Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Motivated


I am trying hard to be more motivated.  Motivated to eat better. Motivated to get more exercise. Motivated to just get healthier.  Thus the  shot of my favorite walking trail.  I have missed it!  I can't wait for it to be more light when I get off work so I can go more than just the weekends.

I have really been trying to choose more healthy foods as well.  And it's working!  It's actually kind of strange to see the scale go in the right direction for once.  I got a gift card to buy some clothes for my trip for my birthday and I was chomping at the bit to go spend it but now I think I am going to wait until closer to the date of the trip and see if I can lose a bit more before I buy new clothes in my current size(that was the longest run-on sentence ever).

Anyway, I have been eating better. Part of that has been trying not to eat so much sugar.  I think I have a sugar addiction.  I really do.  I'm not one to eat baked goods or chocolate but I love sour candy type things.  I don't usually keep that kind of thing in the house but occasionally I will pick up some skittles or other candy and I always end up eating it sometime in the period after dinner before bed and I crave it.

But I have been very good about not eating any sugar.  Until tonight.

This is the conversation Joe and I had after dinner tonight:

Me:  I feel so guilty

Joe: Why?

Me: I kind of fell off the wagon with the whole cutting down on sugar thing

Joe:  How? I didn't see you eat any sugar.

Me: Well I did.  And I feel guilty about it.

Joe: Well nothing can be done about it now.  What did you eat?

Me:  I ate a whole box of tic tacs.

Joe:  Whoa.  Tic tacs?  A whole box?  Man I hope you don't gain back all that weight you lost.  Eating Tic Tacs.  (rolling his eyes).

Me:  Whatever.  They are like 1 calorie each and I ate a whole box. It very well could affect my weight loss for the week!

Joe:  Riiiiiggghhhhtttt.


He is so supportive of me.   :)

One thing I am finding about eating healthier(I am not calling it a diet) is that I have to be way more prepared and bring a lot of my own food to work so I don't end up eating/snacking on the wrong foods during the day.

After a week of rushing around in the mornings trying to throw something together for lunch and finding that I have absolutely nothing to store my food in I decided I need to be more organized about how I go about this.

So last Saturday night I re-organized my tupperware cupboard.  Yes, you read that right.  I spent a Saturday night organizing my *tupperware*.   Don't be jealous.  I really know how to party.

It's kind of unbelievable how disorganized that cupboard was.

Here is the before:

Pretty much none of those items had lids.  Most of it went into the trash



My sister's cat decided to help out



Don't worry. This basket was washed out with a bleach/water solution after she "helped" me.

Here is the basket after


and the cupboard


Ahhhhh...........much better.  Doesn't it feel good to be more organized? Now if only I could get it in gear to start on the rest of the house.


It's so  much easier to get my lunch ready to take along to work now.  

Wow.  That was pretty much the most boring blog post ever.  Not a lot going on in my life right now. LOL.


Monday, January 23, 2012

Continual Catch Up



I suck at blogging lately.

I feel like I am in a continual state of catching up.  I want to keep this as my online scrapbook but I can't seem to make it here regularly so I think I am going to not stress so much about the frequency and focus on the content.  If I don't have anything to post, then I won't.  Maybe two or three times a month is all I can do right now and that's o.k.

I never did get around to posting about my birthday and now it seems so long ago.   It was a wonderful day.  Low key and nice.  My sister got me a Keurig(I know!).

 Oh my gosh I am in love.  How did I ever live without this thing in my life?


O.K. that might be slightly overdramatic but I really love it.  The coffee is just so good and it is prefect for when I am running out the door and don't have time for a whole pot of coffee to brew.  It even has a small filter than you can use your own coffee in if you don't want or run out of the K cups it uses.  Love it.




Here I am with my birthday cake, that Joe insisted on putting all 41 candles on and it almost burned the house down.  Seriously.  That was a lot of smoke when I blew those out.


Let's see, what else?

I made a pact with myself(not a new year's resolution-those never last :) to eat healthier and exercise more. I am following a program but I won't bore you with the details her but it is working so far and I have lost some weight which makes me very happy.

I am back to walking and am loving it.  I forgot how much I loved it until I started doing it again.  Funny how that works.  Also funny(but not really) how easy it is to not do it, even though you know you will feel better afterwards.


I have also started doing quite a bit of yoga(thus the lotus flower at the top of the post.  I have only recently discovered them and they are so beautiful!) and I love how I feel afterwards.  I have a couple of beginner's tapes that I really love and aren't that difficult for my out of shape body to do.  Overall I am just starting to feel better.



I have an fun trip coming up and I am beyond excited.  I have already have some of my outfits planned out and it's still a month away.  Lisa said I am weird but I haven't been on a real vacation in two years and I can hardly wait.  A girl can never be too prepared!




Saturday, January 14, 2012

Christmas

Playing catch up.  I suppose I should start in chronological order so that makes Christmas up first.

I didn't get a lot of time off for Christmas this year. At my job we only took one day, which was the day after Christmas.

In fact this is actually the first year *ever* since I started working when I was 15 that I didn't get at least a week off for  the holidays.

I have worked at either a preschool or grade school my whole life until I got my last job and then for the last four years that job took off two weeks at Christmas as well.

It's nice to have the time off.  But it sucks to have to save all of your paid time off for that, or even worse to not get paid at all(like at my last job).  It made for a very lean Christmas and New Years.  It was nice to go into the holiday without the worry that we would be flat broke the week following.

But it made for a  quick trip again up North, like it was at Thanksgiving.  I took off the 23rd so we could at least have one extra day for travel.

We left at the crack of dawn(as usual) and got up to my sister's around noon.  It was a relaxing day. We laid around and watched movies, ate far too much and generally just kicked back.  Exactly what a vacation should be.  I watched White Christmas(my fav!) while Joe took a nap because he was deathly ill with the flu/a nasty cold(which I now have.  Lovely).

The next day was Christmas Eve day and somehow we found ourselves at the mall buying last minute presents and using the gift cards that were burning holes in Grace and Cameron's pockets that Papa and Uncle Kenny had sent up with us.

I know this is a stupid question, and your answer is going to be "Well DUH!",  but did you know that you shouldn't go to the mall on Christmas Eve Day? No really.  You shouldn't.  People are CRAZY.  And there will be nowhere to park.  And people are crazy.  Won't be doing that again any time soon.

For Christmas Eve dinner we went for easy this year and ordered Thai food. It was delicious.

Cameron and Grace each got to open a present.  Cameron chose what he thought was a video game(it was-shocker) and Grace chose a board game.  Cameron quickly ensconced himself in Lisa's bedroom to play his video game and Lisa, Joe, Grace and myself retired to the dining room to play her game.

It's called "Blokus".   It is a fun game but it's not my cup of tea.  It is a spatial strategy game and I suck at those.  Apparently.  Because I kept losing.  Give me a word game, or even a card game any day over this kind of game. Lisa,  Joe and Grace really liked it though and we had a fun time playing so that's all that matters. I guess. (sore loser much?  LOL).

See how thrilled I look to be playing? This after I lost. Twice.  Hmph.



Grace was quite good at it



After that  we settled in to watch "A Christmas Story"(you'll shoot your eye out kid).  It was on a 24 hour continual loop on one of the channels.  Funny.  I think we actually ended up watching it one and a half times, just because it was on and no one bothered to change the channel.  Joe and I didn't make it to church(again) this year because Joe was so sick and just wasn't feeling up to it.  Last year it was me that was not feeling well with a horrible migraine.  




Then Lisa and Grace got into their matching P.J.'s   I was super jealous that I didn't have some matching P.J.'s too(hint hint).  And they have owls on them!  So cute!




After that we headed to bed to wait for Santa to come in the morning. O.K., no one in the Smith household believes in Santa anymore.  Except me.  Just kidding.  Sort of.


                                      



 


On Christmas morning the kids let us sleep until 7:30(yay for the kids being older and not getting us up at 5 a.m. anymore!)


Grace is playing Santa and passing out the presents and Cameron is helping Finn open one of his presents.  I think he got more presents than Joe did. No joke.  He even had his own stocking.

                                               
                                             

Cameron opening the one present he was really hoping to get.  Mom came through again.  Mom rocks!  

                                               

After presents Lisa made a yummy breakfast and we ate far too much and laid around the living room playing with our new toys.

Breakfast casserole plus the traditional cinnamon rolls. Yum!

                                      


Sweet Finn chillaxing after the present opening.



It's a shame that he is so unloved.   ;)




Some of the big hits this year were an Xbox game that has an actual guitar and it teaches you how to play, plus more video games than I can count for Cam. His Dad got him a Kindle Fire too!  He really made out.

For Grace, she is  getting into clothes so she got a few cute outfits, plus a couple of matching ones for her AG doll.  She also got a new art set to keep at her Dad's so she can paint when she's there, and a disabled set for her American girl dolls, which she really wanted.  She had asked for the wheel chair but she got this one instead because it came with more "stuff". 
 Funny, I remember pretending my dolls had injuries/disabilities at her age too.



With the gift card that Papa & Uncle Kenny gave her she went to Target and got these strange little things:



                              
They are called Zoobles and the best way I can think of explaining them is that they are a cross between Littlest Petshop and Poke balls(both of which I only know about because I used to work at a daycare center.  If you aren't a parent I am probably speaking Greek to you right now).
They are kind of cute little guys.


Here Grace is showing them off for Papa & Uncle Kenny.  Thanks for the Zoobles Papa & Uncle Kenny!


Cameron chose a racing game with the Gamestop gift card from Papa and Uncle  Kenny.  Uncle Joe and he played for a bit.  I think Cameron won.





Lisa got me a Kindle Fire(so cool!!-more on that later) plus the camera.  She also got me some soaps from LUSH, which is one of my favorite things on the planet.  Love me some handmade soaps.  I really made out this year too.  Joe got a cool tablet for the computer that you can draw on and it transfers to the computer screen, plus some wooden puzzles he likes and a book on making soup. He has taken over most of the cooking and had wanted to try his hand at making different kinds of soup.  I can't wait to see what he comes up with.

Overall it was a lovely Christmas and hard to come home after such a short time.



When we left on the 26th Lisa was in bed with the stomach flu that she had come down with in the middle of the night. This delayed our depart time by a few hours, as I stayed to clean up the house and make sure she was set up with Gatorade, saltines and chicken broth before the kids went with Scott for the night.

We didn't end up leaving until almost two o'clock in the afternoon and it took us almost 8 hours to get home.  Blech.  We got home around 10:00 in the evening and I promptly went to bed so I could go to work the next day.

Exactly 24 hours after coming home I was deathly ill with the stomach flu too.  Ugh.  No fun at all!

Thankfully there were no doctors in the office that week so I was able to take a couple of sick days to get over it before going back to work on Friday.

Then about three days after getting over the stomach flu I came down with the nasty chest cold that Joe and everyone I worked with had.  I still have it, two weeks later and it does not seem to be getting better.  Double blech.  I am on antibiotics now so I hope it kicks it out soon.  I am so done with being sick.  

Well that was our Christmas.  It's funny how it seems like it was so long ago.

How was your Christmas?  Did Santa bring everything you asked for?   :)

Next up:  New Years.














Friday, January 13, 2012

Long Time No See

I'm back!  I didn't mean to be gone for so long.  It wasn't my choice.  Since a few days before Year's Eve our internet has been down.

16 looooonnnnnnggggg days.  I'm  not even sure how I survived actually.  ;)

Anyway, a lot has happened since I was last here.

Christmas.

New Years.

My Birthday.

Those three things always come in such quick succession after Thanksgiving is done.

Christmas was fabulous, New Years was uneventful and my birthday was o.k.

I will be going back and doing posts about all three but for now I am tired from being sick for two weeks(so over it) that I am going to go watch a movie and veg.


Here's a couple of pictures taken over the last few weeks with the new camera Lisa got me for Christmas.

It's the Sony Cybershot HX5V.  I love, love, love it.  It takes great pictures for a point and shoot and performs very well in low light, which is something I really wanted.


Joe took this picture of me on New Year's Eve out on our patio.  Love the soft glow of the lights in the background.






And here is a picture of Gizmo at Christmas.  Isn't that the cutest face you've ever seen?  Don't be 
fooled.  She will bite your face off if she doesn't like you.  

Seriously.  Be afraid.







More pictures to come.

I am glad to be back!  Did everyone have a nice holiday?  Kind of hard to believe it's over!  It goes by too quickly.

I have missed you all!  Hopefully I can get caught up this weekend.