Ready for a Slow Down & New Opportunities

Man life has been so crazy lately, isn't it always?! We're well into our 8th week of training with our coach and things are going great! We are really building up a great base and I'm starting to see how much stronger I'm getting.  I am absolutely loving this active lifestyle- something Brandon and I had been chasing after for a very long time.  I go to the gym or workout every day, even if its just to get a nice stretching session in, but I wouldn't think twice about not going.  Its so nice to have the kids club there.  Bashlyn and Coleman love the lady that runs the kids club and she loves them.  Every time we leave Bashlyn says "bye Noelle, see you tomorrow, lub you!" It is beyond cute and so comforting to me knowing I can go and get 2 hours of uninterrupted time and my kids are happy while I'm away! I'm not going to lie I've gone to the gym just to shower in peace a time or two :)

Brandon has been working insane hours lately, upwards of 70-80 and a lot of working through the night.  Its been draining with the different schedules and manning the house on my own.  Thankfully he has the next 6 days off!! I am so excited to have some time with daddy home and him be caught up on sleep so he's not a zombie.  We miss daddy when he works so much and really cherish the time we have him home.

I'm loving watching my body change.  Seeing the fat disappear and the muscle definition start to pop is really exciting and motivating.  I've been searching for a program that could help me learn about macros and gain the muscle definition but hadn't found anything.  I looked into a couple different programs but I didn't want to do meal replacement shakes, I wanted whole, real food and something that would be easy to follow.  Thats when I found Trainer Lindseys 15 day ideal fit program on Facebook (Thanks to my friend Darby for telling me about it!!) I decided to give it a try and it is exactly what I had been searching for! You get 15 days of workouts and meal plans for free! Everything is planned for you, everything is weighed down to the gram or ounce so there is NOTHING to think about.  Just sit back, follow the plan and you will see results! I've done this program 3 times now and I lost 22 pounds since January 25th! I could not be happier.  I am so excited to say that Ideal Fit has offered me an athlete sponsorship and I could not be happier to accept.  I am ecstatic about this program.  I believe in the meal plans and the protein is the best on the market for women, not to mention affordable (bonus!).  80 calories, 20g of protein, no sugar, no carbs!! It will help you build lean muscle and I know this because it IS working for me! Its not a program where you will feel hungry all the time, in fact you'll find yourself going "Its time for me to eat AGAIN?!"  I promise I will not be that annoying sales friend, I am just so excited to introduce this product and FREE program to my friends because it has worked for me! I have created a group on Facebook and if you'd like to join just let me know :)

Lindsey Mathews, the trainer that changed everything for me! 

Such an amazing product line! 

January 25th to March 9th!

If you would like to check out the products and company go to idealfit.com and take a look around.  If you order through my link they can track it to me :) I never want my friends to feel like I am making money off of them, I'm not.  I am getting a product that I would already be buying anyway, I've ordered 3 times since starting the challenge in January! :)

I feel so happy at this point in my life.  I feel like I've really found my true calling.  Working out and helping my friends find their best, healthiest self is truly fulfilling to me.  I can't wait to see where this new chapter of life will take me.  I am learning a lot and I am more than happy to share anything I've learned with you all, I do not know all the answers but I am excited to find a solution together.   Thank you all for standing behind me and motivating me to go after my dreams no matter how big or scary they seem.  I am so humbled to have all your support, thank you!

Community

Hello, can you hear me...
I'm in California dreaming about who we used to be...

Ok Ok enough of the Adele jokes, but seriously...HELLO! I've been meaning to write for awhile and every time I sit down to do it something else pops up or I'm just so tired all I want to do is veg out! So we've been back in SoCal for 3 months now and we are loving life.  Brandon is settled in at work, loving his crew and the work.  He is doing transmission with distribution underbuld and really liking it.  100+ foot poles and he drives a 100 ft bucket truck on these crazy interstates down here every day! I'm settled in with being a mom to two kids, doing my weekly grocery shopping, cooking dinner, nursing around the clock, laundry, cleaning, oh and working out! We struggled a little bit to find the right fit of a gym for Bashlyn but we found a great kids care now and they love her and she loves going, which is good since we're there at least an hour a day 4-5 days a week.

For christmas Brandon bought me a bunch of different Gu, sport jelly beans, bonker bars, ect for my stocking stuffer (how cute is he?!).  Well he went to this triathlon shop called Tri-Zone and they had a flyer for a free 8 week "give it a try" program they were putting on.  We had been shopping around for a coach for swimming because Brandon and I needed some serious help and then he happened upon this, it was a true sign! We signed up and went to our first Saturday meeting 6 weeks ago and have been loving it since.  Its so incredibly awesome to be surrounded by so many athletic and health conscious people all the time.  We bike and run as a group on Saturdays, swim on Mondays and bike on Wednesdays.  On Saturday there is a presentation about something, running form, stretching correctly, transitions, swimming technique, ect.  The program is put on by Coach Diego with Triathlon Training Team.  We were texting a few weeks back and I was telling him that we were doing the Ironman CDA 70.3 and he politely asks "is this going to be a self coached venture?" haha gotta admit I laughed out loud.  I responded with "well.....it was going to be...." Anyway we decided to hire him to coach Brandon and I for the big race.  We want to be able to not only survive the race but do our absolute best.  Signing up for the half ironman has changed our lives.  We are FINALLY living the healthy active lifestyle we have always wanted to be living.  Today its gorgeous out.  We went to our give it a try meeting this morning with the kids, then I went on a 1.5 hour ride followed by a  25 minute run and now Brandon is out on a 1.5 hour ride and a 25 minute run.  Its so awesome and we are absolutely in LOVE with this sport! 

With all that said Brandon and I have been talking about our future a lot lately.  We are both getting more and more antsy to settle into a routine of some kind.  We want community, we miss it so much.  What we realized though, is without even trying we have created community in Southern California and North Idaho.  We have amazing friends down here, Bash and Coleman have great friends, we have routine, we have our places we love to go to get a great bite to eat, our favorite beaches, our favorite places to run, bike, swim, we are meeting like minded people, we are developing a life.  Brandon loves the work and is damn good at it.  We are so lucky that we (obviously) have an amazing community in Idaho and we get to spend the WHOLE summer there every year!  We've talked a lot about what the next 5 years should look like.  Should we buy a house down here, should we check out Northern Cali, should we go to Hawaii, should we go somewhere else in the country, should we move home and Brandon go utility?! We know we are not really ready to settle down 100% yet.  There will come a time that we just CAN'T travel like this and we don't want to cut ourselves short.  We also don't want to pigeon hole ourselves to North Long Beach, CA and never check out anything else but at the same time what if we did.  What if we love it, what if we have friends, what if we have a lifestyle and community and it works for us, would it really be so bad to just go from SoCal to North Idaho twice a year for the duration of our tramping days? We do know that we REALLY want to go check out Hawaii so maybe we'll do a couple more rotations down here and then go to Hawaii and then go home, or maybe we'll be headed to Hawaii this fall, who knows, we sure don't! haha stay tuned to see where this crazy life takes us :)