For Grandma

Okay, so Grandma requested I get onto writing a blog post since I haven’t updated in awhile, so here goes…

Yes, I am still running!  Bart thinks I look like a sushi chef below!  I have been making progress in the running department, but it is such a touch and go thing. One day I will have a great run where my feet feel light and nothing hurts.  Another day, my feet feel like bricks and everything hurts. I have changed some things up while I have run from every day to every other, and it has helped me increase my length of running.  I’ve run my own neighborhood 5ks a few times, and it feels good to accomplish that.  I did have to take my fancy Asics back and get a different pair of running shoes because the Asics were killing my feet! I found out that I was not fitted well the first time, and now I love my running shoes.

I am really hoping I can make running a life long exercise routine because there’s nothing better than being able to just step outside your house and get your exercise on.  I may have to switch to the gym though when the Texas heat kicks in.

Something has clicked at the house lately with the girls, and we have been really enjoying time spent together and at home. I don’t know if it’s their age, or if magic fairy dust has been sprinkled, but family life is good.  I’m finding that although I do miss spending time with my girlfriends, my own little family trumps everything.  I would rather spend my Saturdays in the pool with my kidlets and hubby.  And we have warmed up our pool already, and yes, we have some nudie swimmers in our pool…and no, it’s not mom and dad. Ha!

Easter was great and spent at Grandma K’s! And Grandma lets the girls do anything they want, so when it rained on Easter, they had a great time in her backyard playing under their own umbrellas.  The girls were in heaven!  And the highlight of Izzy’s egg hunt was finding a slug!  She was enamored by it!

This Momma’s getting a new (well, new to me) car! And yes, technically the car I drive now is recently new, but I fell in love with hubby’s recently new car.  Bart had to trade his car in because he was way too big for his car…we literally had a kid’s feet touching the back of his seat at all times in order to get his 6’3 frame in the car.  When he drove the Ford Flex with the quad seats with walkthrough to third row, we were sold!  It’s got SO much room in it…and his head isn’t touching the ceiling either.  Well, I decided I would love a car too with options of actually getting to the third row.  My car now has a third row, but it is basically unuseable because you can barely get to it with two car seats in the third row, and there’s no safety feature to put a car seat in the third row. Anyways, with that said, my car is coming…uh, has been in the process of being transferred for almost 3 weeks now!  Ugh!  Supposedly it should be getting in next week, and it better! Or I am hurting someone at Carmax! And yes, Mommy and Daddy will both have swagger wagons!

School pictures came in this week, and some were really cute, and some were freaking hilarious!  Izzy’s face is so funny! I can tell she is bracing herself for the flash!  Gotta love this girl!

 

Okay, Grandma, I hope you are satisfied now.;)

Come on delivery guy!

Yes, I copy my sister. My sister recently Instagrammed her new bedding, and I fell in love!  I’ve been wanting to change the look of my bedroom for awhile now, and when I saw this bedding, I knew it would be perfect.  Also, because our dogs sleep in our bed at night, we have to be able to wash our bedding weekly, so comforters are always out of the question because king size comforters don’t fit in our washing machine. With that said, we always need some sort of quilt like bedding.

Can’t wait until this comes in!

And I got it all done in 3 1/2 Hours!

I totally gotta blog about my night last night!

Here is my crazy life…

I have decided that I detest grocery shopping on the weekends, so last week I grocery shopped on Friday.  Well, this week I decided that I’d rather even bump that up a day, so I grocery shopped on Thursday instead.

4:30-5:30 Grocery shopped

5:30-6:00 Put groceries away while two naughty toddlers try to look in every bag and see if I got any goodies for them.

6:00-6:30 Cook dinner for hubby and myself.  I made us grilled chicken sandwiches. They were pretty yummy!

6:30-7:00 Swap living room furniture again!  Yes, again!  My husband and I are into house decor and have been having trouble getting our other living area to look the way we want it to look, so we thought the fix might be to swap out the two living area furniture sets.  Wednesday night we did this, and guess what, it wasn’t great.  Thursday night we switched it all back again. We did make a few changes that we think overall added to the look of the front room living area.

7:20-7:50: Take my nightly run!  Yes, you heard that right…a run…and at night!  A few days ago I think I almost or kinda hurt my knee because I was taking too many routes in my neighborhood that were hilly, and I was probably pushing it too hard too. Last night I took a flat route and really worked on pacing myself, and I was pleased that I was able to run almost the entire time, and my legs weren’t killing me either. I do think I need some better shoes too. I got new tennis shoes this year, but I don’t think they are necessarily the right shoes for me for running. I’m hoping I have a repeat tonight of last night’s epic run. ;)

Yep, I got a lot accomplished in a short amount of time last night!  Go me! ;)

Does this blog make my butt look big?

Ha!  I figured out if I was going to write about my get fit journey, I might as well have a crafty title!  I have to say, I am getting frustrated trying to lose weight. Yesterday was one of those days that I was so down about it that I just about talked myself into going to McDonald’s to get one of the Shamrock Shakes…gosh, do I ever want one!!! My scale has not been budging much for awhile, and I have been truly good about the clean eating and keeping within my calories, but lordy the weekends are tough!  I think I need to be better about planning my grocery shopping prior to the weekend, otherwise I end up eating out most of the weekend until my fridge gets stocked again. I also need to switch up my gym routine and get more out of my comfort zone.  I really want to be a runner, but my legs tell me otherwise, but last night I think I might have had my own little running high.  I started some speed walking in my neighborhood last night while the girls were in the bathtub, and then I got lapped from behind by a husband and wife running team pushing their baby in the jogging stroller.  That lit the fire under my feet that I could run too gosh dang it. I ended up running back to my house after that, which don’t get me wrong, wasn’t a long run, but actually it also didn’t hurt.  I think that speed walking loosened up my legs enough that running actually felt, dare I say, good! Also, it was getting dark, and there’s something kind of neat about running in the almost dark that you can just let your mind go and not focus on the someone is driving past me and probably making fun of me running. Ha!

I’m going to give it a try again tonight, and we’ll see how it goes!

Age 4 the miracle twin age…nope! What about 5?

I have a friend that has twins several ages above mine, and she used to always say that 4 was the miracle age where she started thinking that she could have another one because her twins had become so easy.  She talked about them playing in their rooms for hours on end, and how she finally felt like she had some of her life back.  Well, I’ve decided this MUST be because her twins were boy/girl twins.  Yep, there’s my problem…I have twins of the same gender!  And goodness, these twins are naughty! 

Let’s talk about some of the recent incidents of naughtiness:

• Both came home from pre-k a few weeks ago with naughty notes from their teacher.  Gwen lied and blamed Izzy for something she did.  Izzy refused to clean up in centers. The teacher asked in her note whether we were seeing any of these behaviors at home…well, what do you think?  Of course…unfortunately! :(
• One evening when I had the girls on my own for the night because daddy was working on his latest webisode, I was snuggling Izzy in her bed.  Both girls started complaining about various aches and pains. I told them that they sounds like a bunch of old people, and Izzy turned to me and said, “well, you’re fat!”.  Let’s just say that did not go over well with me!  Don’t worry, her apology the next morning wasn’t much better when she tried to tell me that she thought I ate too much.  Lord, help me.  The teenage years are going to be SO MUCH fun at my house!
• Every night at bedtime lately, both girls freak out when it’s time to turn the TV off.  Gwen will fall to the ground and say she’s too tired to move.  Izzy will cry and throw a fit as soon as the TV screen goes dark. Let’s just say don’t be at my house anywhere near bedtime.

Okay, okay, now that I have delved into their naughtiness, let’s talk about some of their sweet moments lately.

• Gwen will often rattle off who she loves.  She will say, “I love my Daddy, my Mommy, Gatsby, Booger, and my whole family.”
• Gwen now likes to give you a “special” kiss which means you get a kiss on each cheek.
• Izzy loves to snuggle her Momma!  She loves her Daddy, but she pleads for me to snuggle her each night.
• Izzy has taken to waking up on her own several mornings, and when I ask her why she is waking up early, she will say it is because she misses me!

Let’s hope 5 turns out to be the miracle age…but I’m not holding my breath on that one!

Thoughts about food

So, I am currently a little obsessed thinking about food lately. My main obsession is how to eat cleanly.  By cleanly I mean little to no processed foods. If you have ever seen Food Inc, it is a total eye opener about food.  I saw it a few years ago, and let’s just say that grass fed beef was a priority after seeing the film.  If you have not seen the film, I highly recommend it!  Now that I am counting my calories, I am seeing actually how many calories are in processed foods. Now I can clearly see why we have an epidemic of diabetes and obesity.

Last night I was reading Food Rules by Michael Pollan, and it basically gives you a guide to eating healthy.  The rules make so much sense!  I love how he talks about “food like substances”.  Food like substances are basically processed foods that resemble real food but in actually are not real food.  It makes me think about all the cheese puffs my girls eat.  Yeah, I’m pretty sure those are just food like substances.  Then this puts me off onto another tangent that yes, I may be working on what I feed myself, but I also need to focus on what I feed my girls.  I know I have created these cheese puff eating monsters, but how do I change that? 

Another thing that I have been thinking about is how expensive real food can cost.  Grass fed beef…cage free chicken = expensive!  Organic fruit = yikes!  I can definitely see why we eat more processed cheaper stuff.

Updated:  I wrote this blog post last week as a draft, and I now have started Mission Impossible: Can I get my kids to eat better?  Well, the answer is yes, it is possible!  I made a trip to Sprouts this weekend and replaced some of their favorites with more expensive, but healthier favorites! Now I am not going to tout that I am perfect in this arena, because they are still eating stuff that ideally they shouldn’t, but they are at least better replacements.  Sprouts has a great assortment of snacky stuff that they were happy to eat in place of their usual Cheetos and fruit snacks. 

The girls HATE the food served at their Pre-K, so I am excited about sending them to school next year with their own lunch from home.  I am totally digging the whole Bento phase right now…and would love to experiment with it some this summer.  Although, ask me next year how I like making lunches, and my whole excitement about it may be long gone…ha! Although if it saves me money, I’ll be making those lunches!

 

Okay, enough talking about food! ;)

Why is this so dang hard?

Well, isn’t everyone blogging about trying to lose weight in the new year?  I guess I better join too! ;)

A little background on my weight issues (OMG, am I really writing about this?)…

I have always been a petite kinda gal, and the kinda gal who never even thought about her weight.  Weight was never an issue for me…you can probably see where this is going. Fast forward now to getting pregnant with twins.  While I was pregnant with the girls, I had hyperemesis gravidarum from week 6 to week 16.  I spent lots of time in the hospital, I had my own home healthcare nurse, I was on TPN at one point, and I even had a Zofran pump through a PICC line in my arm. Sounds lovely, doesn’t it? While dealing with hyperemesis, I lost a good amount of weight.  Once the hyperemesis wore off, it was ON with the food!  I could not get enough food while pregnant with the girls…and restaurant food was my favorite! 

After having the girls, the weight came off very quickly.  I was within 10 pounds of my prepregnancy weight probably 2 weeks after having them.  I never got down to my fighting weight, but I still thought I looked pretty good for having twins.

Fast forward to now, hmmm…over the last year and half, I have quickly put on more weight that I want to mention.  I think a lot of the weight is due to meds that I take, but I think also that plain ol’ not watching what I am eating and getting older are taking their toll on my body.  And guess what, this really sucks! 

I cannot say that I have sat around and done nothing about it. Starting last year, I have been going to my gym pretty faithfully.  I probably took a workout class every day this past summer. And guess what, still no weight loss…argh!  I am now really counting my calories hard core, and guess what, that sucks too! Ha! I’ve been going to the gym a couple mornings a week at 5AM.  Yes, you read that right, 5AM!  I have finally concluded that it sucks a lot more to work out after a long day at work or after my kids have gone to bed than it does to just do it in the morning.  I actually enjoy the morning workouts…I catch up on my morning news and I feel like I am starting my day off already having accomplished a lot.  The weird thing is, I still get ready at the same time.  I shaved 30 minutes off my getting ready time, but apparently I must just move faster then.

I am using the MyFitnessPal app on my iPhone to track my calories, and I think at some point I am going to have to buy a scale because some things are by ounces, and I have no clue what an ounce of lunchmeat looks like.

I have been having some headaches through this week, but after talking to some people who know their fitness, I think it’s mainly due to my body adjusting to all the change.  It’s not used to being denied its Joe’s Pizza or daily Coke!  Ha!  I had the same issues when I was doing Herbalife for awhile, and I think I just need to ride out the yucky feeling.  Today, I am actually feeling pretty good.

Here is where I KNOW I am going to struggle…the weekends!  The weekends are usually the time we go out to eat and generally reward ourselves through making it through our crazy week. I may have to pick a weekend day that I will let be my cheat day…I just hope my cheat day doesn’t negate all the other good days. 

Well, there you go on my weight history!