Bolder BOULDER. May 29, 2012

So, as many of you know, I ran my first race EVER yesterday.  It was the Bolder BOULDER down in, ahem, Boulder, CO.  It’s a 10k, which is the same as 6.2 miles for all you non-runners.  Or non-metric users.  : )  I had two goals that I’m happy to say I was able to accomplish: 1. I ran the whole course without stopping or walking.  2. I ran it in under an hour.  My official time was 57:12, so I ran each mile in a little more than 9 minutes.  For me, that is about the most I could have hoped for.  I feel good about how it went.  It was difficult, but attainable.  It was a beautiful day, and my boys were there cheering for me and supporting me.  Next year, Silas & Phil are planning to run the race with me and partake in all the fun things that spectators are doing along the way — handing out cotton candy, marshmallows, popsicles, offering rides on slip n slides, etc.  There are also lots of fun bands along the way…  Here are some photos from the day.  Thanks so much for all of your encouraging words and support along this journey of mine into the running world!

before the race… i told phil after he took it that i probably looked more excited than i felt! nervous!

The boys watching the race.

Lincoln watching the race. And looking cute. Good Lord.

A couple friends, Erika & Kelsi, and I after the race, in the stadium where it ends. That’s the finish line behind us…

Phil & me. What a great guy!!

My favorite boys and me.

Tate’s photos of me in the stands.

fully alive. May 8, 2012

last week i was able to take photos of one of my best friend’s little boys…  his name is luke and he is two and a half months old.  i say “fully alive” because shooting portraits is one of those things that makes me feel alive and inspired and creative and full of purpose.  as i look down the road to the days when all three of my boys are in school, photography is one of the many things i may pursue as a career.  here are some of my favorite photos of “baby luke” (as my boys call him).

this is enough for me. April 2, 2012

my husband, phil, and i run a faith-based, non-profit youth organization called Summit County Youth (this is our 11th year).  this year, we are directly in charge of the program for elementary-school students, which includes our sons, Silas and Lincoln (he gets to come a year early — the benefits of being the child of the ones running the show, i guess)…  silas recently wrote an essay for a writing contest through his school about “why i am valuable to my community.”  not sure it totally addresses the topic of the contest, but here is silas’ essay.  he wrote it with zero help from us.  while i love to read anything my son writes, this one is especially meaningful to me.  it reminds me why we do what we do.

best year of my life. March 28, 2012

i celebrated my thirty-third birthday yesterday.  and i’ve been considering writing a specific blog post for weeks now, but have wavered about whether or not it’d be a good idea. i intentionally stopped posting facebook updates about this topic months ago for several reasons, but i’ve finally decided that this place — our family blog — would be an appropriate place to share my thoughts.  so… here goes.

i am now officially thirty-three years old.  in the last year, i changed my life.  literally.  it was a simple change with unbelievable results.  a year ago, i ran out of excuses.  i hated my body, and dreamed of a different one, but i had lots of excuses.  i had never been an athlete.  i never exercised or worked out.  i hated sweating.  i loathed running.  in fact, the last time i truly ran had to be in high school when we had to run a mile twice a year.  those were probably the worst eight days of my high school career.  i hated running and i was no good at it.  i had never cared much about my body or what i looked like.  i have no idea what my weight or pant/dress sizes were back then.  in high school and college, i was never fashion-minded.  i wore what i liked and i never wore make-up — i just didn’t want to ever feel ugly without any on.  i never went out of my way to look attractive.  i wanted to like myself, but doing anything to appear pretty or especially sexy to anyone else felt vain and conceited and wrong.

in the past ten years, i’ve carried three babies within me and i have birthed three beautiful boys.  i’ve been either pregnant, nursing or taking care of a newborn or toddlers for most of the past decade, often times on little sleep.  when i haven’t been doing any of the above, i’ve been catching up on sleep or re-claiming my post-pregnant body…  until a year ago.  my youngest son, tate, turned two.  he was sleeping through the night for the most part, and i hadn’t been nursing him for over a year.  i was getting good sleep, and tate didn’t need me 24/7.  i was running out of excuses.  i kept feeling an internal nudge to start running.  i wanted to be healthier and i dreamed of being “fit” like so many of my friends here in summit county.  to be honest, i was skeptical about whether or not jogging/running would make any real difference.  if i could even do it.  but i had never tried before.  i really didn’t have any specific weight loss goal, but i did hope that i would begin to feel better about both my body and who i am.

so, a year ago, i started walking the uphill road that runs past our neighborhood.  i started out walking and running and walking some more.  running was hard and i was easily winded.  it was hard, but it felt good to be trying.  i measured out a half-mile from our house, so that i knew what was a mile round-trip.  i focused for a long time on walking & running that mile.  eventually, i was running more of it than i walked.  and then i started lengthening my route to two miles… two and a half… three… three and a half miles.  i worked my way up to walking the first half-mile as a warm-up and then running the entire rest of the route.  the first mile and a half are steadily uphill.  the reward is running back downhill past the neighborhood (catching my breath) before turning around and running back up the hill to our house.  it has felt good to end with a hard uphill push.  this winter, i’ve been going to the local rec center to run before our daily family schedule begins.  as an all-or-nothing, perfectionist-type person, i could easily become obsessed with running, so i limit myself to running three times a week.  recently, with the unseasonably warm weather,  i’ve been able to run outside again.  a few times lately, i’ve been able to start running before the half-mile mark and push myself to run further up the hill than i ever have before i turn around to run back down.  it feels incredible to be running further than i ever believed i could.  i am even running my first race — a 10k race on memorial day — with some friends, which is something that i’m truly excited about and never thought i’d ever be able to even consider doing.

i said that i have changed my life because i have.  i do enjoy running now.  even more than that, i enjoy the way i feel after i’ve done it.  i feel proud of myself.  (i eat healthier and less now… because i’ve worked so hard and because i CARE.)  i feel like i’ve accomplished more than i thought possible.  i feel empowered.  each time that i run, i start out by asking God to transform my body and transform my mind & heart.  and he has done that.  we have done that together.  it has been a ton of hard work, but thank God, the results are tangible.  i have lost almost exactly 40 pounds in the last year.  40 POUNDS!  that is so much more than i ever imagined would be possible. i have dropped from a size 12 jeans to a size 4/6.  my body has changed dramatically.  my bra size has gone down from a 40 to 34.  i am proud of the fact that i can see between my thighs when i stand with my legs together.  i have hip bones and collar bones that i couldn’t see before.  my face is thinner, my arms are thinner, my fingers are thinner.  slowly but surely, my belly is becoming flatter and flatter.  i finally feel confident about myself and my body.

one of the highlights of this journey for me happened one night a couple months ago.  phil and i were walking down the stairs after putting our three boys to bed.  i must have given phil a hug from behind and he automatically picked me up on his back to give me a piggy-back ride.  honestly, for the very first time in our lives together, i wasn’t afraid that i would be too heavy for him.  i was able to enjoy the fact that my husband would be able to carry me easily and i didn’t have to worry about crushing him.  it was a glorious moment. 

so, why do i share all of this?  well, i certainly have not wanted to speak about it because i have not wanted to brag about how much weight i have lost.  there is hardly a day that goes by that at least one person in our community here doesn’t compliment me on the way i look.  for the first time in my life, i truly value and appreciate the attention.  i can accept those comments now because i feel like i have earned them.  but, for those closest to me, it does seem to be a little much.  an awful lot of focus on me and the way i look and for that reason, i try to talk about it as little as possible.  i’m still not totally comfortable with so much exposure in the spotlight.

i did decide to write about this journey because i want everyone to know that it IS possible.  i had severe doubts before i started, and yes, it does take a lot of motivation and determination to actually DO something.  even to just begin.  and it will be slow and hard at first.  but it IS possible.  if i can do it, anyone can.  anyone can.  YOU can.  the best moments in this journey have been when i see someone else get inspired to start trying.  to start walking or running.  i didn’t see huge results in the first 4-5 months, but something was happening.  and every month after those initial months showed results.  so, if you’re where i was a year ago — dreaming of a different body and a healthy life — it’s time to step out the door and start moving.  wake up early if you need to.  start by walking if you’re uneasy about running, but you can do it.  and it will be sooo worth it.

p.s. thank you, phil, for helping me.  for allowing me the time and space to take this journey.  for buying me a rec pass and encouraging me to keep going.  thank you for loving me just as much a year ago as you do today.

thank you, olivia ward, for inspiring me.  i still think about you every week as i run.  your determination and commitment motivated me and helped me get started.

and thank you to my friends and family who encourage me to persevere every day.

favorites of my 3-year-old. March 28, 2012

we have a tradition at our house of taking black&whites of the boys for their birthdays.  actually, i took black&whites of them each of their first 12 months to capture their changes over that first year.  then, after they turned one, we stopped the monthly shots and just take special black&white photos of the boys annually for each birthday.  for some reason, documenting their growing-up years well makes me feel like a good mama.  here are my favorites of the black&whites that i just took of tate for his third birthday:

the big THREE. March 8, 2012

my son, tate, turned three this past sunday.  it is hard to believe that our youngest child is already three.  already potty-trained.  and just let go of all of his pacifiers (which he affectionately calls “boppies”), but we’ll get to that later…

tate wanted a “dragon birthday” and here he is with what seemed to be his favorite dragon of the day:

as tradition goes, we gave tate breakfast-in-bed — chocolate chip pancakes and strawberries.  i’m realizing that our boys probably won’t actually EAT much of their birthday breakfasts until they are a bit older.  even our nine-year-old didn’t eat much of his birthday breakfast with the distraction of presents to open…  tate was a bit spoiled this year.  he had lots of presents to open and now has lots of fun, new toys to play with.  i guess there must be some truth to the whole “spoiled baby of the family” thing…

here is tate at his birthday party, wearing his favorite outfit of late: just shorts. nothing else.  i guess he hasn’t noticed that we live in breckenridge, colorado, where there is snow on the ground eight months of the year… (notice the dragon is still with him)  truthfully, he is only into wearing shorts so much because his big brother started this shorts fad several months ago (lincoln is the other blondie in the photo — wearing… that’s right!  just a pair of shorts!).  he sure loves doing anything lincoln does!

we had a lovely time celebrating tate with some family friends.  we invited just a few families who have children that tate really enjoys playing with.  we were in our home, which is quite small, so we tried to keep it low-key.  the kids just played and we had pizza for dinner.  tate seemed to enjoy his time playing & eating with his friends.

blowing out his candles!

the night of tate’s birthday was his last night with his “boppies” (pacifiers) — we had been talking with tate for a few weeks leading up to his birthday about giving his boppies to the “boppy fairy” who would in turn give his boppies to new babies that need them and leave him a small gift in return.  he has been pretty excited to be such a big boy that would no longer need his boppies.  thanks to my friend, danielle, from high school who gave us the idea…  i wasn’t quite sure how we were going to go about letting them go, but i felt like his third birthday would be a good time & age to do it…  here he is taking one last photo with his beloved boppy:

then, we put all five boppies that we had left laying around the house (he normally fell asleep with two — one in the mouth and another in hand as a back-up in case he lost the first one!) into an envelope we decorated for the boppy fairy, and sealed it shut.

he took his first nap that day without his boppy and that night, we set the envelope out on the table next to his bed for the boppy fairy.  the next morning, it was gone and there was a gift in its place…

tate has survived three days so far without his boppies.  he talks about them less and less.  after each nap, we have celebrated that he did it and that he is such a big boy!  i am so proud of him…  i think he will become a better sleeper rather quickly as he learns to roll over and go back to sleep on his own, without the help of boppy or mommy.  i think tate is proud of himself, too.  he has been in a particularly good mood over the past few days.  what a big boy!

i’m so blessed to have such beautiful boys.  tate is silly and sweet.  he loves to give tight hugs and sit on our laps.  he loves to play with his brothers and chase after them.  he can just about keep up with them both now, and it is so lovely to watch them play and interact together.  tate has a hilarious voice he uses when he is pretending to be someone or something else.  the boy is a talker.  he talks and talks and tells stories.  he chimes right in with the rest of us.  he likes to pray at the dinner table.  he loves books and reading stories together.  he loves animals, just like his brothers…  elephants, dinosaurs and especially, DRAGONS.  the boy can throw quite the fit when he gets extremely frustrated… but thank goodness he pulls it together quickly after a few moments to gather himself (read “time out!”)…  he is learning and growing so quickly.  he LOVES babies!  i think he is thrilled to discover there are kids younger than him and HE gets to be the big kid.

i am so excited to watch him grow into the boy that God designed and dreams for him to be.

our tate is such a wonderful gift to both of us and to our family.

we love you, tate!  happy third birthday, big boy!

onesies for baby luke. February 21, 2012

several weeks ago, my youngest and i made these cute onesies for a long-awaited little boy.

luke josiah was born to our good friends, erika & aaron, on saturday night.  they have a similar story to ours, in that we both waited for a good while to try to get pregnant again after our first sons were born… and then it took quite a long time to get & stay pregnant.  after erika told me that she was finally pregnant this past summer, i’ve been praying for this sweet little one in her womb — that he would be healthy & strong, and that he would come join our world at the right time; that God would keep and protect erika & baby both.  i’m so grateful for answers to prayer — it was precious to finally meet & hold him on sunday afternoon.

     

so, our first two sons and their younger brothers are nearly the same number of years apart — 3 3/4 years.  it can feel like you’ve forgotten how to do the newborn baby thing by the time that second little one is born… but fortunately, it all works out.  you slide back into that life-with-an-infant groove rather smoothly after all, and you’re just so taken with this new small little person that you had waited for and prayed for for so long…

we’ve found that our silas and lincoln boys play well together, they are now 9 and 5.  the younger is not too much younger that he doesn’t eventually learn to keep up with the older.  and, the older boy is just enough older that he will be able to babysit for us and is really excited about the idea of watching his brothers.  it works for us, for those couple reasons and many more, and we are so excited and thrilled to be able to watch their jude and luke boys grow and change and become the best of friends over the years to come.

congratulations, erika & aaron & jude.  we (all FIVE of us) are so happy to know and love your little boy.

getting ready to start.

freezer paper heart ironed on to each onesie.

putting a tate handprint over the heart on each shirt.

the finished shirts.

drying... pulled the hearts off the next morning.

the finished product. we ended up not giving the two on the right hand side (the paint was too thick on one and not thick enough on the other). tate was very proud of his handiwork!

photo ornaments. February 4, 2012

i tackled the photo christmas ornaments yesterday.  got a bit lazy and just used a silver paint pen to write the year on each one… but hey!  they are done and ready to hang on next year’s christmas tree.  check it off the list.

fronts of the ornaments.

backs of the ornaments, paper covering the cardboard. the first is different, because it's an original that survived the candy cane meltdown.

crafting. February 2, 2012

i’ve recently done some random crafts here and there, mostly in connection to christmas, that i thought i’d share…  here are some photos (you can click on the photo to see it in its original, much larger format):

  the first two photos are of three ornaments i made for our christmas tree.  some of the ladies from our community got together for an evening of hand-sewing.  the ornaments were all more intricate and more time-consuming than we expected.  i got the first two (the tree and the deer) done before christmas, but the cabin took longer.

   i just finished it a few weeks ago.  we purchased the instructions from this website (and rounded up our own supplies): http://www.rosylittlethings.com, but you can also purchase them in a kit, with all of the supplies and felt pre-cut (i think) for you.  much more expensive, but way more convenient!

   i almost made two freezer paper stencil shirts for my youngest boys.  over the past year, this has become one of my favorite quick crafts to do.  so, you trace what you want to paint onto a piece of freezer paper (wax on one side, paper on the other).  then you cut out the parts that you want to show up on the shirt.  for tate’s nickname, i cut out all the letters, but i had to keep the middle parts of the “a” and the “e.”  after you finish cutting your design out, you iron the freezer paper onto the tshirt.  for tate’s shirt, i ironed the name on, and then individually placed the inside of the “a” and “e” and ironed those down as well.  lincoln’s shirt was a bit more complicated, as you can see.  so this first photo are the two shirts with the freezer paper ironed on, and the paint already applied.  i use normal acrylic paint and a regular old paintbrush.  the only tip there is to brush the paint from the paper to the shirt, and not the other way around, so that you’re not brushing paint under the paper and messing up the design.

   here is tate’s shirt after the paint had dried and i removed the freezer paper.  i had made all of the boys a shirt with their name on it about 8 months before christmas, and the younger two especially would wears theirs every day (when allowed, and when wearing any shirt at all).  i thought it would be fun to have another homemade shirt to alternate between.  so this is “taters’” shirt, as we fondly call him.  he does indeed, like to wear it as much as the first.  laundry tip to lengthen the life of the shirt — wash normally, just inside out.  so far, they have all held up really well, even the ones made nearly a year ago now!

   this is the shirt i made for lincoln, again, after the paint had dried and i removed the freezer paper.  on the left is a cat that lincoln himself had drawn.  i used his drawing for his shirt because it is so gosh darn cute.  i traced it onto the freezer paper, widening the lines as i went.  then i cut it out, keeping the insides of the ears and the face with the eyes and mouth cut out of it.  like i said, this one was a bit more complicated.  but it turned out really well.  i just love how the freezer paper stencils give you such crisp, clear edges.  and i love the colors, too.

    here are the boys & their shirts.  so cute!  i love the way they both turned out, especially the idea of using lincoln’s artwork for his shirt.  they were two of my favorite gifts of christmas!

so, i am currently working on our family photo ornaments.  we have a tradition of taking a family photo each year around christmas time — usually when we are on our christmas tree hunt — and then i make an ornament out of it.  well, last year while all of the ornaments were in storage in the crawlspace, some candy canes that got put in the same box seemed to have melted onto most of the photo ornaments.  i’ve done the leg work now of re-locating and re-making prints of all of the photos (plus a spare for each year, just in case).  now it’s on to the real work of making the ornaments, which is simple, but time-consuming, especially with like 8 to do at once.  i just cut our bodies out of the photo and then cut a piece of regular ol’ cardboard (in the same shape as the cut-out) to glue behind it, to make it nice and stiff and durable, sticking a piece of yarn or rick-rack in between the photo and the cardboard to hang it on the tree.  add the year to the photo in some cute and creative (hopefully!) way, and all done!  i will post a photo or two when they are done.  i love to see the way our family has grown and changed over the years.

finally, tate helped me make some special onesies for a good friend of mine (you know who you are!!!) who is waiting for her second little baby boy to make his debut later on this month, we hope.  i will have to wait to post about them until after he is born, so as not to ruin the surprise…

happy crafting, everyone!

my heart turned nine. January 30, 2012

our oldest son, silas, recently celebrated his ninth birthday.  it is hard to believe the boy is already so old.  ten (the big “double digits” — i remember turning ten!) is right around the corner, followed by his teenage years and then he’s gone. so that seems a bit overly dramatic at the moment, but it is true.  there is no slowing down time.  he is halfway to eighteen and on that day, i know i will once again wonder where the last nine years have gone.  in an attempt not to panic about how little time we have left with our si boy here at home, i’m going to focus on the beautiful son and brother and friend he is today.  i have got to focus on today before i start hyperventilating or crying thinking about all of our tomorrows that will soon be yesterdays…

silas is a one-of-a-kind boy.  he is unique, and just beginning to realize that is a good thing.  he told me the other day that he thought it meant “different” and i told him it really means “one of a kind,” which kinda means different, but in a good way.  no two of us are alike, and thank God for that.  our si boy is a beautiful boy with deep chocolate eyes that water when he really gets laughing.  he loves to laugh and to make his brothers and friends laugh, too.  we took the boys and two of silas’ best friends to denver on saturday to celebrate si’s birthday.  on the way home, it was such fun to listen to the “older” boys in the way back make si’s younger brothers squeal and giggle until they were sick to their stomachs.  silas and his two friends were also quite slap-happy in the back, and it was a beautiful moment to hear them laughing and joking and having such fun together.  i am so thankful for these two friends whom silas enjoys so much and who love him and allow him to be 100% his unique self.

  silas has a wonderful imagination and loves to play.  if we let him, he’d probably spend most of his time playing “screens” — which is how we refer to anything with a screen that he’d watch or play: tv, computer, movies, wii, xbox, dsi, ipod touch, dad or mom’s phones, ipad, etc.  it is insane the amount of screens we have lying around here.  we recently put a limit on how much time we can spend on screens each day (i’m beginning to understand why my mom referred to the tv as the “boob tube”…).  thank goodness that the screens do not suck the life out of silas’ imagination.  instead, they seem to ignite it.  whenever he is done playing video games, silas & his brothers or si & his friends pretend to be their favorite characters from the games and videos.  they embody their favorite skylanders, clone wars characters, or smash bros. guys…  it is refreshing to see and hear.

  silas is such a great big brother.  while he has the benefit of being the oldest — getting all the “new” clothes, going to school first, getting the largest allowance, etc. — lincoln and tate, his little brothers, have the benefit of watching silas test the waters.  they will never be afraid to follow in his footsteps because silas does everything so well and so effortlessly.  lincoln cannot wait to go to school because he has watched silas enjoy his time there.  and he is already counting down the days until he is nine and can have an ipod touch of his very own…  even though silas is almost four years older than lincoln (and six years older than tate), and will make a great babysitter for his brothers someday, he is not so removed that he doesn’t love to play with them.  silas is not the kid who comes home and wants to play or be by himself.  he’s not too cool for his little brothers, in fact, he gets sad when they don’t want to play together.  he treats them fairly, compromises and uses his words.  i’m so glad that both lincoln and tate have such a wonderful big brother to look up to and to want to emulate.

  i’ve said it before and i’ll say it again — silas is a thinker and he has a very tender heart.  he asks good questions and feels the pain of his friends and the people around him.  he is compassionate, creative, inquisitive and thoughtful.  we love having conversations with our silas — concerning everything from science and music to movies and relationships to family and God.  he is not always outspoken, but the wheels are always turning — i would love to be inside his head sometimes when he’s deep in thought, or when he’s doing math in his head.  the boy is smart and he has an incredible memory.  he loves animals and currently would love to work with animals at a zoo when he grows up.  he has the heart and the gentleness for it.  he has loved animals from a very young age, and while dinosaurs, pokemon and other fads have come and gone, he continues to love animals…  who knows what will become of it!?!  right now, his favorite is the snow leopard, which we were able to see at the zoo on saturday.  it is always the first stop on the circuit for us gallaghers — they are amazing animals.  silas pours over his national geographic books to learn all he can about them — did you know they are the best jumpers out of all the big cats?  they can jump up to 45 feet, i believe.  you can double check with the expert.

  while i could go on and on about the boy, i won’t.  there is too much to say about this boy who IS my heart.  i love him more than my own life.  my prayer for silas this year is that he will know how very LOVED and special he truly is.  that he will be secure in the fact that we, his parents, and God love him to our very depths and so much more than he can ever imagine.  i pray that he will continue to grow into the boy and the young man that God has designed and dreamed for him to be.  that he would continue to be a caring big brother and a kind & thoughtful friend.  that he would dream big and ask bold questions.  that he would stick up for himself and he’d be unafraid to be 100% silas all of the time.

we love you, silas, and we are so grateful that God gave you to us nine years ago.  what a GIFT you truly are to all of us!