SLO in Arkansas: January 2012

Sunday, January 29, 2012

Swim Lesson #1= Public Humiliation

Sooo, I had my first, and possibly my last swimming lesson this afternoon. Basically I stink and do lots of things wrong. The good news is I can still swim while doing all my things wrong:) The coach was super nice and made me feel better despite all my deficits. She was very motivating, using things like "You better do it right this time because I'm videoing you on my phone and I will post it to Facebook if you don't watch out!!" Yikes!! About the only thing I did well was roll on my back like a whale. Apparently I have wonderful form in my backstroke, despite the fact that I have never done it before!! Anyway, it was a tough and more than humbling experience to say the least. Of course it didn't help that my lesson was smack dab in the middle of family swim time and there were tons of kids yelling and splashing around, at times in my lane, and that I knew someone there who got to witness my humiliation, and the lifeguards standing around watching my entertaining performance. It was a tough day in training folks. Mentally tough. Pride wounding. Thinking about quitting altogether tough. But, I won't give up that easily. I will get back on the horse tomorrow with my usual 8 mile run and figure out what day I feel like hitting the pool again for a little more torture:) I can do this!

Saturday, January 28, 2012

BRICK #1

I completed my first BRICK workout of my triathlon training this morning, and it went well:) I have done a few shorter BRICKS so I was a little nervous about this longer one. I was interested to see how my legs would feel after some time on my bike, since my only pace gauge at this point is on fresh legs. I typically run about a 9:30 pace for my runs of 8-12 miles which is where I can hold a conversation with my running buddy. I didn't really have any idea what to expect for my run pace, so we will see if today is a good average or not.

I got on my bike at 6:25am and began the lovely task of riding indoors for an hour and a half. It can get boring, but I have found that using my ipod makes all the difference in the world. I will randomly become aware that I am belting out songs while huffing and puffing:) I am sure my kids think I am crazy....pedaling away and sweating and singing at the top of my lungs in the basement on Saturday mornings:) I found myself watching the Food channel as well, which didn't help as it was all Super Bowl foods and it made me very hungry!! Anyway, the ride went by relatively quickly, and is by far the longest time I have ever spent on my trainer. You get a much better workout on the trainer since you never stop to coast or quit pedaling, so it was more like a 2 hour ride out on the road (according to the guys at my local bike shop). A quick change of clothes and into my running shoes and I was out the door for my run.

Now my plan called for a 15 minute run just to get my legs used to the transition from bike to run, but really, who wants to get all dressed up just to run for 15 minutes?!! Not me, so I figured I would head out on my normal 4 mile loop. Unfortunately I was a bit under dressed as it was 36 degrees with a 17 MPH sustained wind and 24 MPH gusts. It was cold!!! I hit my first mile at 8:34 and decided to just try and hold that the whole way. My legs shook out pretty fast and it didn't feel too hard of an effort. I finished strong and mile 4 was a 8:24. At that point I felt like I was just warming up too:) It was not nearly as tough a workout as I thought it would be, but my legs are tired from it. The hardest part of tri training is finding a pace you can hold comfortably in each discipline, while saving your legs, energy, etc for the next discipline. And fueling appropriately. I am working on figuring all these finer details out along the way.

I have an official private swim lesson scheduled after church tomorrow afternoon!! I am excited to learn some new techniques that will help me swim more efficiently, but I really hate being critiqued!!! Should be interesting, and hopefully my legs won't feel like lead weights in the pool tomorrow:) Week #7 of training is in the books!!!!

Sunday, January 22, 2012

Better Late Than Never!

We had a great Christmas this year! We have really enjoyed being able to stay at our own home the past few years and spend Christmas morning together as a family. I love the looks on the boys' faces when they see that Santa came:) This was the year of Geotrax at our house, and the boys got plenty of them! They have spent hours playing with the train tracks and airport, creating all kinds of fun and new arrangements. We actually ended up moving the boys into the smaller room together and making Tyson's old room the new play room so they would have more room for all the tracks:)

My boys having fun opening presents.

Jace the pilot playing with his new planes. He is obsessed with the forklift he got from Santa, and only stopped playing with it a few minutes to play with the plane!

My sweet Tyson on Christmas Eve. I love how excited the kids get in anticipation of all the fun.

My little guys on Christmas Eve. We had fun opening our gifts on Christmas morning, having a nice breakfast, and then heading to church. The boys did great at church and we spent the rest of the day napping and playing with new toys. It was another magical and fun holiday season, and as always, we are so blessed and have much to be thankful for.

Saturday, January 21, 2012

Jace is Paci Free!

We had been telling Jace for weeks before Christmas that Santa was going to take his pacifier and leave him big boy toys in its place. At times he would be very agreeable to this idea, and other times he would just shake his head no and look worried. When Christmas Eve arrived I really struggled to decide what Santa would do! We finally decided that we needed to follow through with what we had been telling him for weeks since we had already set the stage. Here he is putting his beloved paci on the plate with the cookies for Santa.

He got pretty concerned when we told him to leave it for Santa. Look at that poor face! I am not so sure about this Mom!

Paci with the cookies for Santa.

Getting excited to go to bed and wake up with new big boy toys!! It only took about 10 minutes to rock him to sleep that night, which was amazing for his first night without paci and the excitement of Christmas. My sweet boy did great and we have never looked back. I am so glad we went through with it and he never seemed too traumatized that Santa took it to give a new little baby. He asked for it for a week or so and has finally quit talking about it. I am so glad to be paci free in our house!!!

January

Let's see....what has been going on in January for us. My parent's came down for a visit last week Tuesday through Thursday which was fun! The boys were thrilled to have them here and it was a nice change from the regular routine:) They definitely got to experience first hand how crazy our daily schedules are! I was able to get a nice walk in with my mom and we had a good lunch and coffee together as well. Dad got some good duck hunting in while he was here which made him happy:)

We celebrated Silas' 32nd birthday on the 14th. He finally caught up to me in age:) I had arranged for a baby-sitter for the boys and we dropped them off and headed out to a nice dinner at Longhorn Steakhouse. It was wonderful and we ate a ton:) We were going to see a movie too, but decided to head to the book store instead where we enjoyed some coffee and reading books and magazines in peace and quiet.....yes we are old!! Things sure change when you have two very loud and active little boys in the house. We definitely value quiet time these days:) Silas found several new books to read so he was happy.

We finally launched ourselves into this century and just bought an XBOX 360 this weekend!! This is a big deal for us, since we are probably the most anti-technology people ever! It has the Kinect with it, which we thought would be fun for the boys and our family. We have already had a good time playing this weekend together:) I down-graded our cable package to a really basic one last week, since we just don't have time to watch any TV (plus I think almost everything on TV is garbage anyway). We started streaming Netflix at home so we will see how that goes. I may cancel it if we don't watch much...we will see.

Everything else is good. I am happy to be back in a routine with Bible study after the holiday break. I guess the biggest change is that the new program/group I was working on for work started last week. It is a support group for children of separated or divorced parents. We have had 2 weeks of classes so far and its going well. Not quite as many participants as we had hoped, but we are hoping to keep building it up over the year. I have enjoyed the children that have come so far and am looking forward to next month's classes.

I am continuing on diligently with my training, even though I still haven't registered for anything! I am working out 6 days a week and usually get about 7 workouts in since I double up at least one or two days. I am tired! I rolled my ankle right at the end of my run on Monday and was scared I had sprained it, so I rested it (as in no running all week, but still did all my swim and bike workouts). It felt better so I tested it out this morning with a nice 11 mile run:) That was after my 20 minute bike ride on my trainer. Thankfully it felt just fine so I'm not worried. I have settled into a new routine that seems to work pretty well in my life. I'm up every morning at 4:30-4:40am so I can either run or go to the gym by 5am. Needless to say I have to go to bed earlier now. Some nights it's 8:30 or 9. Some nights its 10pm. Depends on how late I work and how much needs to be done around the house! The boys are up every morning between 530 and 615am so it helps for me to get up and get my workouts done by then. I sure wish they would sleep later! I am still feeling good and healthy overall and enjoying the cross training that triathlon gives me. My poor feet really needed a rest from all the running of marathon training. I still get about 20 miles a week or so in with running, but that is only 2 runs so they get 5 days to rest! It never ceases to amaze me that I manage to get faster even during long distance running. I went out the other morning for a short run and just ran the first mile to see how I was feeling. My watched beeped and I saw a 7:46 mile and thought, well that felt easy, lets see if I can do it again for another mile. I managed to run a 5k faster than my fastest race times from last year, and held a 7:40 pace for 4 miles. I ran the last 2 miles faster than the first two miles! I may have to register for a local 5k just for fun to see what I can do this year:) It makes me wonder what I could get my 5k down to if I really focused on speed work. Too bad I am enjoying all the endurance training, which doesn't leave me much time for the shorter things. I have just completed my 6th week of half ironman training of my 16 week program. I guess I need to register for the silly thing:)

Monday, January 09, 2012

Busy

I think that BUSY will be the theme of 2012 for me! I have hit the ground running (literally and figuratively) this year and not slowed down for one second it seems. I have been trying to start the year off getting everything organized and finished up from last year, and getting my organizational system in place to keep me under control in all areas for this new year. It has taken a bit of work, but I think I am finally ready to rock and roll:)

I have found a new plan to completely de-clutter my home from top to bottom. It is a 12 month calendar with small 10-15 minutes tasks to complete most days of the week. It seems pretty manageable so far, and I am really hoping this is The Year to get my clutter and "stuff" out of the house that we have been packing and moving from house to house with us!

I have cut my work load down to just 2 jobs, which is working nicely so far. I am working at the counseling center Mon-Thurs afternoons and all day on Tuesdays while the boys are in Mother's Day Out. I work for Silas on Thursdays while the boys are in school, and still love those days most of all since I get to spend time with my favorite person! I can't believe I have worked for him for almost a year now...I think I started the end of Feb or beginning of March last year. Time flies!

The boys and I continue to love our Bible study group we attend every Wed morning. We have all learned so much, and it is such a good way to keep me reading, studying, praying and learning so many new things about God. It is truly a blessing in my life:)

I guess it's the fitness area of my life driving me a little crazy right now. So far the only official race on my schedule for this year is a 10k in Little Rock in March. I have never raced a 10k, so I figured this would be a good year to get a time on the books:) I also enjoyed how organized the Little Rock marathon was last year, and wanted to participate in the event again without having to run those huge hills!! It's the rest of the year that is making me crazy.....crazy because I am seriously considering competing in a 1/2 Ironman event. Seriously considering, as in I am training 6 days a week at this point for the silly thing, but just haven't signed up yet. Do I have time in my life right now with a 2 and 4 year old and two jobs to train for a half ironman?? Probably not. It is going to be crazy from now until April? Absolutely! Do I love every second of this craziness? You better believe it!!! Just in case you were wondering, the half Ironman is a triathlon consisting of a 1.2 mile swim, a 56 mile bike, and a 13.1 mile run (half marathon). Now I know I can do the events individually, but this is a major endurance event to say the least. And lets not forget that I just learned how to swim correctly a few months ago this summer, and I thought a 1/4 mile swim just might kill me. I have been in the pool about 3 times a week since December and am feeling fairly confident, but still scared to death at the same time:) But you gotta love a challenge. Anyway, I am planning to continue training to the best of my ability and make a final decision about actually registering a little further down the road once I see how I am doing. I sure hope it works out!

The boys keep growing and changing like crazy. I am due to do a complete post on each of them soon to re-cap what all we have been up to lately. I just can't find the time to sit down more than 30 seconds right now!! My parents are coming for a visit this week too, so we are all excited to see them and catch up!

Wednesday, January 04, 2012

Christmas 2011

I am getting so behind with my posts! Here are a few pics from our Christmas Eve. Silas was so thoughtful and bought me an awesome new camera for Christmas, so these are the last ones taken with my old one. We used the new one for everything else, and I am still trying to find time to figure it out and learn how to get the pictures loaded to the computer, etc. There will be lots more pictures coming soon!! Our Christmas Eve tradition growing up was to have a fancy steak dinner, and it is something we have continued to do with our own family. The boys think it is so fancy to sit in the dining room and eat on the china plates! I think they like the fire/candles the most:)

A few rare shots of the boys looking towards the camera! They were so sweet and excited on Christmas Eve. After dinner we played around and talked a lot about Santa coming. We read Christmas books. Rudolf has become a family favorite around here. We got the boys dressed in their pj's and took our annual trek out into the front yard to look for Santa in the sky.

Then we got our special plate ready for Santa's cookies and milk and set it out by the fireplace. We checked the stockings to make sure they were empty and finally herded the boys off to bed. Silas and I performed our needed duties and got everything ready before heading to bed. I just love the magic of Christmas Eve, and love experiencing the excitement again and again through my children.

A rare shot of me on Christmas morning! Somehow my hair managed to cooperate:) We had a wonderful Christmas morning together as a family. Lots of pictures coming soon hopefully!

SLO in Arkansas