Achieving a goal!

The last 3 months have been SO exciting for our family. We've endured illness after illness, loss of hours which equals a huge pay cut, our oh-so-amazing Nana & Papa leaving for a year and a half, teething, potty training, the list goes on and on. Amidst all of this, I have been consistently dropping lbs. the good ol' fashioned way: eating less, moving more. It's fascinating that this concept ACTUALLY WORKS! I have lost 30 lbs since January 5th and I plan to continue on this path until I reach my goal.
One of my goals in this journey has been to run a 5k. I used to be quite the little runner and I really thought the possibility of actually doing it was MUCH farther out... a few more months away. I was talking to some girls who told me how they ran a 5k and it inspired me to make that goal a priority. I guess I thought it was unachievable until all the weight was off, but they let me know that I could TOTALLY do it!
Today I DID IT!! I ran 3.1 miles without stopping. I now have a starting point and a time to beat next time... and there will be MANY next times. My next goal is to run a 10k, but I don't anticipate doing that until the fall. For now I'll stick to the shorter distances. ;o)

Holy Geeze! Our house is full of germies!

So.. lets see. 2 weeks ago, I had strep. I did my ten days of antibiotics. BLAH! Then on Saturday we took Jaydin to the instacare and they confirmed (with a swab) that he had the flu. YUCKY!! Yesterday Darin went to the Dr. where he learned he had pneumonia. Today, I took Colton in because he obviously didn't feel well, and he had this crazy weird, untreatable rash on his bottom region. The Dr. told me that babies can get "rectal strep" and sure enough, the rash and everything else is STREP! So he said I could bring in any other kids and have them swabbed. Damon seems to be feeling fine, and Jaydin was negative on Saturday but I did bring Dom in because he has had this horrible cough and a fever off and on and GUESS WHAT?!?!? STREP!! I decided to double check, could I get strep AGAIN!? (Because I've been feeling pretty crappy!) He told me it's possible and swabbed me and .... go figure... POSITIVE! So now 4 of the 6 of us are on antibiotics. I might end up taking Jaydin tomorrow to be swabbed again if his cough doesn't go away.
The moral of this story. Stay away from my house! We are a bunch of sickies! Guess I need to break out all the disinfectant stuff. SHEESH! I think we have had our fill of illnesses for the next 5 years, thank you very much!

Interview

So, I've heard back about one of the 3 jobs I applied for. I have an interview on Thursday at UVRMC. It's a secretary position on the weekends... which would work VERY well with our schedules! :o)

Strep

So... I hate being sick. Seriously.. it makes me SO MAD!! I also hate going to the Dr. and avoid it at all costs. So Tuesday night I started to feel some swelling, tenderness in the glands at the back of my throat. I was annoyed but hoped it was allergies with Utah deciding to change seasons every other day. I got in the shower to wash green streaks out of my hair.. (THANKS JESS) and then took each of my little guys and washed out their green faux hawks! When i got out of the shower this overwhelming chaos hit my head like a ton of bricks. I laid down and couldn't move. My head was throbbing... I KNEW I had a fever. I asked D for some Ibuprofen and took some. I seriously didn't even brush my hair after I got out of the shower. I just crawled in my bed and contemplated my nearing death. I KNEW I had strep. It always hits me like this. So DEBILITATING.

So Wednesday morning Damon comes in my room. I tell him I'm sick.. I can't... he gets Colton out of bed and plays with the boys until he has to go to school. I asked him to make sure the baby gate was up so Colton couldn't fall down the stairs. I'm laying in my bed, thinking about sending out an SOS via text message but not able to complete thoughts when the phone rings 4 times. Dominic comes in my room and tells me Justin is coming. (I asked Justin about the conversation, he says Dominic answered the phone and when Justin asked to talk to me, Dom told him I was sick and in my bed.) So a few minutes later in walk two of my brothers. They were stopping in to get golf clubs that D said they could borrow. Justin comes in my room and I tell him, I'm dieing. I can't get up. I need help. Charlie gets me some ibuprofen, while Justin goes around changing Colton, feeding him AND getting a hold of his wife, Jessica. He decides to stay with me and take care of the boys until she can get here.

So Jessica gets here, picks up my house, brings me some liquid to drink, reminds me to call the Dr. Offers to go get me anything I might need AND spends 3 hours or so at my house and then took my little guys to her house so I could go to the Dr. (she had to be home when HER OWN kids got home from school). At this point, I've taken Tylenol and Ibuprofen and I can at least MOVE. My fever is gone... and I set my alarm so I'll wake up for my appointment.

So after a few minutes and a rapid strep test, my doc tells me that.... I HAVE STREP!! Seriously, I love my Dr. but it is so annoying to pay money to have him tell me what I already know! So.. I'm taking Amoxicillin and tylenol and ibuprofen so I can continue to sort of function. Hopefully by tomorrow I will be feeling tons better. For now, we are out of baby food and Darin will have to go to the store this evening.

So... I want to pour out my gratitude for a minute. I don't know what I would have done yesterday if my brother's and Jessica hadn't been so willing to help me! THANK YOU!!!! I love having my family close for SO many reasons, but yesterday reminded me of just how blessed we are to have each other.

I LOVE YOU GUYS!! THANKS FOR RESCUING ME!!

Jobs

So for now, it seems that Darin has work. He will only be working 32 hours a week though... but WOW we are grateful he has work.

Today I applied for a few jobs. Of course I am applying at the hospital because health care is just sort of WHO I AM. :o) We'll see if anything happens with this. I would love to do medical transcription for the hospital! I love data entry and would be very excited to be able to work from home. (And thanks to being addicteed to AOL as a 14 year old... I type 80+ words per minute!) There are also a couple of secretary type jobs I've applied for that have needs on the weekends... which would be perfect for us! I'll keep people posted. My guess is that in this economy, jobs like these will have lots of OVERQUALIFIED applicants. Hmm... I guess whatever will be will be! :o)

Helpless

So the ONLY part about being a stay at home mom that is really hard is not contributing financially. Here we are in the midst of this recession that has mostly effected the trades in our state and our only source of income is IN THE TRADES!! This week Darin has only had enough work for about half of his normal 40 hour work week. Next week... we don't even know if he'll have work. Because we live off only his income, unemployment would not even come CLOSE to supporting us (and seriously, we don't need hand outs from the stupid government! There is enough people EXPECTING it in this country. We like being self-sufficient.) and THERE IS NO WORK TO BE FOUND!! It's not like he could go out and get a job with a different company which means... he could go work at wal-mart or something for less than half of what he makes. Honestly, with what jobs are available, we couldn't even make his income if BOTH OF US were working FULL TIME!!! But it might come to that. Working opposite shifts just to make ends meet. It seriously BREAKS MY HEART!!! We might just both end up working at the hospital, meanwhile I will be missing my children and my husband.

It's hard times and I know we need to just do what needs to be done to live. It's so frustrating that Darin has dedicated 4 years of school and 7 years of work to a career that is obsolete. So NOW WHAT? I just don't even want to think about what the future holds, but I also can't just not worry about it because it could be staring us in the face TOMORROW!! And then what?

Chocolate cookies! YUM!

We were at my mom's yesterday and she had these 100 calorie packs of cookies. I figured it couldnt' kill him right? So maybe the shirt is doomed... but LOVE these pics!