A mix of emotions

Thank you all for the congratulations and the condolences. This should be a really exciting time for us, and it is, but it is still overshadowed by the loss of Craig's mom. Her services were just a couple days before Christmas, and it was one of the first times for us to see his extended family since they found out about the baby. It was a weird mix of "congrats" and "sorry for your loss." It was standing room only in the church for her funeral mass, and the smaller rosary the night before also filled the funeral home to capacity. All of this made for a very low key holiday for us. Craig went back to work this week, and I go back on Monday.

Diana (Craig's mom) was so excited about becoming a Grandma. We had told her the same weekend that we found out (back in October) by giving her a little onesie that said Grandma's Little Peanut. When she opened it she started crying and screaming "I'm going to be a Grandma!" Followed by, "I have to call Eva!" (One of her sisters). Honestly, I am surprised that y'all couldn't hear her. As much as I wanted to tell her to wait to tell people, I didn't. And I am glad I didn't. It made her so happy. Like I said, she was so excited, and she made short work of letting her (giant) family know the good news. Before she passed away, we were able to show her our 12 week ultrasound pictures that showed a pretty clear facial profile and some cute little feet. During the last few weeks Diana kept saying that she had to wait until June before she could go. It really does break my heart that she will never meet her grandchild.

I am hoping to be back to more regular posting soon. I know I haven't been around much, but I do have a few posts started, and now that things are getting back to our new normal, I think I should be able to finish a few.

9/30 Check in

A month ago I published a post that was scary for me. On it, I posted my current weight and measurements. Thank you all for your messages and comments! Double thank you to those of you who found me on myfitness pal! For a month I have been working out regularly and tracking my food. I haven't been perfect, but it has kept me accountable. Food has always been my weakness. I am an emotional eater. And I have a sweet tooth. And I like my salty snacks. And things that are deep fried. Tracking my food makes me think twice about having that cookie or bowl of ice cream.

On the other hand, exercise has always been something I have enjoyed. I just needed to make sure it was a priority in my day. I have made a couple of tough choices (no Bunco night, not hanging out with friends etc) in order to keep my schedule. Basically, Monday through Thursday I am going to the 4:30 class at the gym. (Zumba Mondays and Wednesdays, Tuesday is a high intensity aerobics/weights class, and Thursday is muscle pump.) I am also going to the 9:30 muscle pump class on Saturdays. I also am tracking my workouts on my home calendar with stickers.

I really like putting my sticker on the calendar when I get home from the gym :) 

And now... its time to show you all my progress for the month....

I am pretty proud of my progress for the month. I know from all my research watching Biggest Loser, that I won't always see this kind of progress, but I am pretty excited to see how I am doing so far. Craig says that he sees a difference in how I am looking, and I am noticing my pants are not as tight as they were at the beginning of the month.

If you are on my fitness pal, let's be friends! caseyamber

A fresh start

As any teacher knows, the new year starts in September, not January. Like any good new year, I have some goals that I am setting. One of my big goals has nothing to do with my classroom. In fact, I haven't really ever talked about it here in this space. Or really, talked about it at all. I have been pretty unhappy with how I look. I have been unhappy with how I am feeling. I have been unhappy with how my clothes are fitting.

As a health teacher, I feel like I am failing in my healthy modeling. I love working out, but I don't do it consistently. I love healthy food, but I really love deep fried or sweet goodness. The scale is now reaching the numbers that I swore I would never hit. I know things need to change. My family history alone is enough to make anyone cringe.

So, I know something has to happen. One of my goals in my 13 in '13 has been to workout 12 hours a month. It hasn't happened yet. It has to. And I know it has to be a mix of cardio and weight training. I am a huge fan of group exercise classes, and I have been scheduling my weeknights around my gym schedule. I also am committing to tracking my food intake (at least during the work week). I have used MyFitnessPal in the past, and I was pretty successful. And the scariest part of it all... I am going to post my progress here. Right now I am not comfortable with a "before" picture, but I am going to put out my "before" numbers. I know tracking the scale hasn't been successful for me, so I am going with measurements. (I took these myself so I know they are only semi-accurate.)

Please feel free to follow my journey along. I will be posting here monthly-ish? (I'm not promising anything... shoot, its pretty much a miracle that I have been posting anything after my August showing.) But I should be updating MyFitnessPal Please friend me to keep me accountable! My name is caseyamber. 

What tips do you have to stay on track?

Me Then and Now

I apologize for the long post with no pictures. I just have been thinking about this little topic for awhile and once I started writing, there was just a lot I needed to say.

I have seen a lot of bloggers posting letters to their 16 year old self. I think that is a great idea, and maybe someday I will write one. I mean I have learned a bunch of stuff then, and yes there is a ton of stuff I wish I had known back then, but to be honest, I was pretty awesome.

I want to be clear, I am not one of those people who think about high school as the glory days. Yes, I had fun. Yes, I have good memories, but I really don't need to relive it. But I have been thinking about me now and me back then. I also was not in the "popular group." I did have a small group of close friends, but I was friendly with kids in all the cliques.

Back then, I was pretty confident. If something sounded fun, I went for it. Even if I had never done it before. Even if I knew nothing about it, I would still try it out. When I was in 8th grade, I decided I wanted to try out for cheerleading. None of my friends were trying out, I had never done anything like it, but I thought it would be fun so I went for it. And I made it. (Looking back, if I hadn't made a team, I am sure my confidence would have been shot, and I wouldn't have done much else.)

My freshman year of high school I tried out for a play and got the lead. I never had really acted or been on stage, but it sounded fun and since cheerleading was over, I thought what the heck. I also started volunteering for the hospital around that time as well. Throughout my four years of high school I also decided to join choir, take jewelry class, take the stats for the wrestling team, counsel at Outdoor School, and a bunch of other things that were outside my comfort zone. Actually, now that I think about it, not much was outside my comfort zone. I was pretty comfortable pretty much everywhere.

I think things all started to change in college. I don't really know what it was that made me become more of an introvert. I remember on move in day my freshman year. My roommate was a soccer player and was at an away game, so she wasn't going to be at school for another few days. After my mom left I was sitting there in my room, completely overwhelmed with everything. I knew there was a new student/freshman BBQ happening on the lawn for dinner. Without having another person (a roommate) I really didn't know if I was going to go. That was the first time I was nervous about doing anything by myself. (By the way, a girl on my floor whose roommate was also a soccer player invited me to go with her to the BBQ. Nicest thing anyone has ever done for me. Seriously.)

Today I am definitely an introvert. As much as people don't believe me, I don't like being the center of attention or talking in front of big crowds. (However I do run several assemblies at school and talk in front of 900+ kids) I also get really nervous about trying new things by myself. Which I hate! I wish I had the confidence that I use to have. There are a few things I would like to try to do, but I make excuses. In reality, I am just scared of looking dumb in front of people and not having that friendly face with me. For example, I have been looking at an aerial fitness class (the kind with the ribbons and stuff) but I am just nervous scared about trying it out by myself.

I started thinking about all of this after taking a personality quiz thingy at a teacher training a few weeks ago. They said that our personality traits (like introvert vs. extrovert) don't really change throughout our lives. Um, lies! Mine did a complete 180, and there really isn't one thing pointing to why that is. I want to know, has your personality changed as you have gotten older? Any advice for how to come out of my shell??

Life Can Change in an Instant

Another heavy post today. I think I need another edition of Smiling is My Favorite after this post.
My heart has been heavy this weekend. It is heavy for a woman I didn't know, but was very similar to myself.

On Friday morning there was a 3 car accident on the highway I take every single morning. A west bound truck crossed over several lanes of traffic and crashed into two cars traveling east. One of those cars carried a teacher to work. She grew up in the small community she now lived in, and would drive the 30 minutes or so to  the larger city to teach high school English. They used the jaws of life to free her from the wreckage, but she was pronounced dead at the scene. That morning was her last day of work before spring break. It was also her last day of work before she went on maternity leave. She was 8+ months pregnant.

I haven't been able to get her out of my head since I heard the news.  I am hurting for her husband. Obviously. He lost his wife and his baby girl that he never got to meet. I am hurting for her students as well. She was well loved in the school (one of her students even asked her to be the godmother of her baby). Lord knows our students need good, strong adults in their lives. I am hurting for the other teachers in her building. The phrase "it takes a village" really does apply to schools, especially the low income schools that we both teach in.

The similarities between her and I are pretty obvious. We both live in this small community, and drive the same roads. We teach in low income schools, she is at one of the high schools in town, and I am at one of the middle schools. We both are in our early 30's. I can think of so many mornings when I have left and was grumpy with my husband for something dumb. Selfishly, I can't help but think, what if I were to leave in a bad mood and then something like that were to happen to me? What would the people most important to me remember?

I want my students to know that they can be anything they want to. I love my job and the main reason is them. My students are such a big part of my life and I worry and think about them after they leave my school.
I want my friends and family to know how much I value our time together. I hate how easy it is to not get together.
I want my husband to know how important he is to me. How much he means to me and how I know my life is more complete with him in it.

Has anything hit you? What do you want people to remember about you?

Dear Mom

Dear Mom,

I can't believe it has been 6 months since you left us. Sometimes it feels like just yesterday I got the phone call. Sometimes it feels like you have been gone forever. Sometimes I forget and want to call you to tell you about some little dumb thing that happened. Usually it is about your cat and how he is adjusting to life here. Then I remember he wouldn't be here if I could still call you.

The holidays were hard, especially Thanksgiving. Christmas is so busy, but there is always a lot of sitting around and thinking/talking on Thanksgiving. I was expecting the holidays to be hard. But this time after the holidays have been harder. I think its just coming down to doing the day to day stuff is what is dragging on me. I guess its just weird to go about my day to day life knowing you aren't here any more. I have a hard time thinking about what it will be like if we start a family. I think that will be some of the times when I want my mom the most.

The house/estate stuff has been weird too. I am trying to be practical with the stuff I am taking home, but it is hard to let some of the stuff go, but I try to remind myself that it is just stuff.  Your closet is still hard to go into. The Christmas decorations were also hard. Slowly we are getting things cleared out.  I am going back during spring break to work some more.

Mom, I sure do miss you.

My thoughts

By now the news from Clackamas and Connecticut are widely known. Having one shooting so close to home and the other take place in a school has made it much more real than previous mass shootings. I was in high school when Columbine and Thurston happened. Back then, I felt connected to the victims and the other students in the school. But now, hearing the stories from the teachers is too much for me. I refuse to watch interviews with children. (And shame on the media for interviewing kids.) I heard one interview with a teacher who hid her students in a room and told them all how much she loved them, because she didn't want gun fire to be the last sound they heard. I can't imagine what I would do in that situation.

There has been a lot of talk about gun control and mental health care. I think there needs to be improvements to both. But what we really need? More compassion. And knowledge. And then action.  We have to look outside of ourselves and to see that other people are hurting and struggling. As a whole, we need to be more educated on what to look for in our friends/neighbors/coworkers and we need to know how to help them, or who to turn to when they need help.

Real Talk II

I want to give a big thank you to everyone who posted a comment or said a little prayer for me and my mom after Tuesday's post. That was a hard one to write, but it felt good getting it out there. On Wednesday morning, I received a phone call telling me that my mom had passed away. No one was expecting it that soon. The day before she was up making her morning coffee. This last week has been one of the hardest ones I will ever have to go through. While I have been busy with everything that has needed to get done, I was able to turn to my Google reader or Instagram to give myself a little break in all the chaos. So thank you for blogging and picture taking. I can't explain how important those breaks were to me. I also have never felt so much love and support from everyone around me. Thank you friends for the food, the cleaning, and the love. (And the clean and folded underpants!)

I want to keep this space as a way to remember the positive little things. So I thought I would share some of the little things about my mom that I love.

1983 ish?

I loved holidays at her house. Thanksgiving will never be the same. I loved every single thing on the dinner table,

Speaking of holidays, a few years ago we decided to forgo presents at Christmas and just be with each other. Every year she went to the dollar store and bought Christmas mugs and used them as place markers at the dinner table. I love those dumb mugs.

Graduation

She could fold a fitted sheet. Like seriously fold it perfectly.

Her pie crust was amazing.

Wedding

She spoke her mind.

She loved her kids and grand kids.

2010

My mom was a hottie back in the day. And she had some nice legs. In the last week, I have found so many old pictures that I have never seen before.

She had a great laugh.

I sure do miss you Mom.

Real Talk

This post is hard. And not fun. And I don't want to write it. I do this activity with my students and we basically end up saying that most of us remember the bad things that someone does, or that happen, instead of all the good things that happen. This blog is a way for me to remember those little good things that happen. It could be the things that happen on the weekend or the small things that make me smile. The less than fun stuff, or the bad stuff, I don't like to talk about it. I don't think anybody does. But, if I am going to be real on this blog, I need to be real. I was actually inspired to write this from Angi, over at Backroads and Microphones. She was so brave as she posted about a medical issue in her family. So real. Because of her, I think I finally have the confidence to put it all out there.

Things are not all happy and fun right now in my family. My mom is in the end stages of non-hodgkins lymphoma. My dad died of the same cancer when I was younger, and now as an adult, I get to see it happen all over again. We are thinking she has anywhere from 1-3 months left, but we are preparing for sooner. And it sucks. My mom named me executor of her estate. I think basically that means I am in charge once she passes. I am 30 years old, but when I am faced with all of this, I feel like a little kid. I don't really know what to do. When it comes down to it, I want to pout, take a nap and run away from everything. I know I need to be spending time with her, but I hate seeing her like this. And to be honest, I don't think she wants me to see her like this as well. When I asked if I could go over and see her last weekend, she said she didn't want any company or visitors. That hurt. But I respected it.

And now? I'm really not sure. I will call again. My friend asked me, when do I stop listening to my mom say she doesn't want people over, and I just go. I don't know. I know I need to see her, but it is so hard.

This blog is a supposed to be a fun place for me. And it is. Prayers for my mom to find peace are appreciated.