A Million Dollars and the path less taken....

I have two things I want to post about tonight.  I'm going to lump them together just to make things easier...

I want to share with all of you a description of my home.  My husband and I live in a northern suburb.  It just happens to be the same one that my husband was born and raised in.  His parents were born and raised here.  Family history was made here.  When we started looking for a home to buy, my husband drove me through our neighborhood and told me, "This is my ideal.  This is where I want to own a home someday."  I fell in love with it immediately.  It might have helped that later on that same night, my husband got down on one knee and offered me a gorgeous diamond ring!  We got lucky.  Just a few months later, a house in that neighborhood went on the market and we bought it.  There's so much to love about our neighborhood!  The trees are old and plentiful, the houses are charming and cozy, the lawns are well-cared-for, and everywhere you turn, there's something beautiful to see.  Have you ever heard the quote, "A bond forged by fire can never be broken"?  It describes our neighborhood so well!  You see, 40-some years ago, there was a night in which 6 tornadoes tore through the Twin Cities, 3 of them through our neighborhood.  The house that used to be on our land was torn up from it's foundation.  The damage it left behind was catastrophic.  But....it also forged something beautiful.  Many of our neighbors have owned their homes since before that night.  The aftermath of that night, the fear, and the relief, all helped to create a very tight-knit community.  It's beautiful to see and even more incredible to be part of!  Considering our neighborhood and the beauty of it all and the fact that there are miles of walking paths throughout, why in the world would I drive 20 minutes away from home to walk around a lake rather than just walking in our neighborhood?  This is why:

You see that incline?  There's a sign at the top that warns bikers to dismount because of how steep it is.  It doesn't look like much from my camera phone, but it's killer.  Seriously!  Factor in the 30 lbs of stroller filled with 50 lbs of children that I've been pushing up that hill....oh, do my muscles ache!  The last couple of days, I've been pressed for time and haven't had the extra time to drive south to the lake.  So, we've resorted to walking the forest paths that I've been avoiding, partly because of the incline and partly because of the massive number of bugs.  But I have reason to be proud of myself now.  I've been walking 2+ miles every day for the last 7 days (that's 8 total workouts!).  Go me!

Okay....on to the Million Dollars!  I think for tonight, I'm going to introduce you all to the idea.  Maybe tomorrow or the next, I'll tell my response.  I've been thinking about this idea for a while.  What does money mean to people?  What value does it have?  What does money represent for each individual?  I think it tells a lot about a person and can really be an excellent way to learn about other people.  So, here's the question....what would you do with a million dollars?  It's not so much money that you could do whatever your heart could desire, but it's enough that people can dream big, right?  So....I'm curious.  What would people in the DOC do with that amount of money?  Donating it to diabetes research is, of course, an excellent idea.  But that's just too easy.  So, I'm banning that response.  I'll share my ideas soon, but in the meantime, if anyone wants to answer the question, I'd love to read about it!

Uncomfortable truths

Oh, how I love my husband!  He's incredibly wonderful and incredibly amazing.  A hard-worker (sometimes too hard of a worker!), a good provider. and terrifically blunt when it's needed.  We had a conversation the other day.  I was complaining about my need for a new winter coat and how I really don't want to buy one because I don't like the size I'm going to have to buy.  His response?  "You're sounding like your mother."  Did you ever have one of those teachers in high school who came up and slammed the top of your desk with his open hand because you'd fallen asleep?  It's the same exact effect!  Seriously.  You see, for as long as I can remember, my mom has been over-weight.  I have no problem with that.  But her response to being over-weight is to not buy herself new clothes because she wants to lose weight first.  Or, if she does buy new clothes, she buys them a size or two smaller than what would be comfortable and squeezes into them anyway.  I love my mom.  I really do.  But, squeezing an over-weight body into smaller-sized Disney sweatshirts and jeans is just plain painful and unattractive.  Personally, I can't stand wearing clothing that cuts into me or fits uncomfortably.  So I've been good about buying the right size of clothing.  I just don't want to spend much on myself.  I suspect that would be true no matter what size I am though.  Anyway, back to the point.  My husband's words echoed something I'd read earlier in the week.  Jen, from Prior Fat Girl, wrote a post about the desire to lose weight.  She basically said, you can wish for it, hope for it, pray for it, yearn for it, but if you really want it, you'll do the work for it.  All the wishing, hoping, praying, yearning will not bring you weight loss.  Hard work and determination will.  I've been busy doing all the wishing, praying, hoping, yearning, for years.  But I haven't done the work.  So, now I'm getting busy with trying to do the work.  I've been walking 2-3 miles daily for the last week.  I'm limiting my calories to 1500/day.  I'm trying to make healthier eating choices.  I'm trying to work on my whole self-perception, self-love kind of thing.  That's the hard part for me. I'm not my biggest fan.  Biggest critic, definitely.  Anyway, in my quest for self-love, I'm going to share some facts that I've become aware of in the past few days.  I need to embrace my faults, just as much as my strengths!

1.  I AM starting to sound like my mother.  Must stop that now!
2. I've spent far too long making excuses for my lack of activity.  Excuses need to end now!
3. If I want to be healthier, I must sacrifice and work hard.  That's just reality.
4. I'm teaching my children an unhealthy way of life too.  Definitely not something I want them to learn!
5. It's incredibly easy to be your own biggest critic.  Not so easy to be your own biggest fan.  But if you're not a fan of yourself, then who else is going to be?
6. It is not pretty when I sweat.  But it's not supposed to be and who cares that it's not anyway?
7. There are always going to be excuses for not exercising.  But the reasons for it far outweigh the excuses.
8. Adding in exercise with diabetes is a HUGE pain!  It results in major insulin reactions all day long, all night long.  I need to suck it up and do it anyway.
9. My children deserve much better than I'm giving them right now.
10. The most uncomfortable truth...I'm worth the effort.

To finish that all off, I'm going to be brave and share a photo of me after my workout today, sweat and all.  I'll warn you, I'm not kidding or exaggerating when I say it's not pretty!

Reyna, it's going to be a very long time before I sport a bikini....maybe in my next life!  For now, I think I'll just be happy with being healthier and more active.

On a happier note....I absolutely ADORE my backyard at this time of year and thought I'd share some pictures with all of you, just because it's so incredibly gorgeous.  The kids and I are spending every spare minute we can out there on the swing set and playing with chalk on the cement while the warm weather lasts.  It'll be cold again before we know it!

Beautiful, isn't it?  I love autumn for this reason alone!  All the beautiful colors in the trees!

My new best friend....

I have a new friend that I don't think I can live without.  Seriously.  Want to know what (not who) my new best friend is?  Aveda Foot Relief lotion.  Aveda is this incredibly cool company that uses all pure ingredients and focuses on non-polluting products.  Personally, I love their products.  But I've heard a few people voice complaints because they're very "herbal-scented".  Anyway, the foot cream is my new best friend because, without it, my legs would be turning into sore, achy, sticks of jelly.  Today is my 5th day in a row of walking 2 or more miles!  I think that just might be a record for me!  Usually, when I attempt to start a work-out routine, I go every other day.  And I can never keep it going.  So, this time around, I'm attempting every single day, no breaks.  Which is partly why I'm choosing walking as my form of exercise, at least to begin with.  It's something I can do every single day without needing a break from it.  Maybe once I've made this a new habit and gotten used to all the new exercise, I can add in something more strenuous.  And until my body adjusts to the new amount of exercise, I think I may be buying stock in Aveda.  Or at least buying the foot cream in bulk!

For my walk today, I took the kids back to the Lake Calhoun path.  I left my husband napping (he got up bright and early with the kids this morning-apparently walking lots means I need more rest in order to feel functional!).  Meri, I grabbed the camera on the way out the door just for you:

 Beautiful boats!

 The Minneapolis Skyline

 The lake, without the zoom lens

A picture of the lake, from the lagoon

Reyna, I'm devoting my post tonight to answering your question....do I have a dog?  The short answer is, no dog at the moment.  But there's an explanation behind it.  You see, this is my old best friend:

Adorable, right?  Peppy.  The name suited him perfectly!  He was all pep!  Our little happy-go-lucky puppy.  My husband and I bought our house in October of 2005.  If I'd had my way, we would have adopted a dog within a week!  It took a little more work to convince my husband.  I finally told him that all I wanted for Christmas was a puppy.  Nothing else.  We found Peppy, a teeny little cocker spaniel puppy.  I put in a ton of work with him.  I potty-trained him.  I ran home from work on my 30 minute lunch break every day for months in order to take him out to go potty and feed him.  I taught him to play fetch, I took him for walks.  And you know who he choose as his person?  My husband, of course.  It didn't matter that he was supposed to be MY dog.  He loved Jake.  He adored Jake.  To be perfectly honest with you, Jake was his "b*tch".  I say that as fondly as I possibly can.  My husband is a pushover.  Peppy got into the habit of insisting he be brought outside every hour on the hour all night long.  And my husband accommodated him.  We had Peppy for a little over a year before Lily came along.  Long enough for Peppy to fully cement the idea in his head that Jake was his to control, his to command.  And then Lily came along and changed everything.  Jake no longer wanted to take him outside every hour on the hour.  As Lily grew and became more mobile, more interactive, Jake spent more time just cooing at her, playing with her.  Peppy got very jealous.  He never minded Lily, but he minded that Jake's attention was on something other than him.  It didn't matter that Lily adored him:

Peppy would be fine all day long, well-behaved, happy, playful.  But as soon as Jake got home, he'd start having potty accidents.  He wasn't happy.  And then, one night, we reached the end.  Peppy had an accident and when I went to hook him up to his leash and take him outside, he nipped me.  That's one thing I swore I'd never tolerate from a pet.  No biting.  The next day, I took Peppy to the closest no-kill shelter, sobbing the entire time.  I kept an eye on him from their website and he was adopted by a new family within a week.  Knowing that helped ease my guilt a little bit, but it still hurt to have to give Peppy up.  

So, no dog for us for the moment.  I do want a dog again.  I'm dying to get one.  But I have some requirements.  I want a dog that will adore my children.  One who will be their best friend.  One with a fantastic personality.  Friendly, happy, playful.  I refuse to get another puppy.  It's so hard to know what their personalities are going to develop into when they're so small.  My mom's dog is actually nearly exactly what I want:

I found Cooper for my mom and her husband through a local rescue organization.  He was 6 months old and nearly 75 lbs.  Fully grown, he weighs in at a whopping 90 lbs.  He's half Golden Retriever, half Black Labrador Retriever.  He thinks he's a lap dog.  He'll sit with his massive head in your lap for an hour or more. He thinks he's Tigger.  He bounces when he's excited, but never jumps.  He lets all of my mom's grandchildren crawl all over him and when he's had enough, he just traps the kids down with one paw to let them know he's done.  He only has two faults....big dog = big poop.  And fur, fur, fur everywhere!  Whenever we go to visit, we come home coated in black fur.  The picture above is actually from one month before Lily was diagnosed.  He laid there and let her crawl all over him and never complained.  He was gentle with her, licked her face, and was as gentle as can be.

So, long answer short...we don't have a dog right now, but hopefully, someday in the not too distant future, we will have one again!

Things I learned today...

We had a very rare day here.  October in Minnesota is not known for it's warmth.  But somehow, the temperature sky-rocketed to the mid-80s.  The sun shone.  The breeze blew gently.  It was a gorgeous day!  After walking inside on a track at the gym for the last few days, I decided the kids and I could use a change of scenery.  We have some gorgeous lakes here in Minnesota.  Lake Calhoun is one of the absolute prettiest!  Imagine a lake surrounded by trees, a couple of sandy beaches, and walking and biking paths all the way around.  Add in that it's at the very center of the city and you've got Lake Calhoun.  It's gorgeous!  The walking path measures just over 5k.  I figured if I started on the path, I wouldn't have any choice but to walk all the way around it, right?  So instead of walking just 2 miles today, I walked 3!  And learned some incredible things in the process....

1.  Walking 5k while pushing 30 lbs worth of stroller with 50 lbs worth of children in it is hard work!  And makes for an incredible workout!
2.  Love, in all it's many forms, is a beautiful, wonderful thing!  While walking the lake path, we passed several mothers with their children, a dad pushing his daughter on a swing, a younger couple on a tandem bicycle, and a pair of middle-aged gentlemen who were holding hands while walking their dog.  Love is amazing!
3. The perpetually-low portion of Lily's current growth spurt is officially over.  In spite of walking nearly half the lake path, she remained in the 200s all day long.  Yuck!
4. Leo will attract attention from anyone and everyone no matter where we go.  The kid is just too darn cute! He spent half the time hamming it up and listening to all the women coo over him.  I'm going to have my hands full!
5. The more I walk, the easier it becomes.
6. I will ALWAYS be jealous of anyone on a sailboat.  Seriously, I if I could have swum out to one of those boats with the kids and hopped on board, I would have!
7. Minnesotans are officially C*R*A*Z*Y!  Seriously, there were women in bikinis sun-bathing.  In October!  In Minnesota!
8. Dogs really are our best friends.  It's just as much fun to dog-watch as it is to people-watch!
9. When a rare nice day like today shows up, everyone will find a way to take a moment to soak in the beauty of it!  You wouldn't believe how many people told us that it was so gorgeous out today that they had to call in sick to work so that they could be out and take advantage of it!
And finally....
10.  My kids are PHENOMENAL!  Seriously.  An hour of walking, waiting in line for 20 minutes just for ice cream cones, and not a word of complaint from either of them!  They were just as happy as I was to be out and about and soaking up the sun.  It was fantastic!

No D today...

So I caught the scoop from Reyna's blog about the Ninjabetic's idea of blogging about anything but D today.  I figure it would be a total waste of the opportunity if I spent my blog-time complaining about my sore knees and ankles (walking 2 miles each day for the last few days is taking a toll, but making me feel better too-funny how that works).  Instead, I think I'll treat you all to a couple of the cutest sleepy pictures ever:

Don't they make you just want to cuddle up and take a nap with them?  Leo's sleeping face makes me just want to kiss him!  I have some new hat pictures to share too!  I'm calling them my Lollipop hats.  They remind me of those swirly-pop lollipops:

Aren't they great?  I just sent these two off to a cousin of mine in Wisconsin who ordered them for her grandchildren.  I can't wait to hear how she likes them!

Okay, off to crochet some more.  I need to make use of nap time so I can go back to the gym later and work out the soreness in my muscles!

The Mail Exchange!

I know some of you are wary of putting up pictures of your children.  Not a problem if you don't feel like participating.  But, I thought it would be really fun to share pictures of what your kids received and how much fun they had!  So, if anyone wants to participate, I'm setting up a "linky party".  Feel free to share your photos or leave comments!  I hope all of your children have received their mail and are enjoying it as much as we did!  Lily has been running around, talking about her new friend and showing off her loot.  It's amazing how excited they get about stuff like this, isn't it?  Here are our pictures:

I can't wait to see everyone else's pictures too!

Just breathe!

I've been a bit busy with making hats for everyone (and they're all coming along nicely and should be in the mail soon!), but there's an even bigger reason that I haven't been blogging much lately.  I've been focusing every extra ounce of energy I have on convincing my husband of something.  You see, marriage counseling did wonders for our marriage.  It really did!  I still get upset and hurt when my husband is in a bad mood, but now I can take a breath and think about the reason behind his mood and not take it all so personally.  Sounds great, right?  It is!  So where's the problem?  My husband isn't doing so well with figuring out my moods (which he openly admits, so it's okay for me to say that, right?) and he's still having some issues.  He hasn't had the easiest of lives.  He's tends to hang on to his anger and resentment over things instead of just talking things out.  And there are a whole lot of things that he's still angry about from his childhood.  It's tough.  To be honest, I can totally understand how and why he's hung onto those things.  I know it's hard to let go of things.  But it's affecting us and our children.  So I've been working on getting him to realize that talking to a counselor may be a really good thing for him.  I've been chipping away slowly at his resistance, in as gentle and loving of a manner as I can.  Guess what?  It's finally worked!  He's even suggested that we both go to the first appointment with the counselor so I can help explain some of the behaviors I see with him.  I'm almost crying right now, just typing that he's agreed.  I've been suggesting it since we started dating 10 years ago!  I want him to be as happy as he can possibly be and it's so hard to do that when you carry an angry, hurting, bitter child around inside of yourself.  I'm really hoping he'll embrace this opportunity and give it all he's got!

Okay, enough with the heavy topics!  I've been doing so much better about going to the gym lately.  We've been doing it as a family, taking the kids to the child care area and then my husband runs off to the weight room (he's a bit obsessed with Arnold and would love to sport some similar muscles.....) and I go off to walk the track.  I've been doing a two mile walk every time we go.  I know, it's not much, but I need to start somewhere.  I've even signed up to follow a blog by a woman here in the Twin Cities, Prior Fat Girl.  She's managed to lose 90 lbs!  It's incredible to see stories like that.  I'm not so focused on losing weight, although that would be fantastic!  I would much rather be more active, healthier, and just plain happier.  I love my anti-depressant/anti-anxiety meds and I know I'll never be able to leave them behind (for my sanity and the sanity of my husband), but I wish the doctors would stress more how helpful exercise can be to your moods.  All those wonderful hormones that it tells your body to release!  It all just makes you so much happier!  Not to mention the people-watching and the incredible selection of eye-candy!  Don't get me wrong, my husband is still the best eye-candy I've ever seen, but wow, it's so much fun to go to the gym and just look!  One of my favorite parts of walking around the track....there's almost always some really toned man running around, no matter what the hour!  And super bonus from today...I could almost swear that I saw T.R. Knight at the gym, on one of the recumbent bikes!  I'm serious!  He looked just like the actor, with a few extra pounds added on and it's not so far-fetched considering that the actor is from Minneapolis!  Not sure what he'd be doing at our gym, but still....it could have been him.  Now, if I could just catch a few glimpses of a Vin Diesel look-alike....