I Painted My Bathroom

Due to a busy year and a tight budget, we haven't done any house painting in a while. The last time we painted anything was about a year and a half ago, when we finished painting the downstairs walls. It was a big, busy job, and so it makes sense that we'd wanted to put further painting on hold. However, the remaining bare, white walls in our house have started nagging at me again, so it was just a matter of time before I took action.

As it happens, the moment finally came a little over a week ago. A friend of mine in our neighborhood had finished painting all the rooms in her house, and she mentioned on Facebook that she was giving away her unused paint. Included in the colors she listed were a bunch of nice-sounding "base" colors (grays, blues, etc.) that I thought might look nice on some of our unpainted walls. Once I arrived at my friend's house, I was able to see what her paint colors looked like on actual walls, and I really fell in love with her office, which she'd painted a nice bright blue. Without having a concrete plan in mind, I decided to take the blue paint home and then figure out what to do with it.

For the last several months, I'd been planning on painting the girls' bathroom upstairs. I have been putting it off, mainly for budget reasons, and also because I'm a little scared to paint bathrooms because of having to work around sinks/shower heads/etc. However, after seeing the blue paint, I changed my plans...instead of starting with the girls' bathroom, I was going to jump right into the more difficult task of painting the master bathroom instead.

Originally, I had planned on painting our master bedroom & bathroom last out of all the rooms in the house. After all, nobody ever sees them besides Nathan and myself, right? But seeing the blue paint got me excited; I wanted to see it on a wall in our house somewhere. And I knew I didn't want to paint the girls' bathroom blue (I am hoping to paint that room some shade of purple...hey, it's a girls' bathroom, I want to get a little crazy!). So I started thinking, Hey, blue might be a good color for my bathroom! And...things just went from there. As you may know, once you start painting a room, it is hard to stop until the job is done.

Taping the walls, as always, took forever. It is my least favorite part of painting. However, I spread out the unpleasant task over a couple of days. One advantage with having more time alone in the house? More time to get home improvement projects done! I ended up doing this project about ninety percent unassisted. Nathan helped tape one part of the wall, but then left me mostly to my own devices. He wasn't being rude; he had other stuff planned that weekend, and my sudden impulse to paint the whole bathroom caught him a little off guard.

Plus, after I'd gotten a good head start on the project, Nathan wanted to see how much I was going to be able to do on my own. The answer: most of it. Nathan did promise to help me out on the girls' bathroom, as well as the stairwell, which will hopefully be our next project. The dirty walls of our stairwell are becoming a source of embarrassment for me. Hopefully we can cover them up soon with a nice clean coat of paint!

In the end, I was pretty happy with the way it turned out. It was a long, sweaty weekend getting it all done, but at the same time it felt great to complete a big job like this (mostly) on my own, and to have our bathroom looking so fresh and exciting. Of course, now I will need to buy some new towels to match the new paint. White might be nice, but some other nautical theme might work as well. Yellow? Navy blue? Striped? I am sort of interior-design-challenged, so hopefully I'll make a good decision about this. Right now, I am grateful for my friend Emily, for donating her old paint and inspiring me to take on a new project. Hopefully I'll get to the girls' bathroom by the end of this year.

But in the meantime, I'll enjoy my bathroom!

A Wet, Weird Couple Of Weeks, With A 5K In The Middle

And now here's another post about exercise, combined with a discussion on the weather. What?!, I can hear you saying. Who talks about weather on their blog? BORING. But don't worry...I promise it will all make sense, and it is actually kind of cool news, and actually is relevant to my family news...kind of.

Since September has otherwise been somewhat uneventful, I might as well talk about all the extra moisture we've been having. Those of you who've lived in Arizona will know that late summer (July and August, mostly) are the "monsoon months" where we get frequent afternoon thunderstorms. The monsoon usually slacks off by early September, but this year it's still going strong. This is mainly due to the busy Pacific hurricane season we're currently having. Usually, when a hurricane or tropical storm hits Baja California, Arizona gets some of the residual stormy weather. Over the last couple of weeks, we've had one nasty storm hit Tucson, and we had one near miss by an even bigger storm.

As luck would have it, the first big storm hit right about the same time a nasty virus started traveling through our house. Everyone was hit with it to some degree over the last week, starting with Celeste on Sunday night the 7th of September. Celeste went from "perfectly fine" to "feverish, clutching her head & crying in pain" within an hour. It was kind of scary, so we doped her up, gave her a priesthood blessing, and decided to keep her home from school the next day. The next morning, her eyes were watery and swollen(!), and I decided it was time to head up to our pediatrician in Tucson.

Unfortunately, this is what was waiting for us in Tucson...

...a crazy-huge rainstorm! My Sahuarita friends told me it only drizzled a bit at home, but the city of Tucson was flooded. I've lived here more than eleven years now, and I've only been caught in one other storm this bad.

When the weather report says Tucson gets two inches of rain, most northerners probably snicker and call us wimps. However, what these northerners don't realize is that Arizona streets are not designed to handle large amounts of water at all. The gutters and drainage are incredibly shallow, and lots of city streets are depressed in the middle. What that means is that during heavy monsoons, driving can become very difficult, if not hazardous.

For much of my drive, I had my windshield wipers going at full speed, and could still barely see outside. The rain was so loud I had to shout to be heard. I could hear the water sloshing around my tires, and occasionally run up to my car door (thankfully, none of the water leaked inside). Towards the end of the drive, our van's breaks were waterlogged, and squealed loudly every time I tried to move. Celeste & Aurora were in the backseat crying with worry. I was scared, but also kind of excited...when you live in a monotonous desert climate all year, driving in rain like this feels like a great adventure!

So we made it intact to the pediatrician's office...this is what it looked like...

The water had leaked in through their doors and the whole lobby was flooded. We had to walk carefully, so as not to fall and break any bones (although if we had broken any bones, at least we were right in the doctor's office...). After all that fuss, did Celeste have pinkeye? No. Did she have strep throat? No. The doctor said it was a virus and would have to clear up on its own. All that hazardous driving for nothing! Oh well...we managed to pick up a music stand on the way out of town. Here's what the parking lot of the music store looked like:

It was rainy on and off through the rest of the week. During that time, everyone else got sick. Aurora felt pretty lousy for a couple of days, Lorelai came home with a raging fever one day after school (she never called home...poor kid!!), and Nathan waited until the next Sunday to come down with the fever and leave church early (but not before watching all three of our girls participate in our LDS ward's Primary sacrament meeting program. We were very proud of all of them, and happy they were all well enough to participate).

Out of the whole family, I seemed to be the least affected by the virus. I felt a little wobbly on Wednesday and Thursday (the same time Aurora & Lorelai were sick), but that was about it. Maybe the sickness was mostly psychosomatic, since I was already dealing with a bunch of sickos? At any rate, I felt fine by Friday night (the 12th). Good thing too, since I was running a 5K with a bunch of my friends from my LDS ward!

This was the Color Splash 5K, which involved all the runners getting sprayed throughout the race with glow-in-the-dark water. It was my first 5K with friends, and my first run at night. I was very excited! Plus, the run was being held in Reid Park, a large city park in Tucson that our family used to live very close to. Being there always brings back happy memories. This was to be the first time I'd ever run in Reid Park, and I was very excited to do so.

 

For this run, a lot of my friends brought glow sticks to wear, as a show of solidarity. I've seen groups of ladies wear tutus/fancy hair/etc. at these 5K runs before, but I'd never really done anything fancy with myself. It was kind of fun to change things up a bit. Taralie Loveland even twisted the last few glow sticks into a rudimentary "halo," which she weaved into my hair. It managed to stay together for the whole run! Good job, Taralie!

It was raining on Friday night as well...in fact, our group drove through multiple cloudbursts on the way to Reid Park. There was rain at Reid Park as well; it drizzled steadily up until about 15 minutes until the start of the run. Everyone was a little nervous, since the rain would be likely to wash away our glow-in-the-dark water splatters. Fortunately that didn't end up being an issue.

The weather cleared up just in time, and soon enough everyone was off! For many of us, it was our first run in a long time; for others, it was their first run ever. Either way, it was a really fun group to run with. I had intended to hang back with some of the slower members of our party, but my instincts took over and soon I was jogging off by myself (I usually run alone, so this wasn't a big deal for me).

It felt wonderful running at night, particularly after a rainstorm. The air was cool and moist, and I felt like I had more energy than I usually do during my runs. I particularly liked watching the trail ahead of me, and seeing all the cool neon "bling" everybody was wearing (and getting splattered with!). Best of all, there was a distant lightning storm going on at the same time; every few minutes, I'd see several streaks of lightning criss-cross in the sky. It was an awesome, inspiring "natural light" contrast to all the neon flashiness.

My friend Lexie ran with me for a good portion of the race, before doubling back and finishing the race with the slower members of our group. I am so grateful for her support and encouragement; Lexie is a very fit gal (she regularly participates in triathlons and runs half-marathons), but she is not puffed up about it at all. The night of this 5K, she traveled from one group member to another, chatting and encouraging everyone. I'm happy to report that I shaved about a minute and a half off my time from my last 5K, and I think a big part of it was Lexie running with me!

This was the first time I've made it through the entire race without slowing to a walk; even though I was jogging really slowly by the end, I still managed to keep myself going at that faster pace. It gave me a great sense of accomplishment when it was all over with; in fact, I felt like I had the energy to keep going for a while longer! (That sensation eventually faded; I crashed pretty hard in the car on the way home.)

Overall, a very fun night; I've felt recently that I'm not seeing my friends as often as I used to, now that my kids are all heading to school and all our lives are getting busier. It was so nice to have a girl's night out and catch up with some amazing ladies who I don't see so often any more. They all inspire me in many different ways. I am really lucky to have such good friends as these.

No more rain fell on us as we drove home that night, but the rainy weather hasn't quite left us yet. There was drizzling on and off for the next several days, and for 48 hours this last week, there was a big flooding scare. A few days before, Hurricane Odile had slammed into Baja California, and afterwards the storm front was projected to plow right through Tucson. Weather forecasters projected doom and gloom; local fire departments distributed sandbags; everyone cancelled travel plans; and everyone was glued nervously to their computer screens, trying to track the path of the storm. The school district even cancelled classes for Thursday, September 18th. I got the call announcing the cancellation as the setting sun was shining in my window. Truly a bizarre moment!

And, after holding our breath for a couple of days, Sahuarita (and Tucson) got hit with...not much of anything. The massive stormfront abruptly shifted east and moved away from us. All we got was several hours of light drizzling in the morning, and then...nothing. At least the weather had cooled off! We had a nice day off from school, having friends over to play and eating pumpkin chocolate-chip cookies that I'd baked (the rain had me in a "fall" mood).

I won't lie; I was kind of disappointed that the "storm of the century" that everyone had predicted passed us by. I should probably be grateful, instead, that we avoided the destructive flooding that hurt other parts of Arizona & New Mexico. I hope those cities that were hit by the hurricane leftovers were able to recover quickly. But I still hope we get some more rain here in Sahuarita! The extra moisture has been really needed down here this year, and the cooler weather the rain brings has been much appreciated as well. It is helping get me excited for the change of seasons (such as it is, in southern Arizona), and all the festivities that fall and winter brings.

New Ways To Get Fit

Wow, I can't believe September is already more than half over...that was fast. I wish I could say we've been partying and having an awesome time, but it's actually been pretty par for the course. School is school, work is work, and life goes on much as it usually does. Maybe I should blog more often about our "boring, normal" days, but probably no one would read the blog any more after that.

So I'll get narcissistic for a bit and blog about myself, and my personal fitness. Not that I'm a prime physical specimen, but I've been changing up my usual exercise routines lately and I've had fun discovering some new local fitness programs that I've never tried before. I love summer vacations with my kids, but one reason I'm happy when the kids go back to school is that I can exercise more regularly and more intensely.

Up until this school year, I've been participating in an exercise "co-op" with several of my friends; each day, one of us would watch the kids while the other ladies went to exercise. We usually had four to five people in the group, so that meant we got to exercise three or four times a week. Plus, our kids got play dates daily. Everyone was a winner!

But this year, with my youngest kid in preschool three days a week, I decided to opt out of the exercise group, after being part of it for almost six years(!). The group has moved on without me, and I have been left to my own devices. It's been harder than I thought to re-adjust to my new, no-exercise-group schedule. Without friends counting on you every week, it can be hard to stay as motivated to exercise. Without any kids at home (something which is suddenly happening a lot), the temptation to crash on the couch and watch television is a lot greater than it used to be.

But I've managed to (mostly) avoid the temptation to loaf...partly because I've been gaining some weight over the last several months and I decided it was time to re-commit myself to calorie counting and weight loss. Last year, when I started using the MyFitnessPal app, I was able to drop 15 pounds, and teach myself some better eating & exercising habits. Luckily, I haven't gained all that weight back, but still...the scale had been creeping up over the summer and I was getting concerned. One of the things I learned last year was that calorie counting and exercise was the most effective form of weight loss for me, so I was determined to keep exercising at least three times a week, just as I'd done in the past year.

When I was part of exercise group, my exercise choices usually revolved around the local clubhouse, which has a nice fitness center inside. Sometimes, I would just go inside and walk on the treadmill or  ride on the stationery bike, followed by some strength training. As I got a little stronger (and more daring) over the years, I'd try out the stair machine, or the elliptical trainers. I used to swim laps in the pool, which I love doing, but I've done it less over the last year or two. This is probably because the pool was recently resurfaced, which caused it to lose six inches of depth. It has made swimming (especially turning) a little more awkward. Perhaps when the spring rolls around next year I will give it another try.

About two years ago I started running, something I'd never really done before. Growing up, I despised running and couldn't understand why any sane person would want to do it. However, as I have improved as a runner, I've found myself kind of enjoying it. Weird, huh? I have improved, bit by bit, as a runner over the last two years, and I've realized that so much of running is mentally willing yourself to do it. When I'm running, I'm complaining and grouchy the entire time...and yet, when I'm done, I feel awesome and energized! For me, at least, running is a matter of my mind convincing my body that it can keep going...and then, when my body makes it, I get a huge sense of accomplishment. Perhaps this is the "runner's high" that I keep hearing about? Well, if the "runner's high" is something that happens while running, I don't think I'm quite there yet. Maybe someday!

While I have come to enjoy running, though, I want to mix up my exercise so I don't get too burned out doing any one thing (or miss out the opportunity to strengthen myself in other ways). I only wanted to run once or twice a week, and then try other things on the other weekdays. Now that my "official" exercise group was a thing of the past, my morning schedule was a little more wide-open, which has led me to try out other things I hadn't considered before...

...like volleyball! Every Monday and Friday, a group of men and women from my church get together inside the church gym and play volleyball...sometimes for hours. There's a wide variety of ages and experience among the volleyball "regulars." Some people played college volleyball, while others (like yours truly) haven't played since junior high! I have known about the volleyball "club" for years now (a few of my friends attend regularly), but because of my general lousiness at team sports (and volleyball in particular), I'd been afraid to join. But this summer, I finally went & tried it out.

It has actually been a lot of fun, even though I am definitely one of the worst players there! More often than not, I am the player who loses the volley for their team. But I have been getting better, bit by painful bit (although I recently went back after a couple of weeks off and my skills had declined again; oops). I have made a couple of good sets, which have then been spiked by more skilled players. Most of my serves make it over the net (even though they're all underhand serves...ugh). Once or twice, I have even gotten the ball over the net and gotten a point. All the other players are super nice and supportive, even when I am terrible. Overall, it's a pretty nice environment to be in...everyone there is just playing for fun, so it feels very low-pressure.

Another activity I just added to my workout list is Zumba, a dance-aerobics class. In the last couple of weeks, I've attended two different Zumba classes in two different places...both of which were free! The first was a twice-weekly class that was offered out of our clubhouse, taught by one of the resident fitness gurus. The class lasted about an hour, and it was really intense...much more so than I'd expected. In the past, I'd peer into the windows of the activity room and see all the women shaking their hips & waving their arms, and I'd snicker from the safety of my elliptical trainer. Well, no more mockery from me! After that Zumba class, my arms, legs, and back were all nice and sore from the exertion. There were basically no breaks for the entire hour, either...the instructor went right from one song to the next, and I almost felt like a sissy for running to grab a drink of water. At least I got to stand close to the large fan, so I was keeping pretty cool the whole time.

The second Zumba class I attended was inside an LDS church building, and taught by a member of a neighboring ward. It was a lot more laid-back than the class at the clubhouse; most of the moms had brought their kids along (many of whom joined in the dancing or ran unchecked through the halls). There were longer breaks between songs, and the instructor made more of an effort to teach everyone the steps involved in each dance before the music started. While it was fun to "learn on the go" at the clubhouse, I did appreciate the "hand-holding" I got at the church Zumba; it helped me feel like I actually knew what I was doing! Plus, a lot of my friends attended the Zumba at the church building (including many who'd been part of my old exercise group in the past), and it was really fun to work out with them again!

Plus, I got to dance like this guy...

In short, I really liked doing Zumba and I'd like to try it out at least once a week, at either the church sessions or the clubhouse. I think it's a fun, exciting way to work out my whole body and burn a good chunk of calories. It's fun to dance to exciting music and not worry about what anyone thinks of you! I just hope no one makes a recording of my dance moves; my kids might get a hold of it and use it as blackmail material against me at some point in the future. But if it helps me keep losing weight and toning up, I'll count it as a win overall.

We Make A Run For The Border

One thing my kids have often asked me is when they get to visit another country. I'm sure that on some level, they mean "travel overseas" and see exotic locations and famous buildings all over the world. However, we are not a glamorous, globe-trotting family (yet), and so we have to think smaller when it comes to international traveling.

As luck would have it, we happen to live just 53 miles from the USA/Mexico border. True, Nogales is not exactly a glamorous town; like many border towns, it's fairly seedy & crime-ridden. Despite cleaning itself up somewhat over the last decade, it's still a city I wouldn't want to stay in overnight. But still...Nogales is in another country, and that's what matters to our girls (for now)! So we decided to take a quick day-trip across the border this last Saturday. It would be Nathan & I's first trip together to Nogales in about eight years; and it would be the first trip ever for two of our girls! (We took Lorelai once when she was just a baby). We also went with our friends the Perrys; they've been to Nogales several times recently, but they were game for another trip.

 

The drive to the border is only about an hour; once there, we parked our car on the US side. From there, it was just a short walk across the border. It was a hot day (it was probably 100-plus degrees for the duration of our stay), but the girls were excited anyway.

I'm not sure if the girls were expecting a magical, exotic, fantastical world upon crossing the border, only to find out that it looks...a lot like America (at least in parts). For my part, I noticed that Nogales was a lot cleaner and more organized than it was the last time I visited. It smelled a lot better too! Brad and Amber told us they'd gotten to meet the mayor of Nogales recently, who had shared with them some of the details of the city's "clean-up" efforts, to improve its image and its tourism. It's still kind of gross in parts, but I'm happy to say I wasn't afraid for my children's lives while we were there...unless they strayed too close to traffic, of course (which they did a little too often for my liking!)

Nathan, as our resident "Mexico expert," led the way on most of our wanderings; we didn't have too many specific things planned, we just wanted to look around. We stopped by a few places to grab snacks, like a convenience store and a delicious panaderia...

Mmmm...that was one tasty concha.

We also stopped in a fabric store, so Amber could buy some nice fabric for cheap. While there, I found some early Halloween decorations out for sale. I couldn't resist picking this up:

Very cute! I'm not sure if I'll hang it on my door or somewhere in the house.

 

We did our shopping here and there throughout town. We picked up some small souvenirs for the kids, and Nathan loaded up on the Mexican junk food at the local grocers. By contrast, Brad and Amber bought some freshly made tortillas and some ears of corn from a street vendor. This caused Nathan to lament that his tastes for Mexican food are "stuck in his adolescence."

Midway through our trip, we took a break for lunch at a restaurant recommended to us by a local. It was called Lupita's, and it was pretty darn delicious:

My favorite part of the meal were the tacos dorados ("golden tacos"); they are small deep-fried tacos that were stuffed with spiced mashed potatoes, along with meat & onions. An unexpected taste, but a delicious one! Everyone loved their food. I was a little nervous that some of the food would be too "spicy" for the girls, but they enjoyed all of it. But their favorite part of this restaurant wasn't the food...

...it was this small band that played while we ate. It wasn't anything fancy; it was just two guys on a xylophone (a drummer joined them later in the set). But the kids could. Not. Get. Enough. Of. It.

They must have danced for fifteen straight minutes to this music. They applauded loudly when each song was done. They were so happy and having so much fun, it was almost easy to forget how much they were embarrassing us in public. For what it's worth, the musicians seemed tickled pink at the sight of all these goofy little white kids dancing to their music. Maybe they haven't had an audience so appreciative in a while?

I thought all the dancing would tire them out, but they managed to make the walk back without much difficulty, despite the heat. They even ran around like hooligans in the grocery store on the way back, thus embarrassing us some more! Kids...can't take 'em anywhere.

Since this was a family outing, we didn't venture too far off the beaten path. Maybe in the future, we'll be able to venture further into Mexico and show the kids some of the prettier parts of the country. Puerto Penasco (Rocky Point) is a beach resort town a couple of hours south of the border. Nathan went there once on a business trip, and the pictures he sent back were amazing! We'd love the opportunity to sit on a beautiful beach in Mexico and just relax for a while. Maybe when the weather cools off, we'll consider it. Until then, this was a fun, easy way to give the girls their first "international" experience. I hope it marks the beginning of many cool international experiences for them.