Ch ch ch Changes, Part II

I apologize,I lovingly sat in my van while Max slept and finished this blog post on my phone and thought I'd posted it. Come to find out, I never did and all the pictures I'd posted, one at a time, are not on here. How annoying to do a "to be continued" and then not continue. Bless it.

I left off on my last post when Rob received an offer for a job, in a town 3.5 hours away, and we had a house they needed major work and very little time to find a house and fix ours and move.

Back to moving. We needed to move yesterday. And we had all that flooring that couldn't be returned in the garage. So, we went to work.

By some wonderfulness, the week after we found out we were moving, I had already taken a week off work to help my church with Vacation Bible School. I talked to the VBS director and told her about our situation and she was so understanding when I said "you remember how I told you I took the week off and could help all five days all day? Maybe I could do 3 half days?" Reason # 8,034,923 why we were sad to leave our church. My blessed Mom and Dad came for 4 days and helped me paint and pack and paint and pack and paint some more. We got a major amount of work done and I am so grateful to them. So, a week into knowing we were leaving, we had repainted the kitchen, master bedroom, master bath, and hallway ceiling and had filled a storage unit with 20 something boxes and donated 5 boxes of crap.

After Mom and Dad left, my sister and her husband came. My brother-in-law helped Rob lay floors in our kitchen, living room and hallway that weekend while Angie and I took the kids downtown and partied at the museum and had a trolly ride and a hotel stay. We attempted helping the boys, but 4 kids+exposed nails+copious amounts of dust=FAIL. So we left and they got much more done without us.

Can you tell which child took a nap and which two didn't?

By the time my sister left, our hearts were so full from all the help we had and our nerves had calmed considerably because of all the work that had already been done. We had three weeks left to find a home, put our home on the market and finish our house.

Everytime we discussed buying a new house, and started looking at houses online, I got crazy face and GI upset. I didn't want to have two mortgages and I didn't want to pick a house in 2 weeks that I would be stuck with if it turned out we didn't like it. We decided to rent until we sell our house. I took the kids alone to Fayetteville and went on an all day search for rentals. Houses, apartments, townhomes, duplexes. We saw it all. And nothing fit. Too expensive. Too small. No outside area for kids to play. Wrong school district. Too many college students. No parking. I felt really defeated and thought we'd never find a home. I thought I was going to have to go back to Little Rock and tell Rob we were going to have to live in a hotel. My sister drove in the area I liked, and texted me a phone number to a townhouse we had missed the day before. Maybe the landlord had put the sign up overnight, who knows. I called the number and somehow this townhouse had an extra room, and a dining room, a one car garage and was $100 cheaper per month that most of the places I had toured. He let me in to look and it was perfect. We had planned to get a storage unit to store lawnmowers, stuff from our attic for Christmas, ect. The one car garage would serve as a storage unit and we'd also save that $$$$. He also offered to give us a 9 month lease, rather than making us do a year. We were going to move in August right before school started and we didn't want to have to move the following August, in the heat, directly before school again.

I drove back to Little Rock feeling happy that we had a place and ready to kick it into high gear. I put in my notice immediately and was done working July 25. It was kind of sad how not sad I was. I mean, when I went prn, I did a whole blog post about it, but I didn't even tell a lot of people I was leaving until I was literally LEAVING the building.  I worked at that hospital for 13 years. It was the end of an era for me and on my last day, two of my favorites weren't even there, the doctor that makes my head spin had overbooked her day and we ran all day and I ended up staying late, alone, while everyone else went home. It was very anticlimactic and I didn't shed a tear. It was time to go. My time there was good but things were changing that I didn't really care for and if we were staying, I probably would have been seeking a new job, to be honest.  I have kept in touch with my old boss, who had retired a year before I left, and two of the nurses I worked with and one doctor. I hope to always keep in touch with them, they are good people.

Getting your house ready to put on the market is hard with littles. But, something happened inside me where I realized the reason why our house was in the shape it was, was because we had lived five years with babies and I didn't BELIEVE I could do it with kids home. It was time to start believing and just freakin DOING. Luckily, I was home and could put in full days of help and the kids were more than happy to zone out with the TV, Amazon Prime streaming, and ABC Mouse, and many other electronic babysitters. We still had to do our "last tour of Little Rock" so in between visiting our favorite stay at home stomping grounds,  I painted 1500 square feet of trim and every door in our house. At night and on weekends, Rob finished the floors in our bedrooms. I powerwashed the house and poolshed and took over mowing. In between we packed, packed some more and packed some more. Literally, where did all that shiz come from.

I can't pain without getting it all over myself

How I felt after 3 days straight of painting trim. Everything hurt (Oh, and I chopped my hair off)

 I started falling apart after a week. Sleeping on my coffee cup helped.

I did have some help

And I took some pics of my electronic babysitters 

 My parents took the kids a few days early to give Rob and I a couple days to be crazy cleaner/painter/mowers. The kids had one last swing on the swingset. It makes me cry to see theis pic. We left the swingset there.

 And one last swim in the pool.

I drove the kids to my parents and came back ready to do the final push needed to get the house ready. Thank goodness for this extra time with just us. We got Rylan's room moved out and discovered that the one room we thought the paint was ok, looked BAD with no furniture in it, so I repainted it. We fixed our fence, cleaned our pool, and began the worst packing of all: the garage. UGH, that place was a mess.

 And then we went on a date to the place where we had our wedding reception. Memories. In all seriousness, the food was MEH, and the wait staff was, meh, and well.....I'm good.

And then, this happened. 

Ch Ch Ch Changes

I just remembered I have a blog. I don't lie. Life has been cray-zay these last months. The dust is settling and life is assuming a look of semi normal.

I'm going to play captain obvious to those that follow me on Facebook or Instagram for a sec. Even if you know the main parts, some of it will be new to you. And if you still are annoyed: sowwy.

Rob and I have always wanted to live in Fayetteville, AR. It is a smaller than Little Rock, less crime, less city, more family, more friends, more nature. We blogged about it. We talked about it. We whined and cried and burned up the road between Little Rock and Fayetteville. But we had good jobs in Little Rock. First, I did, I wanted to work with kids and a Children's Hospital is only found in Little Rock if you are in Arkansas. Then Rob got his job and it allowed me to stay home with the chillens. Every one around us was sick of hearing about how we wanted to live in Fayetteville and they all believed we'd never leave.

But then we started really feeling the itch. Every bad day felt like it could be fixed if we didn't live so far from family. If we didn't have to commute to get anywhere. Rob's 80 mile round trip commute was getting really old. My 1 hour trip to get kids to school, then to work was getting old. Things at both our works were....different. The pull to stay because we had awesome jobs was no longer there.

So, we decided to start fixing our house up to put on the market. The first order of business was replacing our floors. Memorial Day weekend we purchased 1200 square feet of new floors. We had our master bathtub replaced and fixed a place in our ceiling where a burst waterpipe had leaked. It felt good to get the ball rolling. We thought we'd flip the house over the summer, put it on the market and maybe move while Rylan was off of school for Christmas break. Tentatively.

And then:

A couple of weeks into June, my sister Tammy, saw a friend of hers at a restaurant, in Fayetteville. The friend is in the IT business (Rob's business) and was saying how tired he was because he was working like crazy because he was missing two Network Administrators (Rob's title).  My sister called that day to tell Rob about the job and Rob was in Fayetteville two weeks later for an interview.

In the meantime, I started a "last time visit to all our favorite places" tour of Little Rock. You know, JUST IN CASE. I should have been painting and laying floors just in case, but it was easier to go to the zoo. First stop was the zoo with our neighbor Renee and her grandson. We had so much fun.

And then we had an awesome July 4

We found out July 11 that he got the job. They gave him a pretty big window for when he could start so at first we thought we had maybe a month and a half or more. And then we looked at our 5 year old almost Kindergartner and said "oh $hit! we have to move before school starts!!!!!!!" And then we did some research and found out that 1/3 of Fayetteville Elementary Schools do year-round schooling and their year started on August 5!!!!!!! Holy moly.

To be continued..................

Father's Day weekend

Life has been busy lately. I've mentioned before, we are nightime homebodies by nature. The kids and I like to go go go during the day, but come 5pm, we like to be home, eating, cleaning up and sitting on our laurels. Not saying this is good that we have this happen, just that we have it. So joining a busy church, putting 2 kids in t-ball, and becoming more active in MOPS and other community groups, we have been learning a new game of juggling. We are still less busy than 50% of the world, but its new to us, and everything new takes time and flexibility.

The boys have become total Daddy's boys. Especially Max. Rob started a men's group at our church in January, and for the first part of the year, the church also had stuff for me and the kids to do as well, so we still saw him on Wednesday nights. But, when ball season started, the groups for women and children took the late spring and summer off, while Rob's group continued. With Tuesdays and Thursdays being t-ball nights (back to back games and then immediately home for bedtime routine and bed), and Wednesday nights with Rob at church and us at home, the boys have been craving some major Daddy time.

Rylan has been telling his dad that he wanted to take him to the Splash Pad for a couple of weeks. So, we got up Saturday morning and went to a new (to us) breakfast place called The Root. It was fabulous. Everything is farm fresh and local. I had biscuits and gravy and eggs, Rob had a sausage biscuit (and shared my biscuits and gravy, because, wow) and the kids had raspberry and blueberry pancakes. Everything was fabulous. Homemade jelly, local honey, you just wanted to drink the maple syrup. 

This kind of began a downward spiral of eating.

We spent a couple of hours at the splash pad and the kids ran and climbed and splashed and ran some more. And then declared that they needed ice cream. It just so happens that across the street from The Root is Loblolly Creamery and...........yeah. That happened. We had ice cream for lunch. I love Loblolly. They are very allergen aware and always have at least two options for the boys. And their options are freakin amazing. Rylan had coconut chocolate chip and Max had blueberry sorbet. Its hard to pick a flavor. They are all so damn good. I might have picked two flavors. Rob MIGHT have had a brownie sundae. Calories don't count on Father's Day weekend. Or something like that.

You'd think that would be a pretty awesome, full Saturday. But, no. We went home and rested for a few minutes and then headed to Conway for a birthday party at a bounce place.

My kids have a hard life. We should probably have a telethon for them with Sara MacLaughlin playing a super sad song.

Renee is our neighbor across the street. She is a huge part of our life. We take care of each other's houses and dogs, she babysits our kids, we trade coupons, and we drive to Conway for her grandson's third birthday. We had a great time. And we ate Chick Fil A chicken nuggets.  Yeah......so.............

We had a gift certificate for Whole Hog BBQ that had to be used at the Conway location, and we aren't in Conway a lot, so, you guessed it. We had, like, our 5th meal of the day. And then went home and passed out in a fatty haze.

Sunday was a lot more chill. We went to church, swam in the pool, ate grilled steaks and sat by a campfire and roasted marshmallows. Every since Rob's first Father's Day, I make a cake for him every year. Change it up every year. First year was Brownie Mosaic Cheesecake, next was Coconut Cream Pie, next was Carrot Cake, next was a Cookie cake, and this year it was Hummingbird Cake.

  I think Rob had a great weekend and the boys got a lot of time with their Dadio. I ate approximately 72,000 calories and its been actually nice to eat a boatload of fruits and veggies yesterday and today. 

Random ramblings

We joined the Summer reading program. Sometimes I have to pull teeth to get the kids to sit and read with me and other times they bring me so many books that my eyes cross on their own. The reading program encourages all of us to turn off the tv and read more.

We had a four legged extra child for a few days. The kids named him Busta. He was cute as can be, but after 2 days of cleaning up pee and poop and saving anything and everything from his chewing, I was so grateful to find his owners. I have always been a fan of shelter and rescue dogs, but this situation taught me, I am an older dog kind of dog mom. Curt was CRAZY trained when I became his mom, and Lola needed some housetraining help, but I have never dealt with the chewing and the whining and the constant peeing on the floors.

I made Hulk Muffins. They are really good and the kids loved them and didn't even know they were getting spinach for breakfast. Add the bananas in it and sub applesauce for oil and they are basically the healthiest thing my kids want for breakfast.

We had a family reunion on Rob's side. Rob's dad is from Sulpher Rock, so we had it at their community center. It was laid back, good food, and located next to a park, so win, win win.

The boys played their last t-ball games. There was a trophy ceremony, delicious drinks and lots of smiles. The coaches gave good speeches about how they had enjoyed meeting our kids and teaching them. Even Max's team, that had kind of turned into a negative situation had a really good end. The assistant coach that Max really loved, the one that had to manually stand Max up about 10 times a game, the one that often had to carry him off the field because he was too busy burying his baseball hat, the one that was the sole reason we didn't quit when the going got rough asked if he could coach Max if they let him be a head coach next year. That really warmed my heart.

And then..............they called to tell us we needed to make up the games that got rained out. 3 games. In one week. So...............yeah.

There's the last two weeks in a nutshell post.

Ry's first graduation

Holy cow. I started this blog when Rylan was 8 weeks old. He graduated from Pre-k last week. I am going to sound like a typical mom here but here goes

I don't know where the time went.

I mean, I do know. I facebooked and blogged and instagrammed about it out the whazoo. But there are seriously days, like yesterday when Rylan and I were in the pool, I had a flashback of my first summer with him in our pool. How I'd put him in his floaty and kick him around the pool singing B-I-N-G-O to him. It comes in waves, these flashbacks and its hard to remember he's 5 now. He swims himself around and doesn't really laugh when I sing. He kind of asks me to stop singing.

In the last year, Rylan has grown so much. He has started building actual structures with his Legoes, not just messing around with the "guys" switching their heads around. He has tested out of speech therapy. He has gone from a 28% to a 65% in Developmental therapy and is learning letters like a madman nowadays. He helps me in the kitchen and he pretty much puts himself to bed at night. No more naps for this kid, he goes 90 to nothing alllllllll day. He loves reading with us, loves to eat pretty much anything, and loves going places. Like anywhere.Just not staying home. 

 They were all decked out for a carnival

 Rylan's class

The whole school singing This Little Light Of Mine

When they called Rylan to come up, he brought me flowers and a package of kleenex. So cute. They showed a picture of him dressed as Spiderman and read an interview they'd done with him. He said his favorite food was chocolate, he wanted to be Spiderman when he grew up because he always saves the day and when he grows up he wants to live by Zoe, his cousin. I die at the cuteness. Although, one kid said he wanted to live in a bowling alley and be a professional bowler when he grows up and I want to be his best friend.

What I've been eating

I've mentioned one thousand times once or twice that I am trying to lose some L. B.'s. I'm down 5. Which isn't a lot, but this is, literally, the first time in maybe 3 years that I've lost 5 and kept it off long enough to blog about it. That right there is a victory. Usually, I get 5 down, feel good about my accomplishments, say "I've got this" and then throw myself a food party to celebrate.

At the beginning of April, I took a week off for the kid's springbreak and we traveled to see my parents. We didn't eat horribly, but I ate like I wasn't trying to lose weight and I snacked more than usual and I went out to eat a lot. I came back with a stomach at least 3 inches bigger, but it felt like it was 27 inches bigger. I was so bloated. And I hurt. My stomach literally hurt. Eating hurt. Something I was eating was not sitting right in my stomach.

Being the GI nurse, and the mother of two boys that are dairy free, my first two foods to point at are wheat and dairy. It isn't rocket science to see that I have one son that breaks out in a rash and has explosive diarrhea every time he gets dairy and another son that refluxes so bad, the reflux goes into his nasal and ear canals and he has an ear infection within a week of having dairy, that dairy might not be awesome for me.  And wheat seems the culprit in a lot of people's lives, and more and more patients that I work with are testing positive for wheat allergies.

So, I did a "poor man's advocare cleanse." I went off wheat, dairy, caffeine, and booze. I took a small dose of Miralax, just to get the pipes clearing out, if you will. I literally lost a pound a day. And my stomach shrunk probably an inch a day, I don't lie, I went from 5 months pregnant to regular stomach in one week. I still ate carbs. But I ate potatoes, rice, quinoa, lots of fruit. All stuff put on the earth naturally. And I felt like a million dollaz. At the end of the week, I bought a pair of capris in a smaller size that were almost too big. It was awesome.

Since then, I am figuring out how to keep this up full time. I don't want to be on a diet. I want to eat right for myself and not really have an end in sight. I don't want to get in shape for a cousin's wedding or a reunion or anything. I want to get in shape for life.  I am still finding my way to have a cheat meal and not turn it into a cheat month.  I haven't gained the weight back, but I haven't been strict enough to continue this awesome trend. I am probably 70% good and 30% not swell right now. I'd like to be 95% good and 5% occassional treats.

I do think I was on to something for this to not only help me lose, but it simply being the best diet for my body, for the long term, to feel its best. I find that eating to feel good versus eating to lose weight does a lot for my mind set. Telling myself I'll get fat makes me crazy and I turn into a 13 year old hormonal girl that wants to eat ALL THE FOODS that someone tells me I shouldn't. Telling myself "last time you drank a milkshake, you almost threw up after you were done, it made you that sick," makes it so much easier to make the right decision. I think dairy is the culprit of my stomach feeling so sick and bloated and laying off wheat is the key to helping me lose weight and (sorry, TMI) things not getting too slowed down in the ole' intestines. I come from a long line of sick bellies (which, sorry Max, I've passed on to my offspring) and when your stomach feels ill, your whole body wants to shut down. When my gut falls asleep, my whole body wants to sleep. The more I read about processed foods, the less I want to eat them. I've done decently well laying off the cookies, and waffles, and crackers, but I do love a good bagel thin and I have momentary weaknesses for cake, brownies, and Honey Bunches of Oats cereal still want to call my name. I've had an occassional Sonic blast or shared a slice of coconut cream pie. Like I said, I'm working on the 95/5. Working on it everyday.

Here are some foods that I've found that I really like that follow the Sara Plan.

I bought the 99% turkey meat and mixed it with hamburger meat (90%) and made grilled burgers. Instead of a bun, I topped mine with mustard and avacado. We also skewered mushrooms that had marinated in balsamic vinegarette. Fab.

Protein pancakes with pb2 and Walden Farms syrum, turkey bacon

Pancakes

1/2 cup egg beaters

1 banana

1 tsp vanilla

1/4 cup oatmeal

Blend it all in the blender, pour into pancakes over low heat and cook through. It takes a while, but higher heat will burn them errrrrr damn time. How do I know.

Corn tortillas, refried beans, avacado and a ton of cilantro. 

Refried beans

1 lb of pinto beans

6 cups of water

1 whole onion quartered

3 cloves garlic, crushed

1 tbsp salt

Cook in the crockpot all day, when the beans are really really really done, put everything in the food processor with cumin and chili powder to taste. And....yum. Rylan will eat a bowl of the beans with a spoon.

Snack: rice cakes spread with pb2 or regular peanut butter and a chopped banana and sprinkled with cinnamon.

Butter lettuce, spinach, carrots, watermelon, strawberries, with light ranch and a small sprinkle of blue cheese. Rob had this at a restaurant and told me it was good, so I made the homemade version. If I take this to work, I'll put the fruit in a separate container so it doesn't get gross on the lettuce.

Corn's a huge crowdpleaser. Max would make it a main course.

Seriously, they could eat it every night.