Wednesday, July 31, 2013

You can all sleep well now

The Russian polish has been located. :)

It's currently in stock here, if anyone is interested.

http://color4nails.com/index.php?route=product/search&search=Termo

Squeeee!! :)

Yay!

I ran today and no one had to call 911! My lungs felt like they were on fire and I thought I just might die, but I survived to make this blog post. Baby steps.

According to the color of my fingernail polish, I'm still warm and breathing, so we're all good. :)

Tuesday, July 30, 2013

And on a lighter note...

A few weeks ago I was reading a blog and discovered color changing nail polish. There is a company in Russia that makes the coolest nail polish I have ever seen in my life that changes color based on the temperature of your hands and I want some SO bad I can hardly stand it. There are two online polish stores that sell it in the US and they're always out of it. I want it so bad I almost ordered it directly from Russia a few weeks ago. I must have that nail polish. 

I didn't order from Russia, although I'm likely to eventually break down and do it if I can't find it in the US because I have no self control when it comes to nail polish and I'm completely obsessed over this particular polish. It's ridiculous. 

But in the meantime I searched around for a color changing polish you can buy in the US and I ordered a bottle and it came today. It's not nearly as cool as the Russian stuff. This stuff almost seems like it's for kids and it goes on streaky and dries weird. But with a few coats and a good top coat that works a miracle on any polish I made it look decent and it is really fun to play with! 

When it came the polish in the bottle was pink because it had been outside where it was hot but when it cooled off it turned purple in the bottle. When you put it on your nails it immediately starts turning pink. It's kind of fun to watch. But since the tips of my nails don't touch my skin, they're a cooler temperature than the base of my nails, so the base stays pink and the tips stay purple. SO. COOL.

I keep dipping my hands in water to watch them change, because I'm a big dork and stuff like this fascinates me. It will keep me entertained until I can find that darn Russian nail polish...


Everyone stay calm!

Josh left for Scout camp yesterday. I don't really like it when my kids are gone, it makes me a little antsy. My anxiety is doing much better these days but when one of my kids is gone from the house for a week and I have no contact with them, I have to work a little harder to stay calm. :) Josh is my first child to leave the nest for an extended period of time. It's new territory.

Josh was a little concerned (actually a lot concerned) about the swim test at scout camp because he's not a good swimmer. His leader told him he doesn't have to do the swim test if he's not comfortable, but I know Josh and he's totally going to try it anyway. He'll be fine, his leader knows he's nervous about it and there are plenty of other leaders around and someone will fish him out of the lake if he needs it. ...right?

I'm staying calm, nothing to worry about. *deeep breath*

So yesterday I was working on not dwelling on what could be going on at scout camp and assuring myself that he's totally fine, which I'm sure he is. He's fine. Tooootally fiiiine. I'm cool. No worries. He's fine. I'm fine.

And then l got a phone call last night and the caller ID was the hospital and my heart just about fell out of my chest. It turns out it was church related and someone needed Shawn's help with something. It was fine. I'm fine. Everyone is fine. No worries.

And then we got a phone call at one o'clock this morning. And I jumped up like the house was on fire. (Or my child was on fire, which I'm sure he's not because he's totally fine. It's all good. I'm cool.) It turns out it was the wrong number, but I spent the rest of the night a little wound up. Don't call my house at one in the morning unless someone is on fire. Seriously.

No one ever calls us from the hospital and no one ever calls our house in the middle of the night. I'm trying to find it humorous that both of those things happened the day I was working so hard to stay calm. It's actually really funny, but I think I will wait to laugh until Saturday when my child returns home safely. :)

Which I'm sure he will because everything is totally fine. He's good. I'm good. We're all good. No one is panicking. Everything is totally fiiiine. Right?!

Saturday, July 27, 2013

Night rider

I didn't get on the treadmill today. I meant to do it this morning and then the morning passed and I never got down there. By the afternoon I decided I'd skip it today and I hoped Josh wouldn't notice, lol. He noticed at 9:15 this evening.

He tried to talk me into going down there but the last thing I want to do at 9pm is drag myself onto the treadmill. But he won't let me quit so we decided to take a bike ride together instead. I was tired, I had just eaten and I reeeeally didn't want to go. But I went. And it was kind of awesome.

The sun was just starting to set and the sky was pink. I loved riding through the neighborhood and seeing kids playing in their yard, couples sitting on their front porches and people taking evening walks with their dogs. We rode over to the park and there were people having a barbecue, people taking a walk, a family playing soccer and kids trying to get a few more minutes of playing in before the sun set.

There are fountains in the duck pond that looked pink in the sunset. The temperature was perfect and the sky was clear and pretty. It was peaceful and beautiful and the perfect way to end the day.

I sometimes forget how much I love to ride my bike and how much I love the park. I'm glad I decided to drag myself out there when I didn't think I really wanted to. It was the best part of my day.

Friday, July 26, 2013

Victory for Josh!

Josh is doing the couch to 5k program, which is an app that trains you to run. When he tried it before he made it through the first few days of the program, then he had an asthma attack, gave up, decided he couldn't run and that's what spurred this whole return to running for both of us.

Today he completed the portion of the program that made him give up last time with no asthma attack and no quitting. He ran up the stairs this morning to tell me and he was practically jumping out of his skin he was so excited and so proud of himself. He kept saying "I didn't think I could do it and I did it!" It was one of those moments as a mom that I don't ever want to forget so I'm writing it down. I'm so proud of him, and I'm grateful to him for being such a good example to me. Every day when I feel like quitting he makes sure that I don't and watching his successes makes me want to keep going.

I'm making slower progress than he is, but I'm definitely making progress. I started out on my first day doing 20 minutes and I add a minute to my workout every day. I'm also throwing short runs in whenever I can. It's still nothing to brag about, but just setting a goal and sticking to it feels good. With some time and effort I can work back up to where I was before. I already feel better. Exercising every morning improves my mood and gives me an extra energy boost to get through my day.

One thing I'm excited about is that they're building a branch of the gym I have a membership to right next to the new park I used to ride my bike to last summer! I got a membership through Shawn's work a few years ago. I was using it for water aerobics for a while. I haven't been in ages but the membership fee is dirt cheap and comes right out of Shawn's paycheck so I've never bothered to cancel it because it hardly costs us anything and I keep meaning to go back.

Right now if I want to go it's kind of a drive to get there, but in a few months it's going be basically within walking distance from my house. I will be able to get there through the park. I could ride my bike over there, work out and ride home if the weather was good. I probably won't do it much this year because Clarissa is still with me most of the time so it's easier to just use my treadmill at home but next year she starts Kindergarten and I will be childless for part of my day every day. It would be nice to be able to go over there by myself in the mornings. Then I could use different machines. The treadmill gets boring after a while. It's a long range plan, but I'm hoping to make it work.

So everything is going good here these days. Josh is off to scout camp next week, so my workout buddy will be gone, which will be a bummer, but he's really looking forward to camp this year and I know he's going to have a great time. This weekend I need to get him packed.

Summer is flying by but we're doing great and reaching goals! :)

Thursday, July 25, 2013

Woohoo!

I ran today! Not for long, and not well, but I ran! It turns out that I haven't completely had to start from scratch with the running. My asthma is improving every day and even though it's still not great, it's not holding me back as much as I thought it would. I'm still taking it slow and mostly walking, but I'll get there.

Josh is doing awesome with his running. He's successfully doing the couch to 5k program and yesterday after his run he had so much extra energy he took a bike ride. Week one has been a huge success so far!

Today I've got a hundred things on my plate. I have some church meetings this afternoon and tonight I'm having a Korean movie girls night with friends. Those are the best!! :)

Tuesday, July 23, 2013

Motivational reminder



I lapped everyone on the couch today. Barely. :)

Monday, July 22, 2013

21 minutes

I power walked on the treadmill for 21 minutes today. Seriously, it's kind of super embarrassing to come here and admit that I'm proud of myself for walking for 21 minutes. That's clearly nothing to brag about. But I'm getting on the treadmill and it's better than not doing it so its still a personal victory.

Josh is doing the couch to 5k program and is alternating running and walking. He's doing awesome and he said his asthma didn't really bother him today as much, which was a huge victory for him. He's in much better shape than me, obviously, and could probably run just fine if it wasn't for the hurdle of the asthma. So he's starting slow and working up to give his lungs some time to cooperate. I'm proud of him and it's fun doing this together.

Shawn is also participating but he prefers to do his running at night, so he hasn't done it yet today. We decided that our goal is to exercise five days a week. We're taking Sundays off and then we each get one other free pass a week, taken whenever we feel we need it. Shawn and Josh are doing couch to 5k three days a week and then just walking the other two so they don't overdo it. Right now I'm just walking every day until I can work myself back up to running again. It will be slow. I'm doing it anyway.

I may or may not update my progress daily like I did last time. I'm still taking this slow. We'll see how it goes.

This week we're busy getting Josh ready to go to scout camp next week. He's really looking forward to it this year, which is great because last year he really didn't want to go. I kind of had to insist that he give it a try when he really didn't want to last year and that was hard. But he ended up having a great time and is looking forward to it this time. That makes it easier to send him. I worried about him all week last year and worried that I had made the wrong decision insisting that he go. Seeing a smile on his face when he returned was a big relief.

We're also starting to get ready to send Matthew back to school in a few weeks! His school oddly begins the second week of August this year. That is unusually early and has caught me a bit off guard. I'm not quite ready to start buying school supplies yet, but I guess I'd better get on it. Matthew starts fifth grade this year. His last year of elementary school. That kind of blows my mind. Wish my kids would stop growing up so fast!

Clarissa has been a budding chef lately. She likes us to watch My Little Pony videos with her on YouTube sometimes and one day we discovered a YouTube video called Nerdy Nummies, which is kind of a YouTube cooking show where a very hyper woman makes different character related treats. She did a My Little Pony episode where she made pony cupcakes and Clarissa could not possibly have been more fascinated. Now all she wants to do all day is watch that woman make cakes and cupcakes and then pretend to replicate them in her play kitchen. She has been making us pretend cupcakes and cookies and cakes for days. She talks about baking all day long. She has watched those videos so many times that I'm pretty sure I could sit out the ingredients and she would know exactly what to do, lol. I think I'm going to let her help me make some cupcakes this week. She'll be thrilled. It's been really funny to watch how fascinated she is with baking.

But for now I have to go figure out what we're having for dinner this week and get some stuff done. Busy busy at our house these days!

Saturday, July 20, 2013

The beginning. Again.

You know what I did this morning? I dragged my overweight behind onto the treadmill. Go Wendy.

And here is why.

So Josh has been talking this summer about taking up running. In the spring when he was choosing his classes for this upcoming school year, he decided to take a special PE class. There were two class options, either just regular PE where you play dodgeball, learn about sports, etc, or a multi-fit class, which is more like a body training and fitness class. Lots of running and cardio and things like that. A bunch of Josh's friends were signing up for that one so he decided to do it too.

And then, when it was too late to change his mind, I think he started to panic, lol. Josh has never been an athlete. He's smart as a whip and has so many talents, but he struggles when it comes to sports and things like that. Part of his problem is that he unfortunately inherited my asthma. Every time they have to run in PE he has to stop and use his inhaler. I know how that goes, I had the same problem as a kid, and it sucks. I can't tell you how many times in my life I tried to be a runner, get in shape, play a sport or whatever and quit because my asthma made it feel like it was impossible.

It's NOT impossible. Every doctor I've ever had has told me that exercise eventually makes asthma better. If you can get past the first part where you feel like your lungs are going to shrivel up and fall right out of your body and you're going to die every time you start moving, eventually it gets better. Well, that's all well and good, but getting through that first part suuuucks. It sucks. It sucks a whole big bunch. So I totally get where Josh is coming from. I have used asthma as the excuse for why I can't exercise for years. It's legitimately hard. Impossible, no, but it's hard and I'm a big baby and I give up.

But anyway, this summer Josh decided that he wanted to start running. He is worried about being able to keep up in the PE class and decided that if he started working now, he would have a much easier time when school starts. I totally agree and support that idea whole heartedly. So earlier this summer he was super excited and started off on his plan to become a runner. And two days into it he had an asthma attack and gave up. That's my child, lol. I have been there and done that about eight billion times in my life.

Yesterday he had his yearly physical and I encouraged him to talk to his doctor about it, and he of course said the same thing to him that he says to me. Exercise is good for asthma. So last night I have him a big long pep talk about how asthma isn't an excuse. You just have to push through it and not give up. I went on and on about how important it is to be in shape and Shawn Googled Olympic athletes who have asthma and it was the greatest pep talk of all time.

And then I realized that the pep talk was being given by the biggest hypocrite in the history of the universe. I have asthma and I give up on running on a regular basis. Who am I to tell him that he can do it when I can't seem to do it? I give up more than anyone I know, lol. Remember last year when I was doing so awesome? For the first time in my life I managed to conquer the asthma and start running. And it was awesome and I loved it. And then I quit, because that's what I do. And it's laaaame.

So I finally realized that I can't give the "you can do it, don't let asthma be your excuse" speech if I'm not willing to follow my own advice. So I told him that we're all doing this together. He's running, I'm running, Shawn's running, we're all doing it. No excuses, we're just doing it.

So this morning came. I opened my eyes and my first thought was "oh crap. The treadmill." I didn't jut give up on running last year, I crashed and burned. I gained the weight back and went back to every bad habit I had worked so hard to overcome. So now I'm starting over from scratch. And I'm really really mad at myself. Last year I had finally gotten to the point where my asthma was no longer a problem, and now it's a problem again. Last year I was legitimately RUNNING! I never thought I would be able to run and I did it. Now I can't run anymore. I'm back to square one. And it suuuuucks.

But I will do it, because I want to be a good example to my kids and I want to help Josh reach his full potential. I want him to realize the importance of getting into shape when he's 13 and not have to drag his over weight behind onto the treadmill when he's 38.

So this morning I faced the treadmill. I walked for 20 minutes. I had an asthma attack. It sucked. Tomorrow I will walk for 21 minutes and tell my asthma to kiss my behind. It's hard and I kind of hate it. But like I told Josh yesterday, eventually it becomes easier and you kind of love it. You just have to get there. We'll get there together. After I finished walking and I could barely breathe and I thought I wanted to die, I came up the stairs, Shawn congratulated me for going a whole 20 minutes longer than I went yesterday and the whole family cheered for me. We're dorks. I freakin' love our family.

So today after we all spend some time on the treadmill we're having a motivational movie marathon. We're going to watch Rudy and The Pursuit of Happyness. Two true stories about people who had big dreams and lots of hurdles to overcome.

If they can do it, so can we.

Monday, July 8, 2013

A year of pretty nails! :)

I was reading back on my blog a couple of weeks ago and I saw the posts I made about my nails last year. I was a nail biter pretty much my whole life. I've always had ugly fingernails and I've always been a bit envious of people with pretty nails. After years of nail biting I assumed that I had ruined my fingernails forever and it never really even occurred to me that I could make them pretty. 

Then last year when I started riding my bike and running, two things changed. First of all, the daily exercise did wonders for my anxiety and I realized that without the anxiety I wasn't really biting my nails. It's always been kind of a nervous habit. 

Second, I started taking vitamins as part of my new "healthy me" plan and they have biotin in them, which is good for your nails and helps them grow. They're called Rainbow Womens One and I highly recommend them. I still take them. 

So between finally getting over the urge to bite them and the vitamins to help them grow strong, I was amazed that for the first time in my life my nails were actually growing. 

So as they grew I started to paint them and I blogged quite a bit about it at first. I was having fun with polish and nail art and all of that for the first time in my life. 

And now, according to my blog, it has been a full year since I started taking care of my nails, so I thought I'd give an update on them. Wow, things have changed in a year! 

This is the first photo I posted of my nails last year when they very first started to grow. I thought they were super fabulous at the time, lol.


Nail polish on my fingernails still kind of freaked me out back then! I could only do light colors because anything bright or bold just felt really weird. I also wasn't very good at painting them at first.

But over the year I experimented, I learned, and nail polish has become a bit of an obsession with me! Now my nails are always painted. It drives me crazy if they aren't perfectly painted at all times and it feels weird to me if they AREN'T a bold color.

 A year ago I didn't even know how to paint my nails and now I have people requesting me to teach nail care classes and teach them how to paint their nails. People ask me all the time who does my nails. ME! :) I own so much nail polish and so many nail care supplies I could practically open a store, lol. 

Here is a photo of what my nails look like now. (Well, not RIGHT now, I took this photo before we left town last week, but close enough.) What a difference a year makes! 



Nail polish is like my little happy place. It's the little thing I do to pamper myself. I'm not super girly or high maintenance in general, but I do enjoy having pretty fingernails. Even after a year I'm still kind of amazed with myself that I managed to keep it up and kick the nail biting habit for good. I'm glad I blogged about it from time to time over the past year. It's been fun to watch them change over time. I'm proud of my progress!

Sunday, July 7, 2013

Oh, also...

After that ridiculously long blog post, I forgot to post one more thing. While I was at my grandmas house she showed me some DVD's she had just had made of all her old home videos. I borrowed them to make a copy and there was a short clip of me the day of my high school graduation. I don't think my parents took video that day, or if they did I've never seen it, so I was really excited to see a video of that day for the first time. It's a short clip, it looks like she was filming me as my mom was taking photos of me as I put on my cap and gown before the ceremony. It's kind of silly, but I thought I'd share it in honor of my 20 year reunion. Oh, to be that skinny again. But the big hair can stay in the 90's. :)

Also, you can catch a really quick shot of my dad at the end! I sure miss him.


I'm back!

Take a seat and get comfortable, this is going to be a long one! :)

We had SO much fun on our vacation! It was a crazy busy week, we never stopped moving. So here I am with a photo montage of some of our activities.

We left town last Sunday. On our way there we stopped to see Shawn's brother and his wife and we had a fun picnic in the park with them. While we were there Shawn took this photo of Clarissa and me.



I love it.

We got to my moms house Sunday afternoon. My mom lives way up in the foothills on a few acres of gorgeous property and it's always fun to go there and see what animals are currently inhabiting her yard. The last time we were there the neighbors pet turkey wandered over for a visit. This time there is a litter of kittens who mysteriously showed up! Here is a photo of one of them:



There's pretty much nothing I love more than kittens, and so do my kids, so we had a great time playing with them. I wanted to take them home REALLY bad. We didn't. But I wanted to.

Monday morning we got up bright and early and headed up to Yellowstone Park. I grew up two hours from Yellowstone Park and I was lucky enough to get to spend a lot of time there as a kid. Shawn grew up even closer and he spent a lot of time there too so it's always fun to go there with our kids. I love the drive up there. We get to go through the town my mom grew up in and I get to drive by my grandparents old house, although she doesn't live in that town anymore. They lived in that house for 50ish years before they sold it and moved to my hometown several years ago. I have awesome memories of spending time at my grandparents house as a kid and I love to get the opportunity to drive through their little town and see their old house. I'm obnoxiously nostalgic on these trips home, which you already know if you follow my blog. :)

We had an awesome time in Yellowstone! We went to the bear habitat, we walked around and looked at the mud pots and we saw Old Faithful erupt. It looked like this:


I've seen Old Faithful erupt dozens of time in my life and I love it every time. 

After we saw Old Faithful we decided to drive up the mountain and see Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone. It's basically a great big canyon with a waterfall and it's really beautiful to see. Here are some photos I took there:




Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone is absolutely breath taking. It's really fun to see. After we spent some time there we found a little convenient store in the middle of the forest and got milkshakes. After all the driving and all the walking in the heat, I think that might have been the kids favorite part of the day. 

By then it was dinner time and everyone was getting tired to we headed back to the town of West Yellowstone where we had rented the cutest little one room cabin for the night. It was kind of like a hotel room, but it was a freestanding cabin. It looked like this:



We got some pizza and had a really fun movie night. Movie nights are kind of our favorite thing. One fun thing about the cabin is that they have fire pits out front and they leave s'mores supplies in each cabin. 


So fun! One of our favorite moments of the trip was when Shawn and the boys went out to make s'mores and were having a great time and then the sprinklers turned on, lol. They came running in a little wet and we laughed really hard. I don't think we'll ever forget that memory. I wish I had taken a photo of them! 

The next morning we headed back to my moms house but we took the long way and saw some fun sites on the way. We visited a place called Big Springs. When I was a kid it was an area with a little dock with tons of fish that you could feed. I have fun memories of feeding fish there as a kid. We took the kids there expecting to see the fish, but sadly there are no more fish. There are, however, about a million seagulls who aren't stupid and know that people show up there with food for the fish and will feed the birds if there aren't any fish, lol. They were right, we fed them. :)




We had a good time ever without the fish. It was hot outside so we took off our shoes and dangled our feet in the water. 







(I can't make up my mind if I like the Matthew photo with a hat or without a hat better, what the heck, I threw them both in.) 

After Big Springs we went to Mesa Falls. It's another really pretty water fall with a pretty little nature hike. We had an awesome time there, but it was SO HOT. I would have enjoyed it a lot more if it had been about 15 degrees cooler. Still pretty though and the kids enjoyed the little walk to the falls. 






It was a pretty awesome little Yellowstone adventure. I love to be up in the mountains and the kids had so much fun exploring and enjoying nature. If you've never been to Yellowstone, I highly recommend it! It's beautiful! 

By early Tuesday evening we were back at my moms house and we had a fun night with them and my brothers family eating pizza. My stepdad is an awesome cook and this year he got a huge smoker. He actually smoked pizzas for dinner and they were awesome! So we had awesome smoked pizza and hung out with my brother and his wife and kids, who I really love spending time with. My brother and I have a lot in common and always end up spending a lot of time laughing when we're together. 

Wednesday we had a fun little family reunion. My mom does a cousins camp for the kids every year and this year she decided to take everyone swimming at a little water park. Our family, my mom and stepdad, my brother and his family and my sister and her family all met up at the waterpark and had an awesome afternoon swimming. There are no photos. I don't like cameras anywhere on the premises when I'm in a bathing suit, lol. 

Thursday was the 4th of July! I have been wanting to go back to my hometown for the 4th of July for years. When I was a kid the fourth was one of my favorite days of the year. I love the parade and the fireworks and the whole big celebration. So we had big plans to go to the parade. And then we didn't go. :( We were having a super fun time on our vacation but by Thursday we were TIRED, lol. We hadn't stopped moving since we got there on Sunday and I could tell that by Thursday morning the kids were starting to burn out a bit. When it comes down to it, I think I was the only one that really wanted to go. It's more of a nostalgia thing for me and no one else in my family shares that nostalgia. For the kids I think it would have just been a hot and crowded morning and I really didn't want to burn everyone out because we still had more adventures ahead of us on our trip. So Thursday morning we slept in a bit and got a slow start. I feel bad that I missed the parade but overall I think it was a better decision for the family. 

One thing I was determined not to miss was the fireworks! My hometown puts on an awesome fireworks display on the 4th. People come from all around to see it. Which is great, but it means that you have to show up hours early to stake out your spot and parking is a nightmare. Fortunately for us, my grandma lives in a little condo right by the area where the fireworks are. You can't see them from her condo because there are trees in the way, but we could park in her driveway and walk over there really easily. That was awesome, because otherwise parking is a huge pain and you have to walk a million miles in the heat. Plus that meant that we got to spend time with my grandma, which was awesome! 

After spending some time with my grandma and staking out our spot for the fireworks, we still had a few hours to kill before the fireworks started so we decided to go see a movie. We took the kids to Monsters University. Super cute. 

Finally it was fireworks time. Yay! We headed back over to out spot and watched the sun set while we waited for the fireworks to start. 



Unfortunately the fireworks ended up being delayed due to an unfortunate unforeseen circumstance and didn't start until 11:00. By then Clarissa had fallen asleep, but the rest of us had a great time once they got going! They were as awesome as I remembered them and I got my moment of nostalgia. :) 

And that takes us to Friday. Is anyone still reading this? I've been typing it and adding photos for an hour. Yikes.  

Friday was my 20 year high school reunion! Yay! :) 

I have never been to a class reunion. We only had a 10 year and I was giving birth to Matthew that week and was unable to attend, so this was a first for me. Unlike most people, I loved high school. I loved that time in my life and look back on it fondly. Well, most of it anyway. So it was really fun for me to go revisit that this week. Unfortunately I think Facebook is killing class reunions and a lot of people didn't attend but I loved catching up with the friends who came.

I mentioned it before, but most of my close friends weren't in my class. I was friendly with a lot of people, but most of my closest friends were older than me and a few didn't even go to my school. I wish I could have seen those people. This whole week as I looked forward to my reunion, those people were on my mind and there were a few people I was really missing. I want a reunion for my whole teenage years. Wouldn't it be fun if that were possible?

But I did love catching up with the old friends I saw at my reunion. Friday at noon there was a picnic in the park near the house I grew up in. It was fun to take my kids there and show them where I used to play and show them the swimming pool at that park where I spent my summers as a kid. Ah, nostalgia. I had an awesome time at the picnic. I saw friends I hadn't seen in 20 years. Some people have changed a lot and some people haven't changed a bit. I loved seeing every one of them. I had great conversations, I loved seeing everyone's kids and I especially loved seeing my kids make friends with some of my classmates kids at the same park I used to play with those classmates in when I was there age. (Did that sentence make sense? lol)

Friday afternoon we had a few hours to kill between reunion events and we spent it with my brother and his family. They're awesome to hang out with.

Friday evening we left the kids at my moms house and there was a reunion event at my old high school. Here's the situation with my high school. I went to one high school for my sophomore and junior year and then they built a new high school due to overcrowding and split our class in half for our senior year. I was one of the (un)lucky ones who got moved to the new high school for my senior year. It was fun to be the first graduating class of a brand new high school but at the time we were all super dramatic about being split up our senior year and having to leave the old school that we loved. As a result we agreed to always combine our class reunions and that's what we did. So technically half the people at the reunion didn't actually graduate with me but they were all people I went to at least two years of high school with.

The reunion event was held at the original high school that I spent the first part of my high school years at. I'm not sure if I have been back to that school since the end of my junior year and it was crazy weird to be back! I walked in the front door and was immediately flooded with so many memories. Being the sucker for nostalgia that I am, I just soaked it all in. I walked around for the first little bit and just bathed in the nostalgia. I opened my old lockers and walked through the gym and peeked in the window of the front office and looked at all the old photos on the wall and just completely LOVED it. I was happy there as a teenager.

I have a million memories of that school. I stood at my old locker and remembered the fight I got into with my best friend when she got her first boyfriend and I started feeling like the third wheel. We didn't speak for a while after that, which was awkward because our lockers were next to each other, lol. I sat on the bleachers in the gym and remembered all the games and assemblies I had sat through there. I stood in the commons area and remembered all the school dances I attended there. I remembered things I had totally forgotten until that moment. I remembered one school dance where we got bored and laid down on the floor and counted ceiling tiles. I remembered the first dance I went to with my high school boyfriend that ended 10 minutes earlier than it was supposed to so we drove out to a field and had one last dance in the moonlight. I remembered nights in the newspaper room meeting deadlines, passing notes in the hallway, having crushes on boys who didn't know I was alive and falling in love for the first time. I truly loved that time of my life.

It was so weird to be back there as an adult with three kids, talking to people I've known since I was five but haven't seen in 20 years. In some ways it doesn't feel like 20 years have passed. I feel like I was just in high school yesterday. But on the other hand, so much has changed and so much time has passed that walking into that school felt like walking back into a whole different life. The whole night was kind of surreal. I know some people couldn't care less about high school reunions but I loved it. I hate losing touch with people and I'm thrilled to make contact again. I had a great time. 

I didn't take a lot of photos, but Shawn took one with my cellphone when all my classmates gathered on the bleachers for a group photo. For a class that was so big it had to be split into two high schools, that's a pretty small gathering for the reunion, but I loved seeing everyone who was there.



And I got all artsy with a photo of my name tag because I'm obnoxious like that. 



So the reunion was awesome. I loved seeing the old school and all my old friends. Also, I felt old, lol.

Saturday we spent part of the day visiting with Shawn's dad and we visited my dads grave.




Then in the evening I did a photo shoot with the kids. I like to do photo shoots at my mom's house because she has such an awesome yard. Every summer when we go up there I take an evening and do some portraits of the kids. Here are a few of the ones I got this year:











And that brings us to today. This morning we packed up and headed home, tired, but happy. We had an amazing week full of family and friends and lots of adventures. I know this blog post was extremely long, but I had to write it all down because I didn't want to forget any of it. 

Our adventures aren't quite over. This week Matthew has scout day camp and Friday we're packing back up to leave town again. It's our annual cabin weekend with our friends. It will be a short trip, but it should be lots of fun! So far it's been a busy summer at our house!! :) 

Monday, July 1, 2013

Home

Yesterday we made the trip to my hometown for a week of fun activities and I'm really excited about everything we have planned! I love coming back to my hometown. It still feels like home to me. I love seeing friends and family and spending some time doing things I loved as a kid.

One of those things is where our adventure is leading us today. We're headed up to Yellowstone Park! I was lucky enough to grow up two hours from Yellowstone Park and I spent quite a bit of time there as a kid. We used to take day trips in the summer and we'd also go camping in the area. I have great memories of my time there as a kid so I'm really excited to spend some time there this week with my kids. We're leaving this morning, spending the night and coming back to my moms house tomorrow evening. I can't wait!

Later this week we have other fun things happening. A little get together with the cousins, a 4th of July celebration and my high school reunion at the end of the week. It's going to be a really busy week but I think it's going to be really fun and I'm looking forward to all the adventures ahead of us!