This Mother's Day....

As the rest of my family drives away to a Saturday full of fun, I'm stuck at home, by myself.  Any other day I would rejoice in the peace and quiet but instead I'm trying to hold back my tears.  This Mother's Day weekend, I have to work.  I also am reflecting on Mother's Day pasts and what could have beens.  May 10, 2004 was the due date of our first pregnancy.  That pregnancy ended in miscarriage a week after we found out.  And, on that same day three years ago, I had my second miscarriage.  This weekend holds a special place in my heart.  I think about those two babies and wonder what would they have grown up to be had they survived.  According to the Chinese calendar for gender, both of those babies would have been boys:).  Oh, how our lives would have been different.

If we hadn't have lost the first one, I wouldn't have my beautiful Lauren and if we had not gotten pregnant with the third one, I wouldn't have known that we would have another child.  Brooke was an "oops" baby but she meant to be here no matter what.

I know that I will see those babies in Heaven one day and get to see their beautiful faces and I will know them immediately.  God is so good that way.

I'm not going to get to celebrate with family this Mother's Day weekend like most.  I will sleep it away. The joys of working night shift and also working weekends.  Mark and the girls took me out to eat last night and Mark bought me a beautiful potted plant.  Absolutely gorgeous.  Lauren came and snuggled with me this morning.  Mark is going to celebrate with his mom and family tomorrow evening. My family is getting together tomorrow evening as well.  We all are going to try and make that too.  If not, we will celebrate with my sweet Mama on Monday.  The one good thing about the rest of my immediate family being gone, is that when I get home in the morning, I can go straight to sleep and sleep and sleep.

Happy Mother's Day to all of the sweet mothers I know.  Your lives have been an influence on mine and for that I'm thankful.  Please remember those mothers who have lost their own mothers, have yet to hold their babies or had their babies taken too soon.  This day will be tough for them and they definitely need our prayers.


Happy Mother's Day!!

Failure, maybe?

This is something I have struggled with many times over my 34 years on this earth, failure. Starting something to only finish halfway or not even attempting before I even get started. In July it will be a year since I started WW. The last time I weighed like I was suppose to was February 22nd. As of that date I had lost almost 39lbs. I weighed this morning and I have gained about 13 pounds back. I'm not surprised.

We went to New York in December, then it was Christmas, then New Years and then I joined the gym and then life just got in the way. I quit tracking because I thought I could just keep up in my head. I thought well I'm maintaining this weight so I'm okay. Nope, doesn't work that way. I think I got burnt out on eating the same things over and over again. I got tired of tracking everything single thing on my phone. Stresses from life seemed to derail me as well. More often than not, I found myself eating ice cream, cake, chips whatever late at night after everyone else has gone to bed. I guess that was my distressing technique.

I failed again. I had goals that I wanted to reach. I had hoped to be back to my pre-pregnancy weight (like before Lauren) by this summer. If I had kept on track I would almost be there now. But instead I have got to lose this 13 lbs I have gained before I can keep going.

I will do this. I have to. I see what lies ahead for me in the future and I need to delay that for as long as possible, meaning diabetes, heart disease, and what ever else that will happen to me because I haven't taken care of this body.

I'm hoping that I can get back into exercising. I know this summer that is definitely going to be priority. I just know that I have to lose it. I have to get gung ho again and get back on track. I've done it before and I know I can do it again.

This week....

This week has been, in a nutshell, rough.  It was the first full week back at school for the older girls. We started our basketball season last week, I worked this past weekend, dance on Tuesday, I worked and had church Wednesday, Lauren had practice last night and Claire has practice tonight.  On top of this, we had a snotty and coughing little one.  I started trying to be good again with eating.  I joined the community gym yesterday.  I had my first choir practice as director (that one will have to have a post all its own.) And because we love to do things last minute, we worked on a reading project for Lauren that was due today.

Needless to say, we are all very tired and cranky, except for maybe Brooke.  Lauren and Claire have had meltdowns just about every night.  I'm cranky from working the weekend and not being able to catch up on sleep.  My house is a wreck as I haven't had time to clean or do laundry and there are about 100 loads to do.  Mark is recovering from whatever funk we all have shared and is exhausted. We don't have any downtime this weekend either because Upw@rds games start tomorrow bright and early!!  And Sunday, Claire is yoga-ing it with her Aunt Allie in Durham and we have to get up early to get her there and we have church.  I plan on the ENTIRE family taking a nappy poo on Sunday afternoon.

I'm hoping that next week, we'll be back in the groove and can get our act together and we won't have a reading project to work on either.:)

Weight news, I lost 2 pounds this week so that puts me now to 36.9 pounds total.  I think I'm starting to get to the point where exercise is going to be key for me.  I just need to get fully back into the program and not just every other day as this week has been.  I want to reach my goal by July 20, 2013 by golly I'm going to!!

Where have you Been??????

You know, when I started this blog, I thought I would be faithful to it.  Typing up a post each week, possibly more than once a week, really getting into it like some of my other friends who are awesome bloggers.  Well, as you can see, that I have not done.  I think the idea was great in my head but actually doing it, not so much.  Oh, well.  

I would like to change that in 2013.  Now, with that being "said", I will probably look back at this post in 2 months and think, "I thought I was going to be better about posting!"Anyways, I'm going to try again.

The last time I posted was in October.  We have had a lot go on since then.  The girls got their report cards, they were awesome.  I lost another 5 lbs (yay me!!).  Halloween, the big girls were witches and Brookie was their Hoot Owl.  Thanksgiving was good except my mom got the flu and then I got the flu(which by the way is SO NOT COOL).  Mark and I celebrated our 10 year anniversary (finally) with a trip to New York City in early December and I had reached my weight goal at the time and then promptly gained that weight back.  It's ok, I lost it because I was sick, not a good way to lose weight.

We saw Santa Claus, had our Christmas contata at church, all three girls have been sick and now we are in the new year!  Yay!!  

We did have a loss this past year.  My sweet Grandma Sibbett died on December 8, 2012.  She was 83 and went very peacefully.  She had alzheimer's and had gotten sick.  She went to sleep and never woke back up.  My mom and sister were with her when she passed and they said she went so peacefully.  I'm so thankful for that!!  It was hard because she was my only living grandparent.  Mark made a good point on the day of her funeral.  We lost Grandma about 10 years ago when the dementia/alzheimer's took away her memory and now we have lost her again.  The good thing with her though is she was never mean and was always happy!!  I know she is in Heaven with my grandpa just talking his ears off!!

I have a new adventure that I'm starting.  I'm the co-choir director now at my church!!  Myself and my good friend, Tracy, are going to be rocking the Baptist way in the Quaker church!!  I'm pretty excited but terribly nervous.  I have never done anything quite like this before and I know that I will do fine because its for the Lord!!

Lauren and Claire have just started UPWARDS basketball and we are all excited.  I think this season is going to be a good one.  I'm looking forward to watching develop their skills and hopefully fall in love with the sport.  I know their Daddy will be excited if they do!!  Brooke will enjoy climbing up and down the bleachers where as Mommy will not!!  She is on the go BIG TIME!!

Speaking of Brookie, she is such a joy.  Right now she has a terrible cold/cough and we were up late last night dealing with it.  She tries to be just like her big sisters, playing with their toys and trying to keep up with them.  She LOVES LOVES LOVES Dora!!!  She calls her "Backpack!"  We are trying to teach her to say "Dora" but she just says "Backpack."  She'll be going to kindergarten speaking Spanish.  She watches it constantly and because I'm a bad mama, I just let her.  It makes her happy and that makes me happy.  She is a good eater and loves juice!!  She loves fruit chews too.  She still has her paci but I think we could get rid of it if we wanted.  She loves her crochet blankets still too.  She can say Mommy, daddy, juice, backpack, boots, mine, yummy, bye-bye, hey, my, cat, and can make most of the animal sounds.  She loves Scruffie our cat and loves to play in the dog food:(.

As of today, I've lost around 35 pounds.  December was not a good month for me, I didn't watch it.  Too much was going on and I just couldn't concentrate on it.  I've started counting again and am hoping to join the gym in the next few days.  I would like to reach my goal by July, I have about 50 lbs to go.  

This is enough for now....hope everyone has a great weekend!!!