Big Love

The thought of people out there not having a best friend makes me feel dizzy. I guess because the way I see my life is that there have been pivotal moments where I was shaped by a best friend. My slightly annoying but awesome memory can remember even in preschool making a decision to sing Jesus Loves Me out loud because one of my little 4 year old besties said he would sing it with me. <insert red heart emoticon here> Ok so maybe that wasn't completely like life altering, but I remember it, so that's meaningful! Instead of walking down an incredibly beautiful but lonnnnng memory lane of those moments and best friends, let's just see a quick snapshot of some of my current best friends.

Rach and Mere. <insert heart eyed emoticon here and girls holding hands emoticon here> I met these beauties in college freshman year and through the course of some interesting decisions on my part, grew to love, cherish, adore, at times cling to, and absolutely rely on these two girls. We finally got to have a reunion last Friday after being separated for over 2 years!! I literally had not seen Rachel since I had very first been pregnant with Copeland. un.be.liev.a.ble. It hurts me to think it had been that long! Don't you remember college when you got to hang out with your friends every single day for HOURS?! sighhh... Truly praise God that He allows me to live close to Meredith at least since Rach is now like 5 hours away <insert pained face emoticon here>. I try and see Mere as often as possible {which ends up still never being enough} and she is forced to hear every dreary and often mundane detail of my life. Big. Love. for those girls.

completely useless aside: I LOVE Jimmy Fallon. l.o.v.e. and when he had Bill Cosby on for the first time of The Tonight Show, Jimmy told a story of him not having time to stop in the green room to talk to Bill but wanted to say hi, so as Jimmy runs by the green room on the way to the stage he quickly says, "I love you Bill Cosby" as he passes the door, and Bill Cosby yells back "Who cares?!" hahahahaha... so I constantly hear Bill Cosby's voice saying "Who cares?!" after I say many things now-- which includes me describing how Mere has to listen to me all the time 

<insert wide eyed blush faced emoticon here>.

I've still been running, or more accurate, I've still been moving constantly without stopping. When is the day that I will finally be a real runner? How will I know?? ugh. Anyways, this past weekend was my longest time of moving constantly without stopping. 4.miles.!!! I can't even believe it. Now... it did take me 48 minutes and 48 seconds to get through those 4 miles. double ugh. But I actually did it! I am not easily impressed with myself and I have to say, looking back on the first few days of barely surviving 90 seconds of running at a time, I am floored that I did 4 miles of anything! Big group hug! I signed up for a 10k for November 1. gulp. So I still have some mileage and stamina to build, but I'm committed.

Just a little story about that run... I fell. I fell while running. Now while falling isn't foreign to me in any way, falling while running totally is! I was running, listening to my playlist, focused, breathing, all of those things, and completely was unaware that I was about to bite the dust. hard. My left foot trips over something that I obviously did not see in the street. My phone and ear buds go flying into someone's yard. My right side hits the ground and I skid down the street a bit. When I get up (and after I look around to see who is obviously filming me and about to post a hilarious video to youtube) I go back to where I tripped to find a piece of wood that has literally melted into some tar on the road. I try and pry it out, kick it out, pull it out of the street with no luck at all. It's like a tiny mini but very much there abrupt speed bump to anyone walking or moving in constant motion without stopping. I need to go back and spray paint that thing! ugh. How embarrassing. 

This past week was also the remembrance of 9-11. I know we all have vivid memories of where we were that day. It's crazy because I remember growing up hearing people say, "I can tell you everything about the day Kennedy was assassinated" and really having nothing like that when I was little. But this. This was definitely different. September 11, 2001 was during my sophomore year of college. I was up early getting ready to meet my friend Mike to go to HSU's new president's inauguration for double chapel credit {exactly.} I walk into my roommate's room and Tracy is sitting with her knees tucked under her chin watching the news. She told me to look at the screen, that a plane had hit. It didn't register at first honestly. I could see a tall building with smoke coming out but I didn't know where it was being filmed. And that's when we saw the 2nd plane crash into the other tower. So it goes from terrible terrible accident to something is incredibly wrong here. I pray none of us ever forget where we were, what we felt, and what happened next. 

My kids are amazing. Kids are amazing aren't they? Eli can read almost anything now. Judah is his constant side kick {for better or worse} and with Eli reading stories now, they have a whole new bond! And it's actually pretty fantastic that I don't have to read everything! What's not so fantastic is where Wes and I used to be able to spell out words we didn't want the boys to hear, now Eli just thinks through whatever we spelled and says it out loud. sheesh. But then he makes up for his smarty mcsmart smart self by being incredibly precious and making me Lego flowers. Big big love for those boys.

May the words of my mouth and this meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, Lord, my Rock and my Reedemer. Psalm 19:14.

Lots and lots of love. <insert red heart emoticon here>

On.Fire.

That's how I felt this morning on my run. On.Fire. And I don't mean that beautiful Katniss Everdeen, Girl on Fire kind of way. {Although. If you have never seen the Director's interview from the bonus features of The Hunger Games, it is fantastic. Talk about #leadership and #vision. whoa.} No I was feeling like my legs were being set on fire from the inside. I wish I was too embarrassed to admit this, but I kind of wanted to cry! 3 miles of constant motion (hurry up day when I can actually say "run" instead of constant motion which clearly means I walked part of it...) I was pretty proud of myself for surviving, but let me tell you: it.hurt.

I would also like to take a minute to acknowledge a conversation Jenn and I had after Saturday's run. I don't for one second want to take for granted the overwhelming and sometimes completely debilitating blessings and freedoms we are given at birth in America. Where we can literally run free outside without the threats of attacks or explosions. Where we can take our children to public parks and listen to music for free. I just have no idea. NO idea at all the reasons that God has called us all to this time in this life for a specific purpose. But I don't want it to go unstated that there are people suffering all around the world (and in the USA) and for my life to be safe and secure right now is truly more than some will ever know. I am grateful and thankful and want to always be able to contribute to the goodness of the world in some small way. I get all choked up reading this from Beth Moore:

Today was Copeland's 15 month check up. Y'all. This kid. I really can't understand how in the world my heart can contain all of the love I feel for him alone, much less all 3 of the boys! He is hilarious, stubborn, smart, freaking adorable, mischievous, and fast. He is crazy about his brothers, wants you to give him a cracker about 99,000 times a day just so he can throw it on the ground, and will give you hugs and kisses while saying "ya-yo" {I love you} melts.my.heart. So I will continue on my quest for pain and healthy choices to give myself every opportunity imaginable to be involved in his life and the lives of my other kids (and Wes!). Copeland is amazing. <insert every possible heart and love emoticon here> Perfection.

Working hard to earn back your trust. I logged all my food in MyFitnessPal today! <insert rainbow emoticon here> And definitely make the stew I was telling you about! Delicious! Tomorrow I continue my 10k training with a cross training session. The goal is 5:30 am yoga. yikes. {heart is now beating a little fast since that will be session 3 of 5 groupon yoga classes! noooooooo...}

May the words of my mouth and this meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, Lord, my Rock and my Reedemer. Psalm 19:14.

Lots and lots of love. <insert red heart emoticon here>

Dadgum Notifications

These notifications are killing me. Shopping in Wal-Mart I get a MyFitnessPal and a Nike+ notification. Neither of them are every good things. Is there some app out there that can give me a notification of doing something right without me having to post something and get some feedback? (currently thinking this may have not been the most productive hormonal timeline to start this blog) turning.myself.around.now.

Thank you Nike+ app for reminding me that my 10k training program starts tomorrow with running 3 miles! If I actually pull this off by making it 3 miles of constant motion, I will seriously be the most excited person ever! EVER.

In an effort to maintain honesty with the internet, I would like to now confess that I did not begin MyFitnessPal today {hence the "would you like to log your food now?" notification} and no. I would not. Due to my numerous flaws, I really cannot have being a bold face liar be on my resume. So I'm telling you again. Trust can be earned. I will be logging my food in MyFitnessPal tomorrow. Furthermore, I will also be making healthy eating choices as well.

I can already feel like this is turning into one of those "all you talk about is food and working out and losing weight and blah blah blah" blogs. I am reaaaalllyyy hoping it doesn't end up that way. But my unfortunate but consistent food addictive personality comes with some much needed healthy safeguards and more importantly, accountability. Feel free to just skip over any of the food mumbo jumbo. I will also be responsible for keeping negative self talk in check. There is no reason to give evil shame a foothold in any of this. Some of you will never have to know the darkness that comes with hiding and shame about some sort of addiction. Praise Jesus. But for me, keeping it out in the light with honesty and transparency keeps me, helps me be able to claim victories in the name of Jesus and keep the monsters from growing in the dark.

Ok. So I'm making lunch in my new fancy crock pot. I need to remember to use the words "slow cooker" in my searches. Is that like a northern thing? I'm making "Slow Cooker (crock pot) Chicken, Sweet Potato, and Kale Stew." I had no yellow mustard, only dijon, so I hope those 2 teaspoons didn't jack the whole thing up. I also didn't have tomato paste so I basically blended some fire roasted tomatoes from a can and dumped them in. Surely that works! Ugh. And because I had thrown the whole new package of chicken in the freezer instead of putting them in smaller portions, I had to thaw it out enough, with hot water in the sink, to break it apart to use in the stew. gag.me. All while my 15 month old is running around with a crayon in his mouth because somehow he always knows when I cannot possibly reach him to get it out of his mouth. heavens.

I'm still in the running for self appointed homemaker of the year. To be a homemaker do you have to be like a stay at home mom? I'm just using the term as someone who can keep their house together enough to be livable. That's our academic vocabulary for the day.

Although I have not done one single thing to the rooms I posted yesterday {I do believe I kicked some things out of the walkway at least} and I have actually contributed to some more messes, I really did get some much needed closet and drawer clean outs done in the boys' rooms. Walking down memory lane with all of Copeland's (my 15 month old) baby clothes just made my heart burst with love! Finding notes people had given me, written prayers for when Judah (my 4 1/2 year old) was a baby, and teeny tiny socks just almost gave me baby fever. {it's gone Wes.} sigh. I freaking love my kids. So the keep pile remained pretty small, donate pile pretty big, and throw out stained, ripped, and what the heck happened to this pile are ready to be taken care of. {notification: you are a beast Amanda! way to clean out the boys' closets while they are running and screaming and throwing your nicely folded stacks all over the room! you are impressive!}

My hard working, super cute husband was trying to get all of the grocery list with all 3 boys at the store. I texted him and asked him to get some single packet M&Ms so I could feel like an involved parent for Eli's (my 6 1/2 year old) 1st grade class. The request had been on the weekly newsletter twice for goodness sakes. I had to get some and save the day! Apparently the store was rearranging all the candy to bring in the Halloween stuff {seriously?} and Wes could only find the fun size versions of the big over $10 multipack of M&Ms including the dreaded peanut and peanut butter filled kinds. Obviously I could eat every single one of those without blinking an eye, but I (thankfully) do not have a peanut allergy. So while he gets an A for effort, they can't be taken to school, were out of our Dave Ramsey <insert smirk face emoticon here> budget anyways, and need to be returned. The whole point of the story is this was a week ago and we still haven't taken them back, but more importantly is that we have not opened them! Claim that victory! Even when I literally hear them call my name, I just look at them, remember that they were ten dollars of hard earned grocery budget money, and just yell at Wes to remember to take them back! <insert salsa dancing emoticon here!> 55 glorious fun size pieces still in.tact! {Wes!! Take those back!}

Per usual, I am just now catching up with the rest of the reading world and am finally going to read the raved reviewed by literally everyone, Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl. I'm kind of like a 17 year old girl mentally when it comes to books, so I'm a little nervous about the awareness that this isn't going to be a happy ending considering the previews of the movie trailers I've seen. First a big girl crock pot and now a big girl book. I'll let you know.

May the words of my mouth and this meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, Lord, my Rock and my Reedemer. Psalm 19:14.

Lots and lots of love. <insert red heart emoticon here>

Ridiculous

I'm ending my ridiculous day of over the top emotions. {sorry Wes.} Wait a minute. Nevermind. He literally just showed me how big his pants are getting and said, "I just don't know what to do. My clothes are getting too big." I gave him probably the worst look ever. sigh. He is trying on all kinds of clothes and looking amazing while I sit here, feeling like a baby beluga whale, trying (sorta) to be supportive of his never ending weight loss, and my stagnant scale.

Let's go ahead and call on my strength of Positivity {thank you StrengthFinder}, tell Wes to get out of our room, and look at some positives of today. Here we go:

1. Making it 3 miles of constant motion without throwing up or dying. Jennifer to the rescue again for suffering through the heat and humidity all while never making me feel pathetic as I stop and whine and start up again for 3 miles. It actually was kind of hilarious since there was an actual 5k happening at the park we were running at. I made us go the opposite direction as them because my runner's mental state could not have handled continually being passed by children. Running past them going the other way, totally different. Just go with it.

2. Getting to finally talk to my beautiful best friend Rachel, on the phone, not over voicemail, and with no kids screaming in the background! Don't tell her I had to mute the phone about 3 times to tell my kids to go play. She and her family are coming to see me this weekend! I can't even handle it! It has been over 2 years since I have seen Rach in the flesh. It's actually a soul crime for that to have happened. We have to make sure it can never be this way again! I did totally have that moment of, "oh my gosh, go get your house together" when we got off the phone. Not because Rachel would care, but more of "you're 32 now and should be able to maintain an organized home for crying out loud!" Right now all I have going on is basically a scene similar to this everywhere I turn... ughhh...

3. I got a big girl crock pot. (when was the actual moment that things like this became exciting?) And I even started pinning all kinds of healthy crock pot recipes on Pinterest. We all know how many things you make after you pin them. <insert wide eyed emoticon here> But I bought it because I actually really do want to use it, the one we got when we were married is too small, and this one makes me feel all homemakery. Obviously I will take a picture of my first crock pot meal like any blogger worth her salt would do. You just wait! 

4. I recommitted myself to MyFitnessPal. Go ahead and find me on there so we can be fitnesspal friends {username: amandalovestx}. I was going to try and do Weight Watchers with the app until Rachel told me it was $20/month. And obviously if I'm patiently waiting on someone to give me a justifiable reason to join yoga for $100/month I can't possibly take that on. So I'm back on the MyFitnessPal train starting tomorrow... knowing full well that I'm eating at Frankie's for lunch and dreading having to log all of that. gulp.

Four positives is pretty good right? My top 5 strengths, by the way, are Empathy, Includer, Positivity, Developer, & Individualization. You should go buy the book on Amazon and take that test! It's pretty fascinating. It even tells you how to deal with people who have strengths like you. haha... 

Ok. I'm going to go brush my teeth to tell myself I'm done eating for the day. I just ate a giant handfull of dark chocolate morsels from the freezer so hopefully it will mix with the sick mint toothpaste and taste like mint chocolate chip ice cream. I wish that wasn't a true story...

May the words of my mouth and this meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, Lord, my Rock and my Reedemer. Psalm 19:14.

Lots and lots of love. <insert red heart emoticon here>

The Ugly Cry

Tonight I had one of those gross, makeup in your eye, the dog even moves away from you a bit ugly cries. I would like to introduce you to the dirt bag that caused this: Moms' Night Out. I honestly can't even begin to go through everything I felt watching this movie.

It's probably a good time to just lay this out there. Full disclosure: I love basically every movie. You've been warned.

The end of the movie inspired me to get off the couch, make a guilt free glass of chocolate milk, and write my very first blog post on here. Of course I'm making all kinds of mental commitments right now of how to keep this up, how many times I can post, what the H-E-double hockey sticks I'm going to ever even write about... all of that.

But as I was sitting there, watching these over the top mommy moments on the screen, I could not help but visualize my amazing boys and contain the inner freak outs of my friend Jenn saying, "we are creating our kids childhood" and be absolutely overwhelmed by God's hand and goodness in my life.

So instead of going back and trying to give any sort of context to this blog, and definitely breaking every possible writing/blogging rule, I am here to just start writing. To put my thoughts out there {which in itself is hilarious} and make my mark in my kids history. If the internet still exists, maybe they can look back and just know, that even though mommy has many "moments" as the movie puts it, I'm all in. There is nothing but the perfect grace of God that will lead them, and mercifully He is using me along the way.

Ok then.

Just to timestamp some things.

I bought a groupon for yoga with some girls at my work. We get 5 sessions and a smoothie. :) We have gone 2 times and I am hooked. Like. I really want people to think I'm a yogi. Not just because how cool that would be {ok... maybe a lot of that reason...} but also because if I could actually do any of the stuff some yogis were doing in class, I would feel like a freaking ninja and my boys would LOVE it!

Going to the yoga long term however is going to be a problem. It's like $100/month. <insert shocked emoticon face here> !!!!!!! What?! Even more outrageous than the price is the fact that I actually talked to Wes {my husband of 10 years} about trying to figure out a way to do it! Who am I?! Dave Ramsey would not be pleased. They have an unlimited 30 day membership for new members for $30 just to suck you in, make you feel all namaste, and then mountain pose their way into your bank account for $100 a month. sigh. Is there a reason I could come up with that could ever even come close to justifying paying that much money monthly for one person's benefit?? No seriously. I'm really asking. Does anyone have a reason I could use??

ugh.

I'm also trying to "train" for a half marathon. <insert straight lined mouth emoticon here>

I wouldn't necessarily say that I'm a "follower" but basically every action I take seems to scream that. An actual runner friend of mine, Kelli, said that I should do it and we can all run it together and it will be great and magical... blah blah blah... in December. So everytime I see Buddy the Elf with a "18 more Fridays til Christmas" meme I want to eat about 17 warm chocolate chip cookies, turn on Divergent, and take a nap. Considering this morning I barely made it through 2.25 miles and tomorrow I have to run 3 with Jenn, I am ending almost every text to Kelli about running the half by saying "I. Am. So. Scared." I'm even more scared that I'm using the term "half" like I'm such a runner I even have the street cred to call it that. I can't even call Los Angeles "LA" because I've never been there, or Las Vegas "Vegas" because I haven't been there either. Yet I just throw around the name "half" like I'm part of some cool running club that can say those things. sheesh. I better get a t-shirt out of this thing.

At least running outside is free. Dave Ramsey will probably have a little bit more respect for me for that instead of my outlandish (but still very much secretly wanting someone to give me a good reason! hurry!) request to pay for monthly yoga.

And just in case you haven't made this exactly the way she has, the Pioneer Woman's cinnamon toast might be what you need to go make right this very second.

May the words of my mouth and this meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, Lord, my Rock and my Reedemer. Psalm 19:14.

Lots and lots of love. <insert red heart emoticon here>