Zap...Goes My Energy

Sometimes on a Friday night at the end of a long week,

that's been filled with five kids and their sports,

activities, clubs, events, teams, etc...

and my friends are texting me about plans of going out,

all I can think is - No, thanks. 

It sounds fun, awesome even, but I am too exhausted. 

This single parenting bit is not for the faint of heart. 

Whitings Can Do Hard Things

Whitings can do hard things!  It's a mantra I tell my kids all the time.  It's practically our family motto.  You see can't is a word not allowed in our house.  We encourage our kids to ask us or other "experts" when they feel discouraged, "What can I do?"  This takes their can't to an active process of working towards can.  Feeling like I needed to follow my same advice, I embarked on my own adventure this past summer. 

It all officially started on June 5th.  My friend had been trying to talk me into a half marathon for a week or so.  June 5th is National Running Day.  She made me aware that to register for the Philly Rock n' Roll half was in September and would be $20 cheaper if I registered that day.  Some late night texting and an approaching deadline made my decision for me right before midnight.  I was in.  I hadn't run this long for at least a decade, but I worked out regularly, ran somewhat consistently and knew that this might be the thing to help me get past my health plateau that I had hit.

Excitement was my first emotion.  I love trying new things.  Then started the training and finding a 12 week training routine, because that was how long until the race.  Group runs where I was always huffing and puffing took some of the excitement away and filled me with what did I get myself into.  I recruited another runner partner to make us a foursome instead of threesome.  I ran with each of these girls (Jess, JoAnn, and Christie) independently or in groups many times.  In the midst of summer and vacation plans we go off schedule and I was doing a lot more solo running, if at all while on vacation.  I struggled to refind my love of this idea after vacation.  My lonely long runs were sometimes exhausting and filled with boredom. 

Christie charged me through this with a plan to just do the distance to prove I could.  We did and that was enough to kick start my confidence.  After that training got better again.  I did more friend running and learned to appreciate my solo runs.  On race weekend, I felt great.  Not nervous at all.  I knew I could do this.  I had already proven that at least three times in training running over the required 13.1 miles.  My training had really started coming together.  I had let myself off the hook of setting a time goal beyond 2h30m.  About an 11 1/2 minute mile pace.  I wanted this to be fun not stressful.  And so on race morning we lined up, started, race and completed my own personal mission of proving more often than not what we think we can't do, we indeed can even if it means running about 400 practice miles.

And overall I suffered nothing more than some growing pains of developing mental and physical discipline, some blisters (regular and blood) and I have a wonky toenail that I'm still pretty sure will eventually fall off.  The race is over and I'm already looking for the next one.  Whitings not only can do hard things but we end up turning them into easy things too.

Race Start Line



 Race Finish Line

Keeping It Real

In the words of Alexander, this morning was "a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day" or morning as the case may be.  The long and the short of it was the kids were tired, I was tired, and as I tried to correct their behavior I probably wasn't the most patient.  And realizing that and having already missed the bus, I sat our family down for an impromptu family meeting.  I explained my concerns and frustrations and asked them to help me come up with solutions for our family team to succeed.  Instead they expressed their concerns and frustrations which included but were not limited to, they feel like I don't love them and that I am mean. 

Begin movie sequence of rapidly deteriorating family meeting where everyone is crying, nothing is getting resolved and school will soon be starting.  I cut my loses, we pray as a family and I usher them to the car, feeling totally defeated.  The kids want no good bye kisses or hugs, angry door slamming ensues and I feel like a failure, emotionally - logically I know otherwise.  I return a Redbox movie that we have apparently had for 2 weeks and never finished watching - it was that bad, return overdue library books and commit to declutter my life.  Because in my family, my number one priority, things are slipping through the cracks.

I rush change to go help in at the school where they are expecting me three minutes ago.  I enter to the cheer of the teacher and her hugs on how much she loves me and I almost loose it.  She asks how I am and I answer honestly with, "ehhh".  She gives me a questioning glance which I respond with everyone at our house has cried this morning.  "Have you cried yet" she asks.  Oh yeah.  She laughs, senses my need to let it go and we continue on.  I love her for that.  Small children will not understand why I am crying at 8am.  At the end of volunteering, Issac walks me down to the office to check out.  He now loves me so much and doesn't want me to leave.  We've swung opposite pendulum as time has helped him realize I'm not trying to be mean.  More boring details, but several of the office staff notice the unusual behavior and once he is gone inquire as to what is going on.

Full mental breakdown ensues.  I'm hugged, given words of encouragement, sympathized with and told to go shopping, for a bike ride or do something to spoil myself.  I love that the school staff and faculty are as much my friends as anything.  I leave feeling marginally better.  I come home to hit the daily grind of life when I decide to play the piano for a bit - my soothing balm.  The song Our Savior's Love jumps out at me.  As I play this familiar song thinking the words as I play, the phrase collides into my mind "Loud may the sound of hope ring till all doubt departs" and I know that Heavenly Father has bestowed one of his tender mercies on my conflicted mind.  Peace settles over me, I make the decision to hear the loud toll of hope's bell and purge the negativity with a blog post.  It's over, I'm done and I know more than ever that Heavenly Father does hear my prayers and answers them.  Life is once again good!

Emoting Crazy

The book The Secret promotes the premise that whatever you think and say you put out into the universe and therefore it will come back to you.  With the acceptance of this concept you can think your way to happiness, love, money, etc...

Well if you buy into this premise, let me break it down for you...
I must be crazy.  I must think crazy.  I must talk crazy, because I feel like no matter where I go crazy finds me. 

I once had a masseuse, while giving me a preggers massage, tell me to picture Jesus's love flowing down to my baby through a golden umbilical cord.  Likewise she followed up with the offer that if I so desired since she was in communication with my unborn baby that if I wanted to know what the child wanted to be named she would tell me.  I respectfully declined. 

Another masseuse told me that I had broad shoulders for a girl and that because of that people would always confide in me.  It became a bit of a laughing point between some of my friends and me because although it was a bit "earthy" every time I leave a social situation with a little more knowledge about someone than I bargained for, they sum it up with, "It must be your broad shoulders."

Despite these crazy stories and a million others, I still was shocked when we got to the airport to leave for family vacation.  Long story short, I had cordoned off a section of 8 seats in a virtually empty airport seating area for the 6 of us and our luggage.  Shortly after, a young man deposited his bags in the midst of ours and sat down right between two of my kids.  He then engaged them in a semi lucid conversation and attempted to tickle them and breach the social boundaries of physical touch for strangers.  At first I watched wanting to verify that he wasn't mentally delayed before I intervened.  But it was concluded that nope, he was just super drunk.  So of course I had to get video proof for the friends I would soon be visiting on vacation and then put the kibosh on that.  Imagine their lack of surprise when they found I had drawn the crazy aka drunk man to me, where he told me all about his life and bonded with my kids over Harry Potter.

And thus began our vacation.  Bet you can't wait to hear more details!!!  So here he is.  Notice Issac is leaning away from him looking all nervous.  And see the video below to hear just how pesky consonants can be when intoxicated.  Good times, good times indeed.

Rock N' Glow 5K

Manheim is the coolest town ever.  Have I mentioned that before.  If not, here it is for the record.  So this year our town did a Rock N' Glow 5K run to support the Manheim Downtown Development Group, which hosts community events to increase tourism and foot traffic as well as unify the community and promote family fun events.

 

There was a 1 mile race and a 5K.  All of the kids wanted to join me on the 5K, even though it was the evening of Bella's last musical performance after three days of performing multiple shows.

I wasn't convinced she was up to pushing herself that hard and to this point she had been my main running companion.  I told the kids that they could all run the 1 mile and then if they still felt good I would let them run the 5K with me which didn't even start until 9pm.  Needless to say the 1 mile race went well.  The kids surprised me and J proved his athletic/running prowess coming in 4th place.  I still felt guilty I had held him back with the rest of us for the first quarter mile.  I know he totally could have won first place.

 

After the 1 miler, Issac and Kody were content to not run the 5K.  Wyatt and J wanted to both run it.  And Bella was happy to watch the boys since she was on the fence in terms of tiredness anyway.  Plus the following week was field day and she had qualified to run the mile and so felt like she had ample opportunity to run in the near future.

 

I only had 1 criteria for racing with me, no walking.  I told them I didn't care how slow we had to run, but we needed to keep the running gait up the entire time.  Well they proved to be up to the challenge.  Wyatt struggled almost completely silently and later told Travis he had cried during part of the run, but that he knew he could push himself to do harder things than he had to this point.  I felt awful that he cried and that it was such a struggle, but so proud that he pushed through.  Because of  the confidence from doing that hard thing, he runs more often with me now.  J is my newest partner in running.  He is way faster than me, but hasn't built up the distance yet. 

 

Sadly Bella hasn't run with me since.  But where she has left off, Kody has picked up.  And just from this summer he has gotten way faster, 2 miles in 20 minutes.  He is only five and pint size so I consider that awesome.  From this awesome event, we now have family bonding through running.  I love that this healthy lifestyle now seems super cool to my kids.  I can't wait for next year!

The Little Sea Creature/Lagoon Animal

Bella's newest (as of the beginning of this year) endeavor was theater. 

She auditioned for our community theater, iStage.  They did The Little Mermaid Jr. 

She was a Sea Creature/Lagoon Animal -read Chorus. 

It was interesting for me to see. 

Parts were amazing and there were parts were I wanted to offer my help,

luckily I know enough to just keep my mouth shut.

In the end it was very cute. 

Bella is the girl in the blue long skirt and pink leggings.

When asked if she will do it again next year, she hmms and haas. 

She is the girl who loves to do it all at least once.

Stress Free(er)

Kody was my only non-swimmer at the beginning of this season. 

He's cautious, but I was ready to be done this phase of life - stressed around water.

He was excited to learn to swim since our pool installed a new wristband policy

for going in certain pools. 

As a willing fan, I found the quickest most intense swim program I could. 

Four days at our local retirement community pool and enrolled him the day before lessons started.

They showed them the basics and then expected them to do it. 

Kody went not wanting to be left behind on any skill.  He made it forty minutes in and then just quit cold turkey, gave up and got out of the pool.  He was done this social experiment.

 But day 2 I talked him into going back. 

The threat of letting Issac finish his swimming lessons session was all that he needed to hear. 

He jumped back in full fledge, was a willing participant and is now a swimmer. 

Dog paddle/freestyle hybrid is his specialty.

Good Job Kodster!