Tuesday, January 31, 2012

gettin' jiggle with it

yup, that is exactly what I did last night.
I received a package in the mail yesterday! I was so excited as I opened it up & saw Jillian Michaels staring back at me. My 30 day Shred baby!
I am so not an exercise dvd gal, shoot I am not even an exercise gal period. So after being mistakenly identified as someone who is pregnant, a friend suggested this dvd. So off to Amazon I went and ordered this bad boy.
I fed the kids, threw them in the shower & we started this adventure together. That was a big mistake.
At first Sebastien was my cheerleader. "Come on Mommy you can do it" or "Come on Mommy you look so much prettier than those ladies on TV"
Ok so the last one was a stretch. I did like him pushing me & telling me I could do it, but then the laughter ensued. Not little 4 year old giggles, no, I am talking about hysterical laughter. As I was doing jumping jacks, I thought is my son laughing at me? He laughed the whole 20 minutes of the workout. When I asked him what he was laughing at he just replied  "nuttin"
I discussed this with Steven this morning & all I got out of him was that he was mad that I exercised in front of Sebastien but have told him flat out I will not do this in front of him. Husbands! Like I want him to see all the wrong jiggle while Ms. Michaels is yelling at you 4 more!
Lets just say I am sore as .... today, that 20 minutes totally kicked my butt & now all the boys in my house are banned from watching me get jiggle with anything!

Monday, January 30, 2012

Monday

My Life Comes with fine print

I did a little link up over at My Life comes with fine Print.
 I know it is Monday & you all know how I feel about that! This put everything in prospective.

This is what made my day today:

This shiny yellow thing in the sky:


After weeks of snow, ice and rain this was a welcomed sight. I know we don't get to see it much in these parts. I know it is hard to see, but it's there!

These guys:

Even with being 4, Sebastien most of the time still wants to sit and snuggle with Mommy. Although he will flat out deny it if you ask him! Sawyer is becoming such a big boy, I can not believe he is turning 1 in little over a month!

This guy:

Seriously, he is HE-Man in my book. He puts up with all my shite (and there is a lot of it) We did our taxes ourselves this weekend & this guy sat there while I ranted the whole time. Now that is love peoples!

So what made your Monday?

Wednesday, January 25, 2012

weight loss train

toot, toot......it is time for me to board this train for real!

A few days ago I was working at my desk, a co-worker that works on-call & whom I have not seen in a while came up to say hi. We had a nice chat & before he meandered off asked "So we having a boy or girl" pointing at my stomach. I turned to see if maybe he was talking to someone behind me, only to see my desk staring back at me. I smiled politely as a vision passed through my head of strangling him. I laughed it off & told him nope just baby fat from the last one. I could clearly see he was embarrassed but I just wanted to instinctively run and find a corner where I could curl up into the fetal position and cry my little eyes out.

I think this is where I hit rock bottom. I have been always wanting to lose a few here & there. After Sebastien was born, I told myself I was going to work it all off. I gained like 45 pounds with that boy! I did ok for a while but I hit a bump & stopped trying. I even went to the gym 3 days a week & the whole nine yards, but life just got in the way.With Sawyer I was a little better & only gained like 11 pounds, but those boys have done a wonder to my stomach. It is like I have a fanny pack around my waist.
I confess I hate having a muffin top. I never truly knew what this meant until I tried to squeeze my bigger butt into my pre-pregnant pants. It was not pretty people!

After going home & doing a marathon Splash Dance workout  thinking, I realized that I just liked to bitch about it more than I wanted to do anything about it. It was always an excuse.
I realized that there are a few things I need to change:
  1. I want to eat healthier. I think we do ok, but I know we can do better. With our busy lives it is hard not to just grab or throw some kind of food object from a box at each other. I also realized Steven fries everything & I mean EVERYTHING! While that may be good once in a while, I do not think our weekly meal of fried eggrolls, potstickers, or tatar tots is all that good for us.
  2. Alcohol - yes I like to throw down some, sometimes too much. When I used to count calories or tried the whole weight watcher points thing, I would purposely eat lower foods to make sure I had left over calories or points for drinks.....that's just not right. Beer is packed with way too many calories. A few brewskies practically equals a meal!
  3. I need to get my butt up and move. I walk every where & I have the legs & calves to prove it. It is just the rest I need to work on. I have curves in all the wrong places. I used to think my Wii Fit was the answer until after a month it sat in our TV cabinet collecting dust. 
So instead of wanting to kill this fellow co-worker (for the record, I do not think I look at all pregnant) & then crawl into a hole & die, I want to thank him for making me see the error in my ways. Also for making me realize that as much as I bitch about something nothing is going to happen unless I make it happen.
I now have some extra mini-goals in my 52 week challenge & I am actually thankful for it!


Monday, January 23, 2012

how to teach a 4 year old to



all right I am gonna do it...here it goes...how do I get my 4 year old to wipe his own butt! I mean isn't this function already prewritten into our brains. I sat down & tried to think... hard of my parents teaching me to wipe myself. Sure you remember all the slogans along the way...wipe front to back..blah, blah, but I have absolutely no recollection of just how my knowledge came to be.
Sebastien has been fully potty trained for about 1 1/2 years, but the boy is almost 5 & still can not for the life of him wipe his butt. I have let him try & lets just say I had to get a haz-mat suit to clean the toilet area. Worse is he likes to play with the toilet paper and wad it up into a huge ball.
 I am just thinking who is gonna be there for him when he starts school in September (I know!). I just imagine him sitting in the bathroom stall yelling "Come wipe my butt" to no avail & when that school bell rings & the rest of the children scoot along getting on their buses, he is still in the stall trying to get someone to wipe his butt.
Steven & I have had many discussions on this (who knew you would grow up to have conversations with your lover about wiping butts!) & he thinks I should just bite the bullet & let the kid dive in himself. (I mean that literally) but I am the one left cleaning the mess up. It is gross people! We already glance at each other when we hear him calling from the bathroom both ready to exclaim "I did it last time"
And here I was thinking him learning to spell and write his name before starting school was going to be a challenge!

Sunday, January 22, 2012

snowmageddon & randomness

 Last weekend was.....fab-u-lous, as weekends goes.
4 days to spend lounging...yeah right!
I took Friday off & let me tell you I am glad I did. We did a mini marathon of Hellraiser on Thursday, we got through 4 of the movies. Did you know there are 8 of them! We calculated that if we were to start the movies at 7pm and watch them through to the end that it would be 7am before we finished! Well we only made it through 4 but had a blast!
We visited with family on Friday and pretty much lounged around the house. Saturday we ventured out and went to our local cheapy theatre and saw "In Time" yes it has Justin Timberlake in it, but it is a kinda sci-fi, parallel to how our society is film. It was not actually that bad.
And we just had some time for this,



Sunday we woke to this!


I am glad it started to hit over the weekend. Whenever is snows in Seattle it is like the world stops.

We put Sawyer in a snow suit and plopped his butt out there in the snow. By the look on his face I am not sure what he thought. The snow flakes started to accumulate on his eye lashes and he would not move them!




Charlee had a blast, she ran around trying to eat the snowflakes and making tracks everywhere.





On the goals this week, I got a lot accomplished. I actually folded all the laundry & had it all put away by Sunday night. All 3 of our clothes bins were empty. I think Steven almost had a heart attack when he did not have to dig through a bin to find clothes!
I also tackled the boys rooms. I went through Sebastien toy box & started going through his toys. Man these boys are loaded up on everything imaginable. There were power rangers missing all sorts of limbs, some headless Hulks & just plain weird stuff in there. I am happy to say that after the purging & moving some stuff upstairs to their play area, both of his toy bins have some room.



Wednesday we got hit with another front of snow. This time we got another 5-6 inches. It was crazy! I decided to take a snow day. Who wants to sit on a bus for 2  or more hours to get to work & then turn around for another 2-4 hour bus ride home? Not me!



We took Sebastien sledding & he had a blast. This kid whizzed down those hills like his name was Super Dave. He biffed it a lot, once crashing in some bushes and skidding on his face. He stood up all smiles though!


Wednesday night is when the ice hit. All the tree branches were lined with an inch of ice, even the long strands of grass that was poking up from the snow were encased in ice. This led to the tree branches being to heavy & breaking, creating havoc all over the area. We were out of power well into Friday morning.
We hunkered down with some wood and it was like camping in our living room. We roasted hotdogs in the fire, but totally could have used some marshmallows.


Friday I had to make it to work to finish up some stuff I had on my calendar and totally felt gross that I had to go in without a shower. I was too chicken to get in that cold shower, not for a lack of trying. I turned the shower on & tried to psych myself to jump in there. After about 3 tries, there was no way I was getting in that freezing water.

After snowmegeddon, it was nice to start to get back to normal and the same old routine.

Here are some gratuitous shots I took of Sawyer. I am trying to get that shot so I can make his year old birthday invitations....can you believe it is fast approaching!









oh & by the way I am mourning the shut down of Picnik. When I read the email I literally yelled out NOOOOO!

Wednesday, January 11, 2012

10 months

Sawyer's 10 month picture.....




I can't believe it has been 10 months already. This little man has so much personalty it hurts.
He can now pull himself up on anything & everything. He can stand by himself for a few seconds. He is a speed racer crawler and likes to play hide & seek with you. He can now shake his head no when you ask him a question or if you are telling him no he likes to shake it back at you & he can now shake it yes, but this looks more like he is head banging.
He hates bedtime & will stand in his crib shaking the railings protesting it.
He loves all things food & if he even hears or thinks your eating will grunt at you until you share. When he hears Sebastien putting food into Charlee's bowl, him & Charlee race to see who gets there first.
He loves books that have the texture panels that he can feel & will sit and look at his books for a hour.
Every time you look at him, he beams back with a smile unless of course he is hungry or you are trying to make him go to bed.
He loves to touch faces & play with hair. (when he is not busy pulling it)
He keeps up with the big boys & will take everything they throw at him. He loves to wrestle with Sebastien. He is so determined that he will stop at nothing to get what he wants. Even if it means getting stuck in between things.
He can return kisses, even if their sloppy & wet. He loves music & will dance when ever he hears some, even the background soundtrack in a movie.
We are so lucky to have him in our lives!






   










Tuesday, January 10, 2012

when it rains it poors....

old age is catching up to me...I now know why all the older people around me are so grumpy all the time.
Seriously is there someone laughing at all the ironic things going on in the everyday world.
So last week rounded out to be not sooo bad. I had a great time on Friday with the girls, watching one of my best friends try on some pretty white dresses and ended the night with nachos and margaritas & girl talk. We took Steven's car in to get fixed & found a very nice local car shop. (you know you have finally achieved adulthood when you have a mechanic!) Turns out just the battery was dead. Which, by the way, stated for the record was what I had originally suspected.  So after a few victory dances with my arms being shoved in the air & my booty flailing about, some in your faces told you so's, & 300 buckaroos saved later, it was all put to rest.
So on Sunday driving my truck down the road the check gauges light comes on and we see our battery gauge run down. Really? So being the adults we are,we take it in to get the battery tested. It's good, so what runs down a battery, an alternator. Now come on! What are the odds that both cars have similar problems days after each other & also what are the frincking odds of us being so happy to have saved some moola on one car just to have it sucked up by the next! Puh-leese!
I actually did ok, I just laughed & laughed. Maybe a little to deliriously. I guess I can look at it like this, at least both alternators did not go out and since we saved money on one car it means we had money to fix the other. Makes sense right?
Another funny thing is, Steven is kind of determined to fix the alternator on the truck himself. Not sure if this is some kind of "I am man, must fix myself" thing or what. I am not sure I am ready to deal with the fix the car Steven who may clash with the I have quit smoking, cutting back on beer for awhile Steven.

Love you Honey!





Friday, January 6, 2012

a hairy beast of a week

I headed into this new year with such high hopes and this week totally blew.
It has just been one of those weeks, where everything that could did go wrong, your husbands pmsing (yes this really happens to men!), you realize there is life after the holidays, your car breaks down, you know the stuff......


ok ok....I guess it could have been worse. The end of the week is shaping up especially because I have people around me to make it better! (Love you girls!)

 Remember those little goals I was going to do every week, well as life will have it I have not done anything this week & here it is Friday.
I have actually set up a new goal for this weekend, to get the alternator in Steven's car fixed.
Wednesday we switched cars so he could drive the truck for a change and I went through my morning routine without a hitch and packed the kids in the car, got in & it just clicked at me. What the...
It is funny because 4 year olds just do not understand the mechanics of a car. Sebastien leaned up to the front seat & said "Just tell it to start Mommy & I'm sure it will. Just turn the key like this" his hand motioning turning a key. Like I did not know what I was doing. It made me smile though. He gleefully jumped back out of the car & into the house thinking he was getting a day with mommy. Good thing for in-laws, because  not only did they answer the phone at 6:30 in the morning but drove to my house picked our butts up & saved the day for me anyway.
I guess I did meet a goal this week, I realized that you can not sweat the little things, especially the ones that is an everyday opposition. Its not like this was the first car to ever break down or I was the first ever person to have a bad week. It happens......as Steven puts it "We will get through this just like everything else" I just let it go (basically letting my husband take care of it)

On another topic our New Years party went great. We had a great time with our friends and family. We had so much food we could have fed an army & enough drink to go with it. I did ring it in with a banger of a hangover, thank goodness for husbands and sister in-laws (again with the in-laws) that help you & clean your house afterwards. We have enough recycling and garbage bags to keep Waste Management busy for awhile. Man, parties are hard work!