Happy New Year!!!

I know, I know that the New Year was 19 days ago. But if you read my last post, you will know that I could not type on New Year's day, due to my giant splint! You would have also read that I was going to spend the next few days catching you all up on our crazy lives! :)

I can't remember how long ago, Deanna told me of a "project" she and her family do on the last day of school: They sit down and each member writes out 10 things they want to do for the summer. How awesome is that!?!?! We tried it for a couple of summers and never did complete our lists, because we ran out of money or summer! So, I changed it to the first of the year and for the whole year. Some items on the kids lists last year were going to Great America, going camping, going to visit another state, spend a week at each grandparents... Some items were simple like going to swim at the beach.

2014 was a great year of travel for me. It was one year ago today that I was in California for my Tinkerbell Half marathon with Deanna! (Her first half, WOO HOO!!!!) I got to go to Denver, CO for the National Massage Convention, and OH to visit my brother (whose family is now in California) and I took the kids with me to Florida in November to see Deanna and I complete our Coast to Coast challenge at Disney World!

Here is my 2015 list:

Mama’s 2015 List of Goals

*2015 in 2015 with Marie

*Do a full marathon (Lakefront or the Inaugural Milwaukee Marathon)

*Start my running streak over!

*Run 15 or more races in 2015

*RAGNAR?

*Badgerland Strider Challenge again

*Take the Personal Trainer test

*Start training at the WAC

*Look into Girls on the Run certification

*Help Swimchick earn her Silver Award

*Take PeeWee's troop camping/overnight camp in our backyard

*Read 1  book a month for fun/ 1 book a month on self-help

*Blog more

*Cut sugar out of my diet

*Better at menu planning

*Try to add more real food to our menus and less eating out.

*Pay my dental bill
*Pay off my surgery


SO, there it is everyone. My list of goals. I have not signed up yet for the Badgerland Strider Super Strider Challenge. (Money is a bit tight at the moment. I do need to see when the challenge closes, to be sure I don't miss it!!!!) My friend, Marie, asked if I would join her in the 2015 in 2015. As a team, we have to complete 5.5 miles of walking or running every day in 2015. Check it out here. I signed myself up on the website, and to date have only logged 2.75 miles of walking.  It was torture! Physically and mentally. I was sore the next day, not used to walking, and the pace was killing me. If I had not been in that splint, I would have laced up my shoes and hit the pavement. I had to go to the gym and use a treadmill. The next day, the kids and I went to visit my parents, and I didn't bring any exercise clothes. (excuse, excuse, excuse!) Anyway, I signed up and am part of team: Hot Tamales! Go Team GO!!!!

Today is my New Year, and I am planning to go for a run of at least 3 miles. {The weather has been super nice for January in WI. I am planning to do the "park loop" when my husband leaves for work. SHHH!!!} I need to figure out how far behind I am and get caught up. LOL!

Last year, I found a blog boasting a 14 in 2014 race challenge. I did that, and could have done more runs over the summer, but didn't. SO, I am going to challenge myself to do 15 this year. :) And before I fell and got put into a lovely hard cast, I was feeling like I could take on a full marathon again. {I am not sure how you go about doing the 50 states challenge but I have never run a full marathon in WI! HI, IL, MN and FL yes.} Some runners in WI have decided to do a Milwaukee Marathon weekend in Oct/Nov. Oh, my bad, I just looked it up and it will be named MILWAUKEE RUNNING FESTIVAL WEEKEND. I have not decided if I would like to do this full or if I would like to do the LAKEFRONT MARATHON. Again, I need to see what the fees are and when they go up or close the entries. Then decide and talk with my running partners to see who is up for what. I would like to use Another Mother Runners Own It program for my halves and this whole marathon this year. 

I know several folks who have done a RAGNAR race. I think it would be a fun time. I put a question mark on that one, because I have been asked to join a team, and then they filled up. So, I might be able to join if someone else can't make it. We will see!

Oh, for the book reading: I am slowly reading THE FRED FACTOR as my personal growth book. And I started reading FIFTY SHADES OF GREY last night. (I finally got the library e-book reader to work on my phone, and am into chapter 3 already!) I am on Goodreads.com if anyone wants to follow me and see what I have read!

And today is the first day of our 14 week Challenge with 100 Days of Real Food. (The challenge is closed for this year, sorry.) Every Thursday I will get an email with the next weeks challenge on it. We are to start on Monday. This week we are to add more fruits and veggies to every meal. And we are not to buy anything with more than 5 ingredients in it. It is surprising to read the ingredient labels to see how often sugar is listed.

Well, that is the summary. What do your 2015 goals look like? I'd love to read them here in my comments! ;)

Off -n- Running,

AnnMarie

Chatching up

Happy January 17!  I have been meaning to post more and here we are 17 days into the new year and this is my first post.  Such is life.

SO, I just saw that I never posted about our trip to Disney in November.  I have not updated about my dad, or myself.  I will spend the next few days doing that.  I never posted about my New Year Goals or resolutions...

Here we go.  I will start out with my arm.

Here is a picture of the fracture(s) in my radius.  If you look closely, you can see the bone fragments are sort of all over the place!

Here is what happened, as I remember it:  Early in the day, 8:00am-ish, we got a drizzle rain.  I was going to work, at the office job I picked up (another thing I should update you all on!)  Anyway, the rain was freezing on my windshield.  At the office, I saw lots of slow moving vehicals and when I left for the day, the salt had been applied.

I DID NOT GET UP AND RUN IN THE MORNING!!!!!  So, I went home put on my running gear, picked up kids, dropped off kids, per our normal Thursday after school routine.  I was going out the door around 6pm, to pick up kids and WHAM!!! I fell literally right on my face!!!!!   I am not joking here, all I remember is my right knee hitting the pavement and K-POW my forehead hit next.  As I lay there, I thought, "Don't passout, don't passout, don't passout..."  Then my next thought was, "I have to get up, I am probably bleeding profusely from my forehead.  OH GREAT!'  And don't forget the thougthts of, "Oh, crap, I put a hole in my favorite running pants!"

When I did try to get up to assess the damage, I couldn't use my left hand normally.  It felt weird, like my fingers weren't connected anymore.  My sleeve had gotten pushed up a bit, and I saw my wrist/arm didn't look right.  There was this curve in there, where it is normally straight.  "Now, what?" I thought.  My husband was in the house, and I screamed and reached for my phone, cuz I wasn't sure if he could hear me.  He came out and instead of the sympathetic "Oh my, are you ok? What happened?" you would like to think you would get from your loved ones, I got:  "Honey, you just warned everyone about the driveway being slippery, what were you thinking?"  That made me feel SOOOO much better!  He came out and I told him to be careful, and I helped me up.  My head was kind of hurting and my arm didn't feel right.  I wasn't sure what was going to happen.

We got me inside, found a ride home for the kids I was supposed to go get, put some ice on my arm, called a neighbor to come be with the kids and went to the ER.  They were impressed with our make-shift splint of a couple of CD cases and a kitchen towel.  (Sorry, no photo of that!)

The x-ray above was taken that night.  We saw Dr. Nicholas Webber the next day and couldn't get in to do surgery until the Tuesday after that!  The blog post from Dec 19, is the photo of the splint I got in the ER.

Surgery was on December 23, scheduled for 4:30 in the afternoon.  I didn't get taken in until about 5:30.  I was blessed with this lovely plate and 9 screws that night.

I do not come out of anesthisia very well.  My husband kept trying to get me to wake up and move around so that we could get home.  It was funny, from what I remember.  They wanted me to eat and walk before going home.  I took about two bites of sherbert and fell asleep.  Hubby let me sleep about 30 more mintues, and I thought is was 5, came in and asked that I just try to stay awake for the next 2 minutes.  Um, sure right!  I just wanted to sleep.  Seriously, that was a crazy night.  We got up and going, sort of, and made it home around 10:30pm.

So now I have this stuff in my arm.  I was given a soft splint and an appointment to see the Doc again in a few weeks.

On January 6, I went to the office and the soft splint came off, they took these x-rays to see how I was healing.  Because I am a massage therapist, the doc put me in a hard cast, to allow the bone to heal up to perfection, so that I can go bck to doing massage in the future.

Every day it feels a bit better.  Today, my fingers are a little swollen, but I am typing on the computer with the broken arm!  And I feel no pain doing that, at the moment.  I might need a nap in between writing all these posts I want to write to catch you all up on stuff!  LOL.

The end result, of course I picked purple, my favorite color!!!

I get this cast off on February 6.  I asked about running and the nurse said I had to wait a bit longer, walking is fine (Does she know how tourcherous it is for me to walk on a treadmill verses running on one?!?!?!)

I have been seriously going through withdrawls, just ask my kids.  I am WAY behind on my 2015 in 2015 challenge, too!  I will tell you all about that later.  :)

Off n Running,

AnnMarie