Famous Footwear One Day Sale

Steve Madden Women's P-Tiaa

Madden Girl Women's Fawwn

Famous Footwear One Day Sale

Buy One Get One Half Off + Additional 20% off Sitewide +Free Shipping with CYBER20

Check it out here!

 Hundreds of styles to choose from!

ASICS Women's GEL-Enhance Ultra

Holiday Wrap Up

Thanksgiving went off wonderfully!  I did forget the rolls...which are STILL in my freezer...but no one seemed to miss them at all.  The girls put up the tree and I rearranged it just a bit.  I need one more pack of beads to string around it and it'll be complete.  The girls put 4 different kinds of candy canes on it.  I predict in less than two weeks time EVERY...SINGLE...CANDY CANE...will be gone.  Kaelyn is a candy fiend.  Well...a food fiend period actually.  We all know the way to her heart, lol.  

The rest of the decorations are coming along nicely.  We got out the beautiful handmade wooden decorations Bryan's grandfather and grandmother gave us last year.  I'm still deciding where to put them so they won't get broken.  I think I want Rudolph next to my desk.  He's so cute!  I'll have to post pictures of them.  They really are lovely. (Update: Rudolph IS next to my desk.  The Christmas tree and the Nutcracker are on the counter.)

I don't think the stockings are ever going to get hung up.  I keep forgetting the stinking Command Strips to hang them with!  Still can't believe we have six stockings to hang this year.  (I finally remembered the Command Strips, lol.)  I'm not exactly sure what I'm going to put in Melody's either. I might get her some cute little teether toys.  OH!!  She's getting her first two bottom teeth in the front.  They're finally breaking through the skin.  So take this as a warning...do NOT stick your fingers in her mouth.  It will only end in pain!  My mom found that out the hard way on Thanksgiving.  Of course, if it wasn't for her letting Mel chew on her fingers we'd not have known she was finally cutting those teeth.  

So...today was the first day back to running after spraining my knee on the Heritage Trail run.  I did 2 miles this morning.  My knees didn't like it at ALL!  OMG!  I was going great for probably the first mile and a half.  Then I had to stop to tie my shoe...stupid shoe lace...When I got back up to run again my knees were starting to ache.  I made sure to take my medicine this morning before I left the house because I anticipated something like this happening.  Knowing my knees and their history... By the time I got back to the house I was pretty sore.  I'm not going to let that stop me though.  I'm working on testing what the doctor told me the last time I was there.  He noticed that in the time between my last two visits I had lost six pounds.  He explained to me...and I'm passing it on because it's really important for people to know...for every pound of weight that you carry on your body, your joints are feeling 4-6 pounds of pressure.  He said on average every pound of weight that you lose takes 5 pounds of pressure off of your joints.  So for me, I've taken about 225 pounds of pressure off of my joints!  He doesn't think I need any surgery yet, just to keep doing what I'm doing.  If it starts to get too painful I'm supposed to do more low impact cardio (like bike riding).  I wanna see how my knees feel after taking off another 10 pounds.  That's 50 pounds of pressure.  

So here's to starting the week off right!  (Raises my bottle of gatorade!)  Let's see if I can keep it up.

Catch up

Potomac Heritage Trail 50K

So...I realize that I haven't posted anything since at least last week.  Bryan and I signed up to do the Potomac Heritage Trail 50k Run/Hike.  They should have put CLIMB in there too...and for me...trip, fall, sprain your knee...Yeah, that's what happened.  I didn't make it all the way through the 31 miles, but I did get 15 under my belt before Bryan told me I wasn't doing anymore.  By the time it got to that point, he was helping me down all of the hills because putting pressure on my knees going down was agonizing.  I'm not stressing it for sympathy or to spice up the post...it really was agonizing pain.  When we got home I assessed my injuries.  A bruise was starting on the inside of my left knee, scrape on my right knee, scratches on my right thigh, scrapes on my hands, knees throbbing.  Even my hips were sore, but that's because they'd never done more than 6.5 miles before.  The next day when I got up it was worse!  The bruise on my left knee was hideous and there were bruises speckling down my right leg.  I didn't even see those when I did my original assessment.  

My knees were hurting so bad that I decided to make an appointment with the doctor.  Bryan took me to see him and let me just say...I wouldn't have walked out of the office if he hadn't.  I know the doctor was doing his job and all...bending my knees here and there and in and out and all over the place...but seriously, I could barely walk back to the car.  I had to lean on Bryan to ease the pressure off of my knees.  They hurt worse when I left than when I went in!  I sprained the ligament on the outside of my left knee.  FUN!  They made me go get xrays too.  That wasn't fun.  I'm just grateful the doctor gave me some pain medication.  I might have broken down and started crying in his office if he told me to deal with it, lol.  I'm a wimp.  

Anyway...not to make the run out to be something completely horrible...because it wasn't horrible at all.  I'm just clumsy.  The trail was fun.  Climbing the rocks was fun...dangerous, but fun!  The river was beautiful.  The weather was beautiful.  The lack of kids fighting was BEAUTIFUL!  Bryan and I hardly ever get time out to ourselves so we really enjoyed just listening to the sounds around us.  And not ONE of those was a kid arguing!  It was great!  I would so totally do it again!  And I plan to do it again next year with Bryan.  I just have to work on watching where I am going so I don't trip over tree roots, lol.  I made it half way through the trail and I was going fine...the only thing that held me back from completing was falling and hurting myself.

So...who wants to see pictures?  I mean...those who haven't already seen them on my Facebook.

Baby Comparison

Natalie

Allyson

Kaelyn

Melody

The girls are all around the same age in their pictures.  I wanted to see how much they "favor" each other.

Thanksgiving Menu!

Appetizers 

Fruit, Cheese & Meat, Veggie Platter

Nachos (My Recipe)

Olive & Pickle Tray (A must have in my family)

Chips & Pretzels

Dinner

Fried Turkey

Spiral Ham

Sweet Potato Casserole

Garlic & Cheese Mashed Potatoes

Turkey Gravy

Homemade Rolls

4 Cheese Mac & Cheese

Green Bean Casserole

Cranberry Sauce

Deviled Eggs

Macaroni Salad

Corn

Butterbeans

Broccoli & Cheese

Desserts

Pumpkin Pie (2 days prior)
Sweet Potato Pie (2 days prior)

Pecan Pie

Pumpkin Roll

Watergate salad
Orange Mandarin Fluff
White Chocolate Blackberry Cassis

As You Can See...

I've combined my 2 top blogs.  I think it'll be easier for me this way.  So anyway...

We took down our Halloween decorations yesterday and put them away.  We started checking our Christmas stuff to see if it worked.  We are super excited about Christmas this year!  We were stationed in England for the last three (3) Christmas holidays so we weren't able to use our lights.  The whole 110 vs. 240 volts thing.  Basically, out lights don't fit in their sockets unless we used a transformer for every little thing.  We were only allotted three (3) of them so we had to use them where they were needed...the computers for one, lol.  The tree took up another one during the season, but we'd have to share that one with the vacuum.  This year we get to use our lights however we please!  I'm not sure who's more excited...Bryan or the kids, lol.  I've already picked out where I'm putting my tree, but I have to move Natalie's school table and computer.  She's not going to be particularly thrilled about that.  We're pretty much already done our shopping for the holiday too.  The rest of the stuff we're doing is being made by us.  

Yesterday I ran my 1.5 in 13.15!!  I'm thrilled about this because I did it by myself.  I didn't run with Bryan yesterday.  I ran by myself with my iPod.  I think today I'll ride a bike for an hour and read a book.  I seriously hope they changed out the bikes in the family room.  I liked the one that was in there before.  The one that's in there now hurts my tush, lol.  I also need to do my pushups and situps today too.

Stay tuned for my Thanksgiving Menu!