There is something you need to know about me. Something I'm not proud of. But because this is my life and my blog, I feel it's safe to share it here.
I am addicted to celebrity gossip.

Every morning when I get up, I come downstairs and sit at the computer. I have the same start of day internet routine: Log into Facebook and get caught up on everything that's happened since 8 pm the night before, go to the comic section of the Seattle Times' website and view the daily For Better or For Worse, LuAnn and Garfield comics, then go to People.com and check the headlines the see if anything outrageous and/or fantastic has happened in the celebrity world in the past 12 hours.

Don't judge me.

This morning when I logged on to People.com, I was both surprised and elated to read the headline TOM CRUISE AND KATIE HOLMES ARE DIVORCING. Yes, I know it's trivial. And yes, I know it makes me a bad person for being glad that a married couple is getting divorced. All the same, I was never a fan of the Holmes/Cruise marriage. I don't think anyone's been a fan of Tom Cruise since he divorced Nicole Kidman, because two seconds after he dumped her the gossip world blew up with all the bullhicky about Tom Cruise being a Scientologist. I had respect for TC before I found that out, as much of the world did. But the Scientology factor completely and totally soured Tom Cruise for me, as well as John Travola and Kirstie Alley.

The fact is, ever since Tom dumped Nicole he's been a frequent passenger on the 'Crazy Train'. And the fact that he sucked sweet little katie Holmes into his wierd Scientology world was very sad to the diehard Gossipteer's like me.

So there it is. Love me or hate me, I am a celebrity gossip fiend. And as such, I am very, very glad that the crazy, 'silent birth', 'two circle wedding ceremony' Scientology fest that was TomKat's calling card is coming to a close. Hurray to Katie Holmes for filing divorce papers! It's honest and true living proof that brainwashing doesn't last forever.

So last week I only ended up doing 4 days of Insanity. I didn't exercise on Friday or Saturday, but for a very good reason.

Friday morning Steve and I got the girls up at 4:30 and got in the car and drove to Spokane. We only went for 24 hours.

The reason for our trip? To sign papers on our HOUSE. That's right, OUR frickin' HOUSE!!! See, Steve and I decided a while ago that we wanted to move to Spokane to be closer to family. We're all alone here on our little (gray, wet, and dreary) peninsula since Steve's father died, and we're sick of it. We want our girls to grow up with a close relationship to their grandparents and cousins, etc, I want to be closer to my folks, and Steve wants to live in a town where his summer weekends won't be spent cleaning moss off the roof before fall comes and the moss starts growing again.

Our plan was to transition over there withing the next 3 to 5 years, after we finished our house in Kingston and found jobs in Spokane and whatnot. But our situation changed in various ways, and we found ourselves in a poisition to be able to buy a house now, even though we aren't ready to move just yet. So Mother's Day weekend we drove over to Spokane (for 24 hours) to look at a couple houses that we had found online and were interested in. The one we specifically wanted to see turned out to be a crap bag, but that's totally okay. Because it got us over there, and it led to us looking at our 2nd choice house which turned out to be PERFECT. Litereally... the moment we got out of the car and walked towards to front door we knew we'd found The One. The day after we got back from Spokane we put in an offer, after a little haggling we came to an agreement with the sellers and the house was on it's way to becoming ours. An inspection, an appraisal and a down payment later, I now have a key on my keyring that unlocks the front door of my dream house!!

Why yes, that would be my car in the driveway next to the SOLD sign.

The front of our new house.

Front side yard.

A peak into the GORGEOUS backyard.

View of the side. The top is our formal dining room and the bottom is the daylight basement window of the downstairs family room/play room.

Ahhh yeahhh...

This is our back yard.

This is also our back yard.

This is my kitchen with a hardwood floor and granite counter tops.

The formal living room.

The formal dining room.

The giant back deck.

Pretty sweet, yes?
Our plan at this point is to rent it out for a year. That will give us time to finish our house here in Kingston while the mortgage is being paid on our dream house. After a year we will move over there and start living the life that we want to live. Maron will turn 5 in August of next year, and I fully intend to enroll her in Kindergarden at Woodridge elementary (which is about a half mile from where we'll live). So get ready Spokane - Team Haag is coming your way!

This morning when I woke up my headache was gone, so it took very little internal argument to get myself up and exercising.

Today was Day 3 - Cardio Power & Resistance. This is my least favorite dvd in the first half of Insanity, because the moves are very intense and taxing on my horribly out of shape body. I did my best though, and even though I don't think I did as much work as I did yesterday, the work I did was much harder so it made for an even more intense workout.

Now I'm sitting here, post-workout, post-shower and post-omelette, sipping my coffee. My lower back hurts a little bit, my feet hurt a lot, and my legs seem to be getting progressively sorer with each passing hour. But in some ways I feel better now than I have in a long time. I already feel stronger (because Insanity is THAT hardcore, bitches!) and I'm super proud of myself for getting up and doing the work. Plus my diet has been very good for the last few days. No surprise there though - when you're working that damn hard at 5:00 every morning, the thought of throwing away those burned calories on chips or beer is pretty unthinkable.

Tomorrow's dvd is Cardio Recover, and I could use it.

She knows how to make my day...

A few minutes ago I was sitting here at the computer, watching Eureka on Netflix on low volume and avoiding daylight to the best of my ability, trying to keep the migraine at bay. Maron came into the kitchen (in between cartoons) and said, "I want to give you a hug and a kiss."
Cue the sweet, gushy heart-melting.

Seriously though - is there anything better than having your child come up to you, completely interrupt your activity and force themselves onto your person to give you love?

I really am one lucky mommy, and it's important to take a minute - lots of minutes - to stop and realize just how lucky I am. It's important to appreciate my life and my family. It's important to enjoy every minute with them that I can and to show them I love them as much as I am possibly able to. It's important, because this life is it. It's all there is, and it goes by so quickly (and it can all end in an instant).

Do you have family? Do you have someone(s) in your life that you love? Did you tell them? Did you say it to their face? Have you told them over and over and over again so they don't ever forget or doubt how you feel about them and how much you care?

Every day I tell my girls (together and seperately) that I love them to the moon and the stars, around the sun, and back again. And I'll tell them every day for the rest of my life. Because who knows how long that could be?

I knew there was a reason I quit exercising...

So there I was, lying in bed at 4:49 am, dreaming my happy little dreams... then 4:50 came and the alarm clock went off and it was time to get up and exercise. FML
As much as I didn't want to get up today, I got up anyway, got dressed, and headed downstairs. Today was Day 2 - Plyometric Circuit. Holy crap... holy crap... holy crap.

The worst part about it wasn't the warm up (10 hard minutes that leave me drenched in sweat). It wasn't the post-warm up stretching (sorry Shaun T, my hip flexers just don't stretch that far). It wasn't even the two seperate circuits that had me believing, once again, that I was going to throw up and die. The worst part about all of this was the fact that the horrible, eye-gouging migraine headache I had all day yesterday was not totally gone when I got up this morning.

Know what sucks worse than doing suicide drills and basketball jumps when your head is pounding? Nothing. That's what.

I still have the migraine, and it doesn't look like it's going to go away any time soon today. I'm just going to keep my fingers crossed that I won't still have it at 4:50 am tomorrow. Because as comitted as I am to doing this, there is a limit to how many times I can talk myself into getting up and leaping around the living room when my head feels like it is splitting open.

Starting Over

This past weekend, while sipping on a beer and snarfing on a cupcake, I started thinking about my life and fitness goals (again), and I decided that it's time to become proactive in the quest for health and happiness (again). So I decided to re-start the Insanity fitness program that I had so much success with last year. I'm going to tackle the program head on and do my best to get through it entirely. Six days a week is a lot to ask, but I have big plans for the future, and (oddly enough) none of thos plans involve being fat and having to shop in the plus-size section of the clothing department. 


I was reading a diet/fitness article in an issue of Women's Health recently, and it said that every new day is a chance to start over and do better. For me that new day is TODAY.


So today shall henceforth be known as Day 1 - Fit Test.


I got up, got dressed, pushed play, and jumped and kicked my little heart out for 25 grueling minutes. And while my Fit Test exercise rep numbers aren't as high as they have been in the past, I feel like I worked harder at it today than I ever have before. Part of it was the fact that I am wildly out of shape at present, so every move takes that much more effort for me to complete. And the other part of it was the fact that my husband had gotten up with me and was putting in a hard 30 minutes on the recumbant bike. And we always seem to work a little harder when there is someone else in the room, don't we?


So that's my story for now. Assuming I survive the day I'll be up and at it again tomorrow, in the hopes of doing better in the second half of 2012 than I did in the first. Because the time to be happy is now, dammit! I have everything I need to acheive my goals, so all I need to do is press PLAY and do it.

Bumps in the night... and the day.

Everyone knows that there are a miriad of changes that happen to you after you have a child. You sleep less because you worry more. You get crazy excited when your baby poops after a three day dry spell. You become frustrated when you take your child to their 6 month checkup and they still haven't gotten their first tooth like your neighbor's baby did. You become depressed when you take your child to their one year checkup and they still aren't standing up and walking like your friend's kid is. And you become downright devestated when, at your child's two year checkup, they are not talking up a storm and trying to hold regular conversation with you like your little niece or nephew was.

After you have a child you no longer think about wether or not eating a cracker that fell on the floor is a good idea or not, because your kid has already picked it up and is halfway through it. And that little spot of crust on your jeans or the splash of juice/milk/coffee on your shirt that would have had you rooting through your closet before heading out to the store? Now you don't even notice it. And even if you DO notice it, you really don't care. If you think about it at all you're just happy that it's not poop or pee. But on the right clothes pee dries clear, so whatever - at least it's not poop.

So many changes happen to you once you have a baby... Eventually, as the months go by, you get used to the crazy changes in emotion and thought and actions. Your new 'mommy' persona starts to level out and you think that the worst is over (at least as far a drastic personality changes go). Then your baby becomes a toddler. Then you have another baby, who also becomes a toddler eventually, and all the while your first toddler is becoming a little kid. Fast forward to the part where your have a one-and-a-half year old and a three-and-a-half year old. Welcome to my world.

So many changes have happened and are happening to me that I don't even realize how I've changed (or even that I've changed) until much, much later. When I do realize something, it usually comes in the form of a realization while I'm having my morning coffee, like today.

What was today's realization, you ask? I'm glad you asked.
Today I was sitting at the computer, drinking the aforementioned coffee and checking my email. I heard a thump come from the general direction of the living room, followed by another thump. I sat with my ears perked for five seconds or so and didn't hear any more thumps or any crying to go with the first two thumps, so I said 'oh well' in my head and went back to checking my email. That's when it hit me - I have become completely ambivelant to loud, out of place noises that are not immediately followed by cries/screams/etc. With two children that can walk, run, climb, jump and roll, I have come to mostly, if not completely ignore thumps and bumps. If a loud noise doesn't involve louder crying or glass shattering, I don't even bother to check on it. I figure whatever it was can wait until I'm done washing the dished or folding the laundry or putting my youngest daughter's room back in order for the second time today.

The ironic thing about all of this is that I have, and have always had the ears of a fox. All of my life has been spent trying to drown out or ignore all the teeny, tiny little noises happening all through the world so that I could concentrate on getting things done or getting to sleep or whatever. I have always overheard conversations from a different room or even across the house, because my ears are that good. I can tell you exactly which direction the ice cream truck music is coming from, and I can find a person in a crowded room just by listening for their voice in the jumble of conversation happening. I have spent my entire life trying to figure out how to drown out the white noise all around me, and then it happened without me even thinking about it. All I had to do was have kids. Hilarious, right?