Weekend Review

This weekend we made use of the nice weather and went to the zoo on Saturday. M is becoming quite the little photographer and makes us pose for pictures all the time.




Saturday night I went to see a movie with a friend that I've been wanting to see since it came out and haven't been able to. It was wonderful. :)

Sunday I cooked chicken for lunches all week, cleaned the kitchen, mopped the floors, went to a fabulous lunch with my wonderful friends, made a run to Target for Diet Dr. Pepper, washed my car and then got a Redbox movie so the kids would sit down for 5 minutes. I'd say it was a good weekend. The scale may disagree with me tomorrow morning.

Wednesday Weigh-in

I was down 2 lbs this morning! I didn't lose last week with being on vacation and all but I'm glad to be back on track again this week. I've worked my butt off the past few days so those 2 lbs were certainly earned. Moving on to the week ahead now! I have a brunch to attend on Sunday plus having to eat out tonight, possibly Friday and Saturday. I hate eating anywhere other than home. I like to have total control of what I put in my body. It happens though and I try my best to make good choices.

Down 6 lbs in 3 weeks! No complaints here!

Random Monday

I made a new recipe tonight but it needs some work. I'll post it tomorrow along with my ideas for improving it and maybe someone can come up with some great idea to make it work. I just wasn't feeling it.

I managed to do 3 workouts today! Yes I'm insane and a bit neurotic but I'm determined to see a good loss this week. My water weight from vacation is gone and the scale is moving down again so I'm pushing it. I'll do 2 workouts tomorrow and then possibly 2 on Wednesday depending on what my loss is that morning. Must. Finish. Losing. Weight.

J graduated to another swim level in swim lessons today! Yay for my big boy! Now both kids will be in the same group. We'll see how that goes. M always gets great reviews at swim lessons and I'm a little nervous about grouping them together. I'll let the instructors work it out.

Now I'm off to bed so I can do it all over again tomorrow...

Vacation Pictures!

Secret Garden:

Margaritaville:

Mirage Volcano (the kids were not liking this...):
Yogurt-land (YUM!!):

Bellagio Fountains (we watched from both sides):

City Center:

Hoover Dam:

This is how I spent 50% of my vacation. How is it a vacation if I still end up with both kids? They both had to hold mommy's hand if at all possible. I spent the other 50% carrying around my 45 lb 3 year old. Not so fun.

See my excellent parenting skills here? I can post pictures on Facebook and supervise my child at the same time! It's called multi-tasking. My husband has never heard of it.

Red Rock:

Spaghetti Squares

Ingredients:

1 box spaghetti

1/2 cup Egg beaters

1 cup milk

1 tsp garlic salt

2 cups mozzarella cheese

1 jar spaghetti sauce

Directions:

Heat oven to 425. Break pasta into 2-inch pieces and cook according to package directions. Drain and cool. In a large bowl, beat egg, milk and garlic salt. Add 1-cup cheese. Stir in cooked pasta and mix well. Spread pasta mixture evenly into 9x13 pan. Bake 15 minutes. Remove from oven and reduce heat to 350. Spread spaghetti sauce evenly over pasta and sprinkle with remaining cheese. Bake another 30 minutes. Allow to cool 5 minutes and serve.

6 Servings (would easily make 8 but I needed extra calories for the day).

Calories- 398

Fat- 9

Sat Fat- 3

Protein- 23

Carbs- 65

Cholesterol- 15

Sodium- 740

Fiber- 9

Vegas Vacation

Apparently if you can manage to stay sober for more than an hour after arriving in Las Vegas there are all kinds of things to do besides drink and gamble. Who knew? I thought the only places that existed in Vegas were Margaritaville, casinos and hotels. This time neither of us consumed a single drink and we still had a great time. Here's how it went down...

Day 1:

Our flight was delayed just a little bit and the kids were getting restless but once we boarded the flight went well. Both kids like to fly so our only issue is M's ears but this time wasn't as bad as it has been in the past. Maybe that means she's outgrowing it. Once we landed we got all of our luggage and headed for the hotel shuttle area and waited. And waited. And waited. We weren't the only ones standing there so we assumed we were in the right area. Wrong. Finally 30 minutes after the shuttle was supposed to arrive Matt and another guy called the hotel and somehow we had missed the shuttle. Possibly because it was unmarked! I'm sure that had something to do with it! Anyways, after sharing a cab (and the $50 cab fare) we finally made it to our hotel. The hotel was really nice. It had a full movie theater, bowling alley and best of all...childcare!! We ate dinner at the food court, got some ice cream and rounded the kids up for bed. Bed time did not go smoothly. We'll leave it at that.

Day 2: There's a little shopping area right across the street from the hotel so after breakfast we headed over there to walk around for a while. Probably not the best idea when we had a full day of walking ahead of us but it was fine. We dropped the kids off at KidsQuest for a while and did some gambling bright and early. I even won $50! We ate lunch and headed for the shuttle so we could take the kids down to the strip for the day. The kids slept on the way (probably because they got up at the crack of dawn...) so luckily they were well rested for the day. We went to the Secret Garden at the Mirage, M&M World, Bellagio Fountains, Mirage volcano, Fashion Show Mall and did more walking than the kids bargained for. We stopped at Margaritaville for dinner where the kids got balloon hats and ate a wonderful dinner and then walked back down the the mall and did some shopping before they closed. After a very long day we headed back to where the shuttle was supposed to pick us up and there were over 30 people in line. We were in the middle of the line so we weren't sure how this would go down. Someone called to let them know there were a lot of people waiting and they said the bus would hold 14 people. Fantastic. So again we loaded in a cab with some others and paid a $40 cab fare to get back to the hotel. This was at 10 PM Vegas time so midnight our time and the kids were out before we got a block down the road. Once we arrived at the hotel Matt stayed to pay the cab fare and some wonderful ladies and a nice gentleman helped me carry shopping bags while walking with a very tired 5 year old and a sound asleep 3 year old who weighs 45 lbs fully dressed back to our room. Bedtime went much more smoothly. :)

Day 3:

We got smarter on day 3! We decided the shuttle service is crap and rented a car! We were able to get the car right at the hotel and I drove the 2 miles down to Target and bought 2 booster seats. When I got back Matt and the kids had been bowling so they wrapped it up and we loaded up in the car. We drove down to Town Square and let the kids play at the big playground area, did some shopping and went to Yogurtland! Yum! They were still good to go so we headed back to the strip since M wanted to see the Bellagio fountains again. We parked at the Luxor and walked through the Luxor, Excalibur, City Center and Bellagio. We saw the conservatory at Bellagio and the fountains one last time. Let's just say the walk back to the car was much longer than the walk to the Bellagio. The kids were tired and M did enough whining about her feet and hips hurting to last her for the rest of her life. The kids fell asleep in the car and we drove to Chili's for dinner. Then we dropped the kids off at KidsQuest for a few hours so we could see a movie. By the time we picked them up they were good and tired. That was the goal!

Day 4:

We loaded up in the car bright and early and headed to Denny's for breakfast. Who doesn't love Denny's? The kids were pretty pleased that they didn't have to eat yet another breakfast from the smoothie place at the hotel. After breakfast we went to the Hoover Dam. This wasn't something we had planned to do at all but since we had a car we decided to go for it. The kids were so done walking so it was a perfect thing to do. There wasn't a huge amount of walking and I think we all really enjoyed it. We stopped at McDonald's to feed the kids lunch on the way back to town and they were able to run off a little energy at the playplace. We made a stop and In and Out for Matt and then went to the Ethel M's Chocolate Factory to check it out. The kids seem to think it was neat but next time we'll go during the week when the factory lines are going. The kids were pretty tired so we drove out to Red Rocks and did a scenic drive. Matt took some pictures and then we went to Fuddrucker's for our Valentine's Day dinner. J was coughing and not acting like he felt great so after dinner we headed over to Target and got him some medicine. We wanted to get them in bed early since they are going to have to adapt to another 2 hour time difference but since J had taken an almost 2 hour nap he didn't go to bed quite as early as we had hoped. Oh well. It still didn't go as bad as day 1.

Day 5:

We woke up early and went down to the buffet for breakfast and then got in line nice and early for the shuttle (we learned our lesson) and left for the airport around 11. Once we got to the airport and through security it was lunch time so we stopped at BK to eat, did some shopping and let the kids play in the play area until it was time to board. Our flight boarded at 2:30, the kids slept all the way home (so did I) and we got home around 8:30 and started unpacking. I'm sure bedtime won't go smoothly tonight either.

I managed to not eat more calories than I burned any day of our trip. I stayed under 2000 every day except Valentine's Day and I let myself have 1 splurge meal. I feel like I'm retaining a lot of water though so I'm not expecting a great weigh in on Wednesday. I'm back on track tomorrow though and I'll do a round of turbokick for the next few days and maybe try to up my burn to 3000 for this week to make up for it.

Photos will be up sometime in the next few days. I have a new recipe already planned for this week too! I just need to get to the grocery store for the ingredients (and things like bread and milk...).

Some pictures from my phone:

Wednesday Weigh-in

I was down 4 lbs this morning! This thing is seriously the ultimate motivator for me. I'm loving it! This is normally the week I can't lose anything so 4 lbs is a miracle. I was hoping for 2 and I have my program set to lose 2 lbs per week so I don't expect huge losses every week but even 2 lbs a week will get me to my goal by May 1st! I just have to be REALLY good while on vacation so we'll see what the scale says next week. I'm hoping I can keep my burn above 2600 and my calories under 1800. It's a bit more than I usually eat but I figure I should allow myself a little extra wiggle room for vacation. A deficit is a deficit no matter how small so as long as my burn is higher than my calorie intake I'll still be on track. I have all my meals planned out so if everything goes according to plan (yeah right...) then I shouldn't go over my calories at all!

Thanks Grandma!

J loves to wear a cape and pretend to be Batman so I called my mom and asked if she could make him something that I wouldn't have to keep helping him with all day long. Of course she made M one too because that's what grandmas do.

Opening their package from the mail.
M in her Red Riding Hood cape.
J in his Batman cape.
Those are 2 happy little kids. She also sent them some money for Valentine's Day so we went to the store and M picked a Barbie and a ball toy and J picked a Batman with Batsub (submarine) and a Matchbox car. Then they called grandma to say thank you for spoiling them rotten.

Meatloaf

Ingredients:

1.5 lbs lean ground beef (93% or more)

1/4 c Egg Beaters

1 onion, chopped

1 cup skim milk

1 cup bread crumbs

salt and pepper

2 tablespoons brown sugar

2 tablespoons mustard

1/3 cup ketchup

Direction:

*Preheat oven to 350.

*In a large bowl, combine the beef, egg, onion, milk and bread crumbs. Season with salt and pepper to taste and place in a lightly greased loaf pan or form into a loaf and place in a 9x13 baking dish.

*In a separate bowl, combine the brown sugar, mustard and ketchup. Mix well and pour over the meatloaf. (It seems like a lot but go ahead and pour it on there!)

*Bake at 350 for 1 hour. (Mine took 1.5 hours so definitely check in for doneness and be prepared to maybe stick it back in for a while)

***I drained the excess grease off of the meatloaf before serving.

Nutrition:

6 servings

Calories- 299

Fat- 10

Saturated Fat- 3

Cholesterol- 101

Sodium- 487

Carbs- 68

Protein- 28

Sugar- 4

Fiber- .5

It turned out really good! I thought the mustard sauce might be too strong because when I mixed it up you could really smell the mustard but it was perfect! You couldn't taste it at all. It was more of a sweet sauce.

Workouts and Vacation

It's been 5 days since I put on my Bodybugg and I'm getting a pretty good feel for it now when it comes to calories in vs. calories out but the amount I burn for workouts is kind of crazy. Yesterday I walked a few miles on the track at the Y before going to Turbokick and even though I came home sweaty, exhausted and thought I'd probably burned a ton of calories my burn for the day was 2674. We had an awesome instructor yesterday that really pushed all of us. She had so much energy it was unbelievable. The class even lasted an extra 15 minutes so we could do legs, stretching and abs. I'm not sure I've ever sweat so much during a workout before. She's amazing and I may consider doing her 5:30 AM class this summer. But the point is I really thought I'd burned more. These 2 hour workouts 7 days a week are killing me! I need a vacation! Of course I'm packing my workout clothes so I can use the resort fitness center if I decide to. It's inside the spa and those fancy places make me nervous. I'm hoping I can get a burn of 2200-2300 just walking throughout the day so I won't have to go. I could use a break for a few days. I'm so sore!

Speaking of vacation, the kids are really excited about going to Vegas in a few days. I've kind of showed M the places we are going and we're pretty much all packed and ready to go! Yay for a family vacation where there are no bottles, diapers, sippy cups, strollers or carseats! Also, no drinking during this Vegas trip. That will certainly be a first for me! Having to walk by Margaritaville every single day without going in for a drink is just torturous. I'm not sure how I'll survive. I hope the kids do ok with all the walking they'll have to do. It's a long walk up and down that strip with no stroller but the logistics of bringing a stroller just don't work. J will be fine I'm sure and I'm taking lots of children's Tylenol for M. I'm taking a backpack instead of my purse so I can carry water bottles and snacks for them. They aren't used to being outside in warm weather right now so it will be a nice change of pace from all this snow!

I have a new recipe I'm working on for tonight and I'll post my weigh-in on Wednesday before we leave town. Only 2 more days of this crappy weather and then we're outta here!

Bodybugg Week 1

Ok so I got my Bodybugg on Wednesday, charged it, set up the online account and strapped it on Wednesday night before bed. Yesterday was definitely a learning experience for me. It's really hard to guess how many calories you burn per day and my Bodybugg takes the guessing out of losing weight. I know how many calories I'm burning and how many calories I'm taking in. I really thought that I was pretty active before I got it but this makes me 100% accountable. Yesterday I burned 2700-ish calories and that included grocery shopping, 2 workout classes and lots of going up and down the stairs cleaning. It says on an average day I would only burn 1800 calories. I have to work REALLY hard to burn that extra 1000 calories per day! That's why my weight loss has slowed down so much I think. I was still treating my body like it weighs 220 lbs and I just don't weigh that much anymore. I don't burn many calories per day unless I work really hard for it. My daily goal is to burn between 2600-3000 calories and eat 1500-1600 calories. That means I won't be taking many breaks from working out, I won't be eating anything that isn't on my meal plan and I WILL be able to reach my goal before going back to St. John! Of course we're also headed to Las Vegas next week so I'm going to have to show some serious willpower. I've already scouted out all the places I feel comfortable eating and we've tried to revolve our plans around my eating plan. It kind of sucks to have to vacation while on a diet but I will make it work!

Chicken and Salsa Skillet

Ingredients:

2 cups multi-grain pasta

1 lb boneless skinless chicken breasts, cut into bite sized pieces

1 small jar of salsa (1.5 cups)

1 cup of corn (I used a whole can)

1 large green pepper, diced

1 cup 2% Mexican style cheese

Directions:

Cook pasta as directed on package. Meanwhile, heat a large non-stick skillet over medium-high heat.

Add chicken and cook for 2-3 minutes stirring occasionally.

Stir in salsa, corn and peppers and bring to a boil. Simmer on medium-low heat about 10 minutes or until chicken is done.

Drain pasta and add to chicken mixture and stir lightly.

Top with cheese and remove from heat. Let stand 1-2 minutes or until cheese is melted.

Nutrition:

Calories- 367

Fat- 8 g

Cholesterol- 85 mg

Sodium- 858 (which mostly came from the salsa so you could make your own)

Carbs- 50 g

Fiber- 5 g

Sugars- 9 g

Protein- 43 g

It was simple and fast to make so that's big plus for me! This made 4 servings and it reheated really well too. Enjoy!

Weekend Ramblings

Last night my friend Jen posted on Facebook that Costco was selling Bodybuggs so we bit the bullet and ordered 2! One for each of us! This has been a discussion in our house for a long time. We've debated it over and over but the price was awesome and came with a year of service so we decided to go for it. She's had such great success with hers (and I learned another friend is having success with hers as well!) that I really feel this could be the tool to help me lose these last remaining pounds. The biggest reason I didn't buy one before was because I've lost all this weight without one so I know it's possible but it's getting harder and harder. Also, my friend Mandy has asked me to take a class with her numerous times but I hate fitness classes. Hate them. So I've always said no but last week Sarah said she was going so I decided to try it. Turns out I actually had a good time and Sarah and I went again yesterday and are going again tomorrow! It's kind of nice to have something new to add to my fitness routine.

Speaking of adding things to routine, the kids start swimming lessons again today. We have to get all ready for summer! M also started piano lessons last week and my friend Sarah is teaching her. So far she really loves it and she's spent the last week practicing her rhythms. The clapping is pretty much constant. I think she greatly enjoys homework that starts to drive me crazy after a while. In the car the clapping is so loud! And then they're screaming at each other because one kid isn't clapping right or one of them is clapping too loud or too soft or isn't breathing right or something.

With all this snow on the ground we took advantage and went sledding with our friends this weekend. The sun was shining and we had lots of fun!

I have a new recipe I'm making tonight so I'll get it posted sometime in the next few days!