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Crunchy like Granola

There’s a lot of moms around the interwebs that call themselves crunchy. I’ve always kind of wondered what that means.

Last night as I was breastfeeding my cloth diaper wearing baby, while wearing her in the Ergo front pack, all while making stuffed manicotti with grain fed ground beef I bought right from the farmer and home canned spaghetti sauce made with the organic veggies I grew in my garden, I started thinking about how my parenting style is different than I thought it would be or has changed over the last four years.

How I’d never imagined I’d be into cloth diapering two kids, at least part time…or how dedicated I’d be to nursing.

How four years ago, no way in hell I would have nursed in public, then just a few weeks ago found myself in a situation where I was, in fact, nursing in public.

How I always thought sharing breastmilk was the weirdest thing and never in my wildest dreams did I imagine myself giving nearly all of my frozen breastmilk to a 3 week old baby that needed it. Then, again, found myself doing just that a few days ago.

As I stood there in the kitchen, reflecting on all these things, I kind of laughed and couldn’t help but think, “when did I become so hippy? So…granola?”

Then it was like a light went off.

OOOOoooohhh…baha…I get it…

Crunchy like granola.

Priceless

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Tall non-fat Caramel Latte: $3.15

Wireless Mouse: $13.99

Sitting in the Target Starbucks, meeting with a personal trainer about redesigning her website while wearing a pair of unbottoned, too tight pants because the only ones you have that fit are dirty?

PRICELESS.

In related news? I’m going to start working out again next week.

Happy Saturday!!

Pushing Life to the Limits

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At 6:10 AM yesterday morning as I’m pouring Rylee some cereal and begging a fussy, hungry Reese for just a few extra seconds of patience so I can pour myself a cup of coffee, Andy looks at me from the living room and says, “Is your mom taking the girls tomorrow?”

And I just turned and looked at him. Total deer in the headlights. “uhhh…”

I totally forgot that Andy worked today. So I also totally forgot to see if my mom could/wanted to take the girls for the day. When I asked her, she told me she was already busy. Commence the semi-freak out and frantic call to my father-in-law to see if they can take the girls last minute. Thankfully they didn’t have plans and he told me he’d be happy to do it.

Phew. Bullet dodged.

This morning, as I was driving out our front gate, I looked down at the gas gauge to see the needle just about on E. I clicked the “distance to empty”. It showed 26 miles. On the way to work, for the first time in 2+ years since we’ve had the Jeep, the gas light turned on. By the time I finally reached the gas station? 14 miles.

I’ve never pushed it that far.

I don’t like doing that. I don’t like dodging bullets and pushing limits when it comes to my girls and our routines.

But really, I feel like that’s how life has been these last couple of weeks. Sure, I had seen the word “work” written in orange on our monthly calendar for today, but I guess it didn’t compute. Yesterday I saw the gas gauge at a quarter of a tank and told myself I needed to stop and get gas before I picked the girls up, but for some reason, I didn’t. Over the last two weeks between work phone calls during dinner putting out fires, cleaning & painting after long days of work and my trip to NC, our typically stellar communication has completely broken down. Everything has been such a blur. I feel like we’ve just been in survival mode. We’ve hardly seen each other.

Looking ahead, it seems like things should be slowing down a bit. I’m ready to turn off survival mode and for our same old boring routines. No more rushing through dinners and solo parenting. No more pushing life to the limits.

Time to regain control.

I’m looking forward a weekend filled with laughter. With love. With Family. My heart needs it.

Not just dudes turning left.

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Up until last weekend, the extent of my NASCAR knowledge came from watching the movies Cars and Talladega Nights. Not kidding one bit.

When Toyota mentioned that they’d like to send some of the TWIN members to a NASCAR Immersion trip in Charlotte, NC I thought “sure, that might be fun” but I had no idea it would be as amazing as it was.

I’ve spent the last 3 days since I’ve been home trying to process the weekend. If you ask me about it, I will go on and on and on so trying to pear it down to a blog post (or two) is giving me some trouble. I don’t know where to start because I want to share all! the! things! Right now. The food. The People. The cars. The sounds. The strategy. The stories. Well, I guess technically, I already shared some about the food but I think you get the point. Every single one of my senses was in overdrive this weekend. {seriously, no pun intended} I feel like every single item on our 2+ day agenda could be its own blog post. But, like my husband, I’m sure you don’t want to hear me/read about me going on and on and on about NASCAR. I get it.

So, with that in mind…let’s see…highlights…

Friday.

We headed to Joe Gibbs Racing Shop where we got to check out the Fan Fest they were hosting, tour the garage and meet Joe Gibbs himself. We also met JD Gibbs (president of JGR), Darrell Wallace Jr (driver for JGR) and Bryan Cook (Digital Marketing Manager for JGR)

After some lunch and free time, we loaded back up the shuttle and headed to the race track! That night, Toyota driver Joey Logano won and we got to go down to Victory Lane to help celebrate!!

Saturday.

We started the day by touring Michael Waltrip Racing Shop. We got the play-by-play of how they build their cars. Then we got to play around a little. {side note: if you don’t know the story behind Michael Waltrip, I highly recommend his book In the Blink of an Eye. Amazing story.}

(Images courtesy of Toyota Racing)

After that we headed to Darrell Waltrip’s Race Shop {yep, they’re brothers}. Darrell Waltrip was one of Toyota’s first partners in NASCAR. Darrell is one of the NASCAR greats. He was a kick in the pants. We also got to meet his crew chief and his wife. He gave us a crash course in NASCAR 101. He let us climb into his cars. He shared a bit of his testimony with us.

From there we headed down to the racetrack. Hung out in the suite for a few before we hit up the FanZone. We walked around a bit, then went to the Toyota PitPass display where they announced the winner of the Breast Cancer Awareness shirt design contest and presented a check to the Carolina Breast Friends foundation. Then, before going back to the suite to watch the race, we headed into the infield where we toured one of the trucks, hung out on pit road and talked with some women in racing.

Based on our time spent hanging out with the pit crew (AKA: the cute Canadian ex hockey player) of the #15 5-Hour Energy car, I decided that was the car I’d route for that night. And guess what…it won!!

Sunday I flew home. And read this book nearly the entire way. I only have about 10 pages left.

Just like my last Toyota trip, I have come away with so much respect for this company. They really know how to do things right. They’re committed to diversity. Toyota Racing is a seriously impressive division of the Toyota family.

(Image courtesy of Toyota Racing)

ToyotaWomen, left to right: Shannon, Amanda, Stacey, Kristi, Suki, Christen, Mary Lou Hamlin (NASCAR’s Danny Hamlin’s mom), Andi, me, Janice, Maricris, Kitty

I won’t lie, the whole weekend I kept quoting Talladega Nights in my head. I couldn’t resist.

I could go on and on and on about my weekend. And who knows, I may feel the need to share more details on particular parts later on, but for now I will sum it up this way…while I wouldn’t call myself an all-of-a-sudden NASCAR fan, I have a much greater appreciation for the sport and that weekend was a once in a lifetime experience. One I will never, ever forget.

If you ain’t first, you’re last.

Shake -n- Bake baby.

Disclosure: I was selected for participation in the TWIN community through a program with Clever Girls Collective. I did not receive any compensation for writing this post, or payment in exchange for participating. The opinions expressed herein are mine, and do not reflect the views of the Toyota.

Digesting My Weekend.

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And I mean that both literally and figuratively.

My weekend was spent being completely immersed in NASCAR and eating.

While I’m still sorting through everything I learned I will say this: after this weekend I have a much greater appreciation for NASCAR as a sport, and of course Toyota is continuing to impress me.

So while I collect my thoughts and upload my pictures, I thought I’d leave you with this…a glimpse of my weekend by way of food.

Yesterday when I got home I started showing Rylee the pictures on my phone. As she was scrolling through them she looked up at me and said, “wow Mommy! You ate a lot of food!”

And oh was she right…

Not pictured: salads, sandwiches, pulled pork, hashbrown casserole, chicken enchilada casserole with jalapeño mayo and various snack type items.

The fake cheese nachos were just icing on the NASCAR cake. I’ve made it a rule over the years that if I’m at a sporting event and they have those nachos, I get them. Whether I’m hungry or not.

The In-N-Out was in San Fran during my layover. It was a first for me. Not gonna lie…I wasn’t overly impressed.

I was a little disappointed I didn’t get the opportunity to try any grits, but I did get some real deal fried chicken, I tried some fried okra, got to eat at Bo Jangles and there was plenty of opportunity to eat Mac n cheese.

Now…what was I saying last week about joining a gym?

Somewhere In The Middle

Mostly Average Accounts of the World's Okayest Mom.