All Grown Up

Well, it happened. Both of my kids are now adults. *lots of tears*

Today is Eli's 18th birthday. Between Noah moving out and now Eli being a legal adult, my emotions have been working on overdrive. But to tell the truth, I couldn't be more proud of this kid and the adult he has become.

I almost feel like Eli came into this world as an adult. I've always referred to him as an "old soul"; he has an emotional maturity that even a lot of adults don't have in their lifetime. To say that he has compassion and empathy would be an understatement; he loves with his whole heart and he always puts others' feelings ahead of his own. What 18-year old does that?

I don't know if other parents feel this way, but I wish I could go back in time and do it all over again, with both of my kids. I would do things so much differently--have more patience, say "yes" more, and enjoy even the moments where I was frustrated or tired and felt like I needed a break. I can only hope that I did enough.

I know I've done this before on birthdays, but I really love looking through old photos to spark memories of when the kids were little. Eli was--and I would say this even if he wasn't my kid--quite possibly, the cutest kid EVER. He was the happiest and most easy-going baby! He loved taking naps, even as a toddler, and would tell me that he was "going to take a nap now" each day.

He loves animals and they have always been drawn to him. I think they feel the kindness in his heart and the compassion he has for them.

What I've always loved most about Eli is that he marches to the beat of his own drum. He had quirks from day one, and they became a fun part of his personality. He never conformed just to fit in with his peers; he was the trendsetter, even though that's not what he was going for.

Right now, he's not sure what he's going to do after graduation. He's been talking about looking for an apprenticeship in the trades, and I think that would be great for him. He also mentioned taking a gap year, working and saving up money while he decides what's next. Whatever he ends up doing, I know that he'll be great at it.

Here is a collection of some of my favorite pictures of him throughout the last 18 years...

January 7, 2006, 1:06 PM. 9 lbs. 10 oz. 

ALWAYS smiling

A crossbite that would later be corrected, but SO cute

One of his quirks was how much he loved accessories and odd clothing matches.

Just a regular Tuesday attire.

His third birthday

Again with the clothes and accessories!

The braces were to correct his crossbite. His molars didn't line up properly and he would choke on food frequently. He wore braces for three months to correct it. He used to call them his "bracelets".

Does that smile not melt your heart?

On a field trip to the apple orchard.

One of his beloved naps. 

I know how professional the cake looks but, believe it or not, my dad made it. ;)

Eli LOVED all things army. His favorite toys were "army guys"--the little green plastic men. He had dozens of them and played with them daily for years.

I'm not surprised to see that Eli was at the end of this rainbow <3

Phoebe was so young here!

For the life of me, I cannot remember him ever going through a football stage. It must have been very short-lived.

Eli has always been into his hair, and has many styles/colors through the years.

If I remember correctly, it was his birthday and we took him to Denny's. We said he could order anything at all, and this is what he chose! Hahah.

On our way home from vacation, we let each of the kids pick something out at at Walmart when we had to make a stop. Eli chose this tackle box--SO huge.

The kids both loved Spongebob Squarepants and watched it with my dad.

This is a super short video clip of Eli saying "Spongebob Squarepants"--just take all of the words in the thesaurus under the word "cute" and this sums them up...

He chose this outfit for Mark's funeral.

Chandler loving on Eli

He was SO happy to get a dog, and even happier that we'd picked a black dog. That's not the actual reason we chose Joey, but Eli had been hoping for a black dog.

Eli is absolutely Joey's favorite person on this earth.

Running cross country

He was very excited to get this haircut--he'd seen it on his favorite YouTuber.

Holding his only (at the time) cousin

Jerry urged him to use a wooden bat, and he showed Jerry just what would happen when he did ;)

Eli has always loved to cook, and he's got a natural talent for it. I wouldn't be at all surprised if he ends up being a chef one day!

Totally in his element. Fishing has been a hobby that he's loved since he was old enough to hold a pole.

He used to love pomegranates until he learned how much work they are to peel and remove the seeds!

He loved The Walking Dead, and on his wishlist was "Lucille" (the baseball bat wrapped in barbed wire). This one was plastic, of course!

His birthday breakfast. I wanted to make him waffles this morning, but he doesn't like to eat breakfast anymore. I miss making him a special birthday breakfast!

A natural squirrel whisperer. This was in Boston.

After getting his ears pierced.

We used green hairspray to match Lukes hair to Eli's faded green hair.

Even though he was a natural born catcher, Eli really loves to pitch. His (final) baseball season starts soon. Bittersweet!

His permanent farmer's tan. He looks like this all summer.

Eli can solve a Rubik's cube so fast that you might miss it if you sneeze or even blink. Finding a shirt with a SQUIRREL solving a Rubik's cube was meant to be.

This was a 13x13(?) cube. He solved it in four hours.

Eli and my sweet little dumpling pie when he was just a baby

He found this sign in the lake and now it hangs in his bedroom.

I will never forget this sweet little bird that came to my house--twice--and let us hold her.

Eli has always loved cookie cake

This was a bird at my parents' house. Like I said, animals are drawn to him.

Eli used to drink so much pop. I told him that if he could give it up for a whole year, I'd pay him $365--a dollar a day. I never believed he'd actually do it! This was Day 366, his first pop.

Duck loves it when Eli walks around the house holding him like this. He looks so proper!

Eli's first homecoming dance

When Eli was born, he was SOLID. He's always weighed much more than he looks because he has so much muscle mass. I always said that if he ever decided to lift weights, he'd be a monster--and it eventually became one of his favorite hobbies. He was lifting SO heavy for a while. Once he got a job, he stopped working out so much. I hope he'll get back into it--he's really good.

Last year's birthday at my mom's house. I guess she only had two candles? Haha.

Homecoming his junior year

Ava's prom junior year

He got his eyebrow pierced and I got another piercing in my nose last summer

His latest favorite pastime is golfing. He didn't want senior photos, but he asked if I would take some pictures of him on the golf course.

Buying his first car

Such a good looking kid adult!

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Goals for 2024

I've always written a post about goals for the new year on the first of the year, but time totally got away from me last month. (I don't like saying "New Year's Resolutions" because it sounds corny, but that's essentially what I do every January.) I honestly wasn't even sure what goals I was going to focus on this year. I like to try to learn from each year--what worked, what didn't, why it didn't, etc.

First, here is a look at how I did on last year's goals...

1. Get my weight back into my maintenance range of 125-135.

Haha! I'm in the same boat this year. I did, in fact, get back into my maintenance range and was at about 130 pounds for a long time until a few months ago--I was so sure I'd figured out how to stay there. But just like the end of 2022, I gained about 15 pounds. I've thought about changing my maintenance range, but I just don't feel physically comfortable when my weight gets to the upper 130's. I'm curious how things will go this year.

2. Run 500 miles (cumulative, of course).

How did I forget about this one?! I just looked at last year's post and this was written on there. I honestly do not remember writing it. Needless to say, I did not reach this goal--I only ran about 78 miles. However, I did start a daily running habit and I'm currently on a streak of 126 days. I only run a lap around my block (0.4 miles), but my aim was to build a daily habit. Even though I didn't hit 500 miles (or even 20% of that, haha), I'm very happy with the habit I've developed.

3. Complete one crafting project per month.

I may or may not have completed this. I do a lot of crafting, and I've been especially into sewing this year. I didn't keep track of what I was doing through the year, so I'm not sure if I hit this goal.

4. Expand my vocabulary.

I started this one by learning one new word each week, but I found myself completely forgetting about it. So, I decided to start learning Spanish on Duolingo instead. I do at least one lesson a day, and I'm on day 221 right now. It's kind of crazy when I think of how much I've learned in such a short time!

Despite not really hitting those goals last year, I am not even the slightest bit upset about it. The year 2023 was a crazy year and not in a good way. Just surviving was good enough for me ;)

I've decided to try a different approach with goals this year. I'm only going to have ONE goal and I'm going to put my focus on that one goal instead of several. I think having a solitary goal will make me more likely to achieve it. I'm still going to work on other things, as I always am, but I've narrowed down my list to just one.

Eat more vegetables.

So simple! Right? I've been vegan for almost two years now and my diet has gotten so much healthier. However, I still don't eat the recommended amount of vegetables each day. The more I learn about how diet affects health, the more I want to eat healthy. And vegetables are the healthiest food there is!

It's kind of funny--the one vegetable that my entire family likes is Brussels sprouts!

I know that the word "more" isn't specific, but I wrote it that way on purpose. I don't want to put a number on it because I don't want to measure out vegetables or have to hit specific numbers for variety or anything like that.

I've *really* liked reading and listening to "How Not To Die" by Dr. Michael Greger. He is an expert on nutrition and passionate about using food to prevent and even cure disease. Yes, those "experts" are a dime a dozen these days, but one thing that makes him stand out from the rest: He so badly wants to teach people about using food as nutrition that he donates every cent from his book sales and business to charity. His website is non-profit. He doesn't have any sponsors or ads on his site or anything that would suggest a hidden agenda. He's written thousands of articles with all of the studies to back up his research. He doesn't push products and he publishes only facts (backed by research). If there was ever an expert to trust in the diet industry, it's him (in my opinion).

He has a list of what he calls the "Daily Dozen"--a checklist of 12 things we should try to fit into our diet each day. It looks overwhelming when you see the list, but he said not to aim for perfection--it's just a guide to help make better choices. You can actually download the app with the checklist--it's free and there are no ads!--but here is the list (you should be able to click it to make it bigger):

I was surprised to see that I already get a lot of those things every day already. The missing ones are vegetables! To try to get more veggies this year, I'm going to do my best to follow this guideline for the Daily Dozen. That means eating leafy greens, cruciferous vegetables, and other vegetables daily.

I started working on this last week and I'm inspired to keep going. There are a lot of vegetables that I like, but I don't cook them often because I'm the only one in my house who likes them. Jerry will try anything I make and he never ever complains, but I feel guilty making food that I "know" he won't like. He's always telling me to just cook whatever sounds good to me and he'll eat it. I try to do this, but I just feel too bad.

Dr. Gregor writes about how your tastebuds change as you change your diet (something I've noticed many times over the years) and so Jerry and I made a two-week challenge for ourselves. It doesn't sound like much of a sacrifice on my part, but I promise you it is HARD for me--I have to cook meals that sound good to me but that I "know" Jerry won't like. (I put that in quotes because we don't actually know if he'll like it or not.) And in return, he's going to eat only whole foods (including the meals I make) to see if his tastebuds start to change.

We only started this yesterday, but it's been interesting. While I have anxiety over it, Jerry is excited about it, hahaha. I made sweet potato taco bowls yesterday--roasted sweet potatoes with black beans and corn, taco seasonings, quinoa with lime, and a spicy cashew cream sauce. It sounded heavenly to me! But I would never have made that because it's not at all something Jerry would choose.

He has also promised to be completely honest about what he thinks of the dinners I make. I don't want him to tell me he likes something if he really doesn't. I was very surprised at how much he liked the taco bowls yesterday! He said it's something he'd definitely eat again.

The vegetables that I'm excited about eating are sweet potatoes, cauliflower, and mushrooms. If I can find a mushroom dish that Jerry likes, I'll be so happy! I want to make it clear that this wasn't my idea--Jerry is actually pretty excited about doing this challenge.

Anyway, I've been working on the daily dozen (and I love that I'm not striving to have a perfect checklist every day). It's only been about a week, but I feel good about it. Maybe by the end of 2024, I'll be able to tick all the marks on the checklist!

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Wednesday Weigh-In: Week 136

It's been three weeks since my last Wednesday Weigh-In... holy cow. Time is passing so quickly!

Staying on track with my eating habits through the holidays has never really been an issue for me. Other than a couple of days where I might go to a holiday party or something, the season doesn't really change my daily routine. I do, however, tend to eat too much when I am stressed--and December was a pretty stressful month.

The stressors weren't all bad. Jerry's new work schedule is great! It's just been a very hard adjustment because our entire routine that we were so used to had to change drastically. Noah moving out was bittersweet; I'm happy for him, but sad that he's not at home anymore. And worried--always worried. Deep down, I know he'll be fine. As a mom, though, I'll always worry about my kids' wellbeing and I just hope that I taught them what they need in order to make it on their own.

Eli waking up during his oral surgery was a huge stressor for me. It may be hard for others to understand, but I just felt so horrible about the whole thing (I still do). Logically, I *know* that I didn't do anything wrong and what happened wasn't my fault; I just have that mom guilt about making him get his wisdom teeth extracted and having it go horribly wrong.

Anyway, the food I've been eating has actually been pretty healthy, for the most part. There were a few times that I ate junk like Oreos, but for the most part, my excess calories have come from things like peanut butter, nuts, dried cherries, and larger portions for dinner.

Even though I didn't post weigh-ins, I still weighed myself for my own accountability. As I expected, my weight went up and down based on my calorie intake (I'm not counting calories, but I know when I'm eating too much).

I don't feel regret, though. Sure, I wish I had more self-control when feeling stressed, but I have been trying to work on being kind to myself and just doing the best I can in each moment. I had plenty of opportunities to eat my weight in things like cookies, but I chose not to; that's meaningful to me.

So, how did it work out as far as my weight goes?

I was at 144.4 today. That's a gain of 3.8 pounds. While that may sound like a lot for a matter of a few weeks, I have gained much more than that before (not saying that's a good thing, but it is what it is). I started eating better after Christmas because I really didn't want to start the new year with a 10-pound gain! So, I am in a good place right now with my eating habits--I've even started eating meals at the table and stopped snacking at night.

I always like a fresh start, especially when we turn over a new year. I have some goals, which I'll write about this week, but a big one is to eat more vegetables. Over the last few days, I've been eating a much larger volume of food but my caloric intake is lower (I actually did log this food because I felt like I was eating too much). I've always preferred to eat a smaller volume of food, so it feels counterintuitive right now. But I know I'm eating very healthy, so I'm just going to trust that the weight will come back off!

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A Holiday Staycation

Well, that was a very refreshing break from reality over the last couple of weeks! Everything has been SO different around here. I'm still not at all used to Noah not living here anymore. Jerry's work schedule changed drastically, but he had a week off and then a long holiday weekend. Having him home a lot and Noah gone a lot has been such a big change.

I wish I could say that we did all sorts of fun things while Jerry was home, but we actually just enjoyed our down time at home. Like I said in my previous post, we celebrated Christmas on Christmas Eve with the boys and their girlfriends.

Noah gifted me this welcome mat that has a black cat on it and says "Welcome, peasants." I thought it was funny when Estelle laid on it--her eyes look nearly identical to the ones on the mat. And if she could talk, she would totally be sarcastic like this.

Rose, Noah's girlfriend, works at Panera (not the one from my sad avocado story, thankfully). When I first met her and asked her about her job, I mentioned that I used to love their salt bagels. They haven't had them in a long time, but they were so good! She said that they were discontinued a few years ago.

Imagine my surprise, then, when she gave me these for Christmas!

Six salt bagels, made just for me. She knew how much I liked them, and her manager actually made these for her to give to me. She also gave me their original salt bagel magnet that they used to display the price. It was a unique and perfect gift. Ava, Eli's girlfriend, gave me a tumbler that has "Best Bonus Mom" on it (if Duck wasn't on my lap right now, I'd get up and take a picture of it). I love Ava like a daughter and her gift made me feel good.

Oh! Remember the dollar store gift idea that my family was going to do? We had a list of things to buy at the dollar store for each other--things like "something that is your favorite color" and "your favorite snack" and "something we can do together", etc. There were eight items on the list, and all four of us went shopping separately. We bought something from each category to give to each person (so, 24 things total). I made sure to tell them to do it at the dollar store, because it was just going to be fun and silly.

Well, I wasn't taking into account that the "dollar store" doesn't really exist anymore. We have Family Dollar, which is basically more expensive than Kroger. Then there is General Dollar, and most things in there are about $5. Finally, there is Dollar Tree--that is the dollar store I was talking about. It used to be $1 per item, but now it's $1.25. Still, not bad for what we were doing.

Since I hadn't specified which store, well, the joke was on me. Jerry went to General Dollar (thankfully, he only bought a few things there; the rest he bought at Dollar Tree). Eli went to Family Dollar because it's the closest to our house. His total was $110! My jaw dropped when he told me that. I almost decided to take everything back before he'd even wrapped it, but he'd put thought into each of the gifts so I just chalked it up to a lesson learned--be specific when talking about the General Family Dollar Tree. (That's what Jerry and I started calling the trio of stores.)

Exchanging the General Family Dollar Tree gifts was fun! It was interesting to see how well we knew each other (favorite snack, drink, color, etc.).

Remember the tiny plastic babies that I hid in random places for Jerry to find? Well, I'd gotten Cracker Jacks to put in the kids' stockings, and I thought it would be funny to put one of the babies in there as the prize that comes from the Cracker Jack box. I used a razor blade to carefully open the bottom of the box. I cut the tiniest slit in the bag to push the baby inside, then I used hot glue to seal the bottom of the box again. Eli wound up with it, and I played dumb for a minute before I told him what I did. It was a fun prank!

The day before that, we'd gone to Brian's house because Luke and Riley were there. He invited my parents, Nathan, and my family to come over in the morning and watch the kids open Christmas gifts. I miss having little kids like that on Christmas morning! It was fun watching them get so excited.

Riley is super into "mini brands". They are ridiculous--teeny tiny toy versions of actual brand items you would find in a grocery store--and SO expensive for what you get. When we took her to Barnes & Noble one time she picked out a mini brands item; it contained five pieces and I think it was $10. Each one is about the size of the tip of your thumb and it's just a piece of plastic.

Anyway, Brian had actually found a big container of them on Facebook Marketplace and he got her a little toy store for them. She was super excited and wanted to play with it right away. When I helped her open it, there were SO MANY PIECES to put together, including a page of tiny stickers that had to go on the plastic pieces. Brian is lucky I like putting things together because I spent (literally) well over an hour assembling this store!

After Christmas, Jeanie and Shawn came in from the upper peninsula for a couple of days. Jeanie and I walked all the dogs (she has three basset hounds, and I have Joey). Then we ran a few errands--nothing exciting, but it was good to spend time with her one-on-one since we never really get to do that.

There was a very big Lions (football) game on Saturday and I'm sure if you follow football at all, you heard about the shitshow that it turned into at the end, haha. The Lions would have won but the referee made a bad call--EVERYBODY agreed that he'd screwed up--and they lost. Lions fans were so angry because it was a very important game.

On New Year's Eve, Luke and Riley came over for the afternoon/evening. I was hoping that my other niece, Shelby, would be able to come too, but she had other plans. Eli went to a party at the golf course where he'd been working (they are closed now for the season), so it was just Jerry and me with the kiddos. We told them we were going to have a "party" to ring in the new year.

My mom was going to be taking them home (to Minnesota) early the next morning. (She has flight privileges though Brian, so she can fly with them and hand them off to Becky at the airport in Minnesota.) She didn't want them to stay up late, so Jerry and I pulled up the Times Square event from 2022 to watch the ball drop--hahaha! At "midnight" we shot confetti cannons in the living room and the kids loved that.

They were SO funny all day because of all the things we could do, they just kept wanting to run on the treadmill. And at their ages, they wanted to one-up each other with their speed. If Luke did 5.0 mph, Riley wanted to then run at 5.5. And then Luke wanted 5.6. And so on. By the time my mom arrived, they were running at 7.1 mph, hahaha. I wish I loved the treadmill like they do!

In the afternoon, I got a phone call and was SHOCKED (in a good way) to see it was Del--my boss from Curves when I worked there from 2003-2005. Even though she's much older than me, we were close friends. I hadn't talked to her in probably 10 years, so when I saw her number on my phone, I was excited to hear from her. We chatted for a while and it was nice to catch up, but there is way too much to catch up on, so I suggested we get together and talk some more. It was great to hear from her.

The very best part of the break--probably the highlight of the year--was when Jerry got to show Luke and Riley the Ghostbusters movie for the first time. Jerry is obsessed with Ghostbusters and he'd been waiting for them to be old enough to watch the movie without getting scared. He even busted out his proton pack and goggles, haha.

I cannot even describe how giddy he was when the kids were immediately interested in the movie. They started asking him all sorts of questions about the ghosts, so he took out a big Ghostbusters book that he has. It contains all sorts of trivia and behind-the-scenes info. Luke actually told him to hold on a minute, then he grabbed the remote control and paused the movie so he didn't miss anything. That was when I knew he was genuinely fascinated. 

My heart was totally melting while I watched them with Jerry. I haven't seen Jerry that excited in at least a year! He doesn't know anyone who is into Ghostbusters (I've watched it with him a couple of times, and I even wore a Ghostbusters costume for Halloween in 2022, but I wouldn't call myself a "fan") so he doesn't get the chance to talk with another big fan. When the kids were asking questions a mile a minute, he was thrilled to get to tell them all about it.

It's sounds silly, but seeing that interaction was the PERFECT way to end 2023, which was probably the most difficult year we've had in our entire marriage. (I don't mean that our marriage was suffering; we just had to deal with SO MANY stressors all year, as well as the second half of 2022.) It was completely heartwarming to watch the kids showing so much interest in Ghostbusters and Jerry being ridiculously happy to watch it with them and answer questions.

And finally, we spent the day yesterday planning out some goals for 2024. I'm going to do a separate post with my goals for the year (I'm *that* person who still does resolutions), so I won't get into it here.

The last couple of weeks have been busy enough to keep from getting bored, but we also had enough down time to relax and watch movies and just enjoy some laziness. Today, it's back to reality!

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