Connections

I feel very strange with the thought of even giving anything close to parenting advice. I have only been one for a little over 6 months. The two kids that we have with us have a different history than most kids. I love watching them discover something that we take for granted for the first time and their giggles are music to my ears.
My wife and I have had two date nights since we became parents. One was on our anniversary in February and the second was this past weekend. We went to have an early dinner and went to a movie. We rarely go to the movies in the theatre. This blog has covered many topics, but, I highly doubt that I will be reviewing movies in it anytime soon. The kids stayed with some local family of ours for the afternoon and evening and we went out. The movie that we saw is not the point. Neither is the place where we had dinner. The important part is that we spend some time alone together. I suspect that my wife liked having time talking with someone who could actually hold a conversation with her, in understandable english.
What does this have to do with parenting advice? I think that it has to do with the fact that if my wife and I focus on keeping connected to each other, the better parents I think we will be. besides, we picked each other for forever and it is important that we continue to enjoy time together.

Constant Change

There are a lot of sayings in business that I have heard over my career. Using loss leaders to eventually make money. Cost sharing sounds more socialist than capitalistic to me. The most glaring is constant change. Makes about as much sense as jumbo shrimp or military intelligence.
Last post, I talked about one of the many changes that has occurred in my life since the beginning of 2011. The two little ones in there rooms as I type this are not the only change. At the beginning of March, shortly after the one year anniversary of Aaron's passing, my Wife's company decided that they didn't want her to work there anymore. She had worked there for over 10 years with no issues. That is why they had to invent some to justify their decision. We have gone from having two incomes to one. It has been a challenge. Our long term goal was for her to be a full time Mom, but, we didn't plan on it happening so quickly.
We are adapting. We have made a number of significant changes to our budget. Looking for ways to make the ends meet. While these events have been frustruating, we are not going to behave like we are victims here. We are taking the steps and doing what we need to do to get through.
A benefit to this change is that it is really helping our kids. Having her home is a great thing for them. It creates a whole new level of stability for them and they are loving it. I like it too. There is something to be said for coming home to my whole family every night.
I am going to have to make some changes to my schedule. Before the kids came, I used to do my workouts in the late afternoons, after work. It is not something that I can easily do. I have a hard time justifying going for runs when the kids are still awake and my wife having to work with them solo all day. I am thinking of moving my workouts to the mornings. I have written in the past about how I have felt better with the AM workouts. I just hope that going for a run at 05:00 isn't something that I can easily put off. The proof will be on my post next week.

Where have I been?

I realize that it has been a few months since my last post. First, I am going to bust some myths about what I have been doing. I have not been locked away in a dungeon in Europe. I have not been off training at a secret location, although, that would not be so bad. I have not been ignoring my readers. I like having them.
While One Pair of Shoes is mostly an exercise and fitness blog, it is important to recognize that our lives have a lot of things going on besides getting in better physical condition or losing weight. It makes sense to me to sometimes write about other thins and how they can impact training methods and goals.
I can sum up that last four months with just one word. One word with 4 little letters that can change everything in an instant.

KIDS

My wife and I have been trying to have children for as long as we have been married. Without going into all of the details, we have not been successful in having a child. After 11 years of hoping and heartbreak, we decided to become foster parents with the possibility of adopting.

I can tell you from firsthand experience that becoming a foster parent is not an easy thing. There are classes, home visits and background checks. It is a very invasive process. Some of the classes, I believe, should be required for people having biological children, but, that is one person's opinion.

We decided that we wanted to work with infants. In the county that we live in, there is a lot of methamphetamine use, so as a result, there are infants who are born addicted and sometimes get placed in forster care within hours of their birth. Recognizing the statistics for what they are, we prepared our home for having an infant. We bought bottles, diapers, a crib and all of the usual things that new parents buy. It is often said that new parents find out quickly that no matter how prepared they think they are, they really were not that prepared at all. Being a foster parent, even with the training, is no exception.

In January, we got our first placement. While we had our house prepared for a single infant, our first foster placement took us by surprise in a lot of ways. We have a pair of siblings. One is a toddler and the other is less than one year old. We had to quickly adapt to the two little ones in our home. Bioparents get to work their way into the terrible twos. We went directly into it.

I am not going to talk about the specific things regarding the kids. We are not allowed to discuss or publish the details of what lead them to being placed in our home. Besides, it is their story, not mine to tell. I can tell you that we love having them here and hope that we get to keep them indefinitely. They have impacted our lives as much as we hope to change theirs.

He Shoots......

When the end of the calendar year starts to wind down, there are things that most people commonly do. For some people it is, "A week before Christmas, time to shop." Other people look forward to the down time around the holidays. Some people look forward to, or dread, seeing family members that they only see in December.

This past week, as my work year is supposed to be winding down, I took a look at the goals that I established for my self at about this time last year. After reading through my list and trying to see it with an unbiased perspective, I realized that I did not achieve a single goal that I established for myself.

The framework that I used for the goals is not anything that I came up with on my own. There are those who say that there are no new ideas. Looking at the movies that have been made of the past few years would seem to prove that statement. I got this framework from a guy on the radio named Dave Ramsey who, got it from some other sources. I tried to find a link on his website that showed this framework so that others could use it if they are interested. Since I didn't find one, I will write it out long form.

My list of goals consists of one goal in each of six different areas. The areas are....

Financial: This isn't about how much money a person has, but more about how secure people feel as a function of how much money they have. A financial goal is more about what the money is doing than how much there is in the account.

Spiritual: While I am a Christian, this is not a think that is only for people who believe in God. Everyone believes in something.

Physical: This could be a matter of weight loss, or physical endurance. Could also be how much sleep a person gets or what they choose to eat or do.

Intellectual: For a person who has a PhD, or didn't graduate from High School, what a person learns, by whatever means, is a component of what kind of person they are.

Career: Who do you want to be when you grow up. Same question if you are 6 or 60.

Family: Since people are relational beings, how you interact with the family has just as much of an impact on you as it does on them.

I did find a link from Dave Ramsey's website about how to set goals. It is below

http://www.daveramsey.com/article/setting-goals-that-work/lifeandmoney_goalsetting/

Now that I have talked about what kinds of goals I came up with and where the framework came from, here is the big news. I did not achieve a single one. My goals were specific, measurable, documented and were time related. With the end of 2010 just a week away, I did not accomplish a single goal.

Before I just change the year at the top of the goal list, I thought it would be a good idea to try to figure out why I didn't achieve any of my goals. After reviewing the things I tried to do to achieve my goals, I came up with a short list of failure modes.

1) I think I came down to a lack of focused intensity on my part. To paraphrase Covey, I didn't begin with the goal, or goals, in mind.

2) I did not review my goal list during the course of the year to see if I was hitting my goals. Had I done that more diligently, I may have course corrected my mistakes sooner.

3) I did not have anyone holding me accountable to the goals. My wife saw the list and commented to me about it once, but, outside of that I had no outside input on where I was with my goals. Sharing them with someone before I even started would also have been a good way to find out if my goals are even realistic to begin with.

I intentionally didn't publish my goal list for a couple of reasons. The goals that I have are personal and I try not to put my whole life online. The other reason is that if I have motivated anyone to set their own goals, I didn't want to influence what those goals will be.

Burning the Turkey

Aaron had a visit during leave.

I am still around. It felt like forever since I had written a post. Well, I checked and it indeed has been forever since I posted. What have I been doing with my time? Working on the getting my Nobel Prize in Nuclear Physics? Hunting for Bin Laden? Figuring out how to fly without the pesky step of using an airplane? No, none of those things. I am not going to reveal everything thing that we have been doing on this post.

One thing that I will mention is that my wife and I have gone through and completely gutted our house of things that we didn't use, want or didn't work anymore. It was a big project. Partially because we have been married for almost 11 years and we brought a lot of stuff in and just added to it. We also moved often before we bought our house and just finished dealing with all of the boxes that were left over in the garage from previous moves. It was a lot of work, so my workouts took a more domestic turn from time to time during this process. It is totally worth being able to put both cars in the garage though.

As part of the clearing out stuff and moving what we chose to keep around, the treadmill has been moved into the office. I have to say that I really like it in there. I don't need to worry about the dogs or cats interrupting the workout and it is out of the way.

I did get my run in this morning, which I really liked. Too bad I am not up to getting up at 3 to be able to do that during the week. I guy has to sleep sometime.

As I have mentioned before, I use my iPhone for listening to music and the Couch to 10K app. I tend to put my workout playlist on shuffle. Keeps things random and interesting. I was nearly done with the run and I thought to myself that I had not heard any Pearl Jam yet on the run. They are the most frequent band on the list at this point. I finally got "Supersonic with about 5 minutes left on the timer and Spin the Black Circle was the last song.

Yesterday was Thanksgiving. First one for us since Aaron passed last spring. It was a difficult day. We didn't do anything traditional for the day, including going out to eat for dinner. Historically, we always had a feast and I would eat myself sick for days. We had a good meal, with no extras in the fridge. We will return to a lot of our traditions next year, but I liked not feeling sick or on the verge of the turkey coma after dinner.

Last year, Aaron made a puree of cauliflower that was supposed to be a substitute for mashed potatoes. I didn't try it due to my natural aversion to cauliflower. I like most vegetables, but, that one is my kryptonite. Had I known then what I know now, I would have sucked it up and tried it at least. If I am ever in the same room as Cauliflower puree again, I will have some, if for no other reason, in remembrance of him. I will let you know if I like it.

Exercise Buzz

In my reading, I have seen references to "runner's high" and people making the comment that they feel like they have more energy during the day after working out in the morning. As I have stated in an earlier post, I have personally experienced having more energy during the day after a good morning run or calisthenics. Trying to understand this "runner's high" concept seems a little foreign to me.

I have noticed that my mood has been considerably better with working out regularly. I am typically a pretty low key person, but, I did catch myself singing along in the car and just generally not letting things like traffic bothering me. We have a lot of road construction going on where I live and I had to go the long way to go home after work on Saturday. Working on Saturday, didn't get me down. I got a lot accomplished and felt good about that. The Sun was shining and I felt good being in it.

Even tonight, after a 10+ hour work day and putting in a 3 mile run. I feel really good. That is not a term I use very often. I have read that the body releases Endorphins during workouts and those chemicals make a person feel good. That is where the "runner's high" comes from according to some theories. I have not run any major races or gone really far during a run. I am still working on my endurance and just trying to keep the workout habit going. I am very anxious to see if "runner's high" has anything to do with how far the runner goes.

Another repeating thought in my reading is that a person should consult a doctor before starting a workout program. Even The Biggest Loser recommends this practice during their end disclaimer. I am going to the doctor tomorrow for a full physical. Given what my stated goals are and the recent loss of family, it seems like a good idea. I expect to hear that I am fat. I am working on that. Beyond that, I don't know what will happen tomorrow. My last physical was over 20 years ago. I am interested to see where I stand medically. I can only say that I feel pretty good at the moment.

What Have I Gotten Myself in To?

Well hello again,

I apologize for the virtual dust build up here. With the events of the past couple of months, some of which I have mentioned in previous posts, I have had very little time to post. Thank you for checking for something new here, or subscribing to the documentation of my journey.

Since I have made the declaration that I am training to participate in triathlons, I have shared this goal with some people who, quite frankly, have been less than supportive. I am not referring to anyone who reads this blog. I don't believe that the naysayers are much for reading blog posts. I have been told that the distances are too far, I done have the time it takes to train and that I will probably give up when it gets hard. In the words of Bugs Bunny, "They don't know me very well, do they?"

Some people, both positive and negative, have either quoted wrong distances or have asked me how far the race is. To start with, there are two different kinds of triathlons. There are sprint triathlons, which I am just getting into reading about, so I am far from an expert there. There are also Ironman Distance Triathlons. There are more races at that distance than the famous one that happens on Kona in October. Ironman races are comprised of a 2.4 mile swim, followed by a 112 mile bike ride and finished with a 26.2 mile run. While I will participate in sprint triathlons as part of my training and preparations, my goal is to race in the Kona Ironman.

Being able to race in this event is more than just training like a madman. There is also a number of elements that are 100 percent out of my control. From what I have been reading, just getting a spot in the race is an accomplishment in itself.

There are only 1500 spots in the race. Most people qualify for a spot by qualifying at a selected event. There is also the lottery. There are 200 lottery spots every year. 150 of which got US applicants. There are approximately 5000 people who enter this lottery. 125 of the 150 spots goes to a Member of the Ironman Passport Club, a membership organization for Triathletes. There is an annual membership fee, but, for the increased chance to compete, most people say it is worth it. Applicants must apply and pay the fee to enter the lottery by the end of February and a computer selects the competitors in mid April. People who get a spot are notified on May 1 and have until the end of July to validate their spot.

Kona is not the only Ironman race out there. The one closest to where I live is in Idaho and is run every June. The distances are the same as Kona and is a qualifying event to be invited to race at Kona.

I am in need of some feedback. What sort of questions do you have for this lunatic? What do you want to know about what I am doing and how I am doing it? Feel free to ask me. Send me your question in the comments or email me at 1pairofshoes@gmail.com. I will see you on the road.