A 5K and A Bloody Nose

August is just flying by, and the MOPS group at our church is just two weeks away from our kick-off night! The last week has been full of lots of emails back and forth between those of us on the leadership team, me emailing moms about turning in their registrations, actually registering moms on the MOPS website, planning a craft play date with the other hospitality leader (which we then missed thanks to all the snot from our summer colds), plus all our usual weekly things like grocery shopping and cleaning.

I'm so excited for the group of moms who will be meeting together, and the relationships we'll build by sharing the joys and struggles of mommyhood. Our leadership team has a retreat this evening to focus on the theme of the year: a fierce flourishing. As MOPS International lays it out, this includes celebrating lavishly, embracing rest, and noticing goodness.

 screentime- motherhood at it's finest

In other news, this past weekend I ran the River Valley Run 5K with my sister-in-law, Lydia. I ran this race last year, and loved the race and supporting River Valley Ranch. It was Lydia's first ever race, and she totally rocked it! I'm pretty sure her time was faster than any of my first 5Ks- and that was even with her having to stop for a minute because she had a cramp. I love when people I love start running! And she's already saying she wants to do a 10K- and of course I say, bring it on!

I ended up being first female, but only in the last few seconds! There was another girl ahead of me for most of the race, and whenever I caught up to her during the second half, she would pull ahead. I booked it at the end and finished right in front of her (which I feel kind of bad about since she had the lead for the majority of the time!). Lydia and I grabbed some post-race food (yay for Chick Fil A), and ended up talking to a girl who is at Grove City currently. It was a fun morning, and way less stressful for me than last year since I didn't have to rush home to a nursing baby!

Speaking of the baby who used to nurse, on Sunday evening I was laying on the couch playing with him. He kept laying down on my chest, and then at one point must have moved up a little, because he came down hard and bashed me on my nose. It hurt so much, and immediately blood came gushing out.  I sat up and started screaming for Luke to come help me while catching blood in my hand. I don't know that I've ever had a nose bleed in my life and couldn't remember if I was supposed to lean back, or if that would cause me to choke on my own blood.

Luke came running down the stairs and told me to lay down while he grabbed paper towels. By that point the blood was dripping down my shirt, onto my legs, down my arm. And then the pain really started to sink in, and I told Luke I thought I was going to pass out. I have this thing where unexpected pain causes the vasovagal response, but it hasn't happened in a while and usually laying down helps me avoid it. But, according to Luke, I passed out, came to and stood up, passed out again, came to and stood up again, and passed out. I never passed out for more than a few seconds, and when I came to the last time, I just laid there until I felt okay about sitting up.

Thankfully there was no broken nose, and I was wearing a dark colored shirt so there shouldn't be any visible blood stains, right? And now I have a big fear of Jonah's incredibly hard head coming anywhere near my face!