Here We Go Again!

Back in November, I decided to throw mine and Kyle's names into the Chicago Marathon lottery. I honestly didn't have high hopes but thought it would be fun to try. As most of you know I ran for a charity this past year which was pretty darn amazing! 

Well, the big day was yesterday! It's a rolling notification system, so emails are going out all day long and it's super stressful waiting haha. I was SO excited when around 9:30am I got the notification that I was selected. Then we were just waiting to find out about Kyle. Unfortunately, he didn't get selected through the lottery (a few other friends of mine didn't either, boo!). I asked him what he wanted to do, either sit this one out or run for charity. He immediately said he wanted to run for charity! 

He is all registered and set up to run as part of the Homes for our Troops team just as I did last year. I am beyond thrilled that we will get to have this experience together next year. I am excited to help him fundraise and to once again raise awareness for such an outstanding organization that has done so much for severely disabled veterans. As a team last year we raised over $65,000! Let's try to beat that this year. If you feel so inclined to donate, here is his link. 

Team HFOT- Kyle Smith

I am excited to share this adventure with him! We have run a marathon together before but this is going to be pretty amazing!

We're coming for your Chicago!

A Fun-Filled Weekend!

How is it already Monday again!? The days always seem to fly by this time of year. 

We had a pretty busy weekend and despite me having a cold we made the most of it. It was full of lots of Christmas festivities. 

Kyle was home early on Friday which was pretty awesome. I was able to get a bit of rest before the babysitter showed up so we could go to the Five Finger Death Punch and Breaking Benjamin concert.  We bought tickets months ago and there was no way we were missing it. We have seen them both before and as usual they did not disappoint! We had amazing seats and rocked out for 5 hours! 

They both put on a phenomenal show! It was wonderful having that time together!

We didn't get home until 11:40 and it was straight to bed. We were up around 7:30 to get E ready for her Christmas program and art gallery at school. 

Let me just say that it was THE cutest thing I have ever seen. Each class donated items for a a silent auction basket, ours was a date night basket. I was impressed with all of the baskets. My favorite part was seeing all of E's artwork on display that she has been working on in class. Each class had students create 3 unique pieces. These were E's:

Next up was her performance with her class. They performed "Jingle Bells" and "Happy Birthday, Jesus". It was so sweet. Not all of them sang but they were so happy and the cutest little singers.

We just love her school so much and all they do for the kids. They are amazing.

We headed home for a bit and then it was off to Raleigh for E to see Santa! We decided to have a late lunch at Cheesecake Factory beforehand. That is always our go to place when we are up there.

Let's face it, dessert makes every day better!

After lunch we changed E's dress and it was time to meet Santa!

 She did SO much better than we expected her to. No tears or anything.

She was happy when she got her reindeer antlers afterwards haha.

We did try multiple times to get a family photo but for some reason E gets really squirmy and won't stay still haha. Oh well. We had a wonderful day of family fun!

Sunday was a lot more low key. Mostly because it was cold, rainy, icy, and just overall gross out. We enjoyed some snuggles and watched a few Disney Christmas shows. 

It was such a great weekend! I hope y'all enjoyed yours!

One is Enough

Since posting that Kyle had a vasectomy, I had a few people message me and ask how we came to the conclusion that E was going to be our only child. To be honest, it was not a decision that we made lightly. We know how it feels to grow up with siblings and we often wondered if E would be missing out on that. I wanted to share how we came to this decision. I'm in no way justifying our decision to anyone because at the end of the day it's our choice. I just wanted to shed some light on our thoughts. 

If you have been following my blog for any length of time you know that we experienced recurrent pregnancy losses, 7 years of fertility problems, and multiple treatments. It was absolutely heartbreaking to go through. It was emotionally and physically draining on both of us. One of my biggest fears of attempting to get pregnant again is going through this all over again. I'm 33 years old right now and the thought of having more problems is just not something we are willing to risk. The heartbreak of a lengthy infertility journey is not something we want to experience again. I never want to have to write a post like this again.

Now my next reason might seem odd as we did struggle for so long to have E and having a successful pregnancy was so important. I DID NOT enjoy being pregnant. While I am so grateful to have experienced it, it was just not something that was enjoyable for me. It wasn't even weight gain or anything like that. I just never felt the overwhelming love of being pregnant. 

With Kyle being active duty military, it's hard! The reason I say this because of the constantly in and out of the service member. It's SO hard on kids when one parent is gone so frequently. We see E struggle a bit when Kyle is gone and how clingy she is when he returns. I can't even imagine having to manage the emotions of more than one kiddo. Shout out to all the parents out there that manage more than one kiddo within the military. Y'all are rockstars! 

Most of all we are a happy little family of 3. We have a good rhythm and routine. While I am sure that E would do well with a sibling, we don't want to rock to boat. We are SO blessed to have her and we just want to enjoy her. While we know that it's possible to spread love between all children, we don't want to have to do that. 

All of these reasons really fueled our decision to remain a family of 3. 

We are SO beyond thankful for E! As soon as she entered this world we knew that our family was complete. 

Monday Musings!!

Happy December, everyone!!!!

How are we only few weeks away from the end of the year?! My mind is blown.

We had a relatively low key weekend and to be honest that was just what we needed. On Thursday, Kyle had his vasectomy and was limited with what he could for for 72 hours. We had planned to run a 12k together on Saturday but since he couldn't, he stayed home with E so I didn't have to push her. 

The race was pretty great! A 12k is such an odd distance (7.45 miles) and one I have never run for a race. This course was hilly, holy cow. I feel every state we have lived in has inundated us with hills haha. I went across the finish line at 1:04:04 which I was thrilled with.

The medal is adorable!

The rest of the day was spent picking up groceries (I love you grocery pickup!) and hanging out inside because rain decided to make an appearance. Once E went to be I got to work on baking. I do this every year for Kyle and his coworkers. This year I made 4 different types of cookies and I'm so glad to have it all done. These chewy gingerbread cookies are my favorite. 

Sunday was the first day that Kyle felt like venturing out of the house. We made our way to Target and then to Jason's Deli for lunch. 

When we were at Target we decided to buy E a small Christmas tree. We made the decision to not put up our big tree as we are traveling to see my family for Christmas. We don't want to have to deal with putting it all up only to take it down before we leave. Can I just say that there is nothing like seeing the joy on your child's face when she see a Christmas tree! It's priceless.

She absolutely loves it and that makes us so happy. 

We were thrilled when later in the day a good friend of ours and her son came over for a visit. They are stationed at Fort Meade in Maryland but we became the best of friends when we both lived here previously. SO that's over 10 years of friendship. The kiddos played and had the best time.

It was so nice to catch up in person!

Kyle is back to work today, so E and I are back to our normal schedule after having him home for 4 days. 

I hope y'all had a great weekend!!!

Some Things

Thank you all for your well wishes for E. She is doing SO much better. Her allergic reaction is all clear and she is back to her happy self. We are so thankful for that.

I have really been struggling on the blogging front. I just can't seem find a good rhythm. I really blame the holidays and everything that comes along with that. It seems from Halloween until the end of the year it's a bit chaotic. 

However, we do have some fun things happening over the next few weeks!

1. Kyle's unit Christmas party

This is on Tuesday and I'm really looking forward to it. It's an ugly sweater party which to me is even better haha. I haven't had the chance to meet most of his coworkers because they are NONSTOP busy. Working at a Division is a completely different beast. It should be a fun family event.

2. Five Finger Death Punch and Breaking Benjamin concert

I bought these concert tickets months ago and the concert is next Friday! We have seen them both in concert before and we knew we wanted to see them again. I'm so thankful that we have such a great babysitter to trust E with so we can enjoy this night out.

3. E's school Christmas performance 

I am SO excited for this. It's next Saturday and will feature a Christmas art gallery as well as a performance by all of the classes. I can't wait to see what her teacher has come up with. I'm sure it will be adorable and chaotic haha.

4. Santa Visit

We had planned to take E to see Santa this past weekend but with her reaction that got nixed. So we are taking her next Saturday and I can't wait to see how she does. She has gotten extremely clingy lately, so I'm sure it's going to be an epic photo. Ha!

5. Disney on Ice

I can't wait for this! We took E to Disney on Ice last year and she was still too little to appreciate it so we are excited to take her again. It has characters from the movie Coco in it which happens to be one of her favorites. We can't wait to see her reaction. 

6. Favorite Things SLAM Christmas party

I am really looking forward to this. It's a chance to get dressed up, eat yummy food, and exchange gifts with my SLAMfam. We are supposed to bring 4 of the same gift, which has to be a favorite thing of ours. I haven't chosen what I'm bringing yet, but I have a few ideas. 

We have other little things that we need to do around the house like decorate for Christmas and I need to order our Christmas cards. We are heading to Florida for the holidays so we won't be extensively decorating, probably just put up the tree for E. I know how much she loves the lights. Even though I've been slacking on the decoration front, I did get all of my Christmas shopping done! Woo hoo!

Have you decorated or shopped for Christmas yet!? 

Have a great Thursday!

Hello, Monday!

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving and long weekend! Ours didn't go exactly how we had planned it to but such is life right?!

We were up bright and early on Thanksgiving morning so we could run the Skinny Turkey Half Marathon in Raleigh. It was a lot colder at the start than we expected but my goodness it was a beautiful course. Rolling hills through stunning neighborhoods. This is the first long distance race that Kyle and I both agreed that we didn't get bored with haha. There was so much to look at. He was pushing the stroller this time and we decided to just enjoy it. Not going to break any records but we were stoked to cross the finish line at 2:03. Almost a sub 2 hour half with a stroller, not too shabby at all! 

We stopped for our traditional post race Starbucks and headed home. I had done most of the meal prep the night before which was a huge help. 

However, this is where things turned not so fun. We noticed a pretty significant rash on E and around 3 we both agreed it would be best to take her to urgent care. She had been on amoxicillin for an ear infection the week before and the doctor determined it was a bad allergic reaction. Don't get me started on the doctor in October that said it wasn't an allergic reaction when she had the same exact rash after amoxicillin. She was given a steroid and the okay to go home. We enjoyed a quiet meal with just the 3 of us after a pretty stressful afternoon.

My Dad arrived Friday afternoon which is always nice! We love when he visits. E was definitely happy too. Unfortunately, on Saturday morning we noticed that E's rash was significantly worse so off to the ER we went. This doctor once again confirmed that it was an allergic reaction to amoxicillin, so on top of the steroid he gave us a cream and zantac to help with the itching. 

She was doing much better on Sunday so we spent quite a bit of time outside. Kyle had to work part of the day which was a bummer. 

My Dad is here for a few more days so we are going to soak up this time and just have a good time. 

I hope you all have a wonderful Monday!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Wherever you are and whomever you are with, I wish you all a very Happy Thanksgiving! 

We are running a half marathon this morning and then will have a very low key dinner at home with just the 3 of us. I am looking forward to a quiet and relaxing day. 

I am thankful for so much this year, even when things are hard. It's so important to remember all of the good things. 

Enjoy today!