Update on Life

Wow it has been quite a long time since I have posted on here. So much has changed in the last three months most of which I still cannot believe or seem to grasp. Last time I was thinking of photographer and bridesmaids dress choices and now I am worried about how I am going to get through the holidays. Thanksgiving weekend has come and gone and this was the first weekend I truly felt alone. Don't get me wrong I have felt something missing ever since the accident, but it was obvious that only one person was missing at family dinners this weekend. It was also the first night on a weekend that I have sat home by myself. I've been doing things with friends on the weekends to keep myself occupied. I have a feeling that Christmas is going to be worse. I thank God every single day for my wonderful family and friends. Without their love and support I don't know where I would be today. They have been so wonderful to me during this very difficult time and I know they will continue to help me get through the next several months. I've also been finding and reading many inspirational quotes during this time. A few of my favorites include:

"Faith in God includes faith in his timing."


"There are moments in life when you wish you could bring someone down from Heaven. Spend the day with them just one more time, give them one more hug, kiss them goodbye or hear their voice again. One more chance to say I LOVE YOU."

"It's okay to talk about it or not to talk about it. It's okay to ask for help or just want to be alone. It's okay to be angry or feel frustrated. It's okay to laugh sometimes and cry other times. It's okay to take all the time you need because what we want for you is for things to be more than just okay."

Probably my most recent favorite:
"Loving someone so much and then losing them unexpectedly is hard to get over. It's hard believing that their really gone and their not coming back. So you live each day pretending their still there, you keep their memory alive by never letting them go. It's just a process of coping...And it never goes away."

The feeling will never go away, but will live through the memories we've created. I look through pictures frequently and continue to share stories of our life together. The thing I have learned most from this experience is that you need to live life to the fullest because you never know when your life might end. Make sure you tell those you love that you love them as often as you can. Do things you never thought were possible. This will probably be my last post for the year. I'll be back at the beginning of the year with a bucket list. Things I want to accomplish in my lifetime. Before I go here is an update on my New Year's goals for the end of the year.

Get back in shape and run a 5k. I didn't do any activity except volleyball for two months, but I have gotten back into exercising 4-5 days a week and even ran a full 5k on Thanksgiving Day. Ran the whole thing without stopping and finished in 34:07. My next goal is the 5 mile Shamrock Shuffle in Chicago in April.

Debt Free, Save More. Goal accomplished, car was paid off two weeks ago and saving more and more every week. Even with Christmas coming I still manage to put extra money in savings.

Eat Out Less. Doing very well the last few months. I eat at home way more often than I used to, easy to do when you don't have a dinner date all the time.

Read More Books. I'm on my 5th book for the year, The Help. This will take me to the end of the year, I'm struggling to get through it. Next year I'm finishing my Jodi Picoult collection.

New Job. As posted in July, I'm staying at Mercantile with my promotion. Not looking forward to moving buildings though.

Keep in Touch with Friends. This has been going very well and I look forward to working on it through 2012.

Now 2012 just needs to get here, it's been a rough year and I'm ready for it to be over. Hope all of you have a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Decisions, decisions...

Do you realize there are like 20 photographers in the city of Quincy? I took some time this weekend while the kids were napping to contact photographers for our wedding. I am pretty sure I emailed about a dozen photographers and that didn't include all the photographers in Quincy. There were some I either knew I didn't want or were too expensive and didn't even take the time to contact. How do you choose one? I've been looking on websites and Facebook pages to view their galleries and to me they are all starting to look the same. How in the world do you just pick one by they way their pictures look. Plus I do not want to spend a fortune on pictures. I agree it's one of our biggest expenses because we will have them forever, but those whose smallest package starts at $2000, really? Plus for most photographers you have to pay $700 to have rights to your photos, that just seems crazy. Out of the dozen I emailed, so far I have heard from four of them. Hopefully they all respond by the end of the week so I can start going over all their package info.

I'm also on the hunt for my bridesmaid dresses. I found a dress I really liked at David's Bridal, but when I was in Springfield a couple weeks ago I went in to try it on and it was this ugly cotton material. From the photo (see below) it looks like it would be satin and very pretty, but no it looked very cheap and nothing like a bridesmaid dress. So I have been searching designer websites to find something similar to this dress. Let's hope I can find one or I'm stuck looking for something else that I like.

Flaiz and I both have asked our maid of honor and best man to be part of our big day and we are working on the other bridesmaids and groomsmen. I've got one asked and hope to have the others asked soon. We are still looking at a big wedding party, but we feel all these people are important to us and want them to be with us as we celebrate. I might try to do a wedding website on theknot.com sometime soon as well. Only 404 days to go!

Onto my new year's goals. Just finished another book, Picture Perfect, by Jodi Picoult which only brings my total to three so far for the year. I am slacking horribly at this goal. I started a fourth book this weekend, the 4th book in the bride quartet series by Nora Roberts. Hopefully I can squeeze in a few more by the end of the year.

Running...not good. I have slacked off big time with this goal. Need to get back on it. It's nice enough that if I would just make myself get up a half hour earlier in the morning I could go run and get it over with. I want to do the Turkey Run on Thanksgiving so I have three months to get back to it.

Reduce debt and save money I have done the best at! My car will soon be paid off and my credit card bill will be paid off within the month. My savings account has really gotten a boost this summer with me working the Gems games, my raise at Mercantile and babysitting.

Also I want to give a big welcome to Paisley Sue Niekamp, Brooke Catherine Pohlman and Brinley Lane Tucker all babies of friends that were born in the last three weeks and a congratulations to the Deters who are expecting their first child in March!!!

It's Official...

I will become Mrs. John Flaiz on September 22, 2012!!! Wow that sounds weird...no worries I still expect everyone to call me Terp lol. The meeting with our priest went great, we talked about all the details of what to expect that day and were given some information to help us plan our big day. Yesterday I signed the contract for our reception hall so we are all reserved at both places!! I know we have plenty of time, but we wanted to get the two biggest things done quickly so we could get the date we wanted. We (meaning I) am going to take the next few weeks to enjoy all the good things that are going on in my busy life and then I will get back to wedding planning, Next on the list is photographer, reception music and our attendants...only 424 days to go haha!!

Look at me making two posts in a week...I am trying to do better at this :-) Now back to my book because I am getting behind on that New Year's goal.

The Planning Begins...

I really need to work on posting more often so my posts are so long and full of so much information! First off the new job, well plans have changed and I will be staying at Mercantile. A stupid mistake from my past made the Salvation Army withdraw their offer for the position. Good news though, Mercantile has given me a promotion and an excellent raise. I am now the Marketing Project Manager for the bank. Most of the projects that we do are now my responsibility and my boss is to help with any problems I have and she also does the compliance check and approval.

June 11th I ran my second 5k, but did not improve my time like I wanted too. I guess that's what happens when you go from running 4 days a week to once a month. I really slacked off after I ran my first one, but I am determined to get back into it and improve my time at my next race. I think I will run the 5k Turkey Run on Thanksgiving Day?

And now onto the BIGGEST news...Flaiz and I became engaged on June 25, 2011!!!! We are so excited and I can't wait to plan our big day, but in the mean time we've been busy telling all our friends and family. Our favorite part is seeing the reaction on their faces or hearing it in their voices. Our dream date is 9/22/12, exactly 3 1/2 years after we started dating. We have our first meeting with the priest tomorrow night...how exciting! I've also been calling reception halls, getting pricing information so we can pick one. Those are our two biggest concerns right now so we can get our date set and after that we'll worry about the other details later. We've also been discussing our attendants. What a hard decision! My number I have always wanted was five, but as of now we are up to seven. Flaiz has a lot of close friends as do I and we don't want to leave anyone out of it. We think we can get it down to six if I ask one of my girls to do us another huge favor and he has one of his be an usher. So many decisions, I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings, but I also want those that mean the most to me to be up there with me. What do you do if you have a friend that you don't feel as close to anymore or have been hurt by, but you feel you would hurt their feelings by not asking them? We've got our list made now we just need to make the final decisions. We are not going to ask anyone officially until this fall so we have some time to thing about it. We'll see how things go up until that point.

A New Chapter in Life

It's been about a month since my last post and I am happy to say I can cross two things off my resolutions list! First off I ran my first 5K Saturday, May 14th at the Bridge the Gap to Health race in Quincy, IL with my best friend Kayla. Despite the cold and rainy weather we completed the course in 35 minutes. Not the fastest time, but we can say we finished it. We only had to stop and walk a few times and didn't walk very long, only a couple minutes and then we were back at it. It was so neat to run across both bridges that span the Mississippi River. We are planning to try it again June 11th at the Liberty 5K Fun Run. Hopefully we have some much better weather and can improve our time.

Secondly and the biggest news...starting June 6th I will be the Assistant Marketing Manager for The Salvation Army Kroc Center. I came across this great opportunity the week before we left for Mexico. I sent in my resume and was called the day they received it to come in for an interview. What great news to receive before we left for vacation! The day after we got back I went in for my interview and they called that afternoon to invite me back on Friday. I had to inform my current boss of the situation, to which she discussed with Mercantile and was able to counter-offer the Kroc Center. Last Friday I was offered the position which left a huge decision to be made over the weekend. With Mercantile's offer, both jobs were close in pay and offered similar benefits. After much discussion with family and friends and thoughts of my own I decided to start a new career path and take the job at the Kroc Center. I feel I will have more responsibility and will be busier as this new position. I just didn't know what was going to happen with the bank these days and if I would have stayed what if something would have happened in the next six months and I missed my opportunity? Also if I was so valuable to Mercantile, why did they wait until I was going to leave to offer me a promotion and raise? If they would have offered me something a few months ago, most likely I would not have applied for the Kroc Center position. The hardest part of this process has been telling my boss. She does not want to see me go and I think she is taking it pretty hard. She wanted me to stay longer than I thought I needed to so I had to inform her yesterday of my last day. It was pretty quiet in the office the rest of the day, but I feel this is the right choice for me and my future. I am eager to start this new chapter in my life and see what the future brings.

We've got some busy weekends coming up but I am looking forward to all of them, baby showers, wedding receptions, wedding showers, and camping trips all with great friends! Let's hope the weather shapes up so we can make it out on the river too.

It's been a while...

Wow how fast time flies by! It's been almost two months since my last post and so much has happened. First off we leave for Mexico in less than 20 days...so excited!!! We will be gone for seven days and I am really looking forward to getting away and having no worries for a week. Plus we get to celebrate Jason & Kim's wedding with our good friends. I've started my list of things I need to pack, wow how quickly a week's worth of items add up. I always carry on my luggage for the fear of losing my luggage, but unfortunately I am going to have to take the bigger suitcase this time and will have to check my bag. Wish me luck that it arrives to our destination.

Onto an update on the running. Well it's not going so well. Kayla and I have been training for 14 weeks now and neither one of us feels like we will be able to complete the 5k on May 14th. The training program I found online could not have been for beginners. After 6 weeks we were suppose to be able to run 30 minutes straight without stopping. Monday night I ran for 10 minutes and then stopped to walk for a bit before running again. Not seeing any progress makes us want to quit and give up, maybe we are not fit to be runners? We've quit our training program and for the next five weeks until the race we are just going to run until we can't run no more. We're not giving up, we're just doing whatever we can handle at one time. We're going to try to run the entire 5k, but if we have to we will stop and walk if needed. I will push myself as much as I can in the hopes that I can finish it. We're still going to work on getting back in shape, but we're taking a new approach. We're starting an eight week kettlebell class on our lunch hour Monday and Wednesdays. We're also doing other exercise machines as well as some weight lifting and basic exercises to help us out. We did planks last night, what fun that was...I thought Kayla was trying to kill me!

I'm looking forward to summer, but our weekends are filling up fast. With all the weddings, trips and family events we've got coming up our free weekends are getting slim. Plus sand volleyball starts next week which is very exciting, four teams on three nights this summer. And of course one of our favorite activities, boating season. Hopefully the river stays down so we can make it out as much as possible this summer even with the high gas prices.

I've started my next book, but it's only my third this year. I've gotten behind on my reading lately because I have been trying to catch up on some tv episodes...sad I know. I really want to get back to reading this book though, I've been wanting to read this book for two years. It's one from Jodi Picoult's collection, "Picture Perfect". I will let you know how it turns out, I'm only on Chapter 4.

And finally my last goal, staying in touch with friends. This is a very important goal and something I really need to focus on for the rest of 2011. I had lunch with Carrie on Monday and it was really nice to sit and visit with and old friend that I don't get to see very often. With all of us having such busy lives it's hard to make time for one another, but we need to make time for those moments. Remember life is short and you never know when something could happen.

Well that's all for now stay tuned for the next update...hopefully a little sooner than last time.

Spring is in the Air

I can't believe next week is March already. This year is flying by so fast! I've been so busy the last few weeks and I have not given an update on my progress in the last month. We had some great weather last week and I was able to have my first running experience outside. It was a lot harder than I thought it would be. Running outside is way different than running inside on a treadmill. We are up to 5 minutes intervals now and after my first five minutes outside I felt like I was going to fall over. I was out of breath and my shins hurt severely. Once this nice weather sticks around I am really going to have to get out there and get used to running outside if I am going to run the 5k in about two months. I also got some new running shoes this weekend and I am really looking forward to trying them out this week.

I have also done really good at saving money the last few weeks. I've babysat a couple times and worked at OLC to put some money in the bank. I did my taxes last week and found out my return will be enough to cover my Mexico trip so any extra money I have can go into savings with that paid for and out of the way.

We were doing really good eating at home earlier in the month, but the last couple weeks have been pretty bad. We've been eating out just about all weekend . We had burgers on the grill this past week with the warmer weather so hopefully with Spring coming we can start grilling out more often.

Just a quick update for now, really looking forward to Spring...including sand volleyball!!