As I sit here and listen to the comfortable rumble that is my family and my home I feel so blessed.  It is the close of another week.  Lots going on this week.  I worked out every day this week.  Saturday I had a 4 hour workout that kicked my behind lol.  I walked early for an hour with "the Ladies".  Women that I work with.  I love these women and I love spending those moments outside of work with them.  After walking I went to the gym and a friend\trainer ran me through a really tough weight training session for my abs and chest.  Whoa, by then I thought I wanted to puke so I went to Yoga for an hour and fifteen minutes.  I left thinking I may not be able to move tomorrow.  Boy, was I right except that I didn't make it to tomorrow, within a couple of hours I was eating ibuprofen and looking for some relief.  I have to remind myself sometimes that I can't do it all.

 I have a personality that allows me to go, go, go, like the energizer bunny but sometimes I go too hard and my body lets me know.   This was one of those times.  After working out hard all week, I went over the edge on Saturday and it ended up doing much more bad than good.  I took Sunday off to rest my sore body.  today I walked 2 miles and ran 2miles then I came home and worked out for 45 minutes on the total gym.  I took it easier today hoping to be in full force by tomorrow.  I am getting ready for a wedding in July and have set a new short term goal for myself.  I want to lose another 20 pounds between now and then.  I have chosen my dress and really want to get a size smaller than I am now.  It's really pretty, I can't wait to get my new body into it!

Last week I was in training all week and travelling so I got home later and when my schedule is off, everyone's schedules are off.  I think I did okay with my food plan.  It is hard to stay on plan when you have to eat on the run.  I think I made the best choices I could make under the circumstances.  My family on the other hand did not fair as well, it was a week of chicken nuggets and hot dogs I'm afraid.  This weekend has been good however.  We needed some healthier home cooking.  All weekend has been about whole foods, and fresh foods.  We grilled some beautiful baby back ribs today with roasted vegetables, a green salad, and fresh fruit.

We have been active and moving and now it is time for some rest and a cozy movie in mom's bed lol.  Tomorrow is the first day of summer vacation for the kids and back to work for us.  I am re doing the floor in the basement next weekend.  I have decided to keep the tile and paint it.  I researched it and it shouldn't too difficult.  I have been rounding up items to put down there and I can't wait for the finished product.  Another busy week here I come.  School will be starting for me soon so I have to get as much done before that as I can.  My goals for the week are to lose 5 pounds, stay on plan and stay busy.  I will make sure I get my workouts in.  I will get enough rest (that's a hard one).  It has been a great weekend, Happy Memorial Day!  Do something to inspire someone.  Even if it's a little thing, sometimes the little things inspire Epic results! 

Comfort

Today was the last day of a week long training.  I am totally feeling it.  Although it was a great training it was a long week of traveling back and forth and sitting in a classroom all day.  It makes me tired.  One of the things we talked about was comfort and it got me thinking about the things that give me comfort and of course the first thing I think of is comfort foods.  I am from a big Italian family.  We use food for everything and that made it easy to fall in love with food and of course with making food.  I love all the comfort foods, who doesn't, that's why they are called comfort foods right?  I have always loved pasta and breads and tons of carbs.  I don't eat many carbs these days but occasionally I like to have a free day.  I am careful to make sure that it is within a week in which I have worked out a little harder and stayed on plan.  I have worked hard this week.  I have not missed a day at the gym and I am down 6 pounds.

I also thought about emotional comfort and it goes so well with comfort food because we eat from an emotional hunger more often than a physical one.  We eat when we are happy, sad, celebrating, grieving, whatever.  Food plays a lot of roles in our lives not just for nutrition.   I still get the emotional satisfaction, just in a healthier way.  JD and I made dinner together tonight.  I like cooking together.  It gives us time to talk about our day and our lives and our kids.  They make appearances in the kitchen as well, mostly to pick at whatever we are making.  Comfort foods and comfort from just being home.  Just ending my long week with my peeps.

My busy little family

It is the end of another great week in the King universe.  I have been going all week, like I haven't felt that I have had any downtime but I have a lot of extra energy and it has been a very productive week.

Hayden got an A on his solar system project and was pretty funny during his presentation at school.  He is vey proud and we are so proud of him.   School seems to come easily to him and he really loves it.  It so fun to talk to him most days right now because he is at a really great stage of growing.  He's too cute. 

Adrianna is growing up too.  I swear over night she started growing hips!  OOY I am in so much trouble, she is beautiful.  She baked me a cake for my birthday tomorrow and it was so perfect. 

I decided that I am not quite busy enough I guess so I started a new project lol.  I have hated my basement for the 5 years that we have lived in this house.  It is dark with tongue and groove paneling everywhere.  Even the ceiling!  The carpet is icky and we have just been talking about changing it and we finally started the project.  I just got tired of it being an unusable space. We got the carpet pulled up and we found a pretty great tile floor in great condition that is original to the house.  The pattern is a little funky but we can work with it.  I love finding treasures like that in this old house.  I love this house, it has always felt like we belong here.  I love making it ours, putting our family stamp on it.  Every room really is a reflection of who we are.  Finally our Family room will be  a space that we like hanging out in. 

Tomorrow is my  43rd birthday.  I love this age!  My forties have so far been a really wonderful stage of my life.  I am having lunch with my best friend who is also turning 43 tomorrow.  That makes it extra special. Then I am spending the afternoon with my mom looking for some cool antique stuff for the family room.  I get to pick the kids up from school then we are all having dinner.  I couldn't ask for a better way to spend my birthday.

I have had a lot of energy this week.  I ate pretty clean, I had to have a piece of Adrianna's birthday cake but the rest of the day and all week I have worked hard. Believe me, it was yummy. My goal at my weigh in on Tuesday is to be down a couple of pounds.  I but I am going  to workout for a couple of hours in the morning. I have been drinking a lot of water and eating well.  I did not go to the gym the last two days with the basement work .  It has been a very busy week.  Looking forward to Tomorrow, to seeing my peeps.  This next week I will be in training all week in Idaho Falls.  Being away from home is going to make it more difficult both to work out and to eat well.  It is also the kid's last week of school so they have parties and field trips to plan for.  I also need to start on moving the wall downstairs.  We are just moving it out 3 feet to make our bedroom bigger.  I am so excited for this to be finished.  I am repurposing everything in the room.  It will be so cool!!!  Have a great week!!

Mother's Day

Mother's Day for me has always been super special.  Having adopted children we celebrate everything.  We celebrate their adoption days as well as their birthdays and I tell them the stories of how they came to us every Mother's Day.  Adrianna was old enough to have memories of her own from before she came to us.  I know that those memories can be confusing for her at times.  I have always strived to be honest with my kiddos about their birth families.  I have saved every bit of information that I have ever received regarding their birth families and the circumstances surrounding their adoptions.  Every picture and memento, every piece of paper and letter and if you know anything about Foster Care, they don't come with much at all.  They usually don't have toys or clothes or any of the basics that most kids have, much less baby pictures or good memories.

I made a treasure box for each of them which houses all these things along with letters that I write to them every year on the anniversary of their adoptions and put in the treasure box.  I know that someday I will get questions about where they came from.  Adrianna has always expressed the she sees herself as different from the rest of us because she is half Mexican.  I want her to know about her heritage and to be secure in who she is.  I want her to know how much I love her and that I would do anything in the World to see her smile. 

One day we will sit down together and go through the boxes when they are old enough to have a better understanding of the difficult situations that they came from. I have never given birth so I truly cannot compare having adopted children to having birth children.  My heart tells me that it's not that different.  I have been told that it is hard to love other people's kids. People have asked questions about what it's like to adopt.  Unfortunately most of the time when one of those questions are asked it is generally unkind in the way it is presented.  Not intentionally, but people see them as "Not my real kids".  Well, I can tell you they certainly are my real kids and I am a real mom, JD is a real dad, and this is a real family.  We fight and love just like other families.    It constantly amazes me when things like that are said, and I do not respond to it well.  The love that I have for my children is the love of a mother, not having the same DNA does not matter to my heart.

I have been waiting to get the bikes out.  My family gave me flowers first thing in the morning and my husband got out the bikes, cleaned them up made sure they were ready to go.  Yay!!! I love these days!!! Homemade breakfast burritos, fresh fruit, trail mix, and juice packed in the backpack and we went for a two hour bike ride.  It was a beautiful day.  My son proposed to me, my daughter hugged me so tight she took my breath away.  It really was exactly what I wanted for Mother's Day! 

I have been very blessed and I am so thankful for the life I live.  My journey is as much about the inside as it about the outside.  This day my heart is overflowing!

I

So far, it has been a triumphant week.  I have managed to avoid the break room at work with lots of treats for employee appreciation week.  Lunch will be provided tomorrow but I am feeling good about my choices and I am certain that I will be able to make the healthiest choices for me tomorrow as well.  I have been working out every day this week and I am holding strong on the scale.  I have not lost but I have not gained either and for me that is a triumph, a success and a reason for celebration. I am battling a pulled muscle in my upper back which has forced me to lighten my workouts (holy crap talk about PAIN, wow!!)  but I am still getting up every day and going to the gym every day and working around my injury.  

 

On the home front it has been another great week.  My kiddos are gearing up for the end of the school year and Adrianna (who is turning 12 very soon) is working hard to make sure that she ends the year with decent grades.  Hayden has been rocking A’s and B’s all year so for him it is not as much of a struggle.  I am so proud of my kiddos!!  The weather is getting warmer and it is finally starting to feel like summer.  Time to get the bikes out, return to our family’s summer tradition of early morning Sunday bike rides and picnic breakfasts at the park.  It is a wonderful way for all of us to spend time together, get our bodies moving and enjoying good, fresh whole fruits and grains and some fresh air.  I have not had the opportunity to spend as much time with the hubby this week as I would like.  We have both had pretty full schedules and lots going on so the emotional connection has not really been there.  Hopefully we will be able to grab a few moments of mom and dad time to connect with each other this weekend.

 

I have not really had much time for any relationships this week and I find myself missing the people that I care about A LOT!!  My connections to my friends and family are very strong.  It is that human interaction that fuels me on most days.  It is being inspired by others and having the opportunity to inspire others that I live for!  I may not see you or speak to you every day but you are always in my thoughts and in my prayers. 

 

Weeks like this week in which I am being pulled in so many different directions and find it difficult to keep up,  I have to remind myself to stay as grounded and focused as I possibly can.  It is easy to let every thing else take over and we forget that we have to nourish our bodies, our hearts, and our minds.  Our bodies naturally want what is not good for us and our hearts often cry out for those that will break them.  We decide which will prevail.  We decide which we will fight for.  Have a wonderful rest of the week, find something that inspires you and challenge yourself to be an inspiration for someone else!!

One breath at a time

Happy hump day!  I weighed in today,  I have been fighting a lot of fatigue this week and I just wasn't up to going in yesterday.  It is just a fibro flare up and it will pass, hopefully soon LOL.   Although my flare ups have diminished substantially the fibro likes to pop up every once in a while just to remind me that I'm human.  My weigh in was very good.  I have lost the 10 pounds that I had gained.  Yay!  I have been working out every day except yesterday and even though I am feeling the pain I have forced myself to go and workout because I know that I might be struggling just to get through it but I will feel better when it's over.  With fibro pain you are never are quite sure where it will show up.  Most of my pain is in my neck and hips and my right arm.  I don't take pain medication unless I absolutely have to and most days I can get by without it, this week not so much.

It has been a fairly quiet week so far.  Other than a moment or two of drama with my children life is good.  JD and I have found some common ground.  We are working on our relationship and both of us really want it to work for the sake of our family.  It feels like we have found each other again.  It is like we started over.  It is an every day process and we are working every day at it but I look at him now and remember what it was that drew me to him in the first place.  I am very happy, I am loved.  We are communicating in ways that we have not been able to before and much of the anger that was within our home seems to have dissipated.  It is a beautiful thing!  Date night, we have not been on a date together for years.  This last weekend he planned everything, got a sitter, took me to dinner and then we went to play some pool where we met.  We laughed and talked and of course he beat me at pool but not by much lol.  It was a really great night! One that we both really needed.  The kids were still awake when we picked them up so we came home and all of us climbed into my king size bed and started watching a movie.  It wasn't long before the kids were asleep but we definitely made some good memories.

I have decided that I want the kids to be more involved with our healthy eating plan.  Adrianna has been cooking with me for a while.  The last couple of days she has gotten up when I leave for the gym at 5 am and gotten dressed and ready to go so that when I come home at 6 she can help make breakfast.  Today we made banana pancakes and smoothies.  I love spending those moments with her.  She asked me what I wanted for my birthday.  It got me thinking, I have all that I need right now.  I have a wonderful family, my marriage is strong again, I have some really special friends.  I have so much to be thankful for.  I am truly blessed and the only thing that I want for my birthday is to know that the people that I love are happy. 

I am hoping to walk a 5k race on Mother's Day with my daughter.  I had hoped to run it as one of my goals is to run a 10k race within this next year but I am not quite feeling confident enough to run this one.  I will get there, it is a process I must remind myself of that every day and I am working hard.  One day at a time, One breath at a time...