Week 12, Day 5 ~ 30 min powerwalk

Today was the day I had purposed to get up at 6am and go for a power walk, but as is quite the norm in a busy family, things happened otherwise. Bret was up until 2am at the hospital with his Mom, who has been having some heart issues - she is fine. =) But I tossed & turned, texting him every hour or so to see how it was going. I didn't sleep well even after he got home.

So instead, I did what any busy Mother would do, and improvised! The day's weather forcasted shower and cloudy, but in the morning when I took the kids to school, it was sure pretty out!

So when we got home, I put the baby down (Bret was still sleeping) and headed out with the stroller and my running shoes. We went exactly 2 miles in about 30 minutes, power walking as fast as I could while pushing a stroller. It wasn't the most IDEAL workout because I couldn't swing my arms, but I definitely got a workout - my heart rate was up, and my body temp was raised. My goal this week is just to get my body used to cardio again and take it very easy - but always to raise my heart rate, my body temp, and to do it for 30 minutes minimum - 4x this week.

It feels soooooo good to be feeling better!! The "real" me is energetic with lots of plans for my home during the day. I LOVE Mondays for that reason - the whole week stretches out in front of me with endless possibilities if I just put a little elbow grease into it!

Today I didn't PLAN to, but I ended up cleaning the girls' room - Grace6, likes to cut things with scissors, and she does all these little projects after she's put to bed. So there were bits and pieces of LOTS of things in her room all over the floor - it needed vacuumed in a really bad way. They have a pretty small room but it needs to fit 4 girls - so we have one set of bunkbeds, a crib, and then a princess toddler bed for Marie5. THAT, however, had fallen apart so I just took it out, and for now we're sliding her toddler mattress under the crib during the day and at night will pull it out for her to sleep on.

That frees up so much room in there! I was getting all sorts of ambitious thoughts - their room is pink on the top and purple on the bottom, waiting as it has been for the last 7 years, for a pretty matching border to separate the two colors. Alas....many, many things more important have taken the priority.

But I am itching to paint it - the walls have all sorts of marks, tape, holes, etc and it would look so much cleaner and nicer with a new coat of paint! Rachel11 wants pink & brown - I think that would be a nice change too. But she wants CHOCOLATE brown on the walls. LOL I don't think that is going to happen. But we'll see - Google is fun that way, because you can just search for "pink brown bedroom" and here comes a whole slew of examples! She likes polka dots, that would be cute.

We don't know how long we'll be here, though, we've outgrown this house long ago with almost 8 children in 1190 square feet. But with the market how it is, and with various other things - who knows. We own our home, so we might rent it out and then rent a much bigger place for ourselves, riding out the market until our house is worth more, then sell and look for a home to buy that is big enough for us.

To be honest, though, a bigger home scares me! Well, okay, makes me nervous, anyway. I just have such a hard time keeping this one clean - with so many people, things are always getting undone as I am doing something else. I'm sure we'd adapt, and the kids can also take on more rooms to clean, chores, etc. Wouldn't hurt them one bit! =)