Karwoski Life

Many of you know – we welcomed a new member to our little family in July. A 7 month old female yellow lab named Cotton. We’ve spent the past few months acclimating to life with a doggie again…or should I say life with a YOUNG doggie again. Oy. It’s really by chance that we happened up Miss Cotton… While we enjoyed several dog-free months (the first of our entire marriage) my heart still yearned for the love of a dog. While the cats are nice and all – I am a dog person through and through. And while Matt would claim he didn’t really care if we got another dog – he is too. So earlier this summer we started doing some research on dogs, looking mostly at ARL websites and rescue dogs. We both thought we’d like to have another female yellow lab and we’d found a few dogs that looked promising, when I stumbled upon the website of a Labrador breeder close to Des Moines. I was poking through their website, just reading about them and looking at their lovely dogs, when I saw a section about ...

This will come as no surprise to you – I have a lot of emotional baggage tied to the month of September. It’s sad considering how much I love fall and the transition from summer into my favorite times of year. I caught myself thinking about it a lot in August – wondering how I was going to deal with all the pitfalls that were coming up. September holds anniversaries of some truly terrible events in my own life, and those around me. I wondered how I was going to cope with it all. I suppose it’s natural when these anniversaries come up, to think back on what you were doing on that day, to have emotions stirred and to get frozen in time. There have been several Septembers, over these past years, where I found myself mired in grief and the trauma I faced was relived over and over. This year, September brought with it new anniversaries of days filled with tragedy and loss. It marks the one year anniversary of the sudden and unfathomable death of my friend and co-worker Terry. It marks the...

It’s no secret, Matt and I love college football. Already we are gearing up for our Football Saturday tradition, which starts in just a few weeks! We’re starting to make plans to ensure we don’t have any plans, so our Saturdays will be free for our all day/all night football viewing pleasure. It is simply our favorite time of year! The past few years, we've tried to get tickets to both an IA and an ISU game. We've missed a few games here and there, for various reasons, but this year we were all set to get tickets for both again. A few weeks ago I went online and ordered tickets for an IA game and within a few days they arrived in the mail. Our calendar is marked and we are excited for the upcoming trip to Kinnick Stadium…though I truly loath the long drive home, I am preparing to plan ahead a mini-tailgate back at the car after the game. Hopefully avoiding some of the post-game traffic horror that infuriated me last year. Today I went online to see about tickets to a...

Last week marked a couple major milestones in our life – our 15 th wedding anniversary, and our first trip to see REAL mountains (Hawaii & Ireland only have ‘hills’ in comparison). We had booked the trip months and months ago – when curled up on the couch this winter contemplating where to go for our summer vacation. Naturally, our thoughts always turn to Minnesota – and time spent around the lake. But our last trip reinforced the fact that we just NEED to have better accessibility to really enjoy vacation. So we started thinking about other spots and eventually landed on a resort just outside of Estes Park, CO – only minutes from Rocky Mountain National Park. They had an accessible unit which looked like it would meet our needs and so we took a chance and booked it! And I’m SO glad we did!! We split the drive up on the way out (which we would definitely do again, if we go back) and spent an afternoon/evening in Kearney, NE. We wandered around town a bit, checked out a super hila...

Several years ago an old friend of mine from school got together with some other friends and put together an adult theme pr om – for charity. I had seen her pictures and Facebook posts about it before and last year’s Super Hero theme was enough to tempt me and my friend Emily to don crazy ‘Super Emily’ costumes and boogie the night away with a couple hundred ‘super’ strangers. It was a blast – we were hooked and knew that come 2013, we’d definitely have to get our husbands to join us for an out-of-the-ordinary (cuz we hate to do things without a theme) date night. When the prom rolled around this year, it also coincided with my sister’s 40th birthday. A plan begin to formulate in my little brain…how fun would it be to celebrate Hope’s birthday at the PROM!?! Now, normally Hope is not a big fan of dressing up and making a fool of herself. (You should have seen the confused look on her face when Emily and I showed up at Hickory Park in our Super Emily costumes last year… I digress) But...

I feel as though I've been in limbo for several months. I’m in limbo about what to say or not say on this blog…and workout limbo for sure - since the pregnancy and miscarriage.  I’m cautious about how much to share – and keeping a lot to myself these days…which is hard. So here I am – after several weeks – trying to find a balance. Let’s just start off by saying; my body is not where it was a year ago when we started this second round of really trying to get pregnant. (And yes – it’s been about a year.) I was working hard with a trainer, running regularly and staying pretty tight with my food journal. The pregnancy and miscarriage really threw me for a loop though. In the beginning, I was sure that I’d keep up with the trainer throughout my pregnancy – be one of those healthy moms I've seen working out right up to the very end. But losing the baby so early – made me pause. Did I push too hard? Was I working too much? Obviously I knew very early on that I was...

So it’s the start of a new year (ish), and that always prompts a little spring cleaning around the office. If you’ve ever had the pleasure of visiting my little corner of cubicle world – you know that I have very little blank space on my gray walls. I mean, who wants to look at sad, drab, gray walls all day?? When not busy working, of course. I prefer to look up and see things that make me smile; happy mementos of fun times, pictures my favorite kids have made me, photos from awesome places I’ve been, certificates of accomplishment (both professional and personal) which inspire me, all sorts of things which remind me of the countless blessings in my life. For a long time – seven years, to be exact – I had this picture of Matt and me from vacation 2005. It was his 30th birthday and he had caught that really awesome walleye, while I had caught a couple small perch. I’ve posted this picture before – it’s definitely a favorite…special in so many ways. I used to look at the picture long...