Photo Challenge & Update

What a busy busy fall! I'll get more into that later, but first, the reason I'm joining you again after months of silence.

I'm so excited to announce that I will be taking part in a photo challenge hosted by my friend Hannah over at The Ever Eclectic. You can check out a into to the project here. And the post of her first exercise here.

Each week, I'll post a photo as it relates to the exercises found in the book Shooting with Soul.

Stay tuned for the first exercise: "Glimpses of You" later this week. I hope you guys link up too!

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Now, I'm going to give a little catch up of the last few months. You can stop reading, if you want, I won't be offended. Or just scroll through the pictures. I do this more for me, than for you - I like going back and remembering too.

I started (and finished last week!) some classes online from a local community college. I'm working on the requirements needed to sit for the IBCLC exam.

Of course, the kids started back to school. 5th and 1st grade. How does that happen?

 

Lydia turned 2:

I ran my second half marathon. It was quite possibly the most difficult thing I've ever done, except child birth x3...That's a sore subject, so we'll leave it at that.

I registered and started training for the Myrtle Beach Marathon on February 14. Just under 9 weeks to go. Training is going great. Maybe someday soon I'll share my training schedule.

We had our first snow day!

We had a student of the month:

We had our first ever (of many!) band concert. Fifth grade band is about as good as it gets, haha!

The last few weeks have been busy with the big kids basketball schedules. Juggling 2 schedules is hard sometimes. Thankfully, we have very few games that overlap. So while I will be doing a lot of driving between now and March 1, I will get to see the majority of the games.

Catching Up

Our winter has been busy. And cold. Bitter cold.

We filled our Saturday's with basketball games. And some Friday nights and Sunday afternoons. We have one last hurrah tomorrow night at the bowling alley with Noah's team. I sure will miss it, but am also looking forward to a free Saturday :)

I've certainly loved the nice weather the last few days. Lydia and I have been able to get out yesterday for a run and then today we took a walk and played on the playground. She giggled the entire time.

Chad had a meeting tonight, so after homework, we went to the basketball hoops to get some more sunshine:

(and then after dinner, we went for ice cream, shhhh... don't tell Chad :)

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Chad did a little DIY last week.
We started with this:

And ended up with this:

























Isn't it great?
Yes. Now I can delete my "House: Foyer" Pinterest board!

And our new "jumbo" coffee mugs:

oh wait? Swanky coffee shop? Nope! :)

And then these 3 :)














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What have you guys been up to?

Ever feel like you need a reset button?

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You know how when you power down your iPhone, and when you start it back up, everything wrong magically is fixed.

Or when you call tech support and the first question they ask is, "have you restarted your computer?"

That's why I haven't checked in since last Monday. I needed a reset. I spent my time away from the blog (and other things) going to bed early, spending time with family, basketball games, napping, running, catching some Olympics, and trying to figure out how to be a better Christian, wife, mom, friend, runner.

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Taking time away from the unnecessary is a good way to write a new plan. Not a pencil-me-in type of plan. A new life view type of plan. It forces you to decide what's important. I still don't have it all worked out, but I'm excited about this new direction.

Stay tuned, over the next few weeks, I'll be telling you about these changes, after I work out the wrinkles.

 

Polar Vortex? Just plain cold!

A busy day at home with the kiddos.

Snow day #6 here. Thankfully, Ohio came up with (and our district adopted) a plan to give us a few extra snow days without adding days to the end of the school year. Enter Blizzard Bags.

Busy working on their Blizzard Bags in their pjs:

 

 

Miss Lydia had to be in on what the big kids were doing:

 

So much so that we had a no nap day. Maybe she'll sleep tonight? Probably not.

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Funny story about the laundry today:

I was putting in the 2nd load of the day, I had a shirt and skirt of Lydia's on the dryer (pretreated with Dawn after an incident with a green marker). I started the water and tossed those 2 in, ran upstairs for the rest but completely forgot what I was doing. As in, I didn't remember what I was doing until I heard the dryer go off and went in to switch and noticed I forgot to put the lid down on the washer AND then I still didn't remember until I went to switch them to the dryer and whoops! There were only 2 pieces of clothing still in the washer. Oh, there's more- I switched them to the dryer and apparently forgot to turn it on. I may be losing it.

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Dinner:

Chicken philly sub and cheesy potato chips. The bun? Oh, just yesterday's bun from Jimmy John's. 50 cents. So yummy. It really made the sub. Go. Buy one or two tomorrow.

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Chad told Lydia to come say night night to Noah. She cracked up laughing and crawled into his bed. Cuties.

 

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The temperatures today were not as cold as it was a few weeks ago, but still so bitter cold. This has not been good for the running. . . I know I sound like a broken record. I keep thinking that at any point this winter will somehow turn into last winter. Remember? 30s and 40s all winter long? Yes please.

I am excited for Friday though, the forecast says 37! A run with the BOB is looking good :) Hopefully, the bike trail is thawed out by then, I'd really like 5 flat miles.

Oh, and I'm really hoping that next winter is less brutal since I'll be finishing up marathon training in December and January. I'm still in denial I'm even saying that out loud.

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Are you looking forward to warmer days ahead, whenever they get here?




 

A Glimpse Inside: Laundry

As I mentioned in this post, I *think* I have a laundry system that works for me. And I'm going to share it with you tonight.

 

When I first quit work in 2011, I tried a load a day start to finish system and it just didn't work for me. Well, I was good at washing and drying one load a day. But I had trouble following through with the fold and put away part, and we were living out of baskets of unfolded laundry and I was folding everything at the same time.

Tuesday is washing day. I gather up everyone's dirty clothes hamper and tote them downstairs to the laundry room. Then I sort into piles of towels, warm whites, cold whites, darks, jeans, and running/workout clothes. I usually have 2 loads of towels and sometimes an extra load of darks. After the dirty clothes are sorted, I throw the piles back into the hampers to await washing, otherwise, Lydia would be dragging dirty laundry all over the house.

Throughout the day, I throw in one load at a time. Depending on how many loads I have in a week, I'm usually finishing up before I have to get the kids off the bus. Tuesday ends with hampers full of clean clothes.

Wednesday is folding day. I start by sorting the clean clothes by person and separate all the socks. Each persons pile goes back into their hamper. Then I get started folding. I always fold the basket of socks last incase socks get stuck in with the clothes. I try to get one basket folded before Chad leaves for work. Sometimes I can fold some here and there if Lydia is feeling independent, sometimes I have to speed fold during nap time. I try to get it all done before I have to get the kids off the bus, sometimes I do, sometimes I just don't. When the big kids get their homework done, they put their clothes away- I put away mine and Lydia's.

I've been pretty successful in keeping up with the laundry using this system. And I don't constantly feel like I'm behind. That's a win if you ask me!

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What's your laundry schedule?

What's are favorite laundry detergent? I'm a Tide and Bounce girl all the way.