Goodbye 2010...

This year started off pretty badly. Wayne had just had to wind up his business and was officially unemployed. I was about to go back to work full time, absolutely dreading it but knowing we needed the money or we could end up losing the house. The lowest point was probably one bleak January morning when bailiffs came knocking at the door at 7am to repossess Wayne's plumbing van...he had to unload the entire contents, all his tools, into the kitchen while 2 big, burly men watched his every move. Awful, awful times. The only good things were of course Jamie, and bump no.2 who was about 20 weeks old in my tummy.

Things continued to be pretty tough, Wayne struggled to find any work but eventually was forced to resort to a minimum wage job in a plant nursery. My gran was very ill and we almost lost her in March, but she is a tough cookie and hung on. I was hating every minute of being at work, counting down the minutes til I could leave, and even considered starting maternity leave early to get away from it.

But then one amazing night in May, our beautiful Daisy was born and since then things have just got better and better. She has been an angel from the start, Jamie adapted well to being a big brother, and life as a family of four felt so right. Then in September, Wayne got a new job and suddenly everything changed - I no longer needed to go back to work and could have the thing I'd always so badly wanted - to be a stay at home mum to my gorgeous babies. The icing on the cake was our engagement on my birthday in November.

And finally, a shout out to my gran, Edith, who is 95 years old and still fighting on. She's in a nursing home now and is very frail, but she is a total inspiration to me and I'm so proud of her.

Running!

I've always wanted to be able to run. At school I was good at sprinting, and loved doing the 100 metres, but cross country was a different story - I HATED it! A few years ago, I decided I was going to learn to run, and entered the Cheltenham Race for Life. I started doing a walk/run program, which builds you up gradually to being able to run for 30 minutes. And I did it - I completed the R4L on a boiling hot July day, and it was great. Then I stopped, and although I did a lot of exercise - body pump and combat classes at the gym and kickboxing lessons, I never went back to running.

Skip forward 4 years and I haven't done any proper exercise since I was about 16 weeks pregnant with Jamie. The other day, a friend tagged me in a photo on Facebook, that was taken at a wedding we went to in July. Daisy was about 8 weeks old at the time. Well, I looked huge! I know I had recently given birth, and I was wearing quite unflattering clothes, but the image stuck in my head and I decided there and then that I was going to start running again. I talked to Wayne and he said he'd look after the kids when he gets home from work at 4.15pm, so that I can go out running.

I'm following the walk/run program again, which starts with "run 60 secs, walk 90 secs, x 8 reps". Doesn't sound like much to run for a minute, but it's soooo hard! I am determined to stick with it though, as I know it works and in a few weeks I'll be able to run for 30 mins...seems like an impossibility at the moment but I am going to get there!