Not Me Monday

Here is my first attempt at a not me monday! Not sure the rules but I am going to give it a shot

• I did not turn down the opportunity to go to the mall with my DH and daughter with the purpose of me getting MUCH needed new clothes after the suggestion by my DH that we go...What was I thinking!!! Who knows if DH will ever make that kind of offer again.....
• I did not let my daughter be bored yesterday while DH and I watched the MSU basketball game and not even feel badly about it
• I did not eat mac & cheese for lunch and pizza for dinner follow up by several beers all in one day....i don't eat that many carbs in one day
• I did not lay down and try to take a nap at work on Friday because I had the office to myself and I was tired from staying up too late the night before watching tv and drinking wine with my neighbor
• I did not have to buy a new straightner this weekend after forgetting it at the gym on Wednesday and then being mad that someone took it not mad at myself for forgeting it

That is all I can think of off the top of my head for my first not me monday.

Last offical class

My TEAM fitness class is officially done...i am definately sad. Although I do have to say i got a lot out of it and even if i had the $500 i don't know if i would do that exact class again with the same trainer. I love the trainer as a person, but she is a pilates instructor that is teaching this class for the first time and she is obviously out of her element and not as effective as the other trainers i have taken classes from. Now, I am VERY excited to do pilates with the trainer b/c that is her strength and I know it will be awesome. I officially start my "free" pilates next Wednesday and I think I have 7 or 8 sessions so i am super excited about that. I am also goign to workout wiht a couple ladies from my class on our own..so for now i am stickign with my crazy early morning routine!

I am dragging BIG TIME this morning but it is my own fault. I went to my neighbors house last ngith for some MUCH NEEDED girl time and to watch Grey's and Private Practice...I told my self I would leave after Grey's b/c that end at 10 and I have to get up at 5...but no i was too sucked into the shows and having too much fun with my neighbor (and my red wine) so i didn't end up leaving until 11:30 and by the time i was home and sleeping it was at least midnight....and the alarm went off at 5:05 and I got up and went to the gym!!! Since it was my last class there was no option for skipping.....but man am i tired now. I am working on my second large cup of coffee so at least i can function but man i am tired. It was worth it though , i had a great time.

I was really hoping Grandma (mil) who watches Iz on fridays would want to take her home with her and keep her for the night. Izzy loves going to grandma's and kept asking me if she was going to her house yesterday...but i told izzy that she woudl have to ask grandma (i didn't want to ask her since we didnt' have any real event that we needed her to take iz) so I guess this mornign after Grandma arrived Izzy said to grandma "grandma's house?" but grandma said, no i think we are goign to stay at Izzy's house today.....bummer....coming home to an empty house this afternoon to take a nap woudl have been great.....oh well. We are VERY lucky that both sets of our parents pretty much do take Iz anytime we ask so I feel guilty even complaining.

I hope izzy naps today so I can sneak in a nap too. I am going ot leave work about noon and plan to get home right around nap time.......yesterday izzy did not nap...she stayed in her crib for 2 hours and talked to herself the entire time! I knew she was tired but I guess nto tired enough....it was absolutely adorable to listen to her on the monitor though just talking away about random things....

Izzy Updates

Well I was going through my old blogs and realized I haven't updated what Izzy has been up to in a while and I want to make sure I capture all of the current Izzy-ism's before I forget them or you change too much!

I haven't taken any new pictures of you for a few weeks and will try to get one today after your non nap and post it later. You are not always very good at posing for the camera.

You are now 2 yrs old and 2 months, i really can't believe it. You have truely blossomed infront of our eyes the last few months. You went from not a whole lot of talking to talking all day long...unless you are around new people or people we haven't seen in a while , then you pretty much act like a mute, a shy, smiley mute. Some of my favorite things that you say lately when you are playing peek a boo or when you are across the room you say "I see thee" for I see you. And my favorite is when you want to help with something, particularily emptying the dishwasher (this is one of your favorite things to do , you empty the silverware, hand it to mommy to put away) you say "Help Me" instend of help you. It is so darn cute!!! You enunciate your words quite well for a 2 yr old I htink although there are some words you still say inncorrectly....catapiller is "patakiller" to you. You still will not really say Dora, you call her Dada even though you can say Dora. You still know all of your colors and take a lot of pride in pointing them out to me. We are working on recognizing letters, you konw A but thta is about it for now. You love counting though, you count just about all day long. You can count to ten although you often forget 8.

I have to be very careful when talking about you in front of you, recalling stories or bad behavior or whatever, because you know exactly what I am talking about and often add to the conversation.

You are still a fairly good eater and you will "try" just about anything, if you don't like it then yo u spit it out on your plate. Your favorites are hot dogs, cottage cheese, sausage, and of course anything sweet. You would probably eat fruit snacks and ice cream all day if allowed.

You love to play in your kitchen in the basement, you love to prepare soup, coffee for mommy and daddy and hot dogs. You also love to play outside, the sand box and your swing are your favorites and I am sure this summer getting you to leave the park will be a challenge. In your sandbox you often make cupcakes or cakes for us.

You still take a nap although sometimes like right now, you stay in your crib and talk to yourself (for an hour right now) and don't fall asleep. You are pretty good with bedtime once you are up in your bath but you will stall stall stall to take yoru bath, even though you love them once you are in them. You are still sleeping in yoru crib and have shown no signs of trying to get out.

You are obsessed with reading books on the floor at bedtime, not sure how this started but you want mommy/daddy to lay down on their bellies on our elbows and you snuggle under one arm while we flip through the books, sometimes reading them sometimes not depends on our mood.

You really have no interest in using the potty although you will occasionally sit on it and read daddy's fly fishing catalog...you are obsessed with flies! Daddy loves it.

You often sing to yourself although you still can't sing more than a few words together...your favorite to sing to yourself is "Twinkle Twinkle Twinkle Star" most recently you have started singing "a,b, c,b" and you sing the beginning of "I'm bringing home a baby bumble bee."

Overall, you are the happiest kid I know, love to play with mommy/daddy and all your neighborhood friends. I love you big girl

Final Weigh in

Well we had our final weigh in and body fat measurement today. My weight was 132!!!! I have not seen a number that low since high school I think! I am down 4 lbs total since the class started but I am down 21 since Jan of 08! The body fat measurement was a little sketchy and i didnt' get a good look at the beginning numbers. She did the measurement twice today just to make sure and got a totally different number than the first time so i am goign to assume it is somewhere in between.

I think at the start of class I was 25.8 % and today teh first measurement was 25.1% and the second was 24%. Either way I feel really good and I feel like I can notice a difference that I am more toned.

My reward to myself is goign to be buying a new pair of pants. I really want a cool pair of jeans but I really need work pants more, so I think Friday I will see if I can find a good bargin on a new pair of work pants......I am hoping they will be a size 6! I am in 8's now and the waist on most of them is pretty loose...

The craziest part to think about is when I was goign through IVF etc and was at my heaviest weight I was 170 lbs!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Just 3 or so years ago!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! That is horrible, i can't imagine being that weight again! I will not go back. I will maintain a weight of 135 or lower...no excuses!!!

Family Vacation Planning

Well I am very excited to report we have a family vacation planned in December. My parents are taking all of us on a cruise to the Carribean!!!! My parents have a timeshare every other year in Hawaii that they are trading in for the cruise so we can all go together at the same time. The best part is that htey are paying for the cruise and we only have to cover our airfare and extra's on the boat. Well we had enough points from credit cards/ff miles that we booked a total of 3 tickets to florida and paid a whopping $70!!!!!!

I am so excited. It is a Royal Carribean cruise, 8 nights stops at St Thomas, St Marten, San Juan, and a private island in Haiti!!! My younger brother is going along with my step sister and her two girls. My step brother as of right now is not going to make it. the ship looks awesome and I think we are going to have a blast.

And b/c of this trip I know have a potty training deadline.....in order for Izzy to be able to use the big kid child program on the ship she needs to be fully potty trained.....by december....i hope this should be possible.......although it doesn't feel like it most days when she refuses to have anything to do with the potty...although the other night right before her bath she did pee on the potty for the first time.....I am so overwhelmed by potty training. My plan right now is just not to push it and just ask her occasionally if she wants to go on it and put her on it everynight before bath(starting soon, i haven't been good at doing this yet). Maybe come summer I will get a bit more agressive but for now i don't think she is ready and everyone tells me I will know when she is ready......

I just hope she is ready by december!! Not that we will leave her in teh care of the child program all the time but it would be nice to have it as an option. I am pretty excited overall....

5K Experience

Well I survived my 5k!!!! The weather really was not super good, it was acutally snow flurrying when we started!! It was a whopping 32 degrees!!! )Once we got started I actually wasn't cold, but it was pretty cold before we started. They had over 400 people run so that was very cool. We got really nice long sleeve t-shirts too! My bf mandy showed me the way , how to tie my chip on my foot etc. My family (my parents, dh and Izzy ) all came to watch me off although i was very dissappointed that they were not at the finish line...the were inside eating...oh well. Mandy was very kind to stick with me the whole time and run at my slow pace. I am very proud of myself I jogged almost the whole way....i had to walk a few minutes of it. I finished with a time of 39 min 11 sec...so not exactly quick but I did it. I had never run a mile non stop ever and I ran over 1.5 before I walked a bit. My lungs felt great, but I had cramps that i couldn't seem to shake hence the walking.

Because of the weather there weren't huge crowds cheering us on but I had a blast anyway. I already agreed to do another 5k over July 4th and hopefully will find one more to do in between. I am VERY sore today...as I was yesterday...kind of pathetically sore but my body is not used to that much jogging and I had NEVER run outside so I am sure all that factors in.

Oh and today we re-did some of our fitness testing in my class (it is sadly the last week) We did push ups, sit ups and plank. I did better than last time on sit ups and push ups but not with the plank, the trainer had us do a crazy hard ab workout to warm up so the plank was harder than normal.

Here are my results

Push Ups- 13 (I think begining of class I did 7, mid way 10)
Sit ups in 30 sec --26( Begining of class, 20, midway 25)
Plank- 1 min 50 sec (Begining of class 1 min 25, midway 2 min 10 sec)

Wednesday we will get weighed and body fat measurements. My weight has not changed and as of this morning I was up a pound from last weigh in (down 1 from begining) I am not so concerned about that as long as I see progress in the body fat %. I have pretty much not really following my meal plan but still maintaining my weight so that is okay with me. The trainer told me this morning that i looked great so that was flattering (especially coming from all 5/2" 100 lbs of her :) ) I really do feel pretty good and think i can see a difference in my shoulders, arms and legs than before I did the class. I kind of wish I had taken before/after pictures, but I didn't. I don't know if the changes would have been that obvious or not.

We will see on Wednesday

5K is tomorrow

Well the 5K is tomorrow morning, 10 am!!!! I am really excited about it. I was just talking to my BF yesterday who is doing it with me and it sounds like she is going to stay with me the whole race even if my pace is slower than hers. I also found inspiration from the biggest loser this week, they made the contestants do a 1/2 marathon and most of these people are over 200 lbs and they did it!!! So my goal is to be able to jog the whole thing and not walk....that is a pretty big goal seeing that I have never run a mile let alone 3.1 but I am going to try, even if I am jogging slow. My dad is coming to watch along with DH and Izzy.

I am pumped and hope I like it so I will want to do more....

Great workout-better attitude

Well I had a great workout this morning and am in a much better mood (even though I am still a tired, I swear sometimes my period just really makes me exhausted!) And my cramps are almost gone.

Today was our cardio day and I ran/jogged the whole class (except our 2 in recovery intervals) This is the first time I have ever done this, normally i fall back on my crutch and up the incline and walk..... but not today! Granted the longer intervals i was only slowly jogging but still i did it. Then I ran at 6.0 on the treadmill for the 1 min intervals...which is about as fast as I will trust myself to go right now. The cardio workouts are always intervals and we have a segmant of 6 different intervals and we repeat it 3 times. Normally i do at least one of the times with the incline sometimes 2 or all 3 but not today. I was good and sweaty when i finished and it felt good. I am so bummed this is the 2nd to last week but kinda excited because I was talking to one woman in my class and her and another girl decided they aren't going to pay to take the class again but are goign to do it on their own....I asked if I could join them and she said sure...so it sounds like I have workout buddies!!!!!!! YAY!!!!! So it looks like i will be keepign with my crazy early mornings...at least through spring. As the weather gets nicer i can see myself working out more cardio outside and just going to the gym to lift weights.

Speaking of great weather it was 68 degrees yesterday!!! It was awesome, I picked up Iz a little early from my mom's so we could maximize our time outside. We ended up having an impromtu BBQ with our neightboors and we grilled together and ate together and all the kids played outside and had a blast! It is so funny because all the big girls (8 and 9) love to play with Izzy. Cara from next store kept coming back over while Izzy was eating asking if Izzy was done yet so she could come out on teh trampoline! So funny, izzy is so popular and doesnt' even know it. I absolutely LOVE watching izzy play with these girls next store. She was waiting for their bus yesterday and took each of their hands and walked them home it was ADORABLE!!! We are very fortunate in our neighboorhood to be surrounded by kids (and parents) that was really get along with. On one side we have the 8 and 9 yr old girls and their parents which Amy has become one of my closest friends and DH and her husband are super close too. On the other side of us there is a 3 yr old girl and a 7 mo old boy and Izzy and the 3 yr old also play really well together adn we like the parents too. And then across the street there are 2 boys, almost 4 and one day younger than Izzy and they have #3 due in June...and we love those parents too. So last night we were all outside, drinking a few beers watching the kids play..it was great! I can't wait for summer!!!!!!!!!! My one neighbor Amy is a teacher so she is home all summer so we hang out all the time when I am not working. Bring on the warm weather!!!

Never really goes away

Well I am having a bit of a downer St Patty's day! I am sure it will improve in about an hour when i go have a green beer! I feel like crap this morning, horrible cramps (even after the 3 motrin i took when i woke up) a back ache and am exhausted.

This horrible pyhsical feeling is also making me a little depressed. As much as I would like to think these feelings would go away they never really seem to. Anytime I know that dh and had sex during ovulation time, i can't help but get dissappointed when AF shows up. Now we are not "trying" , i don't really pay attention to the calendar much but it doesn't still make me wish for a miracle. In my head, I am grateful I never was pg b/c i wouldn't have izzy...but in my heart I guess I still have feelings of wanting to experience that...and wanting to give iz a sibling. I don't want izzy to grow up lonely and I hope that she won't be too much so. With the cost of adoption being what it is and with the economy being the state that it is I just really don't think it is going to be possible for us to adopt again..at least not now and the more time that passes , and the "easier" izzy gets I don't know if i will want to start over. There is an advantage to only having one, there is so much more we can do for her and as a couple....as selfish as that sounds. I never stop thinking "you never know" which is good and bad....b/c i still set myself up for disappointment. And it makes me so mad everytime i get a bad period, i get so mad at my stupid body for causing me so much pain and it is for nothing b/c my i suffer and have periods and can never get pg...which is what my body is supposed to do!!!

Sorry for the downer post but is how i feel right now. I am sure tomorrow I will be fine, when there are no cramps and I am back to my normal self..but for right now...i am mad/depressed and in pain!!!

Random Thoughts and Venting

Okay is Friday and have a million things racing around in my little head and I need to get them out I think.

Workout Progress
Well My class is almost over and I am so sad! I only have 2 weeks left! I have really enjoyed it and I am hoping I am able to keep it up on my own. I just wish i had a workout buddy that could workout with me the sames times i do. I am thinking about asking one of the ladies in my class if maybe they want to do it, although i think some of them are taking the class again. I would love to take it again (or a different TEAM class) but financially it is just not possible! I need to decide if i am goign to stick wiht the early morning thing or go back to going in the afternoons. I am leaning towards the early morning's at least Wed and Friday's but mondays (which are my one of 2 non working days) I may start goign later in the morning and taking Izzy, that way i can enjoy sleeping in a little. We will see. And there is some good news on the pilates front. I had doen teh demo a while ago on the reformer and loved it...but it is $25 a session so i haven't done it anymore...well my idiot sister in law (i call her an idiot for the second half of my post which will have to do with her) had bought 7 session and has decided that she isn't going to do pilates anymore and asked the gym if she could transfer them to me!!!!!!!!!!! So i think it is going to work out, I am just waiting confirmation from one of the pilates instructors but it looks like I am goign to get to do 7 free sessions because my sil is giving them to me (which is very nice and almost makes me feel bad for calling her an idiot....almost) So i am very excited for this because I really liked the demo. DH told me i shoudln't do it because then i am goign to want to do it more..........i told him, i already want to do it so why shouldn't i take advantage of teh free sessions even if I knwo that I won't get to do it after that. So we shall see...


Okay now on to my biggest issue right now. This is not a new issue but yesterday I think I hit a boiling point and had a bit of a breakdown/venting session to DH about it. Here is the abridged version because I could write all day about it. My sister in law is divorced (has been for 6 or so years) and has an 11 yr old daughter. I spend a lot of time with J, her daugther, I had her one day a week over the summer and up until recently i have picked her up from school one day a week. Izzy loves J, so it is always great to have her around because she is a huge help. Anyway, my sil is the most selfish irresponsible person that I know......and what kills me is I dont' even think she realizes it! If you ask her she says J is her number one priority...BS!!!! She has a boyfriend who treats her like crap, and she is beyond fiscially irresponsible! Over the summer J, confided in my about a lot of her feelings towards her mother. Basically my sil, spends very little quality time with her, talks non stop about her idiot boyfriend and the fights they have, is constantly obessing losing weight/body fat and her crazy diets and tells J way too much about what is going on in her money situation. This 11yr old girl knows more about money and relationships than I did when i was 20! Luckily J's dad is a GREAT father and a very positive role model for j. THANK GOODNESS

Well my sil had to file for bankruptcy last year because she was living WAY beyond her means and if finally caught up to her (here is the kicker, sh emakes 100K/yer +!!!!) So they lost their house and moved into a rental. You would think this would wake the woman up about making better money choices....NOPE!!!! She travels all around the freaking world with her boyfriend (most of the time while J is on vacation from school) and is so in debt to her boyfriend it is sick. She is spending several hundred $ a month on her obbesssion, fitness (she is 40 yrs old and is so fit she has less than 13% body fat...mine is 24!) She obbesses all the time about her workouts and now she has hired this crazy body building "coach" that she gets workotus and a meal plan from ...let me tell you the meal plan is RIDICULOUS!! All this obsession about body image is great for an 11 yr old......not!!!! Well yesterday I find out that J's dad had given her $20 to buy a new shirt she needed for her vocal music concert and my sil asks J, if she can deposit the cash in her account and put J's shirt on her credit card (the one her boyfriend got for her b/c she can't get one because of the bankruptcy) Well J, said she was really uncomfortable about this and was kinda unsure since it was her dad's money so J tells me that my sil, YELLS at her, gives her a guilt trip and then finally calls J's dad to make sure it is okay. She tells J that she needed to do this because otherwise her rent check would bounce by $5!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And here is the best part about yesterday, she picks Jessie up at my house in her brand new LEXUS that she had just picked up that she is leasing thanks to her boyfriend who knew some dealership owner that was willing to give her a lease, and the bf put $3500 down on it, so now she is even farther in the hole to him. I am still so mad about it I can feel my heart racing!
WHAT IS WRONG WITH THIS WOMAN????????????????????????

The worst part is I can't say anything(and neither cna the rest of the family) because then she just isolates herself and I don't want to lose my time with J. There is a HUGE part of me that wants to call J's dad and tell him he needs to fight for full custody just so J doesn't have to deal with this crap anymore, but I know it would absolutely destroy DH's parents! I am just so frustrated! Dh just tunes her out and shuts it out, which may work for him but I am not capable of that , so last night i lost it, i was crying and just going on an on to DH! I know there is nothing i can do or say to change her but that doesn't make it any easier!

Talking Fool

I cannot believe how much Iz has changed in the last 2 weeks. It is like all of a sudden she is a talking fool. She is talking in sentences and non stop! It is SOOOOO awesome to actually be able to hear how she is viewing the world around her. I have always known that she was taking everything in but now she is verbalizing it and it is so fun!!!!!!

Some of my favorite stories recently..I was driving home with her on Tuesday night from my parents after having dinner and she was in her carseat talking away and starts saying "Mommy loves you, Daddy Loves You, Kiki loves you" It was so darn cute! She also has been a counting fool, she counts everything!! It is funny though because most times she counts, 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,9,10...she forgets 8. Yesterday we were singing ABC's and I was shocked when I said ABCDEFG and she started saying HIJK(only it was not super clear but I knew she was saying it so i continued singing and stopping and she continued finishing where i left off. So cool!

She also has been amazing me with how well she enunciates(no idea how to spell that word) There are some things that are hard to understand but for the most part she does an amazing job at this. She finally is saying our babysitters name too so this wednesday christa was so excited to hear izzy saying her name.

She is just so fun right now, definately my favorite age so far. Now if I could only get her potty training....................she has NOOOO interested and just won' t do it. I hope this changes soon because I am really sick of the diapers!!!

5K coming up

Well my 5k is coming up in just over three weeks!! AHHHHH is all I have to say. I know I will have fun doing it because so many of my friends are, but I also know I will not be able to run the whole thing. I am just so in awe of people that can run! I just can't seem to do it! Although on Sunday my first workout in over a week since being on vacation, I ran .75 miles which is the farthest I have ever ran! So to me it is a victory but to most people it is nothing! I ran it at 5.5 on the treadmill and it took me just over 8 minutes. I was proud of myself but also felt so winded! I swear, I can walk up hill all day long but running just kicks the crap out of me!

I am headed back to the gym today to do cardio on my own since DH is still out of town so I couldn't go to my 6am class. I will either do the workout my class did this morning if i can find my trainer to print it for me or I will do one on my own and maybe try to run as far as I can. Although I am still sore from Monday's workout. i went to the 7pm class on monday night (again since DH was out of town i had to miss my normal class) and we did the strength circuit. It is a different trainer and a smaller class than mine and all i have to say is this trainer kicked my butt!! She did the intervals a little different and was much better and coming around and correcting our form etc(i am sure it helped that here were only 4 of us and in my class we normally have about 8 or so) I also pushed myself to increase the weights on some of the machines. It felt really good and it will be interesting to see if my normal trainer has changed it up at all since I have been gone. I haven't been to my normal class in over 2 week!!! We only have 3 1/2 more weeks to go and I am so sad! I love the structure and the accountablility of being in the class and I know I will not be able to take it again because it is so expensive. I will see how diciplined I am to try to keep up the workouts on my own...it is SOOO much harder on my own! I haven't decided if I will stick with the early mornings or go back to going in the afternoons after work Wed/Fri and i will go Monday mornings with Izzy. We'll see. I do like the early mornings because it is out of the way early but getting up is hard....we'll see....

Gettin up at 5am is going to be REALLY hard on Friday morning. I could barely pull my butt out of bed at 7ish the last 2 mornings!

Back from a fantastic vacation!!!

We made it home Saturday night and let me just start off by saying that Izzy was the absolute best traveler! We could not have asked for her to be any better!!!! She was great on teh plane, despite the long trip and the most amazing thing is she just totally went with teh flow the whole trip. I don't even think she had any major meltdowns! She napped everyday and slept just fine every night. After the first couple nights we just let her have a bed to herself which worked out much better, she is no fun to sleep with she sleeps sidesways and kicks you all night. It still amazes me that we would tell her it was time for a nap, take her in the bedroom, lay her down in one bed one of us would lay down in the other bed and in 10-15 minutes she was sleeping!!! It worked out great!!!!! She really was amazing!

Okay so here is how the trip went. Vegas was fine, except I was so sick. By the time i got to vegas on Wednesday I had a full blown sinus infection from hell. Luckily i called my dr and seh called in an antibiotic for me but even with that most of vegas i felt like crap and sounded even worse. I pretty much had no voice from Thursday until about tuesday! So most nights in vegas i was in bed early but I did try to have a little fun outside teh conference. One night I went to Toby Keith's I love this bar that was in our hotel and danced the night away and it was so much fun!!!! Friday night I saw Phantom with my mom and we had awesome seats and it was a really good show. Saturday was my favorite day because the conference was over and I spent the entire morning walking the strip! I put in my ipod and walked my booty off! It was really the only workout i did the whole trip. I under estimated how hard it would be to find time to get that in.

So chris and Iz came on Saturday afternoon and Izzy was SOOOOO happy to see me it was great!! She was kiddy with giggles and excitement, it totally melted my heart. By the time they got in they were starving and Izzy was tired so we pretty much ate and fell asleep by 7:30, my parents even offered to come to our room after their Circ De Soelie show so chris and I could go out but he was sleeping so we didn't take them up on their offer. Sunday we walked the strip a little with izzy then headed out. We were driving to grand canyon and on to sedona all in one day. Let me say this was a bit of a mistake. This was a VERY long drive, farther than I think we both thought it would be. Izzy did suprising well considering we were in teh car for about 8 hours!!!! We got a great rental car (they upgraded us after it was a 2hr nightmare to get the car) so we had a totally pimped out explorer that was super confortable and even had a plug for my ipod so izzy could listen to her tunes. We listened to a lot of toddler music on the drive. So by the time we got to grand canyon we really only got out once. (because there are no guard rails really so it made chris and I very nervous to have izzy running around, plus she was crabby and much happier in the car watching dora) but we did drive the long way all along the canyon. We then drove the next couple hours to Sedona. The road you have to go through the mountains to get down to sedona is supposed to be absolutely beautiful but unfortunately it was very dark when we went through so we could see nothing. And poor izzy, the road was very twisting turning, and by the time we got to the end she got sick! Poor kid btwn the stomach bug she had the previous week and the car sickness she is a bit traumatized, she will say "all done sick, yucky" randomly now all the time.

We pretty much ate and went to bed in Sedona the first night but our room had great beds and a private balcony with a great view. The next day we walked all around sedona and went otu to eat for lunch and grilled our own dinner on the bbq on the hotel/time share property. The place we stayed worked out great, they had a playground which izzy loved and an indoor pool which she also loved.

We made it to scottsdale about noonish, had some lunch and then checked into our hotel. While our hotel was not the nicest it worked out fine and was clean. We were on the ground floor right by the entrance to the pool so while izzy napped we could lay out at the pool and go in and check on her ever so often. The majority of the people staying at this place were all seniors so chris and I were teh youngest by a good 30+ years. It was hilarious, at one point we were at the pool with all the old folks that were in teh water and DH said he felt like he was in the middle of the movie cocoon!

(Izzy's favorite pastime at our hotel, playing with rocks outside our room door)

I will give the quick version of the time spent with family. It went very well, Izzy was the star of the show and got along nicely with everyone. It wasn't akward with Stu and wendy, it was fine. I really did enjoy the time spend with everyone. Here is a quick recap of what we did while in scottsdale.

Tuesday-arrived, ate, Izzy napped and then we went to my uncles house for bbq for dinner with family


Wednesay-We drove with my grandparents and Stu to Superstition mountain, a park about an hour from scottsdale and took some pictures, came back, Izzy napped and I hung out at the pool, we went out for dinner that night

Thursday-DH Izzy and I spend the morning ourselves walking around old towne scottsdale and the city buildings with a ton of fountains. We also watched a native american music/dance free show that was set up. Came back to hotel, izzy napped we drank beer and hung by the pool and then took izzy swimming when she got up then went to uncles house for bbq for dinner


Friday-We went with Stu/Wen and my grandparents to the Phx zoo. What an AWESOME zoo, so much better than the detroit zoo. Came back to hotel, hung by pool took izzy swimming after nap and went out to dinner with family and said goodbye to everyone


Saturday-Visited a park and let izzy play for a while then headed to the airport and headed home.

It was an awesome time. I am very proud of myself for being so relaxed, i didn't feel any stress. I started an finished a book "Twilight" I am now addicted and will be starting the 2nd one tonight i am sure.

We had wonderful weather, especially in Scottsdale, I miss it already!!! It is a whopping 15 degrees outside right now!!! I CAN'T WAIT FOR SPRING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!