Mom on the Run--Woman of Steele

On Saturday April 23, we had my son’s 6th birthday party!  It was his first birthday party with friends from school.  It was a lot to get ready for, but it was so worth it to see how excited he was that his friends were coming over to his house.  It was awesome!   I only scheduled his party with friends from 1-3 and that 2 hours was more than enough time for them to have some fun.  They ran around in the yard playing, played some games that I organized, we ate snacks, sang “Happy Birthday”, ate cupcakes and ice cream, ran around some more, and opened presents.  Luckily, it was such a beautiful day that the kids were able to play outside and just be kids.  It was so much fun seeing them interact with each other.  I can see why his 4K teacher is exhausted at the end of the day!  These kids have a lot of energy!!  I was worried that I was going to be totally overwhelmed, but it was a lot of fun having a house and yard full of little kids.  I’m so used to middle school students all day

Well, if any of you have been following me on my Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram accounts, you know that I recently purchased 2 new pairs of shoes.  I purchased a new pair of New Balance trainers and my first pair of Hoka One One Tracers.  I purchased the New Balance from Kohl's and was surprised by the amount of cushion when I tried them on.  I went to Amazon to purchase the Hoka’s so I wasn’t able to try them on before purchasing.  I ran a few short runs in the New Balance and found that my right arch would start hurting.  But I could walk around all day in them at school and they wouldn’t hurt my arch at all.  I kinda gave up on them once my Hoka’s came.  However, these did the exact same thing!  I have tried loosening my laces, inserts, you name it with the Hoka’s.  I’m super frustrated because I paid a bunch of money for them and I don’t understand why they are hurting my foot.  I’ve never had arch pain before. My MIL says that I just need to break them in some more.  I’m goi

Last week my husband and I tried something new with our morning routine.  Being a SweatPink Ambassador, I had the opportunity to sample and review multi-vitamin gummies from the company SmartyPants.  The individual samples came in packs of 2 and the label said a serving size is 6 gummies.  For myself and my husband to get a true taste of the gummies, we opted to take just one packet 3 days in a row.  Now getting my hubby to take vitamins is quite the feat.  He is not a fan of pills and it has taken me months to get him to take a probiotic to enhance his overall digestive health.  Well, when I told him these were fruity gummies that he would be sampling for me, I was surprised by how positive and willing he was to try it.  He was especially excited to find out that they had sugar crystals on them!  He really is a big kid!   Anyway, I tried mine Sunday, MOnday, and Tuesday.  Jay tried his Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday.  I always take my vitamins in the morning with breakfast so I ha

I just realized that I have been training for my half marathon next month and I have not been updating ya’ll about it!  How silly of me!!   Anyway,  I started training the beginning of March.  I have been following Hal Higdon’s Intermediate half-marathon training plan.  Well, let’s be honest.  I haven’t been following it exactly, except for the hill and speed workouts.  Those I have been following to a T, well mostly. I have added some hill repeats to some of the workouts and now towards the end of my half training it is all speed work, but I know the course I will be running and it’s hilly, so hill work is going to be a good thing still.  I have not been following the schedule for my weekend runs.  Saturdays call for very low miles sometimes at Pace and Sundays are a 90 minute run.  Well, I have been working really hard this winter to maintain some of my endurance from marathon training so I have been keeping my weekend long runs to at least 10 miles for each day unless we have a

Spring Break was sure fun and interesting!!  Carpet cleaning, a trip to Ikea, egg coloring, Easter Egg Scramble, and all the fun of Easter morning have made this a memorable spring break for sure. I have truly loved being home with my kiddos but there were times, especially Sunday afternoon after too much Easter candy, that I was definitely ready to head back to work and for them to head back to school. Monday was the only day my hubby had to work as he took vacation the rest of the week.  So the kids and I did some random stuff around the house and ran some errands.  Maddie went to Menards to pick out paint for her desk so she could paint it with Poppa.  While they were doing that, I took EJ to get his haircut and then to Shopko to get some totes for under the bed storage, the kids’ projects and their photo albums.  I have recently switched from using photo albums to using photo boxes.  You can fit in so many more photos and still have the ability to write on the back of them what