Reflecting on 27... planning for 28.

Today is my 28th birthday.

What a year this has been; I feel like I should be turning 30 instead of 28. When I was getting a massage the other day and talking with Diane (the best masseuse I have ever met) and we were just reflecting on the last year and the journeys we have both been on. When I look back at who I was a year ago and where I am now I see so much growth. I feel so different than I did a year ago. This year has brought me many things emotionally, spiritually, physically, and I honestly feel like my childhood is over and I'm a legit adult now. There's no escaping it or tricking myself into thinking "I'm still young." No, I've moved into this space in my life where I make my own happiness and I'm 100% responsible for all of my choices. I can't blame anyone for anything that happens because I call all the shots now. It's liberating, scary, and wonderful.

I think as you grow up you go through all these stages. First your a child - learning and growing and wanting to be on your own so badly and then you hit those teenage years where everything is new and you get your first taste of freedom. You start making your own decisions and learning from them good or bad depending on what path you choose to take. Then you're in your early twenty's. You turn 21 and you can drink legally and walk into any bar you want. Then you have your own apartment and you start really taking care of yourself by paying for more and more things. You move away from depending on your parents and a few years later you graduate college and you get your first real job. Then things like insurance, cars, and toilet paper have to start being paid for and you struggle. It's that time when you really learn to budget - you learn what it takes to actually LIVE your life. Gradually, you get the hang of things and hopefully you start saving and planning and working even harder. Then you wake up one day and realize that you're actually an adult. You have created your own life and you either love it or hate it. I see so many people wish to be young again, to go back to high school and not have responsibilities but I personally have never felt that way. Instead I'm enjoying every moment of "adulthood." I love being married to my best friend, I love being able to pay my bills and still have money left over. I'm so thankful for the opportunity to move across the country and then back again 3 1/2 years later. I'm thankful that this next year will be one where my dreams really do take off. I feel completely grown and not for one moment do I wish to be "young" again.

If I've learned anything in 28 years it's that life is hard work. Relationships come and go and you learn from each one of them. I'm not the same person I was one year ago and I'm happy about that. I finally put away being angry with my younger self - health wise I finally gave up the excuse that it is anyone else fault and instead I now accept that I am the only one in control of my life. I don't depend on my parents at all anymore... if anything it's now me that can help them when the time arises. It's so strange how roles in life can reverse but I think that is the ultimate sign of growing up. I feel like this big revelation would normally be reserved for the big 30th birthday but I just can't help but feel that this is what it would be like. Instead of looking back and determining things I should have by now or should have done I'm just looking forward at what's next in life. I am happy. This year was a really good year...

Aging isn't as scary as I used to think it was. Some years are better than others and I have to say... 27 was a great one. I will take the lessons I learned and keep them with me forever. I promise to keep working hard and to create the life I've always wanted. God really blessed me by giving me the tools to do this - by bringing the right people into my life. Thankfully I've always had my eyes open and waiting for these things... I trust myself and listen to my gut when it tells me "these people are good for you" "these people are bad for you" etc. Make the right choices, pick the right people to surround yourself with, work hard, and watch your life turn into everything you have ever wanted it to be. Oh and give all the Glory to God. He will continuously bless you and guide you forever. I have no delusions about where my blessing come from. I am nothing without him.

I hope to never stop growing... to never stop learning. I plan on making 28 an even better year filled with firsts and lots of love. It's already the best birthday I have ever had. If I cry this year - it will only be tears of joy.


XOXO

It's Friday!

I'm going to try and start being consistent with my posts. (kinda) So, on Friday's I'm going to tell you about things. It may be only 5 things but sometimes it might be 15. I mean sometimes it's a slow week ya know!

1.
(source)

2. 22 Signs you've found your best friend forever


3. Does anyone remember this girl from My Super Sweet 16? I giggled for 5 mins at this one...

I feel you girl.

4. I'm only 26 but according to this I'm 30.

5. On Tuesday I booked a vacation during Thanksgiving for me and hubs in LA. Five hours later after two weeks of discussing the dates we found out Thanksgiving is actually REALLY late this year... November 28th to be exact and I booked our non-refundable trip a week early on the 21st. I am an IDIOT! Thankfully we are still going but I am SUPER pissed at myself... good news is if we would have booked it on the dates I was going for it would have been twice the price... So, I still win.

6. Big Brother is back! So far this season is pretty good! I can't believe there are people on there being all racist and junk. YOU'RE BEING FILMED 24 hours a day... how STUPID can you be?!
hahaha... AND the two girls that are doing it BOTH got fired from their real life jobs AND they don't even know yet. HA

7. I'm addicted to Candy Crush. It's and EVIL game but it is sooooooo much fun. Took me 500 tries to beat Level 147...but I DID it!


8. Did I mention yet that there is a Hattiesburg, Mississippi player on Big Brother this season! I'm rooting for you Howard!


9. We saw The Heat on Sunday and that movie is so funny. I love Melissa McCarthy and her trying to find those tiny girl balls had me rolling with laughter!

10. Speaking of movies we also saw This is the End the other week and it was amazing.
 My favorite part:

Go watch it right now.

11. Chad and I are working out together in the mornings now... I actually really enjoy it but we did a new workout on Sunday with medicine balls and I was going beast mode on that crap only to wake up on Monday and I couldn't get out of bed. I thought I threw my back out but it was just really sore. I'm back to normal now... if you want to really do something crazy do a medicine ball workout right now and make sure to do this move 30 times on each side:


12. This is what my husband put outside of his butcher shop this week:

Go like his job on Facebook if you're in the WA area!

13. Blocking people on facebook has become a favorite hobby of mine. The sheer amount of people that I don't give a crap about what they think list is growing and growing as of late.

14. Follow me on Instagram

15. Watch Dexter on Sunday.

A fresh Start

A fresh start!

Okay, so I have let time get away from me these last few weeks but while doing that I took time out to refocus on my goals for this year. This is my year. I've been saying that for the first 4 months of this year and I still really believe it. I want this year to be my year to focus on myself and to get really healthy. I'm sick of being overweight and I'm REALLY sick over not being able to do yoga better than I am because I have this big ole belly in the way. My struggle is with food! It just tastes so good and with a few other bad habits I have, my year has been stalled with losing weight. Now, I guess I have to be positive in the fact that I have been losing inches but damnit the scale should be showing some results too and it hasn't been. I've only lost like 5lbs in 4 months which is better than nothing but overall a failure in my eyes. I know why. I know how to change it and I've just recently made up mind to go ahead and do it. I'm so excited to really stop my bad habits and focus on all of my good ones. I enjoy working out and I'm going to start running again trying to build up to the elusive half marathon. I'll be honest and say that in my life when I lost the most weight was when I was running. It's just so easy for me to get burnt out with running but I know that once I really start back again and I start seeing those results it will get addictive. At the peek of my running success I ran 5 miles straight. I remember that day... I remember that feeling and I want that damn feeling again. So, it's time to go get it. As of today I'm kicking my bad habits out of the door and embracing the good ones. Life isn't about how good chocolate tastes or how many pizza slices I can eat it's about how quickly I can move and how good I can feel. Even though I'm never going to fully give up pizza and chocolate... I mean really what kind of life would that even be!?

If you're wondering what my plan is it's really simple: Cut out the bad habits (binging, booze, etc.) and embrace the good ones (running, veggies, water, portion control, etc.) I have a lot of things I want to accomplish this year but this is my main focus and I know I can do it. I just had to finally make up my mind and start.

8 months left... lets see what I can do...
Ready GO!

Stress me Out why don't ya.

Day 10: Something that stresses you out.

 

I thought I'd try something new with this question so, I asked Chad to answer it for me (about what he thinks I stress about) and here is his answer:

 

1. When we don't have money.

2. When mom lives with us.

3. When people don't know what they are doing.

4. Missing Olive when we are out of town.

5. Haley's wedding.

6. Wondering if my friends/family are okay.

.....

 Well, I guess these are true if that's what the closest person in my life feels.

Now, I will explain a few of the above a little more in depth.

 

#1 is what it is. Who doesn't stress when they don't have money?

#2 was more so a stressful point in my life that has been long gone but was strictly due to a space issue. Mom is amazing - tiny apartments and 3 people not so much.

#3 I don't think I stress over this at all. It pisses me off not stresses, I think Chad just got confused ha.

#4 I don't stress over missing her I stress that at any moment she could die. She's evil and will run out of the door in a second if you let her...then I think Oh God she's going to run into the street and get hit by a car. It is completely insane of me for doing this but I do it every single time and I stress out until I get home to see her alive, well, and rotten.

#5 I stress myself out about this one. I'm sad I'm 2600 miles away and I can't be there for everything. I'm stressed about getting my fat ass in the bridesmaid dress and it's also just my usual wedding related stress outs. I think I just have PTSD from my own wedding two years ago.

#6 I do stress out about them when I know they are going through things. Family and friends mean the world to me; I wish them all the very best in life and I get very sad when their worlds aren't happy or going the way they want them to.

 

I hate being all negative on the blog!

Time for something funny:

Source



Running & Pinterest

These last couple of weeks have been ridiculously busy. I kinda sorta had a breakdown this past week and decided to disappear for awhile. What I mean by that is just take some time for myself.

Focus on me and not be so dang busy all the time.

These past two weeks have been full of ups and downs. Here's a quick run through:

Chad got a promotion at work, I got depressed about how fat I am, we had friends come into town and were very busy for a few days playing host, it is 80 degrees and this is my first time EVER not having air conditioner, I'm up for a promotion and stressing out about it all the time, and my best friend is in full swing of planning her dream wedding 2,600 miles away.

The worst thing was the total body depression thing. Ugh it's miserable. I'm back on the wagon though and after not working out for 10 days in a row I ran yesterday AND I did 8 mins solid so I am ALMOST back to running a full mile again. I'm so mad that at one point I could run 5 miles without stopping. I'll be back there soon and honestly, I don't think I'm going to stop again. Running has been the one thing that really helped me lose weight and I'm ready to lose again.

I'm also going to be doing a little Pinterest workout challenge. I have been pinning little workout ideas that I see and I'm going to actually start doing them instead of just letting them sit on my board then letting you guys know what I think.

You should follow my Work it Out! Board on Pinterest now and send me any that you want me to review! Or if you would like to guest post on my blog about a Pinterest workout that you have done Email me at

socmajorgrl @ gmail . com



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I was suppose to post the above last night but it was just so boring without pictures and actual new things/progress so, I decided to wait until today. I just finished up a Mile run today and I am SO HAPPY to say that I did 11 mins straight! That means I'm almosttttt back to my 14 min mile. (which I then plan on getting back down to 11.5/12 mins. ultimate goal is 10 min miles!) After finishing up that accomplishment it was time to do my first PINTEREST work out!

(Click here for the website I snatched it off of)

I picked this one first because it's from a Pilate's instructor and have you seen Miley's new body after Pilate's.

Granted I only did it once so these are not my results... she does Pilate's every day and damn, it's working.

I had to do 4 rounds of each of the above motions and two of them required me to do 4 sets of each on each leg. I think the thing I hate most about yoga, Pilate's, cross fit, etc is that you have to do "rounds" which has me rolling all over the floor switching positions and looking like a injured seal. However, I think that's the whole point so even though I don't enjoy it and I was really thinking about doing all 80 at once I followed the damn instructions. It was hard. My legs are jelly and I can totally see that if I did this the 4 times a week suggested that in a couple of weeks I would see actual results. I can't promise I'll do this one 4 times a week but I'd like to aim for two.

I would recommend this workout if you are really wanting to just pin point your legs. I felt my abs getting a good pull on the scissor and frogger moves but you can tell these are focused in on getting rid of the inner thighs. Which lets face it, I've got plenty of that to get rid of! By the way the Frogger is CRAZY hard. I though the heel pulse was going to be the worst but it was def. the Frogger.

Try this one out and let me know what you think if you do!

I'm off to go crawl in the shower now...