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Sick of winter

Tonight we prep to get hit by another winter storm. I think everyone in Michigan is sick of it at this point. Bella is home from school with a headache that wouldn’t go away, had her drink a bunch of water and take a nap. Could we all just hibernate until spring? It’s cold and windy, I want to be outside riding the horses! Thankful at least for round bales as it makes our daily chore load a lot less when it’s 20 degrees.

Shane was very full of it after being stalled overnight on the worst day.

I’m struggling personally with the cold and lack of sunlight, fresh air! Just the thought of going out right now is depressing. I find that mostly these days people don’t care about others as much as they say they do, but sometimes sharing our struggles helps other people to know they aren’t alone in theirs. For all those struggling with getting through the last (hopefully) and hardest part of winter, I feel you! My horses feel it too I think. I love watching them play, even in the snow, but I know how much they love to run the big pastures and graze. We all are looking forward to the freedom we gain in the summer, long miles on wonderful trails, longer days and green grass. We can get through this. I have to do the self talk daily, “I will get through this, spring is close”. We’ve got this!

Frodo with a snow blaze.
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A little bit of Heaven

Today started off like any day, but it was rainy and cold outside so we did inside things. Chores, be lazy and watch movies, fun stuff like that. I watched A Little Bit of Heaven, and it was a good movie, maybe a good movie for me.

I was never one of those people who was really open about feelings, I had them, but I didn’t feel like the rest of the world needed to know about them. I didn’t handle death well, not like I’d assume many people do, but it was one of those things I didn’t like to think about in any capacity. When Jake died my whole life turned upside down, and every day was a struggle. I was an emotional mess among other things. I never got to say “goodbye” to him, it all happened really fast, he wasn’t terminal and while he’d had a couple of close calls with death I still wasn’t ready for the reality of losing someone so close to me.

I thought I handled it all pretty well, considering the circumstances, and I let myself try to fill the void and move on because the empty space left behind is hard to work around. I figured it out, maybe it took longer than it should have, but eventually I had to let go of the bandaid. When I did, I let myself be loved by someone I didn’t want to love me. I am so grateful for the man I am married to today. He loved me and was there for me every time I needed him, as a friend first, always. My best friend.

His life was complicated, not that mine wasn’t, but really how much drama does one want in a lifetime? I didn’t want to deal with his drama, not because it was inconvenient, but because I didn’t want to feel that much pain, anxiety, and even love again. I always try to be strong, it’s what I’ve had to do. Put on the “I’m fine” smile and just do whatever is necessary. I got sick of people telling me stupid cliches like “God won’t give you more than you can handle”, “whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger”, etc.. I don’t think saying those things to someone who is struggling helps, if you don’t know what to say to someone in a situation just don’t say anything. I didn’t want to be strong, and I didn’t want to think about God giving me my struggles.

So anyways. I am the person who doesn’t let myself cry (unless I’m -really- mad, then if I’m crying I’d suggest walking away). I don’t want to feel things, even still, it seems like when I open myself up there’s always pain involved. Maybe it’s fear, or avoidance, I just don’t like it. I watched that movie today, and I cried. More than once. It was a reminder of how lucky I am to have Corey in my life. Lucky that I have let my walls down for him, and maybe a reminder that I don’t have to be so strong every time something comes up. I’m sure it’s something I will struggle with forever, but I’ll have reminders along the way. Sometimes it’s good to let go.

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Catching up with Summer

I always think Summer is coming, I’m going to get so much done, etc., but that just doesn’t happen. My kids have been brutal so far this summer. My house is filled with the sounds of arguing sisters and bullying of their brother. Thankfully he loves to read so he can escape to a quiet place and avoid them. Even when we are outside they always seem to find something awesome to argue about like “she’s going down the wrong side of the driveway on her bike!”. Yikes! I know other moms out there understand this, but it just seems like this is the worst summer I’ve had for it. I am blaming them being at school all day long last year for making me not used to the constant noise, arguing, crying… and so on. As much as I hate the onset of winter and the cold that comes with it, I can’t wait for the start of the school year and hopefully my much happier kids!

While my kids driving me insane is no excuse for not posting often, I will admit that by the end of the day, I just don’t want to. When the quiet comes I want to relax and just shut my brain off. Every time I get a good idea about something I want to post/rant about, I get sidetracked doing something else and never make it back over to my computer. The joys of being at home with your children, you very strongly resemble a person with severe ADHD.

I feel bad when Corey gets home and the house isn’t shining in an extremely clean state, but deep down I know this is the real world and while some homes may seem that way (when people know you are coming over to visit), the reality is no one’s house can be that clean all the time and have children and pets (lets not forget the farm!). Speaking of, mowing 6 acres of pasture is a lot of work. Lazy work right, sitting on my butt, but it hurts my back and it’s sooo time consuming. An hour here and there at night when I can leaves me a lot less time for riding. My sanity is largely connected to my large herd beasts outside and I really need to up them in my priorities! Their care of course is at the top with the care of the kids, but riding requires another adult on location or else I’m stuck doing circles in the arena, which we’ve been doing a lot of lately.

So yea, our summer has been good so far but I just don’t feel like I’m where I should be by now. I haven’t been running, not enough riding in my eyes, and the things around the house that I feel should be done just aren’t. Such is life I guess!

Here’s hoping for more sanity, and updates to those who actually stop by the blog. And I apologize to those who happened to stop by when we got hacked… ugh. 🙁

 

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Don't over-do it

So, I was getting overwhelmed about trying to blog post daily, and then I stopped posting all together. Even blogging is hard for me to balance! I find that I do this fairly often in my life, and I can’t be the only one, so I might as well open up about it.

I feel like everything I get in to I want to do the best I can, but I have super high expectations of myself and easily become overwhelmed. I started running, did a few 5k runs, that wasn’t enough, did a 25k, and still wanted more. I’m proud of my marathon, but training etc took a lot away from my riding which is supposed to be my main drive. I need to constantly remind myself that my best isn’t always what I could accomplish given the perfect circumstances, but what I can accomplish at this point in my life with the tools/time that I have. I can’t devote my life completely to rocking out one thing without letting the rest of those things in my life fall to the side. Obviously because of my family situation and the responsibilities that I have, this is not an option, ever. My daily goal is going to have to be constantly reminding myself of my human limitations and being proud of the progress I make!

The seasons are changing, I’m happy that the sun is shining, but at the same time I instantly get this weight knowing all that I have to do throughout the warm seasons to be where I want to be. Maybe I should start a group for all of us who struggle with this to remind each other daily that it’s ok not to be able to reach perfection. Being a perfectionist, an idealist, isn’t always a positive thing. I will survive, I am going to schedule time aside to Blog weekly. Hopefully I can be consistent without being overwhelmed, and I can blog more when something exciting happens without feeling like it’s too much.

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Marathon Recap

I had an AMAZING weekend in Houston! Sorry to have such a delayed post, but recovering from my race/trip has been easier in some ways than I expected and harder in others. I was only there for 3 days, but there was sunshine each day and it was beautiful! I am a sun girl, I’m happier and have way more energy and motivation when the sun is shining. I’ve had a hard time adjusting to not seeing it since I got home.

The marathon was great, it hurt, but I finished! I didn’t get the time I wanted, but on your first imagemarathon, any time is a PR! 🙂 My official time was 5:47:58, finished with not much time to spare. I actually started off with a very good finishing time, but it was a bit faster than I usually can maintain and my joints definitely paid for it. I did do some walking at the end, and I got pretty upset with myself for it, but it’s ok! I had a really good team of motivators, and I don’t think I could have done it without them.

My bff Allison lives in Houston with her family, her and her husband Charlie were my super fan club. They raced around and met me at different areas during the race. At mile 18 she had a poster they printed off of my kids holding a poster and I was crying, it was totally unexpected.image Even though I don’t see her often, this girl has a huge piece of my heart. I think you get few friends in life that mean as much to you as Allison does to me. If she needed me I’d be there for her in any way I could, even with all the miles between us, and I am sure she feels the same. Sometimes you get lucky, and you have a friend for life, even when the world separates you. 🙂

I got to run with 2 awesome distance runners, the marathon was like a training run for them. One ran with me until about the half way point and the other got me across the finish line. On Saturday I met Kevin, the man who got me across the finish line, and Sunday morning I met Jean. It’s amazing to me to have 2 people, pretty much strangers, be so uplifting and motivating. They really made me feel like I could do it, and like I was a person who mattered. They took time to run with me, and lift me up and it made a huge impact on me.

I was also hugely impacted by all the true strangers cheering along the entire race course. Wow! I told everyone I am going to have my kids make signs and we will go to the next big race locally and just cheer for strangers because it made such a huge impact on me! If you ever feel like you want to help others, an easy way to lift people up is to just go stand around mile 18-24 of a marathon and cheer!

I was pretty resigned that I wouldn’t run another marathon again, but now I’m having second thoughts. My biggest worry is that it will impact my racing/training schedule for my horses, so we will see how it goes. My joints do not like running past mile 20 or so, but if I lost a little more bulk they might be ok. Only time will tell. I really like my medal, and honestly I was only really sore after the race when I was sitting around and on the flight home. I took Kevin’s advice though and wore my medal on the flight, it was kind of an explanation I think to those looking at me wondering why I was walking so funny. 😉

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Ready to go!

Today is my last full day at home before the big race! In less than 72 hours I will be finishing up my first marathon! This is HUGE for me! To be honest I’m not a runner at heart, I don’t love to run, but I love being healthy and in shape. Running is a means to an end, I don’t mind doing it with a friend but I detest it on the treadmill and am not a huge fan of a long solo run. Training for this marathon on my own was definitely hard, but it was the motivation I needed to get out and run.

I have learned so much about endurance from training for this run and I’m hoping what I knew previously, combined with what I’ve learned, will make me successful Sunday in Houston. I have a whole new level of appreciation for my horse when we are doing an endurance ride, and I’m hoping that a lot of what I’ve learned about preparing for this race can help me to better condition my horses for endurance rides. One major thing I’ve learned, I definitely need to start watching what I eat when I get home, because without running as much as I have been I can’t get away with eating as much as I have been! Running makes me starving, it takes a lot of control to say “no I think that’s enough”! I know that staying healthy is more about diet in most cases than activity and I know why, because when you work out you eat more, and if it’s junk you are in trouble!

Diet and exercise, but also, equally important is REST. When I get a good night’s sleep I feel much stronger the next day. My muscles need to repair, this means days off between workouts. I will admit I did not follow the training schedule mapped out for me. I’m sure it’s a great schedule for someone looking to PR a marathon, but I will PR with finishing with 1 minute to spare! I’m not looking to win an award so I’m not going to run 5 days a week and completely tear my body down in order to maybe get a much faster time. I think 40 miles a week is a lot on a new distance runner and probably more than their body can handle to start out. Just my opinion, but I’m sure I’ll know if I didn’t get enough come Sunday!

So please pray for my travels and my run Sunday! I appreciate it! 😀

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Corey's Birthday

Yesterday was Corey’s birthday! Hurray for 34! 😉 He thinks he is getting old but I’m convinced old is not a number but a state of mind. I fully intend to be riding my horses competitively into my 70’s.

It was a super busy day for me, Corey loves a clean house so I did my best to clean up, but it’s a huge chore when the kitchen/front bathroom is under construction! I didn’t sit down for more than a few minutes the whole day! I spent the majority of my time working on getting the wallpaper border off of the bathroom so that we can hopefully paint soon, and wow is that a pain! There is even some of it still left to get off today.

I had the kids make homemade birthday cards when they got home from school. They had fun drawing on them and using stickers to decorate. I probably spent the same amount of $ I would for 1 card from all of us, so I really liked this idea better. We had a yummy dinner and cake, of course! Since it was a Monday, Corey went to men’s group for church after dinner and the kids and I played a few games of Uno (or 1 really long game as when they won I let them come back in and play more). It was fun. I wish sometimes we weren’t as busy and we did stuff like that more often. It seems like there is always something going on, sports for me or the kids, errands, chores, construction projects, etc. It’s really nice to just say “that doesn’t matter” every once in a while and sit down and spend some good quality family time together. I love my kids! They were laughing and joking around, I can’t believe how much my girls have grown, playing Uno without much help and reading like rock-stars! Man has kindergarten changed them. <3

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Who did it?

Corey and I passed on going out for NYE this year, instead we opted to go out on New Years Day. We got a great deal on a movie mystery dinner from living social and a friend that was also supposed to go got sick so we were able to get their tickets and my parents got to join us. It was a fun night and our first murder mystery dinner experience. We did go to a murder mystery Halloween party this year and it was super fun, but played out a lot differently than the dinners, it is what sprouted our interest in the dinner though. 🙂

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We started off getting our photos taken, then we were seated with other couples at a table and that became our team. One person at each table (at least) got picked to be a suspect and play a role in the game, thankfully that was not me! The game got started and we ate our dinners in between times of “interviewing” where we would use play money and interview/bribe other suspects for secrets (clues). Some of the people dressed up for the theme, a 1950’s prom, but there were quite a few like us that just wore nice casual attire. It was a fun experience even though I’m a fairly big introvert and it was very out of my box to be talking to so many strangers in a group. Sometimes I think it’s great to step out of your comfort zone, and we met some very nice people. There are times when I wish I wasn’t so introverted, but it really is a struggle to step out of my comfort zone when it comes to that and I think those kinds of changes are done over a lifetime.

 

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Christmas 2014

I missed a few days in the Christmas rush! Corey was off Christmas Eve through Sunday, which was a huge blessing for our family, but it also meant a lot less downtime for me to get on the blog! Christmas Eve we brought our dog home from the vet after getting spayed and then we went and picked up Corey’s daughter that he hasn’t seen since September (insert long dramatic story). We went to lunch with my parents since her mom now lives over close to them, and then we went into Grand Rapids and let the kids play at Catch Air. We had planned something more exciting but plans don’t always go the way we want. Catch Air worked out great for the kids as they got to run around and play as much as they wanted until it closed at 4 and Analise’s mom picked her up from us. We got her a couple Christmas presents to take home, stuff she could use like a box set of young reader chapter books and a cute outfit. All the kids got along really well the whole day, which was huge, seems like with Analise not coming over as often it’s more like having a friend come play for the day.

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Abby, Analise, Bella, and Eli on top of the inflatable slide

 

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They were so done with shopping.

After Analise’s mom picked her up we went over to the mall to get my iPhone fixed, somehow the center button had broken and fallen off during the day. We got my phone fixed, the kids got to play again in the play area at the mall, and we walked around and did some shopping. It was a really long day, but fun for the most part. I decided to try to get a cute holiday photo of the kids in front of the giant Christmas tree, but they were tired and not thrilled about getting their photos taken! Eli seems to be my most difficult photo child lately, can’t seem to get a good shot of him to save my life. He is definitely my son although most of the time he is a clone of his father.

When we got home we opened our family presents and then Christmas morning the kids got their gifts from Santa. We spent Christmas day up in Big Rapids with my Sister’s family and my parents and it was a nice day even though my sister’s family has been a bit under the weather.

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Abby and Bella with their Build A Bear buys.

Fast forward to Sunday after church, more shopping! The girls each got a $10 gift card to Build A Bear in their stockings and Eli got $10 to spend so of course we had to spend it right away. 😉 It was another long morning of shopping (honestly not my favorite thing to do), but I think everyone was pleased
at the end of it.

 

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Sterilization Week

Nothing says “Merry Christmas” like spending a load of money with the vet. Yesterday Bobbi left for his new home after getting his blood pulled for a new coggins, and a shot. We figured if the vet was imagecoming anyways we might as well get some other things done and pulled a coggins on everyone else and Sid the weanling pony got his shots and had a little surgery.

Sid is now a gelding. Yay! 🙂 Abby was in the stall watching the event, I warned her she may not want to watch but she insisted. She didn’t seem to have any issues until closer to the end and we got a good shot of her yuck face. The vet was awesome and even explained things to us all, he was great with Abby (he also has young kids at home). I honestly think the 2 vets we have out from Equine Medical in Lowell are the best horse vets I’ve had. They are great with the horses and with us. When we moved from Lowell there were not a lot of options available to us here without a long distance farm call charge, and Equine Medical is the most expensive (It’s about a 70 mile round trip), but we stuck imagewith them because we really like them over everyone else we’ve had experience with.

Sid looked dead for a while in his stall after, he was up and moving around though when the vet was ready to leave and he spent the night in the stall last night. Spoiled. He has a big stall all to himself, a bag full of hay, big bucket of water and has had grain 3x already. He still had a lot of hay this morning so he’ll probably be in there longer than the 24 hour prescribed stall rest just because he doesn’t seem bothered at all by having his food all to himself. I think if it were Dancer he’d be running circles in his stall, upset that no one else was inside with him, but Sid is happily munching away.

From the horse vet yesterday to the dog vet this morning, Ellie got dropped off for her spay at 8am today. I ran out and dropped her off before Corey left for work so I wouldn’t have to drag the kids out first thing in the morning. She gets to spend the night there and we will pick her up tomorrow morning. It’ll be nice to have that done, I definitely don’t ever want to have to deal with a female dog in heat again. I don’t know how anyone can stand having a dog in their house during that. Yuck. Dealing with the doggy diapers was a pain on top of being gross, definitely not for me.

So now every animal we own is sterilized except for Dancer, and of course the chickens. 😉