The Year Is Half Over Check-In

Hi Readers!  I haven't forgotten you!  I have just put you on the way back burner for a long time- don't you feel special?  Ha, no, it's just been a busy few months around here.  I suppose a quickish recap is in order.

Blair completed kindergarten and is now preparing for 1st grade!  Crazy stuff.  I have been kicking around the idea of possibly homeschooling her next year via Classical Conversations.  More on that later, but there is still a chance she will be going to a local Christian school and we will know for sure in about a week or so.  We are waiting to see whether she has been awarded a scholarship and if so, how much she qualifies for.  If she does not receive it or the amount is too great, we will then return to the homeschool plan, much to my discomfort.  Sometimes I see, in my mind's eye, happy days filled with learning around the table and reading on the couch, family field trips to the zoo and museums, vacations on a whim with no need for school permission and close knit relationships between each family member... and then my reality yanks me out of that daydream when a fight breaks out in front of me over a spot on the couch and I look at the clock to see that it is only 8 AM and Daddy won't be home for many more hours.  So am I super excited about the prospect of homeschooling?  No.  I am "open" to it.  If necessary, I will do my best and jump in.  I know I will be uncomfortable.  I know I will be impatient.  I know I will fail way, way more than I wish I would. But I also know that I want what's best for my kids and I just don't feel like public school is best.  Christian school is not in our future for long if at all, sadly.  We cannot afford for more than one child to attend, no matter how well we save.  I have to accept that homeschooling is probably happening sometime in the next couple of years, even if it's not this year.  I'm coming to terms with that plan.  Pray for me!

Mark and I celebrated our 10 year anniversary a little late so we could wait until Blair was done with school.  We planned a 6 day trip that included a stop in Asheville, NC and then a few days on Tybee Island, GA.  It was wonderful!  We were very blessed by my in-laws who kept our kids safe for us at home while we were gone.  Being without those three was certainly strange and I will admit that I really missed them!  I really loved our getaway though!  We went hiking in the Blue Ridge Mountains, watched Netflix until late without little voices whining about what we were watching, ate lots of delicious food, took a historical trolley ride in Savannah, explored thrift stores, ran around the marsh, swam in the ocean, laid on the beach and marveled at the past ten years of our life together.  It was a great trip and we would love to share those places with the kids some day!

Blair has been involved in lots of summer activities- Mark coached her spring soccer team and though it was a rocky start, the team gelled and won the last 5 (of 7) games.  She was involved in 3 different VBSs and enjoyed them all!  This week, she is doing a drama camp that will have a final performance on Friday night.  At the end of July, she will begin fall soccer with a new team, again coached by Mark.  She is blossoming into a big girl by the day.

I am thinking about signing up for a half marathon... in September.  And I haven't run more than 3 times this summer.  I know this is crazy talk, but the race is in my home town and I want to get back there this year.  I haven't really talked to Mark about it yet, but the idea is literally running around in my head.  Maybe I will blog about trying to train in 10 weeks from pretty much nothing.  Keep checking back to see the process if I do decide to subject myself to this torture plan.

Okay, I'm off to watch (another!) thunderstorm roll by.  This summer has been a doozy in the rain department.  Peace out!

A Bunch of Sickies

BLEH!

That is how I feel about our family's health this winter.  I have heard so much coughing, sneezing, vomiting, crying, moaning, etc. from my kids and myself ever since fall began changing to winter.  It got really bad when Blair caught some kind of stomach bug that had her vomiting non stop for a day and a half.  I've never seen so much bile.  It was scary!  She slowly recovered and thankfully no one else got exactly that.  Last week Hadley was diagnosed with walking pneumonia after dealing with a hard cough that made her vomit as well as a fever.  As soon as she started her antibiotics, the other two got bad coughs themselves.  We found out today that Emmett has a double ear infection so back to the store we went for more antibiotics.  Blair's cough appears to be viral only so she needs to muscle through it.  Hopefully once all the meds are done, we will enjoy a time of health.  As for now, these long nights of coughing, gagging, vomiting and crying are wearing me down.  I'm going to try to sneak a nap in...

Days 22-24 COMPLETE!!

I'm thrilled to report that I made it!  The 24 Day Challenge has been met and I'm proud of how well I stuck with the diet.  There were many times that I just wanted to add cheese to this and dessert after that but I kept my focus on the goal and accomplished it!  I weighed this morning (the day after) and officially have lost 5 pounds!  Still not my 7 pound goal, but pretty good!  I'm happy with it.  I'm sure that continuing to be aware of what I am eating and portion sizes, coupled with more consistent exercise will take off those final 2 pounds and I will be at pre baby weight in no time.  

A few closing thoughts on Advocare... I don't know if I will do the challenge again.  I don't feel like it made enough of a difference for me.  That is not to say that it won't help others, but I don't think I had that much to lose to begin with and my lifestyle wasn't too far off their requirements to start with, save dessert, yogurt and cheese here and there.  As I've said before, I don't believe in a total deprivation diet.  I am much more interested in portion control and enjoying anything I would like to eat.  I am grateful that my body is built so that I can live that way.  We do have a couple boxes of meal replacement shakes left, as well as some watermelon Spark, so I do plan to use them if there are times when coffee or tea doesn't sound good and I need a boost or I don't know what to eat for breakfast or lunch on the run.  I came to kind of enjoy the shakes- that first one may have not been shaken enough or something, because they got better tasting as I was drinking them every day.  

Was it worth it?  I think so.  It was good to see how much food my body doesn't need in order to function well.  I was often guilty of mindless munching, even though it wasn't a lot, it did make an impact on my daily food fuel.  Also, it helped me drop 5 pounds!  In less than a month, too!  I'm pleased with that.  

I'm going to celebrate my freedom to choose my food today by eating a Tim Horton's breakfast sandwich, coffee and donut.  I may not even finish them, but just having the pleasure to eat a bite or two and wash them down with a hot cup of coffee makes this girl smile. :)

Nearing the End- Days 20 & 21

There is a light at the end of the tunnel!  We have finished up days 20 and 21 and some exciting news- I lost another pound!  The tally is now officially at 4 pounds lost.  Not super impressive by any means and certainly not as much as I was hoping to lose (at least 7) in these 24 days but I am happy to have lost something.

On day 20 I went out to lunch with a friend to a local Mexican restaurant and was very pleasantly surprised by how tasty my food was.  Per her suggestion, I got chicken soup, which was a good sized bowl of chicken broth based soup filled with avocado, pico, rice, and chicken breast.  It had some spice, but was filling and quite savory, plus it fit into my food allowance nicely.  I resisted my desire to eat all the chips and salsa I wanted and ate none and I'm glad I did because that is often where I get in trouble at Mexican places.  For dinner I made a favorite of Mark's and mine (notice I didn't say "family favorite" because the girls won't eat it)- lentil salad.  My lifelong childhood best friend introduced me to this recipe over the summer and it's a big hit in my house now, often requested by Mark, especially on hot summer evenings when no one wants to heat up the house with the oven.  We adapted this recipe at bit to fit our needs and to add even more flavors to the mix and it turned out great, as always.  We did not include feta and added a cut up cucumber and several diced mini sweet peppers, which made it nice and crunchy!  I did miss the feta a bit, but we will add it next time after the challenge is done.  We always try to have the lentils and bruscetta on hand so that we can make this simple, quick and filling dish in a pinch.  Yum!

Day 21 was a busy day that left me sipping on my breakfast shake until after noon.  Lunch was left over lentil salad (another bonus of that recipe is that it makes a very large amount and there are always left overs!) and in the afternoon I took a nap because the baby was up a lot the night before.  Instead of eating dinner around dinner time, I went to the Y to meet a friend to walk and talk so I took along a clementine for a snack.  We walked a little over a mile and chatted about schooling options (more on that another day) and then when I got home, I ate some lentil red pepper soup (easy on the lentils, Mandy! You'd think that's all I eat!).

Two days left after today!  I'm really excited to stop being so restrictive.  I will probably post once more about this whole challenge journey and then move on to something new (I know, inside you readers are rejoicing!)  Time to start my day long cleaning fest for house church tonight- getting my exercise in that way!  Happy Wednesday!

Days 15-19

Sorry for the delay in posts lately!  I've been busy with other responsibilities.  Although I haven't found time to post, I have been faithfully sticking with the challenge.  Sadly, I haven't made any progress in my pounds lost, but I'm still somewhat hopeful that things will improve for me by the end of the challenge.  With only 6 days left though, my hope is fading fast. 

We have eaten a lot of veggie packed omelets, spaghetti (I made the sauce from tomato paste, diced tomatoes, mushrooms, colorful mini peppers, garlic and spices) and turkey meatballs over quinoa noodles from TJ's, salads, soups, Mexican bowls and of course, meal replacement shakes.  I've run out of my beloved mango strawberry Spark and have had to resort to drinking Mark's favorite watermelon (ew).  I normally like watermelon flavored things, but I feel like the Spark tastes too artificially sweet to me.  If I ever reorder Spark, it will most certainly be mango strawberry.  

We took a family walk the other night for about 2 miles which was pretty nice, until we had to endure Blair's meltdown over the fact that we were going home when we returned to the van instead of playing on the big toys like we had originally promised them.  Before you get in her corner, know that the sun had gone down, it was dinner time, we were all cold and Blair had been complaining about having to pee for the last mile of the walk so lingering at the park was just not the wisest choice at that time.  She made us pay the whole way home though in her very dramatic fashion.

I've been sleeping poorly lately which makes the days more difficult to manage emotionally.  Little mister has been waking a lot in the night and needing to be held for nearly an hour before he will succumb to his bed again.  It's like he is a newborn again.  I hardly have energy to get up for the day and then the chances of me feeling up for a workout are pretty slim.  We've been dealing with some form of sickness in our house since probably the school year started, which is partly to be expected with all of the germs the girls are exposed to there, but terribly frustrating nonetheless.  At this very moment, I just got sneezed and coughed on by Hadley and in turn, I coughed on myself and felt my throat hurt as I swallowed.  We've had virus after virus that includes fever, snot, headaches, sinus pain, coughing, pink eye, sneezing, sore throat, swollen glands and everything else it seems.  I can't wait for spring.  

Tonight we are taking the girls to Awanas and then taking the little guy out on date to be our third wheel.  Better go think of something we are allowed to eat... 

Days 12, 13 & 14-- Over The Hump!

Hi all!

Well, I am officially over the hump!  The first week and some days took some getting used to, but now I'm in a tiny bit of a groove with all of the supplements and food restrictions. Don't get me wrong- it's still a challenge and I do have to fight the urge to steal my kids' Perkins cookies amongst other things, but I'm happy that there is a light at the end of my tunnel and I'm more than half way there!

I've been eating a lot of egg and veggie omelets because they are so quick and easy and they actually taste good.  I have always loved egg bake brunchy type things so thankfully I can eat them every day and stay on diet.  We've also gone to Panera more than once and their avocado cobb salad is pretty good.  We stopped at Chickfila one night and I got their cobb salad with grilled chicken and honey mustard dressing.  That has sugar in it so I used only about 1/4 of the packet.  Next time I might just take it home and put on some TJ's cilantro dressing because it doesn't have much sugar in it at all.

I am down 3 pounds!  I'm happy with that, but I do still have 4 to shed before I return to pre pregnancy weight.  I still have the belly pooch hanging around so that's frustrating but maybe if I get more consistent with exercise too, it will at least get a bit smaller.  Three kids really does a number on your body!

Only 10 more days to go!  Hooray!

Days 10 & 11

Day 10 was an exciting day as it signaled the end of the cleanse part of the 24 Day Challenge.  I managed to get to the gym, although it was a pretty "warm" day and I probably should have run outside.  I was still only really able to run for a mile but I did include some walking so altogether I think I went about 2.25 miles or something.  It was better than nothing.  We decided to eat at Perkins to celebrate.  A note on Perkins-- our family kind of loves it.  I know it's weird and maybe when you hear the word "Perkins" greasy spoons come to mind for you.  I get that.  We started going sometimes on Tuesdays because the kids eat free that day (and Saturdays too!) and now it's like the kids know when it's Tuesday now because they instinctively ask to go almost weekly.  We don't always oblige, but many times we do because a big breakfast meal sounds good!  When I was pregnant I started getting their buffalo chicken wrap and would crave it often.  I think Emmett will like buffalo flavors a lot when he gets older because he "ate" them so often in utero.  But back to day 10, Mark wanted to eat there and I agreed, so we attempted to eat on diet there.  It was hard.  I got a breakfast meal that included scrambled eggs, breakfast potatoes, wheat toast and applewood chicken sausages.  Missing from my meal was the obvious requirement: veggies.  I didn't eat it all but afterwards, I didn't feel really proud of my decision.  Instead, I felt heaviness in my gut.  I don't think we will be going back until the challenge is over.

Day 11 was another interesting day.  I weighed in the morning and am down 2 pounds.  Of course I had hoped for more progress by this point, but 2 pounds is better than no pounds and especially weight gain!  We spent the day in Columbus visiting friends so we wound up eating both lunch and dinner out.  Lunch was Panera's avocado cobb salad.  I didn't realize there would be blue cheese in it (I'm not sure why, I know what in typically included in cobb salads) but it was too hard to pick it out so I just ate it.  Dinner was about 1/3 of a Chipotle bowl that had the same things in it that the bowl I had a few days ago from Qdoba had.  I enjoyed both meals but felt guilty for eating out twice in one day.  What was different about the meal plan for today and from now on is that we don't have any more cleansing products to take and instead there are tons of supplement pills.  It's a little overwhelming just how many there are and how often throughout the day, especially in the morning, I find myself taking them.  I'm going to be glad when this is all over...