A little catch up

Yeah, see, this is the problem I have with journals. I think to myself: "I need to start a journal. I'll write in it every day. Ok, every week. Ok, when something good happens." And then I get out of the habit. Or life takes over, or whatever. And then I want to start writing again, but I feel like I have to play catch up and write about EVERYTHING that happened while I wasn't writing. I know, it's ridiculous. But that's just one of my struggles in life: all or nothing. I don't like things to be halfway, but when things stop going my way, I have no problem walking away, leaving a trail of broken hearts, and/or half finished projects in my wake. Anyway, rant over, here's what you missed in the last three months.

Me: I ran my first 5k! Yay. It was pretty fun. It was a nighttime "glow" run with my friend from college. It was the first time in I don't even want to know how long that I was with someone that I would honestly call my friend, who has seen me at my worst and my best, who I don't have to pretend with. It felt really good. We ran most of the way. We took a short maybe one minute break in the middle and finished in under 40 minutes. It was cool. The best part was the man tagging the wall in the middle of the race. Yes seriously. Did I mention the course was downtown St Louis and I wouldn't have ever been there after dark if there weren't 5000 other people with me? That was October 6th. On Oct 27th, Alann and I ran another 5K together. This was a trail run with zombies on it. The run itself was good. The rest of the race experience was lame. We pulled up and there was a sign out front: parking $10. What? Why was this never mentioned? And why did I pay $80 a person just to pay another $10 to park my car. Not cool. Then we stood in line to get our packet. For 2 hours. In the freezing cold. It was the coldest day so far this year. Not cool. They were really slow with the packets. So we missed our "wave" of runners and just went with the next one. Basically, it was a lovely run through the woods with random zombie people trying to steal flags. I lived 10 minutes. Alann lived about 15. He may have gone longer but didn't realize he had a flag left and when someone pointed it out, a zombie mercilessly took it, instead of letting him go on. Then we cleaned up and looked at homes with the Mackays for a few hours. All in all, it was a fun day out without the kids.
I've been working for Alann's company lately. I started in July-ish. I'm mostly doing bookkeeping. I put the rents in the system and pay the bills. It's nothing glamorous, but it helps him have time to do other things that pay more. I've also shut down my etsy business, at least temporarily. I shut it down when the baby was born, knowing I would be busy, but it also wasn't doing so hot. I decided to focus on the business that was actually making money (Alann's).
After my two 5ks in October, I quit running. Really, the 5k with Beth was the only thing keeping me running for most of September. I'm not going to lie, 3 kids has been much more difficult than I imagined. Elizabeth is almost 6 months old and is still not sleeping consistently through the night. She sleeps longer most nights, maybe 8 or so hours at a time, which sounds like a lot, but I don't go to bed at 7pm like she does. And a strange thing happened. I quit running, really just took a break to recover from the zombie run because I hurt myself a bit, and I started losing weight. I know, totally strange. I know I should start running again, but I'm still losing weight, so I don't want to break that. I am starting to feel more depressed and just uncontent with my life, and I know running helps that, for me anyway. I'm just so unmotivated and so exhausted that adding one more thing just feels impossible. Maybe in February when I get back from AZ.
November was an interesting month for me as well. I gave up soda and baked sweets. I made cookies once with Claire because she earned a treat and that was what she picked. But otherwise, I didn't bake sweets at all until November. I also didn't drink soda. Not that I drink a lot of soda, but I had noticed that my consumption was creeping upwards again. Baked goods are my downfall in life. Give me a brownie or a cookie over a candy bar ANY DAY.
Thanksgiving was just okay. Honestly, it was really depressing for me. I was really missing my family, really wanting to be anywhere but here. We've done Thanksgiving and Christmas alone since we moved out to MO. It just hasn't been financially feasible to visit for the holidays. We usually visit near the holidays, and my wonderful sisters came out here to visit me for a while, but Thanksgiving has always been my holiday, at least since I started cooking anyway. I LOVE to cook for people. I love to have people over. And I realized for Thanksgiving, I had nobody. It was a really lonely and depressing day. We had the missionaries over, but this particular set were not very talkative and hard to create a rapport with. I haven't really enjoyed the having the missionaries over since we lost the sisters and got elders again. We do it because again, I like having people over, but it isn't something I really look forward to. Anyway, the day kind of failed all over. None of the dishes turned out right. My rolls burned on the bottom and were uncooked. Tell me how that happens? My stuffing tasted weird. My brussells sprouts were off. The turkey was pretty good, but Alann smoked it, so you can't really go too wrong there. I'm starting to feel desperate for friendship. Debbie has a theory that the first year you move to a new ward, you have to force yourself into the relationships that are already set, the second year people start to accept you and think of you and invite you to things, and the third year you really settle in and find some good friends. I guess I got lucky in that when we moved here, there was an awesome playgroup with kids Claire's age and mothers that I got along great with. Since they all moved away, I've been feeling terribly lonely. I'm sure I've complained about this before, but it seems like all the "good families" (i.e. the people that are near our age and stage in life) move to Troy. Troy is 40 minutes from our house. I used to drive up there for playgroup, which was fine, but have no real connections up there anymore. I've been wanting to get a playgroup together, but it just hasn't happened. I guess I haven't made it a priority. I finally found some women that wanted to do it, but their family was in town or my family was in town and now it's almost christmas and we are going to AZ/CA for most of January, so my life is really on hold until February. Plus with Claire in preschool, our schedule has been chaotic. I would have thought that 3 months in, I would have something figured out, but I just don't.
My sisters came to visit, but that's another post. We are going to CA to visit Alann's parents in January, and Alann is actually going. Then he is coming home and the kids and I are going to AZ for 2 weeks. I don't think Claire realizes yet that she will miss preschool for so long. But that's okay.

Claire: Claire is in preschool and she loves it. She goes every afternoon Mon-Thurs. She has lots of little friends and is learning so much. She already knows the numbers to 30. She recognizes most letters and can even write the letters of her name, kind of. Her teachers showed us a sample from her first day at class and one from last week, and there was definite improvement. Early on, her teachers commented on her speech and that they had a hard time understanding her. But her speech has improved dramatically. We are still going to get her evaluated just to see if there is something more we should be doing, but suddenly words have sounds at the end of them! What a difference that makes in communication. I was worried when she started preschool that I would spend a lot more gas, since I  drive to town twice a day, 4 times a week, but actually, I use less gas. Most likely, it's because I'm not going to wentzville or washington just for something to do. I'm really consolidating my errands now and always considering if I can make it somewhere and back either before preschool or while she is there. I only have 3.5 hours while she is in school, and Alex is still napping then and Elizabeth usually needs a 2 hour nap or so at that point too. So usually we come home.

Alex: Alex is moving toward that time in life where he stops taking naps. I can see it coming and I am fighting it the best I can. He is staying up and talking or playing before his naps now. If I put him down at 1, he will talk until 2 or so, and then go to sleep for an hour or so before I have to wake him to go get Claire. If he does go down right away, I have to wake him after about an hour, because if he sleeps any longer, bedtime is a disaster. Otherwise, he is talking very well and becomes his own person more every day. He has recently started calling me "mommy" which is still strange to hear. He has always called me Mama or Ma.

Elizabeth is now 6 months old! Yikes. I'll write up a post for her when we have her check up next week.

Overall, things are going well. Now, since I've been writing this post for over a week, I guess I'll post it.