#last90days

Day 3 of me doing the #90lastdays challenge..and day 2 of me actually waking up on time to do my version. I should probably figure out what I want the other 4 items on my daily to do list are. It's Rachel Hollis' newest motivational idea. 90 days left of the year...spend them on an upward climb instead of a downward spiral. In a nut shell. 

She has 5 items on the daily check list. And now that I'm trying to find said checklist at 545am I realize I must be using the wrong hashtag. Oiy. Need.More.Coffee. 

So it's like...get up an hour early. Drink an assload of water. Exercise at least 30 minutes a day. Write down 10 things you are grateful for. and one more thing...I only have like 25 more minutes until my monsters may wake up..I don't have time to research it right now. 

I figure, I should already be drinking that much water and moving for 30 minutes a day...but ok I'll admit I'm not. Maybe I'll try to do all those and my blogging/reading routine will take place of the grateful part. I've never been good at that. I'm not a deep person and I feel like it puts so much pressure on me to have these deep things I'm grateful for. I don't think I can focus that much and that long on one task to really write something profound. 

I mean right now...I'm grateful Jensen went back to sleep. I'm standing outside his door at 5:32 hanging birthday streamers and he throws open his door. I don't have his birthday balloons out yet...the streamers are all in my hand...not a fun birthday surprise. AND I wanted to blog and drink coffee. So yes. I am grateful he went back to bed. 

I don't feel that is deep enough to write on paper and look back at in a few weeks and think "Woowww Pam. You really get life." I'd look back and roll my eyes and think "Yup. You got lucky Sutter. You almost legit had to start your day at 530...and end up with a crabby 3 year old by noon."

FOUND IT!! It's #last90days.

God that'd be embarrassing to base my stuff on the wrong hashtag. I should probably tell the other 2 people I found on Facebook that are also doing it wrong. Then we can join the 15K other people who have their lives together. 

Weird how I forgot the food one. 

I saw someone was giving up coffee creamer. Ummmmmmmm. No. How does one drink their coffee with no flavor and close their eyes and pretend they are in a hotel room on a beach with no one bothering them? Not that I do that. I'm just saying hypothetically how would one do that?

I suppose I should just stick to her 5 huh? I mean this women has sold 9 million copies of Girl WasYour Face (those are my estimated numbers not actual fact.). I think she knows what is going on.

Fun fact: When I started this blog it was titled: Why We Sold Our House. Clearly my brain didn't like that.  

I should have some catch phrase to end my blogs. Like Al Roker "Let's see what's happening outside your window!" or "Stay Classy San Diego!" 

If you want to laugh right now..please go google Anchor Man Quotes. 

Have a good day everyone! Make someone smile today. 

Adjustments

We have been at my parent's for about 2 weeks now and everyone is finally starting to adjust.

I would say Jensen had the hardest time with the move..followed by Bernie. When we got here Bugs kept saying he wanted to go home. We would tell him we were home and his would just shake his head and say "no...my home!"

Ugh. If anything makes you cry...it's your kid not understanding what huge life event you're all going through.

He is up almost every night. My parents have two ways to get downstairs from our rooms and we have one gated off because I have pictured him sleeping walking and falling down it more times than I can count. Pretty much every night the first week he would end up screaming somewhere between 230 and 330. One night Thane found him downstairs on the other side of the house screaming "Mooooommmmmmmyyyyyyyy!!!!" He couldn't find me. Thane's response apparently was "Well..a good place to start to find mommy would be in our room buddy." If only you could reason with a half asleep almost 3 year old. Or just a 3 year old in general...

Since that night we blocked the hallway going down the back stairs too with our laundry hamper. The next night we woke up to him wailing outside our room. I threw open the door and he was walking back and forth in the hallway crying for me. I thought maybe he just doesn't understand where our room is...but nope. I woke up a few hours later with him in my face asking about his Nuk. He defiantly knows where our room is.

Bernie. Did you know our dog could tap dance?

Me either. Until I heard him pacing in my parent's tiled kitchen at 430am. His toe nails. Ugh we need to get them cut.

For a few days he was so restless. He likes to follow me everywhere in general but now he has a substantial amount of square footage to cover to do so. Poor guy. He would sit down..settle his old bones..and then I would hop up to do something and he would slowly stand up to follow me. He didn't seem to relax until I found his blankets to cover his toddler mattress that is in our room. Because yes...that is his dog bed. He's huge. I posted a picture of him the day I found them...he laid down and instantly passed out.

We are slowly getting things unpacked or put away in the storage area.

Lesson learned: It doesn't matter if you are exhausted and want to just throw all your shit away instead of unpacking it...just unpack the damn boxes. ASAP.

and hire movers.

We have been SO busy since we moved. It seems like we have something every night. It is making it impossible to unpack.

I could unpack during the day but on top of trying to get ready for 2 birthday parties I have to do laundry.

Yes laundry.

We took our washer and dryer out the Saturday before we moved. No, we didn't sell it with the house because the washer took a shit 2 days after we decided to list and instead of taking the risk that Thane couldn't fix it and we would have to buy a new one...we just took it off the listing and it is now in storage. Also, want to know a really fantastic time for your washer to break? When you are trying to potty train a super stubborn 2 year old.

So anyways. Washer was out a few days before we were..oh wait best part.

Two Saturdays before closing was our "move big stuff day" including the wash but we had my nephew's birthday party before hand. So we all get back in the car after the park party to rush home to get going and Camden has a Gatorade bottle he is playing with. Driving along....."MOM!!!! Camden took off his cap!!!!!!"

We are 20 minutes from moving our washer and dryer and our kid had just taken the cap off and was spilling a pretty much full bottle of sticky liquid all over himself and the car seat.

Story of our lives with 3 boys.

So we get home and my brother-in-law was ever so gracious as to spend the next 20 minutes tearing apart the car seat so we could wash it on the fastest cycle possible. They just had to move the washer and dryer last. Not the end of the world...but just really bad timing. Wondering the amount of Gatorade in the seat? He picked up the car seat and it was dripping blue. Huge puddle on the table.

So..no washer with a family of 5 means that in like 2 days you have 9 loads to do. I had to roll into my mom's like a college kid and hand her a GIANT box marked "dirty laundry." Made her laugh...until Sunday when she was being awesome and trying to do our laundry and the wash machine broke.

Apparently bad luck follows us around.

It's actually ok to use we found out. Thane was down to his last pair of man undies...ya know..the reserve ones...and I was not about to go to the laundry mat in the pouring rain so we tested it out. After 2 days of thinking the washer didn't work...it worked swimmingly. I spent the next 2 days straight doing our laundry with no problems. It was all fine until Monday when a load of my LuLaRoe became trapped in the washer and it wouldn't unlock. But positive note to this story: I sat down and designed my perfect laundry room. I knew exactly what I wanted. Now to just talk Thane into letting me get the flooring I think I want.

The weekend before our closing was crazy. We had been staying with our new roommates and it was Thane's 15 year reunion Saturday night. So we were going to stay at the house after the party and finish packing and cleaning Sunday and call it good. We hadn't moved the boy's beds yet since they don't need them at mom and dad's so we threw them in the living room to sleep on. Another lesson learned:buying a cheap mattress from Menards is really bad. I mean I slept amazing on Parker's memory foam bed. Thane camped out on Jensen's....and he filled me in on this life lesson. (Confession: I knew Parker's bed would be more comfortable since I had just laid in J's bed a few nights before. I let the drunk guy sleep on it on purpose.)

 I called my mom at like 830 on Sunday to check on the boys and told her we would be home for lunch. She seemed surprised that we would be done that quickly. I rolled my eyes...moms.

Ya. 4:30 rolls around and we were FINALLY leaving.

I was a wreck.

Not so much because I was sad about leaving but  more so because I have never been so sick of doing a task than I was of packing up that damn house.

I swear things just kept appearing. I would think I had a room clean and then I would walk by and see something in the corner I hadn't seen since we moved in 4 years before.

By 4 I was ready to have a meltdown.

Total random side note. We were sitting at the bar before closing, enjoying the Brewer game (well one of us was enjoying it..I was staring at my phone) and eating a lunch by ourselves when I came across this in my Facebook Timehop:

I mean...come on. The timing of this post is pretty crazy. I will say...everything has been falling into place for all of this. Building has always been our dream but deep down I had my doubts it would actually happen. It's crazy expensive. Ok...I'm going to stop. This is another blog post. 

Dreams Do Come True

It seems like an appropriate title for what I hope to be a series of blogs about our lives while building our dream home. I'd love to make a Blurb book about our journey so we can look back on it in 15 years and laugh at how ridiculous I was. 

Well...hopefully while we build our dream home.

I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop. (That's a saying right?)

I keep waiting for the phone call saying..."yaaa....the sale fell through. They aren't buying your home anymore. Delete you Pinterest board and enjoy picking up the pieces of those shattered dreams."

We close in 19 days. I hope to hell that doesn't actually happen. 

I have put off packing because I don't want to get it all packed and then not move. I didn't want to jinx it. 

Well there is that and the fact that I can't get much packed during the day and by time bedtime stories are over I'm ready for bed. Parker now has his own room in the basement thanks to his brother being too big of  a distraction at night so I'm not able to work down there when the kids go down. (good excuse right? Don't mention to me that I have a whole second level to get packed.) 

So what is the status of our life right now? 

Crazy town. 

I am currently driving Parker to a bus stop 17 minutes away and picking him up from said bus stop. We had been debating on where he was going to start the year for what seems like forever. Our home inspection results didn't come back until a few days after Barneveld registration so being the pessimist that I am...I enrolled him there.  You may be wondering why that has anything to do with registration. We have had *awful* luck with home inspections. Ok..just when we were trying to buy a house. But still. Scared. 

I was still trying to figure out how I could open enroll him to River Valley for 3 weeks and not totally over extend myself in the process of getting him to school. There was an option of driving him to Spring Green to get on the shuttle bus up the the Early Learning Center...which was doable since I'm at home but that is a 25 minute drive...at least. Which in the morning that is hard enough..but cutting into nap time at the end of the day would totally suck. (Didn't know at that point that we would have to cut Jensen's naps out the day school started. Ya...that has been fun.) 

My old friend Erin suggested that I look into a bus stop in Arena...and low and behold there is a stop 17 minutes from our house! She literally solved this problem and made all the anxiety about his school melt away. Well that is not true...my anxiety about his school trip could be its own blog post. #eyeroll

I find myself just standing in the kitchen staring at everything. There is so much to do and I'm such a procrastinator. 

I'm not ready to take the pictures off our walls yet. I mean..now that I just realized we only have 19 more days I am kind of itching to get out of bed and start throwing things in boxes. But the thought of taking down all the pictures I love looking at every day..and then not seeing them for a year makes me want to cry. 

Yes. Im a dramatic hoarder. 

I'm aware. 

Marriage status: Still going strong. I'd give us a solid 8.9 right now. Not a 10 because I'm annoyed that he'd rather watch the Brewers than lay on the couch and watch Justified with me. Give my about 15 more days and I'm sure we will be a solid 6.2. I'll probably be yelling  a lot and throwing bubble wrap around like confetti. He will be calmly telling me to calm down because we still have 4 more days to pack. I'll yell at him for being so calm. He will roll his eyes and give me a cape and tell me that I'm super mad now. Totally joking but have you guys seen that floating around Facebook? I laugh every time I see it. 

Anyways...stay tuned for more. There is a lot to come. Wish us luck. 

Blame it on the Rain

The storm last night. 

It was a good one. 

I used to love sleeping while it was raining. The sound of the rain was relaxing..especially on a Sunday morning when I was going to sleep in. 

A loud clap of thunder would wake me up at let's say...7 and I would get to roll back over and fall asleep to the sound of the rain. Maybe snuggle in with Thane and call it good til 10am. The perfect Sunday.

Then we had kids. 

Now a storm at night is nice to fall asleep to...but I lay there wondering if one of the kids will wake up screaming. 

Last night went like this. 

Me passed the F out..because that is how I sleep now. Hard. Yet any little sound usually wakes me up. 

and all of a sudden....BOOM!!!!! Downpour.

My eyes fly open and I lay really still to listen to see if anyone is crying. I thought I heard Jensen so I lay awake listening as hard as I could. 

He is on the top bunk so if he wakes up and wants to get down..he can't. I guess the other night he had a nightmare and was crying out for me. I say "I guess" because I am Mom of the Year and didn't wake up to it. So I think that guilt played a factor in how often I was up last night listening for anyone to wake up terrified. 

Once I was sure no one was awake and scared I drifted off to sleep only to be woke up by another BOOM and more pouring rain. 

Now I laid there trying to figure out how we will fit two kids and Bernie in our Queen sized bed. Parker alone is too much but now what if Jensen needs to come in? Maybe someone could use Bernie as a pillow...

I feel back asleep without a solution to that one. 

The last time I woke up I laid there doing a mental checklist of all the shit we have outside. (Hi..those neighbors here. Nice to meet you!) Racking my brain to make sure all the important stuff was inside. It went something like this:

Battery operated corvette...ya Thane said they pulled it in and I didn't see it when I came home. Not getting up. 

Garage door...down. According to Thane. If it wasn't I could bitch at him in the morning when all the garage sale stuff was wet. Not getting up. 

Water table on the deck. Well Pam..it's a water table. It's ok to be out in the rain..but shit the lid. I had the lid laying on the deck full of water for Camden to splash in. Ehh...if it blows away it will just end up against the deck railing. Not getting up. 

Kitchen window closed? What if I didn't close it and Alexa gets wet!? How will we set the bedtime timers? How will we find out the weather?! How will we play Eric Church Pandora Radio when I need a mental break?! Oh wait..ya no. It's closed. 

Rugs I cleaned yesterday and laid out on the deck to dry. Well shit. 

Those were out there still. 

I laid there wondering if they had already blown away. I finally decided that they would be too water logged to go anywhere. Then I got pissed that I'm going to have to wash them again. Unless they did blow away...I almost got up.

Then I decided no. I'll just buy a new damn rug for the bathroom because gray was boring anyways. And we don't use the one in front of the toilet anymore because with two little boys...its a really gross idea. So who cares if that one is gone?

Then I realized that no..I can't buy a new one. If we ever want to build a house I can't keep buying shit we don't need like a $14 rug from Target. ....Unless they are on sale next week or on CartWheel. Then it's meant to be. 

I almost got up and then nope. I decided if both of the rugs had been taken in the storm we will just use a towel to step on when we get out of the shower so no one dies. The new rug can come when we redo the bathroom.

I know you're all dying to know by now...both rugs made it through the storm. Yet...as concerned as I was about them last night...

they are still on the deck. 

Never Miss a Monday

I did it. 

I set my alarm and I got up at 5:45 today. 

It is a little easier when you husband comes in to say goodbye and wakes you up at that time but still. I didn't fall back asleep. I tricked myself and took a few minutes to check my phone which usually tells my body its time to get up. Because morning routine and all. 

Thane still called me at 6:15 to get me up to workout..ya I make him do that. It was actually super helpful though because he made me feel guilty for thinking about quitting halfway through. All he said was "Oh ya? Good job! K love you." But I felt guilty...you know how it is.

Was my workout pretty? Oh God no. I will admit I stopped the last round because I was just done.  I was so excited to still have almost an hour to myself to drink coffee and blog that it pulled my head out of the game.  I did make it through 2/3 of the my workout though! That is more than I did last week! 

I didn't do anything last week and I could tell. I felt flubby and crabby. Hence my vodka post. So it was actually good to take a week off and recognize how not working out makes me feel. I didn't like it. 

It was my goal to lose 40 pounds by much next month. 

I have lost 13. 

While that makes me want to cry...a lot. I am also pretty happy with where I have come so far. This is the longest I have "consistently" been active. I use quotes because if I had actually been consistently active I would have lost that 40 pounds. 

This is the longest I have been focused on becoming more fit. I may not do something every day...which is not my goal but it is life...but it is always on my mind.

I had a quick chat with Grandma Boo yesterday. She isn't actually my grandma but my kids love her and she is the most fantastic person you'll ever meet...so if you haven't met her you should. I was telling her how I have been slacking this past week and I can feel it. 

And then something amazing happened. 

The words, "I'm pretty ok with my body right now" *actually* came out of my mouth...and I meant it. I then followed up with "well we will see how I feel once I have to get into a swim suit." Why? Why do we always do that? I brought myself up..and then bam. Mentioned a swimsuit. I then came full circle with "but pssh...who ever feels confident in a swimsuit?"  I'm telling you..talk to Boo and you figure your life out. 

So, I have decided to keep my life on track by attempting to workout twice a day. If I get up early, which is totally reliant on Camden sleeping all night, it will be a lot easier to do. I will work on eating on the 21 day fix every chance I get but I will not miss out on fun things that always seem to involve food. 80/20 baby. 

Cinco de Mayo party? Sure I'll eat tacos and hell yes I'll have one of the best margaritas I've ever tasted. Culvers for ice cream? Pssh...I'll get lemon ice (cause that is better right?) but I'm still going to have a french fry for the mom tax. 

I think I'd rather have my boys see me make healthy choices but not restrict everything I do. I love it when they see me working out and then mimic me a few days later by doing squats or something. Parker sometimes gets bummed out when I told him I already worked out for the day and he isn't able to join me. Jensen usually just tries to climb on my back but I am getting strong enough to do a push up with him hanging on me. I actually did a glute bridge set with him laying on my the other day. 

So anyways. Now that I am frozen because I made myself sit on the deck while typing this to enjoy my coffee (because that is a thing you can do when you wake up waaaaay before your kids do) I think it's time to go make my to-do list for the day.

I think after 9 months of being a stay at home mom I may have figured out how to do it like a boss. Which is why my house looks like hoarders live here. Who has time to clean and finish organization projects when we just had this beautiful weekend?!

Happy Monday friends! Make it great. 

Grandma's Cookies

My husband is the chocolate chip cookie maker of the house. He makes them perfect every time.

Me? Epic fail. Every. Single. Time.

I have tried SO many times. Different recipes. Turning the oven up. Turning it down. Letting them cool on the pan. On a cooling rack. I've given up and just let him wear that hat.

Last night I pretty much wanted to eat everything in the house. Problem with that is that we didn't have any food in the house to actually eat. I somehow managed to convince Thane to whip up a batch and of course they were the best things ever. (In reality I just wanted to eat some cookie dough but didn't want to load up the kids to go to Culvers.) 

I'd like to brag on us for a second and let you know that we made healthy chocolate chip cookies. That's right. Healthy. 

We ran out of regular flour so we had to use wheat flour for at least half of the flour mixture. 

Boom. #healthnuts

My grandma made the most amazing cookies. She was famous for them. She always had some on hand because it seemed that there was always someone at her kitchen table to eat them.

The key to her cookies was that she made them into bars. I'm sure in reality it was just easier because this woman had to make like 2 or 3 batches a week. I can guarantee that everyone who came over had at least one cookie if not two, and then wished they could have 3. Whenever we would go up there it would be surprising if someone wasn't already at the kitchen table with cookie crumbs in front of them.

I remember sitting at their table dipping my cookie in milk or just shoving it in my mouth quickly and trying to sneak another one while the grown ups all dipped theirs in coffee while they talked. Let me tell you the life crushing disappointment the 4 times in my life that Grandma didn't have cookies made. It was pretty much the most rare and saddest time in my childhood. 

 I have always wished I could make cookies like her, which is probably why it has been so annoying for me that my husband is the one who can make cookies and not me. I remember the time I posted my frustration about it on Facebook...I wished I had Grandma's recipe. My sister dropped a bombshell on me right there in the comments section. Grandma's "secret recipe" could be found....

on the side of the Toll House Bag.

Mind. 

Blown. 

So anyways, whenever Thane makes cookies I make sure there will be some left so that I can have one with my coffee in the morning. I can't help but smile and think about Grandma when I dip my cookie. I feel like I've finally grown up. I just wish I could be sitting at her kitchen table.

So this morning I was standing in front of our coffee maker zoning out as I dipped my cookie when I hear Jensen asking for a cookie. Thane told him no and he got mad.

I said, "Bugs, when you help pay the mortgage you can have a cookie for breakfast."

Parker came over to me with hope filled eyes and said..."I have a wallet....."

I should have reminded him that he doesn't have any money in it anymore because he has to help pay the water bill since they left the water running outside for FOUR hours on the snow storm day. But that's another story...

Things I Learned at Workout Class Tonight

1. I can now do jumping jacks without holding my belly. It doesn't hurt anymore. Huge win.

2. I am way too invested in my Netfliks show. I found my mind wandering while I was doing lunge kickback pulses (they sound as awful as they were) and I was genuinely cornered about when Amy and Ty would figure their lives out and get back together. I may need to take a step back from Heartland and watch the Santa Clara Diet. 

3. I am still not able to do more than about 20 seconds planking without it feeling like my c-section scar is going to rip open. Like violently rip open. I discovered there are a few ab workouts that I still can't do 5.5 months post c-section and I am definitely listening to my body. I tried to push through the pain last time it hurt and I regretted it for about a week. So not worth it and the vision of the violent rip was a bit too vivid in my mind. 

4. I really like working out! Tonight however, I was not in the mental state to workout. If my friend had text me 10 minutes sooner than she did saying she wasn't going to class...I probably would have bailed too. I'm glad I didn't but I was a bit of a robot for a while. Just going through the motions and getting sweaty. 

5. I needed class tonight. I left feeling refreshed and ready to face my kids again. (Today was rough. Mix the 2's with said 2 year old getting little sleep at night..it's not pretty.) I needed that hour of me time to come home and be a halfway decent mom again. The best part of the whole class was the last 4 minutes of instrumental music where we got to stretch laying on our mats.

I'm lying. The best part of the class was that I was able to push through almost all of the workout and even add an extra move or 2 to challenge myself without stopping. Almost all of it. All the jumping killed me on round 2. I would not have been able to do that in December. Or even before I got pregnant with Cam. 

Baby steps. I got this.