's house where we met up with Carly and Kathy and then we all headed to the race together.

Race Number!

Emily and I pre-race:

January 1st, 2011 was a very, very cold winter day, I believe the temperature was about -9 before the windchill! Emily, Carly, Kathy and myself loaded on the layers and got ready to run, I even put handwarmers in my shoes hoping they would keep my feet warm, they didn't, they just made my shoes extra uncomfortable. Emily and I had not prepared for this race at all, neither one of us had been running much since our last 5k on Thanksgiving. So we were not trying to set any new personal records, all we wanted to do was finish! With the frigid temperature and the lack of training all we cared about was finishing the race. We ran our normal, slow pace, but of course there were plenty of large hills on the course, which always slow me down. On the way to the race I had downloaded the Runkeeper app on my phone, which tracks your distance/pace/elevation, etc by GPS. I think it was around the 2.25 mile mark that Emily and I realized that we were setting a really good pace for ourselves, and could possibly beat our previous best time of 37:41(which I had set on the very first 5k I had ever done). Neither one of us acknowledged this aloud, as we didn't want to curse ourselves, so we just kept on running! When we crossed the finish line I looked at the race clock and realized that we had probably just set a new personal record - also upon crossing the finish line we got these really sweet Polar Dash 5k finisher medals, with all this excitement I totally forgot to stop my running activity on my phone, when I finally got around to it I realized that our time was 37:46. This race was chipped timed, so we were very anxious to see what our actual time was... it ended up being 37:01!! Whoop Whoop! So we went from only hoping to cross the finish line, with absolutely no time expectations, to setting a new personal record for the both of us! The Polar Dash was very well organized and a super fun run! I think we might have to do it every year. It was pretty funny seeing all the guys with beards post-race, as there beards were covered in icicles!

If you follow this link you can view our race data (map, pace, mile markers, elevation) via runkeeper, it's pretty cool!

And we're Done!!

And a shot of our group post-race:

Thirsty Thursday

2011-03-10T12:56:00.000-06:00

My sister always gives me crap for drinking multiple beverages at the same time, I have been known to have 3-5 beverages sitting in front of me at the dinner table. So I thought I would share my beverages of choice today, and yes, they all have liquid in them, and I am drinking them all.

Cup of coffee from home, an Americano from Caribou, a cup of coffee from a retirement party at work and a water (and yes, that is Edward in the background):

I would also like to take a moment to wish my Mother in Law, Becky a very happy 50th birthday!!

I hope you get spoiled and have an absolutely fabulous day!!

Happy March!!

2011-03-09T12:38:00.000-06:00

It's pretty amazing to think that I haven't posted a blog for 2 months, it must be the crazy, busy, amazing lifestyle I have... there is just no time between the parties, spa treatments, shopping trips, vacations and all the other glorious details of my life to find time for blogging... :)

Back to reality: Let's start with me. I pretty much lost track of everything in February, there was no exercising, no healthy eating, no blogging, lots of stress and blah, blah, blah... so now that it is March I am really trying to focus on regular exercise and healthier eating habits (now that it's in writing I have to stick to it). I went and signed up for a free 30-day pass to Snap Fitness last night, it is $10 less a month than my current gym membership, smaller facility, and much less people. I tried out the treadmill last night and their equipment is definitely not the same quality as at Gold's, but I guess I can't really expect it to be, right? The treadmill worked just fine, it turned on, tracked my distance, told me how many calories I burned, which is what matters. I am going to try it out a few more times before I decide what to do. I was also thinking about checking out Anytime Fitness to see what they are all about. If I am going to go through the hassle of finding a new gym I might as well check out all my options.

I am also trying to do more regular workouts at home using my lovely collection of workout dvds. I had to buy a new copy of The Biggest Loser Cardiomax cause mine quit working, and that is really the only dvd I enjoy doing lately.

I am signed up to run the Team Ortho Get Lucky 7k on March 19th... 9 days from now! I'm doing it with my regular running buddies.. Emily, Carly and Kathy. I am sure it will be a grand old time, although I am still scared of the distance, it's 4.35 miles and I usually only ever go 3.1... so that extra 1.25 could really kill me. I had plenty of time to prepare myself for this race, but of course I didn't... so wish me luck!

One last note about me.. I have officially lost 14 pounds this year, whoop whoop!

Let's move onto Kara. She is absolutely, by far the most dramatic child in the history of dramatic children. She will cry and cry and cry over the littlest things and there is no settling her down! Our daycare provider has also commented on her dramatic nature. She said that most kids will cry for a minute, then move on with their lives.. not my little Kara, she just doesn't quit. On top of being dramatic, she is also incredibly smart, silly, loving and absolutely hilarious! It's so fun to watch her personality grow, and see how similar she is to Joe and I, she really is the perfect mix of the two of us.

Kara is and has been potty trained for quite awhile now, she wears big girl undies and rarely ever has accidents. The only funny thing is that she absolutely refuses to poop on the potty chair, so when it's time to go #2 she asks for a diaper, then goes and hides in a corner and tells us not to look at her... it's pretty hilarious!

We are also working on breaking Kara and her sucky (pacifier) apart. She is absolutely 100% addicted to that thing, and I just want it gone! I, of course and the softy parent and give in and give it to her even when I know I shouldn't. It's just so much easier to give it to her than listen to her cry and whine about it! She was doing really good without it for awhile, but now that she is sick(poor baby girl has strep), I just feel bad and give it to her... I am an enabler...

Things that I think Kara might be when she grows up:
Musician - she loves playing her guitar, drums, recorder, xylophone, she just loves music!
Songwriter - when she plays her guitar she is constantly making up her own adorable songs about random things
Baseball player - she is obsessed with her Twins baseball shirt
Brew master - she recently told me that I need to buy her a beer t-shirt so that she can make beer with daddy!

She can also identify the following bands within seconds of their songs starting: Trampled by Turtles, Mumford and Sons, and Jeremy Messersmith. I can't wait until we can bring her along to some concerts. I have a feeling that she is going to love music just as much as her mommy and daddy do! If Joe and I are headed out to a concert and we are dropping Kara off with Grandma/Grandpa to babysit we try not to tell her where we are going, cause she wants to come with us!

Here is a pic of Kara with her guitar and new guitar strap that I made for her, notice that she is wearing her Twins shirt and her baseball hat, she thinks she's a boy:

Finishing touches of the guitar strap:

Shall we talk about Joe for awhile? Where do I start? Joe is currently laid off, and has been since the end of November. He has been picking up hours at his part time job, but I just want him to get back to his full time job!! We have had to cut back on how often Kara is in daycare, so she currently is going 2-3 days a week, depending on which days Joe works. When they are home together they are typically busy ~~cleaning the house, doing laundry, cooking dinner for mom~~ watching cartoons? Yeah, I guess I'm not really sure what they are busy doing... haha! Hopefully Joe doesn't read this, he will probably kill me :) Joe and his friends have continued brewing beer, there are currently 4 or 5 batches sitting in our bathroom waiting to be bottled, which I believe is happening this weekend.

Joe and I have been to quite a few concerts this year, and they have all been pretty awesome... I'm not going to go into much detail, but here is what we have been to:

January: Cash Only - A Tribute to the Man in Black, The Current's 6th Birthday Party with Trampled by Turtles, Roma di Luna, Jeremy Messersmith, Brother Ali and Free Energy

February: Justin Townes Earle (This was on Valentine's day, and it was a really great show!) and the cd release party for Sims of Doomtree, where we also got to see Mike Mictlan, POS, Cecil Otter and Dessa... again, another really great show!

March - Gayngs Affilyated Showcase - ok, I have to talk about this one a little bit. Gayngs basically took over First Ave and brought along all of their friends, and it was amazing! Gayngs has somewhere around 23 people in the group, most of those people belong to other bands, and just about all of the other bands were on the bill to play that night. They took over the mainroom, the Record Room and 7th Street Entry, it was pretty much like being at a music festival inside of First Ave, we will not be forgetting that night anytime soon!

This is a bad picture, but this is how close we were to POS when we saw him in the Record Room, it was the coolest thing EVER!

Upcoming Shows: The Rural Alberta Advantage on March 25th, and also possibly Volcano Choir the same day, and then Bright Eyes on April 4th (an early bday present to me!)

I can tell that this is going to be a great year for concerts!!

So I think that is all for now! Happy March everyone!!

Road Blocks

2011-01-16T11:51:00.000-06:00

My plan to complete the 30 Day Shred and run 500 miles this year has hit a road block that I would like to call shin splints. It all started while I was shredding, my shins were absolutely killing me, I was hoping after a few days it would go away. I made it to day 8 and had to quit. Since I wasn't shredding I tried going to the gym for a run, it had been almost a week and a half since my last run. I couldn't run longer than 2 minutes at a time, and those 2 minutes were absolutely miserable. My shins felt like they were on fire, they were killing me, so after 20 minutes and 1.5 miles I gave up. It was quite disappointing, I can't remember the last time that I had a run that bad. So for now I am going to put running on hold, maybe I will try outdoor running, I have a 7k coming up in March, which is 1.25 miles longer than I am used to running so I really wanted to get myself prepared for it.

In the mean time I have been doing the Biggest Loser Cardio Max. Level one is pretty tolerable, and it will definitely make you sweat!! Level one is 30 minutes including the warm-up and cool-down. The moves are pretty basic, they incorporate some weights, it is Bob as the trainer and then contestants from past seasons. Sometimes its hard to follow what they are doing on screen, they aren't very well coordinated and some of them have bad form...but if you can get past that its really a good workout! I really like it, its a nice change from the shred, which is the only workout dvd I have used recently....well, except No More Trouble Zones, but we don't need to talk about the pure hell that that dvd is...ugh....

Also, I have started a team for The Biggest Loser MN Challenge, our team name is Hotties With Naughty Bodies...Thanks Carly! There are 3 different challenges, weight loss, exercise and nutrition. You can sign up for one challenge or all 3... I plan on doing all 3. The challenge starts on January 24(you have to be registered by jan 23) and goes until April 15th. I am pretty sure our team is going to kick some major butt with this, and we will all be Hotties with Naughty Bodies by the time we are through!

I ordered 3 new dvds to use during this challenge... They are all Biggest Loser dvds. I ordered Power Sculpt, Last Chance Workout and Weight Loss Yoga. I will let you know what I think of them once I get them and have tried them out!

Along with all of these workout dvds I have also started counting calories again, that seems to be the only way that I can really lose weight. So far I have lost 8 pounds(most of which were gained between Thanksgiving and New Years....) Once I hit 20 pounds lost I am treating myself to a manicure and pedicure, for a few different reasons...1. because 20 pounds lost is awesome 2. I have only had two mani/pedis in my entire life and I owe it to myself to have another!! 3. my weight at 20 pounds lost will be an all time low weight for me since I had Kara, and that is definitely worth celebrating!! Only 12 more pounds to go!! When I hit 40 pounds I am treating myself to a massage, which I have never had before!!!

Let me know if you are interested in joining our MN Challenge team, and let me know what your goals/rewards are!!

Happy 2011: Screw Resolutions

2011-01-02T14:16:00.000-06:00

Happy New Year everyone, hope you all had a safe and happy new year! This year my resolution is to screw resolutions. I tend to forget what I have resolved to do for the year by about January 6th, probably because I dream up great big giant resolutions while I am intoxicated. So this year rather than resolutions I am going to have challenges, and I want you all to join me...I tend to keep up with challenges better when there are more people involved, so here is what I am thinking:

30 Day Shred Challenge 4 times this year. Complete your first 30 Day Shred Challenge by February 15th. Then we can all start the next 3 together. With start dates of April 1st, July 1st and October 1st. Just so you know.. I already Shredded today so I am one day ahead of you :)

Next Challenge - log 500 miles of running/walking this year. This is a very achievable goal - it would take 2-3 run/walks of a 5k distance per week. Or maybe you could run/walk 10 miles one day and take of the rest of the week....it's up to you, just get to 500 miles however you can!!

Alright, let me know who is in!! I know you all want to do these challenges with me!!

PS - I will try to get a Chirstmas/2010 year blog post up soon!!

Snowmaggedon 2010!!

2010-12-12T20:49:00.000-06:00

In case you haven't heard, or you live in Minnesota and you haven't looked out your windows in the past 36 hours, we got hit with a mega blizzard this weekend! The tags that people created for it on twitter include snowmaggedon, snowgasm, snOMG, snowlyshit, snowpacalypse and the list goes on and on. We went to bed Friday night knowing that the snow was coming our way, this is what it looked like at about 1:00 am Friday night/Saturday morning:

I woke up around 7:30 Saturday morning and peeked out the window...there was a little accumulation of snow, nothing major, my car probably would have got stuck if I had tried to go anywhere, but thats cause my car just plain old sucks in the snow! So I went back to bed and woke up around 10:30, by that time we had quite a bit more snow! Sistafriend called and said she wanted to come over with the kids and hang out with us so that we could all be stranded together. By about 12:30 they arrived and were greeted by a massive snowdrift in our driveway, I am honestly amazed they made there way through!

Throughout the day the snow continued, and the snow drift in our driveway grew and grew and grew! Everything was closed or canceled throughout the day, plows were being pulled off the roads, airport was closed, city buses were called back in..it was pretty crazy!! We were joking that we were all going to be stranded, turns out the joke was on us, cause we ended up stranded! We made a lovely meatloaf for dinner, hung out and watched Christmas movies, did lots of looking out the window and just chilled at home. Around 9:00 pm I made the realization that we were almost out of toilet paper and there were 4 adults and 3 children at the house. Joe and Dre decided they were going to try to defeat the snowdrift and go to the store...please note that we pay an association fee, which includes snow removal, and at this point there had not been a single plow that had come through! This is what happened when Joe and Dre tried to leave. They realized quickly that they were not going anywhere and spent a good 30 minutes trying to get the truck back in the driveway.

Once they got the truck back where it belonged we decided it was time for the adults to play in the snow... it was much too cold outside for the kids, so they had to stay inside!

It was just insane how much snow was out there! Around 10 or 11 it became apparent that Michelle and Dre and the kids were going to need to spend the night, so we pulled out the pack-n-play and the air mattress, this is what I woke up to on Sunday morning...the after blizzard party:

We made a lovely breakfast Sunday morning, but realized our resources were slowly dwindling... we were almost out of toilet paper, milk, bread, eggs and pretty much everything else! And the snow plows had STILL not come through. I think Dre and Michelle were getting sick of us, so they called up a friend to come help them out of our driveway. Their friend arrived in a massive pickup truck with tow hooks, they hooked up Dre's truck and started pulling.... unfortunately a bolt or something broke, the tow hook appeared broke and they got a great big crack in their bumper, but they were desperate to get free, so they tried again!

And they were finally freed!

After they got out, they agreed to come back with some necessary supplies for us, as there was no way either one of our vehicles were getting through. A little while after they left the bobcats came to plow us out, and it was the most glorious sight!!

Snowmaggedon will not easily be forgotten, I just hope it doesn't happen again anytime soon!!

Time To Quit Neglecting My Blog

2010-12-10T13:52:00.000-06:00

With the holidays and the new year right around the corner I decided I better give some of my time to my blog, do some updates from the last few months and be ready for a fresh year of blogging in 2011! I am going to try to re-cap the last few months and keep this one short and sweet, but I make no promises!

First - here is a picture from back in August at the Michalski Family Reunion. This would be a 5 generation picture, but my grandpa somehow escaped this one. This is my Great Grandma, Mom, Me and Kara

Joe, Andy and I went to see Mumford and Sons on 10/29/10 at First Avenue - the show sold out in about 3.2 seconds, but I managed to get some tickets! And The Current was kind enough to record the show and archive the audio feed on their website... here is a link Mumford and Sons Audio and of course, a picture of the three of us at the show!

For Halloween this year Kara was a monkey, which is very fitting as we call her monkey all of the time! Kara went trick or treating with Jayden and Jayla, and they all had a blast! Jayla was an adorable little Hello Kitty and could not get enough candy! We also brought the 3 of them to Boo Bash on Grand for some Halloween festivities!

Jayden turned 6 on November 5th. It's hard to believe he is 6 already!! Where has the time gone? He started kindergarten this year, and is loving it!

Thanksgiving morning Emily and I ran the Turkey Day 5k, and we totally kicked it's ass! We ran the first 2.5 miles of it, which is an all time record for me - I have never ran more than a mile straight in my entire life!! It was about 9 degrees outside the morning of the race. Maybe this will be a new Thanksgiving tradition! After our race we headed over to my mom's house where we had Thanksgiving brunch, then to Joe's grandparent's house for Thanksgiving dinner. It was a very fun, long day!

Kara with Grandma Julie on Thanksgiving.

Kara has become obsessed with Eskimo kisses!

Kara with her new Hello Kitty purse from Grandma Nancy. She loves this purse! Maybe there is hope that she will be a girly girl someday!

Here are some pictures from our failed attempt of making Christmas cookies at my mom's house, luckily the kids had plenty of sprinkles to eat!

And here are a few other favorite pictures from the past few months:

And I can't forget a picture of Kara putting ornaments on the Christmas tree!

Final Thoughts: The last few months have been crazy busy! Joe is currently laid off, and will hopefully be returning to work in mid January or mid February. During this time we have dropped Kara down to 2 days a week in daycare, and she spends the other three at home with Daddy. I think they are having a lot of fun at home together! Kara has started testing boundaries like crazy, she has the whole manipulation thing down way too well! She is doing really great with potty training, now we just need to get rid of that dang sucky of hers!! I think she is going to have an absolute blast at Christmas this year, I can't wait for it to get here! Oh, and Emily and I have registered to run the Polar Dash 5k on New Year's Day and the Get Lucky 7k on St. Patrick's Day weekend!

Some of Kara's recent phrases:

"I was going to do that first"(when Joe or I are doing something that she wants to be doing)

"Mommy, sometimes you're bossy"

Kara's video message from Santa!

And one last thing.. A little sneak peek of our pictures we had taken with Auntie Emily. Currently #4 and #7 are my favorites. Check them out!

Home Remodel

2010-09-12T13:16:00.000-05:00

So we have been in our house for almost 5 years now. When we first moved in we painted everywhere, but now I am getting sick of everything and want to make some changes. We don't really have any money for a serious home remodel, so I want to try to make some changes on a small budget. I really want to re-do our bathroom and kitchen the most. Our kitchen cabinets are straight out of 1987 and I kind of hate them. I was thinking of just sanding them down and re-staining them, or painting them, but I haven't really figured that out yet. I decided that I would start with our bathroom and work my way to the kitchen. I wasn't really sure what I wanted to do with the bathroom, so I turned to shower curtains for some inspiration... after hours and hours of looking at shower curtains online I discovered that Amy Butler has a home line which includes shower curtains! Amy Butler is one of my absolute favorite fabric designers, so I think I need to buy an Amy Butler shower curtain. Her line only contains 4 shower curtains, but here are two that I love:

and some awesome towels:

They sell these items at Bed, Bath and Beyond, so I need to plan a trip there to check them out in person and then make a choice on which one I want to use. After I choose that, I am going to re-paint the bathroom to match. I would love to just tear out our whole bathroom and start from scratch - but I know that won't happen! Some other ideas I have for our bathroom - get rid of our towel bar and add one of these to the wall that the towel bar is currently on:

or this:

and then I also want to get a new cabinet for the wall over the toilet - we currently have 3 glass shelves - our bathroom(actually our whole house) is always dusty, and it drives me nuts! But it's always a pain to dust all of those glass shelves, so I want to get something that is enclosed, like this:

I would also like to be able to add some hooks or something to the inside of the doors to hang my necklaces on, if thats possible.

If I ever get started on these home projects I will be sure to post updates! Hopefully I will make a final decision on a shower curtain soon, and then I will definitely be motivated to get this done!

Our Anniversary!

2010-08-29T22:06:00.000-05:00

On Saturday, August 28th Joe and I celebrated 6 blissful years of marriage! In celebration of our anniversary we went to The Happy Gnome for dinner, which has been a favorite of ours since the first time we went there - It is a little bit out of our poor folk price range, but it is a great place to go a couple of times a year!

For Dinner Joe had a rib eye steak - here is the description off the menu:

Grilled Ribeye “Eye Steak”cajun fingerling potato hash, chorizo, brussels sprout slaw, house made steak sauce, fresh grated horseradish

And a picture

and I had a chicken sandwich, but not just any old chicken sandwich, it was this kind of chicken sandwich:

Roasted Chicken Sandwichsmoked gouda, artichokes, oven dried tomatoes, spinach, pesto aioli on house made focaccia

it was huge and delicious!!

I also had this amazing beer:..the Flying Dog one listed below, it was awesome!

For dessert we had:

Blueberry Beignetsfrozen citrus custard, blueberry lime coulis

AMAZING!!

And we both had a scoop of Izzy's Salted Caramel - because you just can't say no to it!!

It was an amazing dinner for an amazing anniversary!

Collages!

2010-08-22T17:32:00.000-05:00

I got bored and started going through all of our Kara pictures and made some collages.. hope you enjoy! If you click on any of the collages it will open larger in a new window.

Kara with Mommy and Daddy

Kara with Grandma Julie and Grandpa Kevin

Kara with Grandma Becky and Grandpa Jerry

Kara with Grandpa Wayne

Kara with Great-Great Grandma Ceil

Kara with Great-Grandpa Jim and Great-Grandma Pauline

Kara with Great-Grandma Nancy

Kara with the Adams' Family

Great-Grandma Mickey, Great-Grandpa Wayne, Aunties Molly and Mary Jo and some cousins

Kara with Auntie Chelle, Uncle Dre and Jayden and Jayla

Kara with Auntie Em and Uncle Scott

Boredom

2010-08-19T13:48:00.000-05:00

I finally decided to face one of my biggest fears and I had my wisdom teeth pulled. My dentist has been recommending that I have it done immediately for 3 years now, so I finally did it. I had them pulled on Tuesday, and have pretty much been living in my bed since then - Thank God for this old school laptop with internet access! My schedule has pretty much been sleep - take pain meds - sleep - eat some boring foods - more pain meds - sleep and repeat. I have spent some time browsing the interwebs from bed though - and guess what..Etsy is sending me a happy tooth pillow, how cool is that? The happy tooth pillow is thanks to my new found love of twitter, I am telling ya, there is some cool stuff/people on twitter.

Other things:

Free music download from Urban Outfitters

This is Mr. Sad Tooth that Etsy posted on twitter

There is a woot-off going on, which always helps pass the time

If I had any extra tix for the Mumford and Sons show I would sell them to this guy

Also - go to etsy.com, click buy and then click on pounce. I like to look at recently sold things. You will find so many amazing things that you would have never even thought to search for on etsy!

My Menu:
KFC mashed potatoes and gravy
ice cream
jell-o
soup
pancakes
scrambled eggs
toast with lots and lots of butter
and all that I really want is a big old bacon cheeseburger or slice of pizza! It seems like everything I see on tv is about food, and I so badly just want some real food!

Kara has been super cute- she comes in the bedroom and asks if I am ok, and if my mouth is sore. She has been pretty mellow around me, but she has also tried jumping on me quite a few times, and I am a little nervous about having my face to close to her...you never know when she might try to headbutt me, or jump on me, or any other erratic behavior that you might expect from a 2 year old.

Alright, I think that is all for now. Time for another nap.

Kara turns 2!!

2010-08-03T20:01:00.000-05:00

On August 1st my sweet baby girl turned 2! I guess I can't really call her my baby anymore, she is such a big girl now! It seems impossible that Kara is 2 already, she definitely acts like a 2 year old, but it still just seems impossible that she is really 2! She is such a little joy - even when she is miserable :)

As a surprise to her for her 2nd birthday we turned her crib into a big girl bed and got her all new bedding - she absolutely loves her big girl bed! She mostly just loves to jump on it, but she has been going to sleep in it fairly well so far. It hasn't been quite a week since we switched her to a big girl bed, so it is still pretty new to her. I am amazed that we haven't had to fight with her too much to get her to stay in bed.

The morning of Kara's birthday Mommy and Daddy gave her some presents. She was so excited about opening her birthday presents, and having a birthday - you could tell that she felt special! She was singing happy birthday all day long and anytime you ask her how old she is she says "six" then gets a silly smile on her face and says "two"

She was so excited about her Abby Cadabby helmet - and I was so excited that I was actually able to find one for her!! She is going to be my little safety freak! Sometimes when she is playing we catch her saying "be safe" or "be careful".. she is just too cute!

After Kara had her new helmet on, the first thing she said was "I go ride my bike".. so of course we all went out in our PJ's so Kara could ride her bike.

After our morning birthday celebration we headed to Auntie Emily's house for a little photo shoot. Of course my sweet little 2 year old acted like a complete monster and didn't want her picture taken, but what can you do? I have faith that Emily got some great pictures anyway.. those should be posted here shortly!

After our photo shoot we went to Grandma Becky and Grandpa Jerry's house and had a little birthday dinner for Kara! She once again loved being the center of attention, tried eating the frosting off all the cupcakes, wouldn't let Jayla touch ANY toys, and loved opening all of her presents.

Kara loved this little puppy that Auntie Emily gave her - it came in a little carrying bag and has 'medical supplies' it also has 4 sensors that make different puppy noises when you touch them. Kara is doing a very good job of taking care of her new puppy that she named Boom. She sleeps with it every night and the puppy noises have woken me up a few times and scared the crap out of me.. I am not used to hearing a dog panting over the baby monitor!

Kara also got this awesome new trike from Grandma and Grandpa - she is IN LOVE with this thing!! She calls it her bicycle, and I am pretty sure she was crying for it in her sleep a couple of nights ago. As soon as we get home from daycare she NEEDS to ride it, and of course she wears her new Abby helmet! Today she learned how to push the pedals on it all by herself!!

This coming Saturday we are having a birthday party with all of our family and friends - we are all pretty excited about it! It is going to be an Abby Cadabby themed party!

Other notable 2 year old awesomeness! I made Kara a potty chair chart a couple of months ago - I was a mean mommy and put 60 squares on it... every time she goes potty in the potty chair we give her a sticker on the calendar and we told her that when it was full she would get to go to the toy store and pick out a special present... and guess what!? Today we put the last sticker on!! Woohoo!! I still don't think she is ready to be done with diapers, but we are getting closer!

Thanks for reading - and I hope to keep up with my blog a little more often :)

July!!!!!

2010-07-22T22:18:00.000-05:00

Oh man, it is July 22nd and I am making my first post for the whole month. I really need to get better at updating my blog! I know there are so many things I have wanted to blog about, but I have no idea what they were anymore...

Let's start with talking about me. On my birthday(April 8th) I declared that this was going to be the greatest year ever. So far, I was totally right.. you will see why throughout my post. Let's start with concerts in the month of July.

July 3rd - The Hold Steady @ The Caboose outdoor plaza - I won tix on the radio.

July 15th - Josh Ritter @ Orchestra Hall playing w/ the MN Orchestra - I got on the guest list through twitter - it was rather bizarre how it all happened, but it was legit! It was a great show - how often do you get to see someone like Josh Ritter(assuming you know Josh Ritter) play with a full orchestra - it was definitely a unique experience that I loved! video below...

July 26th - Gaslight Anthem w/Tim Barry @ First Ave - won tix from the radio. Pretty excited about this concert!

July 31st - Lowertown Music Fest - Mason Jennings - Cloud Cult - Peter Wolf Crier - Tapes and Tapes, and the list goes on and on. Mostly local music, but it is all local music that I love - oh and hey - guess what... I won tix to it!!!!!!!

Seriously, 4 free concerts this month, seriously? Yes, seriously!

Last night I completed my second 5K!! This is something that I NEVER saw myself doing, like ever. It was so stinking hot last night that it just sucked, but my 2 friends and I managed to run the whole first mile straight! I have never, ever ran a whole mile in my life until earlier this month.. I have now done it 3 times. After the first mile of the 5k we took a little walk break and it is so hard to get back into your running groove once you stop, especially when it is ridiculously hot outside. We came in about 45 seconds longer than it took me to run my first 5k, but I am not unhappy with my time at all. I was actually pretty impressed that I came so close to my first time considering how miserably hot it was outside. Seriously, I am just so proud of myself, and everyone who ran with me.. running is not an easy thing to do, and I am just amazed that I have no completed 2 5Ks!

Here are Emily and I before the race - and no, we did not coordinate our outfits - we are just that cool that we both happened to wear gray tank tops and black capris.

Carly, Emily and I after the race

Oh, did I mention there was free beer after the run!?

Alright, enough about me... Kara is turning two very, very soon! Anytime we ask her how old she is going to be she says "six" so, I guess she is two going on six. Every once in awhile we will get her to actually say she is going to be two and she will hold up two fingers, it's pretty cute! She has been asking for an Abby Cadabby bike helmet for a couple of months, and I have been searching for one. I finally found one on walmart.com the other day and ordered it right away. It came in the mail today and I can't wait to give it to her on her birthday.. here is a picture of it:

Kara also decided to have an Abby Cadabby themed birthday party - it should be lots of fun!

My grandma gave me a bag of 3T -4T clothes that she had at her house a couple of weeks ago. Kara started digging through them and came across this Twins t-shirt, picked it up and said "my baseball shirt". I have no idea how she knew it was a baseball shirt, but she has become completely obsessed with it, and she looks absolutely adorable wearing it!

Kara has become such a little girl. I cannot believe how well she talks and makes complete sentences. She is constantly making Joe and I laugh with the things she says.

Random thought.. I was just looking through pictures and realized I had totally forgotten about our 4th of July BBQ(which I don't have any decent pictures from) our trip to Underwater Adventures.. Kara had a blast!! We went with Julia, Leonard and Evan and it was a lot of fun!

And, we went to the zoo...

and, Kara got her first car from Grandma and Grandpa!

Wow! I cannot believe that I have forgotten about everything that has happened in July. I am going to be better about blogging more often.. I swear.. I better go to bed now, I can't see straight... thanks for reading :)

June catch-up

2010-07-22T20:51:00.000-05:00

Apparently I was too busy living my life in June(and so far most of July) to update my blog. So, what happened in June? Joe had a birthday - he is an old man! We had a bbq at our place with friends, and friends babies - it was lots of fun. I honestly can't remember the rest of June, except we took a week long vacation to Northern Minnesota. Joe's cousin Matt was getting married, so we went up for the wedding and then stayed at my grandma's house/a cabin for the week. It was lots of fun - here are some pics!

Less than half way through our drive we got a flat tire on the boat trailer - luckily it was still light outside and some very, very nice people stopped with lots of tools to help us put the spare on!

A pic of our lovely family at the wedding!

The only fish that any of us caught all week.

There was lots of time spent sitting around the campfire!

and lots of time spent napping!

Kara got to drive the pontoon.

and she went swimming almost every single day..

she warmed up to Meghan...

and even Molly!

this was probably the funniest thing that happened all week.. I can't even explain it to you, ya just had to be there!

We went to a lake that was on an island in the middle of another lake.. it was pretty cool!

and Emily and I went for a run in the rain!

Alright, that is all I have for June... now onto July...

New Family Pictures!!

2010-05-31T20:27:00.000-05:00

We have not had family pictures taken since November... we had planned a day to take them with Emily a month ago, but Kara got a black eye 2 days before the photo shoot... so we had to postpone it! We met up with Emily in Downtown St. Paul, right along the Mississippi river on Saturday after noon to take some pics, and I wanted to share a few of my favorites!

Ok, so there are more than a few of my favorites, but when you have 149 awesome pictures, its hard to just pick a few! Thanks again to Emily for taking such great pictures for us!! You can see more of Emily's photos or contact her about your own session here.

Move On Over Damien.. There Is A New Boy(s) In Town.

2010-05-26T20:15:00.001-05:00

As you all know, or should know, Damien Rice has been a long time love of mine. Unfortunately, he has left a hole in my heart. He has not been on tour in the US in almost 3 years, hasn't released a new album in almost 6 years, and he has left me feeling empty. I still love him, but if this relationship is going to continue, he really needs to put out.

Thank God for Mumford & Sons. Ever since I first heard "Little Lion Man" on the radio I knew I needed to know who sung it, and have the album. I got the album and fell in love. They are folky, british(you know how I love me a good accent), bluegrassy, amazingness. Their album came out in the US in February of 2010, tickets went on sale for their Minneapolis show on March 5th and it sold out in minutes... pretty amazing stuff right there! I was one of the lucky few that actually got tickets to the concert!! AND I also won tickets to their in-studio performance at The Current... I got to see them twice in one day, and there were people dying to just see them once... I am pretty sure I am the luckiest girl alive!! They have the passion that Damien has, awesome lyrics, and you can't help but stomp your feet or clap your hands along to the beat of every song.

So, Tuesday, March 25th was probably one of the most amazing days of my life. I left work at 12:15 to go to the in-studio performance @ The Current. I brought a girlfriend from work, Annie, who loves music almost as much as I do :) We were so freakin excited about this that people were looking at us funny... not that that is anything unusual to have people looking at us funny... but whatever. Annie was not lucky enough to get tickets to the show, so she was super pumped that I invited her along to the in-studio. I was ready to cry/puke/scream/explode I was so excited! The in-studio performance was amazing. Everything was stripped down and acoustic, the band was awesome. They played 3 songs and did a little interview(they will be airing it on The Current on Friday at 7:30 am if you want to check it out). I was kinda bummed that the band members didn't stick around to meet Annie and I... but whatever.

Later that night Joe and I headed down to the Varsity Theater to see Mumford & Sons. We stood in the rain for an hour waiting for the door to open.. lame, but SO worth it! The opening band was kinda sucky.. they had a couple songs that I enjoyed, but for the most part I just wanted them to be done so I could see my loves. Between sets it seems like we waited FOREVER. There was probably 9 million people in the Varsity, which probably should really only hold 1,200... we were hot, sweaty messes. From the second Mumford & Sons took the stage the entire audience was mesmerized. It was THE.MOST.AMAZING.SHOW.EVER. I think a big part of the amazingness was the crowd. You could tell that ever single person in the crowd truly loved Mumford & Sons. The applause/cheering/clapping during and in between songs was just incredible. I think even the band was taken by surprise at the love that was coming from the crowd. I love Minneapolis for how much everyone in the city appreciates good music. There is such a great music scene here, and I am proud to be a part of it.

There is a great review of the show that you can find here

Truly one of the most amazing, unforgettable days of my life. There are just no words to describe how absolutely unreal the show was. Freakin amazing! I love the fact that Joe and I were able to see Mumford & Sons at the Varsity... it will probably be the only time they play a venue that small in the Twin Cities ever again. In between songs, Marcus Mumford - the lead singer, said "This is the most loved we've been, so far away from home"... I hope that means they loved Minneapolis as much as we loved them and they will be coming back soon!! :)

And The Winner Is.....

2010-05-21T21:01:00.000-05:00

... ME! Thats right, I am at it again. I won 2 sets of tickets this week. The first set is for Dessa and No Bird Sing on Saturday night - they are two local hip-hop artists, and I think it will be a pretty cool show!

The second set of tickets I won(well, Kimmy really won them for me, but I made her do it!) is for an in studio performance that Mumford & Sons will be doing at The Current on Tuesday afternoon... which I cannot even begin to tell you how excited I am about this!! We have 2 tickets to their concert in Minneapolis on Tuesday night(which sold out in less than 2 hours), but I will get to see them twice in one day!! I am so super excited it is not even funny! If you haven't heard them you should really give them a listen.. I just love them! Joe won't be able to go to the in studio performance with me, so I am bringing a friend from work who appreciates good music just as much as I do! We are going to be like two teenage girls going to see Twilight for the first time..... p.s. we both love Edward.

People always say I am so lucky, and I win everything... but really, you aren't ever going to win anything if you don't try. And for the amount of stuff that I try to win, I really don't win that often. But - I am so freaking pumped that I won these 2 sets of tickets!!

Expect lots of pictures next week :)

The Tale of The Missing Blanky..

2010-05-18T22:10:00.000-05:00

One day last week Kara's blanky mysteriously disappeared. We tore apart the house looking for it, but never found it. Last night I was sitting at the computer and Kara was playing in the computer room, she came and sat on my lap, a few minutes later I looked down and realized she was holding her blanky! I was so excited, and I asked her where she found it, she said "blanky hiding"... haha, I still don't know where she found it! The greatest part though was after we put her to bed. Joe layed her down around 8 o'clock, and at 9 she was still making noise, so I went up to her room. I got in her room and she says "Where blanky go?"... so I started picking up all the blankets in her crib, but couldn't find it, so I pulled Kara out of her crib and turned on her little light. I looked all over in her crib and couldn't find it. I started to pull her crib away from the wall(cause she likes to shove things between her crib and the wall) and she starts laughing and says "Blanky hiding, you found it".. it was hilarious! That girl is so silly!

She is so dang smart, she just blows us away sometimes. She talks so well, and really knows what she is saying. She has started using the potty chair a little more often, usually once or twice a day, she can count to ten, sing the whole alphabet, she loves to dance... and has more dance moves than Joe and I combined!

Generosity Goes A Long Way.

2010-05-14T23:02:00.000-05:00

We all know that times are tough right now. But I would like to believe that if I were in a situation where I needed to depend on the generosity of others that my family and friends would help pull me through.

I have always loved being generous, and doing things to help others... I love the feeling I get when I know I have done something that will help someone, or affect someones life in a positive way.

A high school friend of mine posted on facebook that they were having a benefit for her husband's parents. When I read the story I knew that I needed to donate something for the silent auction, I knew that I wanted to help them raise some money...You can find their story here. When I contacted my friend she was so excited and in shock of all of the people who were coming forward and donating money, or items, or whatever they could to help.

It wasn't my own personal generosity that made me feel so good though, it was the generosity of a co-worker. I was talking crafts with this co-worker and I had mentioned that I made a new bag that I was donating for a silent auction - I told her a little about the story of my friend's in-laws - I also mentioned that I had planned on filling the bag with stuff from Bath and Body works, but then balanced my check book and realized I was broke, so I was only going to be able to donate the bag. After a few more minutes of chit-chat I headed back to my desk... a few minutes after that my co-worker stopped by my desk, handed me some cash, and told me to fill the bag. I was in shock!! I could not believe that she was coming forward to help out someone that she had never even met, heck, she doesn't even know their names.

It just goes to show that people do care, and people do listen, and people are affected by the stories we tell. Always remember that people are listening, and people will be there when you need them. Don't be afraid to ask for help, or offer help to others! We all need a little more love in our lives, and the positive affect of helping others is just too great to ignore!

I hope the benefit is very successful and raises lots of money for my friends in-laws!

Happy Mother's Day

2010-05-09T21:33:00.000-05:00

Happy Mother's Day to all of the mommas out there! I hope you got spoiled by your children/grandchildren/baby daddy...or all of the above.

My day went something like this:
Woke up at 7:30 with Kara(Joe was at work), made the two of us some pancakes and sausages, watched Elmo with Kara, made us our second breakfast of over easy eggs and toast(per Kara's request), watched some more Elmo, did the dishes/cleaned the kitchen, gave Kara a bath, put Kara down for a nap, did 2 loads of laundry, spent 1.5 hours sewing my Mom's mother's day gift while Kara was napping, got Kara up from her nap.. I got myself ready, and then got Kara ready. Went to my mom's house for hamburgers and hung out with everyone for awhile while the kids played, Joe met us there after work. Drove home, where ~~Joe ,~~ Kara gave me a beautiful potted orchid, hung out with Joe and Kara some, put Kara to bed, went on facebook, did more laundry, updated my blog... whew. I thought Mother's day was supposed to be a day where the Mom gets pampered and gets to relax!

Kara made me a beautiful jewelry set out of colored noodles with Grandma Julie last weekend that she gave me today.. here are some pics of me opening/modeling my gift.

And a picture of my lovely Mother with the beautiful bag that I made her for Mother's Day.

and a picture of sistafriend and I, two of the bestest Mothers that I know :)

Hope you all had a wonderful Mother's Day!!

I think I drank too much wine...

2010-04-26T21:32:00.000-05:00

I just signed up for my next 5k..... July 21st!! have I lost my mind!?!? I hope some of my friends will sign up with me!

I told Joe that I want to lose 20 lbs before my next race... is that possible??

I did it!!!

2010-04-26T20:16:00.001-05:00

I completed my first ever 5k!!! And I even said it was fun afterwards!! After almost 2 full moths of absolutely beautiful weather the skies decided to pour down on us during the race - we were soaked! About 1 minute into the run I got a horrible side cramp, not cool. My goal was to come in around 40 minutes, which would be a pace of 13 mins per mile. I was averaging about 13-13.5 mins per mile at the gym. But guess what... I made it in in 37:41.. a 12.08 pace!!! It was a great experience, and I felt so proud after completing it. Thanks to my friends for pressuring me into doing something I didn't think I could do!

Here is a picture of the running gang:

And a good old classic Kristin picture... I always go and screw up a good thing...

And we are considering running another race in July... let me know if you are interested in joining us!

Happy Birthday To Me!

2010-04-08T21:59:00.000-05:00

Hey - guess what.. it's my 27th birthday! Here is my day in pictures...

I came into work to see my cube had been completely covered in decorations... it was difficult to find my way into my cube, and then difficult to try to find a place to get any work done...

My cube-mate Kimmy bought me a lovely princess crown, and a giant Baby Ruth, I felt pretty special!

I got to celebrate with Petey P Cup, Pokey Syringe and Staci's favorite green tape dispenser... and yes, that is a video of Alan Thicke performing Sweaty and Hot on the monitor on the left in the background. You can check out the amazing video here

I pretended like I was Marilyn Monroe, and also poked myself in my eye while wearing this wig...

We were planning on going to Ruby Tuesday's for dinner, but ended up getting Yang's sesame chicken #3!

My Sista and Dre bought me a 22 oz. Blue Moon

And then we had some delicious Tiramisu for dessert

Joe made a 'K' out of candles for me

Birthday Freebies: Large milk chocolate mocha from caribou, free lunch from Noodles and Co, and a free blu-ray from Disney! I was also supposed to have a free burger from Ruby Tuesdays, but I still have a week or so to redeem that...

It was a great day, and a great start to what will be the most amazing year ever!

Petey P Cup

2010-04-07T21:35:00.000-05:00

Have you heard of Petey P Cup yet? If you haven't you should probably check him out on facebook here.

Petey P Cup is the Official SpokessCup for HealthPartners. We first met Petey at the Woodbury Days parade this past August. Dre decided he needed to have his picture taken with the giant P Cup...

Today, I got the greatest package in the mail ever... my very own Petey P Cup and Pokey plush..

Is that not the greatest pre-birthday gift that anyone could ask for? Kara has decided that she likes Pokey the best. They are both coming to work with me tomorrow, I am pretty excited about it. Did I mention that Petey P Cup and I have the same birthday!?

Happy Easter... a few days late..

2010-04-07T21:24:00.000-05:00

I hope you all had a wonderful Easter.

A few days before Easter Kara spent the day with Grandma Julie and colored some eggs... here are some pics... isn't she the cutest?

On Easter we were super busy, as we are with every holiday, and had multiple places to go and people to see. We started the morning with a little Easter egg hunt at our house for Kara, she had a blast finding all of the eggs and her handmade Elmo Easter basket that her momma made for her! It was so much fun watching her get excited with every egg she found.

After a much needed nap, we headed to my mom's house where we had brunch, found more Easter eggs and played outside... it was a gorgeous day out! Kara, Jayden and Jayla were all so cute together searching for eggs, and playing with bubbles.. Kara and Jayla even learned how to drive the Power Wheels... that was quite hilarious!

After my mom's house we headed out to Joe's grandparent's house where we ate even more food and found even more Easter eggs. I am about 98% positive that Kara did not consume any food during the day thats main ingredient wasn't sugar... ooops... does that make me a bad mom? Kara had lots of fun searching for the Easter eggs and Easter baskets at Great Grandma and Great Grandpa's house... she is quite the spoiled little girl!

Free Time...

2010-03-31T19:18:00.000-05:00

Due to the fact that we have no daycare on Thursday and Friday this week, but Joe and I both have to work, my mom just came and picked up Kara to spend the night so she can watch her tomorrow. Then tomorrow night my mom will be dropping Kara off with Grandma Becky so she can watch Kara on Friday.... sooooo... what do two lonely parents do when their toddler is gone for a few days?? How about absolutely nothing.

I was 100% planning on going to the gym tonight, but I ate a big dinner and drank a delicious beer and now I really have lost all motivation. Since I am not going to the gym, I should really consider sewing since I have 2 projects that NEED to be completed this weekend... but no, I will do nothing. Sit on my butt and drink some beer or wine and do nothing... and it will be wonderful! :)

Out with the old... In with the new.

2010-03-30T19:33:00.000-05:00

Before: Ugly old almond colored stove and fridge:

After: Beautiful new black fridge and stove... Love them!

And a close up of my beautiful stove just cause I love it so much!

Now if I could just do something about the cabinets and countertops...

Random Thoughts

2010-03-30T09:30:00.000-05:00

Only 26 days left until I run my first 5k! Over the weekend I did 3 miles in 40 minutes at the gym, which equals 13.3 mins/mile. But, if you take my warm up time and mileage out of there we are at 2.75 miles in 35 minutes which equals 12.7 mins/mile... not too shabby for a girl who doesn't run! Recently I have been wanting some new running shoes... my current shoes are Kohl's $19.99 athletic shoe special... I figured it was time to upgrade. I found these beautiful New Balance shoes from 6pm.com...

the list price is $125, I got them for $50! Score! I think they are last years model and that is why they are so cheap... but I have no problem paying $50 for some $125 shoes. And I am completely convinced that these shoes are going to make me a faster runner! :)

New Appliances... So we ordered new appliances on March 6th and they are FINALLY going to be delivered today! I can't wait to get rid of the nasty almond colored fridge and stove we have. By the end of the day we will have a beautiful brand new black frigde and stove!! I will post some pics after these bad boys are installed in my kitchen... but here are the stock photos of what we are getting.

Kara, Kara, Kara... Kara loves to count! Currently this is how she counts...one - two - three - four - six - eight - ten - leven - twelve - thirteen. I haven't told her yet that she is skipping five - seven and nine, apparently those numbers don't matter to her! I love when she starts counting, it's just too cute!

We are all excited about the awesome March weather we have been having! They are saying 70-80 degrees tomorrow!! WOOHOO!! And this has been a snow-free March, how great is that?? All I have to say is this weather better hold up until my birthday.... or else! We have taken quite a few walks and trips to the park so far! Can't wait to spend even more time outside with the little monster. We are also getting really excited about Easter this year! I think Kara will have a blast searching for her Easter eggs and devouring all of the treats inside!

I am in love...

2010-03-25T22:08:00.000-05:00

....in love with sewing that is! So much in love that I have decided that I am going to open my own etsy shop for my sewing crafts!! I know it will probably be awhile before I actually get my shop opened, but I am just way excited! I claimed the name SewCraftyKristin on gmail, sewcraftykristin@gmail.com, on etsy, and have started a blog... well, I have barely started the blog, but I am working on it! .

Keep an eye on my new blog for updates as far as my shop progress goes, what I am working on, and my current favorite fabrics!

P.S.... this is the start to why I think my 27th year of life is going to be so fabulous! I have great expectations for 27... don't let me down number 27!

Crafts: Purse with pockets

2010-03-21T21:54:00.000-05:00

This is my second handmade purse ever. I found a tutorial on how to make purses, and then just kinda went from there. I made my own pattern, because the pattern I had found was for a smaller purse, didn't have pockets and didn't have this type of handle. And let me just say that I suck at reading directions, let alone writing them... good luck!! :)

Materials:

4 - cuts of fabric 19 x 12, 2 are the outer pieces and 2 are the inner.

2 - cuts of fabric 12 x 6, 1 for the outer piece of the first pocket and 1 for the inner piece of the first pocket

2 - cuts of fabric 9 x 6, 1 is the outer piece of the second pocket, 1 is the inner piece of the second pocket

2 cuts of fabric 3 x 21 - these are the handles

4 - pieces of fusible interface cut slightly smaller than the pieces for the body of your bag

2 - pieces of fusible fleece interface cut slightly smaller than one of each pocket (I only used the fusible fleece on one side of the pocket)

2 - pieces of fusible fleece interface cut about 1x20 for the handles

1 - magnetic snap closure

Once all of your pieces are cut, attach the fusible fleece interface to the back side of all of the pieces

Below are all of my cut pieces:

I sewed the handles first. Fold them in half, pin and sew along edge.

Next, turn the handles right side out. This is the part that always takes me the longest - anyone have any tricks on how to speed up the process?

Below is one of the pockets. I attached the interface to the back of the outer piece of the pocket. Pin the 2 pieces for the pocket right sides together and sew along the edge, make sure to leave room to turn the pocket right side out. Trim off any excess fabric to make the seams less bulky and turn the pocket so the right sides are out. Repeat for next pocket.

Pin the pockets to the inside piece of the bag. Carefully sew along the outside edge to attach pocket to bag.

Below is a picture of both of my attached pockets.

Next, decide the placement for your handles. Make sure they are centered and pin them on to the right side of the outer piece of the bag, as shown below. Repeat for both sides of the bag.

Once the handles are in pinned into place on the outer pieces, lay the inner piece right side down on top of the outer piece. Sew along top edge. Be sure to sew this seam several times as the handles will need to support the weight of the bag. Trim off any excess fabric. Repeat for both sides of the bag.

Once the handles are in place, decide the placement of the magnetic snap closure. I centered mine between the handles and put it one inch down for the top of the bag.

My closures included a template to mark where the prongs would go through the bag. Mark the placement of the snap closures, and carefully cut where you marked.

After you make your cuts, place the front side of the snap closure onto your bag, and flip the bag over.

The two prongs should be coming through the backside of the fabric. Place the metal template ring over them, and fold the prongs inward. Repeat for other side of snap.

This is what we have so far! Now it's time to put it all together!! Lay one side of your bag face up, you will lay the other side of your bag face down on top of this side.. see next picture below....

Make sure that the pieces match up - so the outer bag piece is on top of the other outer bag piece... does this make sense?

Pin around edge and sew all around. Make sure to leave plenty of room to flip the bag right side out. I left the opening to flip on the pieces that were going to be the inside of my bag.

Before flipping the bag right sides out, I cut 2 1/4 inch squares out of each corner of the purse. This allows for a squared off bottom.

After you cut out the squares, line the cut edges up so the bag will be squared off. Sew these seams really well. After this step is done you can flip the bag inside out!! Sew the seam that was left open for flipping purposes.

Tada! Look what we have here! We made a purse!

Here is a shot of the pockets: notice the diaper in the big pocket? I purposely make it large enough to fit a couple of diapers and a small wipe case!

Recipe: Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Muffins

2010-03-12T23:34:00.009-06:00

This is an absolutely delicious, and super simple recipe that my sister found somewhere out in the blog world. I don't remember the blog address, so I can't post a link, but if you happen to know it, let me know!

Ingredients:
1 - box of spice cake mix
1 - 15 ounce can of pumpkin pie filling
1/2 - bag of chocolate chips

Step one: Empty cake mix into bowl

Step two: Add can of pumpkin pie filling into bowl with cake mix and mix together well.

Step three: Add half bag of chocolate chips into bowl and mix well.

Step four: Spray all cups of a mini muffin pan to prevent muffins from sticking. Use a scoop to fill your muffin pan. Note: the shape of the muffins don't change much during baking. If you want pretty muffins, make sure you scoop them neatly into the pan. This can make up to 36 mini muffins. I don't like to have to bake more than one pan, so I tend to make 24 larger muffins.

Step five: Bake muffins at 350 degrees for 15 - 20 minutes. You will know they are done when you can insert a toothpick into the center of a muffin and it comes out clean.

Step six: Enjoy!!

Step seven: Repeat! If your family is at all like mine these will be gone before you know it! I like to store them in the fridge and eat them cold.. Yummy!

Random updates.

2010-03-10T20:54:00.006-06:00

I would like to apologize in advance for my post of random thoughts.

So the little diva of the family, Jayla turned one on March 2nd. Yep, seriously, Jayla is one!! Where did the year go? Seems like just yesterday that I was in Michelle's hospital room eating McDonalds at 5 in the morning, being yelled at by the nurse for making Michelle have high blood pressure, and patiently waiting for Jayla's arrival. Jayla has definitely earned her nicknames 'diva' and 'princess'. She is such a little sweetheart, but also very high maintenance!! But we love her for it! Happy first birthday Jayla!!

On March 5th Joe and I had another date night. We went out to Great Waters Brewing Co in St. Paul for dinner and then went to see The Avett Brothers @ First Ave. It was an AWESOME night!! Dinner was good, and the concert was AMAZING!!!! You can check out a live performance of them here. Have I ever mentioned that I love live music? Actually, I just love music in general.

While are on the topic of music... lets talk about the Mumford & Sons, who are my new favorite band. If you search for them on wikipedia this is the first sentence... Mumford & Sons are an English Indie folk band from London Let me put that into Kristin terms for you Mumford & Sons are a love love love band from love... yeah, pretty much love everything about them... They will be coming to the Twin Cities on May 25th, and guess who got tickets to their show that sold out in less than 2 hours... me! It may have caused some serious frustration trying to get the tickets, but once I had them in my hands I couldn't have been happier!

Kara spent a whole weekend at grandma and grandpa's house, which gave Joe and I some time to get some things done around the house, such as this awesome re-designed wall of family pictures. Isn't it great??

Couch to 5k - ugh. I am so not a runner. Last night I jogged/walked 3.25 miles on the treadmill in 45 minutes. So I will keep working on that...

Only 10 more days until New Moon comes out on dvd!! Yeah, I know, I am a loser :)

Potty Time!!

2010-02-20T21:45:00.003-06:00

Kara used her potty chair for the very first time today!! And not only did she use it once, but she used it twice!! I am so proud of my little monkey. She is growing up way too quickly.

We bought her potty chair a couple of weeks ago and she has pretty much shown zero interest in it. But today I had her in the bathroom with me as I was getting ready and she said "potty chair", so I asked her if she wanted to sit on it. So, I got her on it not expecting anything to happen and before I knew it she actually went potty!! Crazy little girl!!

I hope that this will be a new trend in our house and she will be potty trained before we know it!! Wish us luck!!

Valentine's Weekend!

2010-02-15T20:08:00.010-06:00

Happy Valentine's Day everyone!! I hope cupid found you and shot you in the heart with one of his love arrows... or whatever it is that he does with those arrows.

Joe and I celebrated Valentine's Day on Saturday. We dropped Kara off with Grandma and Grandpa and headed out for some much needed alone time. Our first stop was the Mall of America, which was horribly busy, probably the busiest I have ever seen it. All I wanted was to go to Maurice's to buy a smaller size pair of jeans, which I did do successfully! GO ME! I also bought 2 new shirts that I just love. After the mall we headed to our hotel to check in, got ready and snapped a few pictures.

Then we headed out for dinner at Muffuletta in St. Paul, and it was oh so delicious!! I had a steak and Joe had Ahi Tuna.. he is much more adventurous than I am!! We went back to the hotel, had some wine and watched Couple's Retreat, which we had to pay $14.99 to rent on the tv.. lame!

It was nice to get away from reality, even if it was only for one night. We needed it!

So, while we enjoyed some adult time Kara stayed with Grandma and Grandpa, where I hear she ate banana pancakes, covered herself in paint and then played at an indoor playground! Here are some pictures of Kara's artwork.. apparently Grandma and Grandpa forgot to mention that she was supposed to paint on the paper...

Kara painted Joe and I some beautiful Valentine's pictures, with help from G&G of course, I will have to post some pictures of them!

Then to finish off the weekend I bought myself a bunch of tulips!

I love tulips because they remind me of spring, and I love spring because it brings fresh air, green grass, and blooming cherry blossom trees. Its probably my favorite season!! I cannot wait until spring finally gets here and we can open the windows and bring Kara to the park to play! But for now, I will just have to settle for my beautiful tulips and daydream about the day that spring will finally arrive!

sNOw Fun.

2010-02-11T07:58:00.007-06:00

We got a fresh dusting of snow over the last week so we tried to take advantage of it and bring Kara out to play in it. We spent all that money on getting her snow pants and boots a few months ago, and she has literally wore them once, and the boots barely fit her anymore! Kara was really excited to get all her snow gear on and seemed pretty excited to play in the snow, but once we got outside it was a whole different story.

Not the greatest picture, but here is Kara all bundled up!

Kara pretty much just stood in the driveway and wanted Joe or I to hold her. I did get her to stick out her tongue and try to catch some snowflakes on it, and I got this cute picture.

I also managed to get a picture of Kara trying to do her cheese face..

You would think that since I have lived in Minnesota practically my entire life that I would own a pair of snow boots and snow pants, but I don't.. so Joe got all his gear on and tried to play in the snow with Kara, we got one cute picture....

And then Joe decided to fall back in the snow with her.... as you can see from the picture, she didn't like this very much!

Hopefully next winter Kara will enjoy the snow a bit more. I think we will need to get her a sled to try out! I cannot WAIT for spring to come so that we can bring Kara outside and let her run free!! This winter is really dragging on...

Cracked Under Pressure.

2010-02-10T20:40:00.002-06:00

I think this calls for another glass of wine...

Due to peer pressure I have registered for the Get in Gear 5K happening on April 24th, 2010. Please pray for me! Oh, and did I mention I had to PAY to run this race? Not only am I running a 5K, but it is costing me money.... damn you Carly!!

My plan of action is to follow this program http://www.coolrunning.com/engine/2/2_3/181.shtml, and hope that I am prepared by April 24th. Did I also mention that I will no longer be 26 years old by then?

This also calls for some sweet new t-shirts to be made, any suggestions for team names? As soon as I get working on t-shirts I can post my how to instructions for silk screening.

The 30 Day Shred: Day 30!!

2010-02-10T16:48:00.003-06:00

Woohoooo!!!! I made it all the way to day 30! It definitely got easier as the days passed, and I could tell a difference in my endurance. I will keep up with this program since it is such a great total body workout and I need some serious toning. I love that the dvd covers strength, cardio and abs all in 25 minutes!

Overall Results:
I lost about 7 pounds during my 30 day shred. I am sure the weight loss would have been better if I ate healthier. Apparently pizza, hot dogs, nachos and beer aren't good choices when you are trying to lose weight... who knew?? I can tell a difference in all my muscles - I am noticing muscles that I said goodbye to 10 years ago and wasn't sure if I would ever see them again. I can really tell where I have lost inches and started toning up more, I wish I would have taken my measurements at the very beginning.. but oh well. Oh, and the MOST IMPORTANT thing..... I bought a smaller size in jeans, and all my current pants are getting big on me!!!

After I did my 30th workout yesterday, I went to the gym. I did about 40 minutes on the elliptical and another 15-20 on the treadmill and I even jogged for about 5 minutes. I mentioned this jogging to my friend Carly, and now she wants me to run a 5K with her in April!! So, I am looking at the Couch to 5K running program, which is 11 weeks long, and the 5K run is in 10.5 weeks.... haha, so who knows, I may be doing a 5K in 10.5 weeks. All I have to say, is if I do run the 5K I dang well better run it faster than Carly!! :)

So, Stay tuned for updates on my Couch to 5K progress.....

Recipe: Jalapeno Dip

2010-02-07T17:11:00.006-06:00

Ingredients:

1 can diced green chilies

1 brick cream cheese

sliced jalapenos

colby jack cheese

Wheat Thins for dipping

Instructions:

Place cream cheese in microwaveable bowl.
Pour can of diced green chilies over cream cheese - do not drain the chilies
Chop some jalapenos - use as much, or as little as you like, pour these over the cream cheese
Pour some jalapeno juice into bowl - I would guess I typically use 1-2 tablespoons of jalapeno juice

Sprinkle a handful of colby jack cheese over the mixture in bowl

Microwave for about 3 minutes, stirring every 45 seconds. Adjust time as needed until cream cheese is fully melted and everything is mixed together well.

Grab some Wheat Thins for dipping and enjoy!

Recipe: Crack Corn

2010-02-07T14:30:00.009-06:00

This is a recipe that I got from my mom, who I believe got from her friend. I made it to bring to work one day and that is where it got the name Crack Corn, cause once you start eating it you can't stop!

Ingredients:

2 bags of microwaveable butter popcorn (do not use extra butter popcorn)

3 bricks of almond bark

Instructions:

Pop both bags of popcorn, dump one bag of popcorn into large mixing bowl. Set the other bag aside.
Melt the almond bark in the microwave. I usually start with a minute and a half, then stir. Then continue microwaving at 30 second intervals and stirring in between until the almond bark is fully melted. Note... never put any liquid in almond bark, not even food coloring, this causes it to separate and then you won't be able to use it.
Once the almond bark is melted pour half of it over the bag of popcorn you placed in the bowl and mix well.

Now dump your second bag of popcorn into the large mixing bowl, add the remaining almond bark and stir well. Another method that works well - if you have a large bowl that has a lid you can shake it all up rather than stirring it.
Let the almond bark cool over the popcorn and Enjoy!!

The 30 Day Shred. Day 26.

2010-02-05T07:11:00.004-06:00

Day 26 is D-O-N-E!! I managed to get out of bed this morning and Shred before coming to work, which means I don't have to do it tonight.. woohoo! Today was day #5 of Level 3 and I am still enjoying it. I am thinking of going back to level 2 and trying it again to see if I can handle it any better.

Last night I joined Gold's Gym. It is close enough to my house that I could walk there if I wanted to. They had a deal for $20.10/month membership, and I get reimbursed through my health insurance $20.00/month as long as I go 8 times. I would have loved to have picked this option but there was a $319 enrollment fee, and we all know that I don't have $319 laying around. So instead I went with the $39.95/month, no enrollment fee, but $69 processing fee... they always get you on something! I really, really wish I could have went with the $20.10/month since they will never raise your monthly fee from what it was when you enrolled, but oh well. They have childcare, a cardio theater where its like a movie theater and they play a movie on the big screen and have cardio equipment.. so you can watch a movie while you work out, they have a TON of classes that are included with membership, a separate women's area with weights, a pool, a basketball court, and I get a couple consultations with a personal trainer!! Woohoo, I am really hoping they can show me lots of stuff to get me motivated... I am really excited about joining this gym, now I just need to figure out a schedule so I can make time to get there and make it count.

Stay tuned for more information about my 'ShredThis' silk screen T-shirt project!!

A side note.... tonight we are having girls night at my moms friends house. There will be wine, appetizers and JustDance for the Wii.... pretty excited for the wine, appetizers and the dance!

The 30 Day Shred. Day 25...

2010-02-04T06:59:00.005-06:00

Today will be day 25!! Holy amazingness! Somehow my phone alarm was turned off last night, so I didn't get out of bed in time to workout this morning, so I guess I will need to squeeze a workout in tonight.

I moved up to level 3 on Sunday, which would have been day 21. I cannot tell you how much more I enjoy level 3 than I did level 2! Don't get me wrong, its no walk in the park, but I can actually get through it. It is a serious workout for your core - big time! Level 3 consists of Supermans, scissor crunches, jumping lunges, sumo squat hops, and traveling pushups...just to name a few of the fabulous things it has to offer. I really think the traveling pushups are one of my favorite parts of level 3, and yes, I am serious.

Results: Kinda frustrating, but still at about 5-6 pounds of weight loss. I really think I am seeing inches drop faster than pounds, but I would like the pounds to be dropping too! I can tell where I am gaining muscle, but I still have a long way to go!

Only 6 workouts left(since I still have to get #25 in today).... After my 30 days are up I will definitely be continuing with this dvd. It combines strength, cardio and abs into a 25 minute workout, and we all know I won't be "Shredded" after just 30 days... I am also going to check out Gold's Gym tonight and might get a membership there. I currently have a membership at the U's Rec Center, but really going there and 'Sweating to the Oldies' as we call it for 20 minutes just ain't gonna do it for me!

My Fellow Shredders:
Carly - Day 27!!
Amy - Day 14!!
Kim - Day 11!!
Michelle and Dre - Day 7!!
Karen - Day 2!!
Lisa
Becky
Mom?? did you jump on the bandwagon?
Also, a few other peeps on FB that have said they have started it after seeing all of my updates!

Good luck everyone!! Keep on Shredding!

18 Months!

2010-02-04T06:47:00.003-06:00

On February 1st Kara turned 18 months old. It is really hard to believe that in another 6 months I will have a 2 year old!!

We finally went out and bought her a potty chair, she still hasn't used it, but I don't think it will be long! There have been a couple of times where she has ran over to the bathroom door while saying "potty" and trying to pull down her pants. So far she thinks the potty chair makes a really cool hat, or is an awesome new hiding spot for her toys... we will need to break these habits once she starts actually using it as a potty chair!

Kara is still a wonderful mommy to her baby dolls. There is one in particular that she loves the most right now. She carries her baby around with her EVERYWHERE! Lately she likes to pretend to change its diaper, or have it swaddled up in a blanky.

Her current favorite books are:
The Night Before Christmas
an Elmo coloring book(and yes, she does expect you to read it to her even though there are no words)
A New Parent Magazine(it has lots of pictures of babys in it, so she calls it the baby book)

Her favorite songs are:
Elmo's Song(when Kara sings it it sounds like she is saying Elmo's sock... close enough)
ABC's
Happy Birthday(Kara will request who we sing happy birthday to by saying "Happy baby", or "Happy Kara" or "Happy Auntie Chelle"

We typically sing these songs over and over anytime we are in the car!

I will work on getting some more recent pictures of Kara added to the blog. Lately whenever we take out the camera Kara says "I see", so she just wants to look at the pictures on the camera and gets pissed whenever we try to take a picture of her. I will have to be very sneaky... or maybe its time for another photo shoot with Auntie Em :)

The 30 Day Shred. Day 12....

2010-01-21T06:48:00.004-06:00

This morning I finished day 12 of the 30 day shred! I am still waking up at 4:30 am and getting my shred on before work, which still amazes me cause I HATE getting out of bed. Hooray for me!

A Look Back at Days 2-10... Every morning during the first circuit I would think to myself 'self, why are you doing this? It's horrible, you should be sleeping', but every day I knew that if I got through the first circuit that I would be able to keep moving on. Days 1-3 were definitely the hardest, my whole body hurt and I could barely walk up or down stairs. But even with all the pain I pushed myself each day to do the workout again. By day 4 the pain started to go away, but I was still feeling the burn and knew I was getting an awesome workout! So the first 10 days were dedicated to level 1, and even from day 1 I was able to get through the whole workout, with the exception of a few of the push ups... I hate push ups! By day 10 I was doing great on Level 1, so I guess its time to move onto Level 2....

Days 11 and 12... Day 11 was my first day of Level 2, it is not even funny how much more difficult level 2 is! Have you ever done a plank-jack? Well.. have you? I have! Imagine you are in a push-up position, and then you move your legs like you were doing a jumping jack, sounds fun, right? I think there are around 5 exercises in level 2 that involve the plank position, and each one sucks worse than the one before!! If you want to know what the 30 day shred is like, just google it... every review will tell you how much that person wanted to punch Jillian in the face, or cursed her out the entire workout, but that you will notice results! I am definitely developing a love/hate relationship with Jillian! During one of the cardio circuits Jillian says she wants you to 'gargle your heart'... there is your proof that she is crazy!! You know how most workout videos encourage you to take a break if you need to, or grab some water, Jillian does the opposite! She tells you if you are going to do a 20 minute workout and expect results then there are no breaks, push through it, blah, blah, blah... She has a point, but I still hate her every time she says it!

Today.. Day 2 of Level 2.. I still didn't make it through the full workout without a few breaks(shhh.. don't tell Jillian), hopefully day 3 I will be able to do even more of the moves. My shoulders feel like they are ready to fall off, which makes doing 90% of the moves that much more difficult!

Results: After 12 days I have lost 4.5 - 5.5 pounds, which is sweet since I was stuck in a rut and not losing anything anymore. I still wish I had taken my before measurements though, cause I can definitely feel where the inches are coming off!

So yes, I will continue on my 30 Day Shred challenge, and I will be shredded in 18 more days... bikini, here I come!

And in case you were wondering.. My friend Carly finished day 12 last night, Lisa is on day 2 today and Amy is doing her first day today!! Woohoo!! Anyone else care to jump on the Shred bandwagon??

Sesame Street Live January 14th, 2010

2010-01-17T11:59:00.012-06:00

On January 14th my sister and I loaded up Jayden, Kara and Jayla into the backseat of the Mazda and headed for the Target Center. Fitting three kids in their car seats into the back of my car is not the easiest thing to do, but we managed, and we made it all the way without any fighting!! The next challenge was getting to the Target Center. Whenever we go anywhere downtown Joe always drives. This was one of my first times driving down their alone, and it just happened to be rush hour, which makes me even more nervous! We found the parking ramp and started walking... and kept walking.. and then some more walking! Once we got into the Target Center we had to race all around to find our tickets(they were will call), then we had to find our seats, then we had to figure out where the heck we were supposed to be for the meet and greet. Our cousin plays Abby Cadabby in this performance, so she hooked us up with some awesome tickets and a meet and greet(Thanks Becky!!) After asking 5 people about the meet and greet and racing around the Target Center 3 times we FINALLY found someone who knew what we were talking about and where we needed to be.

We got lead into the media room to wait for the meet and greet. There were probably only 10 other people there for the meet and greet, so that was really cool! After a couple of minutes of waiting we got to meet 5 characters, Kara was totally freaked out!! I think she was scared because they all came running into the room, and were all happy and excited and she didn't have a clue what was going on. She wouldn't even look at Abby Cadabby, who is her favorite! Jayden gave Abby a hug, and Jayla seemed to be cool with meeting the characters!

After the meet and greet we headed back to our seats(which means back up 3 escalators, down one flight of stairs all the way to the front row..we did lots of walking!!) We had front row seats, right off the front/side of the stage, which was awesome!! The show started and all the characters came running onto the stage and were singing and dancing, Kara was still a little frightened, I think she was worried they were all going to come say hi to her again. After the first song Kara really got into it. She was singing, dancing and saying hi to everyone around her! See video here http://http://www.facebook.com/kristinlien04?v=app_2392950137&ref=profile#/video/video.php?v=294558922221
Jayden and Jayla seemed to have a really good time as well. Jayla was danging on Michelle's lap most of the time. Jayden had a blue snow cone, and how can you NOT have a good time when you get a blue snow cone!?

Thanks again to our cousin Becky who hooked us up with the awesome seats and the meet and greet!

4:30 am

2010-01-11T07:08:00.000-06:00

Why on Earth would anyone choose to be up at the ungodly hour of 4:30 in the am?? Normally my answer would be that Kara was crying, so I had to get up with her, or very, very rarely my answer would be that I was still awake from the night before. But this time, it's something totally different! I chose to wake up at 4:30 in the morning to work out.. that's right, I said it... TO WORK OUT!!

Yesterday (January 10th), I started the Jillian Michaels 30 day Shred. I wasn't really planning on actually jumping right into the full 30 days, I more wanted to test out the waters and see what I was getting myself into. But, I heard my friend Carly was on day 2 yesterday, so I knew I had to jump right in, cause I CAN'T let Carly beat me!! And Carly tends to be all talk, and I knew that if I was a day behind her and kept it up that she would challenge herself to keep going... so, really I am just doing this for Carly(and for the simple fact that I want to be able to vacuum my house wearing a bikini.. duh)! After my first day of Shred I proceeded to eat 4 slices of Dominos pizza and drank 3 beers... I think that kinda defeated the whole purpose, oops!

So after day one I decided I was going to wake up at 4:30 Monday morning so I would have time to Shred, take a shower and get ready for work. Once my alarm started going off I was definitely not ready to pull my ass out of bed, but I did... ok so the pulling my ass outta bed may have actually happened at 4:45, but that's beside the point. I pulled myself out of bed, headed downstairs and turned on the dvd player to see that skinny b*tch telling me that if I want to see results I need to work hard... not exactly what you want to wake up to at 4:45 on a Monday morning... but I did it! The Shred dvd consists of 3 circuits and 3 different levels of workouts (I am still on level 1). Each circuit contains 3 minutes of strength, 2 minutes of cardio and 1 minute of abs. Half way through the first circuit of strength(about 2 minutes into the workout) I thought to myself... there is no way I am going to make it all the way through this today.... 1st because I was still half asleep, and 2nd because my body still hurt so badly from my workout the day before. But I did make it ALL THE WAY THROUGH!! WOOHOO!! I do think I need to find a space to workout upstairs though, cause walking up those stairs after the workout was not pleasant!

So, will I repeat this tomorrow and wake up at 4:30 to get a workout in before work? I hope so! If not, I do plan on getting a workout in at night. All I know is the 30 day Shred Challenge is ON!

Before this all started I was hoping to take all my measurements and see what kind of results I actually get from this. Maybe I still will.. who knows. I know this is something I wish I did before I lost all of the weight and inches last year, but I was slightly in denial and too afraid to look those numbers in the face... they are real once they are written down on paper! The next step now is to keep the challenge alive and actually make it through the full 30 days, and to focus more on the foods I am shoving in my mouth... maybe I could get some carrot sticks to keep at my desk instead of peanut butter M&Ms... maybe...

Communication.

2010-01-10T13:44:00.002-06:00

Trying to communicate with a 17 month old is not a simple task. Kara knows what she wants, and she wants it NOW! The only problem is that we can't always understand what she is saying. I think as a parent you learn to understand your childs 'language' quicker than anyone else. For instance Kara calls her blanket 'manket', and she calls raisins 'fraisins' and instead of saying yes. she says 'ses'. Joe and I understand most of what she says, but of course not everything. She has turned into our little chatterbox! In the last couple of months she has really started to put words together. Here are some of her favorite phrases:

"baby cry" as she says this she will rock, pat and shhh her baby, its too cute!

"Ready, Go!" is what Kara yells before jumping off of the couch or ottoman.

"Sorry Kitty"after she accidentally, or not so accidentally, runs into the cats.

"baby go night-night" or "daddy go night-night", "mommy go night-night", "papa go night-night", "aunty chelle go night-night", "Elmo go night-night".... you get the picture, Kara loves everything to go night-night!

And of course we hear "What's this" 100 million times a day!

Other notable Kara cuteness that I need to share with you...

Kara has recently become fascinated with her toes, and toe lint. As soon as you take her socks off she is looking for any treasures between her toes! But not only does she take toe lint out of her toes... she finds carpet fibers, pieces of cheerios, paper.. whatever scraps are on the floor and puts them in between her toes! What a weird-o!!

Every Day Is A Gift

2010-01-05T06:50:00.001-06:00

A simple post, with a simple meaning.

Remember that every day is a gift, we are not promised another tomorrow. Don't take anything in your life for granted, for it could all change in a heartbeat.

Tell your loved ones how much they mean to you, snuggle your baby a little bit longer, appreciate all of the little blessings in life that you might otherwise take for granted.

Happy 2010!

2010-01-01T11:20:00.001-06:00

Happy New Year everyone!! I hope everyone had a great time ringing in the new year last night, and hopefully you aren't paying for it too much this morning. We had a great night with Michelle and Dre. Michelle made an amazing dinner...bacon wrapped steak bites, iceberg salad and some smashed loaded potatoes, it was all delicious, but I don't even want to think of how many calories were consumed last night! After we were done eating the dancing began! We picked up 'Just Dance' for the Wii and it was so much fun! Its definitely just a party game, there is not really much to it, but apparently I can't dance... who knew?? I thought maybe I could look into taking some rhythm classes to improve on my dancing skills, but Michelle and Joe informed me that rhythm is something you are born with, and apparently I wasn't born with any! Oh well, it won't stop me from being a dancing fool!

Things I am proud of from 2009!

I lost 65 pounds from January through August, which is pretty amazing if you ask me! Unfortunately I have gained back about 5 pounds over the last couple months... but I will deal with that later!
My baby girl learned to crawl, walk, talk and turned one this year! Its amazing how many milestones children hit in one year. Can you imagine if we continued to learn at the rate they do? We would all be b'geniuses!
Joe and I celebrated our 5th wedding anniversary...and we even still kinda like each other!
My mom turned 50 this year!! Holy crap is she getting old! :)
I read the whole Twilight saga... woohoo!! This is a huge accomplishment for me, as I cannot tell you the last book I read before these!

Things I am looking forward to in 2010

Hopefully losing another 15 -20 pounds. Which means I need to stop eating all the horrible things I love, and I need to actually work out when I go to the gym and not just SWAG. But I know I can do it!
Continue to watch Kara grow and learn new things everyday.
Improve on my dancing skills.
Get a handle on some of our debt... I hate debt, and I want it to go away forever!
Maybe, just maybe think about adding a second child to our family. This is dependent on a couple other things...Kara's attitude, and debt. Based on these things, baby #2 might need to come in 2011, or 2012.
Dedicating some time to get some crafts done....maybe I could actually work on some scrapbooking, sewing, crocheting and whatever else my little heart desires!
Spending some good quality time with my husband... I think we need more than 2 date nights this year!
Look at going back to school.... I am kinda worried about this since I haven't been in any kind of school for 9 years! I would probably be told I need to go back to high school for a few years and re-learn some things before they will accept me into any college!
Work on getting my hair cut more than once this year... I know its a simple thing, but I literally only got one haircut in 2009... how pathetic is that!?!?

Words to embrace for 2010

"Life is too short to wake up with regrets. So love the people who treat you right. Forget about the ones who don't. Believe everything happens for a reason. If you get a second chance, grab hold of it with both hands. If it changes your life, let it. Nobody said ...life would be easy, they just said it would be worth it."

Happy New Year Everyone!! Hope 2010 has lots to offer for all of us!

Kara - A Year in Pictures!

2009-12-31T10:26:00.000-06:00

A look back at some of my favorite Kara pictures from 2009! I tried to limit myself to one picture for each month, but I just don't have that much self control!

January 2009!

Kara trying to crawl

February 2009!

March 2009!

April 2009!

May 2009!

June 2009!

July 2009!

August 2009!

Kara turns one!

September 2009!

October 2009!

November 2009!

December 2009!