So What Wednesday

I am linking up for So What Wednesday.



So What: if this my attempt to be a regular blogger. I like this link up thing.

So What: if I love the weeks where I work late so that I can get off early on Friday. After being salaried for 4 years, I am enjoying this hourly business.

So What: if I ate three pieces of pizza for supper. Lay off me - I'm STARVING!!

So What: if I took today as my rest day. This means I will be working out for 8 days straight.

So What: if my mile time is currently 3 minutes slower than it used to be. I am slower than a herd of turtles through peanut butter. But I am out there.

So What: If I won't run 5K's where they publish your time because of that.

So What: If some days I just want to put Z-man to bed early so I can go to bed early. I have been exhausted lately.

So What: if this was kind of a lame entry. Sorry friends...I will be more witty next time.

Long time, no blog?

So. 

I am terrible at keeping on track with this. I seriously want to and then oh look, 3 months have gone by. Egads. 

So running. I used to run and it was so fun and so easy. And then I gained 30 pounds and didn't exercise for a year. Now for the last 2 years, I have been trying and trying to get back into decent shape. 

Well last night I completed my first 5k without stopping for breath. The time wasn't pretty. (I am sure I wasn't pretty either but I like to think I look like Kara Goucher.) 

But I did it! And with my running buddy by my side (well eating snacks while being pushed in the stroller). 

It can only get better from here!

What's in a Name?

Baby names are one of my favorite things to talk about with my pregnant (and sometimes non-pregnant friends). I especially like talking celebrity baby names. I remember when Suri was born and I was like..wait? What? I think my favorite celeb babies belong to JLO (Max and Emme). 

Anyway...I love hearing about what others have named their kids and how they came up with it. So when one of the blogs I follow, My Very Own Modern Family, announced her link-up, I was really excited to read! And then thought, hey, I am going to invite myself to this party.

By the way, this is my first link-up so…who knows if I am doing this right.

I have been thinking of baby names since I was a kid. I remember when I was younger and my mom was pregnant with my sister, I wanted her to be named Christine. I thought it was the most beautiful name. But..no dice. She turned into a Chelsey. I also went through the stages of Steffanie, Joey (for a girl), Abigail and Ally (until my cousin was named Ally, so I lost that one), Joshua and Elijah.

My babe: Ezekiel Robert

So when I got pregnant, one of my favorite things to do was to go through lists and lists of names. My husband got so frustrated with me because I was texting him a new name every other day. The name we ended us choosing was Ezekiel Robert. Believe me, I checked the baby page at our two hospitals in town every week making sure that Ezekiel wasn’t one of the common names. There were several other Brandi’s out there when I was in school (even, I am noticing, in the blogging world. I think I follow at least 3) and I didn’t want my kids to have to use their last initial for people to know who they are. 

We chose Robert because it is my dad’s first name and my brother’s middle name. We want the middle name for all of our future kids to be a family name.

I already have several names lined up for Baby #2. (Husband may or may not be on board with said names). We are adopting our second so our timeline will be sometime in the next two years hopefully! 

Thanks to everyone for linking up! I love hearing about all these names!

Workshop!

We are at the home study and adoption education point in our adoption journey. We attended the workshop on Thursday and Friday. Information overload! I have done a lot of research on adoption between blogs, articles, books and talking with friends who have adopted but some of the topics really got me thinking.

First of all, we are open to adopting any race of child. From the statistics at one of the agencies we considering, many families choose only Caucasian (girls if you want to be specific) children. We do not have a preference as we know that God will chose the perfect child for our family.

However, say we adopt an African-American child (which we will at some point because we are hoping to adopt from Haiti when we qualify in 7 years). We live in South Dakota. Granted, Sioux Falls is becoming more diverse but we are light-years behind other states. How do we explain profiling and racism to our child? We have never dealt with it on that level. We can not speak from our own experience.

Or, if we adopt from in-state, it is very likely we will be matched with a Native American child. The prejudice against Native Americans in this state in incredible. It is scary to think how our child may be treated. How can we protect and/or prepare them for what they may face?

I know that God wants us (all of us) out of our comfort zone. Serving Him should be uncomfortable. We should feel challenged and we should trust that He will give us the tools that we need to raise our children (biological and adopted). But that doesn't make my heart hurt any less when my child comes home, upset about being bullied (for any reason, whether they are a different color, a different weight, or anything DIFFERENT).

We were told in the workshop that we are not only adopting, we are now educators. We are teaching everyone we come in contact with about adoption. The social worker said, I think everyone should adopt trans-racially. If they did, there would be no more prejudice in the world. So my prayer is that God speaks through us, that we can educate and encourage people who may or may not be considering adoption, and that he protects our children from, well, the world.

Motivation

I read a book last week. (Well it took me a week because we left for California in the middle of it and then I realized that it is due back at the library today, so I had to really fast read the last half last night).

The book was 50/50 by Dean Karnazes.

Talk about a guilt-inducing read. Dean is an ultra-marathoner. Meaning he runs 20-100 miles at a time. On purpose. In this book, he talked about the Endurance 50, where he ran 50 marathons in 50 states in 50 days. So, hey, not only running a bunch of marathons, but traveling to all of these places in less than a days time.

I have read other books by Dean and he is super inspiring. Every time I hear about his runs and how much fun he had, I am like, why am I laying on the couch? I need to get up and run! (Until I remember it is 9:00 at night and the temperature is -4 and oh, I am not in shape to run 50 miles at a time).

At one point in this book, he described being a motivational speaker. He mentioned that when he speaks, people are motivated right away. And then as they walk away, that motivation fades. Because you cannot be motivated to do anything by someone else. They can maybe create a spark, but you are the one who needs to fuel the fire. Motivation comes from you, not from someone else.

I was thinking back to when I was in shape and ran a lot. 

Disneyland Half Marathon

What motivated me at that time? One, I really liked to run 5k’s and 10k’s. It was a fun (although expensive) way to spend my weekends. Two, I lived in Southern California. I started my running for mileage in January. Outside. It was beautiful weather to run in, I almost never went on the treadmills to run more than 3 miles. Three, I had a friend who worked out about 10 times as much as I did. I felt once a day was a minimum to keep up with her. Four, I was in semi-decent shape when I started running. And running was so much fun, when I was in shape. My shortest runs were 4 miles. Generally I ran a 6 mile route and that was my run for the day.

Camp Pendleton Mud Run

So where is my motivation now? What motivates me? I want to be able to run the local 5k’s and 10k’s. I want to do a half-marathon. And I want to be able to chase around my little guy this summer when he wants to play outside. I have to get past that first month of working back up to a normal person fitness level. I need to lose some lbs so it is easier to run faster. I need to fall back in love with running. Can I do it on a treadmill? Time will tell….

Vacation!

So as I have mentioned before, I lived for almost 5 years in Southern California. I LOVED it (minus traffic and earthquakes). However, when I got married and knew that we were going to start a family at some point, we decided to move closer to family (mine). So back to South Dakota it was. And even though I love my family and having Z close to them, I still get homesick for OC.

So for my 30th birthday, I told husband that all I wanted was to go back and visit my friends. No gifts, no party, just a flight to LAX, a hotel on the beach, and authentic California sushi.

So here we are!

Walking around the Omaha airport

Sleeping on the plane

We got a fantastic suite right off the beach in Capistrano Beach.  It was an amazing price, like super super cheap and we could walk approximately 20 steps and get to the water.

The view from our patio.

So many amazing sunsets.

No filters on this one.

My friend Alexis threw a little BBQ at her house the day after we arrived. We were able to visit with a bunch of old co-workers but the best part was Alexis had a son only a few months before we had Zeke. He had a built in friend to play with while we were out there. Since Z got up early because of the time change (and because he always gets up early) and Ben gets up early, we got to have breakfast and play time a few times with them. They are such a great family and it was so fun to hang out with them again.

Zeke's new friend Ben

We spent a couple of days at the beach. Z loved the water, even though it was FREEZING. He would totally be a beach baby if we still lived there.

Just lounging at the beach.

Cold Water! Still love it!

Chasing the water

Of course I have to mention the food. We had In-N-Out for our first and last meal there. It's weird, I didn't eat there that often when we lived there but when you can't have it...dang it's good. We also visited the local Trader Joe's. How much do I miss that store!!?! Anytime we go to Minneapolis or Omaha, I try to make a stop to pick up some of my faves (pita chips, salsa, hummus, and lately, chocolate covered potato chips). We also had Daphne's Greek (which has completely changed and is not as good as it used to be), a really expensive and not so good Mexican lunch, PF Changs, Chick-Fil-A (another franchise missing in SD) and SUSHI! Finally! The sushi in the Midwest isn't terrible but you can't beat fresh California sushi.

My "birthday" dinner

Zeke's table

We spent all of Wednesday traveling back. It was enough to make me not want to travel anywhere ever again. But it was a wonderful time and I can not wait to go back!

Til next time California!

Look at Me, Learning Technology!

First, I have learned how to use Google Reader. Oh. My. Gosh. Instead of remembering blog names, saving them to my favorites bar, or hoping that they show up when I search, I can FOLLOW them. And when I do that, I can go to ONE website and it shows me all the new posts!

Technology.

I love you.

I am still working on a blog header, and, well, basically everything else to do with this blog but I hope to learn. Or to find someone to do it for me.

I tried a new Pinterest project on Sunday. Z was getting bored just hanging out with us and we were being lazy, so I made some homemade finger paint.

The instructions and picture came from this blog. It was a great recipe and was super easy.

So I put Zeke in the bathtub. I only had blue and red food coloring so he only got 3 colors.

He wasn't so sure about it. And most of the time he tried to eat it. Luckily it was corn starch and sugar so it didn't hurt him but he did get mad when I pushed his hand from his mouth.

Mom..this is a mess.

Project: Success!

I probably won't do it again until he is a bit older, maybe this summer, but for anyone who has kids over the age of 2, do it! Also, it washes right out of the bathtub and right off his skin so don't worry about food coloring staining anything.

That's all for today!