Friday, September 28, 2012

Adoption, three years later

We're headed into October and this time of the year always gets me thinking about adoption because three years ago right now we were waiting for our final paperwork to be completed and waiting for our agency to call and tell us that it was time to go meet our sweet Clarissa in Korea. On October 15th it will officially be three years since Clarisssa joined our family. Can you believe it?!

This blog started out as an adoption blog and I realize that adoption doesn't come up all that much anymore. While adoption will always be near and dear to my heart, it's not something that comes up on a daily basis anymore, so I don't blog about it much.

But it is still important to me and I figured it would be nice to make an adoption related blog post again, since we're heading in October and its on my mind. Kind of a "where are they now" postscript to our adoption story, I guess.

In some ways it feels like it was just yesterday that we picked up that sweet chubby baby at the agency in Seoul and in other ways it's becoming hard to remember a time that Clarissa wasn't a part of our family.

Taking her from her foster mother that day and getting in a cab and leaving the agency was one of the most emotionally overwhelming days of my life. It's hard to even describe it. I was SO happy and so in love with this beautiful little girl and so thrilled to have her in my arms, but at the time same time, I looked down at her, so angry and so scared and screaming her lungs out in that cab after being seperated from her foster mother and I felt terrible! That was a hard day for all of us. She screamed for hours after we left the agency and all I could do was hold her and apologize for turning her world upside down.

I cried when the plane left the ground in Korea. Holding Clarissa in my arms and knowing that she was finally, officially ours was amazing, and knowing that we were taking her away from her beautiful birth country was hard. I cried tears of joy and sadness at the same time. I don't recall another time in my life that I was so happy and so sad at the same time. Emotionally overwhelmed is the best way to describe it. I grieved with Clarissa for what she was losing while I was also celebrating the amazing gift we had just been given. Put that together with the fact that I was more exhausted than I had ever been in my life and I was all over the place for a while.

But once we got Clarissa home she thrived. She might have hated Shawn and I at first but oh, she loved her brothers. She took one look at Josh and Matthew standing there in the airport with a handful of pink balloons and she burst out with a grin that we had been waiting for days to see. She bonded to them immediately and three years later she still absolutely adores her brothers.

Clarissa is doing awesome these days. She's three and a half, full of enough energy to power a small country and happy as a clam. She's absolutely hillarious and I just love to listen to her talk because she comes up with the funniest things. She's the girliest girl there ever was. She loves princesses and anything pink and glittery. She loves clothes more than any three year old I've ever seen in my life. I can't wait until she's old enough to pick out my clothes for me because I have a feeling she's going to have great style. Shawn lets her pick out his shirts when he gets dressed for work sometimes. She loves it.

She loves to play with my makeup and pretend that's she's putting it on. If she gets anywhere near my bathroom she runs in there, puts on Chapstick and gets out my makeup brushes and sweeps them across her cheeks. She loves dresses and shoes and purses and anything girly. I'm constantly amused by that, since I am so much NOT girly. I'm learning. :)

At this point in her life she still doesn't really understand that she was adopted and what that means, but we do talk about Korea a lot and I do mention the adoption in toddler appropriate ways. She has a lot of Korean decor in her bedroom and I like to point it out to her, telling that it came from Korea, just like her. She likes talking about Korea but its still sort of an abstract concept to her. The other day she asked me where I bought my shoes (because that is a typical topic of conversation for her!) and when I told her Target she said "Oh. Is that in Korea?" Ha!

We also keep in touch with her foster parents. I don't know if I've really mentioned that, but we do Skype with them occasionally. We're even Facebook friends, although the language barrier keeps us from communicating much that way. I'm still friends with Jin-Ha, my Korean friend who I met online before Clarissa came home, and she has remained good friends with the foster mother. I'm happy that Clarissa's adoption was able to bring them together as friends. Clarissa was her foster parents first foster child and it was so hard for them to let her go that they decided that they would never foster again. The foster mother actually went to counseling after Clarissa left. I felt terrible for her.

But I'm happy to report that they did foster again. Several times in fact. The last time we Skyped they actually had TWO foster babies! She still struggles when she has to give them to their families but she calls Jin-Ha for support and Jin-Ha goes with her to the agency to help her say goodbye. My life has been richly blessed by those two wonderful woman who are doing so much good for the world.

Because of her experience with our adoption, Jin-Ha now occasionally volunteers at the agency we got Clarissa from, helping adult Korean adoptees reunite with their birth mothers. Last year she spent a week with a Korean born woman who was adopted and raised in France who returned to Korea to meet her birth mother. Jin-Ha was able to be with her when she met her birth mother and help translate during their reunion. I hope and pray that someday Clarissa is able to return to Korea and meet her birth mother and when that happens I hope that Jin-Ha and Clarissa's wonderful foster mother are both by her side. Clarissa has been blessed with so much love in her life.

We refer to her foster mother as her Hanguk Omma, which means "Korean Mom", a title that her foster mother is very proud of. :) Her foster parents don't speak English but have learned a few phrases just for us. I love it! When we Skype with them we mostly just gesture and Clarissa shows them her toys and sings songs and waves. I'm sure she doesn't really understand who she's waving to, but one day she will. I will make sure that she grows up knowing how much she was loved in Korea. I'm so grateful to all the people who came together to love and support Clarissa for the first 8 months of her life. Those people will always hold a special place in my heart.

So while adoption doesn't always come up in our day to days lives, it's still very much a part of us. Josh had to do an oral report on a country this year for school and chose Korea. He was very proud to stand in front of his class and tell them about his sister who was born there.

I will always be so grateful for the opportunity that we had to adopt. I can't even imagine our family now without Clarissa in it. She has truly blessed our lives.


Thursday, September 27, 2012

RIP pretty nails

Well, I'm officially in mourning. I cut off my fingernails today. My nails have been looking so great lately. It took me months to grow them out and I was loving them. My nails had never looked so good in my entire life. People were starting to ask me if they were fake, which I was kind of proud of! :)

Then a week or so ago my thumbnail cracked down at the base and I've been desperately trying to salvage it. I bought a patch kit, which didn't really work and I've been using nail glue on it, which only kind of worked. I really didn't want to cut my whole nail down after all the work I've done to get it so pretty, so I tried my hardest to salvage it.

Then this morning I was putting my running shoes on to start my workout and they're kind of hard to get on and in the process I cracked another nail. I tried to patch that one this morning but it looked terrible and I knew it was time to just cut them all off and start over.

So after I put Clarissa down for a nap I said goodbye to my pretty nails and cut them all off. Such a bummer! They feel so weird now and they look all short and stubby. It's going to take me a really long time to grow them all back out again!

I wonder how much my nails weighed...do you think I lost an ounce or two? :) Only someone on a diet would wonder that.

Here are before and after pictures. They're not good pictures but I didn't have time for pretty nail photography today so you get bad lighting and poor composition instead. Pardon my pointer fingernail in the first picture. That's the nail I tried to patch this morning and it looks crappy.

Goodbye pretty nails! It was fun while it lasted!





Wednesday, September 26, 2012

Holy cow!

I lost almost another full pound this morning! I've lost just under two pounds in the past two days. My total loss is now 18.8 pounds. That is crazy! Nothing has changed at all except the running. I did 20 minutes of HIIT yesterday and C25K the day before. Up until now I've been losing weight really slowly and all of a sudden it's falling off. Maybe it's a fluke and will go back to being slow or maybe running really is THAT effective. I have no idea but I'm loving it while it lasts!!

Tuesday, September 25, 2012

What is that?!

The other day I was shaving my legs and I thought the back of my leg felt weird when I ran the razor over it. It felt...hard. It took me a second and then I started laughing. That's MUSCLE! I'm literally so unfamiliar with hard muscle on my body that I don't even know it when I feel it, lol.

Tonight I was putting lotion on my legs and I flexed my leg to show Shawn that I'm getting muscle and when I flexed my calf I could see it! For the first time I can actually see muscle definition in my legs. I'm a bit fascinated by it, I kept making Shawn look at it again, lol.

I know that's silly, we all have muscles, big deal, but it's so nice to see physical changes in my body. I need those confirmations that I'm getting somewhere in order to keep going. All the sore muscles I've have over the past few months are worth it when I can finally see physical changes in my body.

And on an unrelated note, I went to the grocery store this morning and bought the ingredients to make the salad I ate at Karens yesterday. Shawn and I had it for lunch. I'm pretty sure I'm having it again tomorrow. I wonder how many days in a row I can eat it before I finally get sick of it. Mmmm...salad. :)

18!

I stood on the scale this morning and I've lost a whole pound since yesterday! I've now lost exactly 18 pounds. Woohoo!

I'm pretty sure that the running I've been doing on the treadmill is making a difference in the weight loss. In the past I was losing weight really gradually, usually seeing .2 losses at a time. Now this is the second time since I've started running that I've seen an overnight one pound loss. And if you want the truth I haven't been doing so fantastic on the diet for the past week. I'm back on track now, but I had a few cheat days over the past week and didn't do so great over the weekend. So diet wise I'm struggling a bit but I'm really hanging in there with the running. Based on that I have to attribute the weight loss to the running.

I'm glad to see that because it will keep me motivated to keep running. It's kicking my behind and I'm struggling to enjoy it at the moment but I'm really determined to stick with it. Monday, Wednesday and Friday I do C25K and Tuesday and Thursday I do HIIT. Both of those programs are pushing me to the limits. Running is really hard for me and I know if I stick with it it's going to get easier but the progress has been slow and it gets frustrating. I can't run very long before I get winded and have to stop to catch my breath. After 20 minutes of alternating running and walking I pretty much feel like it's going to kill me. I have to reminding myself that I can run longer than I could when I started and that's proof that I'm getting somewhere but it's still a struggle.

The weight loss helps though. It's the reward I get for not giving up. Yesterday I wanted to swear off running forever but this morning I stood on the scale and saw a happy number and now I'm prepared to tackle running for another day.

I can do this! :)

Monday, September 24, 2012

SALAD!

My two awesome friends and I got together today for a girls lunch. Last year we decided we we were going to do lunch together on a regular basis and then I think maybe we did it twice. It was a great idea, but life sometimes gets in the way.

Anyway, the stars aligned today and we had lunch. My awesome friend Karen, the creator of all things amazing, made a salad that she got from the Our Best Bites website. I've been dieting for a while now and I'm a little eh on salads, but Oh. My. Goodness. I ate that salad like I hadn't eaten anything in a year and then I had to refrain from licking the plate. I think it might just be the best salad I've ever eaten. If I ever go postal and end up on death row and they ask me what I want for my final meal, I think it might be that salad.

Here is the link to the recipe. http://www.ourbestbites.com/2008/12/candied-walnut-salad/

I haven't figured out how many calories are in it yet and I think I almost don't care, lol. I'm going to the store tomorrow to buy the ingredients so I can get some sweet salad action at my own house.

So go check out the recipe and then start chopping up some apples and candying some walnuts because you're going to want to get some sweet salad action of your own, trust me. :)

Thursday, September 20, 2012

Busy day!

Whew! It's been a whirlwind of a day! I got Clarissa off to pre-school this morning, ran to a church meeting, came home and took a shower and prettied myself up, dropped Clarissa off at a friends house and we went to see Les Miserables!!

First of all, we picked a terrible day to see it. There is a big college rivalry football game tonight (BSU vs. BYU) and the play venue is on the college campus and they had everything closed down for the game. We had to park in a dirt field a few miles from the venue and be shuttle bused in because we couldn't park on campus. It wasn't too big of a pain getting to the venue but when the play was over it was a madhouse of people trying to get on the busses to get back to their cars and the buses filled up before we could get on. We had to wait for the them to drop the first round of people off and come back for us. By that time it was downtown five o'clock traffic and the football game people were showing up so the streets were insane. It took us a solid hour after the play was over just to get back to our car.

The play was awesome though! I teared up when the opening music started because I'm a big dork like that. I love that play. Josh did great, he really enjoyed it. I worried that it would be a bit over his head because there is pretty much no spoken dialog in it, it's all sung, so that makes it a bit harder to understand what's happening, but he loved it and seemed to have no problem following the story. Next year Beauty And The Beast is coming and I'm hoping to take both boys to that one. But next time we're not going on game day!! :)

Wednesday, September 19, 2012

17!!

I was shocked when I stepped on the scale this morning! Yesterday I was up a little from my diet cheat over the weekend and today I was hoping just to be back down to my previous low. But when I stepped on the scale this morning, not only was I back down to my previous low, I lost another .6! That brings me to exactly 17 pounds lost. Yay!! Maybe attempting to kill myself on the treadmill yesterday was super effective!

Everything I read said not to do HIIT every day, so today I started day one of the Couch to 5K program and I'll alternate them every other day. Couch to 5K is an interval program that gets a sedentary person running in 8 weeks (or maybe it's 9, I can't remember). There is a schedule you follow where you alternate walking and running and it phases in longer runs and shorter walks until eventually you're running an entire 5k. It's kind of a less intense version of HIIT.

This is what I tried to do last year and I made it through the first few minutes of the first day and had an asthma attack so bad I almost had to go to the hospital. I gave up after that. There was clearly no way I was going to complete the program when I couldn't even get through five minutes of the first day.

I am happy to report that today I successfully completed day one! When I failed so miserably at it last year it was really discouraging. I was going through that really crappy year last year and I was feeling pretty low anyway and not being able to do even the most basic exercise program just made me feel worse about myself.

Completing it today, even though it was just day one of the program, was kind of huge for me. I proved to myself that I'm not a failure at this. It's fairly pathetic that it took me three months of daily training to even complete day one of the program, I realize, but I DID it. Last year I honestly didn't think I ever could. I spent a while last year feeling like a failure and NOT feeling like a failure feels pretty good.

My second exciting news of the day is that last night Shawn got us tickets to see the Broadway touring cast of Les Miserables tomorrow!! Maybe you don't know this about me because I don't know if I've mentioned it, but I LOVE Broadway plays. Seriously love them. One of the reasons I wanted to move to New York after high school was to see a play on Broadway. When I finally made it to New Jersey I would take the bus to New York City every chance I got and see Broadway plays and my favorite was Les Miserables. I love it.

I saw it again several years ago when the touring cast went through Utah and I'm really excited to see it again tomorrow! We're going to a matinee and we decided to get three tickets and take Josh with us. We're taking him out of school for the afternoon, which I wouldn't normally do, but I feel like it's an educational opportunity and I really want him to experience it. I love that he's finally old enough to do grown up things with us. He's excited about it, I think it should be really fun!

So there are all sorts of pretty exciting things happening here these days! I'm losing weight, I'm reaching goals that I never thought I could reach and tomorrow I'm going to be sitting in a theater crying while Eponine dies in Marius's arms. It gets me every time. :)

Tuesday, September 18, 2012

HIIT me baby, one more time

I have discovered HIIT. High Intensity Interval Training. Basically you run as fast as you possibly can for as long as you can and then you stop, catch your breath and repeat until 20 minutes is over or until you die, whichever comes first. :)

Fortunately for me, 20 minutes passed before death came today, but it was a close race. It kicked my BUTT, but I did it!

I read all about it and supposedly you're supposed to get more results from 20-30 minutes of HIIT on the treadmill than 40-60 minutes of walking or running at a steady pace. If I can get more results in less time, sign me up please.

I have no doubt that I accomplished more this morning in 20 minutes than I normally do walking for 45. I was dripping sweat when I was done. I practically had to crawl up the stairs, lol. It felt amazing though, and I DID it!! A few months ago I couldn't do a slow jog for 20 seconds without practically needing medical attention. Most days even now I don't run on the treadmill, I just powerwalk. But today I ran for 20 minutes, with breaks to catch my breath, of course, not straight, but I RAN! I ran like I was headed for the finish line at the Boston Marathon. I ran like bears were chasing me. Of course, I would have been trampled at the marathon and eaten by the bears and I thought I was going to die before 20 minutes was up, but it was awesome! :) I didn't I know I could run! I may not be able to walk for the rest of the day, but this morning I ran.

I rock. :)

Monday, September 17, 2012

Baked potato soup

We had ham and baked potatoes for dinner last night, which is our family's favorite meal. My kids love ham. A couple of years ago we had ham instead of turkey on Thanksgiving and my kids still talk about it, lol.

Anyway, we ended up with leftovers, and I actually still had some baked potatoes in the fridge left over from the potato bar at church on Saturday, so this morning I decided to make soup.

I started out by looking up baked potato soup recipes online. I found several good ones but they all called for things like cream or half and half, which I don't have in the house and didn't really want to go shopping for, or they had a lot of milk and butter and flour in them, which sounds heavenly, but not so diet friendly.

So I decided to make up a recipe and just throw a bunch of things in a pot and see what came out. Here is what I did. It's not exactly a real recipe because I didn't measure hardly anything, but I mostly want to write this all down so I can remember how I made it so I can make it again.

I started out with 3 cups of chicken broth and 2 cups of milk. I put that in a pot and added a little chopped garlic and minced onion. Then I cut up two big baked potatoes that I had in my fridge and threw those in. I added parsley, a big scoop of sour cream, some real bacon bits I had in the fridge and I cut up a bunch of leftover ham and threw that in.

I decided it needed a secret ingredient so I threw in a little ranch seasoning. I added salt and pepper and then to thicken it I added some potato flakes and mixed a little cornstarch and water and dumped that in.

I let it simmer for a few minutes and then decided to add in a handful of shredded cheese.

After that melted I gave it a try and it is HEAVENLY. So ridiculously good. I added it up in my calorie calculator and if it serves six it's just under 300 calories a bowl.

Heaven, seriously.

Saturday, September 15, 2012

Cheater

Hello, my name is Wendy, and I'm a diet cheater. :)

I've been doing super awesome on my diet this week. I'm down to 16.4 pounds lost and feeling great. Then the past two days I've fallen back off the wagon a bit. I was doing great yesterday until Shawn and I had a quick date night last night I ate chicken, french fries and frozen yogurt. Date night calories don't count, right?!

Then today I was in charge of putting together a potato bar for a church function. I spent all morning baking potatoes and setting up the lunch at the church and then I rewarded myself for doing a good job by enjoying myself at the potato bar. So I ate. And ate. And then I ate some more. And then I came home with all leftovers and we had potato bar part 2 for dinner, complete with leftover brownies. I think the scale is not going to look pretty tomorrow.

The majority of the time I don't really mind dieting. Most days I stick to it really well, I plan my meals in advance and I end the day feeing great and proud of my progress. But every now and then I have those frustrating days where I just don't want to think about it. I don't want to go on a date with Shawn and eat nothing but a small salad and water at a yummy restaurant. I don't want to go to a fun church function and spend the whole time trying to figure out how many calories are in the toppings on my potato when I can't weigh and measure them and then skip desert while everyone else eats brownies and ice cream. I just want to sit down and EAT.

So on those days I eat. I get it out of my system and get back on track. It slows down my progress a little but I'm pretty good at getting back on track. I guess I'd rather lose the weight slower and know I can occasionally enjoy myself than try to be so rigid that I give up completely.

One thing I've gotten good at over the past few months is getting back on track after a bad day. When I dieted in the past I would have one cheat day, decide that I'd ruined the diet and give up completly. These days I can forgive myself and get back on track.

So today I cheated, but tomorrow is a new day. I will wake up and vow to try harder.

Aside from my diet cheating, I got a lot accomplished today. I put together a successful church luncheon, I got some errands run that I had been putting off and then this afternoon I taught Josh how to make loom hats. Remember all the hats I made for the NICU earlier this year? Josh has to do a four hour service project for school and he asked me to show him how to make hats that he can take over to the hospital. He got one made that turned out awesome and we'll work on it again tomorrow. It was really fun to teach him. He can also count this as a service project for Scouts, so we killed two birds with one stone. Bonus!

And now it's bedtime and I'm ready to crawl into the covers, have some quality snuggle time with Shawn and put an end to my busy day. All that diet cheating and hat making has made me sleepy. :)

Wednesday, September 12, 2012

Progress!!

I took a photo of myself today to compare it to a photo of me before I started my weight loss journey. I never took an official "before" photo so that I could do before and afters, mostly because I hated the before so much that I avoided having my picture taken as much as possible. Shawn took my picture by my bike for one of our Year of Adventure activities though, and it works pretty good as a before photo.

For the record, I super hate the "before" picture. In fact, looking at that photo was one of the things that started the whole weight loss thing. I was kind of shocked when I saw myself in that photo for the first time. Yikes. I cringe every time I look at it. The photo was taken on July 1st, which is within days of starting the diet and about two weeks or so after starting my daily bike rides.

As of today I've lost just under 16 pounds. No one has really mentioned the weight loss and I wasn't sure if it was really noticeable, so I took a photo tonight to compare it to the July photo.

I can definitely tell! It's noticeable, right? I definitely hate the second photo less than the first, anyway! I would say that I'm approximately halfway to my goal. Not quite, but pretty close. I've lost 16ish and I probably want to lose about 18ish more.

I've now been dieting for around 75 days. The progress has been somewhat slow, but seeing the difference in the photos is motivation to keep going. I feel better, I look better and I'm happier. I'm proud of me! :)



Photos!

I don't have a lot of time to blog because I'm headed off to a church meeting, but I wanted to quickly share some photos.

Yesterday was Clarissa's first day of preschool! She did great and had a fun time! Here are a few pictures I took of her yesterday morning. I love that kid.






Also, here are my nails today:


Everything else is going great, the weight loss is going great, I've lost 15.8 and crossing my fingers to see 16 tomorrow! I'll keep you posted!

Saturday, September 8, 2012

Nails and Shoes!

Shawn and I escaped for a few hours today and ran some errands without the kids. Yay! :)

We got the car stereo installed that I bought him for his birthday and then we went the mall to shop for shoes and nail polish, two things that I'm sure were not super thrilling for Shawn (ok, super boring), but he's an awesome sport. I love shopping with him. He's patient even if I stand there and look at nail polish and try on shoes for an hour. He was on a new car stereo high and we did get the battery in his watch replaced while we were at mall, so it wasn't all for me! :)


I decided I needed new exercise shoes. The shoes I've been wearing for biking and the treadmill all summer aren't super fancy anyway and they have suddenly stopped fitting right and they're starting to give me blisters. I do have a pair of nice Nike running shoes that I bought a few years ago that I have tried really hard to love, but I hate them. They're super cushion-y, which I think is supposed to be a good thing, but they're just so much SHOE on my foot. I feel like my foot is encased in so much foam and...shoe.

I hate wearing shoes in general and I pretty much go barefoot whenever possible. I have been known to walk to the mailbox in the winter barefoot when there is snow on the ground. When I do wear shoes I like slip-ons that don't feel constricting. So really clunky running shoes don't work for me. I hate them and I can't do my daily treadmill workout in my Nikes.

I have been researching barefoot shoes recently. You know those new-fangled shoes that are shaped like feet with the toes? Have you seen those? There is a whole bunch of research out there on how it's better to run in bare feet. It's actually really interesting. Those shoes with the toes in them are called minimal or barefoot shoes. There isn't much to them and it's basically supposed to be as close as you can get to running in bare feet without actually being barefoot.


I actually didn't really want the shoes with the toes in them because, well, they're shoes with toes in them and I just can't get onboard with that. But fortunately there are all sorts of other shoes out there these days that mimic being barefoot that don't have the toe things in them.

I spent the afternoon researching minimal shoes the other day and decided on these:
They're Merrell shoes, the style is Pace. They got really great reviews everywhere I looked and seemed like they'd be just what I needed, so I went to Dillards and tried them on. Not only are they the most comfortable shoes ever to touch my feet, they were 50% off today! Bonus! They seriously feel amazing on my feet. The sole is made by the same people who make the shoes with the toes in them (Vibram), and they still feel like being barefoot, but they look like regular shoes without the toe cutouts that I wasn't so sure about. They're awesome, I'm completely in love with them. They hug my foot without feeling like my foot is encased in five pounds of foam and rubber. I put them on when I got home and ran laps around my kitchen, lol. I have happy feet. 


Then while I was at it I saw these shoes and fell in love:



These are Ahnu brand shoes, I believe they come from the makers of Keen. The style name is Karma, in case you love them and want to search for them. I needed some new every day shoes that I could wear with jeans and I tried them on and they are like walking on a cloud. For someone who likes shoes that don't feel like shoes, these are amazing.

I usually don't love shopping for shoes because, well, I don't like shoes, but today was a successful shoe shopping adventure.

While we were waiting for Shawn's watch battery to be replaced and the car stereo to be installed we had some time to spare so we went to Sephora, which is the Holy Grail of all things girly. So much lip gloss and nail polish in one room. :)

I bought a brand of nail polish that I have never tried before. It's called Spartitual and I just could not pass up the interesting colors! I'm a sucker for nail polish in really weird colors. They had two glittery colors that change color in the light (called duochrome) that I just couldn't stop looking at. The first one is called Off The Grid and the second one is called Meditate On This. Off The Grid is an emerald green glitter that shows blue and even a little purple in different light. Meditate on This is a beautiful blue, or purple, depending on the light.  The two colors look amazing together and I knew that they would make a great gradient, so I bought them and decided to give gradients another try.

The result actually came out pretty cool, but all the glitter and color changing made it difficult to photograph. I did my best, but it looks way better in person.



Oh, also, I broke the thumbnail on my other hand a couple of days ago. It was my first broken nail ever. I was super bummed about it. I filed it down and considered filing the rest of my nails down to match it, which I'm sure is probably what you're supposed to do, but I just couldn't bear to do it. It took me so long to grow out my nails that I can't file them down! So I have one sad thumb nail that doesn't match. First world problems.

OK, so now that I've shared my shoes and my nails, I'm going to go watch an episode of Criminal Minds with Shawn (we're finally in season six!) and then figure out what's for dinner. Typical Saturday at our house!

Friday, September 7, 2012

15!!

Woohoo! I was hovering just under 15 pounds lost for a while and then I took my little diet detour and gained a little and FINALLY today I have lost the weight I gained plus .4 more and I have now officially lost 15.2 pounds. Yay me! It took me 71 days to lose 15 pounds, which is a little slower than I hoped, but I'm still really happy with my progress.

If I lose 10 more pounds my BMI will be in the normal range and if I lose 20 more my lowest sized pants will fit (the ones I only keep around as goal weight pants) and I will be at a weight that I haven't seen in years. I have purposely not set long term goals up until now because it's easier to focus on small numbers and day to day successes, but I have found that blogging has been one of things that has kept me motivated, so I'm putting the numbers out there. I'm still only going to focus on the day to day successes, but writing down a goal number will help motivate me to get there.

I have done great on my diet the past couple of days. I even turned down a cupcake at a church function the other night, and I love cupcakes! I'm back in the zone.

On a different topic, I have been meaning to mention this for the past couple of days and I have to write it down before I forget. It's a brag about Josh, so you'll have to forgive me, but I'm proud of him and I want to make sure I document this.

Josh is in Boy Scouts. He wasn't super enthusiastic about Scouts when he started but it's part of our church program and all his church friends go, so he has been a good sport about it. Then it came time to go to scout camp this summer and he wasn't totally sure he wanted to go. To tell you the truth, I wasn't all that sure I wanted him to go either. But we talked about it and decided that it was an experience that would be good for him and he decided to go.

You all remember how much I missed him that week and counted down the days until he came home! Because he's not super unto Scouts and was nervous about going to camp, I was nervous for him. I just hoped that he'd earn some merit badges and come home happy.

Before he left the scout leader told him that last year someone earned 11 merit badges at scout camp and that if someone could earn 11 this year they'd be doing really great. I told Josh to just do his best and hoped that camp would be a good experience for him. I was proud of him just for going.

He came home from camp, a little banged up from a bike accident and a run in with a tree stump, and all of his stuff was wet because it rained all week, but he had a smile on his face and was proud to tell me that he earned 13 merit badges! Thirteen is almost unheard of at scout camp!

After scout camp he earned one more and a couple of nights ago they held the Court Of Honor ceremony where they present them with their merit badges and we got to go watch him get his 14 badges. I was proud of him, not just because he earned the most merit badges, but because he accomplished something that was really hard for him and a little outside his comfort zone and that he did it with such a good attitude.

When he went up to get his badges, the leader who presented them said that the leaders had gotten together to choose one camper to award with a special award for being the best camper. Not for getting the most merit badges, but for having a good attitude, being cooperative and for trying hard. The choose Josh to receive the award and they gave him a really neat walking stick that one of the leaders had carved.

I am so proud of that kid. No matter what you ask him to do he does it with a smile on his face and he does it 110%. He wasn't even sure he wanted to go to camp and he ended up earning the most merit badges and getting the best camper award. I don't so much care about the awards, but seeing how proud he was of what he accomplished was awesome. He really stretched himself to do something that was hard for him and I admire that about him. I love watching my kids grow and learn and accomplish goals. Josh learned at Scout camp that he is stronger than he thought he was and I think that's awesome. I know that is a big long mom brag, but I wanted to make sure to write that down so that he'd know how proud I am of him. He's an awesome kid.

And speaking of awesome kids, Matthew starts his hip hop dance class tonight. He's really excited about it and I think it will be fun to watch what he learns. He likes to dance, which amuses me because he has the two most uncoordinated parents on Earth. :) I'm not sure when he gets it from, but if he wants to learn to hip hop dance I was happy to find him a class! It's a six week class and sounds like fun!

And because I can't leave my third awesome kid out, I am loving being home with Clarissa now that the boys are both in school. We went shopping this morning and she helped me pick out workout shirts. I love the one on one time with her, we've been having all sorts of fun together this week. She starts preschool on Tuesday and she can't wait! It's just for a couple of mornings a week but she has the same awesome teacher we had in the mommy and me class last year and I think she's really going to have a fun time.

So everyone is doing great around here! I'm loving life these days! :)

Wednesday, September 5, 2012

Back on track

I did super awesome on my diet today and set a new personal mile time record on the treadmill. I'm officially back in the game!

Just thought I'd share. :)

Tuesday, September 4, 2012

We were on a break!

OK, I admit it, my diet and I have been on a break for a few days. We had a nasty falling out there for a bit, but I'm working on the relationship again!

Yesterday was Shawn's birthday and in typical White family style we managed to stretch the celebration out for several days. He took part of last week off work and we hung out. And ate.

Saturday night we went out to dinner with friends to Shawn's favorite restaurant and we ate until we were stuffed. We had a really great night with our awesome friends and also went miniature golfing with them afterwards. I'm terrible at miniature golfing. I just thought you should know that. :)

Sunday we ate birthday cake. Twice. With ice cream. Yesterday was his actual birthday and of course you can't diet on a holiday, right?!

So as a result of all those hijinks, I stood on the scale this morning and it wasn't pretty. Let's just not talk about it.

I vowed to do better today and get back on the wagon, but I admit, I'm struggling today. I did the treadmill this morning and I was super sluggish and didn't enjoy a minute of it. Then there was one more piece of birthday cake left and I tried to ignore it all morning and finally gave up and ate it. At least it's out of my life for good now! :)

I keep telling myself that it's OK, it's just a minor setback. Tomorrow I'm going to be back on that treadmill full force and I'm back to counting every calorie. I feel so good when I exercise and eat right. I really don't want to backslide when I've worked so hard and come so far.

The good news is that now school is back in session, no one has a birthday coming up, there are no big holidays for a while and life should be pretty humdrum for the next couple of months and that should be good for my diet progress. It's easier to diet when there isn't birthday cake in the house and there are no big celebrations going on! My goal has always been to be down to a number that I'm happy with by Halloween and I can still make it, even with this little setback. I just have to stick with it.

So I can do this. When I'm in the zone it really isn't that hard, it's just hard to get off track and get back on again. It feels great to watch the weight come off. It does NOT feel great to watch it come back.

So now that I've confessed my diet break up and vowed to get back together and try harder, I will push forward and keep going. I'll keep you posted. :)