Change of Heart

I just finished reading a couple of books, one of which is Change of Heart by Jodi Picoult. I'm not really sure how to describe it--It's pretty complicated. I'm not sure what I thought of it either. I think it's one of those books that you have to discuss to really be able to formulate an opinion. Has anybody else read this book?

I Love Winter (said thick with sarcasm)

Snowfall record for single month tumbles

The Capital Times — 12/29/2008 7:01 pm

With about three months to go in the winter of 2008-09, Madison could end up with the average total amount of snow for a season already before the calendar is flipped to the new year.

With 42.9 inches already in November and December, the 1-3 inches expected on Tuesday could push the snowfall total up to the average 45 inches that normally falls in any given winter in these parts, with the brunt of winter still to come.

The record snowfall in December is now at 38.6 inches, breaking the previous December mark of 35 inches set in 2000 as well as the previous monthly mark of 37 inches that fell in February 1994.

The Madison area did fail to break another record Saturday when temperatures reached a high of 49 degrees early in the morning. That was 1 degree shy of the record for that day of 50, set on Dec. 27, 2003.

Weather Central meteorologist Kelly Curran said the warmth will come back Monday with a high in the upper 30s after a high of 28 on Sunday, one degree above normal.

The warmer temps will be accompanied by strong winds, gusting up to 40 miles per hour Monday afternoon, according to the National Weather Service.

The light snow on Tuesday could get blown around, but the snow isn't expected to cause driving problems.

New Year's Eve on Wednesday will be colder with highs in the low 20s, but travel should be good with sunny skies and no snow.

On New Year's Day, there's another chance of light snow, but little or no accumulation is expected.

A chance of snow is in the forecast for the upcoming weekend, but little or no accumulation should come of it, with highs in the low 20s to start out 2009.

Road conditions around Wisconsin were in relatively good shape Monday morning, with some slippery stretches reported on highways in southern and central Wisconsin.

Seriously?? Last year we had over 100" of snow. How can we be ahead of that?!

Our Christmas-Part 1

Waking Unkey Mikey on Christmas Morning

Abbie's new baby

Nope, not Nate's. That's Alan's new remote control helipcopter

Nate with Darth Mal's ship--He's been asking for this since last Christmas

Encouraging activity--Glow-in-the-dark soccer ball

Santa brought Abbie a princess bike

This is how we seated 15 people for Christmas Dinner Abbie rocking it out on my new karaoke machine (for i pod!) Nate's lego castle--He hasn't stopped playing with it since he built it

I don't know why we wasted so much time and effort on med school when he could have done this for a living

I Can Eat!

So I have spent the past couple of days researching healthy weight loss, exercise, etc. I am definitely not eating enough. With my current weight, activity level, daily exercise, I need to be eating nearly double what I'm eating now. Wahoo! It's backwards in my head to eat more to lose weight, and thus a challenge to convince myself it's okay to eat that extra snack in the afternoon, but since cutting the calories obviously isn't working, I'm going to try this. I found a great site: www.thedailyplate.com This site allows you to track what you eat (they have a HUGE food database), caloric needs, goals, exercise, etc. The best part is that it's all free. I'm going to try this for a while. I'll let you know how it goes.

Just a Note

I was reminded by my SIL, Diana, today that it had been a while since I have updated my blog. Sorry! I have been updating the exercise ticker at the bottom, but it's true that I haven't posted n a while. We've had a busy week. I have lots of pictures from Christmas and the other things that we've been doing, mostly with Alan's family, but I haven't gotten them off the camera yet. We've been spending most of our time with Alan's siblings who are in town--Andrea, Michael, and Diana. Diana is here with her fiance. It doesn't seem like we've really done a whole lot, so I don't have much to say. I'm still exercising like crazy. I got pretty frustrated this week because I actually gained two pounds, putting my net loss at 2 lbs at 2 weeks. Ugh. I'm not sure what my deal is--I can't possibly exercise more than I already am. 60 minutes a day is all my body can handle. I'm trying to drink more water too. I've been keeping track of my calories and the only thing that Alan and I can figure out is that I'm not eating enough, which is sending my body into starvation mode. As difficult as it is, I'm going to try to eat more this week and see what happens. Any tips would be greatly appreciated. It's hard to be motivated to spend so much time kicking my own trash when I'm not even seeing any results. I'll post again when I have a free minute and get our holiday pics onto the computer. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Half Way There

I have done 510 minutes of exercise since I started this kick and I have 510 minutes to go before the end of 2008. Family starts coming today, so we'll see how I do! On a sad note... I ended up throwing away almost all of my not-quite-cooked toffee. I would have been embarrassed to give it away and so I was the only one eating it. Really, binging on it. I was not about spend an hour every day working out until I was almost dead, just to negate it with a bunch of toffee. So yes, I'm still working on self-control. :)

Exercise Update

So far, so good. I've been doing 60 minutes every day on the elliptical. It usually comes out to about 8 miles. I've also upped the level from 1 to 3 which gives me more resistance and makes it more difficult. I'm feeling good. It feels great to know that even after a week, I'm still on track. I lost 4 lbs this week too--It's much easier to stay motivated when I see results. I am still working on my eating habits. I definitely should not have made toffee this week. I just stuck the tupperware out in the snow, instead of keeping it in the freezer. I hate the cold and even toffee won't motivate me to go outside if I don't have to. I'm going to stock up on fruit so that I have something yummy to eat during the day, other than cookies and crackers, etc. I can control my portions much more easily than I can cut out the snacking. I'm thinking that I might need to change my exercise goal of 60 minutes a day. I got a DVD today that lasts about a half an hour and it absolutely kicked my trash. There's no way that I could physically do the DVD and then a half hour on the elliptical too. I hurt too much to sit up straight while playing the piano! I'll see how I feel tomorrow--Maybe I'll alternate the DVD and the hour on the elliptical and weight and situps. I thought that I might be able to just do the DVD 2x in a day, like once in the morning and once in the evening, but I don't think that I'd be able to hold my head up straight. I guess that the important thing is that I'm exercising every day and I know that I am working all of my muscles because I can feel them! It's a long road that I'm on. Weight loss just plain sucks. I am encouraged, though, by my ability to make it past week 1. I also know that it's so important for my kids to learn that exercise is something we do regularly--It's a very crucial part of life. Abbie is doing jumping jacks/dancing while I do the elliptical in the morning and she was doing her best to keep up with the DVD today. Both Abbie and Nate report on whether or not they've done their stretches every day. I never asked them, they just started telling me themselves. I guess they get that it's somewhat important! Here's to keeping goals and losing weight during the holidays!

Winter Wonderland

Holy cow--We got a lot of snow! I think that we got about a foot of snow. I spent about an hour and a half shoveling our driveway, sidewalks and the steps up to our house. There was a three foot pile of snow across the entire bottom of the driveway where the plow went by. That was back-breaking! The kids had a great time playing. Abbie was a bit intimidated at first because the snow was up past her knees, but then she got into it. I think that I shoveled our sidewalks at least 4 times because they would push buckets of snow back onto the sidewalk every time they walked out of the snow. The temperature was a major blessing today. I think that the high was 28--It was so warm compared to the negative temps we've been having. We were able to stay outside for a full hour and a half straight; I even took my coat off after shoveling for a while. I must say that it's not the snow that makes me dread winter. I dread the cold. When it's 28 degrees, I can handle it!

A Little Christmas Miracle

Tonight I asked Abbie to go brush her teeth. She ignored me, like usual. (Sometimes I am genuinely concerned that she has a hearing problem...). I threatened timeout and she started meandering. Then, I told her that if she didn't get a move on, I was going to french braid her hair into four different braids. She RAN to the bathroom. I have never seen that girl move so fast. Now if I can only figure out how to get her to let me do her hair...

Christmas Is Coming!

I've spent the last few days getting ready for Christmas. We finally got our Christmas tree, decorated it and put our lights up outside the house. We got all of our Christmas decorations up as well, which is, well, quite a feat. Christmas is my favorite holiday. It's Alan's favorite holiday too. We LOVE Christmas! We have quite a collection of Christmas "stuff" and we also received a lot of my grandma's Christmas things. Now our house is transformed. We have more Christmas decorations than we know what to do with! I love it. I also love having so many of my grandma's things--I am reminded of her everywhere I look. Today I made Christmas goodies. (I hate that word, but I think it's better than "treats.") I made Peppermint Bark, Toffee and Sugar Cookies. Nate and Abbie helped decorate the sugar cookies this afternoon and had a blast. My toffee didn't turn out as well. It still tastes great, but I realized after the fact that my candy thermometer was not working right--The paper with the temperatures had slid out of place inside the thermometer. Hence, my toffee is definitely not hard crack. It's more like soft. Oh well. Now I have a reason to make more! More baking tomorrow! Here are some pictures:

I love this Nativity plate.

Our ginormous Christmas tree! (We have always been big-tree people, but we were a little shocked at how big this tree was once we got it home)

My grandma's angel Our Christmas Village My Hibiscus tree is about to bloom! Our window seat with our candle advent calendar

This is our Nativity collection. The majority of these were from my grandma. They are from all over the world.

This is what the drying rack (over a cookie sheet) looked like after all of our Christmas cookies were iced and left to dry there. My first attempt at Peppermint Bark. Yum! My not-quite-cooked Toffee Decorated Sugar Cookies!

My Tickers

I've hit my limit. I have reached the point where I am SO done being fat, it's not even funny. Earlier in my life, I was in very good shape. I worked out daily, did aerobics in college (it's great motivation to go if you're getting graded) and ate well. If I started to slack, I'd work hard for a few weeks and lose the five pounds I had gained. If you've seen me in the last 2 years, well, it's obvious that I lost that habit. I am fat. My arms are huge, my thighs make the earth move when I walk, my face is rounder than a full moon and I have so many chins that I lost count 2 months ago. I won't even start talking about how my gut is larger than during my pregnancy with 8.5 lb Abbie. I'm disgusted with myself. Granted, I gained this weight due to medications and illness. I gained 50 lbs in 3 months. Yuck. But that was last year. I still look like this. Yuck again. I am done being fat. I do not want to avoid old friends because I'm embarrassed for them to see me like this anymore. I don't want weight to become an issue for Abbie because I'm constantly obsessing about what I eat, etc. I want to teach my children to be healthy, to exercise and to eat right. That all starts with me. Thus, my tickers. At the bottom of my blog, I have 2 tickers. They mark my progress in this ridiculous/annoying journey and serve as a constant reminder to me of what I need to be working on. Exercise has become my passion. I am doing between 6 and 8 miles per day, sometimes split into a morning and an evening session. I am also doing weights. I know that my metabolism is changing because I am constantly hungry. I am eating healthy foods, though, and working VERY HARD at portion control. Getting healthy has become my life. I have tried to just kind of do it along the way, but obviously it hasn't worked. This is what I have to do. This is what I will do. Yes, that was me giving myself a pep-talk. Go! Go! Go!

Our Trip to Texas

This last week, our family traveled to Houston, TX. It was a treat that we were all able to go--Alan actually had a few days of vacation! We met my twin sister, Rachel, and her baby boy, Ben, there. My little sister, Liz, lives in Houston, as do my parents. We had a good trip. It was great to see family and hang out with my sisters again. I had over 600 pictures total from each person's camera, so I made a little slide show of our trip:

FYI--I didn't intend for the first few pictures to be the ridiculously hilarious ones; it just happened. And Liz, I tried to not have "that picture" as the one that opens it, but I can't make it change. :)

New Blog

My quote section was getting too extensive for the bottom of the blog. I started another blog just for the stupid/hilarious/ridiculous things people say. Check it out! Somebody Actually Said That?

Some of Our Thanksgiving Weekend in Pictures

Snowball fight

Unckey Mikey with all the stuff Nate and Abbie piled on him when they found him asleep on our couch in the morning

My cherry and apple pies

Abbie in leg-warmers