Because I'm the mom.....

I'm not sure what's up with me, but I'm in a funk.  Like not full depression, but not entirely happy.  I mean, I'm not unhappy, but I'm not cheerful like normal?  Does any of this make sense?  I've felt like this for about two weeks now.  Just in a weird space so to speak.  I noticed that I went full on funk a few weeks ago after Emanuel and I had a fight about wedding stuff.  WHY is the engagement and wedding planning the hardest part?  I felt the same way the first time around too.  The engagement/planning period was the hardest time.  Our fight?  Something silly about the timing of stuff.  I think he's closed minded.  He thinks I'm not putting enough priority on certain vendors.  In the end, neither of us is right or wrong.  We are just different people with different priorities.   However, in this argument, something in me sorta freaked out.  Maybe it shorted out?  I've been different ...

As a mom I felt like I had the parent thing pretty under control with my first baby.  We were always put together and did lots of play dates and such.  Travel was easy....just throw some stuff into a bag and go.  Plus my first baby was an easy going kid. Cue baby 2.  My pregnancy was pretty easy, but I did take a fall at the end of the pregnancy and then that same night began vomiting with some virus.  Between being sore and then spending the whole evening vomiting, I was in rough shape the next morning.  I started labor at almost 4 weeks early.  I ended up in the hospital with them trying to stop labor (and doing so successfully) and then realizing I was farther than they wanted in my labor so then started it up again with induction.   Ugh. Natalie was born after a short induced labor.  She was tiny in comparison to her older sister.  And had some minor issues with breathing and was played under an oxygen tent.  She did fi...

I have my kids this school week.  Normally I have them Thursday-Sunday afternoon, and their dad has them during the school week.  He's out of town, so I get them extra time (which I love).  I had a really rough evening Sunday night.  This resulted in literally NO sleep until 4:30am and then I had a dream where I woke up crying.  So I didn't get any real rest.  I was a zombie Monday at work, and it took all my power to not break down and cry or just scream at people.  I had to go to the bus stop to pick up my son, and then home to cook supper.  About the time supper was ready it was time to drive back across town to meet  my oldest daughter to pick up my youngest daughter.  So needless to say, I was very very ready for bed when I was finally able to crawl in it.  I think I was asleep within seconds. I had strange dreams and woke up with my alarm.  Wait.....I woke up with my alarm that was set for 6am.  I have my kids ...

I was very newly married (like THAT day type of thing) when I got pregnant with my first child.  To say I was excited was an absolute understatement.  All I wanted in my whole life was to have a baby.  A husband is nice, but that wasn't as important as children.   Is that messed up?  lol My pregnancy was easy.  I had a little bit of morning sickness and felt rotten for a short period of time.  Unfortunately it was while I was making baked goods at the coffee shop that we owned.  Not the best thing for business.  I loved to EAT everything, but baking gagged me.  It also seemed that when I did get sick it was after a meal that we just spent money on.  My biggest issues was I was tired.  Very tired!  But otherwise, it was really pretty easy for me. I don't think I've ever felt as beautiful as when I was pregnant.  And that's laughable because I gained LOTS of weight with every pregnancy (50-60 pounds each time)....

Good morning!  It's an amazing cold crisp morning today.  Snow and ice cover our side streets, but the interstate is pretty clear.  It is truly beautiful out with the snow and sun creating sparkles.  Now if only we could have this beauty with the temperature around 70!  HA So today I wanted to share my weight loss journey over the last several months.  I've never been overly heavy, but have put on about 20 pounds over the last few years.  Because of my height, I'm lucky that even with that extra weight I still fall in the high, but normal BMI area of the charts.  I have been lucky or blessed or who knows, but my weight has been more bothersome than a critical issue. That said, I was unhappy with the extra "pudge".  My stomach had a nice round appearance that very much reminded me of early pregnancy (maybe not SOOO early).  My thighs, well let's just be honest, my thighs showed some serious "hail damage" and caused my legs to look lik...

How does anyone choose anything for a wedding?  Where on earth do you start?  How do you choose who is going to be best for your special day? Price?  Yes.....THAT is a huge driving factor for a wedding AND final decisions.  It often determines what we "get" and have to pass on.   Money.....WHY is it so complicated? I've had a wedding before.  My finance has also had a previous wedding.  Why do we want another?  Why are we willing to spend money on an event or a process we have already had?  Been there and done that?! I get it.  That said, I WANT a wedding.  I want what I didn't have my first time around.  I'm more mature.  It means something different this time around.   It also means that things are on our dime and we are making choices based on what we know, want, and ultimately will have. So how does one choose who is best?  Which is best?  What is necessary?  lol  I really hav...

It's been a great LONG weekend.  I worked a Saturday last weekend so I got to take a day off during my normal work week.  I decided to take Friday off and because of Presidents Day, I also have today off. That's an extra long weekend.  :) What does one do on a long weekend?  Part of it was cleaning.  But not just "regular" cleaning, but move the furniture and throw stuff out cleaning.  We live in a small townhouse so options are very limited as far as moving rooms around, but I love doing that.  So I decided that Friday I was going to deep clean my room and move the furniture around.  I set out doing just that.  The problem is, with such tight space, you really are very limited in how you can rearrange.  I was feeling optimistic and decided I would try it out anyway.   I eye my room and the furniture and then mentally compared spaces.  I knew it could all work, but wasn't sure if it was something Emanuel would like....

I taught myself to crochet.  I'm not great at it.  I very often read a pattern and start a project and realize that I'm doing my own thing!  IF I put that project down for more than a month, I almost never can figure out how what I did to create the current look.  All that said, I really enjoy making something out of nothing.  I'm not sure if others enjoy my gifts as much as I enjoy giving them, but it makes me happy! Once I read a pattern for an afghan and I was really excited to make it.  I had been working on it for days and someone who KNEW what they were doing commented on how unusual this blanket was.  It was literally two sided.  Two completely different patterns on each side.  It was the coolest mistake.  Sadly, I put it down for a long period of time, and I haven't been able to figure out WHAT on earth I did to make it so amazing.  So i have like a third of a blanket.  Ugh. Right now crocheting is my stress relief....

I work for an online line school.  We have what they call "education zones" for students to have a place to come work out of to get extra help or just meet up with peers.  When I interviewed for this job, I was asked if I wanted to work with middle school or high school.  Do you know my my crazy self requested????  Yep......middle school!  😜 Why or why would anyone make that choice?  Middle school kids are just coming into puberty.  They are moody.  They don't know that they are wrong.   They seldom think through what they do.  Did I mention moody?  I love this age group (most of the time).  lol I'm the site coordinator.  I'm still not sure of what it is that I'm supposed to do. lol  I basically run our building.  I make sure we have supplies.  I am the "gate keeper" of the building reminding people to sign in and making sure they are signed out.  I get there early and open up the building and...

The phrase that became crazy popular due to the TLC show "Say Yes to the Dress".   I said "yes" over a year ago.  I bought the dress, and haven't looked at it since. Today I pull my dress out and put it on and still love it, but realize that when I bought my dress I had a different wedding in my head.  I was going to have a beach wedding and choose this for the ease of walking across the sand.  It's simple and beautiful. Fast forward a year and now I'm having a Christmas wedding in Colorado....not a beach wedding in the middle of the day.  Will my dress work?  Will it still be perfect? Yes.  I believe it can still be the "perfect" dress, but my mindset has to change a little.  What I was envisioned isn't the reality now. Isn't it funny that it's exactly like life?!  We see our job, or our partner, or our lives in a certain way and when life takes us down a different path, a new reality, we sometimes think that nothing is rig...

Have you ever stopped to really think about how blessed you are?  I mean really think about it!  Do you get it?  Do you really get it? In the United States pretty much all the population is blessed as compared to other parts of the work.  Most of the population has a house, and car, and food on the table.  Then on top of that most of us have cell phones, and computers, and we eat out and....and....and.....  Even with all that,  many of us feel like we aren't as well off as the guy next door.  However, can you see that we really are blessed? Me?  I'm so amazingly blessed.   I've lived a life that has had its ups and downs, but it's been a very good life.  I have experienced travel all over the world, and hope to do much more of that in the coming years.   I've had the most incredible children.  All so very different, but all have big hearts.  I've had the good fortune to have many many different types of ...

Today my work family and I had the chance to do some team building fun.  I know that a lot of people cringe when they here "team building".  What does that even mean? We had one of our staff members who specializes in that come in and spend some time with us.  We did some fun activities where we did....gasp......ice breaker questions.  It was GREAT.  These weren't typical questions and even though most of us have been together for around a year or getting close to it, it gave some real insight into who each of us was. We did a rope activity and it caused us to all really stop and think outside the box.  And after some hints....I figured out how "escape" my partner.  :) One of the best team building activities was when we all took these picture postcards and we were supposed to pick one that "spoke" to us and then explain to the team why.  Some picked pictures because they thought they were "pretty" or reminded them of family or somethin...

After such a down post yesterday I decided I really needed to lighten things up! So we are in the midst of planning our wedding.  As I mentioned in a previous post, I really want to have what I want, but I don't want to spend much to get it.  lol I've been calling hotels, conference centers, and other building spaces that might work for our big day!  It's exciting as we talk about what we want from that day.  I want to have the ceremony and reception in the same location.  I want it to be beautifully decorated.  I want it to be a lot of things, expensive not being one of them. Do you know that no matter what type of hall or building you look at, it's ALL costly.  And if you find one that isn't that expensive by the time you figure in your rentals and such it now is crazy!  lol But I refuse to stress about what I can't control.  No matter what we choose or where it is, it will be amazing because it's my wedding!  And I'm being giv...

I was in college and on my way home to visit my family.  My car broke down on a mountain pass and the events that followed changed my life forever.  I won't go into any details, but at the age of 19 I was raped.  It has forever changed and scarred who I was as a person. My car was repaired the next day and I went back to my apartment and pretended it never happened.  I buried as deep as I could.  Pretending it never happened.  I was young and a fool and believed the threats that had been told to me. A few months later over Christmas break I had an accident and was able to quit college and move because of my injury.  I thought maybe a "fresh" start somewhere would "fix" me.  Bury it...... A year after my rape I finally found myself dealing with depression and unable to cope with the pressures of going back to school.  I finally broke down and told my mom.  My parents were devastated.  And now on top of my trauma I also had guil...

My wedding is coming up.  I have 10 months to prepare.  I've been losing weight since October so I'm not too worried about that aspect of preparing.  However, I'm not toned or in shape.  What's the big deal?  I have lots of time. Let me confess, I HATE cardio.  I mean I HATE it.  I would rather do just about anything other than cardio. I know the benefits.  No only is it good for the heart and other muscles, but it's GREAT for the mind!  I don't mind weights.  In fact, I actually enjoy them.  But I've lost motivation to get my butt dressed and to the gym.  I've had a membership to Planet Fitness for well over a year.  I faithfully used it for a whole 2 or 3 months last year and nothing since.  We even bought a cool online program that allows you to pull up both weight and cardio workouts.  I can't even use the excuse that I just don't know what to do. I'm just lazy.  Ugh.  I'm one of those that want...

Many of you know me.  Some think you know me.  And for others I'm a stranger.  So who is the lady behind the blog?  Let me give you some highlights of my life to help fill in some blanks. I grew up in a tiny little community in South Eastern Colorado.  Our whole county had around 1200 people when I was growing up.  I lived in a teeny tiny town.  Many would consider it more of a village than a town.  There only a handful of families that lived there.  It's mostly a farming area, although many people commute to nearby towns to work (unless they worked on a farm).  Our bus rides to school started in "town" and then went way out to the country and then to the next town were we had a couple stops and then another stretch to the school in the middle of no where.   Plainview is a K-12 school and my senior year of school there were 102 in the whole school.  Our class one of the largest with 8 people.  There were 26 in high ...

I'm coming up close to my 44th birthday.  It's sorta a crazy thought that I'm nearing my MID 40's.  I will say that I'm more alive and feel better than I did in the last half of my 20's and certainly my 30's.  Who knew?  Why do I say this?  Can it really be true that I feel better than 10 or even 20 years ago?  Don't get me wrong, there are days when my body aches or is sluggish and that is vastly different than a few years ago.  My brain isn't as sharp (I believe THAT is from the lack of oxygen the last time I went into anaphylactic shock.  I'll share that story next time) as it was.  I don't learn as quickly as I once did.  I certainly don't retain the information as I did earlier in life.  So what's so great?  With the information I have shared how can I say I feel better? 1. I'm more confident in myself. I have plenty of days when I question myself.  I still don't know what I want to BE when I grown up.  I worr...

I'm engaged for the 2nd time in my life.  Never saw that coming.  HA  I will say that the 2nd time around is harder.  I think for the same reason the a relationship is more difficult so is an engagement and planning a wedding.  When you are young you don't know who you are or what you want.  Everything is a new adventure and you sorta grow into who you will be as an adult.  You're more flexible to change because you haven't lived long enough to really know firmly what type of person you will be.  Fast forward 22 years, and that can't be said for now.  I've lived a lot of life and while I am still changing and morphing into who I am right now, largely I'm set in ways.  Does anyone else relate?  In other words, I'm stubborn. The same can be said for what I want in a wedding.  I want everything I didn't have the first time.  However, this is on our dime and I don't want to spend the kind of money that my "dream wedding" requ...

Who's with me?  Why the heck is love and relationships so darn hard?  I'm not used to love being hard.  I'm not used to a relationship being hard.   The first serious relationship I had was in high school.  My high school sweetheart woke up my life to romantic love.  I realize as a young person maybe it wasn't as deep as "grown up" relationships, but it was very real to me.  I was in love much to the upset of my parents.  LOL  But as most high school relationships do, we broke up and I was heartbroken.  It's the first time I had been the "dumped" instead of the "dumpie". Fast forward to my marriage.  I was still young and not sure that I made the best choices about WHY I decided to get married.  I mean, I really liked him, but I'm not sure if it was true, deep and passionate love.  I was happy but still not a good reason to get married. And then we have NOW.....I'm divorced, but finally found myself.  It's been...

In my last post I was sharing that I was divorced.  It was a shock to pretty much everyone with the exception of some family and close friends.  Unfortunately it was a huge shock to the kids.  I'm not sure how you break the news that their world is going to change and be forever different.  They of course didn't find any information given to them to be "good enough" reasons for me to leave their father.  Even several years later, they are still very much affected by this. I've carried the very serious MOM GUILT with me almost daily.  I've gone between their happiness (or perceived happiness) and my own.  It feels selfish at time.  But I also finally found that I needed to really find myself and my true happiness.  I'm not talking the superficial kind.  Because I had lots of that.  And I will be 100% honest.....not all of my marriage was unhappy.  Not at all.  But as I look back over time, I see where I wasn't being hones...

So many people were shocked to hear of my divorce.  We were the couple that "would last forever" and "were perfect for each other".  There was a time when that was true.  I'm so thankful for what came out of my marriage....mainly my 4 amazing kids.  I was a stay-at-home mom for years and while I loved most moments of it, I did find I lost myself.  I lost who I was.  I was HIS wife and THEIR mom.  I wasn't sure what I loved or was passionate about.  And I struggled with depression off and on.  After some issues with my husbands ability to find solid work, I went to work after years of being away.  I really enjoyed working but struggled to make enough money to keep the family afloat.  I was blessed enough to find a job that was excellent money, but long hours working as a paramedic.  This was enough to take care of the family, but kept me away with 24 hour shifts.  This was a blessing and a curse I suppose. I found mysel...

It’s been years! I can’t believe I used to blog and was very much a computer nerd. I had the privilege to travel and meet people from all over the world. Now I stay pretty close to home and while I’m still that girl, I’m a completely different woman. I have so many changes to share. I can’t wait to take you on this new journey of my life. The good , the bad, and sometimes the very ugly. I’ve made so many mistakes, but have learned so much. So grab some coffee or something stronger and let’s talk.