Tidbits from the Weekend

Friday night was spent with my girls at my friend's house for a delicious dinner and play date. We were in our beds by 10:00!

Saturday morning I got to spend two hours to myself with sweet baby girl before big sissy woke up. 

Later that day, Jade wanted to take Adele for a ride in the wagon 

Grandma & grandpa took the girls for a night. Love this picture!

Mommy got to enjoy a flight of Chardonnays/Cabs with a great friend

After doing a few hours of work, I picked the girls up today at my parents new place!

Quite a gem of a neighborhood & a beautiful home that my parents look forward to remodeling before they make the final move!

Jade & I managed to eeek out some gardening today. This is the result of phase one of three. 

I decided to do myself a favor & base my flowers on the discriminating taste buds of rabbits. We ended up with geraniums for the first time. Phase two includes adding another box plant to the porch. Phase three includes some baskets of herbs on our privacy wall & a few new perennials. 

Jade did a great job of helping me this year! She was able to remove the flowers from the cups, dig a hole and hose off the flowers & mommy! Dirty girl before her bath 

Time to wrap up my day with a little "Dark Places". 

I Run My Own Race

As much as inspirational quotes get old, I still can't help but to post a few that really speak to me. I found this one about 2 minutes ago:

Seems like I run my own race often these days, literally and figuratively. Saturday, I have a trail run 5k which should prove to be a lovely place to run as long as I don't get to caught up in the mud since it's supposed to rain the next few days. 

James & I had an excellent "Come to Jesus" meeting regarding a timeline to purchase a home. We are committing to ONE savings account. Yes I know many of you just passed out, so I'll give you a minute......  Our goal is to put our town house up for sale around February of 2016, then hope to buy sometime over the summer. For the record, assuming we both work in our current locations, we will not be moving any further west or south, other than that, we have no idea where we will actually end up. This gives us three years to build up our liquid assets (I'm making Suze proud!) Just the notion of a structured plan motivates me to stay-the-course. 

We also discussed the need to move "A Day for Adele" to October. We will use the summer to continue organizing and we'll use our experience in Savannah to better communicate and educate our Army. 

Permanence

Adele's big 1st birthday was this weekend.  It's been a mixed bag of emotions for me.

Something that I've come to terms with recently, is that up until Adele's diagnosis, anytime a conflict or difficult situation has come up in my life, it has resolved. In the case of Adele's needs, they will not.

It is a constant struggle for my brain to wrap itself around permanence. Through my best efforts within my time and space, I have not been able to get myself to a place of balance. I am setting myself up with a very local therapist in hopes that I can come up with some effective coping mechanisms.

I am asking my audience a favor as a whole, with the understanding that many of you do this already..... Please check in with me from time to time on how I'm doing. I don't always have the forethought to express my need for help. Also, I am doing the best I can with my girls and thank goodness, I have a kick-ass husband as co-pilot.

On a side note, I took a million birthday pictures of my babe on her birthday, and will share them soon.

Reflection

In honor of those affected by The Boston Marathon, I wanted to share a few photos and highlights from The Shamrock Shuffle and challenge myself to a new goal.  

The day started out at 4:45 A.M. on Sunday. Lucky for me, but not so much for my hardworking dad, I was able to grab a ride from him to McCormick Place since he was on his way to work that morning. Once at the hotel, I met my friends who spent the night. We took awhile to joke about how early it was and attempt to eek out a few more minutes of charge on our cell phones until we had to catch the trolley to Grant Park.  Once there, we were met with this sight

and with the goal in mind.

We had about an hour and half to kill since wave 2 started at 9:15. Within that time, we also located the bathrooms and had some cute group shots taken by spectators.

Three of us deliberately placed ourselves in the last corral of the entire race. This worked out well for our pacing but not so much for the waiting around business. By the time we crossed the start line, it was about 10:00, however, Corral K is where the magic happens :-)

Just about 19,000 people ahead of us, but who cares, look where we get to run!! LOVE my city!!!! Race time begins and we manage to keep ourselves entertained with lovely conversation despite losing battery power to our phones. My friend and I mentioned that the energy was amazing. Music was playing at mile markers and starting at mile 3, people where cheering like crazy! The last mile, our trio decided to split up and finish at our best. I came in just over an hour for 5 miles having NEVER run 5 miles in my life.. I'd say I did pretty good. After the race, we decided to meet up at the infamous banana stands for a celebratory banana and beer!

I was inspired by others posts about what they did to honor those affected. My goal was to sprint a mile. I came in at 10:02 which is my fastest mile run!  I'm insisting on 11:00 mile averages for 5k races. Let's see what happens on May 11th.

Ultimate Blog Party Post

Blogging is new to me and was born out of the need to communicate information on my blossoming family; and to help others with special needs children to relate and gain a better sense of identity through the blog community.

I am a teacher and mom of a 2.5 year old daughter and an 11 month daughter who was diagnosed with 18q- syndrome (1 in 40,000).