One week down! So, I have to say I was dissapointed yesterday when I weighed and i'll tell you why. I cheated and weighed on Tuesday I think? and was shocked when the scale said I had lost 9 lbs! I even stepped on the scale 3 times to make sure I wasn't seeing things. Well, it must have been too good to be true, I dunno what happened, but I stepped on the scale yesterday and had lost 6 lbs. That is not bad at all, and really I am happy with that, but I got soo excited about the 9 lbs! I was getting very frustrated yesterday because I am sooo tired of this 'obsession' with losing weight. I feel like it's consuming me sometimes, I think of nothing else, and I don't think that's healthy. I wanted to dump it all yesterday and eat whatever I wanted. I made crockpot lasagna for the fam yesterday and it looked and smelled soo yummy and cheesy, and then I made some delicious smelling garlic bread and then to top it all off, I let the kids have some leftover brownies and ice cream from a couple nights ago when we had Davids family over for dinner. These are alot of my favorite foods. But, I was proud of myself. I did allow myself to take a small taste of everything, like a pinch, but then I stuck to my guns and ate the right things. I had some blackened chicken smothered in a tomato sauce that I dressed up with onions, bell pepper, garlic, chili powder, salt, pepper and basil and then a big salad, it wasn't bad, not as good as lasagna, but it satisfied me. I was still itchin for something sweet after dinner, so I splurged a little and had a sliced apple with some almond butter and a little honey drizzled over the top, and that did satisfy my sweet craving. And then, I just drank alot of water. I am determined to do this! It's almost like an anger is coming out in me, an anger that I let myself gain this weight in the first place, an anger that I have to work this hard to lose it. But I keep telling myself, "just get it over with!". And I'm going to! I want to do this not to just look good, but to be confident in my skin, to be healthy, and to have energy and be able to run and jump and climb with my kids (and my hubby). So, I'm not giving up. 6 lbs. is awesome!!

My favorite snack lately...

oh yumm! They have been soo sweet and just yum, and the smell, just smells good and fresh!

Have a good weekend y'all!

So, I wasn't going to post anything until Thursday, 1 full week since I started the hormone diet, so that I could give a weight loss update, but I didn't want to wait that long between posts. I'm sitting here drinking my green monster smoothie for the morning while Abby keeps trying to paint my face (pretend paint with her own little makeup brush, do I see a makeup artist in the making??) and her also pestering me to paint her nails (she loves to have her nails painted but she is not so good at sitting still while I try to paint them, oh well, I'm going to enjoy her being girly!

I'm almost over being sick, I feel wayyy better, but I'm still hacking up phlegm (sorry, but it's true). Just kinda annoying. I haven't started exercising yet, I'm aiming for next monday, get all this chest congestion cleared up.

I keep wanting to post about this but always get busy talking about other things, but today I don't have much to talk about, so I thought I would post about it today. I kinda get tired of people using others as examples of how they want to look. Of course it's ok to admire the way others look (like man she/he has good legs or whatever) but I think everyone needs to remember that we all have different body types and we are not all built the same, and we need to learn to love what God has given us. Me, for example, I am a pear shape. Small upper body and big booty. I used to always hate having a big booty because it's HARD to shop for pants and even shirts sometimes. Pants will fit in the booty but be loose in the waist, and some longer shirts wont fit over my hips and if I get a bigger size they just swallow me. I can try all I want to lose the booty, but it aint going no where! Thanks to my sweet husband, I have learned to embrace my figure (mainly the big booty) because he loves it. So, all I'm saying is, I hope everyone can embrace the body God gave them and not envy others legs, booties, waists, arms, etc.

Also, I guess I should throw this out there. Awhile back I said I didn't have a goal weight to get to, but I do have a goal size to get to. Right now (gasp, I can't believe I'm going to post this on the internet for the world to see) I am a loose size 14, tightish 12 (depending on the brand). My goal is a comfortable size 10. I've been that size before and I like how I look at that size, any smaller and I think it's too much for me (I could change my mind once I get to that point, but right now this is my goal.) I decided to buy some "goal pants". Now, ever since the whole skinny jean thing came in style, I honestly kinda made fun of it, but I think it's because I was secretly jealous that I couldn't look as cute as some girls in them. Well, my goal jeans are a super cute pair of black size 10 skinny jeans. They really are super cute! I can just imagine them with a cute flowy top and some cute wedges! Get ready cute little pants, because I'm on my way!!

I started my 'cleanse/diet'. I guess it's not your typical cleanse because I'm eating and I decided not to take all the supplements and stuff (they just make me gag!). But, it's clean eating. I decided to share with you a day of eating on this plan, so here goes...

For breakfast I had this 'Green Monster' smoothie. I got my inspiration from Pinterest (duh) and tweaked it a bit so it would work for HD (hormone diet). It has around 2 cups of baby spinach (you can do more or less depending on what you want), 1 Tbs. almond butter, 1 sliced frozen banana, and 1 1/2 Cups of unsweetened vanilla almond milk (I added this much because the original recipe called for some greek yogurt, which I can't eat in this phase of HD). I add it all in my blender until green...

For lunch I made some blackened chicken which I took from this recipe and I made this yummy, easy greek salad dressing that I found on....Pinterest (yup). Ingredients for the dressing are: 1/2 C olive oil, 1/2 C red wine vinegar, 1 tsp. each of garlic powder, dried oregano, dried basil and dijon mustard, 1/2 tsp. onion powder, salt and pepper to taste. Mix all together and chill. It's yummy! I added the chicken and dressing to a salad with tomatoes, cucumber, carrots, etc.

And for dinner I got a little thrown off and had to just throw something together quickly. I made a taco salad. I just got some lettuce, carrots, cucumber, corn, browned some ground turkey with paprika, chili powder, cumin, salt and pepper, kidney beans and homemade salsa. For the salsa I just a take a couple large tomatoes (whatever kind you want and however many you want), minced garlic (maybe 1 tsp? I never measure, just throw stuff in and tweak it as I go), fresh cilantro, chunk of onion, spoonful of sliced jalapeno, salt and pepper to taste. I put all this stuff in the food processor and pulse it. It's sooo yummy and fresh! So, that's what was for dinner, not bad! (and I did add cheddar cheese to the salad for everyone else, but I picked mine out) I would have added bell pepper and maybe some avocado or even make some kind of avocado salsa, but like I said, I was running low on time.

I also had half an apple and half a banana as a snack yesterday. I drank lots of water. And, I decided I wasn't willing to give up my coffee this time around, so instead of my usual coffee mate creamer with my coffee, I'm just using some of the unsweetened vanilla almond milk, it works.

My proudest moment yesterday was when everyone decided they wanted frozen yogurt yesterday evening. If you don't know me very well, I LOVE frozen yogurt and ice cream!!!! I could honestly eat it a couple times a day EVERY day, and I'm not exagerating! So we went to The Big Swirl and everyone got some yummy yogurt...except for me! And it really wasn't that painful! I didn't even take a taste of anyones. And another happy thing was that Abby got to eat her first bowl of fro yo! We have discovered that she is no longer allergic to dairy!! Woo hoo!! She's having fun trying all these things that she never got to enjoy with us, cheese, yogurt, ice cream, fun fun!

And, one last picture from yesterday. Looks like we will be doing alot of this for awhile. The hot weather has come our way once again. It's supposed to get up to 105 this weekend! I do think it's supposed to cool off some next week, but not too much. Have a good weekend everyone!

Ahhh!! I am sooo tired of sickness!! I never get sick and I have been sick or had a sick person to take care of for too long! It was really windy last week and I figured my stuffy nose and stuff was just due to allergies, and maybe it was, but it turned into much more. I've got me some major chest congestion, stopped up nose, coughing, aching, blahh!! My chest was soo tight yesterday afternoon that I broked down and did a breathing treatment on Ben's nebulizer. It opened my chest up but it made me shaky, didn't like that. I'm starting to feel a little better this afternoon. It's just soo frustrating! I used to get asthma like this when I was a kid, but haven't had this in a long time. It makes me achy, and tired, and weak. So, all this to say I haven't been working out for squat! Once again. But, all this time to sit around and think, I've decided my ol' body needs some cleansing. I've gotten sick one to many times lately and I'm tired of it. So, I'm pretty sure I'm going to do the Hormone Diet again. I've done it before and felt amazing and lost some good weight from it. It's a 6 week program (you can go longer if you choose) but the first 2 weeks are a cleanse phase, fruits, vegies, chicken, fish, turkey, no sugar, dairy, wheat, etc. Then the next 2 weeks you start to add in foods that you hadn't been eating (it's mostly a way to see what your body may not tolerate or even if you are allergic to things) and then the last 2 weeks is the same foods but you start exercising. I do think I'm going to exercise through all of it though, it kinda drove me nuts to no exercise the first time I did this. I'm not positive when I'm going to start this, either later this week or beginning of next week, I'm just going to see how my body recovers from being sick. Well, not much else to report here, I've got some crafts I want to work out, hopefully I can get some of those done and I'll share when I do. Hope everyone has a good week!

This will be a very random post, but I had some pictures I wanted to share from the past couple weeks. Starting with this one...

Abbers with her 'chicken pops'...not bad!

Finally in Texas! Hangin' out in the backyard.

So, I finally got a shellac manicure. I have to say I'm very impressed! This is a couple days after I got it done and even now, over a week since I've had it done, they look really good. Might have to do this more often.

The girls with their pigtails. They are soo cute together! Wish we lived closer :-(

Me and my girl taking a break from baking for our Easter Soiree

Exciting times! Ben finally lost his first tooth! He even pulled it himself (even if it was hanging by a thread!)

They had a butterfly release at my brothers church on Easter Sunday, very cool and the kids loved it!

And really random, but I gave Ben a haircut this afternoon, yes, ME! I thought it turned out pretty good if I do say so myself, and saved a couple bucks in the process!

Sorry for the horrible quality, I think all of them were taken with my iPhone, I dunno why I don't pull out my good camera more, that will be a goal, to use my good camera more often.

Happy Easter! I have joy because my Heavenly Father sent His only Son to die for my (and yours) sins, and I am eternally thankful. I have hope because Jesus rose from the dead 3 days later, He lives! Because of this I have been given eternal life! How amazing is that?! Eternal life with no sorrow or pain but filled with happiness and joy! God is so good to me! Place your life in His hands, you will never regret it, I promise!

I'm in Texas! We didn't think it was going to happen because of the pox epidemic our house encountered. But, Wednesday morning I woke up planning on changing our flights (which were for the very next morning) but it was going to cost double to do that, not cool! So, I talked to my mom and she told me to look at Abby and Ben and see how they looked. Ben had nothing, I wasn't worried about him. Abby still had spots but they were all scabbed over, which means she is no longer contagious. I was just worried they wouldn't let us fly because she still had spots. But, we decided to go ahead and leave the next day. THE NEXT DAY! I admit I kinda went into panic mode. I had done most of the laundry but still had a couple loads to do and had to pack, all in one short afternoon. It happened! I do not recommend planning and packing for a trip in one afternoon. The kids were good for me, we had no time for anything at the airport, security was insane and we got to our gate just in time to board, thank goodness I brought snacks. I thought we were going to have an hour layover in Vegas but that didn't happen. We had to haul butt to a whole other terminal for our second flight and just had a minute to grab a sandwich (gross pre made airport sandwich) and some chips and fruit. But, we made it to Grammy and Pots and it's so good to be here. Just wish my hubby could be here too, we miss him, he's my other half and I feel a little lonely without him even though I'm with my family. Enough of the travel stuff.

So, between having both kids home and getting over being sick, I hadn't exercised in over a week. I HAD to do something. So I brought my shred DVD and finally did it this morning. Whew! I dunno if it's just because I haven't worked out in too long or because I still had some congestion, but it was harder than I expected, but I finished it. I just did the first level and I feel good. I also tried this new smoothie I found on pinterest (shocking I know) but it was pretty good. I don't like them too thick, and this one wasn't, I suppose you could make it thicker if that's what you like. The recipe is: 2 handfuls of baby spinach, 1 cup of pineapple, 2 bananas, 1 cup of yogurt (I used plain nonfat Greek yogurt) and 1 cup of filtered water. This seemed like an awful lot of smoothie, so I halted it. Next time I will probably add a little ice or use frozen bananas.

We've got a picnic to get ready for. Have a good day!