Day 1.... its good to be HOME

Oh yeah I am loving it already!! I just love a shiny new challenge. So fresh and bright. I do feel like this is a good one. Not a lot of hyper excitement, more like...get it done and quit whining and a lot of quiet resolve. I am very proud of the fact that I did go out and get all of the things on my list below, plus planned my meals, and got the food. I have nothing to do today but get everything cooked and prepared and put ito my new tupperware containers. My gym/porch is still a big mess but I can technically still go to the gym for 3 more days so I have time. Its not THAT bad, I could go get it all nice and spiffy in an hour or so this afternoon. Which I probably will since the kids are home I can slave drive them a little. Muaaahahhaa.

My first meal today was wonderful. 4 eggwhites with sauteed spinach and mushrooms. Delicious! And a small orange and water. I'm back to wondering why I stop eating this way, its so great!I am not looking forward to the massive HEADACHE I will have by the end of the day.I can already feel it creeping up since I didn't have my traditional Diet Coke and cookies or Froot loops for breakfast. Blah! It dosen't even sound good at all. Maricar came over yesterday morning and we measured. It was quite horrifying. (for me, at least-she's doing fine :D) I'm not going to stress over it, I just have to get back to work. HARD work. I have to undo lots of mental and physical damage I have given myself over the past few weeks. I am completely re-focused and re-committed!! I got everything on my list below, all my meals planned for the week, and today is the cooking day.I am gonna fill out my packet today as well. Not looking forward to pictures whatsoever. Alright then, time for cooking and playing scrabble with the kiddos today. Feeling very good and positive.

EDIT:
OK made it through day 1 with flying colors. I did SO much cooking, it was crazy!! I made my egg white salad, sweet potatos, brown rice, chicken, cut up veggies, cc/salsa dip, Barilla pasta, and the zuccini oat bars (2 thumbs up on those!). I drank 90 oz of water so far (I'll put down another 60 before bed) and I did have diet coke but its ok for now. I'll get stricter starting week 2. I still need to assemble my Tuna bugers and cook my broccoli but I'm taking a break. I am good to go for this week!! I put everythig on my plan into fitday and will log each day to gauge where I'm at and where I need to improve. LOVE it!!

Strategy

I'm coming up with my game plan and strategy to do my real BFL challenge. The home gym is coming together nicely. My bad eating is totally off the hook, I'd kill for a nice piece of roaasted chicken breast and some asparagus right now. My challenge starts Sunday, which will be my clean eating only (no w/o) and monday is the first workout day. I re-read my book and wrote out all of the stuff he says to, I really like my focus/goals. It feels real to me and it really help define where I'm at right now and where I need to go. Sometimes I think after we've been doing the fitness "thingy" for a long time like so many of us have its very easy to lose sight of our reasons why we are doing it. I was looking back on my old goals, and I've acheived them but of course I'm not even close to where I truly want to be. I am proud that I did make it to this point though. My original goal way back when was to be a comfy size 8 and have shape to my arms. Well I did that. Its now time to get serious and go for the higher level.

Anyway, as it goes right now I'm still stuffing my face with crap and gaining by the minute. Its gonna be a scary detox this weekend. Mark is just as bad he says he's never been in worse shape and his eating is so bad that He was up barfing at about 2am and he is not ill. His body just didn't want to bother digesting all the yuck food. So he's on a diet whether he likes it or not. Everyone has their breaking point, I think he's finally there. So am I. I need to gather a couple things today to be "ready" because I'm pulling out all the stops. Heres my list:

1.Those interlocking foam floor covers from Sams so I can do planks and stuff
2.The color coded little tupperwares (oh yeah, I'm going extreme)
3.Jumprope
4. a rubbermaid box to put all of the timer, gloves, jumprope, etc in so the kids can't get at it
5. Protein shaker bottle for Mark
6. BFL entry packet
7. New notebook to act as my BFL journal
Then I have to get the backyard all tidied up and pretty and organize everything, although I'm still thinking I want to move everything into my office. It will just be tight squeeze. I may have to do some measuring today to see how it would all fit. Some stuff might have to be outside while some be inside. I have a couple ideas of how to split it up. I'm also going to clean out my garden and plant all my veggies this coming week. It will be nice to know that my lettuce and other things weren't urinated on by some migrant worker. EEEEW!! LOL I am also going to blog a litle more and hopefully use some of that to help me with my essay. I'm putting me back on PROJECT STATUS. Nothing comes before my workouts. I give myself permission to be 5 minutes late to things in order to eat a meal on schedule or to pack food ( hopefully I'll be organized most of the time to not have to be late, but lets be real here)

Anyway, that is the plan of attack today. I will do the grocery shopping on Saturday and the weekly cooking Sunday.Oh yeah,and the pictures. Eeeeek. They will be some doozys.

Midnight ramblings

OK well I'm just updating so there is something new to look at over here. I've been staying busy, just the usual stuff. The kids have all been sick but its just been one at a time, I'm up super late tonight because I took too long of a nap today ( gotta love sundays) and Cooper woke up at aobut midnight burning up and throwing up. Ugh. That will be nice to clean up in the morning. He has a top bunk and I can't really get to it till the morning witht he other 3 boys in there, so tomorrow....ick. I always tell the kids they should film me and send it in to "Dirty Jobs". That would be cool to have "mom" as a dirty job. "aint that the truth. Hmm what else is going on??

I moved all of my computer and stuff out of my bedroom (HOORAY!!) and inot ta-da.......the OFFICE! I know, I'm so brilliant. :P Mydesk has been sitting in here empty (well, except for the papers and crap)for a couple months now. I had to get the wireless stuff so my internet would work, and I got a snazzy new keyboard so I can just push buttons to get to all of my fun places on here. My mouse is stationary with a big read ball to move the cursor (its looks like a big blood blister....ewww!) But its so cool. I also got a cool new printer/copier/scanner so now I can put all my pics of me as a kid and stuff on here. I have already used everything, its so fun!!

I am in the process of setting up my home gym.Its coming along much better than expected. So far I have a heavy bag, and a weight bench with a bar and a few plates. I just need a few more dumbbells and I am ready to rock and roll. I'll be taking pics of it for SURE this week. Its all on the back porch right now (looks like some frathouse or something) but it will have to move into the office when it gets hot because the metal will be to hot to touch, and forget any kind of outside activity when its 110 out for months on end. For now, its outside though. As far as fitness goes, I am totally stagnant but feeling the fire to do a challenge. Spending a little time with Ken on Saturday was very good for me. I LOVE my BFL family!! He really gave me a good pep talk. Of course, pretty much everything out of Ken mouth is a pep talk, he's just awesome like that. :D Anyway, mentally I am "there" and Mark is feeling like a slug too so we are gonna get serious about it together.

The babysitting is going well, I'm also staying busy doing hair which is good, and its almost time for football season for Cade, so that will be fun. Mark is doing great at work, and things are pretty good. Just the usual. Hese a fun picture I found the other day while looking for stuff to scan with my new toy. Its me at about 1 year old, my dad(age 20) and his favorite grandpa about age 65. I'm gonna frame it and give it to my dad for his b-day. My dad will die when he sees it. heee hee

Happy Valentines day!!

I'm not sure why I went so crazy over valentines day this year. Probably because my mom did most of the stuff for me! haha But the reason she does all the little stuff is because she knows I will make good use of it all. She has definetly rubbed off her holiday habits onto me! Oh well, its a good thing. FIrst of all, she brought me some of her awesome papercrafting stuff to put up this year. I am SO sad that I will have to take it down soon. I've had his darling stuff up:


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Its all so cute and such awesome detail. Well then she had made me this darling calendar for christmas and I had found a book kit she'd given me so I put the book together and put all pics of Mark and I (mostly from the cruise) and it turned out super cute. I took pics of a couple of the pages.


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OK so that was fun. THEN I decided today that it would be pretty easy to use the scaps I had left from the book to make cards for the kids teachers, so thats what I did, they turned out cute. I had to take a pic becasue I am giving them away tomorrow..


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and THEN Sadie needed something to bring her cards home in tomorrow so we copied this from family fun magazine, she decorated it herself. Its just 2 paper plates. How cute is that???


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AND THEN ( last one I promise) my mom had also brought over gift bags for the kids so I put it all togehter for a special valentines breakfast where we will have creal and cinnamon toast cut with heart shaped cookie cutters. I set it all up after they went to bed, they will love it especially since grandma also got them each a spiderman toy (and Sadie a shirt) so this is what they will wake up to tomorrow:

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Not really anything fancy but they will think its so awesome.

We are busy all day but Mark and I are gonna try to go out to dinner if we decide to brave the crowds. I guess I just feel so lucky to have so many people to love!!!!

DRAT!

I need another do-over. I kind of blacked out last night and made a cake just so I could eat the batter, but then came to my senses when TOM arrived. I thought it was over but then I baked the restof the batter and ate the rest of the cake today. Well there was no frosting on it, OK??? Who has time for frosting when there is CAKE???? Bottom line though, I am WAY to addicted to my fit body to keep on this kind of path to insanity. Even though my life is up on its end right now and I'm getting ready to head into 3 days of Mark being home and Valentines day, I have GOT to eat clean the rest of the week, drink some fricken WATER and get my fat ass to the gym. My official challenge will have to start monday but I am too miserable to keep this up. I am TERRIFIED of getting on the scale and taking measurements. I mean PETRIFIED. My diet over the last week or so is actually quite perfect if I were an A-list celebrity trying to gain 30 pounds in 2 months for a 20 million dollar film role. HAHAHAA!! Yep, I'm yur girl! I'm so done. I don't even what to LOOK at another candy bar. You know its bad when you wake up with little flecks of snickers stuck to you because the last thing you did before you shut your eyes was stuff one in your face. ewww. Just the thought makes me ill. I didn't get any zits this time though. Yay me!!

Hopefully watching the Secret tomorrow will help me out of my funky funk and get my mind right. I will get it all back off and then some. 4 weeks from monday I will post new pics and you all will be SO amazed!!

The Family Does Disneyland

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Mark and I decided that we'd take part of our tax return and take the shorties to Disneyland. It was so exciting!! We decided not to tell them until the day we left, just to have it be a cool surprise. Besides, then I wouldn't have to listen to a zillion questions every minute till we left :D. We have been telling them we wanted to go for a couple years now, they had really given up hope of EVER getting to go. I got everything all packed up on Saturday night whle Mark worked his last shift for the week, and hid the bags and snacks I'd packed in the office. We went to church Sunday early in the am while Mark slept a couple hours, then when we got home we told them we had a surprise......"You guys have been such good kids, and we didn't get to do very much fun stuff while daddy was in the academy, so we are going to take you to Disneyland TODAY!!!!!" They were just STUNNED for a second, Sadie screamed and we got some BIG hugs and kisses and jumping up and down. It was SO fun!!! So Sunday afternoon we drove to LA where Marks Aunt lives and stayed the night (we'd been promising to do that for about 8 years!!) and then in th a.m. got up early and drove to Disney.


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It truly could not have been more awesomely perfect. The weather was gorgeous, Dayton was tall enough for all the rides except Indiana Jones, and there were NO LINES!! I am not even kidding, we literally walked right on to Pirates of the Carribean, walked right on the the Matterhorn, (3 times) it was about a 10 minute wait for Space Mountain. We did that twice. It totally rocked! Most of the rides were less than a 5 minute wait. It was SO AWESOME! We did the Haunted Mansion 2 times in a row, just for fun. The kids had a blast. We kept telling them how spoiled they were by not having to wait in line. We had been worried that we only had 1 day to spend there and if we'd be able to do everything we wanted to....HA! It was really a fantastic day, just to be out having fun with our great kids, enjoying Disneyland. Not only that, we came in under budget on food, gas, souveniers, AND hotel.


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Mark got picked by Merlin to try to pull the sword out of the stone. Hee heeee. Of course its rigged so that a big dad can't do it but a little 6 year old does it. hehe Merlin made Mark do the "dance of shame" it was HILARIOUS! Its on video, of course. LMAO I even ate pretty good. I had brought some snacks for myself (apples, balance bars, BFL shakes) and they were really hitting the spot for me. Unfortunately, I also had onion rings for 2 meals in a row, too so that was pretty bad. I do think you could stick to bfl at Disney. I can see it being done.

Well I am going to have to officially start my challenge tomorrow, but I am totally energized and ready to rock. It was really worth it to postpone my challenge to do this with my kids. Definitely a "high point!!"

On the drive home we stopped at the big dinosaurs and ate lunch. The kids loved it.


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