City Momma/Country Momma

Many miles in 2010

2011-01-01T10:57:00.002-05:00

Happy New Year everyone! I have many things to post, I never did post the rest of the Warrior Dash photos like I said I would... I might get on that this week. I am however, transferring my running mileage over to the blog from my sidebar.

Drum roll please...

In 2010 I ran 621.5 miles! That's a lot! Here's the breakdown:

January running totals...
71.75 miles
February running totals...
82.75 miles
March running totals...
78.50 miles
April running totals...
69.25 miles
May running totals...
10 miles (Broad St. Run!)
37.50 miles
6.2 (Kennett Run!)
Total 53.7
June running totals...
41.25 miles
July running totals...
27.50 miles
August running totals...
35 miles
September running totals...
35.25 miles
October running totals...
34 miles
November running totals...
42.50 miles
December running totals...
50 miles

I will admit that I might be off by a mile or two, there may be days that I forgot to record my miles or days that I wrote down more than once but all in all, I think it's pretty accurate. It's interesting to me that after I discovered Zumba, my mileage drastically decreases. I am not big on the "New Year's resolution" however my resolution for this year is to track all of my exercise, not just my running. I'm still formulating a plan on how that will be done exactly.

So Folks, (if anyone actually still reads this blog) I'll try to be a better blogger in the coming year but I ain't making any promises.

Hope you enjoy your New Year's Day!

The Warrior Dash

2010-11-29T19:18:00.008-05:00

Or some alternate titles for this post...

What the hell was I thinking?
Why didn't I blog about The Warrior Dash sooner?
or
Something I never thought I'd do but did.

So yes, I am back after another LONG hiatus. I don't know, I'm just not feeling the blog thing any more. I don't know why but I do know that I am very busy. I have four nutrition groups that I teach now and I still teach swimming, in my "free" time, I am at the gym, maintaining my 90 pound weight loss. I've started Body Pump classes three times a week and I've had lots of people tell me that I must still be losing weight but the truth is, I am not. I think everything is just shifting and toning up from Body Pump. Pretty amazing if you ask me. I've also begun to eat more intuitively and not journal every morsel that I eat. It's been a journey because I tend to be compulsive when I get used to things and not writing down my food has been difficult for me. I still do it if I need to get things back in check but for the most part, I eat what I want and exercise one to two hours per day. It seems to be working for me.

So... on to the Warrior Dash. What is the Warrior Dash you ask? Well, the Warrior Dash is described as "The Craziest Frickin' Day of your Life" and for me, it just might have been. I am not a "getting dirty" kind of girl. Back in kindergarten, my (very mean teacher) had to shove my hand into the plaster to make the obligatory plaster mold of my hand for my parents because I didn't want to get dirty so when I a friend of mine asked me to do this race, my first response was, "Hell NO!" but then... I started to think about it and I thought, "Why not?" I'm forty years old and I knew it wouldn't kill me to get dirty so I decided to sign up and do it.

Warrior Dash is all over the country and we did the Mid-Atlantic one. Here's a group of us looking all cute and coordinated before the race. Costumes are encouraged so we decided to wear pink and black tutus.

We were not original in our idea but many people were...

There were lots of fun costumes, if I ever do this again, I'm pretty sure I'd like to do it in an 80s theme prom dress or a wedding gown or some other totally non-running gear but that of course would mean that I'd actually do something like this again.

We posed for a few more pictures before heading to the main area for the starting line. I will admit that I was beginning to get a little scared... Ok, A LOT scared.

My cousin, aka, my BFF/Chrissy 'Cuz /Longest Friend/Best Cousin Ever took all the pictures, this one is of people who had already finished the race waiting for the hose...

and for this one... she used the zoom lens to capture me in a very candid shot. It was at this point that I was definitely thinking, "Why the hell did I let Becky talk me into this?"

One final picture of the start line as this post is getting very long... I will finish up with the good pictures and make sure that it gets posted by Wednesday... I really, really will!

Losin' it!

2010-09-10T08:53:00.006-04:00

Hi Friends! Happy Thursday!

It's been quite a few weeks since I posted and actually quite a few weeks since the event about which I am going to blog happened, but it's a milestone in our household so I must tell you all about it.

The Son, who is 6.5 years old, finally lost his first tooth! We thought it would never happen as many of his friends have lost multiple teeth but when we were on vacation back in August, he noticed that he had a wiggler.

It took a while and part of that is because he wouldn't "work on it" he was afraid it would hurt when it came out. When it finally did come out, there was blood... a teeny, tiny amount of blood and of course there was drama... a huge, giant amount of drama because of said blood but we soon recovered and soon realized that the tooth was missing. I thought he swallowed it but eventually The Husband found it in the carpet right near where The Son was standing when it fell out. Phew!

The tooth fairy came that night and left The Son $5 since it was his first tooth! She also wrote him a note (that conveniently matches the "tooth fairy" scrapbook paper I already had... imagine that.) and best of all, she let him keep his tooth so that it could be put in the scrapbook... that tooth fairy sure is cool!

Here he is with his Squirrel, Skuggs. Skuggs is holding the tooth wrapped in tissue before we put it under his pillow. For the record, my child does have clothes, he just prefers to walk around with no shirt on. LOL!

Placing the tooth...

Posed? No way... totally candid. ;)

Thanks everyone! I have a busy weekend ahead of me. I am working a couple classes today and then getting ready for a ten-mile race on Saturday! I haven't really trained for the race but I think I can do it even if I have to walk a bit. I'll keep you posted on that. I also have some fantastic pictures of a recent race I did... I got muddy... really muddy. Stay tuned!

Have a great weekend!

The first day of first grade!

2010-09-10T08:25:00.005-04:00

Happy Friday my bloggy friends! I actually have a few minutes this morning to write up a blog post for you. The Son gets on the bus at 8AM and I don't have to be at the gym until just afternoon. I've been enjoying myself by trying out lots of new fitness classes at the Y and my nutrition classes that I teach are going well. I also went back to teaching swim lessons. I don't know if I had mentioned on the blog that the Y came up with a "policy" that you had to work 10 hours there to remain employed and with that policy, many of the swim instructors quit. One would have to work pretty much every day to be able to get in 10 hours of swim lessons and since so many of us are moms who work at the Y because we only had to work a day or two, we quit. That didn't bode well or work at the Y so they changed the policy and we all went back. I'm thrilled because I enjoyed that job and it was really nice to see some of my favorite little swimmers again... I missed those little guys!

It's late but I have a few pictures of The Son's first day of school. He's really enjoying himself as a big first grader! He buys lunch every day and decided on his own that he would only get chocolate milk once a week since it's not as healthy as white milk. I'm so proud of that decision as I know the rest of the school lunches probably aren't that healthy.

So... on to the pictures! He may not realize it but I will be taking a picture of The Son on the first day of school at least until he graduates from high school... if he goes to college locally, he might have to endure it then too. (and I'm only half joking with that statement.) Here's a couple on the front step...

Does this one look odd to you? Well, it's a picture of The Son with his first wiggly tooth! Some excitement going on up in here!
Walking to the bus stop...

with Daddy...

Oh Momma... come on!

There it is...
Happy First day of First Grade Son! WE ARE SO PROUD OF YOU! Clearly, you're very proud of yourself as well and that's just the way we want you to be!

P.S. Do you think he looks a lot more grown-up? The pictures in the post below are from the first day of kindergarten, I didn't think he looked that different until I posted this but now... I think he does!

Tomorrow is the first day of first grade!

2010-08-29T20:04:00.006-04:00

It's official! I am a horrible blogger, this summer has come and gone so fast, perhaps we can just consider it a blogging break? It may or may not continue but for now, I just wanted to post a few pictures of The Son last year on his first day of Kindergarten. I simply cannot believe that my boy is getting so big and will be in Kindergarten for the entire day! He's excited, I'm excited and I think it's going to be a great year.

Here he is last year:

In all honesty, I don't think he looks a lot different this year but when we visited the school on Thursday last week, he sure did look bigger than all the kids who were starting Kindergarten this year. I guess when I post pictures of the big day tomorrow, we'll really be able to see a difference.

Good luck tomorrow Son! Momma and Daddy are SO proud of you and wish you luck in your first day of first grade and your first FULL day of school ever! We love you!

Hi.

2010-08-10T10:00:00.004-04:00

Hello out there! I have to take a quick moment to post even though I think I lost all my readers (all six of them) at this point. Alas, I guess this blog is for me and my family anyway so no big deal.

So, did you see my August running mileage? Yeah. That two week break I was supposed to take? It didn't happen. I took a week off and then my "tendonitis" felt better so I ran and did Zumba. Fortunately, it is still feeling pretty good and I've managed to run a lot more, I think it's the Zumba that irritates it so I have stopped doing that seven days in a row. That might have been a bit of over kill, ya think?

Our summer is going well but unfortunately it's going fast. The Son and I are busy at camp and heading to the pool as much as we can. Today we're going to Sesame Place in the evening to hang out with The Niece, The Baby Niece and The Sister for some water park fun. I can't wait. I used to work there YEAAARRRSS ago and I am excited to go back, it's been too long. I hate to do a post without photos so I'll leave you with two more.

Here's a bumble bee on a zinnia at Longwood Gardens, isn't she cute?

Lastly, a silly one of me with my favorite thing in the summer, CORN! YUM! I cannot get enough! Hope you all have a great Tuesday!

A break I don't want.

2010-07-29T10:49:00.004-04:00

Hi All! I don't mean a break from my blogging although admittedly, that's happened too. It's been a very busy summer and I never seem to get around to blogging about it.

The break I am referring to is one with my running, and unfortunately, my Zumba classes. I think I have tendonitis in my ankle. I say "I think" because I didn't officially go to a doctor. I consulted a doctor, my BIL, over the phone. He's a gastroenterologist, not a sports medicine doctor or anything like that but he runs... and has ankles so I think he's qualified. ;) He helped me to figure out that I most likely do not have a stress fracture which was my first worry but he assured me that it would be MUCH more painful than it is and after discussing things with him, we decided I have tendonitis. He advised me to take a break from all "weight-bearing" activities for two weeks. TWO WEEKS WITH NO RUNNING? He also advised me that if I didn't, I might be taking off longer from everything... MUCH LONGER so I am listening to him. I am sticking to biking, (ugh.) elliptical, (boring.) and swimming (haven't done that yet.) I also took two days off in a row earlier this week. I get weighed today and have a feeling I will not be happy with the number on the scale. As much as I hate the saying, "it is what it is." I guess that's all I can say at this time.

The good news is that my ankle feels pretty good. I might do a Zumba class on Sunday. One. Class. Don't judge me. I promise I won't run and then I won't do another class until next weekend, that will be officially two weeks. If things don't feel a whole lot better at that time, I will actually go to a doctor.

Well, that's all from me for now, I have to teach a class this afternoon and then attend a class where I will get my (sure to be disappointing) weight and then I'll be teaching another class later this evening. Hope all is well with everyone out there. Happy Thursday!

Horsin' Around

2010-07-16T10:26:00.008-04:00

Howdy All! Busy, busy, busy around these here parts as usual. I've been working in the mornings at the Y's summer camp and during the day at my nutritionist job. I'm really proud of most of my group members, they're focused and working hard to get (or stay) healthy. You go Ladies! (and a few Gents!)

About a week ago, in between heat waves, I was give an excellent opportunity... horseback riding! I tell ya, I haven't been horseback riding in a long, long time and one of The Husband's colleagues, and now my friend, Martha, works at Gateway Stables in Kennett Square, PA and asked me to join her. I was so excited! The Brandywine Valley is just beautiful and I couldn't wait.

I took this shot of the stable from atop my new BFF, Popeye, he's a big guy for sure!

These are some kids who were attending a summer camp at the stable, they did not go riding with us but I thought they were so cute that I had to take their picture. What a great camp for little girls, wouldn't you have loved that as a kid?

Here's Popeye, he's a kind old soul and treated me pretty well. I found horseback riding to be challenging as I am a "Dog Person" and quickly realized that dogs and horses are completely different. It was not intuitive to me and Popeye probably realized it but I'm sure it wasn't his first time with an inexperienced rider. Here he is thinking, "What the heck does this woman want me to do?" Isn't he sweet?

So, I got saddled up, (and by "I got saddled up" I mean Martha put all the equipment on Popeye and I watched) and we were ready...

It was a GORGEOUS day and the Brandywine Valley countryside was so lovely!

We finished about an hour later and Martha showed me how to hose down the horses and then squeegee them off. I had no idea that horses got squeegeed but I used this giant bread-crumber like tool to remove a great deal of the water from Popeye and then he got to have a snack. You can also really see in these pictures how BIG Popeye is, I am 5'8" and have boots with about a 2.5" heel on them and I look practically petite next to him. I'm so tiny. ;)

I felt very lucky to have gone on this little trip and want to thank Martha, Gateway Stables and most of all Popeye for having me that day. Hope we can do it again someday!

Have a great weekend everyone!

Summertime and the Living is...

2010-06-29T22:11:00.005-04:00

BUSY!

I don't know if anyone's actually wondered where I went, but basically, we've been doing a lot of this lately...

It's been a hot summer thus far and we've spent a lot of time poolside. I also started a new job at the Y, it's 7 to 9 AM for our summer camp, I help get kids out of the cars for our "express check-in" or I play with kids in the "parvilion" as The Son would say. It's fun but I hate getting up that early. Oh well, it's only for the summer.

I also started a couple new weight management groups, they're going well and I hope to have more in the Fall since The Son will be in school full time.

Speaking of The Son, he had a great school year and is really enjoying his days at summer camp. He also has a girlfriend. I think they're talking marriage. I have lots of things to update and when I'm not working or working out, or sunning at the pool, I'll be sure to do that!

Hope you're having a fantastic summer.

The Kennett Run!

2010-06-07T09:58:00.005-04:00

A few weekends ago, The Son and I took part in the Kennett Run, a local race that is very well known in our area. They have a 5K, a 10K and a kids 1 miler. Last year it was the very first race I did and I did the 5K. This year, I decided on the 10K. I had some neighbor friends who told me they were doing the 10K but never actually decided to sign up for it. I joked that they were afraid to be beaten by a girl, which I think I found a lot funnier than they did. Turns out though, that I did beat them. They only did the 5K and if you doubled their times, they would have been longer than my finishing time. I finished the 10K in 1:01:50! I was thrilled, I know that's not a terribly fast time, but it is under ten minute miles the whole way, so for me, that's great! I'd also like to add that the Kennett Run is notoriously hilly... HILLY! I train on hills around my house but they didn't prepare me for the inclines of this particular course. I took advantage of the downhill and really sped up when I could. I have a few pictures to share with you...

Here I am with The Son, walking to the start line (for me) and then stretching before the race.

Not my most attractive angle but The Son looks cute...

Here I am waiting for it to start, the 10Kers started first and then the 5Kers followed. The Son's 1 mile kid race was later in the park.

Here I am after finishing... I was HOT and irritable, can you tell?

And here I am last year... Can you see the difference? Last year, I finished the 5K in 38:50 which at that time I was quite pleased with, it's a respectable time.

So that's the Kennett Run for me in a nutshell, I have some shots of The Son doing the kids' one miler that I'll post next week.

Have a great weekend everyone! And thanks to my few loyal readers and comment leavers. You know who you are and I hope you know how much I appreciate you!

Where's the Son? SON? AHHHHHH?

2010-06-03T08:00:00.002-04:00

Yesterday, I told you about The Son dressing up like a Big, Bad Bullybug for Book Day at his school. You can see how scary he was in the picture above. You can also see how visible and conspicuous he was, hard to miss, don't ya think?

Well, it was raining that afternoon so I decided to pick him up at the bus stop, usually, he walks home from the bus stop because I can see it from our house and I just watch for him by looking out the window. Thank goodness, that's not what I did on this particular day.

I got out of my car as the bus drove up and I watched the throngs of children come off the bus, we have a lot of kids in our neighborhood and I'd say that approximately 15 of them are on The Son's bus. They all got off and I scanned the crowd for The Son, as I was scanning the crowd, the bus drove away and The. Son. Wasn't. There.

I became frantic, wracked my brain thinking, "Was I supposed to pick him up today?" I quickly asked the other kids if he had been on the bus and thankfully, they replied, "Yeah, I think so, he was in his bug costume, right?" I then asked them why no one thought to bring him with them as they got off the bus, I mean really, how could you miss a Kindergarten Kid in a silver bug costume? I then realized that The Son was probably panicking himself right about then.

By this time, the mom in the car behind me had called the school and passed her phone to me, it was nice that someone else was thinking clearly. The school phoned the bus company who contacted the bus driver and I got word that The Son was safe and would be dropped off on the bus driver's trip back around in about 20 minutes! I swear, it was a long 20 minutes but soon enough, the bus came driving back up the street and I got out as The Son exited the bus. He was crying and running toward me with all six legs outstretched and waving in the rainy breeze. I scooped him up and hug, hug, hugged him. He was so sweet, telling me how much he missed me and how the older kids on the bus, "cared for him." He told me that one girl offered him some goldfish crackers and made sure that he felt OK. I came to find out that it was a substitute bus driver which I think led to the problem and is part of the reason he didn't get off at his stop. The other reason can be blamed on the classic rock group, Queen.

"Queen?" you ask.

Yes, Queen!

When we both calmed down and got home, I was holding The Son on my lap and asked him to tell me what happened. He said, they were doing "WE WILL, WE WILL, ROCK YOU!" on the bus and he didn't realize that all his friends weren't there until he turned around to talk to his little friend Josh and he was gone. He started crying again while telling me this story and then said, "The bus driver told me he would bring me back home later, and I was so scared and then the big kids cared for me and I started to feel better but Momma, I missed you so much."

What a day! I was so relieved that he was safe and secretly found the "We Will ROCK You" story a tad bit funny. I will not hesitate to refer to this incident the next time The Son gets mad at me and tells me I'm a mean Momma although I haven't had to use it yet. ;)

All in all, it turned out just fine, The Son hasn't forgotten to get off the bus since that day and I doubt it will happen again any time soon as long as the kids don't start channeling Freddy Mercury again.

Have a great Thursday my friends! I'm getting weighed today and I'm not expecting a great result, it's been a tough week as far as healthy eating... I'll let you know!

Don't Bug Me!

2010-06-02T08:41:00.004-04:00

A couple weeks ago, The Son had "Reading Week" at school, each day was filled with special activities focusing around reading. The best day, according to The Son, was the day they got to dress up like a character in a book,my boy LOVES a costume. I don't think all parents did this but I told The Son that it had to be a character that was in a book first, like it couldn't be Bakugan or Sponge Bob or someone that books were written about but had to be more from Childrens' Literature. He decided to be a "Big Bad Bullybug" from Ed Emberly's "Bye Bye Big Bad Bullybug."

I used silver dance costume/bathing suit fabric and traced around The Son to make the base of the costume. The Son and I stuffed knee highs with fiber fill to make the legs and I attached them to the sides of the costume, it was a little tricky but I used fishing line to string the legs together so that they would attach to his wrists and be able to stick out straight at the sides.

We used foam sheets and pipe cleaners to create the Itty-Bitty-Babybugs in the book and also attached them to the costume and lastly, I took an old pair of sunglasses and attached some more foam pieces to make the Bullybug's three eyes with some more pipe cleaners as the antennae.

He was so proud of his costume and he looked so cute. We had a great time making this together and he was so excited to ride the bus the next day, he said everyone liked his costume and told me about some of the other kids' choices. I have to say, it sounded like his was the most creative. ;)

Later that day, we had some real excitement, excitement I hope to never have again...

I'll tell you more about that tomorrow, thanks for visiting today and I hope you enjoyed my Big Bad Bullybug Boy! Happy Wednesday!

Broad Street Run-- Race Recap part 3 (finally)

2010-05-26T09:09:00.003-04:00

I finally seem to have recovered from the GI issues I had about a week ago. I'm feeling WAY better and I realized that I need to post my final post about the Broad Street Run. If you'd like to read the first two parts, you can scroll down a post or two to find them, they're right there.

We last left off when the three of us were heading to bed to get some sleep before the race, we got in from dinner a little later than we wanted to and 5:00 AM seemed to come WAY too fast. We were staying at a Residence Inn which has a kitchenette, this was great for us so we didn't have to head out to find some nourishment really early. We cooked up our bagels and brewed the coffee and enjoyed. After eating breakfast, we got dressed in our race gear and posed for the obligatory pictures.

We headed down to the lobby, checked our bags with the front desk because we were moving to a different hotel for the next night (don't ask.) and we headed out to meet the BIL at the subway a couple blocks away, it was 6:30 AM.

We got to the subway and met up with BIL, headed down and ran into hundreds of other runners heading to Philadelphia's Central High School for the start of the race. It was pretty incredible. It took about 25 minutes on the (very crowded) subway, we were packed in and standing but my excitement was so high that I didn't even mind.

When we got to the field, we looked to find our starting corrals, I was in pink, the last corral and the others had corrals, much closer to the front, I didn't let it get me down though, I was going to enjoy this experience with our without them. It seemed like a long time until the race was actually starting, we waited in line for the port-a-potties and participated in the group warm up which was actually quite fun. I enjoyed watching the HUGE group of people, all with the same goal, stretching, moving and getting pumped up. FUN!

Finally, it was time to line up. I had a can of pineapple with me because I like to eat pineapple before I run so I found a spot in my corral and cracked open my pineapple. Each corral took off in turn and about 40 minutes after the start of the race, it was the pink corral's turn to GO!

I started off at a very slow pace, listening to Carrie Underwood sing, "Before he Cheats" which I know is about a 5.1 on a treadmill, as the crowds around me thinned out, I was able to run a little faster but I never went too fast as I knew I couldn't keep up a fast pace for ten miles.

I was really enjoying my run through the city, we passed Shriner's Hospital for Children which is where my mother worked for years and I silently talked to her in my mind, I knew she'd be proud of me. We passed Temple University where The Sister and the BIL went to school and then we passed by Broad and Diamond which was the main intersection near Frederick Douglass Elementary School where I used to teach. Memories came flooding back, some good, some not so good but I could see City Hall WAAAAAAY in front of me so I kept running.

Did I mention it was getting hot? Really hot? I mentioned that last year's Broad St. Run was really chilly, well this year it was supposed to be close to 90 and it was approaching that temperature quickly. I don't mind the heat, in fact I like it but I hadn't trained in hot weather at all. I made sure to stop at every water stop to stay hydrated and because I was running behind thousands and thousands of other runners, there were wet cups all over the ground causing a slightly slippery situation for those of us who might be a bit more clumsy than others and by that I mean, ME! I had to slow to a walk at a couple points but I just kept telling myself that I had to make it through 10 miles and a little walking would be fine. The fire hydrants were open and every once in a while, I ran through the edge of that too to get a little spritz.

When I passed City Hall, I knew that I had approximately 4 more miles to go, I was more than half way there! This is when it got hard, it was hot and I was getting tired but I just kept going, slow and steady finishes the race...

Miles 7, 8 and 9 were actually kind of fun because this is when we were heading in to South Philly, the spectators that were there were very encouraging, I slapped hands with lots of little kids who were there watching and they helped keep me going. I started to get very emotional as I neared the Naval Yard, the end of the race. The ships on the river were beautiful and even though it was close to 90 degrees, the breeze off the river felt really good. I did see a few people who had collapsed and had emergency personnel helping them out, I felt surprisingly good considering...

As I crossed the finish line, I got extremely emotional and started to cry! I had done it. It took me one hour and 54 minutes but I had done a ten mile race! HOORAY!

In hindsight, I think it went well, I am proud of myself, it was an awesome race and I will definitely do it again next year. It would be nice if it's not 90 degrees next year but for me, I think 90 and sunny is better than 53 and rainy like it was last year but I'm sure many would disagree with me. I leave you for now, I have a few more thoughts and pictures that I'll share in my next post. It's Wednesday, one of my busy days and I need to start getting ready to tackle the day. Have a good one friends!

Sidelined...

2010-05-21T10:36:00.003-04:00

Hi Friends! That is if any of you are still out there... I know I haven't been around much lately, I've been feeling less than spectacular to say the least. The Son had some kind of GI/viral? issue on Mother's Day and I think he gave it to me, nice present huh? NOT! I've been having issues that make me feel not very well, let's just leave it at that.

I did a race last weekend and did really well so I want to tell you about that, I also lost more weight but of course, that could be because of this illness. I've only worked out once in this whole week so you know, I am not feeling well. I am going to try to head to the gym this afternoon when I put The Son on the bus and at least do some weights and a light cardio work out. Wish me luck, it could be ugly.

Have a great Friday everyone!

Broad Street Run-- Race Recap part 2

2010-05-14T09:41:00.004-04:00

Hi Friends! If you want to read part 1 of my race recap, click here first. Also, to my anonymous commenter... Thank you so much for your sweet comments, do I know you? Are you always the same person who is commenting? I do appreciate your comments (since you are one of the only ones who's been commenting) but I'd love to know if I actually know you.

So, when we last left off we were talking about heading to dinner, we had already taken the time to set up our clothes for the next day, organize our pre-race breakfasts and everything that we would need to bring with us when we left the hotel at 6AM.

Here's my race day breakfast, an Asiago Cheese Bagel from Panera Bread with light cream cheese. I also eat a can of pineapple but didn't take a picture of that. ;) I think the only reason I do races is to give myself license to eat a bagel now and again. I used to love bagels but really watch how often I eat them now because bagels = lots of calories!

Here's all our race gear lined up and ready for the next morning.

...and here is the "view" from our room, not terribly beautiful but we didn't care.

After all our organizing... we left for dinner.

I'm disappointed with myself that I didn't take any pictures of me and my friend Stacy, I wasn't thinking, in my defense, I was preoccupied with the race the next day. We met up with The Brother-in-Law who was also doing the race, let's call him Dr. BIL. We didn't have reservations and in hind sight, we should have but we ended up finding a little pizza/wine restaurant in Center City Philly called Zavino. I liked my pizza but wasn't overly impressed with the place as far as service and menu over all. I had the Kennett Pizza which I thought was very fitting for me since I live near Kennett Square, PA, the mushroom capital of the world! The Kennett Pizza had bechamel sauce and three different kinds of mushrooms on it and it was yummy! I also had one glass of wine. The "salad" of mixed greens was lousy, it was truly a few different kinds of leaves on a plate with some vinaigrette poured over it. Not. Impressed. I wouldn't go here again and wouldn't recommend it, it was kind of meh.

After dinner, we headed across the street to Capogiro Gelato. If I didn't need the carbs for my run the next day, I could have skipped dinner and had just gelato. Oh. My. Goodness. It's fantastic there. I had been there before but it's been a long time. If you're not familiar with gelato or think you like pieces of stuff in your ice cream so you won't like gelato, let me just tell you, gelato is not ice cream, it's a completely different experience and so darn delicious! I had the dark chocolate, coconut and nutella flavors. Those are not the Italian names that they have at the shop but I can't remember the Italian names. Evidently, they have a Sea Salt flavor that tastes great with the Dark Chocolate but they were out of it... next time. Chrissy Cuz and Dr. BIL also loved the gelato and I think we all had similar choices for flavors. YUM!

So, after dinner, we headed back to our hotel, Dr. BIL went his way, back to his hotel, we said goodbye to Stacy and we went to get some much-needed sleep, we knew that 5 AM would be here WAY too soon.

It was so fantastic to see Stacy, it had been years since we saw each other and I'm glad that we've rekindled our friendship. We used to work at The Marriott together and those were some fun and crazy times... Love you Stacy!

Well, I'll stop with my recap for now and tell you about the actual race the next time. I have to get ready for a meeting with my boss/guru and have to get The Son ready for school. Have a great Friday everyone! Please leave a comment if you stop by and let me know who you are!

'Twas the Night Before Broad Street... a recap part 1

2010-05-11T10:23:00.011-04:00

It's about time... I know, I just haven't been motivated to post and I was waiting for the Broad St. Run pictures to be posted and they finally have been. I can't post my individual picture but I will be ordering it and I'll scan it so that I can eventually post it, let me tell you, I look SO pretty in it. NOT! LOL!

So, onto to the Race Recap...

My friends and I checked into our hotel on the afternoon before the race and headed right to the Expo to pick up our packets and bib numbers. The photo above is of the three of us waiting for the "shuttle bus" to arrive. It was a hot day and I was looking forward to sitting down and relaxing on the bus, that is until I saw a yellow school bus pull around the corner. I looked at my cousin and said, "This is not looking good." Sure enough, the school bus was in fact, the shuttle bus that was going to take us to the stadium where the expo was being held. It was hot but not as bad as I thought it would be once the bus got moving.

We got our packets, picked up our free t-shirts which are pretty cute, and then browsed through the vendors. I have to say, I was disappointed with the shirts they had available for purchase because although the shirt was kind of cute, it was emblazoned with "Modell's Sports" logo on the back. It was like a giant red and white bumper sticker and was not at all attractive. Now, if this was on the free shirt, I'd have no problem with that, but for $20 I don't want ugly advertisements on my shirt. Sorry Modell's but I'm not paying $20 to be free advertising for you. I would have certainly bought it otherwise because it was a pretty nice moisture wicking shirt... maybe if the ad was a little more subtle?

Anyway, we headed back and took a few shots of Center City Philadelphia, especially Broad Street. I was in awe that I would be running down it the following day!

We went to the Municipal building where they have lots of giant Game Pieces that we posed with. Here's Chrissy Cuz on the top hat from Monopoly and me with a "Sorry" piece. Cherie posed with a mini-Philly Phanatic instead of a game piece.

Here's a cool shot of City Hall, I met a cute guy here back in 1992...

and no... I don't mean William Penn.

We soon got back to the hotel to organize our things and get ready to go out to dinner with an old friend. I'll tell you more about that in my next post...

Go! Go! Go!

2010-04-29T09:46:00.003-04:00

Hi Friends! I've been absent for a few days because, as usual, I've been a busy lady. It is officially three days before The Broad Street Run and the anxiety has set in. I know I can do the ten mile race since I did it two weeks ago on the treadmill, but I have anxiety about all the other logistics... how to get to the expo, taking the subway to the starting line, finding my family and friends that I'll be racing with since they are going to be much faster than I am... lots of logistics.

All that being said, I am super-duper excited! I think back to this time last year when I never would have thought that I would be tackling a 10-mile race! I also think back to the fact that I knew some people who were doing the Broad Street Run and it was a rainy and cold 53 degree day! I felt for them, I really did... well, let's just say I felt for most of them, some of them were the cliquish "mean moms" from the Y so I didn't exactly feel for them. ;) Anyway... the temperature THIS year is supposed to reach 87 degrees! Yeah! I am thrilled by that because I am thinking that it will be a perfect temperature for running in the morning and not 87 until the race is over. Either way, in my mind, 87 is WAY better than 53 and rainy! Go Mother Nature!

The whole weekend proves to be lots of fun, my cousin Chrissy and her friend Cherie are coming from Connecticut tonight and will be racing with me. I have to work on Saturday morning but we are heading into The City immediately after my classes. We will check into our hotel and then head to the "Not for Runners Only" Expo on Saturday afternoon. After that we have a friend who is a former concierge who is making dinner reservations for us somewhere in The City and she's also joining us for dinner. My BIL will be joining us for dinner too, should be LOTS of fun. I'm thinking we'll head back to the hotel to get to bed fairly early... not that I'll be able to sleep very well!

The race starts bright and early on Sunday, in fact, we have been told to board the subway by 6:30 AM to make sure that we reach the start line in time. Ugh... I am SO not a 6:30 AM girl! I think I can handle it this time though. So then, after we join the other 29,997 people who are running in this race, I guess we'll get started! I finished my "Mock Broad St. Run" on the treadmill in just under 2 hours and I have to put it out there, my goal is to finish this race in 1:45 but I think that might be a stretch but I will say that I'll be happy if I finish in less than 1:55. (Hell, I'll just be happy when I finish.)

The Husband and The Son are meeting us in The City at the finish line or somewhere around there but they are not staying in The City on the night of the race... but... we ARE! We've decided to get a room there on the night of the race so that we can go back to the room, swim, relax, NAP, and then go out on the town and celebrate our fantastic finish! I'm hoping to get together with some of my City Friends while there. We'll come home Monday morning and get back to real life...

and possibly...

training for a half marathon? You heard it here first folks... now to find one...

Have a great day everyone! It might be next week until I get back here but I promise lots of pictures and recaps of the race/weekend in The City!

Up Close and Personal at Longwood Gardens

2010-04-23T07:30:00.001-04:00

Hi Friends!

Yesterday I shared a few pictures with you from my trip to Longwood Gardens with The Son. As I said, we had a wonderful time and took LOTS of pictures with my new camera. I'd like to show you some of the close up photos I took. I'm really pleased with the things I am learning with this camera... I am sure I have lots more to learn but so far, so good... Tell me what you think...

What's that you say? You want a few closer? OK!

Lastly, I'll show you a couple I took of some Robins and a friendly squirrel these were taken with the "outdoor bird" setting and I was quite far away when I took them so I'm pretty pleased with the way they came out. I think it's pretty safe to say that Spring has officially arrived!

Thanks for stopping by! Have a great day and stay healthy!

A Longwood Gardens Date with The Son

2010-04-22T07:30:00.003-04:00

Back when The Son was a baby and I was solely a Stay at Home Mom, we spent every minute together, playing, hanging out and visiting museums, etc. Now that he's a Big Boy, and in Kindergarten, I'm working more in and out of the home, and I realized that we haven't had any of those "special" Momma/Son moments we used to spend together.

We're fortunate that we live kind of near Longwood Gardens and that we're members there. Longwood Gardens is a wonderful place to visit, it's acres and acres of beautiful horticultural wonderment. (I just made that up) It's beautiful all year round and I know I've mentioned it at Christmas time before. If you're interested in visiting or just checking out the history, just click on my link above.

I decided that The Son and I needed to take a Momma/Son visit to The Gardens and I picked him up from school on Tuesday for us to do just that. We took LOTS and LOTS of pictures. As I told you before, I just got a new camera and I knew that taking The Son there would give me lots of opportunities to test out the new camera. It was a beautiful day so there are many pictures to share with you...

As you can tell, we had a fantastic day, we plan on going back again really soon. Thanks for stopping by my blog today and for leaving a comment of course. Tomorrow we're going to get a little more up close and personal with some of the flowers at Longwood... See you then!

Don't Mock Me!

2010-04-19T14:59:00.007-04:00

Hi Bloggy Friends!

I know I've told you all that on May 2nd I'm running my first long race, the Broad St. Run in Philadelphia. I also know that I shouldn't be that specific on my blog but considering there are 29,999 other people running in that race, if you ARE a stalker... good luck finding me!

Well, I decided that I couldn't try to participate in that race without having run the full 10 miles at least once. I've heard the Broad St. Run is an "easy 10-miles." It's "mostly downhill" and that it's a "really fun race," I also heard that as long as I could run 8 miles, I'd be fine for the BSR. I didn't believe that so I decided to stage a "Mock BSR" on the treadmill at the Y on Sunday.

I was psyched. I ate the same breakfast that I am going to eat on the morning of the race, an Asiago cheese bagel from Panera Bread with some cream cheese and right before I left for the Y, I ate a can of pineapple. I like to eat pineapple before I run. It's psychological but I think it helps me with energy and every time I eat it, I have a good run. Why mess with that? I chose the bagel and cream cheese because I love bagels and never eat them any more and for obvious reasons, I don't want my fiber filled breakfast on the morning of the race. Bagel it is! The cream cheese was some added protein for me.

I started the run at 11:40,

and, an hour and twenty minutes later, I had gone 7 miles! I had to stop because the treadmill only allows one to run for an hour and a half, I took a quick break to reset and kept on running...

Three more miles in 34 minutes and I was finally finished!

An hour and 55 minutes later! My goal was two hours which obviously I achieved and I'm hoping I can do it a little more quickly during the actual race.

Not exactly pretty but, pretty happy!

I am continuing my training for the next two weeks by doing my shorter runs and working on my speed. I ran with this guy today and finished 5K in our neighborhood in 28 minutes and I think I'm ready... I can't wait!

Family Ties!

2010-04-16T08:39:00.005-04:00

Don't you just love that picture? Two happy cousins playing together. The Son and The Niece had a great time on The Niece's new swing set last weekend.

Happy Friday everyone! I'm finishing up a week of being a single-mom. (sort of) The Husband has been in Palm Beach, FL at the Ritz Carlton for a work event. Before you get too jealous, notice the words, "work event." He barely got to enjoy any of the Florida sunshine and was in meetings most of the time. I feel bad for him because to me, that's almost like torture. Take a bunch of employees to a beautiful hotel in a beautiful area let them see the pool but not got to the pool and then schedule meeting after meeting after meeting with no down time until it's finally time to go home and they still never had any time to relax. Torture. Anyway, I'm happy that he'll be coming home this evening and The Son of course, is happy too. We missed him.

I am taking some time today to post a few more pictures of last weekend.

More swing set... leave it to the boy to have to stand on the swing instead of doing it the "right" way.

Time to slide...

Inside the house, The Son entertained The Baby Niece.

...while The Niece practiced for her future career in modeling. Yes, that is totally posed, the girl knows how to work it.

And... we were finally able to get some shots of The Pop-pop with his grandchildren. So cute!

Have a great weekend everyone, we have a busy one ahead of us! Should be fun!

Happy 2nd Birthday to our German Shorthaired Pointer-- Ziggy!

2010-04-14T09:38:00.004-04:00

Today is our dog Ziggy's second birthday! Ziggy has brought such joy to our family and is a really wonderful dog. When we lived in The City, we had smaller dogs, we still have DaVinci, our Italian Greyhound, but unfortunately, our MinPins, Iago and Desdemona have passed away. Ziggy definitely has a different personality then that of the MinPins and I must admit, is probably a better "family" dog. (Well, at least better than one of the MinPins who I like to refer to as "six pounds of pure fury.")

Ziggy is a German Shorthaired Pointer we got him from a fantastic breeder, Keystone Gun Dogs, as we knew we really wanted this particular breed and we wanted a puppy. I highly recommend the breeder we went through, she has a beautiful operation and top quality dogs who you could tell she really, truly loves. The place was immaculate and I was extremely impressed. The Husband grew up with GSPs and knew what great family dogs they would be, how right he was!

Thank you Zig for being such a pleasure to have in our house. You are a great "little brother" to The Son and you have such a sweet disposition.

Thank you for being the best running buddy a girl could ask for...

We hope you have a happy birthday and that we can give you as much love and joy as you've given us. We love you Big Man!

On your mark... get set... GO!

2010-04-12T23:13:00.008-04:00

Happy Tuesday everyone!

I had a busy Monday and didn't get a chance to come on and blog but I can update you about my weekend today!

I had a great weekend! After work on Saturday, I headed out to my sister's house, we were doing a race together on Sunday. My sister invited me to come a day early so that we could go to her gym together and work out and so that we could also go out for a bite to eat together sans kids.

We had a nice work out, did 15 minutes on the stairmill and then ran a couple miles before doing our back, triceps and shoulder weights. We decided that we had to do the same work out because we're sisters and we have to do everything the same. ;) We took a few pictures after we got ready to go out.

This little beauty was already sleeping but I can't leave her out can I? The Baby Niece is a very serious girl, can you tell?

We had a nice dinner but knew that we couldn't stay out too late because we had a big race to run in the next day so we headed home and went straight to bed.

The next morning we woke up, and got ready to go. The BIL who is a high-powered, much sought after, renowned, gastroenterologist had to leave the house at 4:15 AM for his rounds. In other words, he's a newer doctor and he's the low man on the totem pole so he was on call and had to go in on a Sunday morning. It was just the girls, basically this meant that my sister got her girls ready and I only had to worry about myself. We headed out around 7:50 AM.

We got there in plenty of time and guess who was there to meet us? These two handsome guys!

I was so happy to see them! They were scheduled to do the one mile walk which meant that The Husband was scheduled to carry The Son on his shoulders for one mile because The Son was feeling particularly lazy this day... good workout Honey!

Here they are lining up at the start line for the walk.

Here's me and The Sissy before we got ready to run... it was a smaller race in a beautiful state park. Only 91 runners participated. The race was to help benefit the computer lab of The Niece's preschool which is also a K-8 school.

Here I am crossing the finish line... I finished in 29:44 which is a personal record! I was SO thrilled and never thought I would finish in less than half an hour. I started off really slowly and was actually the last one in the entire group of runners but I knew that I had to pace myself and not start off too fast. My iPod helped me to stay steady and I picked up my speed as I went along and passed lots and lots of runners. It was a somewhat hilly course and I have trained a lot on hills so I am sure that helped me. I ran the entire thing even up the very last steep, steep hill that I thought was going to kill me! What doesn't kill us makes us stronger though right?

I even slowed down a bit when I was able to see the time clock because I was afraid I'd have no room to grow if I finished too fast and I'd like to be able to do a couple more PRs. Speaking of a PR, The Sissy finished in 27:18 but hated every second of it! I'm still proud of her.

I am still thrilled with my time and feel like I want to run around and tell everyone! Thanks for sticking with me if you read this far. I have some more pictures from our super-fun weekend but tomorrow is a special day for a furry member of my family so I think tomorrow's post will be devoted to him... more pictures on Thursday perhaps?

Have a great day everyone! I am off to get The Son ready for school and myself ready for the gym... weigh in on Thursday you know and I had a decadent weekend. Bye for now!

Happy...

2010-04-07T10:04:00.007-04:00

... Birthday to my Daddy today! It's unfortunate that we didn't take many pictures on Easter because I really would have loved to post a picture of him with his grandchildren but alas, we were slackers and I don't have any. I think we're all getting together on Sunday to celebrate so I will bring my camera and we WILL, I repeat WILL, take pictures.

Happy Birthday Daddy/Pop-Pop! We love you very much!

Speaking of cameras... I got an early Mother's Day present yesterday, a new camera! It's really nice but now I am in the process of learning how to use it and that kind of well... sucks. I hate that electronic equipment no longer comes with a manual, everything is computerized, in this case, it was stored in the camera and we had to upload it to the computer. That's nice in theory but it makes it difficult for those ~~dorks~~ of us who actually like to read the manual and take it with us as we learn how to use our electronic equipment. Yes, I can print the manual and probably will but carrying around a bunch of 8.5 x 11 sheets of paper while trying to learn a camera is kind of irritating.

Anyway, I am also having some challenges learning how to use the software that stores the photos but I suppose it will all come to me in time. At the moment, I cannot seem to locate the photos in the program to upload them to my blog, I had to do a lot of stuff to find them on the computer but I'm hoping The Husband will know what to do later this evening. Anyway, I managed to find them in a roundabout way. Here's a couple pictures I took so far, mind you, I haven't actually gone anywhere great to take pictures to try to learn the camera so there aren't too many.

The Son at Daddy's office... we drove in to see him and to pick up the camera.

Ziggy, looking regal and handsome... as usual.

Two "brothers"

A rare appearance of DaVinci on The Blog. Doesn't he look handsome on that couch?

I got my nails done yesterday and the new camera takes really nice close-ups so I thought I'd show you, I know, not too exciting. ;)

So, there you have it for now, I anticipate a big learning curve ahead of me...

Today is a busy day, volunteering in The Son's classroom, working out, teaching swim lessons tonight... same old Wednesday. Have a great day everyone and again, a special, "Happy Birthday" to my Daddy! Stay healthy everyone!

Easter Recap!

2010-04-05T10:51:00.003-04:00

We had a lovely Easter with family yesterday. I wanted to report back on our recipes that I posted about in my Easter post. (The links are available there) They were delicious. I know that I've talked about my beloved Broccoli Rabe recipe before, and how I use wild rice and low fat feta in place of the orzo and regular feta, well, my Dad even liked it and that's saying a lot! I'd like to say how proud I am of my dad who has lost 17 pounds in the past three months just by making small, healthy changes to his diet. I'd like to think I can take some credit for it as he is one of the few followers of my blog and I know he reads regularly! (Hi Daddy!)

The Roast Chicken with Lemon and Rosemary was a HUGE hit! It. Was. Delish! I have no leftovers which, I guess is good considering we also served ham and had lots of other things but I must admit, I was hoping to have it for dinner tonight too. Oh well, we'll probably go ahead and make another one this weekend. It was that good.

As for the French Silk Pie can I just say, WOW! It was also delicious. I ended up with 8 servings instead of the 10 they say you get out of it so my calories per slice ended up being 225 but I must say, for the richness in that pie, 225 is not bad at all. I know I mentioned that I had issues finding the cookies to make the crust because I didn't want to use a product with trans fat in it. Unfortunately the Nabisco Chocolate Wafers contained hydrogenated oils so I refuse to buy them. What I decided to do instead was to buy Paul Newman's Chocolate sandwich cookies, and use the equivalent (in grams) to what the Chocolate Wafer cookies would be, after scraping off all the cream.
It worked and no trans fats for my family! The main thing I remembered to do before leaving the store was to look at the weight of the wafers for the 30 cookies that the recipe called for. Does that make sense? For example, the recipe called for 30 chocolate wafer cookies and 5 cookies = 32 grams so I multiplied 32 grams by 6 which would equal the amount in weight of cookies, since I had to scrape off the cream and that left me with two halves, I was then able to get an accurate weight measurement on my food scale. If this is confusing, and you're really interested in what I mean, feel free to ask me to clarify, I get the feeling I'm not explaining it properly.

Anyway, the pie was fantastic we all loved it and I will be making it again, probably on a regular basis.

Lastly, we were so busy cooking and helping The Cousins find things to do that I did not take too many pictures. I have a few that I posted but didn't get any of The Baby Niece. Duh! She's so beautiful and sweet, I don't know how I forgot! Fortunately, I am doing a 5K with The Sister next weekend so I will make sure to take some photos that day... I might just have a new camera by that time too... I'll keep you posted on that one!

Have a great day everyone, it's back to school for The Son and I am heading to the Y (as usual) for a good workout. I hope you all had a fantastic Easter/weekend. Stay Healthy!

It's Easter!

2010-04-04T09:31:00.002-04:00

Happy Easter everyone! I am hosting Easter dinner at my house this evening and I'm really looking forward to it. I am serving some yummy dishes, some our traditional items such as ham, cole slaw and deviled eggs and others some recipes from my favorite websites/magazines. We're having Lemon-Rosemary Roast Chicken with Potatoes, Broccoli Rabe and Wild Rice (instead of orzo) salad and for dessert... French Silk Pie! I got some fresh rolls from Trader Joe's yesterday and they look delicious! I decided to make the roast chicken in addition to a small ham because I have been trying to stay away from ham and other salty meats. I am excited to try a fresh, roast chicken since I usually just buy the pre-roasted ones at the grocery store. I'll let you know how everything turns out!

The Easter bunny was very generous to The Son, he brought him two baskets with a few yummy treats, a couple books and a couple toys, he was very happy. He has a cute Easter outfit, complete with tie and hat that HE picked out. Momma's little metrosexual! LOL!

Yesterday was a busy day, honestly, I cannot believe how much I got done... want a list?

I got up at 6:30, left the house at 7:45 to teach my nutrition classes at the Y, one class at 8:30 and one at 10:00. I finished up at the Y at about 11:30 and headed out to Sport's Authority to return a running skirt I bought online, unfortunately, they didn't have the skirt in their computer so it looks like I have to return it via mail. After Sport's Authority, I went to The Christmas Tree Shoppe to find a few more things for The Son's Easter basket and a few little odds and ends to decorate for me, after that, I went to TJ Maxx to look for some work out clothes, I ended up getting a couple clearance items. Next, I went to my favorite grocery store, Trader Joe's. Finally, I headed home where The Husband helped me unpack and I ate some much needed "lunch" it was 4:00 PM after all... oops, I hate to wait that long.

I finished "lunch" and then headed out to the Y to work out, I did my triceps, back and legs and then ran 3.5 miles on the treadmill. Following the Y, I had to head to the regular grocery store to buy the rest of my groceries for today's dinner. It took a while since I had a run in with hydrogenated fat in the cookies I needed to make the crust for my French Silk Pie. I think I won the battle though, I'll let you know for sure after I make my pie. I finally made it home around 8:30 and again, The Husband helped me unpack everything. I got a shower and showered up The Son and got him ready for bed. The Husband made me a delicious dinner of Bison Burgers, baked chips and broccoli while I got my cookies ready for the pie crust. At that point, I felt as if my limit had been reached and as I looked back over all that had been done, I didn't wonder why! Phew... what a day!

Today there is lots more to do so I must sign off for the time being. I hope you all have a wonderful Easter and enjoy spending time with family and friends.... I know I will! Stay healthy!

Traveling to Washington, DC

2010-03-31T11:37:00.002-04:00

Did you realize we were gone? Probably not. I haven't been getting much in the way of comments recently although that I will say I am definitely more of a "quality vs. quantity" type gal and the comments I HAVE received have been just lovely, thank you all so much for your kind thoughts.

It's Spring Break for The Son so we decided to take a couple days away and head to Washington, DC. I didn't post about it before because I'm now paranoid to be specific about when we're going to be away because of recent robberies to people's homes that have been linked to Facebook. Of course, I still posted that I was a way on Facebook but I just tried not to be totally specific. I'd also like to think that my FB friends wouldn't rob me but I'm sure that's what the people who were robbed thought too.

I started the planning for this little trip on Priceline.com. I'd never used Priceline before but decided to do a "name your own price" deal and ended up with a room in DuPont Circle for $69 a night! SWEET! It was at the Marriott and it I was thrilled with what we got for the price, the room was small and The Son kept commenting on that but the child is used to full, two-bedroom suites at Disney with full kitchens because we're Disney Vacation Club Members so he has no concept. It was a nice, clean comfortable room with great Marriott service, I'd stay there again for sure, especially for $69 a night! I also recently used Priceline to get a great room in Philly for the night before the Broad St. Run, also at a Marriott (Residence Inn) also, for $69 a night which I'll be splitting with friends so, another great deal!

We had a really nice time, lots of tips and things I can tell you about but I am going to sign off for now and try to get a few things done around the house before we head out to the Y for working out/teaching swimming this evening. I indulged a bit too much while in DC and need to get myself on that treadmill ASAP!

Have a great day everyone!

Spring really HAS sprung!

2010-03-25T10:13:00.003-04:00

Hi Friends! If anyone out there still reads (or comments) on my blog that is...

I know I've been on hiatus again, I have to admit I am having difficulty managing to find time to blog and work out and work and take care of my men and all the things that busy moms have to do. I know for a fact that many of you out there will understand!

I am really feeling great about this weather lately. I hope that the title of this post doesn't jinx us and make it turn into Winter again because Pennsylvania has had some big snow storms in March and even in April. Scary... it's been pretty nice around these parts lately and I'd like to keep it that way.

So, let me tell you what's going on with us. I am still working on losing weight but my body doesn't seem aware of that fact! ha ha! I have had quite a few weeks of NO LOSS! Ugh! and it's not for lack of trying and doing all the "right" things. I am so close to my goal of losing 100 pounds that I think at this point, it's just difficult. I am not getting discouraged or giving up because honestly, on the plan I do, there is no "finished" this is just the way I will live and eat for the rest of my life. If I have another week of no loss, I will have to really examine my foods and tweak a few more things to make those last ten pounds LEAVE. It will all come off eventually, it might just take a bit longer than I want it to.

I am still training for the Broad Street Run which is a 10 mile race on May 2nd. I am feeling a bit nervous because I can't seem to get past 5 miles comfortably and 7 miles with a lot of effort. I'll keep trying though and know that I could walk 10 miles right now so if that's what I have to do, at least I know I'll get through the race. I downloaded some music to run to and I have to say that BPMs have changed my running life... don't know what that means? I'll tell you in another post, it will give me something to blog about!

The Son is doing BEAUTIFULLY in Kindergarten. The Husband and I had his conference this week and his teacher couldn't say enough good things. He's mastered all the Kindergarten skills and is now working on first grade skills. She told us not to expect him to master the first grade skills this year because they are much more complex than the Kindergarten ones. I am not worried. I have no plans to rush him, he's still just a little guy. He needs to work on his printing because it's very sloppy and he also needs to work on putting spaces between his words, other than that he's doing really great. His standardized test scores were in the 99th percentile for math and the 97th for reading... PROUD! I will add that as a former teacher, I know that standardized tests are only one indicator of a child's intelligence and abilities but as his mom, I am still very proud of him indeed. His teacher also said that he is a very "nice boy" and that he treats the other students with respect and is friendly with everyone. I hope this is an indication on how he will be as he progresses through school because I couldn't be happier.

We're going on a little spring break vaycay this weekend... it's not THAT exciting but I'll tell you about it soon. It should be fun.

I still keep wanting to do a post on healthy cooking/eating as well as a post on BPMs that have changed my life... I'll try, try, try to be a little more proactive with the blogging because it really is something I like to do, it's just hard to find the time.

Lastly, I got a haircut and I am really happy with it! My hairdresser didn't take off too much but she did just enough to make it a little more manageable and now I have some shape. Here's a picture. Funny enough, The Son took this picture, he's pretty good for a six year old, as long as I help him know how to frame it and place him the right distance away, he's getting the hang of it.

Final addition... I wrote the above post earlier today and forgot to post it. Duh. I got weighed at 1:00 today and was down 1.6! Yahoo! That makes my official total 90.2 pounds. only 9.8 to go for my goal... that could take another year but I'll get there. (I'm only half kidding!)

Have a great day everyone! Stay healthy!

Is it really here?

2010-03-16T10:29:00.003-04:00

Spring that is! We've endured quite a few days of rainy, yucky weather and today when I woke up I saw the sun! The warm, beautiful, welcoming sun. However, it's March 16th and I hate to get too excited about Spring because Mother Nature can be a big tease, taunting us with these lovely, pleasant days only to rip them away and dump another ten inches of snow all over us. I will just try to enjoy these days while they're here and not get too excited lest they be cruelly ripped away from me as I am plunged into the depths of Winter Hell once again. (Who are you calling overly dramatic?)

So anyway... as you can see, I'm still here. I've been feeling a little "non-bloggy" these days. As usual, I've been busy and when I'm busy, there are things that have to be put aside. Blogging is probably one of the first things to go because it certainly isn't going to be The Son or my work outs or my healthy eating, those are always things I make time for because those are the things that keep me healthy and feeling good.

The Son is doing well, growing like crazy, I cannot believe that he's more than half way through kindergarten. His Nannie recently sent him a down vest from L.L. Bean and then found this cute hat to go with it.

The Son loves it so much that one night he even wore it to bed! He got dressed this morning at 9:30 and put it on so that he "would be ready to leave when it was time to go to school." People, the child goes to school at noon! LOL! He's playing in the sunroom now wearing his vest waiting to go to school. He's a funny kid, my boy.

Thanks Nannie! We really love the vest (and you!)

I'm still training for my ten-mile race, I feel like I hit a wall with my training but I'm going to overcome it. Ziggy (my German Shorthair Pointer) and I are going to go for an outdoor run today. I think getting outdoors will help me get back into the swing of things. I've been running plenty, don't get me wrong, it's just been difficult to get past the max of seven miles that I've achieved. I'll get there... I'm determined.

I have a few posts that I'd like to do about excuses (not making them) and about ways to incorporate "real healthy eating" into our diets, not "faux healthy eating" with bars and frozen meals. They'll get written... one of these days.

Well, I'm off to say hello to Mother Nature now and beg her to keep that sun shining and those temperatures warming up. If you see her, do the same, perhaps she'll decide to let Spring stick around for a while! Happy Tuesday! Stay healthy!

Randomness...

2010-03-08T10:34:00.005-05:00

Hi Everyone! I need to post because it's been quite a few days, I'm still mulling over the Breast Cancer 3-Day Dilemma. I think today is the day I have to sign up for it if I'm going to get that discount and I think I'm going to. Thanks for all who helped with your advice, I appreciate the input so much.

So, some random thoughts for this sunny Monday...

I lost another 1.6 pounds. My total is now 89.2. I've been journaling all my foods and exercise in a good old-fashioned notebook. It seems to be the best thing for me. 10.8 pounds left to reach that goal of 100! I might go lower, I might not... we'll see when I get to 100.

I love the Wendy Williams Show. There. I said it. Don't judge me. Wendy Williams is hilarious, gregarious and super-duper cute. I love her and I'm not ashamed to shout it from the bloggy rooftops. I LOVE YOU WENDY!

The Broad Street Run is in a little less than two months. I am excited but feel as if I've hit a "wall" with my training, I am having trouble getting past the 5-mile run. I will keep working on it. So far, I've done 7 miles in 1 hour 26 minutes which is slow but I think it at least shows that I can do the 10 even if I have to walk some. I also think that two more months is a good amount of time to improve that time. I will do it! I will do it! I will do it!

Speaking of goals... my friend Andrea from Run, Eat, Date Sleep, completed the Disney Princess Half Marathon on Sunday. I am so proud of her! I don't think she blogged about it yet but I guarantee she will. Check her out, she has a cute blog and is very inspirational with her goals and achievements.

According to Hungry Girl, Laughing Cow cheese is coming out with three new flavors... in June. Ugh! I hate to wait for June, The flavors are 1. blue cheese (The Husband will LOVE this) 2. queso fresco and chipoltle (meh.) and 3. mozzarella and sun-dried tomato (YES!) Is it normal to say that I can't wait for June because of this? I simply love me some Laughing Cow.

I have to get The Son ready for school and me ready for the gym now. I've been eating well over my calorie limit this weekend because I have been truly, truly hungry! I've been writing it all down so if I don't have a loss, there will be proof as to the reason why. I go a couple hundred calories over each day so I'm at like 2300+ but remember, I have a very high calorie range AND I work out a lot. Most people cannot lose weight at that many calories per day, I just happen to be lucky. Anyway, this is all in one random thought because it means I must have a really, GOOD and HARD work out this afternoon to burn off many of those extra calories. The scale might not be so kind to me this Thursday...

Have a great Monday everyone! Keep it healthy!

Breast Cancer 3-Day... I can't decide what to do...

2010-03-03T10:33:00.004-05:00

I need a little advice people. I have been asked by a good friend of mine, to do the Breast Cancer 3-Day Walk.

I really, really, really want to do it with her.

Sadly, she lost her sister to Breast Cancer and wants to do the walk in memory of her.

I really, really, really want to do it with her.

It's not until October, my fantastic boss has agreed to cover my Saturday classes for me to be able to participate and...

I really, really, really, want to do it but... I am hesitant... very hesitant... why?

Because in order to do it, participants MUST raise $2300! EACH! You cannot do the walk unless you raise the money or guarantee it with a credit card. Yeah. That credit card part, is NOT going to happen. It just seems like such a huge amount of money and I am not good at asking people to donate, particularly in these "difficult economic times."

I'd like to think of some ways to raise the money, I'm creative, I am not against some kind of fundraiser(s) but the problem is, I don't know where or what or how to go about doing it. So, I ask you, what would you do? Do you think I should just register and go for it and try to raise the money or is it just out of the realm of possibility for me to actually get $2300 for this very worthy cause? I don't have tons of time to devote to this so it has to be something fairly simple. There is a $25 discount on registering up until March 9 so I want to make this decision quickly, plus, the sooner I register, the sooner I will be able to start the fund raising. Any opinions? Suggestions? Input? I appreciate it!

As I type this, I just saw the commercial for the 3-Day Walk and I want to be a Pink Warrior! Has anyone out there done this and found ways to raise the money?

I really, really want to do this...

The Trans-Fat TRAP!

2010-02-28T08:52:00.004-05:00

Ding, ding, ding, ding! Winner, winner, (healthy)chicken dinner! Two of my very smart friends who also happen to be two of my living healthiest friends realized that I was talking about trans fat in my last post. Trans fat SUCKS and I want to tell you why. Good work Nom and Jen! You girls are nutrition geniuses!

What exactly is trans fat? Trans fat is the fat that increases our LDL cholesterol which is the "lousy" cholesterol and it decreases our HDL which is the healthy cholesterol. It's created when hydrogens are added to liquid vegetable oils. Eating trans fats increases your risk of developing heart disease and stroke. It’s also associated with a higher risk of developing type 2 diabetes. The way my boss put it to me is that trans fat is the fat that your body cannot eliminate or digest. Trans fat that you eat today will stay in your body forever and is the fat that clogs your arteries. Companies use trans fat because it's cheap and it lasts a long time so if you buy foods and notice that the expiration date is a long, long way away, (think oblong little sponge cakes with white cream inside of them) chances are it contains trans fat. If the words "partially hydrogenated oil" of any kind are on the label well, then it's got trans fat in it.

Why do I get peeved about labels? Because companies are allowed to say that a product contains 0 grams of trans fat as long as it contains less than .5 grams of trans fat per serving. The reason this is dangerous is because we should not have more than 1.5 grams of trans fat per day and serving sizes are small... SMALL! Companies have adjusted their serving sizes to be able to say 0 grams of trans fat but if you have more than the serving size, chances are you're having very close to, or above the amount you should be having and if you're doing this every day well, you're clogging your arteries even when you don't realize it. It's a trap! A trans fat TRAP and I think it's basically a legal way to lie to the American people.

Let's take what I consider to be one of the biggest culprits of this... coffee creamer liquids! I have lots of members in my groups who choose coffee creamers in their coffee because they think it's a good way to add creaminess and flavor to their coffee for a low amount of calories yet the third ingredient listed is "partially hydrogenated soybean and/or cottonseed oil." You probably realize that on labels, ingredients are listed in order of proportional quantity, meaning the biggest amounts are first and the smaller amounts are at the end. The "serving size" of coffee creamer is 1 Tablespoon which seems rather small to me, but even if you're having that amount, if you're having coffee creamer every day, chances are you're consuming quite a bit of trans fat.

On the coffee creamer website, one of the FAQs is regarding trans fat and the company's answer is so irritating to me, in a nutshell, they say, that their liquid flavors contain less than .5 g of trans fat per serving although the ingredient statement lists partially hydrogenated oil, the amount is trivial. Therefore it can be listed as 0 (per FDA guidelines) on the nutritional statement. Frankly, I think they're just hiding behind the stupid FDA guidelines just like every other company that uses partially hydrogenated oils in their products.

I was going to go on and list the foods that contain the most hidden trans fats but as I was doing my research, I found this article which I think sums it up better than I can. I encourage you to do your own research on trans fats and read labels in the store (and in your pantry.) If you weren't already aware of this trap, you might be very surprised about what you're consuming and/or feeding to your family.

In my opinion, it's all about being educated and not liking it that the government is legally allowed to hide the truth because big companies claim they cannot survive without using trans fats in their products because remember trans fat is cheap and keeps the products on the shelf longer. A really easy way to avoid trans fats is to eat real, whole foods and to stay away from things that are processed. I know it's not possible to stay away from all processed foods so when you do eat processed foods, just read, read, read those labels and don't buy things that contain "partially hydrogenated oils" if enough people did this and knew about the dangers of trans fat, then perhaps the companies that manufacturer our foods would stop using them.

Thanks for reading, I hope I helped educate you or at least helped to reinforce information you already knew about being healthy.

One last pet peeve of mine that has absolutely NOTHING to do with nutrition is spelling errors and grammar errors on blogs. I know I've probably complained about it before but I sometimes hope that the people who blog with these errors frequently will read my blog and learn proper grammar from it. (I recently even saw one use the word "grammer" to refer to proper grammar... Oh! the irony) I do not claim to be perfect but I will say that I proofread and try my hardest to make sure that I am usually correct in my grammar and spelling. I even have my own personal proofreader who sends me e-mails when I have errors (Hi Daddy!) and I correct them ASAP, feel free to also act as a proofreader if you see any errors on my blog, I appreciate the feedback. Anyway, A brief, very brief reminder...

Your = the possessive form of you. Example: "You need to use proper grammar on your blog."
You're = You are. Example: " You're consuming trans fat and don't even realize it."

Enjoy the rest of your weekend Friends, Happy Sunday!

I'm Peeved...

2010-02-26T09:39:00.004-05:00

Do you have any pet peeves? I sure do! I probably have WAY too many that I shouldn't have. A lot of them might border on OCD behaviors, like only using blue ballpoint pen or at least using all the same color ink. My boss was recently helping me with a group and she used black pen on my weight charts, It took every ounce of my being to not say something, but seriously, how are you going to tell your boss to use a different pen? I do realize it's silly.

A lot of my pet peeves come from food labeling. The different words that companies use are so ambiguous that most people don't know what to make of them, words are just randomly thrown around, people are deceived and think they're eating well when they're not. Here's a few that might be confusing you...

"Light"
Light means the food has half the fat, 1/3 the calories OR half the salt of it's regular version, that means that a food can still be really unhealthy for you depending on what the original food's nutritional content is.

"Made with Whole Grain"
You can do your own research on this one to find out the full details but to sum it up, "made with whole grain" really means that there is very little whole grain in the product. Let's face it, any wheat flour even enriched bleached white flour has to come from a whole grain. I would go as far as to say that ALL wheat flour is at some point, "made from whole grain." What we actually want to look for on our labels is 100% whole grain or 100% whole wheat. The Whole Grains Council has a nifty little stamp that it allows to be put on products that meet it's standards. You can take a look at it and read a bit more about whole grains at their website which I linked to above.

"Natural" vs. "Organic"
Seeing the words "All Natural" on a label makes us think that what we're eating is good for us but it's important to know that there are really no regulations when it comes to using those words. "Organic" however comes with strict regulations and organic foods are produced without antibiotics, pesticides, hormones, irradiation or bioengineering. Organic farmers must follow certain soil and water conservation methods and rules about the humane treatment of animals. It is also important to keep in mind that "organic" does NOT mean it's healthy for you. Cupcakes and french fries can be "organic" and I don't think anyone would ever call them healthy foods. (though I sure wish we could.) If you'd like to learn more about organic labeling or would like to see the USDA's label that they put on organic products, you can click here to go to the website.

"0 Calories"
When a label says "0 Calories" the thing we must remember is that this is PER SERVING. Splenda, the popular sugar substitute actually has 3 calories per packet but because it is less than 5, the government allows the company to say 0. This goes for "Pam" the popular spray oil as well. Pam is 0 calories for a 1/3 second spray but if you spray for a full second, you're getting 7 calories. Yes, these items are going to give you far less calories then the foods they're being used to replace but it's still good to know that they're not truly 0. I just don't like the idea of being deceived by the manufacturer which is why this is a big peeve of mine. Personally, I feel the government should make manufacturers say what the calories truly are even if they are less than 5.

I'm going to end here for today, I have one more labeling "trick" that I believe is the worst and the one that can do us the most harm. It is my biggest pet peeve of all! I also believe it's the one that people don't understand and know the least about. I was recently talking to the Fitness Director at the Y who is extremely fit and healthy (We call him "Hot Bill" and by '"we" I mean I do.) and even he was misinformed about this popular ingredient and no, it's not high fructose corn syrup although I could go off on that crap too! I'll devote an entire blog post to this evil, evil thing tomorrow.

Until then... stay healthy, read labels and educate yourselves about the things that the food manufacturers don't want us to know. Don't bury your head in the proverbial "food labeling sand" like so many people do, and pretend it doesn't matter, you're too smart to be taken advantage of! Enjoy your Friday, we're snowed in AGAIN.... ahhhhhh!

Sounds Gross but it's Cute: Making a Diaper Cake

2010-02-25T10:27:00.000-05:00

Happy Thursday everyone! I am participating in Mama Kat's Writer's Workshop today. I was so thrilled when I saw that she had a craft post as an option because I've been working on this one for quite some time.

I have a co-worker who is pregnant with her third child. She has two little boys who are around the same age as The Son and she is having a much-wanted girl this time. Another co-worker of mine thought it would be a great idea to have a little baby shower for her. I agreed and we had planned on having it at my home.

The Blizzard of 2010 decided to come on the same night as the scheduled party and... Surprise! We had to cancel. I was bummed, my co-workers were bummed but the guest(s) of honor had no idea because it was supposed to be a surprise party anyway. We rescheduled the party for the following Monday night after the mom-to-beX3 was finished teaching swim lessons. I didn't take pictures of the actual party because no one wants to be photographed at almost 9 months pregnant, let alone almost 9 months pregnant AND just completing a couple hours teaching swimming lessons in the pool. Trust me on this one.

I didn't know what to give as a gift and had always thought that diaper cakes were a little bit odd but now that I've been a new mother, I know that diapers are a wonderful gift because they are one of the items that you need right from the beginning and keep on needing. Presenting a case of diapers as a gift, isn't very creative or pretty so the diaper cake makes a cute way to present something that's a rather well, let's face it... unpleasant part of parenting. I had a friend at my shower give me a pack of diapers along with the books, "The Gas We Pass" and "Everyone Poops" which I thought was hilarious but I'm not sure this particular guest of honor has quite the same sense of humor as I do so I decided the diaper cake was a better option.

Making a diaper cake is actually pretty simple. I looked up a couple different varieties on line since I had never made one before, and decided on the kind that doesn't roll up each individual diaper. It came out beautifully and I'm sure was much quicker than the other kind, not to mention better on the diapers.

First, you need a round object to put in the center, this will NOT be staying there as it does in other diaper cake varieties so it really doesn't matter what it is, it's just there to hold your diapers up as you form them into a circle. I started with four diapers layered on top of each other kind of like steps and rested them against my center object.

Continue to lay your diapers all around the object, kind of with a pinwheel effect.

You will need the following amount of diapers per layer, the first number is the diapers that will to around the outside and the second number will be the numbers you put into the middle:

Bottom = 40 and 8
Middle = 28 and 4
Top = 14 and 2

After you put all your diapers around the round object, tie them tightly with a piece of string or other thin ribbon. I used curling ribbon. I put the ribbon around, tied them part way, removed my round object and then tied them the rest of the way, there should be a smallish area still open in the center. After you tie them you can arrange them to make them more even.

After you like the way they are arranged, take the smaller amount of diapers and roll them up all together to stick them in the middle.

Do this for all three layers. One of the tutorials I saw suggested using a pizza pan to put the bottom layer on but honestly, I used a piece of cardboard from an old calendar that was much smaller than my bottom layer but worked just fine, I found that once everything was tied up, I didn't even need it.

The decorating was the fun part. I found this thick white ribbon and made that the base for all my decorations. The important thing to remember with this project is that you don't want to glue anything to the diapers OR to the objects with which you're decorating. I wrapped the ribbon around and used my hot glue gun to glue it to the other side of the ribbon. Remember, NO glue on the diapers. I am saying this twice because as obvious as it is, if you are a big glue gun user, you might get carried away and want to start gluing all over the place. I had to keep reminding myself not to do this. I used small pieces of ribbon and glued them to the white ribbon and then used them to tie various things on.

This little cutie was the thing that inspired the whole theme of my cake, I knew that my friend wouldn't have any little toys like her because, like I said, she has two boys. I loved the pink and brown colors and she's really soft. I got her at Wal-Mart, she's made for their store's Carter's brand. I tied her to the top layer and rested her so it looked like she was seated on the middle layer. So cute!

Here's another angle, I used some onesies, a few toys, some bibs and a little brush and comb set as my decorations along with some various pink and brown ribbon. I made a big bow for the top and secured it through the center and then just tied everything around to make it look cute. (Such technical directions, huh? ;) )

I did not attach the three layers to each other so the cake was easy to transport and just assemble when we got to the party. It was a big hit and made a really cute decoration on the table. I was very happy with it.

One final note, I read a lot of tutorials in order to come up with the way I was going to make this and noticed that a lot of sites comment that diapers are very absorbent to smells as well as liquid so if you're a smoker or cook a lot of "fragrant" types of food, it's a good idea to make your diaper cake away from these various odors. This wasn't an issue for us, but I can only imagine how a beautiful diaper cake could ruin a baby shower for lots of people if it reeked of cigarettes. Ewwwwww...

Well Friends, I hope you all have a lovely day. If you stopped by from Mama Kat, thanks! Leave me a comment and I'll be sure to stop by your blog too. If you want to see what we're doing today, click here for yesterday's post. Yes, it happened, or I should say, it's happening. Again. Stay warm people! Live healthy!

You Have Got to be Kidding Me!

2010-02-24T08:51:00.009-05:00

Remember a week or so back when I told you about the giant snow storms that we got here in Pennsylvania? Well, they say it's going to happen again tonight and by "they" I mean those jerks we call our local weather forecasters. UGH!

That's right, this...

is going to happen again.

Some of us,

are very happy about it.

Others...

Not so much.

I hate to be a big cry baby but you know what? I'm going to be. I felt like I finally got myself back into a routine, the snow was melting, spring was just around the corner, I had a new Lilly Pulitzer dress to wear to work on Thursday, (did you know she made clothes that aren't pink and green and actually look cute in the winter?) I had a night out planned with my neighbor across the street, and now it looks as if it's all going to be buried under 6-10 more inches of snow.

Here we go again...

Stay warm and happy everyone... this can't last forever, Spring will be here someday. I'm sure of it!

Refocusing works!

2010-02-22T11:26:00.003-05:00

Hello Friends!

In my last post I talked about excuses and refocusing my goals and all the little things I do to undermine my weight loss. I gave it a lot of thought and realized that as much as I know, if I want to lose than I MUST, must, must journal my foods. It's the most tedious part of losing weight for me and for just about everyone but I cannot stress enough how well it works for me.

I realized that I tell my group members this all the time but when I really looked at myself, I knew I wasn't doing it faithfully. I would track and journal my breakfast and my lunch and sometimes my snack but by the time dinner came and I knew I had 1000 calories left to eat, I became a slacker.

I also added a few extra croutons here, a bigger smear of butter there and conveniently "forgot" those few extra glasses of wine each week. The good news is, I know how to live healthy and I know I will be able to maintain my weight, that's a biggie but now it's time to get this last 20 pounds off!

I've been journaling faithfully, I've been trying new recipes, lots of them and BOY, did we try some GOOOOOOOD ones!

I've been working out, not that that had ever changed. Did you look at my running total for this month at all? HELLO 62 miles and there's still a week left in the month! I am so proud of myself. I'm still working on the triathlon challenge but have lots left on the bike, it's apparent that the bike is not my favorite form of exercise, isn't it? ;) I'll keep plugging away since the bike is the only thing left that I have to do.

So, I'm off to the Y as soon as I put The Son on the bus, I need to get my work out clothes on and get myself moving and grooving! Hope you're all having a great Monday. Stay Healthy!

Winter Complacency

2010-02-19T11:01:00.004-05:00

Do you find yourself getting complacent with yourself and your life in the winter months? Well, I surely do as I haven't lost any weight in weeks... WEEKS! I am maintaining my 87 pound loss which is fantastic but the fact remains that I have about 20 more pounds that I want to lose and I need to get back on track.

The snow didn't help, the Y was closed for four (very long) days, I wanted to munch, munch, munch, The Husband and I enjoyed some extra bottles of wine during the storm, I'm already wearing a size 10, I like the way I look and feel, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I know these things are all "reasons" for no loss but let's face facts and call them what they really are...

EXCUSES!

I've come so far, and I am not about to stop now. I want to reach that goal of losing 100 pounds and then some. When I lose 100, I will be 152 pounds which is an excellent, healthy weight for a woman my height (5'8") but... going just a few pounds lower will put me in the "140 category" which I think is where I really want to be, I'll reevaluate when I get to that 152 but I do believe I'll want to go a bit smaller.

I know that the thing that works better than anything for me is also the thing I dislike the most... faithfully journaling my foods. I've taken our group's journal this week and next week I will be journaling for my boss/weight loss guru who also wants to take off a couple pounds herself. We are going to be "journal buddies" and switch journals each week. I know this is the refocus I need to get that last 20-ish pounds off and gone forever! I can do this, I know it will happen, the last few pounds is always the most difficult.

I am getting ready to go to the grocery store and buy some salmon for dinner. YUCK! I really don't like salmon but it's lent, The Husband won't eat meat on Fridays and it can't hurt me to try another new thing. I might even find that I kind of like it. I'll let you know what I do with it if it turns out remotely appealing. ha ha! After the grocery, I will be heading to the Y to try my next challenge of running six miles in a row without stopping. I did six miles last week but had to stop a couple times for very-mini walk breaks and I need to challenge myself to complete the whole thing without stopping. I'll get there... I know I can do it! I am goal oriented and will reach my goal! No more complacency for me! It's time to kick it all up a notch!

Lastly, I did sign up for the Broad St. Run which is a 10-mile run in Philadelphia on May 2nd... it's safe for me to say this on my blog because there are 30,000 participants... if I do have a stalker, good luck finding me among the other 29,999 registered runners! ;)

Have a great Friday everyone! Enjoy your weekend.

Risotto... Make it for the one you LOVE!

2010-02-15T10:09:00.007-05:00

Hello Everyone! Happy belated Valentine's Day! I had a wonderful day with my guys yesterday, The Son gave me a beautiful potted red tulip plant and The Husband gave me a book on "SuperFoods." We had a low-key day as far as gifts are concerned but Valentine's Day isn't about gifts, is it? I should add that it was the 17th anniversary of my engagement to The Husband... can you believe he kept me that long? Through thick and through thin... literally!

I have been INTO making risotto lately, I think it's because of the cold weather and snow we've been experiencing as well as the fact that risotto is delicious! DELICIOUS! Now, as a nutritionist, I will admit that risotto isn't the most healthy thing you can eat but there are plenty of ways to work it into your diet (diet meaning the food you eat, not a plan you can't live with) and the fact that if you make it at home, with out a pre-packaged mix, it's all natural, not processed and it tastes so fresh! It also takes a bit of time to make so that helps me limit it to once per week, therefore, we're not eating too much of it.

I really enjoy the process of making risotto, it's soothing, stirring in cup after cup of broth as the smells of garlic or shallots or mushrooms waft up and as your hearty, delicious dish thickens and gets tastier by the minute. I always tell The Husband that it's a dish you make for the one you love because it takes time and dedication to do it right... just like marriage!

I've been scoping my favorite recipe Internet sites for various risotto recipes and of course, the best ones I find are on Cooking Light and Eating Well, two of my favorites. I had a guest photographer yesterday who took pictures of me as I cooked, The guest photographer is also known as The Son and I think he did a pretty good job!

Here is a cooking tip for you and yes, I am totally and completely serious... I wear swim goggles when I cut onions, or in this case shallots. I know it helps that I am a swim instructor so of course I have goggles but you can buy a cheap pair at any Wal-Mart or Target as soon as summer gets here if you don't already have some. My eyes are sensitive and I cannot stand the way they feel when the fumes burn them. I know I look ridiculous but honestly, it's the only thing that works...

Plus, it makes The Son laugh...

I also like making risotto because usually it calls for a half a cup of wine or so and that means that I can have a little glass of wine while I'm cooking, it makes the stirring and stirring and stirring just a bit more entertaining.

So, I am not going to post the recipes here that I've tried, I'll supply you with a link and my opinion and you can give it a try yourself if you want to make them.

The first one I tried was from Cooking Light and was Porcini Mushroom Risotto with Marscarpone cheese . This one was by far, my favorite. I cut a little bit of the fat by using half the olive oil and replacing it with non-stick spray which is something I do with just about every recipe I ever make. At times, I don't even use the olive oil but in this case, I want a bit of that EVOO flavor. I made this recipe twice and the second time my grocery store was out of dried porcini mushrooms, I used oyster mushrooms and the were not as flavorful but still quite good, if you don't like a really strong mushroom flavor, they would be a good option for you. I preferred the porcinis as did The Husband.

Last night, I made Eating Well's Winter Squash Risotto, the nice thing about this one was that by adding the Butternut squash, you lower the calories per 1 cup serving. The Husband had requested this one and it too was very yummy. My tip for this one is, if you can, buy the squash already peeled and seeded. Doing that saved me loads of time, this recipe calls for optional saffron which I was unfortunately unable to find at my grocery store. It was good without the saffron but I think it would have been even better with. I added a few fresh enoki mushrooms along with the fresh shitakes that this recipe called for just because I think they're cute and yummy. Here's the risotto in the pot...

And, on the plate with some roasted asparagus and a petite filet... a yummy, hearty, healthy meal for just a bit more than 500 calories!

And see... he loves me!

And... so does he! I'm a lucky girl!

Thanks to The Son for taking most of these pictures, please don't mind the few dark spots on some of them, that's where his finger was over a portion of the flash, he tries so hard, I don't have the heart to correct him.

Have a great President's Day, we're meeting friends at the Y which I'm really looking forward to. They're calling for more snow tonight and I'm hoping it's just a dusting and won't affect whether or not The Son has school tomorrow the child needs to go back... Bye for now!

Writer's Workshop: A List of Do's and Don'ts

2010-02-11T09:33:00.006-05:00

I haven't blogged in a few days because I've been busy and preoccupied with snow so today, when I realized it was Thursday, I hopped on over to Mama's Losin' It to see if there was a writing prompt that I could use to participate in her always fun Writer's Workshop. I've elected to do the Do's and Don'ts list and with help from The Husband and The Son, we've composed...

The Do's and Don'ts of how to Survive Two Major Snowstorms
Within a Week of Each Other!

Do...
Plan on spending lots of time indoors watching some favorite TV shows and playing Wii with your family.
Don't...
Expect anything you have planned to tape on your DVR to actually be the scheduled program, it will inevitably be "LATE BREAKING COVERAGE OF THE NOR'EASTER OF 2010" for hours on end.

Do...
take photographs of the storm in progress.
Don't...
call them "snowtographs."

Do...
let your dog out to play and frolic in the wintry wonderland as the snow accumulates.
Don't...
step in the "presents" he leaves WAY too close to your front step when you open the door.

Do...
make sure you have plenty of bread, milk and eggs in case you need lots and lots of french toast during the storm.
Don't...
forget you also need to make sure you have plenty of toilet paper.

Do...
Spend lots of time working on the computer and by working I mean facebooking and playing hidden object games.
Don't...
prevent The Husband from using the computer for two minutes to check if he actually has to go to work.

Do...
Take the time to make homemade whole wheat bread and delicious homemade Wheat Thins.
Don't...
eat them all in one day.

Do...
Pay $30 to have someone shovel and plow your driveway and front walk.
Don't...
hesitate to tell everyone you did it yourself "for exercise."

Do...
Enjoy being able to have snow days off from work and school and the gym...
Don't...
forget to spend the time with your family, playing in the snow, laughing and making great memories.

Happy Snow day to everyone who's having one! Stay warm! Have fun! Stay Healthy!

I'm alive...

2010-02-09T10:40:00.003-05:00

just really busy! I'll try to blog later today. Lately my life has been...

snow,
cooking,
work,
working out,
child care,
husband care,
dog snuggling,
laundry,
snow,
snow,
snow, and guess what's on the agenda starting this evening?

SNOW!

I'll try to blog more later! Have a great day friends!

Bummer...

2010-02-04T10:29:00.003-05:00

I hate to have to write this but someone already won the Ironman Triathlon competition at our Y. Last year, it took the winner 2.5 weeks and I heard she was there more than once a day. This year, it took 3 days? Seriously? I worked SO hard for three days and still only managed to do the 2.4 miles of swimming, 8.5 miles of running and 32 miles of biking. There is no way I could have physically finished in three days, even if I did have the time. I'm a little bitter because I really hate to lose but also because I didn't know all of the rules going into it, apparently, you were able to bike or run at home and in my opinion, that's not fair. I'm sure that the girl (at least it was a girl ;) ) who won was honest because you'd have to be a really crappy person if you weren't. I'm happy for her, I'm just bummed for me. I look forward to finding out if she did any of it at home. I know I'd feel a lot worse if it was a man. LOL!

The only positive side to someone else winning is that now, I don't have to be so stressed out because I was seriously stressed out about it. I am starting a new group for my weight manaegment classes this afternoon at a local shoe store/comapny (yay! Shoes!) and I have another group this evening that started a couple weeks ago. I was going to work out in between which would mean that I would have to get ready for work and shower twice today and now I won't have to do that. Honestly, it's a relief. I have some fun things brewing for this weekend that I cannot tell you about until after they happen and I can now concentrate on those things. They are forecasting LOTS of snow for us this weekend so I might get to have Saturday off and if someone hadn't won the competition, I'd be in the gym all day trying to win myself, so now, I don't have to worry about that, again, a relief.

I imagine I'll try to complete the competition but at this point, I'm not going to stress about it, I can get back to my regular weight lifting and cardio routines instead of just these triathlon activities. I'll get over it. Someday.

Well, I must go fix myself up and find an outfit that looks cute with my boots manufactured by the shoe company at which I'll be running a group. I will have to make sure they know my size, you know, just in case they need any testers or anything. You never know, it could happen...

Happy Thursday everyone!

A Snowy Wednesday and Recipe Resolution

2010-02-03T09:47:00.004-05:00

Hello there everyone! I've been working on the triathlon competition at our Y and trying to get some other things done in my life, you know, cleaning, work, all those kinds of things. We woke up this morning to find a couple inches of snow on the ground. Our school district has a two-hour delay but since The Son is afternoon kindergarten, it doesn't affect us. Yay! I will be heading to the Y after I put The Son on the bus and hoping to complete at least 5 miles of running and 10 or more of the biking in this challenge. I finished the swimming portion yesterday morning but unfortunately, so did some of the other participants. Winning is going to be a challenge and I don't think it will happen but I can just keep plugging along. If the competition is still going on on Sunday, I think I can get a lot done that day. I am the tortoise, not the hare...

I have been trying new recipes, especially after my high-blood pressure episode, but I have slacked on blogging about them. If you remember correctly, my new year's resolution was to try two new recipes a month and blog about them. The trying has happened and then some. I never take pictures of my cooking because frankly, it's not that interesting or helpful but I will continue to let you know when I try something delicious that you might want to try for yourself. For example... Lemon-walnut chicken! I found this recipe in Fitness magazine (my favorite) and made it last night, it was extremely delicious and very, very simple. I served it with brown rice and broccoli and The Husband and I both loved it. I'll be eating the left over piece for lunch today. YUM! Give it a try, I think most kids would love it too. It didn't taste like walnuts at all but more like butter and there's not a stitch of butter in it! I imagine that the same recipe would work nicely with pork chops too for variety. It's definitely going into my rotation.

Well, I'd better get busy and pack up for our day, I feel like I have to pack for a vacation when I go to the Y on Wednesdays because I have to bring swimsuits, towels, changes of clothing, and lunch and snacks, it's tedious. Ugh.

Have a great day everyone! Stay healthy!

What did I get myself into?

2010-02-01T06:00:00.000-05:00

It's been a couple days since I blogged, I've been going about my normal business, working, working out, taking care of my family, etc. Nothing all that exciting. I did manage to lose five pounds this past week. Before you think that sounds too great, remember, I gained 3.8 the week before because of my blood pressure issues so really, I lost 1.2 pounds giving me a grand total of 87.6! All in all, that's pretty good and I'm thrilled!

I signed up for a fun event at our Y, at least I think it will be a fun event. It's an ironman triathlon competition. It costs $5 to enter and then we have as long as we need to complete all the events in an ironman triathlon. That means 26.2 miles of running, 2.4 miles of swimming and 112 miles of biking. The first person finished wins the entire pot of money. I think it's up to about $200 right now and I want to win! I am mostly worried about the 150+ laps of swimming. Obviously, being a swimming instructor I know how to swim but... I am not a fast swimmer, we are allowed to swim any stroke, I'll probably concentrate on breast stroke with a bit of side stroke thrown in when I get tired. The run doesn't concern me since I run about that much in a week anyway. Others have told me that 112 miles on the bike is really hard but I am planning on going to the Y next Sunday and spending the entire day on the bike. We're allowed to do the recumbent bike so I think that will help me out. Hopefully, no one finishes before that time. The person who won last year finished in 2.5 weeks. I think I can beat that considering I don't have a full time job and on occasion, I have been known to be very competitive. ;) It should be fun, CityMomma/CountryMomma is very goal oriented.

Tomorrow, when The Son is in school, I'll be working on the swimming to see how much of that I can get done. I'll probably head back to the Y for a bit in the evening to get some biking done, at that point I'll know if I stand a ghost of a chance at winning this thing. My race training is taking a back burner until this competition is complete but I'll still be running of course and the cross-training with the swimming and biking can only help me.

Have a great Monday everyone and I might add a very Happy Birthday to my beautiful Sister! Hope you're having a great birthday Cathy!

Speaking of Heart Palpitations...

2010-01-28T09:43:00.004-05:00

Hello Everyone!

I mentioned in my last post that I was having some health "issues" last week. Go figure. Most people don't think they'll lose 86+ pounds and THEN have health issues but I did. I turned 40 and started falling apart. LOL!

You may have noticed that I didn't post anything about my weight loss last week, that's because there wasn't a loss... at all. I had a bad week previously with lots of migraines and just feeling bad in general. I've been diagnosed with migraines in the past but really only get them once every four months or so. I was getting one a day and it wasn't as painful as my "regular" ones but I was feeling "foggy" and irritable. I continued to work out and found that my running was really the only thing that made my headaches feel better.

A week ago today, I was feeling pretty lousy but I am the kind of person who believes that the more you worry about feeling lousy, the lousier you'll feel. I just try to persevere and not worry about it. I went about my day and got ready to get weighed at 1:00 like I do every Thursday. I knew it wasn't going to be a good week weight-wise but I also knew that I hadn't eaten too badly and that it couldn't be that bad. WRONG! I was up 3.8 pounds at the scale! Miss Phyllis knew that it couldn't be a true weight gain because I certainly hadn't eaten three entire pizzas that week and she got really serious and said, "Something is not right with you." Remember, I have been working with her for over a year now and I have never had a big gain, ever. I think the biggest I ever had was about a pound. 3.8 was quite a change for me. I started to tell her all the problems I was feeling and she mentioned that perhaps I should have my blood pressure checked. Hmmmmmmm, blood pressure? I've lost 86 pounds, I can't have high blood pressure any more, can I? Well actually, yes, yes, I can.

You see, when I was obese, I was on the "borderline" for having high blood pressure but of course it was always blamed on the fact that I weighed 252 pounds. My dr. would wag her finger at me and tell me that I had to lose weight and that we should "keep an eye" on my hypertension. We never really did but I was aware that I had issues.

Cut back to Thursday. After our weight loss meeting, Phyllis and I got the YMCA's blood pressure cuff from the fitness staff and we went to the employee area to take my blood pressure. I don't even want to tell you what it was but it was HIGH... really, really, high. Phyllis looked at me and told me, "Caren, you cannot work out with your blood pressure that high." I started to cry and realized that my blood pressure must have been running high for a very long time. It was such a relief, but very scary at the same time. After looking back, we realized that I've been under a lot of stress, that I had been trying some new food products that coincidentally had lots of sodium in them and that all of that combined just got to be too much for my body and I was having headaches, shakiness, and irritability all as a result. Thank Goodness for the 3.8 pound water weight gain because it really clued us in to what was going on with me.

Phyllis suggested that I call my doctor immediately and when I told them what was going on, they were able to fit me in within the next hour. I ran home, got The Son off the bus and packed him some snacks, fixed myself up a little bit since I had previously been in my work out clothes and off to the Dr. we went. They did an EKG which freaked me out but thankfully, it was fine. The Dr. prescribed a medicine for me that had a diuretic and a blood pressure medication in it and I was hesitant to take it but did a little research, spoke to my BIL who is a doctor and also spoke to Phyllis and they convinced me that it was in fact the best option. I also made an appointment for Monday morning to go back for another blood pressure check.

I had my scrapbooking weekend and honestly, still felt pretty bad that Friday and Saturday for half of the day but as the weekend went on, I started to feel much better and began to realize how badly I had actually felt the weeks before. Duh. When I went to the doctor on Monday, my blood pressure was down to 128/78! Hooray! The nurse practitioner who I saw that day (and LOVED) said that I should feel really proud of myself because the actual blood pressure medication takes a good two weeks to work and that the diuretic in combination with the low-sodium diet I'd been consuming for the weekend is what actually helped to lower my blood pressure. She also mentioned that I should be happy to have had symptoms because many people don't have symptoms and then end up in the ER suffering from far more serious problems.

So, why did I share all of this with you? I'll admit it's a little personal and I could get accused of "over-sharing" again. I shared it with you so that on the off chance that anyone else out there is feeling like I was, they might have a little clue into what is going on. I am so grateful to my friend, my boss, my guru Miss Phyllis who is so knowledgeable and who knows me so well that she was able to help me figure out what was going on. I am so grateful that I am not suffering from those "migraines" anymore and that I feel smart and less irritable again. I am on blood pressure medication now which sucks but at least I am feeling much, much better. I am also thankful that I've realized I have a hypersensitivity to too much sodium. It's something I really have to watch now but you know what? It just helps me eat healthier, it also helps me be a better nutritionist because when this happens to one of my group members, I'll know exactly what is going on just like Phyllis did with me. I look at all of this as a positive from which I can only get better.

I am fairly confident that I will have a good result at the scale today. If I don't have a loss, it's because of my scrapbooking weekend and all the yummy desserts I ate there but I am pretty sure I'll be back down to my lowest weight I've been or at least right around there. I'll keep you posted...

Thanks for making it this far if you were able to, have a great Thursday! Stay healthy!

Caution! May Cause Heart Palpitations...

2010-01-26T10:14:00.004-05:00

Scrapbooking Girls gone Wild!...

Sort of. A facebook friend of mine says I should really call it Scrapbooking Girls gone Mild. She's probably right.

I issue a warning to my sister and others who may be obsessively organized. Read. No. Further. (or at least don't look at any of the photos!)

Did you miss me while I was gone? I have had a few "issues" during the past week and I was getting ready to go away on a Scrapbooking Retreat Weekend with my cousin. I will tell you a little more about the issues at a later date. Things weren't good and I had some pretty scary episodes but it all seems to be taken care of now.

As for the scrapbooking weekend. It turned out to be a really good time. My Cousin Chrissy came from Connecticut to go with me, usually The Sister is able to go, but this year she has The Baby Niece and her nursing needs to worry about so she wasn't able to come. We were bummed and missed her but after she sees the mess the two of us created, she may be relieved, turns out I've found out my Chrissy Cuz might be just as messy a scrapbooker as I am.

We got there late on Friday night after a trip to the craft store and dinner out at Bertucci's. We each had a salad, shared the individual Margherita Pizza and then shared chocolate mousse for dessert, it was delicious. When we got there, we settled in, arranged our supplies and I fielded questions about my 86+ pound weight loss. The last time I saw these ladies was last January so they were pretty surprised.

As the weekend went on we managed to complete some nice layouts. I think Chrissy Cuz got about 17 layouts done and I got 6 done. It's not a lot but I am a very intricate scrapbooker so it takes me a long time. I enjoy the process and quality and don't worry about how many I get finished. Chrissy's are really nice too. Some of the ladies who were there finished 60+ pages so that's a good comparison to see how "little" we actually completed. I bet ya we had just as much fun though. ;)

My tote is organized...

Our tables... not so much.

We worked hard...

And had lots of fun.

I am so thankful that my Chrissy Cuz was able to join me, we had a great time, ate lots of (not so healthy) Pennsylvania Dutch food and made memories in our scrapbooks and with each other. I can't wait until next year...

(Insert Post Title Here)

2010-01-20T10:48:00.002-05:00

Hi Everyone!

Another long stretch of time without a post. I've just been very busy, so what else is new?

Lots of new weight management groups starting up. I have some fantastic people in my groups and I am so honored and excited that they'll be working with me to get healthy. It's such an awesome job that I have and I feel so fortunate. Obviously, I don't blog about other people's journey's since losing weight and getting healthy is such a personal thing but I've had a lot of success in my groups and have seen so many healthy changes in people that it thrills me, I love helping people realize how much fun it is to be healthy!

The Son turned six last weekend. We had a party for him at the Y and it was very successful. I have pictures of course but you may have to wait a while to see some of those. My MIL visited and we had a really nice time. She lives in Maine which is hard on The Son, and on her but she makes time to see us as much as she can.

I am going away for the weekend with my fantastic cousin, Chrissy Cuz. She is coming from Connecticut to go to a scrapbooking weekend away with me. My sister usually goes but her daughter, The Baby Niece, is a little too high maintenance right now for her to be able to join us. We're sad about that and will miss her a lot. Next year Sissy, next year... So, I've been uploading and uploading and uploading pictures to have them printed at CVS. Next year, will someone please remind me to start this in November, not a couple days before I have to go. I always have good intentions to get started early but alas, it never happens.

I'm about to get The Son ready for school and myself ready for the gym and work. If you notice my running mileage in my sidebar, you'll notice it's gone down considerably, that's because I am trying not to over do it so that I can have good runs for my training plan. I am running more than the plan suggests because I just can't bring myself to run only three even when it tells me to do three, I just use the extra miles as warm-up and cool down. Soon, I'll be wishing it only asked me to do three I'm sure!

Have a great day everyone! I have a few more photos to upload and then we're heading out.

Through the Eyes of My Child

2010-01-15T10:29:00.003-05:00

The Son drew the picture above for me the other day. He really loves to draw and spends his time creating lots of interesting pictures that are usually of new Bakugans or some kind of robot he invented. Normally, they don't look like anything that anyone can actually figure out which is fine because that will lead to some interesting stories and descriptions, which of course, The Husband and I love. See the picture above though? Do you know what that is? Well, it's me on the treadmill of course! (I'm SO skinny! ;) ) The Son drew that for me recently because he knew I was having some "blister issues" and he wanted me to feel better. I was so excited that he drew me working out because it means that he really gets it that I am an active person and that fitness is important to me. I am so proud that I have become this good example to him. I put the picture in the front of my notebook that I use for my weight loss groups so that I can show my students. It's a big accomplishment for me that The Son sees me that way. I should also mention that he recently saw a "before" picture of me and didn't know it was me!

I've had people tell me they don't want to put their kids in the child care area at the Y and take the time to work out because they want to spend as much time with their kids as they can. Usually, it's working parents who truly don't get to spend as much time as they'd like to with their kids. Yes, it's important to spend time with your children, very important, but I also think there is great value in letting your kids see you take time to take care of yourself. Perhaps one can't work out for a couple hours a day like I am able to do when The Son is in school but when someone can take 45 minutes to an hour a couple times a week to stay healthy, is only going to be good for them and their child(ren.)

A little update about my progress, I lost another 2.2 pounds this week! I am now in a new category, the 160s! I cannot remember the last time I was in the 160s! I am meeting with my trainer today so I will also get measurements and find out how much my body fat is going down. I'll update with any good results.

Since I am posting a bit about The Son and how he views things, I wanted to let you know that he views our dogs, especially Ziggy as his brother. He actually told his Kindergarten teacher that he was the "middle" child and he had her very confused because she was sure he was an only child. Evidently, he exhibits a lot of classic traits of an "only." It took her a couple days to realize that he was referring to dogs as his brothers.... looking at the pictures below however, can you blame him? Ziggy is such a special boy, he and The Son love each other and as you can see, he's pretty comfortable thinking of himself as a brother too. I really miss Iago, our Miniature Pinscher who died a little more than a year ago but Ziggy is slowly starting to become my canine boy just like Iago was. It's pretty safe to say that as cute as puppies are, I'm much more of an "adult dog girl." than a "puppy girl."

Our other dog isn't quite as snuggly, he's a bit older and he's an Italian Greyhound named DaVinci (Vinnie for short). We think of him as the less sociable teenage brother... poor old guy. I'll have to get a few pictures of him to show you because as crazy and neurotic as he is, he's a cute little guy.

Well, I guess I should be signing off for now. Have a great Friday! Woo HOO! It's FRIDAY! Tomorrow is The Son's 6th birthday and Sunday is his party at the Y as well as the aforementioned Vinnie's 12th birthday! The MIL is coming from Maine to visit and we just have an over all busy, busy weekend. I hope yours is fun too!

Recipe Resolution: Shrimp Fra Diavolo

2010-01-14T08:00:00.001-05:00

It's my first recipe post of the new year! If you read my blog, you'll remember that I made a resolution to try two new recipes a month and to blog about them. I want to eventually post them on my "Healthy Living" blog but since I haven't been working on that one, I'll just post this here. I got the recipe from "Cooking Light" magazine, not only is it a healthy and yummy recipe, it's also a budget conscious recipe and says that each serving costs about $2.50.

I simply copied and pasted so that I didn't have to type the whole thing but the pictures are of my cooking and my final product.

******************************************

Shrimp Fra Diavolo

Be sure to use inexpensive medium-size shrimp in this garlicky, spicy classic.

Yield: 4 servings (serving size: 1 cup pasta and about 1 1/4 cups sauce)

Ingredients

8 ounces uncooked linguine
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil, divided
1 1/2 tablespoons minced garlic, divided
1 pound medium shrimp, peeled and deveined
3/4 cup diced onion
1 teaspoon crushed red pepper
1/2 teaspoon dried basil
1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
2 tablespoons tomato paste
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
1 3/4 cups canned crushed tomatoes
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 (14.5-ounce) can diced tomatoes, drained

Preparation

1. Cook pasta according to package directions, omitting salt and fat. Drain; keep warm.

2. While pasta cooks, heat 1 tablespoon oil in a large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. Add 1 1/2 teaspoons garlic and shrimp; sauté or 3 minutes or until shrimp are done. Remove from pan; keep warm.

3. Add remaining 1 tablespoon oil and onion to pan; sauté 5 minutes or until softened.

Stir in remaining 1 tablespoon garlic, pepper, basil, and oregano; cook 1 minute, stirring constantly.

Stir in tomato paste and lemon juice; cook 1 minute or until slightly darkened.

Stir in crushed tomatoes, salt, and diced tomatoes; cook 5 minutes or until thickened.

(Side note: I love this brand, they're really yummy tomatoes, in my market, they're in the organic section, I must also admit that I don't buy a lot of canned tomatoes so frankly, they may not be all that much better than any other canned tomatoes... anyway, they're good, especially the "fire roasted" crushed ones. )

Return shrimp to pan; cook for 2 minutes or until thoroughly heated. Serve over pasta. You can click on the link to get all the nutritional information but the serving below is approximately 475 calories.

My review:

This recipe was very easy and quite tasty. It was also quite spicy. The Husband loved how spicy it was but for me it was a bit too much, I will make this again with half of the red pepper and then allow The Husband to add a little more of his own. We ate this for two days and for the second day, I added some plain tomatoes to the spicy sauce which helped cut the spice a great deal. I used pre-cooked frozen shrimp. It was BOGO a the grocery store a few weeks ago and it was actually quite yummy, I'm sure fresh shrimp would be equally as good if not better. I also cut out the two Tablespoons of oil which cuts 240 calories from the recipe, I used cooking spray instead, I don't notice a difference and it lightens each serving up by 60 calories. All in all, this was an easy, healthy recipe that I will definitely make again.

Give it a try and let me know what you think! Happy Thursday all! I get weighed today, we'll see if this recipe helped me lose any more. I'll keep you posted.

Mid-Week Quickie

2010-01-13T11:13:00.003-05:00

Hi All!

I was all set to post about my new recipe that I tried on Monday night when things started getting blurry and I started getting pain in my head... another migraine! I've been getting them WAY too often lately and it's starting to concern me. I used to get them once every three or four months or so and now it's weekly. It sucks, truly sucks.

I took four Advil and drank two giant glasses of water and stopped thinking about posting about my new recipe. I am feeling a little bit better right now but a little shaky and groggy, migraines make me feel like what I imagine a minor stroke patient might feel like. Words don't come easily, thoughts don't form easily and my body feels a little uneasy over all. I am volunteering in The Son's classroom today, I sure hope I can spell by 1:00 since we're doing KidWriting!

After going to the classroom, I am going to head to the Y to complete day two of my half marathon training. My plan only calls for me to run 2 miles at a 10:30 pace today and that's totally doable for me. The challenge would be doind ONLY two miles, I might feel the need to do more. I find that the adrenaline I get from running, helps my headaches so I'm really looking forward to it. I pick The Son up at 3:00 and then go back to the Y to teach swimming this evening. Busy day! I hope I can do it all...

Have a great Wednesday everyone! I'll post that new recipe and recipe review later this week when I'm not feeling "foggy."

NO! This does not make me a grandmother!

2010-01-11T10:23:00.008-05:00

Many of you know that I used to be an elementary school teacher. For six years, I taught in the typical inner-city neighborhood in North Philadelphia at "Frederick Douglass Elementary School." That's where I met Cory.

Cory was a student in my third grade class and then I had him the following year in fourth grade when I "looped" and kept the same students. Cory was one of those kids with a big personality and lots of smarts. He wasn't always the best behaved student in my class but for sure, he wasn't the worst. He spoke up when he needed something, he stayed after school just because he wanted to and most importantly, over the summer, he looked up my phone number in the phone book and called me! I was shocked! In fifth grade, he moved on to another teacher but we've kept in touch ever since he was 8 years old and my third grade student.

Cory has had his fair share of troubles, his mother passed away quite a few years ago and he and his many brothers and sisters were basically left to take care of themselves and each other, in spite of all that, Cory graduated from high school, he even attended Millersville University for a few semesters until he had trouble paying his tuition. It's not the best situation that he had to leave the University but I feel confident that Cory will finish college some day, it's just going to take him a little longer than some.

Cory is 23 years old now and his girlfriend just had a baby! I am not thrilled that he isn't married, or that his girlfriend had a baby before he actually graduated from college BUT... I love him so what can I do but support them?

They came to visit us this weekend, the baby is also named Cory and Big Cory introduced me to little Cory as Grandmom! I put a stop to that right away! I am not ready to be called Grandmom and in all honesty, I want to save that title for when The Son has a wife who has babies. I told him I could be Aunt Kiki which is what my nieces call me. (I don't know why but I like it!) So, here's a few pictures of our weekend. It was lots of fun and I hope that we'll get to see lots more of this sweet little guy and his parents.

The Son loved the baby but still couldn't resist acting silly in a photo!

Here's a better one...

Check out this cute face! I love his big, dark, eyes! He's such a good baby, honestly, the whole time they were here, I barely heard this little guy cry. Cory Sr. says he pretty much only cries when he's hungry or doesn't want to be in his car seat, what a good little guy!

Daddy with his boy!
Mommy with her boy!

The happy family!

Hangin' out and lookin' cute!

Adorable, wouldn't you agree?

Today is the start of my training for the Broad Street Run, my blister is still bothering me but on today's agenda is running three miles at an 11:00 minute pace so that shouldn't be too difficult for me. This whole week's training plan only has me running 8 miles total which for me is nothing... any runners out there want to give me advice? Do I stick to exactly what the plan says or can I do an extra day or so to get in a few more miles, it's hard to do only 8! I could do the elliptical or AMT machine on the off days if that would be better but I'd much rather run. Please, let me know your thoughts.

Have a great day everyone! Enjoy your Monday!

Sunday Fun Day!

2010-01-10T11:54:00.003-05:00

Well, not THAT fun of a day but so far I've been a little productive so that's always good. I got caught up on my oh, so important facebooking. Replying to messages, responding to others status updates and my general over-sharing that I am so apt to do. ;) I also planned out our dinner menu for the week and I am thrilled to say that it contains TWO brand new recipes! If I manage to follow through with what I've planned, I'll meet my monthly goal of trying the recipes and then I'll simply have to blog about them. I also tried to plan to use up food items that we already have because I don't know about you but we tend to go to the grocery store before really using up all the things we've already bought and that's a bad habit to be in in this "tough economy." I made up a shopping list for what I have to purchase and if all goes well, I shouldn't have to step foot in the grocery store more than once this week. I forgot to mention that that is also a resolution of mine, to make a list and stick to it and then USE UP what we bought.

So, do you want to know what we're having this week? Too bad, I'm going to tell you, I put the items in italic that we already had.

Sunday-
London Broil, roasted asparagus, potatoes, biscuits (this is all left over from last night)

Monday-
Shrimp Fra Diavolo (new recipe from Cooking Light) we already had the shrimp, salad, garlic bread flat

Tuesday-
same as Monday night, it's a recipe for 4 servings and The Son won't eat any.

Wednesday-
Trader Joe's Marinated Chicken, Broccoli, Cauliflower Rice (I'll have to tell you about this) and Wild Rice, also from TJ's

Thursday-
Blueberry Bison Burgers (new recipe from Eating Well cookbook, it sounds weird doesn't it?) we already had the bison, Baked chips and a veggie.

Friday-
Trader Joe's Ravioli, salad and garlic bread flat.

Saturday is The Son's sixth birthday and the MIL is coming from Maine, it's also Parent's Night Out at the Y and The Son is going to attend, he's thrilled because he'll be six which means he will be allowed to swim as a part of the PNO fun! I am guessing that The Husband, The MIL and I will all go out somewhere for dinner, THAT sounds pretty thrilling to me! ha ha! That's about as far ahead as I can think at this point.

We had some company visiting us this weekend, the youngest visitor will definitely be the subject of a blog post this week and trust me, the cuteness will be worth waiting for. I am heading to the gym today for a good run and a leg work out, I had some really ugly blisters on the arches of my feet from Friday and I bought some "advanced healing blister" Band-aids, some new socks with NO cotton in them and some Band-aid "Friction Block Stick." I'll give you a report as to if this all works because blisters SUCK! I hate being sidelined by a little thing on my foot that The Son says looks like a dried apricot. ha ha!

Enjoy your Sunday everyone! I am off to get ready for the YMCA!

...And the Training Begins!

2010-01-08T10:45:00.004-05:00

It's time to start thinking about my most difficult New Year's Resolution or as I like to call it, "The Hardest Physical Thing I've Ever Done!" (No, giving birth wouldn't fit that bill, I had an epidural and a C-section and although it was scary at the time, it wasn't really hard physically) Anyway...

It's time to start training for the Broad Street Run. I mentioned a couple days ago that Philadelphia's Broad Street Run is the biggest ten-mile run in the country and I don't know why but I got it into my head that I am going to be a part of it this year. I also figured that if I'm going to do a ten-mile race, I may as well train for a half marathon so that if one comes up that I want to do, I'll be ready, it's only three miles more and at that point, does it really matter?

I found a training program in "Fitness" magazine (which I recently subscribed to for $5 at amazon.com. As of today they still have this deal) I LOVE Fitness magazine, it's full of great tips for healthy living and often has a few good and easy healthy recipes in each issue.

The training program says that if you can run two miles without stopping, you can train for a half marathon. Check! I can do that! It starts with three weeks of what I would consider fast-walking and jogging so I am going to skip those weeks, I am already doing WAY more than that for my regular work outs. I'm running more than 15 miles a week and this training plan is starting with only 6 miles a week. I am going to start at Week 5 where it asks you to run two or three miles at an 11:30 pace which is on the easier side for me but I don't want to start off too challenging, as the program progresses they take you through all kinds of hills and other various drills to improve your speed and distance. The program never goes above a 10:30 minute mile so I know it's totally achievable for me.

I tried to find the link for you and realized that it's probably actually a link to "More" magazine which is evidently a fitness magazine for the 40+ set and ummmm, yeah. That would be me. ( I think More and Fitness are affiliated with each other) Anyway, here is the link to the pdf file if you're interested in checking it out yourself.

Today I am going to do a regular longer run and my shoulder workout. I got weighed yesterday and after all the holiday festivities I was DOWN .4 of a pound. Not too much but considering the average American gains 5-9 pounds over the holidays, I'm feeling pretty darn good about it! I have given myself a goal of 20 more pounds to lose by June 1, 2010. That makes a little less than a pound a week and again should be a very achievable goal for me.

Thanks to all who responded to my frenemy posts, (scroll down if you want to read them) I did end up inviting the son of The Frenemy to the party because The Son would want it that way. I haven't decided what to do about my BFF (Bitchy French Friend) yet but boy, you girls aren't a very forgiving bunch... are you! ;) Thanks again for all the support! Enjoy your Friday!

Frenemy Update!

2010-01-07T19:23:00.007-05:00

If you need to get caught up on the stupid drama that is my life, you can read about it here. If you already read it...

Guess who called me this evening? That's right, my BFF (aka Bitchy French Frenemy, I'm so clever) I was actually surprised because I thought I had her number in my phone but I must only have her cell phone number so I answered. She started off by saying she was sorry that what she had done was mean and that she was so, so, so, so, sorry. I asked her why she had done what she did and she explained to me that none of her other Facebook Friends posted information like I did and that she felt like I was sharing too much and that culturally it was very different than what she's used to. (She's lived here for 7 years and is married to an American man) I find it very shocking that NONE of her other Facebook Friends post mundane daily info about themselves but she swears it's true. I even read her some of my friend's status updates and she swears that her friends don't post like this.

For example:

"Friend #1 is having a great night :) 20 mins till bedtime for the kids...I told them I've been letting them stay up later...but back to the routine!!! Hope the snow isn't bad tomorrow I want to hit the gym in the morning :)"

"Friend #2 is back from the gym.....ran 4 miles and did weights. Updating from Husband's iphone, I know what I want for my birthday. :)"

"Friend #3 finally got out and about today! Feeling better and the sun was still shining. =O)

and my so offensive over-sharing status update...

"CityMomma/CountryMomma is home from the gym. Ran 4 miles tonight but had to suffer through a treadmill with no TV! ;) Off to take a quick shower and then make a nice, healthy dinner. Yum!"

See what I mean? I don't get how none of her friends post like this, trust me, I have 30 -50 more for today alone. Isn't that what facebook and other social media venues are?

She also didn't know about networking blogs or that people made their blogs public and that people actually made money from blogging. Basically, she didn't know anything about blogs. She couldn't figure out why I would share personal information and then link it up to Facebook.

She also didn't know that I would be able to see her status update and that I would then be able to figure out a reasonable approximation of what she said with an on-line FREE translation program. Her husband told her this and evidently told her she was crazy and she needed to take it down or not write in the first place. (Thanks to the American Husband)

She had a bad day, she took it out on me because she was irritated by my "over sharing" which as I hope most would agree was not really over sharing (I've had "friends" over share, telling graphic details of what your boyfriend is going to do with you and some honey when he gets out of jail is over sharing... former student... don't ask, I deleted her.) and she apologized over and over and over and said that if she was me, she would not want to be friends with her again. I know it takes a big person to admit that they were wrong and I do appreciate that she called me and apologized. A mutual friend of ours put her up to it because she basically told her she was wrong and that because she "started the fight, she needed to finish it" (Thanks to the Mutual Friend)

So now that leaves me deciding what to do. I will admit that I didn't invite her son to The Son's 6th birthday party next weekend because this all took place as I was mailing out the invites. I plan on discussing it with The Husband but I will probably invite him. I don't want to be mean to children because of the mistakes of a parent, I will say that I would not be inviting him if she had not apologized. I'm not THAT big of a person.

So, that's the update. What would you do? I know for a fact that we will NEVER be facebook friends again but friends who hang out and do crafts or invite each other to their New Year's Eve parties? J'y penserai (That is what I think means "I'll think about it" according to my French translator. ;) )

Enough of the juvenile drama, tomorrow we will be back to our regular scheduled, over-sharing posts...

Frenemies

2010-01-07T10:43:00.003-05:00

Have you ever had a "friend" who you just can't seem to please no matter what you do? Why do we let these people continue to hurt us, upset us and treat us badly? Do men do the same thing? THAT I highly doubt.

Those of you who are my Facebook Friends, probably know that I'm referring to a recent episode that I had with a former FB "friend" and her love of posting status updates in her native language of French, only this last time, her status update was snarky crap about me! ME? I guess she didn't realize that I could google a translation program and get the jist of what was being said or ask a friend who is a French teacher or one of my husband's Cameroonian students to translate for me. I still can't even quite figure out why I am such an annoyance that anything negative had to be said about me in the first place. The comments related to my blog and MY status updates which honestly, aren't scandalous but usually just talk about how many miles I run, what I'm making for dinner or if I get really exciting, something funny that The Son has said to me. Isn't that what social networking is all about? I like to hear that my friend Cristina in Texas just got a new running toy and realized that she's running faster than she thought or that my friend Andrea in Delaware is going to running TWO half marathons within weeks of each other or that my friend Heidi in Pennsylvania finally had foot surgery but can't get her little one to stop jumping on the bed so that her foot won't hurt as it heals... I LIKE these updates! And if I don't, you know what? I don't read them! For example, my friend Melissa who likes to post occasional Bible passages, I am NOT a Bible passage kind of girl so I just don't read those, do I let it bother me? NO! It's her Facebook page to do with what she wants!

As for blogs, I have lots of friends who have networked their blogs to Facebook, if it's an entry I want to read, I read it, if not, I don't, simple as that. No need to bitch in another language about these people or their social networking content. I still don't understand why it was done about me AND yes, I am hurt. Really hurt.

So, I get back to my original question, have you ever had a friend that you can't seem to please no matter what you do? I'm 40 years old people, I feel like this crap shouldn't be going on in my life any more and as much as I try to say, "I won't let it bother me," "I'll get over it," "She's not worth it." It still hurts.

This particular friend was mad at me months ago, during the summer she deleted me from FB, I never really found out what I did but after a couple months of not talking to me, she told me that I had said something that hurt her feelings and she didn't feel like I was a very good friend but that she missed me and wanted to resume our friendship again. I should add that she NEVER actually told me what it was that I said or did so I still don't know but I made a conscious effort to be more sensitive, considerate and thoughtful than I had before. I even invited her to attend an upcoming scrapbooking weekend with me and my cousin and sister because I know how much she likes to scrapbook and it's local and I thought she might like to get away. I am an abrupt person, I know that, I know I can come off as harsh but I really never mean to hurt anyone's feelings, it's just my manner. If someone tells me I hurt them, I feel bad, I apologize, I'd like to know so that I can fix it. Cut to a few days ago when I invited her and her family to my New Year's Eve party. It was fun, I thought we all had a great time and then a couple days later, I see these mysterious French status updates that I eventually translated and realized were nasty things about me. UGH! WHAT THE...? WHY?

I called her on the phone, she didn't answer, I left a message that I was deleting her so that she wouldn't be bothered about my status updates and networked blog anymore and I also said, "This friendship is over, I thought we were friends again but clearly, I was wrong." I told her that I was deleting her from FB and that was at least offering the courtesy of a call which didn't happen with her when she deleted me before. I promptly hung up after feeling instantly transported back to high school! I shouldn't have let it get to me so much but I couldn't help it, I feel so betrayed and taken and can't help but wonder if maybe this was her plan all along because perhaps what I said before was so hurtful to her (not that I know what it was) that she's been planning on getting back at me. Keeping with the high school feel, all I can think to say is "Whatever."

I'd like to end by thanking all of you who commented on facebook or this blog yesterday and who support me, who understand social networking and blogging and especially to those of you who I've known for 6+ years and have never actually met in person, you girls are better friends than people who I live right down the street from and see on a regular basis. I would never call you "virtual" friends, you're real friends who I just happened to meet virtually and I really hope that someday we can all meet in person because you are all special to me. Thanks.

I know it will continue to hurt me, irritate me, confuse me and I'll continue to question why this all actually happened but I have to look at the bright side and know that truly, this isn't a person I need in my life, even if she never intended for me to realize her comments were about me, the fact is that they were and for some reason she has an inner dislike for me that I will not be able to change. Lesson learned. "Au Revoir Frenemy, Au Revoir."

Better Late than Never...

2010-01-05T22:51:00.004-05:00

I finally came up with some New Year's Resolutions. At first, when I thought about it, I thought it might be silly because generally people don't keep resolutions but then I realized that I lost 85 pounds last year so I guess that means I DO keep resolutions. ;) I decided to pick a few things that were attainable that I knew I could achieve. I should be making a resolution to be more organized and to fold and put away my laundry as soon as it's finished (my Sister is laughing her ass off right now, aren't you Cathy?) but I knew that would never happen, so why bother even trying?

So here they are...

#1 - Try a new recipe at least two times a month and blog about it. I'd really like to build my "HungryMomma/HealthyMomma" blog but I haven't had the opportunity to do much with it. I'll post these new recipes on my healthy blog with a link from THIS blog so that will be a way to start building it. An added mini-resolution is to really work on building that blog but this is a measurable way to start.

#2 - Train for and Complete the "Broad Street Run" The Broad Street run is the biggest ten-mile race in the country. It starts at Philadelphia's Central High School and continues all the way down Broad Street (duh.) to the Philadelphia Naval Yard. I've heard it's a fairly easy ten miles and that most of it is ever so slightly down hill. I can run six miles now (with effort) but because the race isn't until early May, I have plenty of time to train. I am going to train with a half marathon program because that is on my agenda this year too and I figure if I can run 13.1 miles, 10 will be easy! I'm starting this next week and I'll update more on the program I've found at that time.

#3 - Continue with my Healthy Lifestyle and lose (at least) the last 20 pounds that I have left. This is sort of a silly one for a resolution because it is a part of my life now but I need to mention it if only to refocus myself and to know that it WILL happen this year.

That's about it for my "resolutions." I will try to be a bit more organized this year as well....

or not. (hee hee.)

Happy belated new year everyone, enjoy your Wednesday!

Bad Attitude...

2010-01-04T22:54:00.005-05:00

I know I shouldn't feel this way and as a nutritionist I should want people to get healthy but I write the following with a disclaimer saying that I've been very cranky for the past few days and working out is the only thing that makes me feel better and then when I get there, every treadmill is full so with out further adieu...

Dear People who just joined the Gym because it's a New Year:

Where have you been all year? The gym has been empty, the treadmills all available and now suddenly because the date has changed you feel the need to come work out?

I am a devoted gym member, I've been here faithfully almost every day. All of a sudden, I come to work out and there you are, hanging on for dear life with the treadmill set at an obviously too difficult incline. Do you know that if you lowered your incline, let go and used your arms while walking that you'd get a much better work out? Anyway...we all know that in six to eight weeks, you'll be tired of coming, disillusioned and bored anyway so let's just make it easier on everyone, go ahead and leave now.

And while we're at it. Smoking is not good for you, smoking a cigarette and then getting on the treadmill next to me is not good for you either. Your sweaty smoke smell, and stanky smoke clothes odorwafting over towards me while I try to work hard and breathe deeply is seriously unpleasant and honestly, just quitting the smoking is going to benefit your health WAY more than huffing and puffing and wheezing away on the treadmill ten minutes after smoking a cigarette. Perfume doesn't cover it up, you're not fooling anyone. Perfume is pretty much just as offensive and the two of them combined make me want to hurl.

Lastly, for those of you who DO plan on continuing after the "gym honeymoon phase" is over, good for you! Keep coming, keep working out. Please don't forget about the healthy eating, you'll feel great as those pounds come off but could you try to at least leave me a treadmill between the hours of noon and three? I'll be there, we can roll our eyes at the treadmill holder on-ers, the smokers and the excessive perfume wearers together.

Thank you and have a great work out.
CityMomma/CountryMomma

The Blahs... I haz 'em

2010-01-04T16:00:00.004-05:00

It's 2010... I know you all know that it's a new month, a new year, a new decade. I just can't seem to get with the program and embrace it however. I don't know why that is.

The Son did not go back to school today, he's been sick for the past couple days with an on and off fever, a little vomiting and just general crankiness. When he wasn't feeling well this morning, we decided to take him to the doctor and lo and behold... the child has an ear infection! The doctor was shocked because The Son acted as friendly and as cute as can be, he told us he's had no ear pain other than his ear feeling "a little weird" and he acted like such a Big Boy at the doctor's office. When she looked in his ear, she couldn't believe how badly infected it was, he's on antibiotics now and spent the last hour+ playing with play-doh.

So, I guess The Son not going back to school hasn't helped me feel like I should be getting back into the swing of things either. I'm trying... I really hate the new year, the holidays are over and we just have months and months of cold weather to look forward to, I need to snap out of it for sure.

My holiday decorations are still up. Still. Up. I haven't felt the motivation to begin taking them all down but I plan on doing it one of these days. Or weeks.

I've been feeling out of control with my eating and again, I don't know why that is. I haven't had my meeting for a couple weeks because my meeting day is Thursday and the past few Thursdays have been holidays. We're back again this Thursday and I'm pretty sure that I'll be able to get it back under control, I've been journaling off and on but I know that I need to focus, I did OK over the holidays but not as good as I would have liked to.

The Husband has been sick and he's coming home early so that I can go to the Y for a work out and a swim instructor meeting, I know the working out will help me feel a little bit better. I hope that The Son will make it to school tomorrow and perhaps that will get me heading in the right direction. I have a couple "resolutions" I want to tell you about but I'm not really feeling that right now either. I'll try to snap out of it because I hate feeling like this.

Hope you're all doing better than I am with this new year and that your Monday was OK.

I just updated my running mileage in my sidebar...

2010-01-03T16:36:00.003-05:00

but I didn't want to lose the record of the following completely so I'm copying and pasting it here.
I'll be back to my regularly scheduled blogging tomorrow. Enjoy the rest of your weekend.

************************************

Miles I've run since the Race for Hope, November 1, 2009...

11-1-09 to 11-7-09 - 22 miles
11-8-09 to 11-14-09 - 19.75 miles
11-15-09 to 11-21-09 - 17.25 miles
11-22-09 to 11-28-09 - 18.75 miles
11-29-09 to 12-5-09 - 25 miles
12-6-09 to 12-12-09 -25 miles
12-13-09 to 12-19-09 - 18.50 miles
12-20-09 to 12-26-09 -19.50 miles
12-27-09 to present - 14.5 miles

Total 180.25 miles

Lordy, Lordy, Momma's Forty!

2009-12-29T10:46:00.004-05:00

Happy Birthday to me! I know that age is just a number but I must admit that this day is one I've been dreading. I have issues with getting older, I mean really, I cried on my thirtieth birthday. Over the year, I have watched all my high school friends turn 40 on facebook and although there are two who still hang on to 39 for a couple more days, I really enjoyed being one of the youngest... I guess graduating at 17 has some advantages. ;)

Being a "holiday baby" has always been something I've enjoyed. Others have asked if I got "ripped off" at the holidays because I am so close to Christmas, but as a child, my parents always made sure to keep the days separate and it's really nice to start off a new year with a new age AND an actual new year, it makes keeping track of events pretty easy if that makes any sense. I've also felt like the celebrations just continue from Christmas all the way through to New Year's... nothing wrong with that! 2009 has been quite a year for me. I've had lots of ups and many downs but I don't generally like to discuss my "downs" on my blog, I try to keep this a positive place for myself so, for today, I'll just focus on the positive happenings from the past year.

I continue to have loving support from all my family and friends. The Son is thriving in Kindergarten, The Husband loves me through thick and thin, (pun intended) I've made so many new friends at the Y this year and my dogs keep me happy and healthy (most of the time.)

I lost 83.8 pounds in 2009! I will definitely reach my goal of a total of at least 100 lost some time in 2010. This is an accomplishment I never thought I could do but I can now look back and say it's been a really fun journey. I've learned simple things that will keep me healthy for the rest of my life and I know I will never been obese again.

I am running! RUNNING! And... I actually like it. I have so much more to accomplish with my running but I love that it's the kind of activity with which I can always set goals to improve, be it increasing my speed, my distance or just trying new runs outside. I will never get to the point where I can't improve and that's the kind of activity I like. I can reach the goals and then set new ones for myself to just keep getting better and better... do you think that in 10 years I'll be talking about running marathons? It's possible!

So, those are probably the best things that happened to me when I was 39, I look forward to what 40 will bring for me. I do have some goals to set for myself but I'm waiting until 2010 to write about them... my goals for today however are simple and a fun way for me to celebrate my birthday. I am heading to the Y to run six miles today, this will be the longest run I've ever had and I will probably be very sore when it's finished but I know I can do it. (I'll be taking tomorrow off from the gym, I will need it) After my work out, I am getting my nails done, not something that's terribly pleasurable but at least it will be done. Following my nail appointment, I plan on heading to the Goodwill for a little thrift shopping, I know to most this wouldn't be an exiting birthday but I can't get enough of my finds at the Goodwill and I get compliments on my wardrobe all the time... little do people know... I will also hit Trader Joe's to pick up a few of my much needed items, European yogurt and my tomato soup, yes, I'm an addict! After that, I'll be coming home to a clean house! The Husband took off from work today so that he could clean the house for me and as most women know, this is a fantastic present! The Son is obviously home from school today and The Husband also took off so that I could enjoy my day by myself. We'll be eating a yummy healthy dinner of filet, shrimp, asparagus and roasted potatoes for dinner. Woo HOO!

Well, my bloggy friends, I'm off to the gym. I hope you all have a fantastic December 29th... I know I will!

A Holiday Poem Rewrite and a Recap of our Holiday...

2009-12-28T10:07:00.011-05:00

'Twas the day before my 40th birthday when all through the house, The Son was enjoying our new Wii console with a man I call The Spouse (or The Husband if you want to be particular.)

The presents were all opened, lots of toys had been unwrapped and I felt like this was the perfect time for a little holiday recap.

On December 20th we thought, "What do you know?" as we enjoyed watching lots and lots of new fallen snow. Ziggy was thrilled,

The son was too, he laid right down and knew just what to do.

On the day after the snowstorm we knew just where to go... to Longwood Gardens, not many others were visiting because of the snow. The company that joined us enjoyed all the beauty as did The Son, our little Christmas cutie.

In lieu of presents for the Kindergarten teacher we were asked instead to buy items for a "Giving Tree" that would feature, socks and underwear and hats galore for children who didn't have many and needed some more.

While I followed directions and we picked out hats and gloves, I had had to make something for the teacher we loved, a few note cards I crafted and wrapped up real quick, my usual "go to" item when I want to play St. Nick.

The next thing I knew, it was Christmas Eve and Santa was leaving some PJ's under the tree, they weren't very Christmasy, that much was true, but The Son was excited by them and posed really cute too.

Christmas day was spent with family and friends, a busy, busy day, the kids hoped the fun would never end. The Niece, The Baby Niece and also The Son got lots of fun presents and enjoyed every one. The children we have must have been especially good this year because Santa was generous, he's such a dear.

Maxus Dragonoid, a Bakugan toy is the favorite present of my little boy, he's played with it more than any toy yet and he even played with The Niece and her Princesses set.

Another year past more memories made, hold those memories close and don't let them fade. I hope you've enjoyed my little holiday story, I'm off to enjoy this day with The Son for tomorrow I'll be FORTY!

Happy Monday to you all!

More fun with gingerbread...

2009-12-23T13:58:00.006-05:00

It's been a busy week so I haven't posted much and by much I mean, at all. I wanted to take a minute this morning before I start my busy Christmas Eve Day to post a few pictures of our large gingerbread house. This one was especially fun to make too. Click here if you didn't see my teeny tiny Gingerbread house and you want to take a look at it. The Son was gingerbreaded out at this point so The Husband and I got to decorate this one all by ourselves. I actually baked this gingerbread from a mix, rolled it out and used a pattern that I downloaded to cut out the pieces. It's a very basic pattern, next year I might go for a slightly fancier house.

Here we are working hard, we used Frosted Shredded Wheat cereal for our roof.

Various views of our house. We kind of went for a Tudor style, the tree you see off to the back is from one of those kits, The Son and the Step-MIL worked on this together, it's cute as an addition to the house scene but I was surprised that it it came out looking smaller than I imagined judging by the picture on the box.

This sledding guy is one of my favorite parts, isn't he cute?

I bought these little gingerbread men cookies to use as decoration, we decided to taste them which was a big mistake. They're surprisingly good and 35 calories a piece, I've only eaten two but I'm pretty sure that will change as the holiday progresses.

Merry Christmas! I hope you and yours enjoy the magic and wonder of the season.

Teeny Tiny "Gingerbread" Houses

2009-12-20T11:33:00.009-05:00

Oh, the weather outside was frightful... but our tiny gingie houses are delightful!

We got a lot of snow yesterday. Official estimates are close to two feet for our area. This is more snow than we've gotten TOTAL for the rest of The Son's life, he's kind of excited to say the least...

Needless to say, we were snowed in yesterday. Fortunately all snow-related disasters were averted because I managed to hit the grocery store the day before to stock up on bread, milk, eggs and snacks. We wouldn't want to be one of those tragic families you hear about who die in their homes stranded without any food to see them through the long 24-hours of snowstorm. Just terrible those stories, huh? ;)

Anyway, I also stocked up on supplies to create some super-cute gingerbread houses out of graham crackers. The Husband, The Son and I had a lot of fun and it truly kept us busy for the day. The FIL and his wife are also visiting and I am happy to say that my Step-MIL helped The Son with his house which made it easier for The Husband and I to work on ours. I highly recommend this activity, we all got into it.

I hit the bulk bins at the store first, it's easy to buy a couple tootsie rolls or starburst candies when you use the bulk bins, and the cost is definitely better so unless you need an entire bag of tootsie rolls, hit the bulk bins. These cute little trees and "wreaths" were fun.

I made my own "royal icing" to use as our glue, it's a very simple recipe. I used four cups of confectioners sugar, 3 egg whites (you can use pasteurized egg whites if you're worried about salmonella, I'm not, plus we didn't really eat any) and 1/2 teaspoon of cream of tartar. Throw it all in your mixer and stir it all up. It mixes for about 7 minutes and makes a nice thick icing.

We then cut the graham crackers with a serrated knife. You need two full graham crackers cut with a point at the top, two half sheets to make the walls and two additional half sheets to make the roof. I cracked the first one I attempted, don't press too hard on the opposite side when you cut.

Smiling for Momma...

The Husband took his work very seriously.

Here's our mini-neighborhood...

The Husband designed a church, The roof is covered in whole wheat linguinie pasta which I must say, was a really nice food to use for decorating, I used it too as you will soon see... The cross on the steeple as well is made from linguine.

His stained glass window on the back of his church, is made from gumdrops

Here's The Son's house, his theme was clearly, "How Much Stuff can I Stick on my House before Momma and Daddy tell me I'm Wasting Candy?"

Don't you you just love the back? I think the "Andes Mint" randomly stuck to the roof really pops.

Yeah. The Son's house is kind of like your neighbor who puts out a few too many holiday inflatables and then adds even more to them each year...

Here's my house, I made the fence around it with the aforementioned pasta, and gumdrops

The snowman is one of my favorite parts, I used two different sized gumdrops and then a tootsie roll that I cut as his hat. I must admit that I drew the eyes and mouth on with a sharpie marker. Melted dark chocolate dipped in a toothpick works really well if you need everything to be edible, but the sharpie is easier.

Here's the back, you can get a good glimpse of the fence here...

I used coconut to make the snow all around after the houses were place in their locations and again, those long linguine noodles came in handy to push it around into all the little crevices and corners.

The FIL took a couple shots of us with our neighborhood, Ziggy decided that he had to be in this first one which made The Son act a little silly himself,

One more try... Merry Christmas!

As I mentioned before, this project was LOTS of fun, we will definitely be making this a holiday tradition. The Husband and I also made a real gingerbread house and it came out very cute as well, I'll feature that one later this week. Enjoy the rest of your weekend and if you live on the East Coast, enjoy the SNOW if you got any! (I'm off to the Y now, a couple feet of snow can't stop me from working out!)

A Decoration Preview...

2009-12-17T09:38:00.008-05:00

How cute is this boy? Ziggy enjoys the fireplace, that's for sure! When we turn it on, he lays there for hours which is nice because if he's laying there, it means he's not running like a crazy pup all over the house or stealing things and hiding them behind chairs, we know where he is...

I thought for today, I'd show you some of the decorations that I have completed, a little preview if you will. Pretty much everything is finished but I'm still straitening up and putting boxes and boxes and boxes away. My FIL and his wife are coming tomorrow night so it will be done by then and if it isn't, it will look like it is.

This year, I wanted to do somethings a little differently. I used my apothecary jars to show off some candy I had in my cabinets. It's candy we'll probably never eat considering it's been there for quite a while but it sure looks cute in the pretty clear jars. By the way, three of these jars were purchased at the Goodwill or Salvation Army for less than $2. Every time I go to a thrift store, I make sure to check out the home goods area, you never know what you're going to find.

Here's a couple pictures of my snowman collection, I have LOTS of snowmans. (Yes, I know that's grammatically incorrect but I like it. ;) ) There are all kinds in my collection from little country crafty guys to a goregeous...

giant Waterford ornament, see him below, (to the left) I think he's one of my favorite Christmas decorations.

I also have a cute Santa Claus collection. They are on the mantel with a couple sparkly trees, unfortunately, the trees didn't photograph as especially sparkly but trust me, they are really, cute.

Nothing simpler than a pretty Lenox bowl filled with ornaments, I love this bowl, it's so different and special. Definitely another one of my favorite Christmas decorations. I think I'm sensing a snowman appreciation here... funny thing is, I really don't like snow!

And lastly, a preview of our smaller tree.

This is the tree under which Santa leaves our presents but we also have a nine-footer in the foyer. I'll post some pictures of that, and more detailed pictures of this tree soon. Until then, I hope you've enjoyed my preview.

Today is another busy day for the CityFamily/CountryFamily. I have my nutrition meeting and weigh in at 1:00, plus I need to work out and The Son has karate tip testing tonight, I have to get ready for company this weekend and I have to do all the other daily chores that people have to do so I bid you farewell and wish you a happy Thursday! Stay warm!

Did I tell you...?

2009-12-16T12:11:00.003-05:00

...that I was working on making myself an apron? I ask, because evidently, I can't remember the things I tell these days, as my sister so kindly informed me about yesterday's post regarding the Snuggie. Evidently, I already posted about it. Oh well, you know I love the thing so it deserved two posts.

Well, I've been wanting to make myself an apron for a long time so I finally bought the supplies on Black Friday. (when I also bought those beads that yes, are still missing) Anyway, here's a couple of pictures of me in the apron. I realize it's very cheesy, campy and totally over the top as far as aprons are concerned but that's what I wanted. It's a vintage simplicity pattern and there's a couple other options for aprons that I'll have to attempt as well because, it was fun to make. The Son took these pictures so they aren't the best but you get the idea and yes, Ziggy had to get in on the action too. The back has criss-cross straps and a cute, big bow but I decided against posting the photo of me from behind. It didn't come out very flattering considering The Son was pretty much camera level with my rear end. So here ya go... funny huh? Yes, I will wear it and actually already have!

Enjoy your Wednesday everyone, I'm off to do KidWriting in The Son's classroom this afternoon and then I'm heading to the Y for a run. I've been especially hungry this week who knows why? It's probably not going to be a good week for weight loss, that's for sure!