The Strongest 93 Year Old Woman

That would be my Grandma, she is one tough cookie. Yesterday afternoon my mom had taken her to get groceries and when they got back to my Grandma's building my mom dropped her off at the door so she could go park the car. When my mom got back to the building and walked in my Grandma was laying in the entryway, she had fallen. They called an ambulance because Grandma couldn't put weight on one of her legs. It turns out that she actually broke her hip!

She went through last night without any painkillers, just telling everyone that she really wasn't feeling any pain. They did surgery at 8:30am this morning and put a plate and four bolts into her hip. The surgery went very well and she is recovering well, still no pain!

I went to visit her on my lunch hour and take her some flowers. When I got up there I put her flowers on a table and gave her a hug and kiss. While I was standing there talking to her with my mom she said to my mom, "When is Stephanie coming up?", mom just looked at her and said, "Stephanie is standing right next to you." My poor Grandma, I could tell she was kind of embarrased but she recovered well telling me my dark hair threw her off ;-)

My mom showed me the x-rays they took after they put the plate in and of course gave me one of the pictures to email all of my siblings. So here is what is now in my 93 year old Grandma's hip for the rest of her life.

She probably won't be able to walk hardly at all, she was already struggling before this. She needs a little Hoverround (or whatever those are called), Grandma thought that was a good idea for her to tool around on one of those :)

A Wall

The playroom is so close to being completed. We have one wall that is DONE, yay :) We moved all of Bella's toys in on Sunday and she is THRILLED with her new room! I got her easel all set up and she is constantly wanting to color on the chalkboard. We will get the rest of trim up eventually and I will take photos of the entire room once that is done. We have to wait on redoing the floor because Kyle decided he needed a new starter in his car AND a new windshield ;)

Too Many Goals - #1: Marathon

I must say I'm very proud of myself for doing the P90X program for the past three weeks and sticking with it. Like I said before, it's fantastic and is really doing wonders for me, especially the Ab Ripper workout.

I realized this week that I need to get my butt started on the Marathon Training Program. We got all of Bella's toys moved into the playroom (no the trim isn't all up yet, but the toys are easy to work around), and we got the treadmill moved out into the family room and ready to be used!

Last year when I first had my goal of doing a marathon, a lot of bumps threw me off and I didn't stick with the training and therefore didn't do a marathon.

I was pretty disappointed with myself, this is something that I really, really want to accomplish and I let myself get too involved with other things and just plain laziness came into play as well.

I will not be able to do the P90X program in it's entirety along with the marathong training, Kyle has put his foot down. I guess he doesn't want to end up with a spindly looking wife, he likes his woman with at least a little meat on her bones ;-) So I've decided to incorporate just the weight training into my marathon training. If it gets to be too much, I'll back off on the P90X weight training.

I have printed off the training schedule and it will going up on the bulletin board at home for all to see. I can't slack, Kyle's job is to yell at me if I do ;-) He would never do that but I did tell him that if I start mentioning feeling lazy he has to talk with me and keep me on track.



So I guess I do have a resolution this year, to train for a marathon AND complete one in Des Moines on October 18th!!!

Tanner's Party

Laura and I hosted a little gathering for baby Tanner, a meet and greet that was a lot of fun :)  We had it at the Teamsters Hall, decorated a little bit on Friday and had a great time.  It was Mindy, Laura, Lauryn and I and we had some excitement.  I was doing something in the kitchen and when I walked out to go back to the Conference Room I accidentally shut the door and locked my keys inside!  No one else drove, so we didn't even have a car to drive anywhere to get a key.  So I called Kelly to see if she could come over and save us, she didn't answer at first so Mindy decided to try getting into the kitchen with a credit card.

Now this is my baby sister, I'm thinking, yeah right she can't break in with a credit card, right??  I did have some faith in her, because she is a Koch girl and we are pretty resourceful when we really need to be.  As Kelly called me back, Mindy amazingly got the kitchen door open with a credit card :)  I'm proud of you Mindy, but we better not let too many people know about your new talent ;)

It ended up being pretty cold and windy, I know, SHOCKING!  We had the perfect turn out and everyone had a lot of fun.  Tanner got a LOT of new clothes, now he doesn't have to borrow McKayla's ;)  He was so good the entire time, he looked like a little man in his cute outfit and matching shoes.  He's such a solid little boy, the gals at daycare will love him, he's super interactive and loves to smile at you.

This game was fun, everyone had to draw a picture of a baby with the paper plate on top of their heads :)

This is the beautiful artwork by my mom and Mindy :)

At the end of the shower, we just couldn't resist checking out Tanner in his new shades :)

-51.....WTF!?!?!?

Ok, so yes I choose to live in this wonderful state of Iowa, so really I shouldn't complain. But -51, what the hell???

Last night I think it was a balmy -25 when I got home from work. I decided that I better shovel the 7 fresh inches of snow because it would be too dark and even colder by the time Kyle got home. So I got Bella in her chair, put on Little Einsteins and gave her some yummy dinner. I put on one pair of socks, a pair of my running tights, a dry fit shirt, fitted yoga pants, long sleeve shirt, another pair of pants and some fuzzy warm socks. I had on my boots, coat, two pairs of gloves, my hat and a scarf wrapped all around my head with just my eyes exposed.

I got out and started, it wasn't too bad.....at first. Our driveway is HUGE, we can fit four full size trucks in the driveway, I knew it would take me almost two hours to get the entire thing done. I'm sure my neighbors thought I was crazy out there shoveling, but it had to be done, too bad I got started after everyone had already used their snow blowers so I got no offer of that kind of help. I got 3/4 of the driveway done before I got what was like an ice cream headache and HAD to go inside. 45 minutes in that cold was too much for me, luckily the redness around my eyes that I was afraid would be frostbite slowly went away :)

This morning was the kind of morning where you step outside, take a breath and everything inside your body is frozen with that intake of a breath. I was like a mad woman rushing to get Bella out of the car and running her into daycare.

The drive into work wasn't too bad, there were idiots that think they can drive super fast and got themselves into accidents of course. It's seriously so cold that the exhaust from cars and the factories somehow freezes on the road, so they were kind of icy in town. I wish everyone would realize that they need to SLOW DOWN in this weather!!

Pudding is MESSY

A couple of nights ago Bella was wanting some pudding, so I gave it to her and went to do something. When I came back to check on her this is what I saw....

Who knew pudding was also a body lotion?? Needless to say it was straight to the bath with a very giddy, pudding covered little girl :)

Then she got to go to Grandma and Grandpa's house and wear a new shirt that she had gotten from her Auntie Nora a while ago. The shirt is super cute and Bells looks ADORABLE in it :)

Week 2

I started my second week of P90X, yay :) I must admit that I didn't do the Ab Ripper X yesterday, my lower abs are still hurting me pretty badly so I decided to give them a break. It was painful just to do the push ups yesterday using my abs to keep my back straight!

I did step on the scale this morning, even though I'm trying not to think about that number being I'm lifting so much. But it was good, I'm down two pounds, yay :)

The only "bad" thing about this program is the cheesiness (not sure if that's a word or not) of Tony Horton. This guy has got to be the happiest person when it comes to feeling pain from working out. I'm already to the point of fastforwarding through his talking points, he knows what he is talking about but the cheese level is just too high for me.

Hopefully I can make it through the entire plyometrics routine tonight!

Wall Chatter

Yesterday the phrase I ordered from Wall Chatter for Bella's playroom came in, I was DYING to get it put up.

Today I stayed home with Bella again, this cold seems to not want to go away, but at least her fever has been lower and she is going on a 3 hour nap right now so I'm hoping she'll be feeling better when she gets up.

While she's been napping I decided to hang one piece of trim and the phrase.  I hung the trim with Liquid Nail, not such a good idea for me to hang a 7' long piece of trim by myself with that.  One end slipped down and got glue all over the wall, now I have to figure out how to get that off.  But I got it up and I got the Wall Chatter up, it looks AWESOME!!!

All that is left to do is hang the rest of the trim, I'm patiently waiting for my brother to be free, put up the clouds (which just came in today :)) and replace the flooring.  I have yet to order the tiles but may be doing that today, yay progress!!

Good Pain

Bella has been sick yesterday and today, so I stayed home with her.  It's viral so just sleep, tylenol and fluids is all we can do for her :(

I have been keeping up on my P90X too!!  Yesterday was plyometrics, I haven't done those since highschool.  I couldn't even finish the last 10 minutes, my legs felt like they would collapse if I tried to jump anymore.  It's the toughest cardio workout for the program though, so I didn't feel too badly for stopping early.

Today was biceps, triceps and shoulders, plus the Ab Ripper X, yow!!  My abs are still pretty tender from Monday but I toughed through it.  Only 86 days to go ;)

I think I may have to wait about a month to start running, I need to get my body used to doing all of this lifting activity before I add anything more!

I DID IT!

The first Monday of the New Year!  I'm not one to make resolutions, it seems like I put too much pressure on myself and then I go all out and get burned out too fast.  So my goal was to just start the P90X program this morning, no matter what!

I got my butt up at 4:30am and did the Chest & Back and Ab Ripper X, yay!!!  I feel great right now sitting her chugging my protein shake (I HATE protein shakes), but they do make a HUGE difference in your body recovery after hard workouts.

Day 1 - Check - 89 more to go :)

Progress!!

I have to admit, I got further on the playroom than I thought I would this weekend.  All we have left to do is put up the white trim that will go on the walls separating the color sections (that's why it looks sloppy instead of a nice line where the colors meet).  My brother Matt is a life saver, he is going to come over sometime soon to help us cut the trim, he is an amazing carpenter and it will go much quicker with his help :)

I am awaiting my order of the clouds that will go in the blue section of the wall.  We are also awaiting another order that will showcase the wall we will use to display Bella's artwork, I'm so excited!!!!

We have just one panel of the dry erase board up, it was hard to get up!  First of all I got the wrong kind of adhesive and Kyle and I couldn't figure out why it wouldn't hold.  Well I got the adhesive that you have to brace the panel for at least 24 hours, oops.  So we made a trip to Lowe's this morning for the trim and the right kind of adhesive.  It worked much better, but was like a huge work out to get it to stay flush on the wall, we'll get the rest up sometime today :)

The final step will be to rip out the carpet and put in the rubber floor tile which we are doing in the tan color.  I'm just so happy to be so far along!

We have been keeping the door shut so Bells can't see what's going on, but this morning it wasn't shut all the way and she saw it.  I have never seen so much glee in her face, she was so overly excited and it gives me all the more reason to hurry up and finish it so she and her toys can move in!

Our Weekend

I have been working like a mad woman on Bella's playroom, and it has paid off :)  But in between my hard work we have had quite a bit of fun, and of course gotten some pictures of Bella AND Tybalt :)

Bella LOVES to read The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle, she loves to count everything the caterpillar eats.

Tybalt just hanging out and looking like the majestic boxer he is ;)

Another one of Bella's loves, ELMO!

We LOVE his squishy face :)

We LOVE the beautiful princess we are so blessed to have :)

Finally....A Play Room For Bells...Coming Soon

I FINALLY really got started on Bella's playroom.  The day I was deathly ill at one point I was watching HGTV and was motivated to draw out sketches of the walls for the playroom.  It was like it took me to feel deathly ill to get the design set in stone and know exactly what I was going to do.

Yesterday morning I took Bella to the doctor for a check-up on her tubes, they are perfect and everything is wonderful :)

I then took her to school and ventured out to Menard's, Best Buy, Stuff, and Lowe's, I got ALMOST everything I needed but need to hit Lowe's one more time today.  Once I got home I couldn't decide if I wanted to blast the ITunes from upstairs (I really need to get a dock for my IPod), or would there be something worth while on TV?  The TV is in another room so it had to be something I could just listen to all day, and wouldn't you know The Travel Channel had a marathon of No Reservations.  Those who know me best know that I have a strange attraction to Anthony Bourdain, I was so HAPPY to listen to him on his adventures all day while transforming the playroom :)

I have a few photos of the progress so far, although no photos yet of the painting I have done on the walls.  It took me a while to get all of the trim painted white, taping off the walls has actually been really fast and easy.  I LOVE the new blinds and we will be replacing ALL of the blinds in our house eventually, but I must keep my mind on the playroom!!

The room was just very plain, it was still kind of messy when I took the before photos, Milo was checking everything out :)

Tada!  I LOVE the difference it made painting the trim white, and I love how the new blinds look.  The walls will not be white......keep checking in for hopefully more pictures today :)