This weekend was a little busy and crazy.  But I supposed that as a mother of 3, it isn’t about to get any less busy or crazy any time soon.  This week is going to be a good one though.  Even with all the busy-ness of it.  My list to accomplish this week is as follows:

• I’m planning on running 3 (more) days this week with a minimum of 4 miles each day.  (I ran yesterday as part of this.)
• I’m planning on getting lots of errands done today – bank, need to get some stuff for CCD, groceries.
• Making sure SmartyPants has good meals and lots of rest this week for her next gymnastics meet this weekend.
• Sort through pictures for my scrapbooking weekend coming up.
• Stay on top of the neatness of the house for Bunco Wednesday night.
• Work as much as I can even if I don’t want to.

I think that’s a good list for the week.  How about you?  Do you have any plans for the week?

I’ve been meaning to sit down and write this since last Thursday, but it seems this weekend has been full.  This week and next weekend won’t be any less crazy, so I’m going to do it now.

Last week’s topic at RCIA was Prayer and Spirituality.  This is an area I’ve always felt inadequate at.  I always thought there was a “right” way to pray, and because I felt I was never taught the “proper” way to do it, I never wanted to pray out loud.  Our presenter this week was from our diocesan office of faith formation.  Essentially she (Monique) is half of the team that helps organize education of Catholicism at all age levels.  I’ve heard her speak previously, and I’ve felt inspired.  I have to take a step back and say that I read this post by MckMama and it really made me think.  So I basically posed the same question MckMama does in her post.  If prayer is really for us, then why bother asking God.  Essentially MckMama’s perspective was reiterated back to me.  There was a good bit of dialogue that happened from my asking the question.  I love hearing Monique’s perspective.  She was a nun for 20 years, and ended up leaving the convent.  Towards the end of her “tour of duty” (I’m not sure what the proper term is here, and I’m military minded so bear with me) she said she prayed a lot asking for guidance to make the right choice.  When she felt she had her answer, she went to the Mother Superior to talk about her wanting to leave the convent, the Mother Superior told Monique that there was no way that “her God”, the God she prayed to would ever allow someone to leave the vocation.  Monique said that was a defining moment for her, because the God that Monique believed in (the “same” Catholic God) led her to this answer.  Monique insisted that praying has to be individualized for the person.  We had “put our fingerprints” on our prayer.  This spoke to my heart and soul.  At the break I went up to talk to her.  I told her how much I appreciated hearing that no one knows everything about God, and that no one can speak of MY relationship with God because it’s my relationship.  It’s an ongoing conversation between myself and God.  No one is privy to that.  I told her that in teaching my CCD class this year I am trying to voice that sentiment to this room full of 3rd-graders.  I don’t want them to feel like they are failing at their relationship with God because they don’t pray like they think others do.  One of the handouts she gave us was on the different forms of solitary prayer.  There were 7, and I’m going to list them and then tell you the ways I have always prayed and just never knew that I was doing what was right for me.

Meditation – one approaches the Scripture passage like a love letter.

Contemplation – one enters into a life event or story passage of Scripture – using imagination and senses.

Centering Prayer – a very simple, pure form of prayer frequently without words; an opening of our hearts to the Spirit dwelling within us

Mantra – a form of centering prayer with the use of a “mantra” or “prayer word”

Meditative Reading – reflective reading of Scripture or other spiritual writings.

Journaling – meditative writing – when putting pen to paper, spirit and body cooperate to release our true selves.

Repetition – the return to a previous period of prayer for the purpose of allowing the movements of God to deepen within one’s heart.

So I can’t speak to some of these, because they don’t come to me naturally.  The two that did were Journaling and Centering Prayer.  I have always kept a journal, and I know that this form of prayer is different than keeping a journal, but I have learned so much about myself by reflecting on the things I have written.  This actually brought me back to T after a separation of over a year.  I realized that I hadn’t been the person I knew I was and knew that he deserved.  Had it not been for journaling I might never have become aware of who I was and what I wanted and how T fit into that.  I have always written to learn and decipher not just to record history.  As for the Centering Prayer, when at mass I would kneel and just BE.  I would feel peace in my heart and peace in my mind.

This last week was very eye opening to me.  I nervously admitted to Monique and the coordinator for the RCIA program that I was nervous about going through this process with T.  I was scared that I would be hearing a lot of things that I couldn’t accept into my heart.  I have yet to hear something that makes me feel that way.  I have been so reassured that I’m perfectly “normal” for feeling the way I do, but that doesn’t diminish my level of faith.  I am so happy to have made this decision.  It is making me a better, more self aware person.  Being aware of your inner motives is freeing.  I will continue to embrace this process.

SmartyPants has a friend sleeping over tonight.  It was part of her birthday present that was derailed because of the crud that was cruising through our house.  Tonight we made homemade pizzas, the girls played and watched a movie.  Then Sass and Sweet Pea went to bed.  Sass was exhausted from her sleep over last night and being up until midnight and promptly passed out.  Sweet Pea, on the other hand, was excited that there was somebody new in the house and kept coming out of her room after she had stories and songs and snuggles, etc.  The bedtime routine.  T and I were playing cards.  Does anyone remember the card game speed? I taught it to T tonight and opened a big ol’ can of whoop ass on him.  Between the ages of 5 and 7 my family lived in American Samoa.  At the time very remote and removed from regular life.  We played A LOT of card games.  We learned about a half dozen ways to play solitaire, speed, Uno.  As kids we would play for hours sometimes.  This was back in the day when our TV was black and white and if you were lucky we had reception on the island.  I haven’t lost my touch.  Granted T is a thinker.  He wanted to play poker.  Poker has too many rules for me.  Too much thinking.  Give me a game that goes fast and there isn’t time to think, you just react, and I’m good with it.

Anyway, back to the point of the post.  Sweet Pea came out for about the 10th time with this sad, downcast look on her face.  She had pulled the fin part of the Ariel costume for her Build-A-Bear over her head and couldn’t get it off.  I look up and she has mermaid fins under her chin, and I just started laughing.  I laughed until I cried.  Man, that felt good.  Then I had to figure out how to pull it off without ripping her ears off!  But mom was successful at freeing my youngest from the wrath of Ariel’s fins.  Unfortunately I was laughing too hard to take a picture.  I wish I had, because that look?  Priceless.

I love my kids.  Even when I want to strangle them, they go and do something hilarious and make me remember why I wanted them around to begin with.

So my good friend, Lissa has started a new carinval.  (She’s cool and smart enough to know how to make buttons and redesign her own blog and stuff, unlike other people. Hey! Quit looking at me!)

I think this a fantastic idea and I’m going to play along.

So this week, I say Thank Goodness for my husband.  If it weren’t for him I wouldn’t be taking this crazy journey of faith with him through RCIA.  I have a whole post I want to do on the subject after our meeting tonight, but since it’s late (and T has been home for less than 24 hours after being gone for 6 days), I’m going to go spend some time with him and enjoy the fact that he’s got a 3-day weekend and we get to spend time together.

Beth’s challenge this week wasn’t really so much a challenge in the normal sense, but it was a challenge because I had to choose what to take pictures of.  I’m not known for my decisiveness.  So I just went about my week snapping pictures here and there and hoping that some theme would come to me.

My theme came more from the editing stage.

I love this picture of Sweet Pea.  Sass is taking swimming lessons, and this is how she passed her time – making a bed out of Sass’s towel and pretending to sleep.

These are Sweet Pea’s shoes that she inherited from her cousin. They don’t quite fit her and constantly fall off her feet, so I have put them away until they do fit. (Which led to a “fit” of a different sort.)

Sass at the park after trunk-or-treating. She was my cowgirl this year.  I went to take her picture and noticed the flag pole in the background and had to include it in the picture.  She looks so solemn.

This is why she wasn’t wearing her cowgirl hat in the other picture.  She decided to practice her cartwheels.

And last but not least, the park had this old-looking water fountain.  Sweet Pea was very upset that they had turned the water off for winter.  She was thirsty after I let her enjoy a piece of candy.

So what did you capture this week?  If you want to see more, head over to Beth’s.

]]> http://livinginagirlsworld.wordpress.com/2009/11/04/you-capture-my-choice/feed/ 26 girlsworld Photobucket SANY5240 SANY5246 SANY5255 SANY5254 SANY5258 http://livinginagirlsworld.wordpress.com/2009/11/03/running-2/ http://livinginagirlsworld.wordpress.com/2009/11/03/running-2/#comments Tue, 03 Nov 2009 07:29:32 +0000 girlsworld http://livinginagirlsworld.wordpress.com/?p=1212 ]]>

Today was a run day.  I informed SmartyPants and Sass that they were to work hard at their school work this morning because I was going for a run this afternoon.  They kept up their part of the deal and I did mine.  You know, not surprisingly, 4 miles after 13.1 seems pretty easy.  But I was thinking about what I have done mentally and physically to get to this point and I wanted to pass some of it on to you.

When I first started running again last fall I was nervous.  I wanted to get back on the horse, so to speak.  When you have been out of the exercise circuit for a while you get lazy when you move.  Not just while exercising but even just walking.  I find myself doing it sometimes just walking to the mailbox!  When you do everything, you need to use the right muscles.  That is one thing that I liked about shredding.  Jillian would remind you to check your posture/form.  If you aren’t using the right muscles, you could be hurting yourself.

I found while running the half marathon I would change my pace or change my stride in order to give my muscles a break from the repetition.  For example, I would lengthen my stride or focus on creating less vertical movement so my power wasn’t being wasted on going any further up than absolutely necessary.

Another thing I found when I first started running again was that my shoulders would get tight.  I carry all my stress in my shoulders and neck, which is fairly typical, but I found the repetitive motion of the back-and-forth swing of my arms made it worse not better.  That is when I started doing something simple when I was done with my run.  Arm rotations.  I started off doing repetitions of 25 in each of the following variations: palms down – forward circles, palms down – backward circles, palms up forward, and palms down backwards.  This really loosens up my shoulders…if I do it right.  You have to really get the range of motion going and relax the muscles not being used to get the full benefit.

Remember that the more you run, the stronger you get, and therefore you are able to stretch out your stride a little more or push off harder with your toes.  One of the “easiest” exercises you can do to help your stride are lunges.  They really stretch out your quads, which is what you need to do in order to lengthen your stride and make each step really do the job you want it to.

So at the beginning of this post I stated that I was going to tell you about what I did mentally and physically.  I’ve talked the physical part a bit, and now I talk mental.  I can talk myself out of most anything when I’m running.  I didn’t think I really had the mental fortitude to run 13.1 miles.  I had never done it before, but I found out about myself during that run.  I wasn’t as prepared as I could have been going into a half-marathon.  I hadn’t run more than 6 miles straight before that half.  My original goal was to run the whole thing.  By September I had just about talked myself out of having a chance to succeed at that goal.  I was burned out on the treadmill and by mile 3 I would be bored out of my mind and I just couldn’t convince myself to keep running.  I remember when I hit the 5K mark on the course and thinking to myself, “huh, this is where I usually want to stop.”  But instead of stopping, I just kept putting one foot in front of the other.  And really, that is what I did starting at about mile 6.  I was tired, but I wanted to make the hill.  When I hit the top of the hill, I almost cried.  I definitely choked up.  (Btw, choking up while running? not advisable.)  I couldn’t believe that I made it up this hill.  I had hit the 7 mile mark.  I was over halfway done with the race.  At this point I just kept telling myself to keep going.  And you know what?  I did just keep going.  I was Dori, but instead of swimming, I was running.

The Nike Women’s Marathon was on Twitter.  You could email them pictures of the race and into the Twitter stream they would go. One of the pictures that came through was a mom with her twins (probably about 2-3 years old) and the caption saying something to the effect that  her mantra for the last 6 miles (she did the full 26.2) was that she gave birth to twins, this was easy.  Isn’t that the truth?  We mothers have more endurance and strength than we give ourselves credit for.  We do marathon sick days, sometimes combined with our own illness.  We endure pregnancy, which can be a pain – physically.  We endure and prove our strength every day.  Some days are easier.  Just like some miles are easier.  Running a (half)marathon is just that, a marathon  It’s not a sprint to the finish line.  Just as some days the idea of why you wanted to venture on the journey of motherhood is what gets you through the hard days, you have to enjoy the process of your growth as it relates to exercise.

Happy running!

So despite how much I didn’t like my 3yo crawling into bed with me at 6 am, I have to say that this time is not too shabby.  Don’t talk to me come spring, because THAT is the change I despise.  It makes mornings insane and grumpy and I don’t even get to take them to school and let someone else deal with their crappy moods.  But “fall back”?  This I can handle.  I have happy, chipper children this morning.  We are all ready to take Sweet Pea to school and it’s not even time to leave yet!  This in and of itself is amazing.  A week ago we woke up 20 minutes before we needed to leave.  Granted everyone was fed, dressed, brushed, and ready to go within that 20 minutes, but can you say adrenalin?  So I’m not a hater of “fall back”.  I don’t even mind the dark evenings.  I’m more of a night person anyway, so it always feels like I’m staying up later than I am because it’s been dark for so long.  Yeah, I’m weird.  I know.

It’s also the beginning of the week, so I need to plan for my week.  Last week I missed my exercise goal due to Halloween and not feeling 100%.

1. I’m planning on running 3 days this week.
2. I’m planning on getting supplies for an art project for my CCD students.
3. I’m planning on not going slightly crazy on Thursday when I will only be home for about 3 hours between 8 am and 9 pm.
4. I’m planning on enjoy Thursday despite said craziness because T will be back in town.  (YEAH for husbands who are home!)
5. I’m planning on making arrangements for Sass and SmartyPants to have their respective birthday sleepovers.
6. I’m planning on staying healthy.

I think that’s enough planning for one week.  Anyway, I hope your week is starting out as splendid as mine.  (Although, now as I type that, I’m probably cursing myself for slow, unmotivated children doing school work this morning.)  Here’s to fall!

This weekend has been a little crazy feeling.  Traveler has been gone since o’dark hundred Friday morning and between drill and a trip for his full-time job, we won’t see him until late Wednesday night.  I’m not sure who I pity more, me or him!  Friday was a day off for Nevada Day.  The girls had some school work to finish up and then we headed out to the mall to spend some of SmartyPants’ birthday money.  I also wanted to drop off my anniversary ring to be resized.  Now that it has gotten colder my fingers have shrunk.  It actually flew off my finger last week.  So I had to have that problem fixed.  Couldn’t go around losing jewelry, right?  This was the look in my back seat on the way out. For the most part they were pretty excited.  (Excuse the horrible exposure.)

Friday evening we went trick-or-treating, but first had to stop by my parents house so they could see the girls dressed up.

Instead of 3 Men and a Baby.  I had 2 princesses and a cowgirl.  Sweet Pea’s costume was a little long.  I had to do a little mom-improvisation so she wasn’t tripping on it.  The riggings included safety pins and a hair elastic.

We met up with some friends and my brother and niece to go trick-or-treating.  We were only out for about an hour, but this is what they came home with.

I wasn’t very productive at all yesterday.  I keep feeling like I’m getting sick.  I’ve been getting the burning eyes, scratchy throat, and slight tickle in the back of my throat every afternoon/evening for the last week.  But I’ve been waking up with them now too.  I’m trying to convince my body that now would be a really bad time to get sick, but I’m not sure it’s listening to me.  So yesterday consisted of futzing around the house and meeting up with some friends for more candy collection then a movie on the couch with two of my girls.  SmartyPants spent the night with my parents up at the lake, which was refreshing.  Two is usually so much smoother than three.

Today we will head to church.  I have to get some errands done like get dog food.  The poor dog is 100% out.  I also need to get back to the jeweler and pick up my ring.  All the while starting laundry and getting my work done for the weekend.  Not to mention prepare for this week.  So what am I doing?  Blogging.  Have I mentioned that I excel at procrastination?  I think I’ve perfected it to “art” status.

I hope your weekend of candy and chocolate was a good one.

I know what some of you are thinking.  ”Oh, good gawd, girl, can there be any more?”  Well, yes there can be, but I’m not in that sad spot anymore.  But I do want to clarify a few things from the last post that was written with tears brimming in my eyes and angst in my heart.

So, first.  I love my friends – all of them.  When I stated that there are only a few that actually reside in my heart, that doesn’t diminish the other relationships I do have.  I very much enjoy the company of those I call friends and I care about them and their daily struggles and triumphs.  I genuinely care.  I also know that I have used this blog as journal and put out all the dark and twisty parts of me that I wouldn’t normally expose to the world.  But you know what I’ve found about the internets and this bloggy world?  They are friends I have made that I wouldn’t have otherwise.  Friends who also bare their souls in an attempt to gain better understanding of themselves or to look for some hope that they aren’t alone.  I can’t find fault in this.  I only see the light.

So, let’s take a detour for a minute.  (Remember, my blog, my stream of consciousness.)  Last night at RCIA we were talking The Holy Trinity.  You know, The Father, The Son, and The Holy Spirit.  We had a speaker for each part of the Trinity.  The first was our associate pastor who is from Mexico and maybe mid to late 20s.  He spoke about God, The Father.  He spoke of patience and hope and forgiveness and all things related to 1 Corinthians 13:4-7.  (Holy moly! I just quoted the bible!)  So that had me thinking about my patience with relationships and my hope with relationships and forgiveness in my relationships.  Then our former pastor spoke about Jesus, the Savior.  The one thing he said that stood out to me was that you just have to say “yes” to Jesus.  (I will be honest, I’m freaking myself out a bit here with all this religion talk!)  Yes to how Jesus wants us to live.  To be open to those around us, to care, to love, and that the path you take is the path you were meant to take.

All of this applies to the angst I had been feeling.  I questioned in the beginning before I instigated a confrontation whether or not this was the right choice.  I wrote about those feelings in that first post back on September 19th.  I wrote this:

I question myself sometimes.  I question whether my feelings are valid to be voiced.  I question whether I will be respected after I speak my mind.  I question if speaking my mind makes me unlovable to those who I care for the most.  I question whether my voice NEEDS to be heard.

And for some reason, my gut (or maybe my heart) is telling me that this concept needs to be revisited.  That I question whether or not I hurt those I care for in the process of trying to find peace with the situation.  I have apologized to one.  There is part of me that feels the need to have hope that if given the chance I will apologize for transgressions I may have unknowingly caused.  Because that is what started this whole debacle.  Words that were not meant to hurt but which did hurt.  I am probably at fault here too.  This post is to say that I acknowledge my part.  It takes two to tango, right?

Things just feel unsettled, and I’m hoping that those involved can accept my genuine apology and that they can move on to a better place with me.  Because I will be waiting for an embrace of love and forgiveness.

I didn’t participate in last week’s You Capture, but I vowed that my laziness/moodiness would not get in the way this week.  So this first picture, I will admit to not taking.  Traveler said that I could use it, but that I had to give him credit for taking it.  (Although I messed around with the colors a bit.)  So consider it done.  He took it while on a field trip to a pumpkin patch with Sweet Pea.  They had a little daddy-daughter bonding time.  (And let me tell you, they need it.  If I’m around, she wants NOTHING to do with anyone else.  It’s painful at times for all involved.)

These next pictures are of the jack-o-lanterns the girls and I carved this weekend.  If you remember from a past You Capture, we carved our HUGE pumpkin.   Both of pictures below are carved into the same pumpkin.

This last one has Sweet Pea’s little pumpkin that she got at the pumpkin patch and insisted it get carved too.