Waiting for friends and this brown hair

Welp, it's 10:57 pm and I'm waiting for one of my best bests on the planet to pull into town from Arizona with her new fiancé/unfortunate individual who must listen to us speak in high pitched tones of voices every time we're on the phone with one another. I'm SO excited - listen here: they're spending the night here beginning probably around 1:00 am, then we're all going to wake up with the kiddos, have a fabulous breakfast, then Chad and TayMan (I hope he's not offended by my endearing nickname) will drop the babes off at Grandma Cheryl's while Whitney and I do things that gals do (what do you think it is? I have no idea! Woo!), then the four of us will take off to Malibu for my Big Sis from sorority's wedding! I know - OMG. And get this! The four of us will be sharing a hotel room. Not a hotel room with a master suite and an additional pull out couch, but rather one with two double beds right next to each other - HAHA! Every time I think about it I want to start laughing. I can't believe we're doing that - it's going to be awesome! (Isn't that picture awesome!!! It's from 2007!)

Anyhoo. While I'm thinking about it: this brown hair. THIS. BROWN. HAIR. Where do I start? It's almost an insurmountable topic to tackle. To just casually sling the subject around this beautiful, baby-documenting, Chad-and-my-newlywedish blog? I don't think so. It's been a very big deal around here. A very big one - I sort of feel bad for Chad. He's the one who has to listen to me talk about it everyday. Literally.

Well back in the day, I died my hair with a nifty box my sophomore year of high school, deciding that the ashy brown my beautiful locks had transformed into was just not flattering anymore. I quickly realized that me going dark was a bad idea, so I bought two BLONDE boxes, which swiftly turned my hair orange. Like real, REAL orange. Truly closer to neon, and I'm not kidding. I had to live with my neon hair for two weeks because I was advised to not touch it anymore otherwise it would fall out. So after that ordeal, I moved onto professional help, where I began an almost ten year stint of highlighting a glorious blonde color. Anyhoo, I was 16 then, so why I decided to go dark at the end of my 25th year of life I still have no idea.

Well, I sort of remember - I wanted something new. Just a nice, caramelly, light brownish, but no. It was not meant to be. My hair became so dark, I literally could not recognize myself! Leaving the salon that day I was all smiles - Hey! Look at me! I'm brave enough to do this to myself! But as the days went on I really started to ask myself what the hell I had been thinking. I made an emergency trip to Target to purchase a darker eyebrow pencil and I was in a true panic. After a few weeks of cursing myself, I finally actually DID my hair for Thanksgiving. I found out that I really didn't HATE it anymore, I just strongly disliked the whole shebang. Anyhoo, I've given it time and I still feel like this was not the smartest move. I'm going back blonde IMMEDIATELY. The nail in the coffin?? Welllllllll

I had to renew my license and I literally wanted to cut it up after seeing how non-awesome the picture was. AND I THOUGHT I LOOKED GOOD THAT DAY! WTF?! Not cool, not cool. Oh yeah, and I almost forgot about this: I was looking over pictures from a wedding last year, and one of them was from the back of the audience. I was sitting on the aisle, so I started looking for myself. Well! There I was looking all freakin' awesome with long blonde hair! Without sounding like a deuche, I was smokin' that day! WTH?! I no longer am smokin'. This brown hair is messing with my mind!!!!!

All of the above is evidence which points to the fact that blondes have WAY more fun. The end; experiment over. But anyway, such is the way of the world. I guess you just have to make some of those idiotic decisions in life. Lesson learned, my friend, lesson learned.

(Poor Kota from that picture above! She had just woken up and I insisted on documenting the moment. Girlfriend does not like waking up haha!)

Noggin thoughts after Body Back

These kids are the bomb, man! I mean, just look at them - total bosses - sharin' undies and all! Woo, jackpot has been hit over here, jackpot. has. been. hit.

Today has been an awesome day for a few very random reasons:

1. Thursdays are my 6:00 am teaching day at PB, which means that I get a solid hour and a half of straight ME time in the mornings afterwards. THIS morning, though, I was crazy, crazy tired when I woke up at 5:00, which made no sense because I fell asleep at 9:00 pm the night before - I know. Anyhoo, thanks to a rare Starbucks run (oh, how life has changed. Venti Iced White Chocolate Mocha's with a quad shot are no'mo). Now I'm happy with a good ol' fashioned tall iced coffee with room for cream. So simple and so awesome.

2. After work and a few errands, we headed to Dland with Chadly where I took Carter on Star Tours, just me and him. Even though Chad has told me many times that he's a total BA on that ride, I was nervous it would scare the hooligans out of him! I mean, it's sort of terrifying! Anyhoo, he did great and was so hilarious to watch throughout. He had his "pewers" out the whole time (read: his hands in gun shapes ready to "pew" the robots).

3. On the way there, we swung through Mother's and got this dark chocolate, peanut butter, nonfat yogurt, almond milk, espresso gigantic smoothie. OMG I will never drink anything else, ever. Starbucks can go to hell on all of our future driving trips!

4. After we got home from the big D, Chad made an awesome dinner of eggs (we be healthy folk nowadays), and then I took off for the end of Week 5's Spring Body Back class where my ladies became FREAKING beasts. I mean, they killed it. KILLED IT! 648 calories were burned by the end! 648! I do believe that's a personal best. Also, they all looked like they either wanted to cry or puke by the end, soooooooo WIN!

5. Now I'm sitting here with Chadly and the awesome new train/Lego table I picked up for Carter today from an awesome friend's sister! Yes, I went and got him a cool toy! Very rarely do I get these babes anything other than a few do-dads from the dollar section of Target - never mind something that could double as my non-existent coffee table! I just have had this bad feeling lately that since both of my kids' birthdays are within days to Christmas, does that mean that those poor souls have to wait an entire year for anything cool to happen to them?? Anyhoo, I went and I picked it up from her and now it's Carter's delight. Well, as long as Kota's not touching it. So tomorrow will consist of me telling Carter that it's okay to share and then occasionally letting Kota know that it's Big Brother's new toy, so that means he can have some time with it alone. Well. Yeah. Wish me luck, I didn't think about that until just now.

Anyhoo, woohoo!

The wild animals phrases



I literally call my children "you wild animals." There's no such thing as a separate Carter and Kota, but rather one long whatareyouwildanimalsdoing?! Come here you wild animals! Do I need to attack my wild animals with tickles?! Be careful you wild animals! I swear, just long strings to words I say again and again throughout the day, all containing a reference to untamed monsters in the mix.

The wild animal thing is usually spoken with a nice, sweet voice filled with an aww, aren't you guys so cute? tone, but there are a few other favorite word-strings spoken on a much more frequent basis with a not-so-nice inflection:

Guys! Don't touch each other! NO MORE TOUCHING EACH OTHER!

Stop bugging one another!

CARTER! Let go of her legs! She doesn't like that!

DAKOTA! Let your brother play with his toy! He let's you play with your toys!

I. SAID. STOP!

Did you hear what mommy said?!

CARter!

DAkota! (I literally only switch from Kota to the much more serious "Dakota" when she is pushing the limits which has become more and more often - apparently I'm a total first, middle and last name yeller at my kids when they're doing something bad!)

All of which reminds me: yesterday I was outside hanging with my sister with all the kiddos walking/riding their bikes around us, and what does DAkota do? She runs out into the middle of the street! Just full-blown took off in front of a car that was heading down the little midsection in our complex - and she knows better! YES! Embarrassingly, the person who was driving the car was my sister's mother-in-law who was there to watch her kids, so there I was with the psycho child who wasn't listening to my crazy "DAkota" yell. AND while shouting DAkota, I was also trying to catch her surprisingly fast sprint further into the street so I was doing that awkward running, hunched over, trying to grab your child's shoulder with a stressed out look on your face thing - yes, I was such an in control, totally cool mom in that moment for sure. FOR SURE.

Anyhoo, let's hope for a calm, collected mother at Disneyland tonight! This has been the weekend of fun celebrations for a few reasons, one of which being that my man has been SUPER stoked about a SUPER awesome work situation - ahhhhh!!! Love him and love his excitement!! Wooohoooo! The bomb, man! The bomb.

A few daily, weirdo thoughts



I realized that I have a few weirdo thoughts that happen on a daily basis. For lack of more to say on the matter, here's what goes on in the noggin:

On the way home from Stroller Strides:

Wow I feel great. I'm so happy that today I'm going to be making great food choices. Those 3 weeks of clean eating really made me feel wonderful, I think today I'll start that again. My fridge is stocked with fruits and they all sound so appetizing, I'm really looking forward to feeling great tomorrow because I made such wonderful decisions today. Woo!

On the couch during the kids' nap and quiet time:

I had such a fabulous, healthy breakfast and lunch, I'm totally going to have a few Girl Scout cookies. When will these damn things leave our freezer? The faster the four of us eat them the quicker I can get back on the clean eating trail. I'll just have a few today...

....I'm so glad that there wasn't a full sleeve of Thin Mints available without opening another box - it really stopped me from consuming all 13 of them by myself. That would have been embarrassing. I would have had to explain the Chad that I've officially taken the whole "Sunday during Lent is when you can break your sacrifice" into all the other days of the week. I would have to say to him again: "Look babe, the Big Man and I have an understanding. It's okay that I ate those sweets."

While consuming said Girl Scout cookies:

Holy cow, Netflix is such a time suck. Thank goodness I took a few weeks off of life to complete House of Cards or else I would still be spending my nap times thinking about what the next episode would bring. Until that show comes back though, Amazon Prime and stupid Hulu really do take up a lot of work time. It's okay though, I need at least an hour to sit and do nothing or else I'll be useless during the second half of the day.

When 4:00 comes and I haven't done any work:

Crap, the kids are up and I haven't sent out those emails. I'll give them a snack and get them over with really quick. I really should stop doing this to myself and get this stuff done during nap time. I feel bad for sitting here like a zombie on the computer while stuffing them so they'll let me sit here.

6:30-7:00 pm:

Good Lord, please let Chad walk through that door within the next 30 seconds or else I'm going to take up knife throwing as a new hobby.

10:00 pm:

I love when Chad makes me these banana/peanut butter milk shakes! Eating clean is so great! I'm totally doing it tomorrow - Girl Scout cookies can go to hell! Woo!!!

^^EVERY DAY! These thoughts seriously go through my mind every day - the same ones! Anyhoo, that felt good! Glad to have some me time on this here computer. Now back to child rearin'!

2014 - the busiest couple of weeks ever!

 Oh, how the days have been whizzing by! How can we only be a few weeks into the new year? It feels like time has been going by in the blink of an eye and has taken forever at the same time. There's been lots going on!

1. Stroller Strides had it's ONE YEAR ANNIVERSARY! I know, insane. 2013 was a great year - it marked me hitting personal goals (opening and owning my own business and, dare I say it?? - experiencing some success! Pretty stoked about the whole shebang!). It also unexpectedly became the best role model program type thing for my family - I can't even believe that the way Carter and Kota "play" is by seeing who can do the most step-ups on the stairs! Not that I'm trying to produce psycho fitness freak children, but hey! That's pretty cool!

2. Today is January 24th which means that yesterday was my 26TH BIRTHDAY!! I know, nuts! I love my twenties - they've been filled with having a blast in college, marriage, babies, moving from one home to another (and another and another), REAL faith, friends, watching friends experience aforementioned awesomeness and just an overall amazing time! I've always thought of 26 as being a legit year, I have no idea why, and I can say with all confidence that I feel exactly how former Nicole envisioned it! So woohoo to that!

^We went to the LA Zoo a few days after Christmas and Carter was in love with Santa's reindeer!

3. I observed at Carter's preschool class yesterday on the big BDAY! Truly, it was the best way to spend the morning. I canceled Stroller Strides that day because Thursday is my slowest morning and I figured doing that once for personal reasons was darn OKAY - right?? Anyway, it was such a treat! To watch my big dude interact with his AWESOME teacher and all the other kids was so wonderful. I gathered that the dude is a super awesome hand-raiser, especially when he wants to tell the group about the shot the doctor gave him for his 4 year checkup, he has made a connection and LOVES to play with/gets along with ALL the kids in class! I swear - every single one! And he's just a darn great, happy, outgoing, non-shy big dude! He's the best! 

The giraffe family of 4 that Kota was in love with :)

^This was a telescope to see the monkeys closer with, but Carter immediately jumped up on it and YELLED, "Hey Mom! Check out this pewer (pewer = gun that goes "pew-pew, pew-pew")!! I'm going to pew all these MONKEYS!!!" Hahahaha

^Hey look, people! It's me pushing a stroller without workout gear on! It's a miracle!

4. I've become re-obsessed with checking out Zillow. I just can't wait for us to kick this year's butt in the name of house buying for 2015! Now that I wrote that out I'm probably jinxing myself, but you know what? It's always on my mind, that darn house buying! I can't wait!

5. Chad has become interested in nutrition and I really am reveling in it. The guy has been kicking bad foods to the curb and seriously feeling great. I'm so proud of him! Again, this is another thing I probably shouldn't have written out due to cosmic universe jinxing powers, but it has to be said that the dude is a machine when he puts his mind to it! Proud wife, proud wife!

6. Okay I just remembered: we visited the zoo the day after we watched that documentary Black Fish - I was having a heart attack the whole time I was there! All of a sudden, every animal seemed like it was going to kill it's trainer because he/she was stuck behind bars!!! I felt really bad for the tiger, just pacing around there looking for her next meal in the form of whichever human was responsible for her non-wild habitat! Hahaha I'm glad I remembered feeling that way - Black Fish for the win!

The month of never ending celebrations!

 This is it for December: the forever most busy month of our lives! Gosh dang that month, it is fun and IT IS PACKED! We celebrate everything within those 31 days - everything. So here's to remembering our very tiny celebration on the 23rd for Carter's 4th (his actual birthday!) and Kota's 2nd with some awesome friends. We sure are lucky to have these people in our lives! See that little dude right there? Gavin! Carter and him will be starting Skate School tomorrow at Ice Palace - their first step towards the NHL, I know! Lexi, Gavin and Carter are buds and everyone's little sister's are pals - Kota, Sienna and Cailyn!

 ^Kota started getting shy so she hid behind her big brother. :)

The rest consist of KOTA'S dear that was not allowed to be touched by Carter without a massive scream that would rip through the peaceful Christmas tree place. Yep, those were my kids! Loud as can be :)

I'm going to write these facts down, dag nabbit

2013, the year of 25, was so gosh darn eye-opening it almost feels like I'll pop if I try to describe every new thing it taught me. It's so cliche: girl has what she thinks are life-changing epiphanies and ponders very deeply about them, but dag nabbit is it true. I learned that if I'm interested in something, dangit I'll be me the most dedicated and excited person on the planet while pursuing it. I also learned that I have a very lazy part of my personality and if I open that door, it will be like trudging through the snow for months to stuff all that laziness back into where it came from.

I learned that sometimes stuff takes effort, not everything is effortless. Relationships have generally been easy for me, but that's not always true when you think the world begins and ends with MY life, MY kids, MY business and MY husband. (Not necessarily in that order, haha.) I learned that relaxing and letting things flow is okay here and there - none of those aforementioned faucets of life will tank if I chill out. Real, person-to-person connections are the most gratifying (another epiphany), so spending "the time" became a necessity, not a (sometimes) burden. 2013 was also the year of learning that hard, hard work makes me very happy and fulfilled. If I let the lazy monster thrive, I become cynical and annoyed and basically take an all around down-on-myself U-turn. 

I learned I want grace to rule me when it comes to child raising and husband-taking-care-of. 

2013 was also the year of some fierce faith. In 2012, I prayed for a job that would allow me to use the gifts God gave me and he delivered big time (the next day, might I add!). After realizing that if your heart is true God will answer, sometimes in very subtle ways only noticeable in hindsight, 2013 became the year of "hands off the wheel." Life is simple when you let God do what he's there to do and dag nabbit it's more enjoyable that way. 

I re-realized that I'm creative, ruled by emotion most of the time and one of those people who are "in need of outlets" - once realized, business became better. If I don't have some fun, let-me-express-myself time, I start to feel dead. It's like rejecting who I am! I never felt like I overly denied that I'm a right brainer, but I definitely spent the better part of 2013 trying to master the left side of the brain - there's no need to do that, the right side is good enough! And more fun.

Anyhoo, here are my hopes for 2014. They're pretty general and broad, but if taken to heart, I think will have quite an impact:

1. Work hard. Nose to the grindstone. It makes for a happier, well-rounded attitude. And when it gets tough to work hard, take it week by week, or day by day or hour by hour.

2. Don't let the lazy monster rule.

3. Not to forget that Jesus has this. And to teach my family that fact.

^All in all, remember what I learned about myself in 2013 and go for 2014 with ferocity! 

Woohoo!