Stories from Kristina + Breanne

  Shared by Breanne Smedley A few summers ago, Brett and I went on a vacation with our friends Zach and Kathryn. We had this idea to do annual Smedley-Banning summer trips. The year prior was a fun, adventurous, and relaxing trip to Glacier National Park. The following year, we decided it would be fun to enter as a team in the annual Hoopfest 3 on 3 basketball tournament in Spokane. Well, I think Brett and Zach thought it’d be fun. They both had years of basketball experience under their belts. Kathryn and I thought it’d be more along the lines of hilarious. When Zach signed us up, the registration asked for our basketball experience and height. Zach-6’0”, High School Varsity Brett-6’4”, High School Varsity Kathryn-5’10”, Middle School Breanne-6’0”, 1 week unit in Elementary PE We had a plan though. Brett and Zach would play the whole time and run the show.  Kathryn and I would just switch out for each other and be the decoys. Run around a little bit.  Distract the oppone...

  Shared by Breanne Smedley I can count on one hand how many yellow or red cards I’ve received throughout the past 8 years of coaching. My philosophy on officiating is that there will be a number of calls or non-calls in each match that will go the wrong way, but it usually evens out. As long as it’s consistent on both sides of the next, I tell my players (and myself) to control the controllables. And reffing is not in their control. Getting angry at the refs (who are human) and blowing up for every double they don’t call only distracts from what is in our control: our response, mindset, attitude, and effort. Judgment calls can’t be overturned, anyways. So most of the time it’s useless to protest and just gets players emotionally charged. However, there are some situations when I have felt it necessary to say something. A few seasons ago was one of those times. My team was playing in a match with some young, inexperienced line judges. This happens from time to time, but this was a ...

  Shared by Breanne Smedley This morning, I was wakened like normal to the sound of my alarm coming from my phone at 4:15am. And, as always, I laid in bed and wondered if I can sleep in a little longer. “Maybe I can get ready in 5 minutes instead of 15,” I try to reason. “Or, I’ll push my reading to the afternoon instead of morning.” While I’m wrestling with myself, my phone continues to emit its annoying “cosmic” ringtone sound. If I could, I would press snooze. I can’t though, without having to literally get out of bed and walk into the bathroom. “Why is it so far away?!” The alarm continues to go off and I wonder if I can just sleep through it. However, it’s too loud to ignore. “Who put the alarm on high volume?!” Now, I start to feel bad that the alarm is going off and that it might wake Brett up. The thought of “I’ll just press snooze, then get back in bed” pops into my head and entices me. So, I get out of bed and head to the bathroom. However, by the time I make it into the ...

  Shared by Breanne Smedley Brett and I left on a road trip for Spokane yesterday to visit his parents for the first part of Spring Break. We had the car jam-packed with everything one could need for a three-day trip with a 1-year old. Snacks, toys, books.  Enough clothes to recover from any blowouts or messy meals. We decided to make the drive later, expecting that Charlee would be sleeping for most of it. We’ve taken multiple long car rides with her.  We know the tricks.  In fact, by now, we’ve considered ourselves experienced in baby car travel. I was actually looking forward to the 6-hour car ride to catch up with Brett. Knock out some reading. Do a little writing. I quickly saw those plans diminish a couple hours into the trip. It was now past 7pm, time for Charlee to lull herself into a deep sleep for the next 4 hours of the ride. She was fed. She was in her cozy PJs. She had her teddy and binky. The perfect recipe for sleep. But, Charlee wasn’t having it. She ...

  Shared by Breanne Smedley About a month ago, I was talking to Charlee’s babysitter about how Char has full-on entered into the “get into everything and anything” stage. Cupboards, drawers, cubbies. Anything that’s at eye level or below, and within reach, is fair game to be taken down and thrown on the floor. And now, she’s making a game of how fast she can get to the stairs and start climbing before we chase after and pull her off. So, Brett and I naturally decided we needed to do a better job “baby-proofing” our house. First, pretty much all decorations at three feet or lower had to go.  Which (side note) actually made my minimalist, clutter-clearing self really happy. Then, we started looking on Amazon at the plethora of baby-proof “essentials.” Cabinet locks. Drawer stoppers.  Baby gates.  Outlet covers.  Edge protectors.  Knob covers. Cord protectors.  Toilet lid locks. There’s apparently a market out there for this stuff! “Do we really need all ...

  Shared by Breanne Smedley “The perfect time…” Last month, Kristina and I were walking around the Orlando airport, trying to kill some time before our flight back to Portland. We had just spent the weekend at an event where we dove deep into the vision of Mindfluent Leadership, building a business, and the principles that would guide it. Particularly, honing in on our desires to help free women from the inner critics that hold us back in so many areas of our lives. Beliefs that limit us.  Fears that grip us.  The voice in the back of our minds that “keep us in line.” We were in the beginning stages of creating our entry point challenge. A challenge to help women become aware of their inner judge, and give them the process, and more importantly, community, to start to disengage from it. As we were talking, we began the conversation of when to start building, and potentially launch the program. We talked about the beginning of April and quickly I said, “Nope, that’s Spring...

  Shared by Breanne Smedley This week, I was waiting to head into an Orange Theory class when I overheard a conversation. It was between one of the people who work at the front desk and someone who was taking a class for the first time. It was a pretty typical exchange. The woman was getting set up with her monitor, learning about how the class went, signing her waiver. Even typical was the next question from the front desk agent. “What was your name again?” The woman replied, repeating her name. “I’m sorry, I’m terrible with names!” The receptionist apologized. It got me thinking, because I used to say that all the time too. I’m just bad at “names,” I would tell myself and others. Someone would introduce themselves to me, and minutes later I couldn’t tell you what his or her name was. I’d have to think to myself, “Darn it, what was her name?” Then awkwardly ask again. Or not, and just hope I wouldn’t see that person again to have to ask their name another time. I figured it was ju...

  Shared by Kristina Smedley “Hard Pilates…” “One… Two… Three… Four” “Four… Three… Two… One” And repeat. But slower this time. That’s Lagree Fitness. 40 minutes of non-stop, 1-minute exercises. Always going at this very slow 4 count pace.  Or SLOWER! I call Lagree “hard pilates.” Sennad calls it “the longest workout of his life!” on the Megaformer “death-machine.” I’m not sure if I’ll ever convince him to go again! After some hesitations, I just got back into it after a year away. I remember what I used to be able to do… when I had muscles. Slow 4 count out on the inhale. Slow 4 count in on the exhale. Now, I’m huffing and puffing. My arms are shaking. Everything is giving out and my knees are down before we’re even 30 seconds in to the movement. Dang it! But my competitive juices are firing. The ladies next to me aren’t putting their knees down. I know I can do this! Come on abs. Come on butt. Seriously, quads?! Hold in there. Nope!  Knees down. It’s either that or fall ...

  Shared by Kristina Smedley Process > People” This is probably the last thing you would expect me to write or believe in – process over people. It’ll make sense here in a second. Yesterday, my manager took myself and my two peer managers out for lunch. We went to this little dive bar/restaurant called Slim’s Last Chance. Nestled in a South Seattle industrial area, with a large backyard-like patio and picnic tables, we had some really tasty food. In fact, it was featured in Diners, Drive Ins, and Dives on the Food Network for having great comfort food. Beef brisket chilli. Poured over jalapeno mac & cheese. Topped with sour cream and chives. And a side of cornbread. I didn’t say healthy. But definitely tasty. If only I had time for a nap afterwards! This was our first “Quarterly Forward Thinking” lunch of the year. Where, we will come together and share some of the ideas, struggles, and visions that we’ve been contemplating. We each took a turn. And what we shared varied gre...

  Shared by Kristina Smedley ”Our current debate…” On several occasions, I’ve had leaders and managers at Boeing ask me “how’d you do it? And how can we teach everyone else?” At the time, I didn’t have an answer for them. How did I negotiate a multi-million dollar payment plan and kept the customer on schedule? How did I greatly improve our organization’s relationship with one of our notoriously difficult customers? How did I lead a site-wide initiative that greatly improved safety and won a company-wide award? I honestly didn’t know what to say. I thought my actions were obvious and intuitive. The same actions that anyone else would have taken. Now, I know they aren’t. This awareness came as I was working with a consultant and she said to our leadership team, “relationships are the foundation of accomplishment.” This comment was so obvious to me that I almost didn’t internalize it further. The rest of the group’s eyes widened – “ah-ha!” Suddenly, they saw a whole new way of being,...

  Shared by Kristina Smedley ”Might take some practice…” That’s what I was reading on the blogs before I first tried out my Instapot. Seriously? I might need “some practice” in order to learn how to use the supposed best appliance in my kitchen? The whole reason we got this was so I could just plug it in, throw everything in, hit one button… and ta-da a perfect meal 10 minutes later. I don’t need practice. That must be for people who have hardly stepped foot in their kitchen. Soon after, the perfect day came for pulling out the Instapot. We were planning a girls wine tasting day, finished off with dinner at one of our houses. “Come to my house! We can use my new Instapot!! Plus I already have all the ingredients for Chicken Korma!” Sold! We got home that evening and got to work chopping, slicing, measuring all the ingredients. Eyes burning from all the onions, we dumped everything into the instapot. Put on the lid. Hit the button.  And waited for the magic to begin. We waited....

  Shared by Breanne Smedley “Meal prep…” On any given Sunday, during our family’s busy seasons of life (volleyball/football season), our kitchen looks like a tornado went through it. All four burners on the stovetop cooking something different. Food in the Instant Pot and Crock-Pot. Loads of vegetables chopped up, covering the counters. Multiple kitchen gadgets ready to be used. And, of course, dishes piling up and over the sink. They’re the sights and sounds of meal prep day. Goal: Make two weeks of meals that we can freeze, then just take out and reheat on weeknights. We originally saw this as the solution to our attempts to eat healthy and quickly during the week when we have limited time. We both get home late during our sports seasons, and we don’t want to spend that short amount of time before bed cooking and cleaning pots and pans from dinner. But we also didn’t want to eat out. So, we decided to make every other Sunday a meal prep day to make two weeks of meals for us to ea...

  Shared by Breanne Smedley “If you bake it, they will come…” One of the things I love about teaching at the same school I coach is being able to see my players from day to day. Some of them are in my classes. Others I get to see in passing. For some, I can take a short walk to the lower commons on my lunch to touch base. One of my coaching principles is that relationships are everything. So, the ability to check-in, touch base, and maintain relationships daily is invaluable. However, this year I started noticing a trend. My teaching routine only allows me to see a certain percentage of my players on a regular basis. I noticed that my relationships with the players that my schedule naturally allowed me to come in contact with was stronger. Like a bank account, each interaction I had with them was like a deposit. Some deposits small. A “hi” and a smiling face. Some, larger. Having a long conversation about what’s going on at home. Still, there were many relationships that had a “rem...