End of 2012

Above is how my year started... the middle of the year... and how my year ended.  What a life changing year!

As the year quickly comes to an end, I am becoming reflective on my year of change.  This is the year I became a mom.  Giving birth to Cooper has been one of the most rewarding and challenging things I have ever done!  Those first 6 to 8 weeks of Cooper's life are still mostly a blur... but let's start at the beginning.

In January I started my last semester of course work towards earning my degree in Early Childhood Education.  I finished my classes at the end of April.  At the end of May I had my last day of work at the child development center I worked at for over 2 years.  This job taught me so much about children! And it cemented the idea that working with children was going to be my career.  Not to mention, this job taught me what to do with a baby... because before it, I had no idea!

Then on June 25th at 4:30am, I had pains that I knew meant my life was really about to change.  Twelve hours and one minute from the beginning of those pains, I had my baby boy!  I won't lie... recovery and having a newborn was way harder than I realized.  However, I can already look back at those pictures from the hospital with rose-colored glasses and smile.

Also, just as a beautiful life was brought into this world another wonderful life was taken away.  My father-in-law had a 4 week stay in the hospital that he did not know would be his last few days.  Life is precious and we should try to enjoy minute of it with the people we love!

The last half of the year I have been playing a stay-at-home mom and housewife.  It has not all been easy, as my perfectionism doesn't exactly blend with parenting an infant.  Soon I will be starting my student teaching and Cooper will be entering daycare.  I am both sad that I will not be with Cooper all day anymore; and excited that I will be returning to the land of adults and finishing my degree.  Cooper is now a sitting up, two teeth, babbling, smiling, laughing, food eating, half bottle feeding/ half nursing, amazing, 6 month old boy!

Crafting Presents

I got two wonderful crafting presents for Christmas!  One was a "Teach Yourself How to Knit" book and kit and the other is a sowing machine.

Last year I had decided I wanted to learn to crochet so that I could make something for my soon-to-be baby... but that did not go so well.  I could get started on the first row... but could never make it to the next one.  Someone told me that knitting is easier so I wanted to try it.  And I can already say it is much easier!  I haven't tried a full project yet, but I've practiced some.

I believe I'll try to make a small project soon.  Once I get some knitting under my belt, I plan to try crocheting again.  Wish  me luck!

Christmas Meals

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas!

Since 2008 I have cooked Christmas day lunch (with help from my husband).  Also, I have always made a half breakfast casserole for the hubby and I to enjoy.  This year I planned on making the two usual meals and I made chili for Christmas Eve!

The chili was a hit!  We only had one small bowl left by the end of the night (leave a comment if you want the recipe).  The breakfast casserole is hard to mess up and gone within a couple days.  And for lunch, ham is always included as well as deviled eggs... the rest has varied.  This year my menu included:

ham

deviled eggs

mashed potatoes

dressing

veg-all casserole

green beans

rolls

After enjoying the Christmas Eve chili... my prep work began.  The breakfast casserole is mostly made the night before.  Here's me preparing the dish (in my new Christmas pjs):

Once the breakfast casserole was done, I tried to prep for lunch as much as possible... setting aside ingredients, the dish to cook it in, and attempting to prioritize:

Every year we have gotten an Apple Lane Farms ham... but this year we strayed and got a ham from Sam's. It tasted fine, but not as good as Apple Lane Farms. Next year we'll spend the extra to get the delicious, not just mediocre, ham. The deviled eggs were good as usual. The mashed potatoes... well, they ended up cooking too much and were dry and a little disappointing.  But I could eat a plain potato, so I liked it.  The dressing... was dry.  I've never been a big fan of dressing but I thought I'd try it.  I won't try it again and we threw it away that night because we knew the left-overs would not be eaten.  The veg-all casserole was delicious!  I may have to make it every year.  And I thought since we were having veg-all casserole we could have plain green beans instead of green bean casserole.  The green beans were ok.

Everything was a little crazier this year with a 6 month old.  While we were really getting into the cooking Cooper decided he didn't want to nap.  We'd tried for a little while to let him figure it out on his own.  After we realized it wasn't going to happen on his own, I went up there and patted him till he fell asleep.  Crazy boy was exhausted... just fighting it.

Overall, Christmas was great and everyone left full.  We survived our first Christmas with a kid!  I can't wait till he can enjoy all the magic Christmas brings!

22 Minutes!

I did it!  I did it!  I ran 22 minutes without stopping.  I'm super excited since I probably haven't done that in 5 years!  I see running a full 30 minutes is in the near future... probably a couple of weeks.  I am not the fastest runner by any means.  However, I always feel good when I'm running next to people who turn the speed up super fast and I see them stop and start while I'm still movin' along.

     Side note:  Speaking of "movin' "... did  you hear about the girl on Wheel of Fortune who didn't win
     because she said the puzzle was "six swans a swimmin' " and didn't say the 'g'.  That's just crazy!

I will be adding to my blog soon.  I plan to add an "about me" section and a "favorite links" section.  This may be my last post till Christmas... so Merry Christmas everyone!

My First Post

What do I say for my very first blog.  Well, it's not exactly my first blog... I did keep a travel blog when my mother and I took a road trip in 2004... though I can't remember the name of it or how to find it.

I want this blog to be about the many different things I do and hope that it is interesting, helpful, and a way for friends and family to keep up with my family and me.  As a new mom, I'm sure I will talk about my son plenty!  He is adorable if I must say so myself!

My latest undertaking I've decided on is that I will run a the Cotton Row 10k on Memorial Day.  Ever since running my first triathlon in 2011 I've wanted to do more and more athletically.  In the fall of 2011 I got pregnant with the adorable boy in the above picture and lost all my athleticism.  After having him I was excited to try to get back to running, but was disappointed at my 6 week check-up... my doctor said I needed two more weeks to recover.  At my 8 week check-up, my doctor said to wait another 2 weeks.  Then my father-in-law went into the hospital and unfortunately passed away.

Finally in October, maybe the end of September, I started running again.  Since then I've completed two 5ks... but not run the whole time.  As I'm getting closer and closer to running for 30 minutes without stopping, I'm already looking for my next goal.  I was thinking about training for another triathlon... which I will do another one... someday!  But I decided with a new baby and student teaching, I might not be able to make that kind of commitment.  After the triathlon I made 2 goals, one of which is to complete a 10k by the end of 2013.  So, I decided I would stick to that goal and start that training.

I was excited to go run since making my 10k decision!  Last night, I went to the gym to run (it's too cold outside!) and had a disappointing workout... especially since making my big decision.  I was suppose to run 22 minutes, which would be the longest I've run in a very long time (I've been following coolrunning.com's couch to 5k).  I was going pretty well, then my jacket fell on the treadmill, so I paused my workout and picked it up.  I went to start my workout again and I accidentally canceled it!  Ugh, I had no idea how long I had been going!  I tried to start again and for some reason my energy was zapped.  I was exhausted so I just stopped, came home, and made sure to get to bed early.  I'm sure if I would have kept going for a few minutes I could have finished my run... but I'll just use this minor failure to fuel me for next time.

Ok, I think my first blog has been long enough.  Hope it wasn't boring.  This will definitely be a learning process.