On sand and snot

No I haven't dropped off the earth again, I'm back from vacation but I'm sick...and so is A2. Don'tcha just love those summer colds?! The runny nose, sore throat, the ringing in the ears, and the changing of bed sheets because A2 horked up some purple shit I have no idea what it could have been all over them. Ahh, so much fun.

We had a fantastic time on vacation though despite the fact that we drive all the way from point A, which is at least 13 hours away from Panama City Beach, only for me to strip down A2 to put his swimming trunks on him and his bag is NO FREAKIN' WHERE TO BE FOUND!! That's right, his bag was all the way back at point effin' A! I had NOTHING for him except the one outfit he had on his back and the other dirty one from the night before when we stopped over to spend the night at a hotel.

I didn't know whether to laugh, cry, or throw up. The only thing I could do was load up with the husband and hit up Wal-mart for some cheap shorts and underwear and a pack of plain white t-shirts. From there we hit up Old Navy for a couple outfits to get him through and went back to the condo. The thing that pissed me off about it all was that he had tons of cute clothes, most still with the tags on them, packed along with at least 6 pair of flip flops. Hell, you know I'd have to pack him several pair if I brought a bucket o'flops down with me.

From that point on it was smooth sailing. The condo was right on the beach and the view was awesome. Friend 2 and her family have stayed here for at least three years or so and knew all the ins and outs of getting around. There were eight of us total in this condo but surprisingly we were all able to spread out and do our own thing and got along very well.

We spent our days mostly at the pool or the beach and our nights we would go out to eat and then come back and either go back to the beach or pool for a night swim. Usually we would have to whole giant pool to ourselves except for one or two others that never stayed as long as we did. One night the husband went down to the beach with his flashlight and discovered that there were tons of stingrays swimming up close to the shore. We all rushed down there and spotted tons of them. That was pretty fun.

While there we ate at Sharkey's, Pineapple Willy's, Margaritaville, Angelo's Steak Pit, and Five Guys. My crew stayed in and ordered Papa John's one night while the other two adults and two kids went out for seafood. We aren't huge fans. About the most seafood we get is Captain D's, seriously, not big seafood fans!

We rode go-carts a couple nights and some of the kids did the bungee trampoline thing. I took our Wii with us and we all had laptops so there really wasn't any time or way we could have gotten bored. A2 smoked the entire house at Mario Kart and it was ha-larious. Friend 2's husband is very competitive and he was breaking a sweat trying to beat the three year old at racing....he couldn't do it. We got more entertainment out of that than anything. One night we played a round of Scattergories which is always fun until someone takes it to the ditch with the dirty answers.

Time to pack up and head home rolled around way too soon and we were out of there come Saturday morning around 9 or so. We took a different route home than we took going down so we hit a certain point and the husband said we were only a couple hours away from our family and asked if I wanted to go there or keep chugging away to our house....family won out and we took a detour. I was pretty excited to get to visit with everybody since it'd been a while. The hubby ended up taking Monday off so we just made an extra long weekend out of it.

Monday morning we loaded up and hit the road for the house. I think we got home close to 6 or so that afternoon. Even though it's still a long ass ride, it seems to pass a lot quicker than it did when we first started making it. Thankfully all the animals were fine and nothing had gone wrong while we were gone.

Tuesday I could tell that the baby and I were starting to feel a little off and here it is Friday and I'm propped up on the couch struggling to even hold this stupid computer in my lap and can only breathe out of one side of my nose and it's through an opening the size of a pin hole. My head feels like an elephant as planted it's big ol ass right square on top of it and I'm sure the husband will be home soon crying about how he's sick too. That means I'm going to have to suck it up and cater to him since he can get the freakin' sniffles and you'd think he was on his fucking death bed.

Will share more later when I can hold a coherent thought in my head without a ton of mucus sloshing around in there with it.

I think I'm going to go throw the sheets in the dryer, carry my laptop back to the bedroom with me so I can check on my Farm Town crops in a little while, and try to finish reading this book I'm having a hard time getting through called, "The Shack." Have you heard of it? I heard some good things about it but to me I'm not connecting with it. I'll give a full review when, or if, I manage to finish it.

so the story goes

there is absolutely noting going on that i can write about right now. i'm seriously racking my brain trying to come up with something of importance and the same things keeps coming up...a big fat zilch, zero, nada.

i'm trying to soak up as much sun as possible before we leave for florida. thankfully the weather has been cooperating and i've gotten in three good days and after just checking the forecast it looks like i'm going to get two more. pretty stoked about that since i wasn't wanting to be the girl who emitted a soft glow when i stepped out onto the beach.

i washed up every stitch of clothes in this house and dared my family to not even think about throwing something in the hamper unless it absolutely reeked and they pretty much took it to heart.

i've been working out pretty hard with my wii active and i'm considering writing the company and demanding i be put on their payroll as a marketing rep. i swear through facebook and my little blog here i'm pretty sure i've gotten about a dozen or so people to go out and buy their own copy! it's seriously that awesome. i've weighed 128 for the past two days and i'm hoping by the end of the week to have reached my long long long ago set goal of 125!!!

my youngest child, A2, has picked up a new saying and it's hilarious. my husband and A1 swear that he got it right from me but i didn't realize i said such a thing. here's what he does, whenever he wants something, like the blanket that is a mear 2 inches from his head on the back of the couch, he will say, "hey guys, what about some covers?" or he'll want some milk he won't ask out right for it he'll say, "what about some milk?" he cracks me up.

thought i was going to have to take him to the doctor yesterday though. i'd noticed about three little red bumps on his cheek a couple of days ago. they didn't look bad and they were about the size of a tiny pin prick. yesterday morning he woke up and they were about the size of a pin head and redder and he was covered in them all over his back and butt and arms and there were a few more on his face. all of the new ones were tiny and looked like the original three did at first. turns out we called in insurance and nurse nancy happened to answer the phone and talked us out of taking him saying it was something like fifth disease. i'd already been online and saw that and it didn't look anything like it.

i texted one of my nurse friends and she said the same thing and that it wasn't that big of a deal. i wasn't convinced, being i don't have a nursing degree or anything like that but still, so i just watched it and thought i'd take him today if he woke up and it was worse. i was thinking it looked more like heat or an allergic reaction to something. he looks 10 times better this morning. all the bumps on his trunk, arms and butt are gone and he only has the ones that got real red left on his face. don't know for certain what it was but if i had to guess i'd say it had something to do with some new toast i'd given to him. he only about 5 things so it wasn't hard to narrow down anything new that had been added to his diet.

other than that it's been pretty quiet around here. i'm very tired today for some reason. i think it's because it was close to midnight last night when i was working out and i had some stupid dreams last night that kept me tossing and turning all night. i'm thinking i hear my big soft bed calling my name right about now. maybe a good nap will zap me with a burst of energy so i can get my workout on here in a little while. as you can see i clearly need it since i don't even have the energy to freakin' use proper capitalization!

Eleven !! 11 !!

Vacation
All I ever wanted
Vacation
Had to get away

Yippee! We DO get to go on vacation and we get to go in 11 days. I couldn't be more excited about this. This has been such a hard few months with moving out to the middle of nothing and nowhere and trying to get adjusted and my dad going through and recovering from surgery and our house still sitting on the market after many many long months that I'm ready to get away and enjoy a little stress free down time.

Because we still have our other house and our current house, things had to tighten up around here on the financial front. I've been trying to watch my spending and when I slip my husband has been right there with his reminders of how much it costs to keep up two homes and the amount of money it costs us each time we go in to check on that house and to visit family.

I was feeling a little restless the other day and just out of the blue asked him what the likelihood of a vacation would be this summer with all the crap we have on our plate. Naturally the answer wasn't what I was hoping for because he said we probably wouldn't get to go anywhere unless we count going home to visit the family as our vacation. Free room and board and a few meals scattered around here and there. That's about the best we were going to be able to hope for this summer. I could live with that since I love going home but time seems to fly by and we never have enough time to visit everybody for as long as we'd like before we have to pack it all in and get back on the road to make the long ass journey back here. So a few extra days spent down there would suffice as a vacation as long as I didn't have to scrub any toilets or mop any floors.

I'd given up hope of going to the beach and soaking up as much sun and sand as I could...that is until Friend 2 called me out of the blue one day last week.

She called to tell me that she and her husband and their daughter were planning on going to Panama City Beach for the week of June 7th. She said that they had an awesome deal on a two bedroom condo at the Edgewater Beach Resort. They came across this deal because someone else was originally going to go that week but now wasn't going to be able to make it. They had paid for the room and wasn't going to be able to get their money back so they offered it up to them at a cut rate. The original price was some outrageous amount but she had it given to her for $700 for the whole week. Well, since it's a two bedroom and she knew I've been wanting to go she said if we split that and go in $350 we can have the other bedroom and only be out gas, and whatever we decide to do and eat.

WE JUMPED ON THAT LIKE A FAT KID ON CAKE!!

I'm super excited to say the least and can not wait until we leave! The last time we went down to Panama was with my brother in law and we only stayed like two days...hardly enough to count as a vacation. This time we are staying an entire week!! I'm also super excited to get to hang out with Friend 2 some more. I haven't seen her since we moved. Our kids get along and our husbands are in the same field of work so they will have tons to talk about and they've hung out before so this is hopefully going to work out perfectly.

My goal for the next 11 days is to clean my house from top to bottom for the next two days since it's suppose to be cloudy with a chance of rain and frankly my house stinks like ass right now for some reason. After that I want to get some sun so I'm not emitting a neon glow from being so pale when I step out on the beach and I'm going to hit my 30-day Active challenge and any extra workout I can manage with full force every day!!

I will have pictures from this trip dammit! I'm not going to be ashamed of my body any longer!

Ok, got to get up now because those damn dishes aren't going to wash themselves and I'm pretty sure that ass smell is coming from the million piles of laundry sitting in the laundry room screaming out my name. I've waited on them to take care of their selves for long enough and they refuse to budge..assholes!

30-Day Challenge

My newest obsession: EA SPORTS Active for my Wii. I was sitting on my butt the other day not really wanting to get up and workout and I saw a commercial for this new game coming out for Wii. I was immediately drawn in and had to have one.

It's claim was that it was like having a personal trainer in a box and that it would give an actual workout and not the illusion of one like other games (pretty sure that was a slam at the Wii Fit).

I called my hubby and told him about it. I must have been pretty convincing because he brought it home for me that night.

What you get in the box is a leg strap that you use to put on your right leg. You use is during exercises that require you to put the nunchuck in the pouch on top. You also get a flimsy red stretchy band with handles. This is the one thing I'm a little disappointed about. To me it gives no resistance and I can see where after a few workouts it will more than likely snap. And then there is the game.

I popped it in and it asked me to set up a profile. I was already loving it more than my Wii Fit because I didn't have to step on anything only to hear it groan before it gave a reading. Who needs that bull?!

Anyway, I set up my profile and decided to do the 30-day challenge it offers. I'll be working out two days and then resting one, working two then resting one and so on. I think out of the 30 days there are actually 20 workout days. I was able to pick the level of intensity I wanted which I set at medium. You can pick whether or not you want a male or female trainer. Once your workout is ready it will give you the option to uncheck anything that you feel you may not want to do or aren't ready to do. I went ahead and did the full workout. It consisted of 18 exercises (some repeats) and my projected goal was to burn 94 calories. It gives a projected calorie burn before each workout and at the end lets you know if you met the goal or not.

My first workout contained some walking/running, lunges, arm curls, inline skating, punching, and jumping. I LOVED it!! There is a picture in picture window that shows your trainer and you follow their moves. They tell you whether or not you are doing the moves correctly and offer positive support throughout. There are also instructional videos that you can watch that shows an actual person doing the moves if you aren't sure how to do them. You really only need to watch them once and then you've got it.

By the end of my first workout I was sweating like crazy and out of breath! I couldn't wait until the next day to do my next workout. On day two the workout was different from the first adding in new moves and kicking up the intensity a bit. By the end of that workout my legs felt like jello and the next morning the backs of my thighs and my butt was definitely feeling the burn. I was so sore!!

Day three focused more or upper body but was still a pretty intense workout that included some cardio and lunges to keep those legs working. Last night I did workout number four with my husband (he bought the accessory pack that included an extra leg strap and band) and this morning my butt and legs are sore and I even feel a little twinge in my bicep!

I am loving this game/workout! It's so much fun. If you're like me and just wasn't feeling much from the Wii Fit then you have got to get this game. It's compatible with the balance board so you can use it in some exercises if you want but it isn't required at all.

Right now the hardest part for me is the inline skating. You put the nunchuck in the leg strap and hold the other remote in your hand. When she says go you have to crouch down as low as you can to gain the most speed. When you come up to a ramp you have to jump. The ramps get closer so you have to get back into the crouch position and jump again. If you don't have enough speed your person will falter a little. The better you are at it the more "tricks" your person will do. My girl has only managed to do about two!

The game is a little expensive but it's not much more than any other new release game. We happened to find a deal at Best Buy and was able to receive a $10 gift card with purchase. I think that deal is over now but it wouldn't hurt to ask. We used the gift card towards the accessory pack. I think it was around $19. The game runs $59.99 at most stores. I saw it at Sam's for $58. But again, if you are looking for a fun workout with a personal trainer then this is for you!!

I entered my weight in as 130 on day one. I'm anxious to see what it reads by the end of this 30-day challenge! If you are still unsure then I'd suggest you Google EA SPORTS Active. You'll find some pretty awesome reviews and also a video of someone doing it with Ellen on her show. This is definitely worth the money and blows Wii Fit out of the water!!

Let me know if you get it or have it and if you are doing the challenge. I'd love to hear what you think about it.

Pwned....by a freakin' three year old

No, I didn't misspell anything in the title. Google it.

Back last year we bought Mario Kart for our Wii. We thought it looked like a lot of fun and that it would be something we could all play. Well, for a time, it was all the rage when we first got it. We all sat around and played it and the baby especially loved it. At first he wasn't any good but he would sit and play and play and play until he was actually winning some races.

I'm pretty sure I posted how he blew away the electronics guy at Wal-Mart with his mad skills one day while we were there letting him play. He'd gotten so good at the time that there was no way I could beat him (shaking my head in disbelief here), it was killing his brother that he couldn't beat him every time and his daddy really had to try hard to be able to beat him. He was seriously that good.

As with anything else, once the new wears off we tend to shove it in a corner or just lay it down and pick it up every now and again when the notion strikes. We hadn't played Mario Kart in a long while but A2 (who, let me remind you, is 3!!) decided the other day that he wanted to play it again.

Like a desperate good mom, I jumped on the chance to turn on a video game for him because it meant I'd have time to myself for a little while to either work out, wash dishes, or hell, just go take a crap without this little three foot person standing right in front of me holding his nose asking what I'm doing in there for so long. When he first started playing I could tell he was out of practice because he was falling off of the roads and coming in last or closer to the last place. I thought it was a good learning experience to teach him that the more you practice the better you get and if you stop then it's harder to still be as good.

Who knew video games could be such a good learning tool?!

Anyway, he sat there a little while and I went about my business. I could hear him in there yelling at Yoshi, his favorite character, to come on already and various other screamings to that effect. It kinda made me chuckle because I could see my gift of "talking smack" flourishing from my very own little person.

After a while the inevitable happened and he asked me to play with him. I was thinking sure I'll play you (since you suck at it for the moment). Surely I can school his little butt for once because he's so out of practice and I'm the super awesome mom who doesn't need any stinkin' practice, right?

I couldn't have been more freakin' wrong if I tried! I sat down, he set it up, the race began and that little turkey zoomed off and left me in the dirt. That wasn't the worst part though.

Here's a little word of advice to all you parents out there: If you're like me and you like to play around and talk smack all the time from time to time you better be careful because little ears soak it all up and little mouths spit it right back out at'cha when you least expect it.

As the race went on A2 would say to me, "eat my dust mom!" or "are you racing or what?" or my favorite one of all "you drive like a girl!" I shit you not.

What the hell!!??!! I AM a girl you freak!! Needless to say I wasn't able to stay on the road because he picked one where it was floating out in damn outer space and I came in dead last with 0 points. He didn't come in first place but more like 5th but still he beat me. I had to go about the rest of my day knowing a three year old beat me and talked pure smack to me the whole time.

What's up with that? I'd like to see him try to beat me at Guitar Hero (the one and only video game I'm any good at besides Dance Dance Revolution and I kinda suck at that one). Better yet, I'll just stick to my farming in Farm Town on Facebook. That's more my speed.





Excuse me while I get him fresh batteries for his steering wheel.

The Closer You Get....

So, during my time off I thought it might be fun to go back and do some reflecting on what I had written here over the past couple of years to see how much has changed in my life. There were a few posts that I thought were pretty funny, a few that I wonder what in the hell I was thinking when I wrote that, and a few that make me feel really good standing here right now as I write this entry.

If you've followed me at all or even know me then you'll know that I have struggled with my weight every since I had A2 (he was born in July of 2005). Just to be very clear, I've never been overweight and even after the baby I wasn't what some would classify as overweight but for my own personal preference I was carrying around more weight than I was happy to be lugging around on my size 5.5 feet.

After giving birth I weighed 160lbs. I stand 5'4 on a good day so that wasn't horrible considering. The problem with that number though is that one year went by and it hadn't changed. Two years went by and my ass is still large for me and the number has only come down by about 10lbs. The only reason I lost that 10 was because we moved and all that unpacking and keeping up with a tiny baby gave me a good work out. I didn't even realize I had lost it until I stepped on the scale one day.

When I started blogging I think I weighed in at around 150. I read a post the other day that literally made me tear up. I had been struggling and struggling and weighed myself and was so very excited that the scale read....148. I was happy. I weighed in at 148. I had tried on a pair of white jeans I'd bought that barely slid up my thighs but the fact that they came all the way up thrilled me. I didn't even care that they didn't button, they came up past the freakin' thighs!!

As time went on I kept blogging about how I wanted to weigh less yet it was such a struggle to stick to any sort of workout or to just get motivated to do much of anything. If it didn't involve the damn TV remote or plugging in my laptop before the battery died I wasn't that interested. Seriously.

I've never felt comfortable looking into a mirror at my body. I could point out a billion things that is wrong and never truly liked what I saw. My thighs rubbed, my boobs were two different sizes, my belly had extra grips on the side, I've got a freakishly long second toe on my right foot and the list goes on.

Well, somewhere between my very last post towards the end of last year and today I've come to terms with what I see when I stand in front of the mirror. I know I'm never going to have the "perfect" body and I'm never going to feel like I look better than anyone but I stand here today and I'm finally comfortable in my own skin.

I weighed in at 130.2 this morning and that means I am five pounds away from my goal weight that I set for myself a few years ago. A goal that I didn't think I was ever going to reach. I feel stronger than I have in years and I don't cringe when I look in the mirror.

I've started a new workout plan that really seems to be working for me. I bought myself a set of Zumba DVDs off of eBay and I set a goal of wanting to run a mile and a half in 12 minutes. I actually look forward to working out and feel like a slob or at least a sloth if I don't do at least a little something.

I have friends on Facebook that cheer me on and I cheer them on to get up and work out. Yes, I still have cellulite. If you know how to get rid of that shit I'll give you a direct number how to reach me but you know what...I'm willing to bet just about every single woman out there over the age of 20 does too so who gives a flying shit if I do!!

I'm never going to weigh the buck 10 that I did when I was in my twenties but that's ok, my boobs are bigger now then they were back then so I'll take the trade.

I guess my point to all of this is that I'm glad I wrote about how unhappy I was with my weight and how I kept trying to take it off and fit into my clothes because now I feel good and I have a better sense of accomplishment not only because I can now fit into that pair of white jeans and actually have to have a belt to keep them from falling off!

Go me! Tooting of my own horn over now. It's good to be back.

Long Lost Friend

Oh, how I've missed you my own little piece of the web. It's been months since I've been able to sit down and write but I think I'm almost ready to let everything I've been hanging on to inside my head and heart out.

The past few months have definitely been filled with lots of ups and downs, funny sayings from the three year old and teenage issues that I'm not sure I can handle on my own. Thankfully I've got a good hold on my emotions and think I'm going to be able to pull through just fine.

So if you're reading this it means you're probably here by mistake so I'll wait as you sneak out the side door. If you're here because you really want to know what's been going on with me then welcome to/back to my world. I'm happy to have you!

I'm going to take this weekend to jot down a few of the things I want to share and will see you soon! Right now I'm going to sit back and enjoy my Mother's Day weekend.....and my new addiction, farming on Facebook! Hey, I never said I'd been doing amazing things with my time off from blogging.