{"id":219,"date":"2013-03-22T20:33:38","date_gmt":"2013-03-22T20:33:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ramblingrunnergirl.com\/?p=219"},"modified":"2013-03-22T20:41:49","modified_gmt":"2013-03-22T20:41:49","slug":"spring-break-part-ii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.ramblingrunnergirl.com\/?p=219","title":{"rendered":"Spring Break, Part II"},"content":{"rendered":"

We\u2019re home.\u00a0\u00a0 Safe and sound.\u00a0 Nothing like having your first vacation as a single mom start off with not being able to check into the hotel because your credit card has been cancelled thanks to some joker who tried to commit fraud at a Target in Brooklyn.\u00a0 Super (Insert maximum sarcastic tone here).\u00a0 After a few phone calls, a bit of stress and the threat of tears (mine), we were good to go.\u00a0 Although, I could have done without the additional headache of a stalled Pathfinder after loading up the car at check-out. Someone please tell me it\u2019s going to get smoother from here.\u00a0 But the kids had a blast and I survived, so I\u2019m gonna call it a success.<\/p>\n

While I was away, I received the following message from my friend and SMR teammate, Ken.\u00a0 By the way, this is the guy I\u2019ve had a conversation with while in adjoining port-o-johns.\u00a0 Now that\u2019s bonding!\u00a0\u00a0 Anyway, his message:<\/p>\n

\u201cSpring break provides a chance to bond with our kids in ways that our normal routines do not allow. As for working out, do what you can. You suffer from the same problem I do, you believe that going at life at 100% is the only way to go at it. Unfortunately our muscle fibers need to heal or we end up in the gray zone with no improvement. So take these days as a chance to let the muscle fibers heal up while your workouts are easier.\u201d<\/p>\n

He\u2019s exactly right.\u00a0 And that\u2019s exactly what I did.\u00a0 My workouts were anywhere from minimal to non-existent.\u00a0 However, my heart fibers were what got truly stretched.<\/p>\n

My workouts included things like practicing the fine art of \u201ccar dancing\u201d and climbing many levels of stairs to reach the top of the water slide.\u00a0 Although, I have to admit, it wasn\u2019t just for the stair climb workout that I carted a giant intertube up\u00a0those stairs so many times, I\u2019m kind of a big kid like that.<\/p>\n

I have to give my kids huge props.\u00a0 They were champs.\u00a0 They humored their mom\u2019s hairbrained idea to go for a hike when it was only registering 18 degrees out.\u00a0 Seriously, isn\u2019t this supposed to be SPRING break?!\u00a0 What\u2019s with the excessively low temps?!\u00a0 But, we did it.\u00a0 We saw deer, climbed trees, caught some fantastic views and had ourselves a good ol\u2019 time\u2026at least until the whining of \u201cI\u2019m hungry\u201d and \u201cI can\u2019t feel my feet\u201d set in.\u00a0 Just as Ken said, I go at life at 100%, so as tough as it was for me to accept that I wasn\u2019t going to be able to complete all<\/i> the trails I wanted to, I needed to do what was best for my kiddos and know when to say when.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d have to say, though, that the best workout of the week award goes to the laughter Silas provided as he did his spontaneous poolside dance party to \u201cMoves Like Jagger\u201d.\u00a0 That kid does have some sweet moves and he had me laughing long and hard.\u00a0 There is no better way to burn a few calories and tighten up the abs than laughing.<\/p>\n

Like I said, my heart fibers got stretched more than any other part of me this week.\u00a0 Ally and I doing multiple slide runs together, Ethan spotting more deer than anyone and his declaration that \u201cThis hike is AWESOME\u201d and riding the lazy river with Silas; those are all things I will hold in my heart forever.\u00a0 Even long after I\u2019ve forgotten various tempo runs and speed workouts\u2026well, ok, I don\u2019t cherish speed work at all.<\/p>\n

But here was the part that really got me.\u00a0 As an added bonus, we had access to an indoor amusement park as well so my kids got to ride the likes of the Growler and the Tilt-a-whirl to their hearts\u2019 content (and to their mom’s nausea!\u00a0 I love rollercoasters, but the spinning, Oh, the\u00a0incessant spinning…).\u00a0 The first night Silas kept dragging me onto rides because he needed me there.\u00a0 By the end of the last night, he was doing rides by himself.\u00a0 As I watched my three sweethearts climb onto the Growler together, (a huge blessing for the fighting to subside for a brief and beautiful\u00a0window) I was so amazed by my little man\u2019s courage.\u00a0 He\u2019s not a baby anymore.<\/p>\n

As a parent, it\u2019s my responsibility to teach my kids how to spread their wings and learn how to fly.\u00a0 But who knew that at the same time I\u2019m teaching them, I would be re-learning how to do that myself?<\/p>\n

One of our family rituals is at dinner time we go around the table and each say our best and worst thing of the day.\u00a0 We hadn\u2019t done that during\u00a0this trip, until lunch yesterday at Nonie\u2019s Cafe.\u00a0 The kids said their \u201cbests\u201d were everything from hiking, the wave pool, going into Chicago to see friends, the ropes course, the various rides, Shedd Aquarium, the water slides.\u00a0 They basically made a list of everything we had done and called it the best.\u00a0 But I have to agree with them.\u00a0 My best was\u2026all of it.\u00a0 And my worst was\u2026umm, yeah, I don\u2019t really have a worst.<\/p>\n

Well, I guess I probably coulda done without the whole credit card debacle.<\/p>\n

\"My<\/a>

My cuties at Starved Rock State Park in Utica, IL<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We\u2019re home.\u00a0\u00a0 Safe and sound.\u00a0 Nothing like having your first vacation as a single mom start off with not being able to check into the hotel because your credit card has been cancelled thanks to some joker who tried to commit fraud at a Target in Brooklyn.\u00a0 Super (Insert maximum sarcastic tone here).\u00a0 After a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"aside","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,7,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-219","post","type-post","status-publish","format-aside","hentry","category-conquering-fears","category-onbeingasingleparent","category-uncategorized","post_format-post-format-aside"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4eO4v-3x","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ramblingrunnergirl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ramblingrunnergirl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ramblingrunnergirl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ramblingrunnergirl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ramblingrunnergirl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=219"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.ramblingrunnergirl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":224,"href":"http:\/\/www.ramblingrunnergirl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219\/revisions\/224"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ramblingrunnergirl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ramblingrunnergirl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ramblingrunnergirl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}