94 days until marathon & just when I thought my life was calming down....

Running

50 minute slow jog.  I can't find my Garmin, which is probably a good thing as I'm not really fit enough to push the speed right now.  My beginner marathon schedule said 50 minutes and that's what I did.  It was so cool and no humidity for a change.  I really enjoyed it.  Tomorrow said a rest day or cross training.  I got a shock email today (see below) and am still recovering so I think tomorrow will be a rest day.

One of my favourite views from my run

Autism

The twins are doing swimming lessons with school.  Today I volunteered to be a parent helper (translation - I wanted to check out how my kids were going).  I was mainly worried about T2 as T1 is pretty good.   T2 was really well behaved but I doubt whether he would have absorbed any of the instructions if I hadn't repeated them in his ear and prompted from behing to listen to the teacher.  There were 10 (yes TEN!) kids in a class and it was a 45 minute lesson so overall he did really well. But at the same time his swimming was quite abit worse than the others in his group and his listening to instructions was not good.  Ho hum!

Life

I just finished a long afternoon/evening shift at work and logged on to my email to be informed that my nursing placement will start in 3 weeks - PANIC.  Its 40 hours a week for 3 weeks and 1 and half hours drive away.  My vital signs are through the roof right now.  What's worse is that I have a HUGE, HORRIBLE anatomy exam in the middle of my placement so therefore NO study time.  I'll be so ticked off if my GPA drops.  Freaking out right now!

My First Tempo Run & 25 years

Running
T2 woke me up bright and early and I reached over for my charging Forerunner 10 - only it wasn't charging at all.  It had a totally blank screen.  After frantically googling and attempting resets I knew I'd be going back to Harvey Norman at Gordon, where I was ready with box, receipt ( and a print out from the ACCC website in case they were going to try anything). The guy was very pleasant but said 'I'm not sure if I've got any of those left'...mmm..but he did - only they were green not my pretty pink ones.  I was very happy with the service there.  So I accepted functionality over beauty and now have a green Garmin.  I headed home.  I could have skipped my run but I've been feeling increasingly frustrated this weekend and really 'needed' to run.  So in the middle of the day I did tomorrow's run.  A tempo run of 1km hard running, 2 minutes recovery ( I walked) X 4.  It was really tough.  But I'm glad I've done it because I knew it would be a hard run and was kind of dreading it.

I'm now the green machine!

Life
Tonight I've promised my eldest that I'll stay up with him and watch  Liverpool play Manchester City.  It starts at 10.30pm.  Ouch!!  Its 7.40pm and I'm already tired.  We're all staying up (except for the twins) and going to make an event of it. This arvo my mother-in-law and I made mini quiches for when we're watching.  I call them 'home mades' from one of my favourite movies (Silver Lining Playbook).  I really hope they win.  I'm going to be SO SO tired tomorrow.

My eldest is actually in there somewhere - and very nervous

home mades

I've also just realised that its the 25th anniversary of the tragedy where 96 Liverpool fans were killed at a game.  It will be a very special game to watch.

This morning my husband had the twins cutting out shapes, gluing them and writing.  T2 did some very impressive work.  I'm really proud of this.

A long run & a cook-a-thon

This morning I had to run for 70 minutes as part of my half-marathon training.  I started off so slow.  I felt sore and stiff.  But then I noticed that every km I was loosening up and running a little bit faster.  One of my running goals for this year is to run 10km non-stop and I'm just happy to tick that one off the list.

I googled my Garmin problem.  Apparently because my Garmin is new and far away from where it was born it takes longer for the satellite's to pick up its location.  Then it remembers the approximate location through its satellite cache.  Also, I read that it picks up the signal better if the watch is still.  So this morning I lay my watch down face-up while I put on my shoes on...and presto!...in about 20 seconds my Garmin was ready to rock n roll!

This morning the twins' year group had to sing at a church service.   I had attempted to take them to church once before (about 9 months ago).  Then, it was a disaster. T2 started making loud noises and they squirmed and fussed and I was so mortified.  Thankfully today they were fantastic.  The church was packed and it was quite noisy and T2 coped really well.  The difference in nine months is huge.  After church was a BBQ so that was very reinforcing for them!

This afternoon was a lunch box and treat cook-a-thon.  First up was choc-chip cookies, then peanut-free rocky road, followed by mini-quiches and cheese, bacon and vegie scrolls.  Then I tackled the mammoth school note and mail pile that I'd been neglecting.

cheese, bacon and vegie scrolls

my own not-so-secret recipe

I'm exhausted, but in a good way.  Maybe Downton Abbey and some choccies are in order.  After all, my Garmin told me I burnt 799 calories this morning!

Beginning new 10k program, my baby is 11 & ABA sessions

This morning I went for an early 5km run.  It felt so hot at 7am and it wasn't easy.  I got home and checked the forecast thinking today must reach 35 degrees and its a top of 25.   Since I've completed the Couch to 5k I thought I'd take a couple of weeks of running 5kms while I find a 10k program.  Yesterday I found one I'm happy with so I've decided I'll jump in straight away.  The name of the website is quite appealing - lazyrunner.com.  That sounds like me.  It has a similar feel to the Couch to 5k so I'm looking forward to it.  The program can be found here.  It does take 12weeks though, but I'm going to try and be patient.  This marathon is seeming further and further away.

Eldest had plenty of help opening his pressies

Yesterday my eldest turned 11.  I kept thinking in 7 years he'll be an adult.  Seven years goes by too fast!  The last six have gone by in a whirl because of all the twins' needs.  But now that they are about to hit school I'm committed to really enjoying time with my eldest.  He's a great kid and I'm really lucky to have him.  We had his official party before school broke up so yesterday was all about a family feast and cake (not as impressive as for his party), cricket, playstation 4, swimming and table tennis.  T1 was a little testy yesterday after being a perfect angel over the Christmas period.  We tried to ignore his behaviour as much as possible and gave lots of praise when he did the right thing.  He really improved in the afternoon.  I think part of the secret was keeping him really busy.

never to old for fairy bread

I think we may have over-catered

chicken and mayo sandwiches were delicious

peanut-free rocky road & lollies

The cake topper arrived a day late so I had to print out a paper one 

Today I did another ABA therapy session with T2.  It went really well and as it was the second session he had today, I was really surprised how focussed and compliant he was.  For reinforcement he really enjoyed playing with Thomas tracks and trains.  I had put them away thinking the Thomas phase was over but if playing with trains gets him through a 2 and a half hour therapy session then so be it.