City Days

Not too long ago, my online friend Jo (for more cute pictures of yesterday, click that link!) announced that she was moving from Brooklyn to the Chicagoland area. I did a happy clap because Jo seemed so warm and inviting online and I was excited at the thought of getting to meet her.

Yesterday, we headed to the Millennium Park splash pad and met up with Jo, Kate, Martina and Megan. I've wanted to take the boys here all summer, so the change to go and meet up with friends and make new ones? Perfect!

My kids love water, so they dove right in as soon as we arrived. They were impressed with the size compared to our tiny little splash pad!


I love how little kids will all bond over a ziploc baggie of Goldfish crackers. It's an adult version of happy hour.



After a ridiculous amount of splashing and jumping and running and cracker eating and kissing, we dried off and went to the Bean.


We walked past on the way the splash pad and I promised the boys we could go back after we played in the water for awhile. Sometimes living as close to the city as we do, we forget to do touristy things with the boys. Maybe these things need to be on next summer's to-do list.

They loved it! After the Bean, the kids were all famished. If you follow Jo, you know she has the most delicious baby girl. As if the hand on Luke's thigh wasn't funny enough, she definitely tried to make a move for his hot dog. Luke told me later that this was his favorite part of the day, followed by holding Megan's baby.


The boys were having such a great time that we stayed a little later that I intended. Luke likes pretty ladies, so this happened.

After this, Tommy started to get a little crazy tired because we were about two hours overdue for his nap, so we packed up and started the walk back to our car.



I want to pat myself on the back for walking Tommy several city blocks without him dashing into traffic or jumping over an overpass. Yes, I decided to forgo a stroller entirely because I am slightly insane, but we did it and lived to tell about it. The boys hung on awake for the first 25 minutes of our drive, then they passed out. We got home and I put them directly into the bathtub, because they were filthy... which is kind of the sign of a good day, yes?

Surprise!!

I have pretty amazing family and friends. I already knew this, but it was even more solidified when Shane, Julie, and Donya managed to throw off a surprise party for my 30th birthday.

This is amazing for so many reasons. One, it's beyond humbling to know that a group of busy people took their time and energy to put together something just for you. Two, Shane doesn't have a cell phone, so the fact that he managed to coordinate this without texting anyone is amazing. Three, everyone managed to pull it off in a way that I just thought they were busy my birthday weekend. And four, Luke knew about it and managed to keep it a secret for three weeks straight.

Shane got me out of the house Sunday morning under the guise of taking me to breakfast. He said his mom was going to watch the kids all day so we could go out to breakfast and dinner. Before we left for breakfast, I took all the sheets off the bed, washed them, and had them in the dryer, because I was definitely planning on taking a nap after breakfast. I also wasn't planning on eating lunch after breakfast, so I definitely ate a huge serving of french toast stuffed with bananas, peanut butter, and bacon. It was, in a word, amazing.


While I was making a glutton of myself, my house was being transformed.

And filled with desserts.


After breakfast, we went to CVS because I needed to pick up a prescription. This worked out for Shane, who needed to kill more time before we went home. Walking into CVS, we ran into one of my coworkers. I thought he was being really rude because he walked off while I was talking to him and didn't wish me a happy birthday. It turns out he was headed to our house and was panicked that he was going to ruin the whole thing. Ha!

When we got home, I was pretty excited to take my nap. Until we walked in and a bunch of people in my living room started yelling surprise at me. I don't remember what I said, but I think I called Shane a jerk.


The neatest part of this whole thing was looking around the room and taking in who was there... it was incredible to look from person to person and register that they were there for me.
Next I went around the room and hugged everyone and laughed at whatever excuse they'd given me. I was super surprised to see my bestie Leah there because she lives 2ish hours away... and she'd told me she had a baptism to attend!







Someone took my purse and told me to go downstairs and look at the decorations and then someone else handed me a mimosa, which was like my third of the day. It was all kind of a blur...I really couldn't believe it was happening, how incredible everything was.



(To read more about this amazing cake, visit Julie's blog.)

I blew out candles and everyone sang while I was holding Tommy. Then Luke realized that he missed out on cake and was sad, so we decided that the first time was just a dry run. Julie lit the candles again and this time, I held Luke while everyone sang and I blew out the candles.




I didn't really know what to wish for because I couldn't think of anything else I could possibly need, you know? I felt like I had it all. It's amazing to get to a point in your life where your family and friends throw you a surprise party with the perfect decorations and the perfect desserts because they know just what you'd want. And then you unwrap gifts and every single gift is something you would've purchased for yourself because, again, they know you so well. There were even presents from people like Ryley and Cameron and Adam, who couldn't make it because they live a million miles away or because their wife just had a baby... yet they still took the time to do something special for me. That is humbling.

I was and still am so overwhelmed at all that these two did to throw this together. And my husband, with whom I apparently didn't take a picture? Oops!


I wasn't dreading turning thirty. Age is just a number and I'm probably in better health now than I was ten years ago, but I was worried that my thirties would not top my twenties. I can't think of a more fitting way to ease that worry than to start my thirties off with one of the best days of my life. I'm sure that I've forgotten details or people to thank, but what is overwhelmingly with me--reflecting back on this and on our Tommy's Team walk--is how incredibly, amazingly blessed I am to have such love and support in my life. You guys? I am really, really lucky.

Thank you to Donya for these incredible photos. You can see all of them here.

Down and Dirty

At my party a few weeks ago (I am going to blog about this very soon, I promise, I just need to get pictures in order!), there was a sign welcoming to the dirty thirties. This turned out to be very literal, as Bari and I did the Down and Dirty Mud Run yesterday morning. When I did a mud run last October, I loved it and wanted to find another. Unfortunately, winter doesn't make for a good mud run season. I found this run pretty quickly and convinced Bari that she needed to do this with me and yes, she would love it. Because this run is partnered with Operation Gratitude, the course was staffed with service men and women who definitely provided motivation on some of the more difficult obstacles.

Being girly girls, we wore our Team Sparkle skirts, of course!


Because Bari is recovering from an injury, we didn't run it. I was completely fine with that, because a mud run, to me, is more about having fun and enjoying yourself and less about setting some fabulous time goal. Besides, I can barely run fast on a regular day, let alone with 18 pounds of mud caking my shoes! Even without the obstacles, this was a tough course. It was VERY hilly--and I don't mean little hills, I mean the type of monsters that you're not sure how to walk down without killing yourself.
That said, despite recovering from an injury, Bari was a beast at the obstacles requiring upper body strength. I was, uhh, not. Despite that, I managed to successfully complete all but one of the obstacles. This one got me!

In my defense, I wanted to go on the short wall, but a very stern woman in fatigues yelled at me to not wuss out and that the short wall was for little kids. So I took the big wall. By some grace of God, I made it all the way to the top, put my hand on the ledge to pull up... and the mud coating my hand did not make for good leverage. At which point, I went WHOOSH straight to the bottom, where some buff eye candy in a uniform broke my fall by grabbing me under my arms. In all honesty, getting caught by this guy wasn't half bad, so you could say that failing to climb over the wall was a good strategy. I could've tried again, but I also managed to gash my knee on the way down and you know what? I'm a wuss. Bari, however, owned that wall!

As if we weren't already muddy enough, this was the last obstacle. I only captured about half of the mud pit! When we went to go in, a guy in uniform yelled that no part of our bodies was to touch the net and then yelled and laughed that I was going to get my hair wet.

I didn't mind getting yelled at, because most of the guys in uniform were serious eye candy. I could actually use them running next to me yelling at me every day.

And this was us after the race...


I definitely got my hair wet. After the race, they handed us a Powerade. I drank it, then asked Bari if I had mud on my face because I wasn't sure if it was mud or if I managed to spill Powerade all over my chin. She confirmed that, as you'll see, it was most definitely mud.


The race was an absolute blast. Spending time with Bari? Also a blast. I can't wait for next year's mud run!

For Hope

"Lord save us all from a hope tree that has lost the faculty of putting out blossoms." ~ Mark Twain

When the boys were babies, I used to watch the rise and fall of their chests sometimes. I'd stand nearby and place my hand on them to feel the steady rise and fall, the assurance that they were okay. The first time Luke slept through the night, my heart panicked when I opened my eyes to the sunlight. I rolled over, placed my hand in the bassinet and was reassured that yes, he was still breathing. The thought that a baby could just stop breathing while sleeping was so scary and when they passed that stage, I was so grateful. It was one less thing to worry me.

And then Tommy was diagnosed with epilepsy and I learned about sudden unexplained death in epilepsy... and you know what? That's just not fair. Suddenly I was back to tiptoeing into his room every night, multiple times, placing my hand on his chest and waiting for that reassuring rise and fall. Only this was different than when I had infants, because I wasn't able to hope so much, because it might be something that he'd never outgrow. I wrote about feeling like hope was dragging around behind me, like a lead balloon. It was so hard and heavy, for a long time. I kept it inside of me mostly, but it was such a crushing weight. Somehow, the loss of hope is heavier than anything in this world. For awhile, I thought hope might never return. It's so hard to hope when all you see when you close is your eyes is the image of your child with twisted blue lips and a pale face.

But it did... it always does, and I found the sweet hopeful, happiness that we had before his diagnosis.

Yesterday, we walked and ran for people who might not have that hope. We walked and ran because epilepsy is not stronger than us. It's not. It might be big and scary, but it won't beat us. We walked and ran because maybe someday, there will be a cure and maybe someday, parents won't have to go through what we did. As I ran yesterday, I studied the faces of the people I passed. Some wearing team tshirts, some not, and I wondered how they were connected. I wondered what they went through to lead them to this place.

On the way home, Shane asked me what connections the people on our team had to epilepsy, if their children were epileptic. I said, "No. Their connection is Tommy," and that's it. Some of the people on our team are friends of friends. Some of them, I didn't meet until yesterday. Some of them held my hand through his diagnosis and cried with us.

And those who couldn't walk with us because of time or distance or commitments or illnesses were there in spirit, through donations and support. As of today, Tommy's Team has raised $3345. This amount far surpasses my wildest thoughts on what we could do--and we did it all because we aren't going to let epilepsy win. Because, no matter what, this disease is not stronger than our hope.




Huge thanks go out to the sponsor of our tshirts, Caribbean Pools & Spas

Miles To Go

One year ago exactly, I did the first day of Couch to 5k. I still remember huffing and puffing back and forth between stop signs, thinking that there was NO WAY this was going to work for me. Not at all. I was so slow and it was so hard to breathe. Each sixty second interval seemed like an eternity and I was gasping and red-faced after each one. The cool down couldn't come quickly enough, but I was still not convinced that it was going to work.

It did, obviously. It's been a year of highs and lows, in so many ways. I learned things that never would've crossed my mind a year ago: negative splits, hill repeats, over-pronation. A year ago, I would've blinked and smiled blankly at those terms, now I can add my own input. Now I can say that I've ran a half-marathon, that the girl who struggled through sixty second intervals ran for over two hours. TWO HOURS. That's a really long time.

I'd hoped to complete two half-marathons this month, the second being yesterday. After I drove home from my first, though, I realized that I was not going to be able to do the 2.5 hour drive home from the second one alone. I tried everything I could to find someone who could go with me, but it just wasn't going to work. I sucked it up, ate the registration fee, and found a ten mile race that two of my friends were doing. A ten mile race that just happened to be 15 minutes from my house.

I'm not going to lie... I'm not a big fan of pushing through the pain. I'm just not a big fan of pain in general, to be honest. When things start to hurt, I back off. Therefore, I prefer to choose races with courses that are described as "fast, flat, and easy." Now that's my language. If I found a course that was described as having a three mile slip and slide in the middle, I would be ALL OVER THAT. This course, however, was described as challenging. Challenging? Even those tiny inclines to make sidewalks wheelchair accessible are a challenge for me!

But I did it. And here's the crazy thing. I'd just come off of half-marathon training, so I didn't do a whole lot to train for this. I did one ten mile run and one eight mile run. I did a few days of hill repeats and miraculously, I started to feel a little better about hills (but I would still prefer sliding down one on a slip 'n slide). But here's the crazy thing, at least the crazy thing for me, I didn't stress about it. I knew I could run ten miles. I didn't really care about my time on this race, it was more about having fun and accomplishing something. I've always ran races alone and being the solo person at a race tends to get lonely, so I was super excited to run with Barb.

The day started out ominous, with thunder, wind, and rain. Fortunately, the rain stopped just before the race started, but the wind and the cold kept up.

Sarah, Barb, and I before the race. Photo taken by the awesome Bari who drove to down to spectate!

They did not lie when they said the course was challenging. The course consisted of seven miles on the road, then three miles on trails in Taltree Arboretum. The roads were country roads, which tend to be hilly. These were no exception. Miles 2.5-3.5 were somehow all uphill, with little to no downhill. I'm not sure how that worked, but we just kept going UP. Around mile six there was a hill that looked like it'd be impossible to climb, because it just seemed to go up. Yet, we did. I want to pat Barb and myself on the back and say that we ran every single hill for the first seven miles, even when we had to weave around people who weren't running them, even when we were huffing and puffing and cursing the very existence of said hills. A year ago, I couldn't have done that.

The transition from road to trail was a little rough! The first trail had long grass where I couldn't really find my footing. We transitioned onto mulch after that, which seemed easier, then they threw in some muddy and slippery hills. By this point, my hip was screaming at me, but we managed. I ended up with my slowest ten mile time, but I felt amazing about it. Our average pace for the first seven miles was somewhere around 10:30, which is great considering the hills and that we were chatting through most of it. Aside from the half-marathon, I've never felt so accomplished after a race. It helps that the race volunteers were some of the most genuinely cheery, happy to be there people I've ever encountered. They were COLD standing out there in the wind, but every single one had something supportive to say. I felt like I picked up the pace a little bit each time we encountered a volunteer, because they were so great.

The best part was cheering on Sarah as she received her age group award after the race (that girl is amazing!), except for the part where once we stopped moving, we got very, very cold.

Afterward, we went out to breakfast, where I proceeded to make a glutton of myself with stuffed french toast and house potatoes. It was worth it, very worth it, except for the part where my stomach was not too happy with me afterward. But seriously? WORTH IT.


It's strange to reflect on the past year and think of how far I've come, yet how far I still hope to go. I have no plans on running a marathon, mainly because I don't think I could handle the time commitment with training while working full-time with two young kids, but also because the thought of running 26.2 miles makes me want to stab myself in the eye. I do want to learn to push myself a little. I want an official sub-30 5k, and I'm going to have to learn to like pain just a tiny little bit to get myself comfortably there. After that? Who knows. I've ran 262 total miles this year so far, but something tells me I have many more to go.