It's officially Christmas Season... It's Shutterfly time!

Every year I tell myself I'm going to get our CHRISTMAS cards out BEFORE Christmas and EVERY year I send a HOLIDAY card because I can't get my act together until AFTER Christmas. It's an endearing quality, no?

I suspect this year will be no different as it's Dec. 1st next week... I haven't yet logged into Shutterfly to peruse the choices for cards or to peruse my photos to see if we got anything 'card worthy' (and now also print worthy since all I do is shoot w/ my iPhone) throughout the year.

I've used shutterfly to make photo books in the past too. A nice way to chronicle the kids speedy growth. I'm also considering making a calendar this year... shh don't tell the grandparents!... It's so easy to upload your photos and then use them in the various options be it holiday cards, invites, calendars or photo books.

And sweet bonus.. Bloggers get 50 free holiday cards from Shutterfly http://bit.ly/sfly2010 So if you are a blogger.. check it out. Save some coin so you can buy your sweet (uh, or yourself) something nice this holiday!!!

They have a really nice selection of designs to please all types. Go check it out!

GU Roctane Kona flavor

GU did a promotion during Kona.. I'm sure you remember.. where you could get a free box of GU Roctane in a special Kona flavor with the purchase of two boxes of GU. I went for it and got my box of Roctane w/ pretty hibicus flowers on it, but hadn't used it yet. I headed out for my run yesterday and was feeling a bit 'under nourished' and tired so I took two gels with me.. one chocolate and one Kona Roctane.

Three miles into this run I felt like CRAP and doubted I would make it the full hour. About 20 mins in I stopped to walk up a crazy CT Alps hill and decided to take the Roctane. I ripped the pouch open and squeezed some in... swished it around in my mouth to enjoy the nice KONA flavor. Hmm.. it tasted okay, but it had a kind of medicinal taste. It was a familiar taste.. WHAT WAS THAT!? AHA! I've had my fair share of dental work and if you haven't had that pleasure you may not be able to understand what I'm talking about. It tasted just like that gel stuff they put on your gums w/ a big huge Qtip. They flavor it (who knows why). It usually tastes a bit like bananas w/ a medicinal after taste. The KONA Roctane tasted exactly like that! EXACTLY! I've never used Roctane before (always just straight up GU) so I'm not sure if this medicinal taste is part of the Kona mix or the Roctane mix.

I chugged some water and kept on trucking. The medicinal flavor quickly subsided.

Would I recommend this product to a friend? Based on flavor... NO! Based on results... YES! I had started out on a lackluster run that I wasn't sure I would be able to complete and ended up completing my long run ... TWICE the time/distance as I had originally set out to do. I did have my other regular GU 45 mins after the Roctane, but I was really surprised at how much better I felt after taking the Roctane...

So if you are HUGE on the flavors skip this one, but if you are more about the results and can tolerate some 'not so awesome' flavor GO FOR IT!

hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving... save my 2 hour break for a nice long run I spent much of the day wiping noses, getting water and warm milk, taking temperatures and snuggling on the couch. All in all not a horrible thanksgiving. We needed some good snuggly down time.

Oh and I also whipped up this little gem of a bag. Well, finished it anyway. In the interest of cleaning out my house I found this wool shirt that my dad wore in Vietnam that I used to wear in my highschool days. I no long consider it part of my fashion repetoire, but I didn't want to part with it so I made it into a bag. Not too bad, eh?

Catch up Time!

I've had things rolling around in my head to post, but my 'duties' have been keeping me busy.. along w/ this pesky thing called spin class. I have a new appreciation for what goes into planning those classes I've been taking for so many years! Damn... it's hard work. Or perhaps it's just me!

I feel like the last two weeks have just flown by. Seriously... it's going to be December next week? And year end only a few weeks after that. My head is spinning just thinking about it!

I'm still waiting to find out about Trakkers, but it seems things are moving along there and I'm hopeful to know more by the end of the year (hopefully sooner). I've discovered that some of my bloggy friends have applied as well... and while I shouted it from the rooftops for the world to see they kept it a little secret. You sneaky devils! You know who you are. I'm excited about the prospect of maybe being able to meet some of these people AS TEAMMATES in the real world. Yeah REV3! And how could I not be excited about the prospect of calling these two amazing athletes TEAMMATE! Sonja and Michelle just kicked A$$ and took names at IMAZ! Both earning a KONA slot. Sonja's second Kona earn in A YEAR... after going to Kona in October. These women are both crazy cool and excellent determined ATHLETE MOMs! Check out their blogs... they both are working through their race reports for IMAZ!

Warning.. the rest of this blog post is likely to be one huge mess.. but this is kinda how I've been feeling over the last couple of weeks!

I learned in the last week that SLEEP is essential. Okay.. I learned it again. How many times will I teach myself this lesson!? Tom was in Asia and I'm a horrible sleeper when he is gone. Not only do I stay up WAY too late, but I don't sleep well at all. Top that with maintaining my workouts and keeping up w/ two whirling dervishes who, I might add, have really kicked it up a notch lately and I was toasted by the time Tom was due to return home. Well, he got home - AWESOME, sick w/ what we think was the flu - NOT awesome! Three days in bed for my poor husband.. 3 days OUT OF THE HOUSE as much as possible for me and the kids.... If I wasn't fried before I am REALLY fried now.

Unfortunately the quarantine of the virus dd not work and both kids woke up this a.m. with a fever. I'm still standing.... barely. At least I've been going to bed and getting some rest. I'm certainly feeling the affects of my body fighting something and the exhaustion still holding strong.

Goal numero uno during Tom's next trip... GO TO BED already! :) It's a must do non-negotiable to avoid the crash and burn!

When Tom was gone I was thinking a lot about my 2011 Year of Awesomeness. Most of the things that I have centered on this are athletic when really if it's going to be the year of awesomeness it really needs to include all walks of my life! I'm bound and determined to make this happen. I'm going to need a lot of support from Tom and the kids to execute on the athletic endeavors and in return I owe them the best I have to give them as a wife and mother... this blog, afterall, is called WIFE MOTHER ATHLETE. And Athlete is last for a reason. While these goals are important to me they are secondary to my role as wife and mother! If I want to have balance then I need to call out what my plans are regarding my family! I read a blog post not too long ago (was it Goals for the Week?) talking about how we schedule our workouts and THEY GET DONE... shouldn't we do this in other parts of our lives? I believe she was talking about her sex life. :) Hey, it falls into that WIFE category... big time! AM... how's that going? We DO want to hear! So on the list of to do's is to really dive into what this means to me. Instead of just letting the whole family thing 'take care of itself' it's time to get proactive about it. I need to schedule things in that way as well. (and my computer time... I know you all know the time suck that can be. I won't give up my bloggy friends, but I know I can stream line things... I need a "block" like parent block for some stuff... SERIOUSLY!)

Another way that I plan to make more time in my life for my 2011 AWESOMENESS goals to become a reality is to continue to clean my house out. And by clean I'm not talking vacuum and organize I'm talking GET RID OF IT! A quote to be placed on my "vision board"...which will get made as soon as my season is solidified... is "just enough"... it's directed mainly at STUFF!!! What the hell do I need all this crap for!? I mean really. I'm only forced to organize it, pick it up, clean it, move it to clean something else, trip on it on my way to do something... ENOUGH! Really I don't feel like we have a lot of stuff, but I swear I got rid of a CAR LOAD of stuff and I still feel like we have tons of stuff. Just unnecessary things.... I need to keep this in consideration as the holidays come and every time I go shopping ... like to TARGET! Jesus is that place a black hole of buying shit I don't need or what? If I'm finding myself so bored that I am shopping I need to pack the fam up and hit the woods STAT!

I'm also cleaning out our photos. I'm HORRIBLE about backing up my computer and the macbook is acting up. I'm worried I will lose EVERYTHING! In the interest of keeping things streamlined I am going to make annual photobooks. (Got this idea from my friend Erin. They do this every year and it's great fun to look through them.) No ordering individual photos to then need to be organized into a book...which just end up rolling around the house. The books will all be the same size and will look nice on a shelf. I'm using www.lulu.com (at my friends recommendation) It's pain staking to load all of the photos into the software then into the template, but I know I will be glad I did when this computer goes to sleep for the last time!

And the Spinning. Good lord this opened a whole can of worms that I wasn't expecting! I was a nervous wreck about teaching this class. I got my cert YEARS ago .. I think 3 years.. but never did anything with it because I was so paralyzed by it. Well my friend Jill found a place that was looking for spin instructors... she was going to get certified... had just started taking spin classes and was all over this! What the hell is wrong w/me I thought? I've been taking spin classes for years, I've been certified for years.... why wasn't I teaching. I could get paid to get a work out, get a free membership to a place with a pool (albeit a place that is a tad far away). We are approaching THE YEAR OF AWESOMENESS! It's time to start being awesome already! So I contacted the lady, went to meet her and was offered a job. I think she was impressed w/ the fact that I ran right before I was meeting with her, I'm a triathlete and I appear to be relatively fit. Does any of this mean I can teach a class. HELL NO, but she was confident that I could do it. Others were confident that I could do it. I was fairly confident that I could do it. It was to be a week and a half before I taught my first class. I went to work on profiles and play lists. This was no small task for me. I had the same music on my play list for TWO YEARS!!! TWO YEARS! I am not exaggerating. Two years, six days a week... same 20 or so songs. I was all good w that. Needless to say I didn't have a lot of music in my iTunes Library to pull from. I got all my CDs out (mostly purchased in HS and college) and took what I thought I could use and put the rest in a pile to hit the garbage (hey I'm getting rid of stuff!). I came up with a profile and playlist that I figured would kick some serious spin ass. I was told these people wanted to WORK!! Okay then! I can do that! I used a mix of stuff... some Eminem (love him), some Christina Agruilera, some Flo Rida and I took a risk and put Megadeth - Symphony of Destruction and Janes Addiction in there. The Megadeth stuff went over just ok.

Tuesday came and there was no turning back. I felt like I feel the morning of a big race... and this made me feel absolutely ridiculous. I got there early and was able to talk to some of the ladies that were getting set up and it turns out their set up on the bike was all wrong and I was able to remedy that (they said their knees had been hurting). I felt pretty good about this and that made me feel a bit more legit. Once we got going it was fine. I have some things to work on, but I think I worked everyone. It's hard to really tell because while I'm kicking my own ass it's obvious that some people are dogging it. It's there workout though and I can't turn that dial or increase their turn over. I can only offer them some tunage and a workout!!!

These emotions of fear really opened some things up for me ... an insight into my psyche. I SO wanted to call and quit before I had even started. Thinking that I just couldn't do this. That I didn't need to do it bc we don't need the money and I'll certainly have plenty to do as marathon training picks up and then tri training after that. Did I really want to have this commitment to someone outside of my family and my training? When it came down to it I felt like I did need to do this... for a few reasons! I needed to prove to myself that I could do it. I needed to move outside my comfort zone! I WANT to share fitness and the lifestyle with others and this is a sure fire way to do that. I want to show my kids that you can do things you might think you can't. I'm not sure if this job (can I really call it a job?) will turn into anything more, but I guess that's not really the point.

Alright year of AWESOMENESS... I'm preparing for you.... are you ready for me!? Can you handle it!?

What plans do you have to push yourself outside of your comfort zone in 2011. It's terrifying, but exhilarating!!! Come on all the cool kids are doing it!

(I warned you that it was going to get jumbled up in here!)

Interesting swim breakthroughs.

Rolled (no pun intended... see below) to swim tonight.. though I REALLY wanted to go to bed. Tom's been gone and I've not been sleeping enough. :(

Our regular coach was busy tonight so we had a sub. He's a highschool swim coach in a neighboring community. Jon was JUST what I needed. We didn't go in and hammer out sets. We did drills... the entire time. It was FABULOUS! We worked a lot on rotation.. also fabulous! He told me I need to swim slower because you can really feel when you do things when you swim slow. WOW! Not that I can work on speed, but I need to spend time FEELING the water.. feeling the balance in the water, feeling the catch and feeling the rotation. When you are FEELING those things you basically sink like a rock when you are going slow.

So what did we do?

1st up:
kick: no board, no fins. Slow flutter kick originating from the upper leg. Arms outstretched in front of you. Lift head to breath then rebalance after your legs sink from breathing.

2nd:
kick: on back, arms at your sides, rotation around the axis going straight through your body. Don't rotate fully to your side. Make sure your hips and shoulders stay in line and keep a nice slow rhythm.

3rd:
swim: use your upper arm to initiate the recovery stage (don't lead w/ your elbows) and have your body rotation bring the arm around and into the water.

4th:
same kick drill above, but practice pushing your buoy to cause your legs/hips to rise. Play with it until you feel like you are floating weightlessly. Not too little push so your hips sink, but not too much causing your butt to pop out of the water.

5th:
kick on side, arms at side. Bring bottom arm up to catch position. Catch and rotate. (both arms back at side, you are kicking on opposite side). Bring arm (under water arm) up to catch position. Catch and rotate. All the way down the pool. Don't PULL w/ your catch arm. CATCH the water and ROTATE.. thus causing your body to move forward over your arm which naturaly flows under your body.

That's all I can remember.

Essentially... BALANCE is key. In the first half of practice Jon was able to take me from a wiggly mess to a nice flowing non wiggling gliding swimmer (I 'rolled', er, rotated. Get it?). I WISH I had had my camera with me to take more video. And I wish he was going to be back!!! I felt like I was getting a lot of what our other coach Rich had been trying to explain. Isn't it interesting how you have to hear the same thing over and over again in different ways before it all finally comes together. (Perhaps this explains a lot about my dad's approach. He is always saying the same thing over and over in a different ways. Could it be that he KNOWS this little thing about people needing to hear things in this manner before we get it. Nah.. I think it's just one of his quirky annoying habits... mom? Thoughts? Dad? Thoughts? You are going to claim that you knew this... at least about me!)

I feel like I didn't do a good job of describing everything we did. I looked for videos briefly, but kids, I'm FRIED. And here we are again midnight and I'm STILL not in bed. Thank god Tom is home tomorrow and I can go back to going to bed at 9:30pm on the dot! Makes for much more pleasurable mornings for all.

Night night!

PS. Only TWO more days until I know about Trakkers!!!! The suspense is just killing me!

Recovery Week...

While this recovery week has hit at a good time regarding scheduling (read: finding someone to watch the spawn) it's come at a bad time for my mood. I'm like a caged animal right now... caged w/ two wild crazy 4yo spawn that I'd like to eat just so I don't have to listen to the general craziness! ha ha (before you get your panties in a bunch I clearly love my spawn and would NEVER eat them.)

I KNOW the recovery stuff is part of the deal (and is highly beneficial), but I've always been outright TERRIBLE at recovery be it a single workout or a full on week. I always push too hard in the workouts and usually 'feel good' so I throw an extra workout in. This coached thing is going to really going to MAKE me do this and HELP ME to see the true benefits of it.

Now if I could get these kids to take a recovery week! DAMN!

One of the reasons that I exercise is to burn off tension, bring me down a few notches and help me cope with the craziness of kids. The sheer volume of it has already made me want to put on my shoes and RUN AWAY about 50 times and it's ONLY 9:30 in the a.m. Thank GOD Coach let me swim today! Mama needs a good workout. Time with my head underwater sounds about right!

I dropped my gym membership to move those funds over to coaching... well, the reality has already hit that that means running outside 100% of the time through the winter. Hmm. Northeast winter, curvy roads, snow plows... doesn't matter how much bright/reflective wear I wear I'm libel to get mowed over by a snow plow if there is fresh snow.

I have been spin certified for years now and never used it ... basically because I'm a huge chicken shit. I used to get up and talk in front of hundreds of people (in a past life) and while it was nerve wracking I did it, but I feel paralyzed to get on a spin bike in front of say 25 people. What's with that? My main problem isn't the workout.. I know I can make people work / sweat and generally suffer. It's the damn music. Putting it to music! UGH! Music people like. I had the exact same playlist on my ipod for OVER TWO YEARS!! TWO!! Over and over again I listened to the same music and it didn't bother me a bit. Also.. most of my music is explicit. CRAP! Anyway... 2011 is the year of awesomeness right? Time to get over this BS! And what a perfect time. I need a treadmill... don't want to pay for it... let's do this thing. So I start teaching spinning in a couple of weeks. I did a practice spin for my 50 min class last night. Worked up a good sweat, but my music ended at 34 mins. I've got a lot of work to do to get some playlists and profiles together. Hmm.. think I could just play music and wing it? So put a little prayer out there that I don't freeze up and that my music somewhat goes with my profiles.... oh and that the class members are merciful as I work out the kinks! Everyone starts somewhere right. Come on this isn't rocket science people! :)

Another great swim drill video

Tides are changing. I practically begged coach to let me swim a third day this week. I'm in a recovery week right now (these make me really twitchy.. I have to work hard to not workout.. craziness). I looked at the schedule and was shocked to see that I wasn't supposed to swim on Sunday. I emailed coach to MAKE sure it wasn't a typo or something. He said NO SWIMMING. Okay, back to the schedule. Wait!! I'm supposed to swim on Monday early and I can't so can I swim on Sunday instead?? Coach, FINE! Swim. YIPPEE! (Hmm.. I guess the point of PAYING a coach is to listen to him not BULLY him into doing what you WANT to do!? oh well... I get to swim. Notice get to not HAVE to.. my language is changing. Never EVER thought this would happen)


I had a GREAT swim session last night. I FINALLY felt what it's supposed to feel like to do rotation properly. I felt the stroke all the way down my arm and then down my side. NOT in my shoulders. It was awesome and I was definitely faster. (I was sharing a lane w/ one of the sharks. He's injured so he's slower than normal, but I kept up with him while he was lame (for a little while)... it's a start).

We did a couple of sets then hit the catch up drill w/ the stick. 50 drill / 50 swim. While this drill isn't my favorite this is the second time I've felt that it's really given me a good sense of what a stroke is supposed to feel like. (Mind you this time I'm also spending a great deal of time thinking about my kick and head position.)



We do the drill with the stick parallel to the bottom of the pool.

I'm feeling really good about all the time I'm spending in the pool and feel like I'm right on the verge of it all clicking and coming together (hence my desire to keep hitting the pool... and slight fear that if I don't it will all fall apart again.)

Our main set after the catch up drill was 2x400 (75 free, 50 back, 50 free, 75 breast, 150 swim) I NAILED that first 400. This is the VERY FIRST time I feel like I can say that I nailed a swim workout. I pushed myself out of my comfort zone!!! I'm so excited. I've always struggled with being able to really push myself into the HURT LOCKER in the pool. I'm glad to have gotten there. I was wipedout after that and couldn't get there the second 400. I did pushed myself, but couldn't quite get to where I was in the first set. Glorious swim workout!!!

Thanks to the sharks for giving me such good feedback and encouragement! You are playing a large part in things coming together for me and I truly appreciate it.

Too Legit to quit!

What can I say.. I wanna be one of the cool kids.

Jon over at SwimCycloRun recently posted about getting his own domain. He was inspired by Megan at The Daily Sweat (she just got a new job in my favorite city in the whole world. Go congratulate her.) How sweet is that? Totally makes you look all legit and stuff. Well I inquired with him as to how this works and what it entails. Well it was pretty simple... so I WANTED IN! It goes with my "2011 is the year of AWESOME" plan. I checked the availability of AUTHENTIC LIVING.. surprise surprise it was taken. So I went with my original idea of changing the name of the site and just went with my tagline. 

I can now be found at www.wifemotherathlete.com ... so if you follow me and want to continue w/ the google reader updates etc you might want to just click on that there "follow" button so as not to lose me. I'm not sure what will happen with any RSS feeds with this change, but I do know that if you keep the link to authenticliving.blogspot.com you will be rerouted to WMA.

So thanks Jon and Megan for the intel on switching to my own domain. I'm happy to be part of the cool club now.... see 2011.. I'm bringing the awesome already and it's not even 2011 yet!!!!

Hopefully everything will go seamlessly. If you have problems let me know!!!!

2011 is going to be the year of AWESOMENESS!!!

I'm putting it out there right now. You are on notice 2011 you are GOING TO BE THE YEAR OF AWESOMENESS!

Proof of this fact! Big things are planned. I've got myself a rockin' coach! I'm putting myself out there in ways I've always wanted to, but never gone through with! Things like.. the coach, the GREEN, and now I'm working on re-certifying for Spinning and am GOING to USE it (need something to pay for the awesomeness), I'm going for the BQ, putting my hat in the lottery for NYC and am stepping up my triathlon distance! I'm also working on building this blog into something more than just a 'journal' of sorts.  As I've alluded to before there is some other 2011 awesomeness in the plans too, but I'm not at liberty to discuss them here right now. It'll all come out some day...

I'm amped and excited about this. I've struggled for most of my adult life with the "what am I going to do with myself?" question. I've been painfully paralyzed by it. I'm not sure what happened, but I feel like I'm breaking free of it in a big way. I've always been ALL OVER the place with my interest and have really lacked focus, but the one constant has ALWAYS been the training/exercising. Granted it has come and gone, but over the last 4 years it has always been there. So I'm going with it. I'm not ready to really work per se. I am committed to the two little munchkins and being there for them in these years, but once school starts full time I want to hit the ground running with whatever it is I finally settle on. Part of the planning for that is doing the things above to either get them out of my system or ingrain them in my life to carry them on in different (read paid) ways as my time opens up. Word on the street is that kindergarten might be full time next year! Holding my breath and wishing hard on that one. Would certainly contribute to the second half of the year of AWESOMENESS!

I'm excited to take you all along with me for the support, motivation and inspiration. You all really do make me want to step up the game and live this life to it's fullest! Let's do this thing!

What awesomeness are you bringing into your life in 2011?

Anniversaries!

WARNING: If you read this blog only for my trials and tribulations as a triathlete/endurance athlete you can safely skip this post!!! Namely the first part w/ the photos. It's about to get personal up in here!

So it's weird.. I have a lot of "anniversaries" in the last quarter of the year.

last week we celebrated (using that term VERY loosely) our 1 year anniversary of leaving Madison and moving to CT.

This week we celebrate (again loose use of the word) our FIVE year anniversary of leaving Seattle.

Our wedding anniversary - 7 years - is at the end of this month.... (I don't have any wedding photos on my computer.... 7 years is a long time in the world of technology.)

                               We have a similar photo of our kids in this stage. Freaky huh?

AND I was just cleaning out some things (more on that later) and came across some old paperwork. There are a lot of new people here and I'm quite sure you haven't gone back to read my OLD OLD blog posts, but we did IVF to get pregnant (and if you care to know WHY) and I just dug up our paperwork ... Oct 18th I went into the hospital to have two tiny embryos place inside me! On Oct 28th (FIVE years ago) I found out I was pregnant! WOW! Looking over the paperwork with the words Blastocyst and embryos written all over them I feel a strange disconnection from it. When we decided to do IVF I always wondered if we would tell any resulting children how they were brought into this world. That question is still unanswered, but I rarely think about it. Now that I'm on 'the other side' I don't even feel like we went through all of that.. and believe me WE DID! It was a long hard road to get where we are, but it's like it was all erased from my memory when Jason and Lily joined our family. If you know anyone going through this infertility business. Give them a big hug, an ear and a shoulder. That's really all the need. Well, not all, but you get it.

I am working on simplifying some things.. all things.. in preparation for a big training year. Part of that is cleaning things out and letting go of the 'unnecessary' things (which lead me to purge the aforementioned paperwork) and streamlining our finances (aka squeezing out any extra cash I can to support my crazy triathlon habit). I can't remember where I found it, but I stumbled upon Zen Habits. I am really loving this site. It's got all kinds of info about creating your 'zen'.. from ridding yourself of extra stuff (aka baggage) to simplifying your finances. I'm just gobbling up this site (and a lot of time.. not so zen or simplified, but we'll get there).

Are you in need of some simplifying and cleaning out of things? What do you do to keep it simple stupid? I'm excited to get rid of the unnecessary stuff to allow more room for the good stuff, brain space for more creativity and less of that bogged down feeling from all the 'stuff' I've got to manage.

PS. Hot tip from a friend of mine. If you donate stuff to Goodwill they have a brochure that helps you give value to the things you donate. This brochure gives way more value to things than I had given in the past. If you itemize on your taxes this is very cool. You have to list every item, but it might be worth the extra work.

Balancing the lifestyle...

As I was trying to fall asleep last night I thought about Trimommy's post about Visualization and how she uses it before race day and it works so she should try using it in the realm of parenthood. (how's that working trimommy?)... as I lay there I was also thinking about what was on deck for my workouts for the next day. I always do this.

I'm not sure about all the other moms of young kids out there, but one of my main struggles in motherhood is REALLY connecting with my kids on a daily basis. YES, it's true. I spend almost EVERY waking moment with my kids and it's not uncommon for me to go to bed at night and not be able to think of one moment in the day where I really stopped the chaos and madness of motherhood/house caring to connect with my children as opposed to just responding to their needs and shuffling them around for school and errands. And this is not a new problem...

I've tried a number of times to figure out how to fix this problem. To be more scheduled about our day... but really it's not my style. So then I was thinking... okay every day I have at least one (sometimes two) workouts planned each day. I am non-negotiable about this and it gets done every day.. barring any unforeseen circumstances ... normally related to the aforementioned spawn. So why not do the same thing for the kids and I. I could plan an activity or something for every day that is 'non-negotiable'. It doesn't need to be elaborate because frankly they just don't care they just want my undivided attention. And really is that too much to ask of your mother!? It could be reading books or coloring.. and I mean coloring as in me coloring too not them coloring while I'm on the computer!

So today's activity is going to be a hike w/ Leo dog, then a trip to the library to return the Halloween books and movies (and pay for the movie that Jason broke before we even got to watch it.. ugh) in exchange for some Thanksgiving stuff. That's as far as I've gotten right now.

Another area that I'm struggling with is the 2011 goals and image board. I'm all set in the world of endurance sports, but struggle with adding things around the family goals. There's just ONE big one... other than that I'm stumped. What's wrong with me? Clearly the undivided attention goal is a good one, but other than that??? I guess this is one reason why I love triathlon... it gives me a schedule and goals. Mostly I feel like there is a schedule to get the training done and the rest just happens. I know I need to make it so that the rest has purpose and intention as well, but I get so overwhelmed with it.

How do you do this ladies/gents? How do you make sure to spend that quality time with your kids? I feel absolutely ridiculous asking this question, but I know I can't be alone in this. I never thought that as a stay at home mom this would be an issue, but it's easy to get distracted by all the mundane things that 'need' to get done to run a household.. and frankly playing trains bores me! :)

My swim feedback...

I sent the link to my SWIM VIDEO to coach John (tri coach) and coach Rich (masters swim coach) and got similar advice from both.

1. Press the chest/swim down hill
2. Head neutral / make small movement to take a breath
3. Catch: square the elbows (do finger tip / high elbow drill and catch up drill)
4. Drive from the hips
5. Kick in the bucket

I wrote the 5 things above on a note card I can put in a baggie and take to the pull with me to remind myself of the things I need to work on.

Here is a video I found helpful... how it should be done! The catch.