Wife Mother Runner Blog - Wife Mother Runner

What I Am Learning About Essential Oils

February 13, 2016

As I am learning more about essential oils, Shannon sent me a very informative video to watch. It is a great Essential Oil 101 to talk about each of the major oils and what they are used for.

Essential Oils 101 with Dr. David Hill from dōTERRA International on Vimeo.

And here are the basic essential oils and what their common uses are for. These are the great oils to start with if you are going to explore using essential oils.

I’ll keep you posted with more information that I am learning about as helpful and most resourceful oil uses in your home and for your family.

I Am Now A dōTERRA Essential Oils Wellness Advocate

February 12, 2016

“There are no wasted efforts in nature.” That is a profound statement from the dōTERRA video you can watch below.

The smell of Spring flowers, or the scent of the earth, these are the aromas that are found in essential oils. The oils are actually a protective agent to the flowers and plants. They have been used for a very long time for food preparation, beauty treatments and health-care practices. Essential oils may sound like a mystery. In my opinion, I think it is becoming a trendy thing; but it’s not something new.

My first encounter with essential oils came when my friend Shannon told me about them. She had told me about a situation she had been going through for a while with her son. It was to the point where every day for her would start with tears. Finally, someone saw what she was going through and saw what her son was struggling with and gave her some advice about essential oils. She said it was life changing. I believe her.

I recently decided that I needed to bring the use of essential oils into my family’s lifestyle for a few reasons. My children, especially my son, have been suffering from respiratory challenges from the months of November through February. We had been to the pediatrician more times in those past months than we had been in years. I was getting frustrated because they weren’t constantly fighting something off and my son never seemed to get better at all. Shannon sent me some samples right away and said we have to give it a try. My son did end up seeing a pulmonologist; but in our discussions with her, she also supports our decision to use the oils in conjunction with her recommendations because of the severity of his asthma at this time.

I also want the benefits of it to help with seasonal depression and dare I say it, perimenopause. Yes, I am 43 years old and I think I am now suffering from those lovely hormonal changes that happen for at least 10 years before menopause. What a joy. I also wanted to try it for overall well-being and then for my husband as well.

I never doubted essential oil and I also believe in taking a natural approach to healing rather than medicating every illness; but it is much easier to go to a doctor and do what they prescribe, get over it and move on. In the case with my son being sick for so long we didn’t want to medicate him too much; but also when he was on medication it wasn’t working.

I also noticed that he wasn’t himself anymore. I think because he was sick for so long he was beginning to show signs of depression. I also blame the inhaled pulmicort for that. He was on it for at least 2 straight months. He wasn’t playing outside like he used to and he didn’t have his energy level like he used to. I was blaming it on the warm seasonal winter we had; then I was blaming it on the cold when we did end up getting snow. But I think after seeing his lung specialist and how bad his breathing tests were, he felt like crap! She was surprised when we told her that he was having a good day!

He is finally on one last medication and I am using it in conjunction with the dōTERRA Breath blend in a diffuser in the house and I rub the oils on my children’s feet and chest at night. I gave some to my mom last night to try as well. While it is still too early to tell for sure; I do believe it does have some positive affects. I also want to use the dōTERRA essential oils as a daily regimen for overall health and well being. Preventative measures so that when we are healthy we will remain healthy. The dōTERRA Breathe oil that I have been using for the kids contain Laurel Leaf, Eucalyptus Leaf, Peppermint Plant, Melaleuca Leaf, Lemon Peel, Ravensara Leaf, and Cardamom Seed essential oils.

You can use oils with a diffuser for an aromatic experience in several rooms of your home. Diffusing essential oils can also cleanse and purify the air of unwanted odors. You can use it topically on your skin. Many people use it with a roller ball applicator. And you can also ingest them in caplets or droplets in a drink for dietary supplements.

Essential oils aren’t only used for healing for medical reason, you can use many different recipes to create cleaning products, salves, moisturizers, sugar scrubs, and more!

Check out my dōTERRA site for more information and feel free to ask me any questions! I’ll also continue to give you an update on how the family is doing, what my favorite oils are and how I am using them in our home.

The DISNEY Collection By Jamberry Was Released Today!

February 9, 2016

If you all know me by now you should know there are a few things that I really do love. One is Disney and the other is my Jamberry wraps! Well now we have them both together officially because Jamberry now has a DISNEY Collection.

The news was released last night by the company founders via their YouTube channel.

You can preview more of the designs as well on the Jamberry YouTube channel.

I was so excited when I heard the news. I had to share with all of my Disney and runDisney loving friends!!!

Some of the fantastic designs in this latest release include Ariel, Aurora and Minnie Mouse as seen below. But I have many more photos available on my Facebook Page, which I update often. Stop by and Like my page and take a look at many more samples of the great new designs!

More designs are planned to be released, as well as junior size wraps so be sure to like my Facebook page or subscribe to my blog to receive updates about these fun, highly anticipated and extremely popular designs!

I already ordered mine today. Are you going to order yours? Perhaps you are interested in hosting a party. Let me know! Check out my online catalog.

What Have I Been Up To?

February 6, 2016

It’s been a little less than a month since the Dopey Challenge was over and I’m still getting out and enjoying my time on the roads. Some days I have been choosing to walk rather than run. Part of it is because I was fighting off a cold. I typically don’t care and just run through it; but I figured what do I have to prove? Why not just walk and enjoy the time out there?

We have been having the strangest weather. One weekend it will be 50 degrees and everything has a hint of Spring on it; then we will get a snow squal and everything is coated with white; only to melt a day later. Then the following weekend we will have a snow storm dump 12 inches on it – 7 days later 50 degrees and all the snow is gone. We are now on the colder trend of weather and the talk is that there will be more snow coming this week.

On Thursday I went for a walk. I planned on getting in at least 4 miles. The weather forecasters kept changing their forecast throughout the day from what was to be a potential 1″ dusting for our area to a much more significant snow. I knew something was up when I was out on my walk because all of the geese were in the fields gathering up food. I took a detour from my usual walk and went into a cornfield and followed it back into a section I have never walked before. I wanted to mix things up a little bit. I was enjoying my Laugh or Go Crazy podcast and felt like I was getting some soul healing that I was needing.

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The following day the kids had a snow day. I worked all day and then around 4:30 I needed to get out of the house and run. The roads were plowed and the kids were playing in the snow. I was antsy for my fresh air fix. Although it was slippery in spots I really enjoyed my time on the road. It was just before the sun set and the views were spectacular!

A first for me – I took a picture without make up on!

So what am I up to race-wise? I have been averaging between 3-6 mile runs but need to get in a little bit of a longer run to prepare for the runDisney Princess Half Marathon weekend Glass Slipper Challenge I am running with Mandy. I was planning to do the Rock ‘n’ Roll Half Marathon in Washington D.C. in March but am going to pass on that since it is a long drive for a half marathon. I was going to turn it into a family trip; but we want to spend more time in the city and enjoy the sights. The runDisney Star Wars Dark Side Challenge is taking place in April so I will run that with Diana and Mandy and it takes place during our family vacation to Disney.

I haven’t made decisions yet for my other race plans. Since I am passing on the D.C. race, I will run the Chicago Rock ‘n’ Roll Half Marathon because I was given the bib by Team Chocolate Milk. I wasn’t sure that I was going to want to run that race again; but I loved Chicago and had a great time with Susana Cruz so I hope we can hook up again and maybe I can encourage some of my other friends to run this race also.

I did toss my hat into the ring for the sweepstakes for the New York City Marathon. So now I wait to hear if that is going to fall into my plans for “not running a Fall marathon”. If that does turn up as a Yes then I have some thinking to do. I believe it also falls on the same weekend as the runDisney Wine and Dine Half Marathon. So I may defer for the following year if I do get into NYC. Again, time will tell.

So that’s what I have been up to lately.

Strength Training

January 31, 2016

Something I plan to work on this year as part of my goal in running is to incorporate strength training. At first I was thinking that I just wanted to do more leg work; but as I am doing research and talked to my chiropractor; he mentioned it is best to do exercises that don’t just isolate one area. Do more dynamic exercises that involve the entire body and fluid movement all at once. We don’t just run and leave our arms by our side. And we don’t just move our arms and our legs are still when we run. So do a lunge walk with light weights and do shoulder presses at the same time. All in one movement. But remember to start off slowly and easily. Don’t do 50 of these with heavy weights on your first day doing it. Beginning off with using your own body strength at first is also good advice. Focus on your form and then increase weight after you know how you feel the days following your new routine.

I realize you want to feel like you worked out and like how muscle soreness indicates that you did something (or at least I do); but you don’t want the extreme where the soreness is so bad that you can’t resume your regular workout or running schedule because you did too much in the beginning. It’s similar to when you began running. I know it happened to me. I loved the feeling of getting out there to run; but I did too much too soon and had terrible shin splints and could barely walk, let alone run, and I lost time because of it.

I was listening to the Another Mother Runner Podcast recently in episode 194 that discussed with Angie Krueger how you should include it as part of your training. For me the biggest question was when do I do the training. The day before you have a run, the same day after you finish your run? This article from Runners World helps clear it up for me. It does recommend to do your strength training on the same day as your run for two reasons. The first reason is so that you can have recovery time from both the run and the weight training. The second is because then it will force you to be a little more conservative on the weights that you use or your intensity on the strength training so that you don’t overdo it to the point where you cannot walk or run for several days later.

I ran into a friend of mine, Nick Takacs, during the marathon (my Dopey challenge) and he was telling me that he started to do a new training program called Iron Strength by Runners World. But he started doing it the week before the marathon and said it wasn’t the best decision! His legs and butt were sore in muscles he didn’t even realize he had! But I had seen that exercise routine going around on Facebook and it interested me to add it to my weekly routine.

The videos are good to watch to learn what you want to focus on for your workouts. They use a lot of dynamic movements to get your body warmed up and loose without “stretching”. The key in this workout is to strengthen your running muscles because when you run you use them but you don’t actually strengthen or build them. Having a dedicated workout routine to focus on those muscles are what I want to work on during this year to help me be a stronger runner and to avoid injury because of overuse of these muscles.

The workouts also focus on your core. Core strength is important not just in running, but in all areas of your life. Unfortunately, we sit too much at work. Having a strong core helps protect our backs. Working our upper body will also help us in running because it will help prevent us from slumping forwards as we become tired during our long runs and longer races. By remaining upright and strong we will finish stronger and will again avoid injury.

I haven’t started this routine yet; but I plan to so that I can get stronger and more fit and become a better, and hopefully faster runner.

2016 One Word Resolution

January 26, 2016

For the past few years I have been using a one word resolution around the new year as the word of my year. Last year the word I chose was Challenge, the previous year was Grow. This year is Joy. I want to bring joy back into my life. I want to bring it back into my running, my work and my entire outlook on things.

Ironically Joy is also a character from the movie Inside Out. I was fortunate enough to be selected last year to attend the Disney Social Media Moms Celebration in Orlando and we had a sneak peek preview of the Movie Inside Out. The main character in the movie is Joy. I connected with her. She ran the main dashboard in the brain of the character Riley. Joy did everything she could to make sure that Riley was happy all of the time. She tried to ward off sadness, fear, anger and disgust. I feel like I am running the dashboard of life and my family’s life like Joy does.

I can’t lie, there have been times in the past year when I was lacking some Joy in my life. There were some really tough times. You may not see that in my blog posts or in my social media posts because I don’t show those sad times. I share the happy events that we are having. Who wants to hear someone complaining about life and the challenges they are up against or the sicknesses that they are fighting? I’d rather share my good news than my bad ones. But that still brings me to my point. There are things that I am going through in many areas of my life where the Joy is missing. I am working on that. That is my plan for this year. To change some of the things that lost some Joy and bring it back.

One area for certain was my running. Last fall I was falling out of love with training – not running, it was the training that I was hating. I was training for my marathons and was struggling with putting in the long runs required. Something happened, I think it was burnout, that made the actual training runs more of a chore than a time of enjoyment for me.

I just completed the Walt Disney World Dopey Challenge a few weeks ago and I enjoy running. The taper weeks leading up to that race were better for me. The pressure was off, the longest run was done and the little runs I did prior to the races were to stay loose and to keep my mind from going stir crazy. Now that I have completed the races I am in a recovery period where I am not pushing hard for speed or high mileage; but just getting out on the road when I want to for my pleasure. I do have to increase my runs soon to prepare for my next races but I am not dreading the training like I did last Fall.

This is a look of pure Joy! I was so glad to have completed my second Dopey challenge and I loved every minute of the races!

I want to add Joy back into my work. In December I was involved with a large project at work that was taking up many hours of my time. I had some very long work weeks; but I was also learning new things. I want to feel the joy of trying new things and testing things out and growing in my career. I had that for some time last year and then things got a little hectic where I felt like I wasn’t learning as much as I wanted to. So I want to make sure that I still enjoy my work and am growing from it.

For my family life things have been a little rough at home. I have to be honest. The kids are fighting a lot; they have been coughing since November and it seems like every 5 minutes someone is complaining to me about something that the other person said. I just had to pause writing this post to play referee about an elastic band that goes around the base of a toothbrush because the kids were fighting over what color they can use even though my husband did rock-paper-scissors with them to make it fair.

It must be something about the middle of winter making everyone nutty. Even though we just had a large snowstorm this past weekend and the kids can go out and sled ride there seems to be something wrong with the snow each time they go out. It’s melting too fast, or the sleds aren’t fast enough. Where’s the joy??? Time for me to don my snow pants and get back out there with them more to make insane sled riding paths and ramps, start a fire in the fire pit and bring the fun back into winter.

Motherhood isn’t easy, I realize that. I want to always have a good time. I know not every day will be days with smiles and happy children and husband. I know every day at work won’t be easy or fun. But I’m trying to change my outlook. I’m trying not to lose my cool. I’m going to work hard this year to fill my life with more Joy!