I'm a grandmother!

...To a beautiful tiny baby girl. She came early! She was only 3 pounds 15 ounces, but she's perfectly healthy. God is good!

I was at my cousins house having a laugh the night before our river rafting adventure when I got a call from my youngest son. He was away working but he had received a call from his girl saying she was in pre-term labor and they were prepping her for a c-section.

Needless to say that changed my focus. I felt so helpless being so far from both of them. I did the only thing I could do, I prayed - for a healthy delivery, for peace and safety for mom, and for peace and a quick flight home for dad.

A couple hours later I got that word that we had a baby girl and that she and momma were doing fine. Daddy was still trying to get home to them.

This is the first look we got of our baby girl, sent in a text message.

My cousins had all gone to their rooms earlier having given me orders to let them know when I had any more info, or if I got any pictures. I ran around the house making sure everyone saw our baby and we all celebrated together.

Because the baby was so tiny they decided to fly her to a children's hospital where she would be sure to get the care she needed. Baby was flown out in the morning and momma was flown out in the afternoon. Daddy was still trying to get home to his girls.

I never really understood how tiny the baby was until I saw a picture of her in her mommy's arms

 

After a long couple of days travel daddy finally got to see his girl in person. Because she was so tiny and had to spend most of her time in an incubator, he didn't get to hold her right away but I was anxious to get a picture of her with her daddy.

When he finally got to hold her he quickly became a pro and enjoyed every minute of it.

I haven't had the opportunity to hold my granddaughter yet. I haven't even seen her in person much. Only two people are allowed in to see her at a time so any time I go visit her either her mommy or daddy have to leave, and I don't like to take that time away from them.

I am happy to report, however, that she is growing and doing great.

I can't wait to hold her and kiss her. Soon, hopefully.

 

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How I found out I was going to be a grandmother

Way back in January I was sitting in a movie theatre waiting for Les Miserable to start when my cell phone rang. I quickly stopped the ringing and checked to see who it was. It was my youngest son. He rarely calls. My first thought was that something was wrong, so I quickly sent him a text. This was our conversation:

I immediately started to cry, and the movie hadn't even started. :-) I quickly sent off a few more texts - spelling, grammar mistakes and all -

So, that was a Tuesday.

Four days later, on a Saturday night, at 6:51 in the evening, I get this text from my oldest son

 

It was a little odd for them to be going out to our place, about a 40 minute drive from their place, at that time of night, especially on the snowy night that it was, but we had friends visiting for the weekend that they wanted to see and probably wouldn't get to see if they didn't come then so I didn't think too much about it. They came and we had a nice little visit. Just before they left my son got his wife's purse and took something out of it and presented it to me saying that it was the real reason the came to visit. This is what he handed me

 

Needless to say I was in tears again and the grin that I had started wearing Tuesday got a little bigger. Both my boys were going to be daddies!

Both couples swore us to secrecy for a while until they saw the doctor and knew more about how far along they were. That prompted me to send the boys this text a few days later

 

So, that's how I found out I was going to be a grandmother, twice. When they finally saw the doctors and got their due dates all straightened out they were actually due just a little more than a week apart!

Here are the two beautiful mommies showing off their baby bumps a few months back.

 

 

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Community Bible Experience

I heard about the Community Bible Experience quite a while ago and loved the concept but couldn't get anyone to commit to doing it with me. Recently i decided to sign up for the free trial anyway, just to see if it was as great as I thought it was.

I downloaded the complete Books of the Bible:NT into iBooks and I love it! I had already started the YouVersion Community Bible Experience:NT reading plan a few days earlier and was really enjoying doing the readings in YouVersion but I like it even better reading it from the Books of the Bible:NT in IBooks. There is a better option for making highlights and notes and there's also the additional introduction to the books. The introduction to the books are great!

My one disappointment is that I haven't figured out how to access the sample audio files on my iPad. I don't think it's a problem with the files; it think its my lack of know how on how to get them to work.

I would love to actually do this the way it is meant to be done - with a group of people. Maybe some day.

 

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No walking this week, but lots of excitement!

Its been a crazy, but exciting week since I last posted. I haven't managed to do any walking, but that does not mean I've given up, just that life is in the way for a bit.

Just a quick update on the excitement right now. I'll expand on it more in later posts. Two exciting events interrupted my walking routine.

The first event was a fun filled weekend with some female family members. One aunt, one sister, one daughter, five cousins, and one cousin's daughter, plus me, added up to ten crazy females gathered in one house a week ago today to set out for a crazy adventure the next day.

The second event was one I was not expecting to happen for almost another two months. I became a grandmother!

I'll share more about both these exciting events soon, but for now I just wanted to explain that my walking routine has been interrupted for a week, but that does not mean its over and done with. I'll be back at it again soon.

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Walking - day 1 of week 2

Walked again today. Normal Dawson route. I remembered to start the timer for the walk but I forgot to stop it when we finished walking, so I'm not sure how long it took, but I think it was about 30 minutes.

I had a new walking partner today. Anna's been wanting to walk with me every since I started walking. Today I decided to take her. I told her it was a test to see if she could come again or not. I think she's decided not to come anymore. It was too long for her.

She started out fine and was very entertaining. Here's a sample of the entertainment she provided.

 

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Summary of week 1 of walking and on to week two

Some tweets by friends and acquaintances about their running reignited my desire to run. Realizing I am far from being in shape to run I decided to start walking.

Day 1 - Wednesday, July 3

Starting slow. Walked 20 minutes. Main Street, 10th Avenue, Elmwood Crescent and cut across yard to join into Earle, 8th Avenue back to Main.

Day 2 - Thursday, July 4

Started with a 25 minute walk. Slight route change. Skipped Elmwood and went right to Earle. Went for a second walk in the night with Sarah. Passed by Earle and went right to Midland for the loop. Did it in 40 minutes for a total of 65 minutes walking on day 2.

Day 3 - Friday, July 5

Started the day with a 30 minute walk. Another slight route change. Skipped Earle and went to Dawson.

Day 4 - Saturday, July 6

Started the day again with a 30 minute walk, same route as yesterday.

Day 5 - Sunday, July 7

Didn't walk til late in the evening. Went with Sarah again and did the same Midland route we did last time in about the same time - 40 minutes.

Day 6 - Monday, July 8

Started the day again with the normal 30 minute walk on the Dawson loop.

Day 7 - Tuesday, July 9

Started the day again with the normal Dawson loop and cut a bit of time off. Did the route in 28 minutes 50 seconds.

And that was week 1. A great start!

Today was day one of week two. I didn't get a walk in until late this evening. Walked with Sarah again and did our normal Midland loop. I completely forgot to time the walk but I think it took about 40 minutes.

 

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Trying out Blogsy

I've discovered what appears to be a great app for blogging using an iPad. I have struggled with blogging since my lap top died, over two years ago. I thought that I would easily pick it up again about a year ago when I got my iPad, but I discovered it wasn't as easy as I thought to blog from an iPad. I returned to lamenting the death of my laptop and gave up on blogging - until now.

Yesterday I decided to start blogging about my progress in walking, but I almost quit again before posting my first post! The app that I had downloaded a nice while ago is very frustrating to work with. I decided to go ahead and use it for my first post but to search for something better. That's when i came across Blogsy.

I spent the morning watching the How-to-Videos on their site and becoming more and more amazed. Blogsy appears to be a great app! This is the first of what I hope will be many blog posts that I will create using Blogsy.

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Walking Again

A week ago today I decided to start walking again. I thought that tweeting about my decision and progress might help hold me accountable, so everyday I tweeted how long I walked. Then I got to thinking, that's a bit boring for tweets, and also sometimes I wanted to say more than what could be said in a tweet, so I started thinking about blogging my progress. So, here I am.

It's been a long time since I even visited my blog. My first thought when I logged in is that it is in desperate need of a makeover, but I have no idea how to go about doing a blog makeover from an iPad so that's not going to happen any time soon.  I almost let that stop me from blogging now, thinking I should do the makeover first but I seriously don't know when I'll be able to do a makeover and I didn't want to delay starting to blog, so here goes.

I recently became aware that some of my friends and acquaintances in my community, where I've been living now for almost two years, are runners. I don't know if they've been runners for years or if they just recently started. I learned about their running when some of them tweeted about it. That's what got me thinking about it again.

Back in January 2009 I actually started a blog, called Couch Potatoes to Road Runners http://couchpotatoestoroadrunners.blogspot.ca/ , as a basis for a challenge between some family and friends. In the first post on that blog http://couchpotatoestoroadrunners.blogspot.ca/2009/01/how-this-blog-came-about.html I shared that years before a friend had told me about a walk/run program that she enjoyed and I had tried it for a while and loved it, but didn't keep it up. I thought that getting some family and friends to join me in the challenge in 2009 might help me stick to it, but that didn't work either. In a post on May 11, 2009 http://couchpotatoestoroadrunners.blogspot.ca/2009/05/faithful-in-training-but-not-in.html I shared how I was disappointed in the lack of participation of others and I wrote my last post on that blog May 31,2009. At that time I was still faithfully training and had worked my way up to being able to run for 25 minutes straight without feeling winded. I was pretty proud of that but I think the training petered out shortly after that. 

I did try to start to train to run again once or twice after that but then I finally just gave up. I even tried just walking, but I didn't stick to that either. 

Reading about others close to me running sparked my interest again. I am certainly in no shape to run right now and I seriously don't know if I will work up to that or not.  For now I am content with just walking.  We'll see what happens as time goes on.