Wife Mother Runner Blog - Wife Mother Runner

Why Should We Go To Walt Disney World This Summer?

May 3, 2017

There are many changes coming to Walt Disney World This Summer

We weren’t planning a vacation to Disney this summer; but with all the new updates coming to the parks, I didn’t want to miss out. At Animal Kingdom the land, Pandora the World of Avatar is opening on May 27th. Recently, the Rivers of Light show also opened to the public, so now Animal Kingdom offers lots of new things to do at night. At Hollywood Studios, BB-8 is greeting guests at the Star Wars Launch Bay. Typhoon Lagoon has a new family raft ride, Miss Adventure Falls. Plus, the Magic Kingdom Wishes fireworks show is ending on May 11. A new show, “Happily Ever After” Nighttime Spectacular is making its debut on May 12 .

I am attending the BlogHer conference at the end of June, so I couldn’t go to Orlando and not turn it into a family trip! But of course, like always, it has to be a surprise! So if you are a reader of my blog and know my children, DO NOT say anything about this to them!

Animal Kingdom

Pandora- The World of Avatar

To prepare for this new world, we watched Avatar with the kids recently. My husband and I have never seen the movie so it was great to see it for the first time together. I have heard that it isn’t necessary to watch the show prior to going to the new Pandora the World of Avatar; but I wanted to really understand the story behind the world to gain a better appreciation for it. I also wanted the kids to have that insight.

Source – Wikipedia

Rivers of Light

We were hoping that last Spring when we had our family vacation that we would have the chance to see the Rivers of Light show on its opening day on Earth Day. The show didn’t open until February of this year so we will also be sure to make this a must-do on our list.

I have been avoiding any social media related to these changes because I want to get the first hand experience of seeing it all myself. But I think any preview videos and live broadcasts won’t do it justice. These new immersive experiences in Animal Kingdom are things that have to be seen in person.

Magic Kingdom

Fireworks

The Wishes Nighttime Spectacular is being replaced with a new fireworks and pyrotechnics show on May 12. Happily Ever After Nighttime Spectacular includes an original music score and it will include more recent Disney movie moments projecting onto the castle.

Beauty and The Beast

With the new release of Beauty and the Beast I heard that the Beast in Magic Kingdom has taken on the appearance of the Beast in the live action movie. Since we never went to the Enchanted Tales of Belle interactive story telling show, it is now a must do on our list of things to see!

Hollywood Studios

Star Wars

We love Star Wars and now BB-8 is at the Star Wars Launch Pad. When we were in Disney for the Walt Disney World Marathon in January we got family photos with my parents, my husband and the kids with Chewbacca and Kylo Ren. Well now I need to add to our collection with BB-8! We also didn’t get a close view of the “Star Wars: A Galactic Spectacular” fireworks and projection show, so I’d like to stay closer to the Chinese theater to see the entire show.

Typhoon Lagoon

Miss Adventure Falls

The kids love going to the water park. We have only been to Blizzard Beach and last year we tried Aquatica at Sea World. But that didn’t hold a candle up to the fun you can have at a Disney water park. So this time I’d like to try Typhoon Lagoon. Especially since the Miss Adventure Falls family raft ride includes a ride up the conveyor belt to the top of the slide! That is a win-win in my book! Less stairs to climb!

Source – Disney Parks Blog

The Wedding Pavilion

Our 15th Wedding Anniversary

My husband and I are celebrating our 15th wedding anniversary on May 16th so I didn’t want to miss out on a trip to our place of marriage on this special anniversary year. The Disney’s Wedding Pavilion was recently refurbished so I want to get over to our wedding location to take some photos. I’d secretly love to hire a photographer to do some family pictures there. Something to consider for a special gift to my husband!

So as you can see we have a lot to do! I hope we can fit it all in with this one trip. Otherwise, some of it will have to wait until our next one. And by the looks of it, we are going to need a vacation from our vacation!

NYC marathon training plan - Wife Mother Runner

26 Weeks Until The New York City Marathon

May 1, 2017

I hate bridges!

I have 26 weeks until the New York City marathon and I have felt a little nervous about it lately. I am not nervous about running a marathon, I’ve done that several times before. I am most nervous about running over the first bridge, the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge! I hate bridges! I saw some photos with people running across the bridge and some are running in the middle. I think that is where I need to be, in the middle so I can’t see below me.

My New York City Marathon Training Plan

I am also nervous about training for the New York City Marathon. I have to go back to the beginning of my racing days and when I trained for my first marathon. I took it seriously. I have to stick to my schedule.

Training officially begins on June 3 with a 6 mile run. I will follow the Jeff Galloway training plan that I followed when I trained for my first Disney marathon. This program works well for me. I have been training with a 30/30 interval and that seems to get me through the miles with no injury and little pain.

My intention this Spring and Summer is to only run races that are going to support my training plan. I want to run for fun right now without a fixed schedule before I am on a more rigid plan. I have been cross training with weights and my beach body video library of exercises to help strengthen my glutes, hamstrings and quads. I think that is going to be important to keep me healthy and strong for this race.

This race is a serious race for me. There won’t be character stops like there are at the Disney World marathon, so I hope to achieve a decent finish time. My best marathon finish time to date is 5 hours and 40 minutes. I don’t anticipate I will have that great of a finish time; but I’d like to get anything under 6 hours.

2017 Boston Marathon with Achilles International

April 29, 2017

On April 17, 2017 I had the pleasure of traveling up to Boston as a volunteer for Team Achilles and I captured as many moments with the members from all the chapters along with The Freedom Team. It was a beautiful day to spectate. I had the opportunity two years ago to watch the race and enjoyed it as much, if not more this time because I am part of that team who overcame very difficult challenges to get to the finish line.

As I did last time, I took the train from Worcester to Yawkey and watched the race at mile 25 and then walked to the finish line later in the afternoon to see several athletes cross the finish line. I didn’t expect to see as many Team Achilles members as I did and am so proud of everyone for their success in crossing the finish line of the 121st Boston Marathon.

Enjoy the recap video highlighting the presentation of the Freedom Team at Fenway Park on Sunday to the last Achilles athlete I captured running down Boylston Street. I can’t wait to capture moments like these again next year! One day I wish to also be a runner to cross the line at the Boston Marathon myself. Until then I will gladly cheer everyone on!

Pamela Frost - Wife Mother Runner - Our Infertility Story

It’s Infertility Awareness Week – My Infertility Story

April 23, 2017

The last week in April is dedicated to National Infertility Awareness Week. When my husband and I got married 15 years ago this May, I never expected that we would have to struggle to begin our family. I don’t really speak much about the difficulty it was to get pregnant and when we were trying to get pregnant, we didn’t tell anyone in our family what we were going through. So all of those appointments, consults, ultrasounds, early morning blood tests, phone calls, waiting, we did it all by ourselves. Sadly one in eight couple struggle with infertility. I was one of the lucky ones.

Our Story

The hardest part was when I was first diagnosed with Henoch–Schönlein Purpura (HSP). It was a very difficult time because we got married in May and wanted to have a family right away. Then we were told that I was going to be put on a chemotherapy drug that would not allow me to get pregnant while on the medication. I struggled with getting the disease under control and finally getting a confirmed diagnosis of what I have after two kidney biopsies, medication and steroids.

Our Infertility Process

After a long five years I was finally cleared to go ahead and try to get pregnant. Well come to find out, it wasn’t so easy. After many months without success, we had to meet with a specialist. We met with the UCONN fertility center and had our fist consult with Dr. Schmidt. The staff was great and we felt very hopeful after meeting with them. After several tests we learned that I had unexplained infertility. Which basically meant, there was no particular reason why I was unable to conceive. But they were going to try a simple approach first of inter uterine insemination (IUI) before going to any extremes with egg retrieval and IVF.

Our first attempt was unsuccessful. I was very disappointed. I also hated having all the blood tests, going early on the weekends to Farmington to get the blood tests done. The waiting for the phone call that it was time to count how many follicles we had via ultrasound, and then booking the day to do the insemination. I was getting very frustrated and upset. But I knew that if I wanted this, I had to do this.

We were very fortunate that with our second attempt we got pregnant with our son and I had a healthy pregnancy with a long, yet successful delivery and when it came to wanted to grow our family, I happened to learn that I was pregnant before we went to the fertility clinic to work with them for our second child. I had what was called a chemical pregnancy. It meant that my hormones were high enough to produce a positive result on a test strip; but the numbers in the blood test were not rising to a level that would be a viable pregnancy. We had to wait the entire weekend to return to the doctor for another blood test and sure enough, that afternoon I got my period.

So it was off to the fertility clinic again in early January (6 months after our son was born), to do our third round of insemination and thankfully, we were fortunate again to have a healthy pregnancy and a baby girl completed our family.

How I Can Help

I realize that not all stories work out like ours did; but everyone does have a story and I never shared mine with my readers before. So if you are going through the challenge of trying to get pregnant and need someone to talk to, please feel free to reach out to me! I know I spent countless hours on forums reading everything about ovulation kits, temperatures, blood levels, numbers and so much more in hopes that someone’s situation sounded similar to mine and I’d gain a peace of mind.

2017 Middletown Half Marathon

April 22, 2017

This blog post is a reminder to Diana and I that if we are considering doing this race again, we must be trained for it. We should have learned this lesson from the last time we did it two years ago. But, Diana won a free race entry with a Facebook contest from the Hartford Marathon Foundation and I had already shared with her that I thought the medal was pretty nice looking! So guess what we did on Sunday, April 9th.

That morning when we met up I told her that we will just use this race as an opportunity to catch up since we hadn’t seen each other since January. And on the plus side we’d bet getting in some exercise and the weather was spectacular! Just before the start I found all my familiar faces – Bob and Mary Perrotti, KO from work, and Diana’s friend Jeremy from running Disney races.

The weather was beautiful. It was the first warm day we had in a long time. It was a sparkling 65 degrees out with nice warm sunshine. Not always the most idea for running a half marathon that starts at 11:00 a.m. but I didn’t mind. We are used to running in hotter temperatures with humidity for our races in Florida so this was fine. We just had to make sure to hydrate throughout the race. Plus we weren’t actually racing this race.

I was running for Lyla and someone came up to me and asked me what her story was. That was the first time someone asked. I hope to share more knowledge with others about rhabdomyosarcoma.

As you can see from our splits, we started off pretty strong and consistent; but then the hills started and they were kicking our butt. Diana was starting to feel the unpleasantness that happens to her stomach during these hilly races so we slowed down. We also spent the first 5-6 miles talking a lot and that exerting some more energy. We walked the last three miles.

On the course I saw a sign from Lyla. I just happened to look towards the curb and on a lawn was a dime. Ironically it was her 10th birthday the weekend before and I keep finding dimes now.

After the race, we went to the green and I got food and was happy to see that the Hartford Marathon Foundation had COLD chocolate milk on ice for the finishers! This is the first race where I had seen chocolate milk offered. I hope this is something they continue to offer to the finishers in the future.

Diana and I walked to my car so I could drop her off to her car in the lot down the street. Unfortunately, she needed to empty her stomach at a telephone pole before going to my car. Poor thing. I put all her race items in a bag for her and gave her a tissue and she said she felt 100% better after that! Unfortunately, she told me later that she got sick two more times after that. Something about these first races of the season always does her in.

But I was glad to have spent the time with her, earned a cool looking medal and got 13.1 miles under my feet! Will we do it again??? Probably not! Even with the course having been changed there were still some significant hills. Unless we train for it.

Adding Magic To Your Disney Vacation

April 20, 2017

Want to learn how we make our Disney vacations extra special for our children Check out my guest blog post for The Mouse For Less blog.