42 miles in August

 

Hey all!
Long time no type.

Too many trips like this….

 

this……

 

this….

 

this….

 

 

and this left little time for blogging.
Or  running, for that matter. 

Three trips in three weekends people.
Approximately 35 hours of butt sitting in our suburban.
A suburban that is screaming, “no more driving!” due to the busted air conditioner

Good things it’s only 103 everyday, on average. 
Who needs air conditioning?

I do,  that’s who.
How did I ever survive growing up without it?

But guess what?
It’s now August and things have slowed down a (tad) bit.

So guess what time it is?
Time to run.
Get focused.
Get moving.

Please join us for 42 miles in August.
Just post your runs on Facebook (on the Haus of Girls page) or on Instagram (my fave) and use the hashtag #42milesinaugust so we can connect, cheer each other on and motivate on another.

Are you in?

Sometimes you just need to…

 

curl your hair,

 

ask for some help,

 

bring every American Girl item into the front room of your house,

pose,

 

enjoy the blooming all around you,

 

join a co-op and get gobs of fresh fruit and vegetables for $23 every other week,

 

hop on a fire truck with your Mimo,

 

make your own sauce,

borrow your daughter’s headband,

 

run in the same grass your mom ran in fifteen years prior,

 

dance,

 

laugh out loud,

paint your girls’ nails five times a day,

 

run like your socks are on fire.

Hope you all have had a wonderful Spring so far!

Join Me in June (Strong is the New Skinny)

I love having goals.
They keep me focused when life gets too busy.
They help me feel good about myself when I accomplish more than dishes and diapers in any given day.
And I don’t know about you, but when I give myself an hour a day to get healthy, it makes me a better mommy and wife. 

After a swim suit, cupcake and beer filled weekend at the lake this past weekend and meeting a fellow St. Louis mom like myself, who loves all things fitness, I felt motivated to step it up a notch.  After three kids in less than four years, nothing will ever look like it used to.  And that’s ok. 
I can still feel good about myself and have energy to keep up with all the kids in my life. 

I owe it to my girls, as well as myself, to be the best possible ME each day.
To give them the happiest and HEALTHIEST mommy possible.

With my home daycare and side business of creating party favor buckets, I will never have the time to work out all day and be a fitness model.  I barely have time to shower. 

However,  if I give myself an hour a day to make fitness a priority, it will add up.
An hour a day = 365 hours in a year.
365 hours in a year =  less fat on your body and more energy.
Less fat on your body and more energy = a life with more joy and  purpose.

You get the point.

So, what do you say?
Do you want to get in shape with me this June?
Reveal a few more ab muscles?
Let’s do it together!

Join me on Instagram, if you have that app or on Twitter (@hausofgirls is my name on both sites) and post your daily walk or run using the hash tag #40milesinJune.
Everyone participating will be able to click on the link to see who is posting and cheer them on!

I think this will be a great way to feel accountable and get motivation and support from others.
If you are not on Instagram, get the app asap. 
If not, post your run or walk on twitter or on my  Haus of Girls Facebook fan page. 

Party favor buckets and running = the perfect combination, right?! 

Finally, if you don’t have Nike+, another fun way to keep track of your miles is an app called MapMyRun GPS Running.  It’s free and tracks your pace, route, distance, calories and elevation. 
Pretty awesome.

So if you’ve been wanting to get back into shape, get your blood pumping and stop making excuses,  take reading this post as a sign.  A sign that it’s time to make a change.  Not only for how you look on the outside, but how you feel on the inside. 

And I’m even going to make a batch of some fun tank tops for anyone who’s interested.
If you’re going to go run you might as well look cute while doing so, right?
I’m thinking white tanks with this phrase…

If you think you may like a tank top, let me know.
Trying to get a count on how many to make.

Let’s do this.
Are you in or are you in?

I Feel Pretty…Unpretty

 

The girls and I love Glee. 
Well, what I should say is that the girls and I love music. 
Therefore,  we love watching Glee.
We love hearing all the fun ways our favorite songs are interpreted and transformed. 
We grab the nearest microphones (hairbrushes, pens, etc.) and belt out along with the television.   
The “mash up” below was on a couple weeks ago and I loved the message it conveyed. 

Being from a very un-plastic surgerized family, it seems so foreign and creepy.  But at the same time, I know that the majority of other people I meet have most likely had something “changed.” 
Don’t get me wrong, I am totally a supporter of making the most of the medically advanced world we live in today, and there are so many people who need and deserve to alter their appearance.  I just had my vein lasered remember?  That was awesome. 
And who wouldn’t love to change their “flap jacks” for boobs after breast feeding three girls in less that four years?  (The inflation and deflation that occurred so rapidly in such a short amount of time is mind boggling!)

But, I truly feel so sad that the world we live in today forces so many people to feel that they must change things about themselves on the outside to conform to what society thinks is beautiful, instead of embracing what God gave you.  Valuing what you inherited from your parents, rather than looking for ways to change it.  

It took me awhile to accept that I would always, for the rest of my life,  when entering a room,  be one of the tallest people in there.  The stares, comments and glances at my shoes to see how high the heels were, have always made me feel a bit embarrassed.  But I know that I can never change it and that it’s just the way I’m supposed to be.  I embrace it and stick to wearing flats.  :) 

Now having three daughters of my own,  I struggle trying to balance what I teach them about the importance of beauty.  I want to tell them how beautiful they are so that they know they are perfect just the way they are.  Encouraging the growth of their self esteem so that they never feel insecure being who God made them.  Hoping to enhance their confidence.  But I also don’t want to put so much value in the outside appearance.  I want them to always know that the most important thing in life is to treat people kindly and with respect.  Being a good friend is so much more important than being a pretty friend.  


Do you tell them how beautiful they are, or does that only stress that beauty is important?
If you don’t tell them they are pretty and perfect, does that inhibit the growth of their self esteem and confidence? 
What a balancing act.

“My outsides are cool.  My insides are blue…..

You can buy your hair if it won’t grown. 
You can fix your nose if he says so. 
You can buy all the makeup that man can make, but if you can’t look inside you, find out who am I to be in the position to make me feel so damn unpretty.”

All I can hope for are three confident daughters who know who they are.
Three daughters who don’t feel they need to be someone else to fit in.
Three daughters with high self-esteem and positive feelings about themselves, because in the end, each one of us will be old and wrinkly one day (no matter how much Botox you inject)  and will most likely think back to our youth and wish we would have loved ourselves, imperfections and all, a little bit more.  
After all, when you compare what you have at age 90 to what you once had, you will realize just how beautiful and perfect we really were!  

So how about not waiting until your 90 years old to realize just how lucky you are to be you and be grateful for what God has given you.  Don’t waste any precious time unhappy with the things you can’t change, because in the end your nose and chin mean nothing at all.  

I feel that if everyone stopped focusing on the negative things you wish you could change, and simply focused on being the best/happy/healthiest YOU you can be, our world would be a much happier place.

 

Haus of Drama

The past week or so have been hectic, filled with drama and exhausting.
I feel bad complaining when there are so many other more important, sad, terrifying things going on in the world. 
My broken washing machine means nothing in the grand scheme of things and I really don’t like to use this blog as a place to gripe.

However, I also feel like I’d like to document the Debbie Downer moments, just as much as all the happy things we have to share and celebrate.
I think of it as, keeping it real.
Because we all know, life is not always sunshine and daffodils. 
That would be too easy.

Something that truly has not been easy for our family for the past year or so and that is actually very real and serious to us, is our oldest daughter Mia’s health.

Last January through May, when she was in Kindergarten, she was constantly sick. 
It went something like this.
Ear infection… sinus infection… strep throat.
Then sinus infection…strep throat…ear infection.  

{Watching Aunt Maggie play at Purdue University last Spring.}

All while we were road tripping the country watching my youngest sister Maggie play softball for the University of Michigan several times a month.   
I think back and feel awful for what she must have been going through. Not feeling 100%, but being such a trooper.  She rarely even said her ears or throat hurt, but when she went in to see if her previous infection was better, it usually turned out that she already had another infection.

We finally had her blood tested, since the only time she was infection free was when she was on an antibiotic, to see if there was something going on with her immune system. 
Sure enough there was.

She had very low levels of one of the five antibodies that all of us have to help us stay healthy by fighting off foreign things, such as bacteria or viruses. 
The one she was low on, is the IgG class of antibodies, which just so happens to be the most predominant one we have.  Most of the antibodies in the blood and the fluid that bathes the tissues and cells of the body are of the IgG class.

{Last summer at her first appointment with the immunologist. On her 6th birthday.}

She saw an immunologist in July and was given another vaccination (one that all babies get) to see if her immune system would respond and produce the antibodies she was low on to defend itself.  Thankfully, it did just that!  This means her immune system is functioning.   
We were so happy that her levels were back to normal and she has been healthy up until recent weeks.
She had strep and then a double ear infection and another sinus infection.
Once again, no fevers, no complaining.  Just a bit of a headache.

I am so glad we took her in because we have learned that her levels have dropped again and unfortunately she must be on antibiotics for the next few months to keep her healthy. 
30 days on. 10 days off.  30 days on.  10 days off. 
A journey we are still unsure of and praying that everything will work out in the end.  Praying her little immune system will grow strong and overcome this.  

After reading this blog written by a mom of a little boy who suffers from the exact immune deficiency as Mia, I found myself discouraged and in a fog.  What this little boy has been through is so upsetting.  A life with such trials and tribulations.  I can’t begin to imagine.   

However, my hopes were heightened after talking with a mom at the girls’ dance studio whose daughter suffered with the exact thing as Mia since she was one year old.  She is now seventeen and is perfectly healthy!  She did have to have infusions, through a port near the heart, of the IgG antibodies from age one to ten, but by ten her immune system was strong enough to not need the infusions!

So we continue to pray and hope for the best for our sweet Mia taking it one day at a time.  Sometimes feeling so in the dark, and others feeling extremely positive and thankful that we are happy to know what her situation is and that’s it’s a manageable issue, even if it means that she must endure infusions at some point. 

As if Mia’s health is not enough, we have had many other drama filled adventures the past few weeks.  What you ask?

For example, I came home from preschool to a flooded laundry room.
Our ten year old washing machine was a goner.

And after a week with no washing machine, I can finally do laundry in my own home again.  Thank you to all who allowed us to lug our dirty clothes over to do a few loads. You saved this mom’s sanity for sure.

And the list goes on…

-Sophie’s brand new birthday Barbie’s wing broke. 
Drama.

-I have been caring for some sick children this week, while trying to also take care of five healthy ones.
Drama.
Snot sucks.  Pity party.  Bring on summer.

-If you recall this post, I chose to have a vein lasered in my leg and I am unfortunately still limping around like a weirdo.
Drama.

-Our trampoline was picked up in a recent storm/tornado and ended up on our roof.  We flipped it over to see if was still functional, and it’s definitely not.  The girls are sad.
Drama.

-It snowed on Monday.
Then Thursday is was 83 degrees and sunny.
My sinuses want to explode.
Drama.

-I watched my cat barf on the top of my Suburban yesterday.
Awesome Drama.

-I drove off Wednesday night in a tizzy to get my three girls to dance on time, along with our neighbor’s little girl, with my iPhone on my bumper.
Drama.

*Luckily I have so many awesome and generous people in my life, and thanks to one of them, my friend Kristy Bradley, I now have a new iPhone! She gave me her old one and I am so thankful to be back in the cell phone loop.  How did I ever survive without an iPhone?

-And finally, the finale…we woke up this morning, the start of Steve and the girls’ Spring Break, to find and smell about 15 piles of dog poop upstairs. 
Green none the less, in honor of St. Patrick’s Day.
We now have a sick Gussie dog.  I am wondering if she ate something last night in the back yard as they were outside for about five hours celebrating the nice 80 degree weather.  
Drama.   

Thank goodness I have so many fun and positive things to lighten my spirits as life gets dramatic….

Like these two bucket heads….

who may or may not be princesses as well…

a sleep-talking ducky-on-the-head-wearing crazy kid…

bowling beauties…

a Sophie Cat in the Hat….

and sisters who go line dancing with me.

Life doesn’t get any better than that.

 

PS I need some hair help.
Here it is now.  Long.  Too witch like?

 

This is what I would love to do. 
My sister Haley sent me this picture and I stole it to use as an idea for my hair. 
Thank God for sisters.

What do you all think?
To cut or not to cut?

Have a great weekend!

I Had Plastic Surgery. Jealous?

I can now officially say that I’ve  had plastic surgery.
Unfortunately, not the fun kind where I get a cute new nose or skinnier thighs.
Just the ultra- glamorous correction of one useless and very malfunctioning vein in my leg.

Yes, it’s true. I am 31, and had to have varicose vein laser ablation.
Jealous?

You really will be after checking out this picture in some stellar black panty hose taken the day of my surgery. 

The procedure I had done was a bit more challenging than I had planned.  In my mind, and they way I {mis} understood things, it would be a simple little shot of fluid and local anesthetic to numb the vein, followed by the sliding of a tiny laser all the way up my leg to my groin area.  They would then fire up the laser and with pulses of heat it would incinerate the vein as he slowly pulled it back out around a tiny incision in my leg.

Not exactly what happened.

{Day After Surgery}

As you can see in this picture, and all those teeny tiny red dots going up my leg, I had a few more shots than the mere one that I was anticipating. 
It was more like 30 shots… of lidocaine no less, which I now know, causes me to shake violently, feel like I may pass out or throw up at any given minute, and feel like I drank a bottle of wine. 
Awesome.

Thankfully they tell you ahead of time to have someone drive you the day of your procedure, because I was definitely over the legal limit of lidocaine on our way home.

A big shout out to my sister Adie who kindly drove me, along with her three week old baby boy, and my sister Maggie who sat with the rest of the seven crazy kiddos so I could have this done!

Adie hung out back at Haus of Girls for awhile, reading to several of the cuties, while waiting for me to sober up.

Maggie is such a life saver to hang out with all the kids for a few hours so that I could finally have this done.  They now all love her more than they love me.  :)
I should have expected that though.
She’s way younger, more energetic and does NOT have varicose veins.

{Two Days After Surgery}

It’s looking so much better.
But now the actual vein that they lasered is what is  sore rather than the initial 30 pokes from a giant needle. 
It feels like a super sore, hard electrical wire going up my leg.
Even more awesome.

The back view.
Gross.

Despite burdening my sisters, feeling like I might die from an allergic reaction to the anesthetic and some stinging pain for several days, I am so thankful that I did have this done when I did.
It’s over and done with and now I don’t have to worry about it anymore.  Just a few more injections in the actual vein that was bulging down in my calf, and I am done.

And I know this second procedure will pale in comparison to having a laser slid up my leg,  heat pulses burning it to pieces all while tasting the nastiest burnt toast taste in my mouth.  Yuck!

And finally, do you want to know the biggest benefit of having this surgery?
(If you love Saturday Night Live as much as I do you will totally get this…)
Afterwards I was able to say with authority, “I got one leg! Jealous?!” and mean it.

Happy Tuesday!

Women Food and God

Synopsis:
No matter how sophisticated or wealthy or broke or enlightened

you are, how you eat tells all.
If you suffer about your relationship with food — you eat

too much or too little, think about what you will eat

constantly or try not to think about it at all — you can be free.

Just look down at your plate. The answers are there.

Don't run. Look.

Because when we welcome what we most want to avoid,

we contact the part of ourselves that is fresh and alive.

We touch the life we truly want and evoke divinity itself.

The author of this book, Geneen Roth, was on Oprah a few weeks ago.

I tivo Oprah everyday.

Sometimes I watch. Sometimes I don't.

Several nights ago, at 12:20 am, I watched.

It was extremely interesting to hear her perspective about why we all eat.

Emotionally trying to fill something.

For me, whenever I'm stressed, overwhelmed or feeling like I can't catch up,

I can be found eating pretzels like it's my job.

But, everything, in my opinion, stems from our childhood and how we have evolved into the person we are today.
Each of us having our our own unique personality.
No two people are alike in how we react to life's triggers.

We are uniquely effected by the things happening around us.

I am excited to read this book to further examine ways I can achieve

my main goal in life: to live a long happy life with no regrets.

Because I do not want to spend my life worrying about food.
Dieting.
Stressing.
Feeling guilty.

I want to enjoy my life to the fullest.
Not worry day to day about how I should not eating certain foods.
But simply make more conscious choices towards living as healthy and happy as possible.

I will continue to live each day putting my family first, and living a healthy lifestyle.

I do not want to look in the mirror when I'm 80 and realize

that I wasted one single day in my 20's, 30's, 40's, 50's, 60's or 70's

thinking I was not good enough, skinny enough or ANYTHING enough.

Because I can guarantee, that my 80 year old self would tell my

30 year old self the following......

"Dear thirty year old Marta,

You are perfect just the way you are.

Keep taking care of yourself.

You look like a MODEL compared to how you look now at 80.

All the little things that you may stress out about now mean NOTHING.

I can tell you, that you will never regret not having passed one more test,

not winning one more game, or closing one more deal. You will not regret making more
money to have that new pair of shoes, a new outfit or a new car.

You will only regret........
More time not spent with your parents and the chance to learn something new.

More talks with your husband because he has a way of making you feel special.

And not having more hugs from your three little girls who look up to you more than you'll ever know.
You can never get this time back so live life to the fullest each and everyday!"

I want to continue to feel blessed to have this body that God

gave me and continue to keep it healthy for a long happy life.

Appreciating myself for being me.

Unique.

Happy.

And food should not be what I turn to when I'm bored or feel stressed.

But something that fuels my life toward peace, happiness and love.

Love for my family.

My husband.
My three daughters.
My parents and my three sisters.

Have any of you read this book?
If you have, I'd love to hear your thoughts about it.