Christy B’s Weblog

Hello!  I know you have probably forgotten me by now, but it’s Christy!  Remember me?  I used to blog until my life took over!  Like many things, I don’t want to do anything that is not perfect, whether water skiing or blogging, and Brian just told me, “A quick thought is ok.  Not every blog has to be a masterpiece.”  Now, obviously he has not been reading my blog because “masterpiece” is not quite the word to describe it, BUT – he does have a point.  I need to relax.  That is my word for 2009 and all.  Probably time to start practicing it.  Soooooooo………..

It’s May!  Can you even believe it?!  I have finished my wedding invites (thank God), did my sis-in-law’s shower (turned out great!), went on a girl’s weekend (awesome),  just got back from our church network conference (love Mark Batterson), have been working on my talk for the spring brunch (pray), caught the swine flu.  Well, it’s not really the swine flu, but a horrible cough and cold.  I think I slept about 8 hours just today – not at night, mind you – during the day.  Now it is 11pm and I don’t feel tired.  Hmmm.  So I am blogging!  Here is the run down of the last month.

Our big boy!

Cool dude!

Jake has finally mastered the two wheeler.  Yes, he is almost 6, but it is not easy to find a dry day that we are all home to mark this great achievement!  He did GREAT!!  Hardly needed any help!  His sisters were so proud of him.  Love it when they are getting along.

Looking too old!

Madison got her hair cut.  She immediately aged about 5 years.  CRAZY!  She says I always say that when any of the kids get a haircut.  But, it’s so true!!

Egg Hunt

Easter was great!  The egg hunt our church did was a HUGE success!  Tons of people showed up!  Our Sunday services went great too.  God is good.

My sis-in-law's gift and contest entry.

One super exciting thing that happened in April was my selection to the Craft Warehouse Design Team!  WoooHooo!  I will get to design projects for them, get free product and a discount at the store!  What is better than that?  Tomorrow is National Scrapbooking Day, by the way, the first day of my discount.  Sick or not, I will be there! :0)

Dear Friends!

The best part of April was girls weekend at the beach house.  I went with four of my college girlfriends for 4 days of RELAXATION!  It was soooo great.  It was like we were all back in the dorm, but with more smarts, that’s for sure!  We also didn’t have to raid Kim’s room to get enough money for Taco Bell.  My friend, Rod, prepared wonderful food for us.  We were spoiled!!  What I loved is that these girls HAVE MY BACK!!  They have loved me for 20 years!  I was able to share some things that, as a pastor’s wife, I just can’t share with people here and my college girls could look at the situation with only my best interests in mind.  It was so refreshing.  They gave me a list of things to do when I got home.  I love a good list, and I am half way through, Girls!!  I thank God for my friends.  What a blessing!

Brian and I just returned from our churches network conference in beautiful, scenic Pasco, WA.  Ok – it rained the whole time.  Anyway – one of the guest speakers was Mark Batterson.  He was sooo great to listen to.  Inspiring.  I can’t wait to read his books.  Brian has read them and loved them and that is saying a lot because he does NOT enjoy reading.  They are titled: “In a Cage with a Lion on a Snowy Day” and “Wild Goose Chase”.  I will give my review when I am done.  I have heard they are seriously life changing.

Only 27 minutes until National Scrapbooking Day!!  I better go get my beauty sleep!

Well, it is spring time here in the great northwest.  That means beautiful flowers but still cold weather.  It makes it feel like it isn’t spring, but on Sunday, when it was hailing, I got the first real wiff of my grape hyacinth as I walked up to my front door!  Now that says spring!!  They smell so good!  I made Jake stop and smell them and he told me they smelled like “an old blue marker”. Ok – whatever 5 year old.  Appreciate nature!!  Then again, I have a picture of the cherry blossoms on my computer as my screen saver and the first time he saw it he said, “Wow! That is so pretty!”  I guess I’ll cut him some slack on my beautiful spring flowers smelling like old pens.

So, it is spring and my spring cleaning is almost done.  The only thing left is the toy closet which I have tried to pawn off on the girls, but Katelyn thinks it should be a WHOLE FAMILY project.  We all know what that means, they help me pull everything out and then conveniently find something else to do when it comes to sorting and putting everything back.  So, it is still messy.  I also didn’t clean my pot lids on top of my pot rack.  I figure, my mom is coming in May and she loves those jobs that I never seem to get to! Right, Mom??  But seriously, I have almost enjoyed doing laundry in my clean laundry room, I smile when I look up at my spiderweb-free curtains, and I found a bunch of old Creative Memories stuff that I’ve earned $80 on so far on ebay!!  WooHoo!!

I took last week off and did a little scrappin’ and a little nappin’ and talked to a lot of my girlfriends on the phone and read a book.  I like that better than Spring Cleaning 2009!!  But now it is back to reality.  Next week is spring break, so I need to become the cruise director for the kids.  I am heading up and speaking/singing at our women’s spring brunch on May 9th, so I have been praying about all of that.  I am doing my sis-in-laws shower in about a month, so I need to get out the invites and plan that.  I have two baby gifts to make. Mother’s Day. I am making invitations for a wedding and doing the decorating for that all the while I am doing our homelife group, and attempting to do a newsletter for that, fitting in rehearsals for Easter and entering the Scrapbook Design Team contest for CraftWarehouse.  I think it is time to start my monthly craft night at the church too.   It makes me tired just thinking about it all!  I am glad I took last week off.  So……. what am I doing to prepare?  I am blogging and doing laundry.  Which should I stop doing now and get to work????

Sweet Sleeping Boy

Isn’t he so cute?  My precious little boy.  This is an older picture because now his room has a Star Wars theme and the walls are striped blue and gray with a black border and Anakin Skywalker posters everywhere, but I digress.  Last night, Jakey came into my room because he had a bad dream.  He wanted to sleep with me since Brian was still downstairs.  “Of course you can!” I say.  He grabs his water cup from his room and jumps into bed with me.  He snuggles down, facing me and closes his eyes.  Then they pop open and he throws his arms around me and gives me a kiss.  Ok, could he be any sweeter?  As his eyes close again, I just stare at him.  I can see him well because he has to sleep with our door open and the hall light on.  The hall that Brian has just put new BRIGHT lightbulbs in this weekend!  So, I am staring at him and praying that he will be everything that God plans for him to be.  It was one of those mom moments that just warm your heart and make you thankful.  I drifted off to sleep.  Suddenly, I am awakened to a small hand clobbering me in the face.  Whoa!  My heart is beating really fast and my nose is stinging.  He, on the other hand, is sound alseep!  I chuckled to myself and moved his arm back to his side of the bed and fell back to sleep.  BAM!  Yes, another smack in the face!  This time with both hands!  My precious mom moments memories are starting to fade!  I fall back to sleep and am awaked to yet another attack.  At this point, I start to ponder wether he is really asleep, or if he is just taking out his aggression on his lack of a play date that day.  Finally, Brian heads upstairs and grabs our boy to put him back in his Star Wars room.  When he crawls in bed, I say, “Jake was totally smacking me down while he slept!”  To which my wise husband says, “You should know you never face him when you sleep! Roll over!”  Now, that seems like basic advice, but at 1am, I wasn’t thinking very clearly.  Sometimes I wonder if, when we are feeling beat up by life, there is an easy solution, but we are too tired to ask.  I know my prayer life is often disrupted by sleep, and then I fret during the day.  God says to pray without ceasing, so maybe I need to engage my brain a little more often in my awake hours and listen to the answers that God is waiting to give me.  I’m still thankful for my cutie, Jake.  But now I know I can look at his cuteness in my bed, then ROLL OVER!!

What I am about to show you is not suitable for those with delicate constitutions.  My mother may not want to read this, or at least not look at the pictures.  She is not at fault for what you are about to see because my memories of her involve washing the floor with knee pads on and washing the plant leaves with special “leaf wash” wipes.  She is not responsible for what has happened to me in the 13 1/2 years I have been away from her clean house.  I’m just saying – DON’T FEEL BAD MOM – YOU RAISED ME RIGHT!  Anyway – I have been spring cleaning upstairs this whole last week.  I was hoping to be finished with the upstairs and move on to the downstairs this week, but I still have two bathrooms left upstairs.  But let me tell you, the other rooms feel so great.  Clean-Clean-Clean!!!  But last week, you wouldn’t have thought it was too bad, not too dirty, but then I tackled the laundry room.  It is a small room.  Barely fits the essentials.  Not even big enough to go in and shut the door behind you. KEEP THAT IN MIND BEFORE YOU JUDGE!!!  So I decided to document the filth for my many blog faithful who are sick of seeing “Go Red!”.  Hold your breath…….

Gross Washing Machine - BEFORE

Empty Dirty Shelves - BEFORE

How does this much stuff come out of that timy room?

Ok - this one is bad - Behind the Door - BEFORE

So there it is.  The bad and ugly truth.  I never clean my laundry room.  I wish I had taken pictures of the shelves before.  I found such random stuff on them.  I guess it was the place I put everything I never wanted to deal with.  Well, it is dealt with now!!!  So, to make my mother proud, here are the after pictures…….after many hours of hard labor!

It almost makes me want to iron.....almost.

Wow!

Hey - I can actually USE these shelves for good and not for evil!

Last but not least - Behind the Door - AFTER

Just to let you know, I will not be posting pictures of the nooks and crannies of my kitchen when that day comes.  It would be too much for all of you!  My goal is to blog next week at least 3 times.  What else will I have to do since I don’t have to clean and I don’t have a dog.   I’m off to tackle my bathroom!  Wish me luck!

It is Valentine’s weekend and Madison is leaving for winter camp so we all won’t be together on V-day – so………we had our RED party tonight!  I have been reading this really cool blog called: www.whittakerwoman.typepad.com.  She has the best ideas for family night.  She inspired me to do our RED party.  Her princess party was darling, but, I don’t think Madison will be going for that – let alone Jake! :0)  Her kids are a little younger than mine.  (I will attempt to put her blog on my blog roll and her husband’s blog.)  We all wore red – as much as we could – and we ate red food.  Hawaiian Punch, Red Vines, Berry Applesause, Hot Dogs with Ketchup and cookies and cake with red sprinkles.  Madison even broke out my red Christmas tree.  The girls dressed their stuffed animals in red too!  They were so excited!!  It really took very minimal effort and they just loved it!  We watched “Space Buddies” and now the kids are all sleeping together since there is no school tomorrow!!  WooHoo!!  My favorite family night from Whittakerwoman was her melted snowman night.  You have to go check it out.  There is even a video on her husband’s blog that is linked.  (They adopted a little boy from Korea and have videos about that, Linda.  I know you are being Wonder Woman and all, but you would enjoy them in all of your spare time!)

What are your family nights like?

Hello, Race Fans!! I know, it has been two weeks since the race and I am finally blogging!! It was not because I couldn’t walk to the computer after the race, it was just my life taking over! I also wanted to add pictures and they were on Brian’s computer. Today he transferred them to mine. So, here we go!!!

First, let me share a picture of how thrilled my children were for me to have this awesome experience!

I had forgotten that we usually do not bring them to the airport when we leave, but here they were, SO THRILLED we were leaving. Notice Kate’s red eyes. Jake looks like Han Solo just got killed. Madison was holding it together pretty well, but she cried too. Good Times.

We made it to Arizona thanks to my BFF Cheryl. Thanks for the tickets! :0) She was the one who encouraged me to enter the race. We had such fun catching up with my family! Brian, Rick (my brother-in-law), Linda (my sister), Austin (my nephew), my mom and I all headed downtown on Friday to pick up my race number at the Health and Fitness Expo. I printed out all of my forms and at the bottom of one it said, “Signature of Athlete”. I had to show everyone. I have never been called an athlete! My mom and sister said I should cross it out and write cheerleader, but I was starting to feel athletic! The expo was cool. Who knew they had all of this stuff you could buy about marathons! I picked up some cute stuff to scrap my experience. (no worries Heather J.)

The night before the race, I attempted to go to bed early, but I couldn’t sleep. Five o’clock came VERY early. To make it all better though, my dad got up and made me eggs and bacon and of course, nice fruit – a staple at my mom’s house.

He is the best! Brian got up with me too. He was so encouraging!

I walked with my BFF Cheryl, Kristee P. and Susan. Here we are looking all relaxed before the race began.

There are like 30,000 people that race, so it takes a while to even get to the starting line. We just chatted as we waited and a gal in front of us turns around and says, ” You’re Christy & Cheryl!” So crazy that in all of those people we saw Diana who I sang in choir with like 9 years ago! So, we were finally off and it was such beautiful weather!! The atmosphere was fun and crazy. People dressed up, bands every couple of miles – even guys dressed up as Elvis cheering us on!

At seven miles we stopped for a potty break. My least favorite thing about the race – port-a-potties! Thankfully, Kristee P. is a race pro and had hand sanitizer with her to hook us up when we finished. Seven miles was also eventful, because I started to get blisters! BIG BUMMER!! I had been training for months without a blister and here I am, only 1/2 way and I can feel them on both feet! I guess it was the heat that made my feet sweat more or something. The girls were so great and encouraging! And at about ten miles we saw this:

Brian and my dad & mom showed up with signs!!! They had my name and then flipped over to Cheryl’s!!! It totally made me smile so big! It really gave me a boost to keep going. My own cheerleaders!! I am one blessed girl! At about 11 miles though, I didn’t think my feet would make it. My girls were there for me though. They started singing, “Eye of the Tiger” and even had some dance moves! What I appreciated most was their attitude that we were all going to finish together no matter what our time. In other words, they slowed down for me those last two miles. With one mile left, I said, “I wish Brian was here!” I looked up and there he was!! He had walked a mile from the finish line to walk the end with me. I love him. Even though he wouldn’t give me a piggy back ride! :0)

I was never so thrilled to see the finish line!! I had quite the cheering section there for me too!

My sister’s family and friends that were visiting from Canada, my parents and my sweetheart! They even brought me flowers! They were yelling, “Who’s an athlete? – Christy!!” What an awesome sense of accomplishment! There were so many times during training that I wanted to quit and didn’t think I would be able to do it, BUT I DID IT! What was so cool is how much support my friends and family gave me! I felt like it was a big deal, but all of them showing up showed me that they thought it was a big deal too. I felt like an athlete! My sister wanted to take a picture of the athlete’s in our family so she told my nephew, Austin, to stand with me because he is the fastest hockey skater in America, but my mom was having nothing to do with that! She won ribbons in track when she was young and knew that was where all of my athletic ability came from so she joined in the picture as well! :0)

Afterward, my In-n-Out burger tasted so good!! I had never savored a burger more! My nap was great and the recliner became my new best friend. I wore my medal the whole next day and it now hangs at my desk where I can look at it all the time. Blisters aside, I was an amazing experience. I am proud of myself. Blessed by my friends and family and happy to say: “I DID IT!!!!”

This picture is from New Year’s Eve last year. My side of the family was all together at my parents home. It was great fun! This year, Jake & Brian have strep throat, so we stayed home, watched “Elf” and played “Dogopoly”. Still fun, but a little more mellow. Either was, it is 2009! Can you all believe it? I can’t. This year, my kids will turn 12, 10 and 6. They are growing up too fast. Madison asked for clothes and shoes for Christmas this year. She couldn’t find anything at Toys-R-Us that she liked. sad. But enough sadness! This is a new year and if you know me at all, you know that I love new beginnings. They mean a fresh start, resolutions, lists. I love a good list! I have been thinking about my resolutions and trying to make realistic ones this year. Maybe that should be my first resolution: realistic resolutions! Another thing I have been thinking of is my “word” for 2009. In 2007, I started choosing a word that I was going to focus on for the year. That year my word was “BECOMING”. It was a year about figuring out who the Lord wanted me to become instead of who I thought I should be based on my circumstances and the people around me. It was a life changing year. That is for sure! Last year, my word was FUN!! I started out with a bang by going on a cruise in January. I made a little card to help me remember to have fun and to record what I did to purposely have more fun. I wish I had looked at it more. I still had fun, but I think I could have been even more purposeful. So now it is 2009 and I am trying to think of what my word should be. Maybe FINISH – so that I will finish the things that I start. Maybe DO – so I will do the things that I think are important. Maybe RELAX – so I will enjoy life more and not be so performance driven. If I had to put it on a necklace and wear it all year, what would I want it to say? How about you? What would your word be for 2009?

This was my house last night. Since then, we haven’t had more snow, but the freezing rain added 1/2 and inch of ice on top of the snow!! I may finally have a white Christmas! But as you all know from my previous posts, I have been trying to train for a 1/2 marathon! After 6 days of no walking, Brian got online and signed me up for a free 7 days at 24 hour fitness. He drove me there yesterday in the blowing snow and the place was packed!! So I hit the treadmill with Madison’s nano. It was not fun. My shins were screaming. I don’t know if it was because I started too fast being the overachiever that I am, or because it was a treadmill and I’m not use to that, or my new shoes, or the fact that I hadn’t walked in 6 days. Needless to say, at 2 miles I was ready to jump off the treadmill!!! I put on my favorite walking song, Kirk Franklin’s ” Looking for You” and pushed through. The treadmill shuts off at 60 minutes, the club limit, and instead of moving to another treadmill to get in that last half a mile, I happily got off!! So tomorrow, my sweet husband will drop me off again and this time I am going to attempt 9 miles. I think I may go from treadmill to elliptical each half an hour so I can remain sane. I love the elliptical. I wish I could elliptical the 1/2 marathon!! Anyway – I will let you all know how it goes!

Here is the view out of my back door.  Thus, my 1/2 marathon dilemma! It has been like this and colder since Sunday.  I walked on Saturday with two pair of pants on, but there was no ice or snow!  I got new walking shoes on Tuesday, but haven’t been able to really use them, other than Christmas shopping.  I could go to a mall and walk, but I am not a snow driver!  I am still thinking of getting a one week guest pass at the gym and having Brian drive me.  Any other suggestions????

I couldn’t find a dorky picture of myself that I was willing to share, so I thought I would share one of my kids being dorky. I am sure they will be thrilled!! Last time I was a dork because I created a “page” and not a “post”. Now I am a dork because of my inferior math skills, or maybe just my lack of memory. I don’t know – you can choose.

Yesterday was my long walk day. 7 1/2 miles to be exact. But that was generally the problem, “to be exact”!!! The trail that I walk is 6 1/2 miles so I have to add to it to fulfill my training schedule. Not that big of a deal, you may think, but somewhere between the 40 degree weather, no coat, the loud music in my ears, my inferior math skills and my failing memory, I could not for the life of me figure out how to go 7 1/2 miles. It does seem simple, yet when I was training before, I knew I had added a section in the middle of the trail to make it longer. My problem was, was that section a quarter mile, or a half of a mile? Failing memory. I was sure it was a quarter of a mile, which led me to realize that I had been wrong in my calculations this training period. When I thought I was going 7 miles, I was really going 6 3/4. Who cares? Is that what you are thinking? Well, I am a bit OCD and I CARE!!! So I am listening to Karen Carpenter, practicing for the Christmas Concert, and trying to add all of my fractions to get in 7 1/2 miles. I then start to backtrack to make up for what I THOUGHT I was missing. By the time I got to the car, I realized that it had been 2 hours and 16 minutes. Not a great time for 7 miles, or 7 1/2 miles, or whatever I did!

I made it home to a hot shower and then went on google earth to track my trail. Guess what, my added area was 1/2 a mile! Not a 1/4 mile! I ended up going 8 miles. Aren’t I cool?! And that said, 2 hours and 16 minutes is a great time! Just what I had been aiming for! Brian laughed at me, of course, but now I know I can go 8 miles, so next week will be no surprise! Let’s hope, anyway!