Happy Halloween 2012

Happy Halloween from the Pace's!

 

I have been SO excited for Halloween this year since Adalyn is old enough to participate in the festivities. :)  Here are a few pictures from our pumpkin painting on Monday night for FHE...

 

 

 

Happy Trick or Treating tonight!

 

Have a great day!

 

My Journey to the Healthiest me, while Pregnant

Today I have a story to tell you.  It is about me and my journey to health.  It definitely isn't finished yet, but these days I need a little motivation to keep on going so I figured if I wrote it down for all to read it would help me "feel the pressure" so to speak and help me stay on track with my goals that will hopefully one day lead to a healthier me.  It is kind of a long story so I have broken into a couple posts.  Today I will focus on the "why"  What made me decide to start this health journey, when did I start, why did I start, and what is my ultimate goal?

A lot of thought, pondering, and ultimately inspiration has gone into my journey already and I assume that there will be more of each as I take each baby step.  I feel this journey fits me, my stage in life, and my personality perfectly.  I have tried a few other things in the past and failed, this is the first time that I feel like I might actually be able to reach my goals and desires. Please feel free to read along.  I have loved reading others health/success stories with food and fitness out there in blogger land and many of them gave me the motivation to start my health journey.  So maybe this one will inspire someone also to stick to THEIR goals.  I promise I will try to not make it too boring. ;)

Lets see, we will begin with a little background.  Deep down I have never really been ecstatic with the way that I looked (ok maybe in 6th grade).  There have been times that I have felt satisfied, but never really happy.  I believe most women are this way.  We are always comparing ourselves to others whether in a "wow I look so much better than you" way or in a "I wish I could look like you" way.  This concept has been the main reason why I haven't written this post in the past few months.  I always felt like even though I was liking my new lifestyle and results, MY story was never good enough to write.  But today I decided that this is MY blog and I want to write it, who cares if no one reads it. :)  So please be nice, even though I gathered up enough courage to write it down does not mean it is not a tender topic (HELLO we are talking about a woman's weight here, the most sensitive subject known to man!).  In 2010 when I was training for my first and only marathon I thought "great, now I can get the body I want"  Well even at the end of race day I STILL didn't love my body.  Although I look back now with my post baby body and would LOVE to have that body again.  Perspective right?

Soon after the race I was blessed to be able to get pregnant with Adalyn. (here is a picture of her cuteness just for fun. :)

I gained quite a bit of weight when I was pregnant with Adalyn and swelled a lot (I thought the swelling was from the heat since she was a summer baby, but I was wrong).  I was working full time and we were in the middle of moving out of state so my health was not my highest priority at that time.  I ate what I wanted (kind of with the myth idea that you can eat anything you want when you are pregnant because you are going to gain weight anyway) and hardly exercised at all (just walks around the neighborhood in the 3rd trimester).  Here I am 7 weeks pregnant with Adalyn (oh I wish my hair was long again)...

Then here I am at 35 weeks pregnant with her...

 And here I am the day we brought her home from the hospital on August 13, 2011...

Yep I swelled a lot (if you had only seen my feet), but by the end of her pregnancy I was REALLY motivated to get my body back and workout hard.  So six weeks after I had her I jumped back into exercising and working out.  It didn't work, I will explain more in a later post why it didn't work (it isn't really that big of a secret, we all know that it takes more than exercise to lose weight).  But for now we will just say that it didn't work and I only lost some of the extra baby weight that I had gained by the time we excitedly found out that I was expecting baby #2 (no it wasn't a surprise baby).  Adalyn was 8 months old and we were thrilled to be giving her a baby sibling.  I was/am due on December 24th (in case any of you missed that news).

Rock Bottom:
Finally we have reached the turning point in the story.  I think everyone who wants to lose weight reaches this point at some time or another that they just can't stand how they feel anymore and are actually ready to do something about it.  I reached this point this past June.  I was 12ish weeks pregnant with baby #2 (don't you love how well I remember the details...not).  I was pretty depressed with how I felt, looked, and fit into my clothes.  I was also disappointed in myself that I hadn't lost the baby weight from Adalyn and now I was pregnant again.  Was I just going to gain more and more weight?  I had visions of what I would look like when I had my 4th or 5th child and I was physically ill inside.  I thought there was NO way out of the cycle.  I remember going to McKay's sisters wedding around this time.  I felt so blotted, nauseous (morning sickness), and depressed inside that day.  Here I am at the wedding in my first trimester. 

I poured my heart out to McKay later that weekend about how I was feeling.  He was a great listener and supporter.  P.S. I just want to clarify that these feelings not being pretty enough or skinny enough never ever once came from McKay.  He has always treated me perfectly and made me feel like a queen every single day... Just thought that I would throw that in. :) Love that man. 

Finally I decided something must be done.  Just because I was pregnant didn't mean I had to keep my same habits.  No I couldn't do anything too extreme like starve myself or exercise a million hours a day, but I could do something.  I prayed to my Heavenly Father (yes he cares about small things like this), started researching health, and thought about what my long term goals were.  Slowly over the course of that month I found the answers that I needed to get started toward the healthier me.  As I thought about what I really wanted; I decided that I didn't need to be super skinny (nor was that going to be a reality at this stage in my life) my ultimate goal at this stage in my life was to maintain a healthy weight.  I wanted to be able to play with my kids and stay active at all times (before, during, and after pregnancies)  Slowly I got started on my new fitness and food goals.  I actually didn't expect that anything would "feel" different while I was pregnant (I just thought that I would form good habits to help lose the weight after the baby was born), but I have had some surprising results.  Next up... The details on what I am doing fitness wise these days. 

Click here to read part 2
Click here to read part 3
Click here to read my final post

Hope you are all having a great day!           


  

31 Weeks

We have now entered the final 10 weeks until this baby boy makes his appearance.  For some reason getting to 30 weeks makes it feel a lot closer than it is.  I have been mentally prepping myself for these last weeks to be the worst.  They were NOT fun when I was pregnant with Adalyn.  So we will see how they are with him...  Part of my feels like it will fly by because we have all the holidays to focus on (I am 1/2 done with Christmas shopping, yay!) 

I am carrying him MUCH lower than I did with Adalyn so I can still breathe fairly well.  I consider this a HUGE blessing.  :)  Size wise he is exactly where he should be and everything is going fairly well.  He kicks tons and is getting so strong.  There were a few minor surprises from my glucose blood test.  1. I turned out to have low blood sugar (they are testing to see if you are hyper glysemic and I was Hypo glysemic) even AFTER I ate all of the sugary jelly beans (yes my doctor is nice and we get a choice between the sugary drink and jelly beans...ofcourse I choose the yummy jelly beans).  So apparently I should be eating a little more sugar in my life. :)  I am now no longer trying to avoid all of my sugar cravings, life is good. :) Surprise #2 was that my red blood cells were larger than normal which can either be a lack of Vitamin B12 or Alcoholism.  We took a wild guess and assumed that it was lack of Vitamin b 12 ;) so I have been having weekly shots of it and it will soon just be monthly shots.  I am praying that this is just a pregnancy thing and my blood cells will go back to normal after delivery but it is still a possibility that I will have to keep doing the shots monthly for a while. 

As far as baby boy's room goes we have done um... nothing.  He will have the very basics when he arrives, but the "extras" (like cute curtains and pictures on the wall) will have to come in time.  Amazingly I am handling this fact fairly well because usually I am a perfectionist and want EVERYTHING done BEFORE the baby comes.  But I am loving the new sense of peace and freedom that comes with our budget more than wanting to go out and buying everything I want/think I need.

Here are a few pictures from yesterday of my belly at 31 weeks and 3 days.  Oh we are SO excited to meet him! 

 

Have a great day!

        

Adalyn Fans

Adalyn is loved by many people... for obvious reasons.  Besides just being cute since most babies/toddlers are she is VERY social and will flash her heart melting smile at just about anyone that will look at her.  She sure makes a lot of 'interesting' people's day at Walmart when she peaks at them from the grocery cart. :)  I actually have a slight fear that this next baby (unless he is SUPER social like Adalyn) will be over shadowed by her energetic love for strangers/random people.  Lets just say she has set the standards pretty darn high in the cuteness department.  :)

Although there are many Adalyn fans out there we may have spent this past weekend with what might be her ultimate fans.  And needless to say she was in heaven.  They spoiled her rotten and gave her their undivided attention.  Can't you just see the love from both parties? :)

 

This weekend we spent time with three of my cousins in Utah while their parents took a mini vacation (lucky!).  And all of them (including my sister Mykelti who stopped by for the day on Saturday) were so helpful that I kind of felt like I was on my own vacation. (except for the middle of the night screaming that went on BOTH nights.  Longest nights as parents to date. :P)

 

We didn't do anything too major, just played and relaxed (my kind of fun when I am 30 weeks pregnant).  These 3 have some pretty intense schedules normally with activities and school work so I think they were just as excited as us to relax and not worry about too many things.  Saturday we went to the Barn yard boo at Thanksgiving point.  They have halloween games, face painting, and animals.  We played games, ate lunch, and spent time with the animals. 

Adalyn's favorite thing was the pony ride

 



  

  Dayton loved the games (he won tons of candy)

 

The rest of the weekend is lacking in pictures, but just imagine us relaxing, playing endless games, and we may have consumed too much junk food.  Good times. 

 

Oh and I REALLY enjoyed getting time to read my book "The Happiness Project" by Gretchen Rubin.  Seriously don't have the right words to describe how much I have throughly enjoyed reading this book.  It is exactly what I needed to hear at this stage in my life.  So much food for thought (and bonus it is an easy read).  My husband has been so sweet and listens to me every night "discuss" my thoughts on it since I just can't keep them in.  Have any of you read it?  

 

Well that is all have a great day!  

Happy Happy Times

Sorry about the lack of posting this past week.  I started a few posts but then was never able to finish them.  Adalyn REALLY doesn't like it when I am on the computer and I have decided that it isn't worth the fight so I try to stay off when she is awake.  I am also in the last trimester of this pregnancy and this past week I have felt a definite change in my level of energy so I am trying to use my time wisely and rest often.  But this weekend was too lovely to not post about so here is a quick update from our conference weekend. 

Weekends like this one that we just had reminded me once again that even though we don't have the blessing of seeing family on a daily basis we can still create wonderful memories with the time that we do have and they seem even sweeter because we don't get them all the time.

 We drove to my parents house on Friday evening right after our last ultrasound (baby looks good and has the cutest nose EVER.  I have never had an ultrasound at 28/29 weeks so it was fun to see what he looked liked.  Definitely bigger than the normal 20 week ultrasound).  The trip to Utah took us quite a bit longer than normal because there was TONS of traffic around Brigham City and Ogden.  So we kept ourselves busy with snacks and picture taking...  

 

 

 

My one request for the weekend (besides listen to conference) was to go on a hike in the beautiful fall mountains.  Where we live in Idaho there aren't any mountains and only a few trees so I hadn't gotten my fill of fall beauty.  My mom found a beautiful trail up Little Cottonwood canyon.  It was quite cold that early in the morning, but still peaceful and beautiful.  Mykelti who is still recovering from knee surgery babysat Adalyn so it was just the girls and McKay on the hike. 

 

Don't you love each of our school spirit?  Each child in my family has gone to a different college thus far.  We will see where Mykelti decides to go next year...

 

After the hike we watched conference for the rest of the day.  Adalyn did great at entertaining herself with all of Grandmas toys so we were pretty much free to watch the whole thing without too many distractions (besides her cute babbling to herself as she played).  The first session was interesting with the change in missionary age and had us talking for the rest of the day as I am sure many others were too. 

 

Saturday night while the men attended priesthood the girls headed out to Gardener Village for some fun girl time.  We enjoyed seeing all the witches that they have on display and window shopping in the stores.  Can I just say that the quilt shop made me wish I had a sewing machine right now... I love looking at fabric. :)

 

Adalyn loved looking at the animals at the petting zoo

 

 

This was our first time seeing Larissa since she got back from Connecticut.  She was amazed to see Adalyn walking and talking.  It is sure amazing how quickly kids change in 6 months. 

 

Larissa's old mission companion spent the weekend at our house too and it was fun to meet her



   

 

Saturday night we finished off the night with games and yummy peach dessert.  On Sunday we enjoyed more conference and a delicious sunday dinner with turkey and mashed potatoes (sounds like Thanksgiving).  We were sad to leave Sunday night, and we can't wait till the next time we get to see everyone. 

 

Well that is all for today!  Glad I finally finished a post, have a great day!