April 2023

We came into April on a high from our concert.  

I felt young again and ready to get back into shape.

I am not a person who would EVER have seasonal depression from a fabulous rainy season.

I LOVE the rain more than anyone and I am truly my best self when the day is dark and rainy.

However, I might be forced to admit that it may have made me lazy and unenergetic.

I went to my monthy doctor's visit.  I get my blood drawn and she looks at every part of my body.  All of my blood work came back perfect for the first time since I have been monitoring it (May of last year) and for who knows how long before I discovered I was literally a ticking time bomb.

Everything was spot on except my freaking weight.

I could blame it on my medication...  I for sure could blame it on menopause.... 

but the harsh and brutal truth is, I am just lazy and unenergetic.

So April was the month that I got real with myself and decided to put in the work to turn things around before I get out of control.  

Rals and I set goals to start walking in the evenings when the weather is perfect and we feel good enough to go.  Every single night, we could definitely come up with a brilliant excuse not to go.  It's too windy,  it's too cold,  it's too hot,  the sun will be in our eyes.  Luckily, it turns out that when one of us was weak and not feeling it, and started searching for the excuse, the other wass strong and motivates the team.  We were always glad that we made the effort once it was over.  

We have a great time every time we go.  I don't know why we fight it.

A horrible thing happened.

We have several cleaning crews that work for us. 

The cleaners are required to come in and pick up supplies that we provide for them before they head out to clean each day.

So we see our cleaners several times a week. 

I saw Chelsea on a Wednesday.  

And the following Friday, she died.

At age 46 from a brain anurysm.

And I didn't know her very well, other than to just say hi to her when she walks by my office....which was surprising by how badly her death messed me up. 

I think it just hit too close to home.  I have had two TIA (mini strokes) and so the reality of me 

being here one minute and being gone the next, scares me a little bit and her sudden and unpredicted death was a kick in the crotch.  She had so much more life to live.  

I decided I had better get things under control, starting with the 7 pounds I needed to lose to get back to goal weight.

It will really help when THESE are no longer available to me

We celebrated Easter mildly.

One hour of church.  Cute new clothes. 

A wonderful dinner provided by Papa and Nana and a couple of small gifts.

She wasn't mad.  She didn't know I was taking her picture. 

But she is gorgeous

These two sisters could not be more opposite in likes/dislikes

but they LOVE each other and are best friends

So many freckles

Our friends Carrie and Itzak finally got married!

We joke that they are our only Asian friends and they joke that we are SO 

American and eat the most boring food.

We were one of only 3 non-Asian couples at the entire wedding. 

And boy was it an eclectic group the most interesting people I have ever been in one room with. 

I sat next to Peter (Peter is his American name.  I would never be able to pronouce his Korean name) 

Although it kindof had Peter in it.

He was the BEST.

He is the little guy up front with his leg sticking out. 

He and I swapped beauty regiment ideas.  He gets his ageless skin cream at Costco. 

He was so funny and QUIRKY.

I totally loved him by the end of the night.

This was a great wedding full of culture and sentiment.

My favorite part was watching Itzak (Isaac) treat Carrie like she was his queen.  He was so cute with her and took such good care of her.  

Their cake topper matched their wedding attire perfectly.

While we were up north, we attended the Murray 2nd ward.  

The ward that Raleigh grew up in. 

He had the best time talking to old Young Men leaders and old bishops.

It was good for him to go back there

We somehow convinced Peyton to wear this dress and she has never looked better.

SO SO darling and a little "girly".  

She may have low-key thought she looked good too, but she will NEVER admit that 

out loud to anyone. 

We also went to lunch with The Big Kids while we were up there.

We ate at R&R BBQ and it was SO good.

What a good choice.  We had a great conversation and got all caught up on everyone's lives.

Brayden still loves his job.

He was recentally in a fender bender that left his car totalled.

At first it was a tragedy, but ended up being a blessing as he now drives a great new car with

less miles and is better in the snow.

Allie just accepted a new job.  She starts May 1st.  

She will be making so much more money and they were very impressed with her knowledge.

I love how the kids' lives are in such good places right now.  

They have been working so hard to get them there.

I love that they are all so happy and have friends and have good jobs.  

My parents get together often with old friends. 

In this photo is my old stake president,  my old bishop,  my old young women's president,  my laurel advisor,  my young women's president and two members of my stake young women's presidency....and ALL of them are people who made me who I am today and molded and shaped my testimony.

I am forever grateful to people who were good way back when and are still good, strong, faithful people to look up to today.

We had our first quarter KPI party at Big Shots.

We got to choose our group and I loved my group so much. 

We had the best night laughing at each other's swings and total lack of talent.

I am really hoping that our next KPI party can be an event that doesn't require athleticism.

It really sucks to go to parties in general, but it gets exponentially worse when you couple 

it with physical activities that you have to perform in front of other people.  

I was in a little bit of hell the entire night.

At least I walked away with a little bit of cash in my pocket

Almost every weekend this month was nice and warm.  We sat out in the back yard and got some sun on our legs finally.  It is so nice to sit out there when it isn't blazing hot yet.  It's very cozy back there.

Raleigh has a friend who is a life and business coach by trade.

I have felt for a long time that I should probably invest in being coached by him so that I can shed some of the negative influences from my past that hold me back in business (and life in general). 

As part of his business, he does breathwork sessions.

To my total surprise and utter dismay,  Rals signed us up.

I was super excited.  

I knew not what we were getting ourselves in to.  

I thought we would lay on a yoga mat and learn how to gently breathe deeply until we were relaxed.

I needed that.

I couldn't wait to relax for an hour and a half and unwind and decompress.

WELL...

That is not at all what a breathwork session is.

It goes like this.

Lay on the floor with a mat and a pillow and a blanket.

And breathe in 80% violently and blow out 20% violently fast and with only a second in between each breath FOR 30 MINUTES!!!!!!!!

THIRTY MINUTES.

He mentioned that we might have a tingling sensation in our finger tips as this will border our bodies on hyperventillation.  But, me being HYPER in general, my body went into a full body tingle within the first 3 minutes of the 30, so imagine what happened to me after the entire time had passed.  

After the 30 minutes was up, he told us to take a very deep cleansing breath in and then blow that out completely and when all our breath was out, we were to hold our breath for a minimum of 60 seconds.

Yeah right.... on my very best day, I can hold my breath for maybe 25 seconds.  

NOT TONIGHT!! 

I without effort could have held that breath for 5 minutes.

After the 60 second breath hold, you are supposed to start breathing normally again and then let your body begin the process of coming out of the hyperventilative state it was currently in and return to normal.

However....

I totally forgot to breathe normally again.  I just kept holding my breath.

I either passed out or fell asleep, but at some point, my body reminded me that I needed to breathe by jerking me awake.  

And that jerk, caused me to go into panic mode.

Because I was hyperventative, my entire body felt like it weighed 1000 pounds. 

I believed that I literally couldn't have moved any part of my body if I had wanted to due to the fact that it was too heavy for me to move it, so I didn't even try.  I was trapped inside my body.  I was in a full panic, but couldn't do a single thing about it.  

I could hear him saying things don't fight your emotions. 

If you feel like crying... cry.

If you feel joy, laugh.

If you feel fear, fight through that.

Fear....  yeah....  that is definitely what I was feeling.

The most intense fear.  I had extreme claustrophobia and I thought my heart was going to stop beating and die.

Nevertheless, I did what he told me to do.  I layed there in a full body trauma panic attack and fought through the overwhelming fear that I was feeling without making a sound. 

I honestly thought I was dying.  What had I just done to myself?  I was killing myself.

For what was probably only five minutes, but seemed like an hour.

Finally, my heart that was beating a million miles an hour started to calm down, my body started to calm down too and suddenly all of the pain and trauma went from total body to just the center of my body and I could see the RED color of the pain and I could see the color leave the otter body parts and move into a line in the center of my chest.  When it did that, the color changed to green and the pain instantly stopped and all I felt was an overwhelming sense of the most unbelievable joy and love and acceptance.  I have never felt love like that before.  I was unconditional.  And it didn't matter what I had done, what I was thinking about, what kind of a person I was, I was toally and completely loved. 

And I heard the words in my head...  I love you so much, you are a good person, you are doing great things in your life, don't stop doing them.  But most importantly YOU HAVE GOT TO STOP BEING AFRAID TO BE HAPPY!!

When I heard that, I started sobbing.

Not loudly just to myself, but there were a lot of tears and a lot of emotion. 

And when we were finally able to sit up, I sat sobbing and tried to make sense of the feelings.

What an experience.

A good time to self reflect and make adjustments.

April was a good month to us.  I am so glad we were able to do so many fun things.