Yesterday was a great day. Mother’s Day.
Usually around here Mother’s Day consists of a normal day where I get flowers. Which is fine. But this year Linus had his heart set on making the day really special and Jeremiah followed through in helping him.
A few days before Mother’s Day I was driving back from getting goat milk and we had the radio on and it was playing some commercials. I wasn’t paying any attention to them when Linus said, “Mom we aren’t doing THAT for you for Mother’s Day, we are doing something WAY better.”
So I thought, maybe I should inform Jeremiah that Linus had some grand ideas and may need some help with them.
So I did.
I was TOTALLY thrown off when Jeremiah leapt out of bed sunday morning when Christian started crying. I said, “What are you doing? You never get up this early on Sunday…” I really and truly did not understand what was going on.
“It’s Mother’s Day, you get to sleep in.”
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Then we got up and ate leftover quiche and went to church.
After that we ran to the grocery store because I was not going to be allowed to cook and as you can imagine we don’t exactly have things around the house that the husband can just make out of a box. And we were pretty much out of leftovers, so we got some fried chicken and sides and a delicious salad with huge chunks of cucumber, red onion, cherry tomatoes, black beans and a bunch of other stuff.
So we ate lunch and put the kids down a nap and Jeremiah finished watching the King’s Speech, great movie. We had started it the night before and I was to tired to finish it.
Once the kids got up, we transferred car seats to the Land Cruiser and got a little hiking pack together and some snacks and the dog and cruised on up to the mountains for some hiking.
I LOVE hiking.
The Land Cruiser makes things especially exciting because we can get way back in woods where there aren’t any other people around.
So we got to do a little off-roading as well which is always exciting.
Once we got way back somewhere we unloaded and went for a hike.
Christian is getting way to heavy to pack around in the baby back pack so we decided to try letting him walk and he did awesome. I was shocked. He kept up with the other kids most of the time and I hardly had to carry him at all! There was a couple hairy spots that were steep and covered in sticks and pinecones when he wanted to be carried. But that was it. He was quite the little trooper.
We got to see some great views of the mountains and do some fun exploring and of course Juliette did some flower picking.
Once we got back to the truck with 3 worn out children, we loaded up and went home. Ate some more leftover food and put the kids in bed.
Once they were tucked in, I put on my running gear for the first time in almost a year and went for a run. This wasn’t totally spontaneous, I meant to get up in the morning and go but since I had the opportunity to sleep in for once…..ya, that didn’t happen. The reason I have started running again is because my sister, Rachel, has been training to run her first marathon. She has already done a half and has been working towards running in the Portland Marathon in June. But she is questioning her ability to make it the whole way and is trying to set herself up for success by putting things in place to encourage her. Like me 🙂 So she asked me to run the last 6 miles with her.
Of course I said yes.
You see I used to be a runner. I ran cross country in high school, I have a varsity letter and was a team captain my senior year. I of course continued running for many years after high school – until I had kids. Well, then I just moved to a treadmill at the YMCA. I stopped running and switched to walking while I was pregnant with Juliette and then got back into it after she was born. Then I got pregnant with Christian way sooner than I really wanted to and was sort of in denial about being pregnant again. So I kept running. Then my hip started coming out of place all the time and after about 2 visits to the physical therapist I was told to knock it off until I had the baby. So I ran in the pool in neck deep water. If you haven’t ever tried that, it’s a great workout and easy on the joints. Eventually I got to the point where I was so pregnant I would just drop the kids off at the child watch and float in the pool.
Well, after Christian was born I ended up getting into circuit training rather than running. I was doing a weight loss competition, purely out of my competitive nature not because I needed to loose a ton of weight but because I simply wanted win. So I followed Jillian Michael’s book, Making the Cut and I got second place and lost 9.5% of my body weight. So then I was hooked on that type of workout and didn’t go back to running. I have been doing HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training) workouts for nearly a year now (www.bodyrock.tv), which are awesome and are VERY good for cardiovascular health as well as strength.
So even though I really haven’t run in a long time, running 6 miles isn’t something that scares me at all. I just have to work up to it and I have 5 weeks. And I will be going from 7000 feet to sea level, that should help 🙂
So I went last night for the first time in a super long time and I felt great. I was really happy with how I did. I need to go out in my truck and see what the mileage was but I am guessing it was about 2 miles and the only reason I couldn’t go farther than that was my lungs started to hurt. Strength-wise I think I could probably do 4 with no problem, my lungs just aren’t used to it.
So I will be posting about my progress. I think this is going be a fun project and a great way to change up my exercise program for a while.
This is also a HUGE obstacle for Rachel to overcome as she has had her own health problems in the last year and was nearly diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis. Thankfully the doctors decided it wasn’t MS and her symptoms seem to have been dwindling, slowly but surely. But when she first started on her journey she was so dizzy all the time and her vision blurry, she could barely walk, much less run. So she decided that was what she was going to do. Run. So she started on the elliptical machine and eventually was able to move to a treadmill and then started running outside with a group who was training for a half marathon. After completing the half, she decided she may as well go for the whole thing. So here we are 5ish weeks away and Rachel is right on track with her training. I don’t think she needs me, she’s one tough bird, but either way it’ll be fun to do together and I am super excited to be able to be there for her if she DOES need me.
If you are going to be in the Portland area on June 19th come cheer her on!!!
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