Harder. Better. Faster. Stronger.

Ok. So I'm not ready to run a marathon. Not even close to running a 5k. But I can tell a difference in my walks. Today I walked around our two neighborhoods. That was about 4.5 miles. I walk every cul-de-sac, dead-ends, every turn and curve. The second part of our neighborhood is so much bigger and so much more torturous that I hate it but suck it up. Thank God for my MP3 player. You've gotta have the right music to keep going and keep up a good speed. I'm trying to push myself so I did a bit more running. I ran up a lot of hills today and pressed on after I reached the top. It wasn't easy and I was breathing hard afterwards, but I did a lot more jogging than I've done before.

When I got home, I used a resistance band to do some arm exercises. Man are those things deceiving! I even managed to squeeze in some ab exercises.

I managed to make it to the gym twice this week. Not fun. Well, the first time I made it I was only 2o minutes into my elliptical run before I was called home for an emergency. Everyone is fine. The second time I made it there I set the timer for 35 minutes. I couldn't do it! I was so so so tired. I cut it down to 20 minutes plus the cool down. I think part of it is that walking outside and walking on a machine are completely different. Each is a challenge in it's own right. The hills in my neighborhood would give a season treadmill runner a run for their money. But I really wouldn't want to run a treadmill.

Anyway, I'm trying to work it out, you know? I try to stay positive and focused, but it can be hard. As much as I say that I don't want to weigh myself, I just can't resist. And the stupid thing says that I gained 4 pounds since I've started this thing! What?! I told my hubby that I want him to hide it from me because all I'm doing is setting myself up for disappointment. I know that I'm making a difference. I know I am. A friend of mine said that there could be many reasons for the suspected weigh gain, including retaining water. I like that idea and that's what I'm sticking with!

I've read that getting enough sleep is very important. I have to agree with that. I stay up too late. When I wake up, I don't feel like doing anything for the whole day! Yesterday I managed to get to bed an hour earlier than normal. Today I woke up ready to take on the world. Getting sleep is key.

I think I'll do my walk again tomorrow and work on some leg exercise and glutes. Wish me well and that my legs don't give out.

Home! This route was about a mile shorter than my walk to home depot yesterday. So i logged about 4 1/2 miles today!

Askd Bart if i should walk or drive to the store to get a newspaper. He said to walk. Whose side is he on anyway?? Got a napsack this time

My Legs!

Because my parents were going out of town, I decided to take the boys over to their house and spend the night so they spend a little time with the grandkids. Since I was at their house and didn't walk around their neighborhood on Friday, I decided to join my mom at the church gym and do the bootcamp that they have at 6 in da morn. I was kind of scared because both my mom and my girl Steph made it sound killer. I won't lie; it was hard. The trainer had us do something called Jenga or something. It reminded me of some Brazilian fighting/dancing. Or you remember Eddie from PlayStation's Tekken? He was always jumping around and kind of break dancing. That's what I felt like. Honestly, it looked easy and the movements weren't too hard on the body, but you were definitely sweating and feeling it.

After that he had us do ab exercises. Yeah, that didn't work for me. My stomach muscles started cramping up. Man that was painful! The instructor told me not to do any more because it would just cramp up again. He was right. After I had stretched it out, I curled into a ball to roll up into a sitting position. That didn't work either. My stomach just cramped up again. So I just stretched it out again and laid there on the floor until class was over.

I felt the exercise for the rest of the day and night. I woke up today planning on resting and not going for a walk. But with some encouragement from Steph and my older sister and after admitting that I ate 3 slices of pizza the night before. So instead of just walking my usual route, I decided at the last minute to go the distance--walking to Home Depot. I needed to go there to get something for the toilet and stop at the bank as well. Well, I made it there and back unharmed, just sore. When I walked into Home Depot, this lady said, with a smile, "I saw you walking!" My sister said that I should have said, "Why didn't you pick me up?" I thought about saying something about how she should have joined me, but she was overweight and that would've sounded mean. When I stopped at the bank, the guy asked if I had walked. Who knows. Maybe I might inspire one person to get moving. My whole trip took a little over 2 hours and a little over 5 miles. I'm proud of myself even though my calves are screaming. I hope No one could smell me in the stores because I smell now!

I tell you one thing: My legs have definitely gotten a workout! I remember when I first started walking earlier this year (it didn't last). When I would walk around the neighborhood and even trying to jog a little, my legs (especially my inner thighs) would start itching like crazy! I would want to rub and scratch them, but I didn't want someone driving by or looking out their window and see me scratching between my legs. What would they have thought?? I looked it up to see what was causing the itching. Turns out that since I had been so inactive for so long, the itching was a result of my nerves and blood vessels that I hadn't used in such a long time trying to work again. How embarrassing is that?? But now that I've been moving and jogging a bit, my legs don't itch anymore. But they are sore.

Now that I'm walking I need to work on other parts, evident by my stomach cramping up after doing some crunches. Hopefully, after church tomorrow, I'll drag myself to the gym and work on some upper body stuff. Wish me well!

Oh, special thanks to my hubby. After working all night and into the morning, he comes home, watches the kids, and lets me take my long walk. Thanks, Honey!

Gotta keep pushing!

Day 3 of walking and I'm trying to push myself. I'm the type of person who quits as soon as the running gets too hard. You've ever watched NBC's show, "The Biggest Loser"? I would drive those trainers crazy because all that yelling and screaming wouldn't get me moving. I have to find it in myself to say, "Ok, Ty, keep running until you reach the next mailbox. Ok, you've reached that. Now keep running until you reach the next bush." And so forth. That's the only way I could keep running. Don't' get me wrong, I didn't run around the whole neighborhood, or even a third of it, but I did run. I even ran up the biggest hill in the neighborhood and a little beyond that. I'm pretty happy with myself.

Yesterday, after talking with my girl, Steph, and watching The Biggest Loser, I decided that I have got to push myself a little bit more. So what I've incorporated into my exercise is to run a type of circuit at home. After I walked around the neighborhood today, I ran up the driveway, did 20 jumping jacks, ran down and back up, did 15 lunges, and ran down and up (barely) and did 20 more jumping jacks. Talk about sweating and breathing heavy! I'm going to try to do that every time I walk and also add some more things like jumping rope, push ups, squats and whatever other form of torture Steph can think of.

I wore my pedometer for the first time today. I got it awhile back but haven't worn it because it was stuck on Kilometers and I don't know how to compute that. Once I found the instructions and got it back to miles, I found out that my walk is just shy of a mile! All of that work, huffing and puffing and I haven't even walked a mile. UGH! So now I've gotta kick it up a notch and go walking in the other part of the neighborhood. But I'm not too upset. A mile is a good place to start. I can't expect to walk 5 miles on the first day. So for my next walk, who knows how far I'll go or where I'll end up. I just don't want to get too far and have to call my hubby and tell him, "Honey, pack up the kids in the van and come and get me!"

I don't always watch The Biggest Loser, but these people are inspiring. They make me want to cry during most of the show. Like the Biggest Loser, I'm thinking of taking some pictures in my sports bra and shorts and publishing them on my blog. Not sure if I want the whole world (whoever does read this blog) to see all my rolls and such. I'll take the pictures before there's any change so at least I'll have them as a reference even if I don't publish them. I've also decided not to get on the scale very often either. I got on it recently and was very disappointed. I shouldn't have been surprised because I hadn't worked out in a week or so, but it still hurt my feelings. I'll just wait until I feel a difference in my clothes, then maybe I'll step on the scale.

Oh well, keep pushing y'all.

Busy busy little bee

Man, have I been busy this past week. I'm so tired from staying up late and waking up early to bake and decorate cakes and rushing around like crazy to get things done. Everything has been finished since Saturday, but I'm still recovering.

I had so many cakes to make. I had to make a cake for class, and a sample cake for a lady, a cake for my uncle's 50th birthday and a cake for my friend's husbands 34th birthday. I don't know if I waited too late to get started or just didn't realize the massive undertaking of the projects. My Aunt G wanted to specific cake. It was a chocolate 12x12 cube with chocolate filling in the center and four layers. That cake was huge and heavy! Then we thought it would be neat to cut the cake into 4x4 pieces and make 9 cubes. How crazy was I to think that would be easy? I had to cover each cake with chocolate buttercream and then lime green fondant. Try doing that 9 times! No regrets because it was a big hit! My parents took it all the way to Virginia for the party. My aunt said that my uncle actually wore his lime green shirt without having ever seen the cake. You know everyone picked on him for matching the cake. The cube has something to do with an architecture lesson that I guess just about every architect has to learn and that my uncle has taught to his students. We realized later that the 9 cubes also had a special meaning because there are 9 siblings. But can you imagine this huge lime green cake with 50 blazing candles on it? I'm waiting for pictures so I can see how it looked.

I finished my uncle's cake at 1am Saturday morning. Then I had to do a specialty cake for a good friend's 34th birthday party at 4pm on Saturday. Talk about trying not to stress out! Thankfully I had already baked the cake, but then I decided that it needed one more layer that morning so I had to bake a whole other cake before breakfast! Thankfully, I had other things to do and get ready while I waited for the cake to bake and cool. This cake came out really awesome. It was a dark blue poker chip with the #34 in the center and and the suits (heart/spade/club/diamond) going around in a circle. It was covered in bark blue fondant and the numbers and suits were made out of white chocolate. I'm surprised that I finished it with time to spare. Everyone loved how the cake turned ou.t And you know I passed out business cards. Unfortunately, I forgot my camera at home (kicking myself), so I'm waiting for pictures to be sent to me.

I'm happy how things turned out this past week. I had fun and made a little bit of money at the same time. Is baking my future? I don't know, but I'm having fun while I'm at it.

I've been so busy that it's been about a week since I did any exercise. So today I went for a walk around the neighborhood the really long way. I try to walk/jog every street that I come to. We have a lot of cul-de-sacs and I make sure i go in those too. I often see early in the morning (before I'm even thinking about going for a walk) this skinny-minnie jogging. Now good for her, but here's my problem with her: she's running down hill! Our neighborhood is extremely hilly. If you turn right out of my driveway, you'll climb up the steep hills and go down some slopes. If you turn left, then you are going down the big hills and climbing some little slopes. I always turn right even though I'm not in the best of shape, but it makes sense to me to go that way to get the most challenge. And every day there goes skinny-minnie jogging down the big hills. Doesn't make sense to me. I'll just keep dragging myself up the big hills until one day I can run up them and run past her as she jogs down the hill!

That first week that I did stick to exercising I could feel a difference in my clothes and my "baby belly." But it's hard for me to stick with it. After one week I'm not a size 8 yet?! I've gotta work on patience, you think? Can't I have instant gratification and be fine after one week? No? Not fair.

I had 1/2 a sand wrap, 1/2 an apple n sum pretzels. Man am i stuffed!! Gave Dylan the other half of everything and he ate it all and wanted more. This is my attempt at eating healthy. Now I've gotta figure out what to eat for dinner. I need to make a menu for the week to help keep me on track instead of breaking out the Hamburger Helper.

Another Try

My goal at the beginning of the year was to start exercising. Well, 4 months later I finally made it to the gym yesterday. I just started with the elliptical machine for 30 minutes. Well, I actually set it at 35 minutes but couldn't make those 5 extra mins. It was torture! I've walked around our neighborhood a few times and never had felt like that before. Also, when I used to go to the gym (like over 3 years ago!), I would see people doing it reverse, like they were walking backwards. I honestly thought that was the stupidest thing. Why would anyone do that? Well, that stupid elliptical tried to make me do it...I couldn't! I wanted to cry! It was like medieval torture machine. It kept trying to force me to do every few minutes, but I would force it to do the regular way because I would try it and then give up. I don't think my body was ready for that. Let me build up to it.

I did taebo today. I'm so uncoordinated but I gave it a try. I was sweating at the end.

I'm going to try to do this losing weight thing right. My biggest obstacle is eating right. Anyone who knows me knows that I'm a terrible eater. I hate veggies and hardly eat any fruit. I've gotta do better. When the year started, I wanted to look fine and hot for the beach. Now I just want to look decent in a bathing suit, without my belly sticking out.

I think I'll post a weekly report with my weight and measurements for the whole world to see (though I'm not sure who still checks out my blog since I haven't been consistently updating it). But that's what I'll do. Thankfully I have a good friend who I can be accountable to. Unfortunately, she's on the other side of town. I wish we could meet up and workout together. But we'll make do and inspire each other to get moving. I'll post a daily update of my exercise and how I feel afterwards. Hope you'll join me on this journey. I'll post my stats later.

Have u ever pedaled backwards on an eliptical machine? TORTURE!! Can i just stay fat?

On my way to th gym! Just gonna do eliptical 4 abot 30-45min but its a start. Dont want 2 over do it on th 1st day

We're at gymnastics for Dylan. Y does it seem that out of the 3 lil boys here, my kid is the 1 who has no clue what he's doing and the 1 that the teacher has to redirect all the time? Frustrating. I wish she would do the class differently. She has everyone doing different things at the same time. One is over on the jump thing, another is rolling and another is doing something else. She can't pay attention to everyone and make sure they are doing it correctly. Why not have everyone line up and focus on that exercise? That's just me.

It's Been A While, Huh?

My goodness. Time has certainly been just zooming by. What happened to my post? Where have I been? Well, I’ve been busy. I let life distract me and have been feeling guilty every other day because I haven’t posted anything new. I know not everyone is looking for constant updates on my family, but some are (Nana C).

I’ve missed talking about Dylan’s 3rd birthday, Christmas and Devin finally walking (he walks like a penguin)! So much has been going on. So many pictures that haven’t been shared. So I’ll try to catch you up a little at a time without overwhelming you with a really long post.

So….What have I, the busy mom of two, been up to? Well I started working an at home customer service job. The pay isn’t the greatest, but it’s helped out sum, that’s for sure. When I think about the cost alone of going back to work and getting a job in an office (not including the emotional part), I think about the cost for child care for 2, buying new clothes (because I don’t have ANY nice clothes nor am I able to fit the clothes that I have), gas, additional meals and so forth, it just doesn’t seem economical.

On top of working my lil job, trying to keep house and keep up with the kids, I’ve started baking/decorating cakes and knitting. Yes, it’s true. I’ve turned into a little old lady. Oh well, at least I’m enjoying it.

If you remember, after I made Devin’s 1st bday cupcakes, I was kind of bitten by the baking/decorating bug. I started taking Wilton cake decorating courses at the arts and crafts store Michael’s. I’m only on the second course. I had to stop for a little while because I needed a good stand mixer, and thanks to my in-laws who got me a wonderful Kitchen Aid mixer, I was able to continue with the courses this month.

The courses really opened my eyes to a few things; I’ve begun to try different things. Last month was my aunt’s 70th bday. My cousin (her daughter) commissioned me to make her a cake. Well, my aunt is known for making hats. So I decided to make her some hat cakes. They turned out really nice, special and tasty. I even have about 3 orders for Valentine’s Day. True the orders are from my mom, sister and a friend, but they are orders nevertheless.

People ask if this will turn into a business. I’m not making any promises or predictions. We’ll just see where this path will take me.

I started knitting to save money on Christmas presents. We were pretty broke around the holiday’s (still kind of are). I was watching Inside Edition with Deborah Norville. She knits, even has her own line of yarn. She had a little segment about how to knit and how it was a great way to save money and give nice gifts for Christmas. I went to the store that night and bought some yarn and needles. I searched the internet on how to knit and found a great site (wikihow.com) that taught me with videos just about everything you need to know to start knitting. And it was free! I’ve been bitten by the knitting-bug ever since. I’ve knitted 2 scarves, and am currently working on two more and my husband has put in a request for a toboggan. A cousin has requested a blanket for her bday in April, but that’s not gonna happen. I’ll try for later in the year.

I enjoy knitting so much that I’ve even sewed my own knitting needle rollup to hold all of my different sized needles and such (click here if you want to know the pattern). I love the colors and am pretty proud of myself for being able to follow the directions and sew a straight line. I must confess that I had a realization, let’s call it a revelation, that I’m going to be one of those moms who sews the costumes for their kids plays at school. Nothing wrong with that, but I never thought that would be me. I think I’ll enjoy it.

So that’s my life right now in a nutshell: knitting, baking, taking care of 2 small kids and a husband, trying to keep a clean house (loosing that battle), trying to keep a relationship with God and trying to keep my sanity.

Next time, I’ll talk about the men in my life. I’ve gotta share with you how my husband about freaked out when I asked him to put something in the crock pot. The easiest meal EVER, and he acts like I’m asking him to make a 3 course dinner. The whole meal is in a bag. You take the crock pot, dump in the seasoning packet and some water, wait til that’s dissolved and then dump in the rest of the frozen ingredients. All the instructions are on the bag! Then press the timer on the crock pot 4 times until the 10 hrs light is lit. Not hard at all, but my former chef of a husband freaked. Sigh, men….

Until next time, which will be much sooner than later.