10 on Tuesday

On Wednesday again. Oh well. My Tuesdays have been so busy. :)

1. I just signed up Skyler for soccer. I always had a feeling this would be her first sport. At age 2 I believe it was she was dribbling the ball all around the yard without anyone ever showing her how to do it. I'll have to look those videos up to see how old she was for sure. She really wants to play too. I was so excited that they added a younger age range just this week.

2. Courtney on the other hand does NOT want to play soccer. I was really hoping she would just give it a try before saying she didn't want to play. Oh well, maybe I can convince her before registration is closed. Probably not though. She keeps telling me not to sign her up. She says she doesn't want to do that much running. haha

3. We couldn't be more proud of Courtney and how she is doing at school. She is done with everything kinder and moving on up. She will be even more ready for 1st with all of the extra work they are having her try and her new "academy" that starts up this weekend for her.

4. I have piles of donations at my house. Granted, I love that there is so much, but it is getting old already. I need April 15th to come. Then at least some of it will be gone. The baby item exchange is that day. I'm hoping that the bigger things will be gone. Or at least some of them. Then there is the Yard Sale on May 1st to sell the rest of the stuff. We don't have very much "yard sale" stuff. Just mainly baby/child things so far. So we need more of that type of stuff.

5. I took over a car load of stuff to Candice's house last night. It felt great to get rid of some of the bigger items that didn't need to be sorted. I still have the rest of the sorting stuff inside for easier access. The stuff that is already sorted and full is in the garage ready to go.

6. We are making a car for Courtney for a project for school that she will have to wear. She wants it to have glitter all over it. And some added "bling". haha That is soooo Courtney.

7. Skyler said the cutest thing the other day. We were talking about Jesus raising from the dead and she said, "That's tricky." haha Yes it is!! So cute.

8. The girls are excited for Easter. They helped me fill eggs for Skyler's school. They are such good helpers. We are going to my in law's house for Easter this year. We asked if someone else could do it since we have donations all over our house.

9. I need to make some more birthday cards. I am quickly running out.

10. I had a nice gorge-fest after the challenge was over. And now it's back to work.

3rd Place!!!!!!!!

The 12 Week Weight Loss Challenge is over. So, I'm not the Big Fat Loser. lol But I am a big fat loser after all. :) I got 3rd place in the competition. I am so happy about that. I lost 32.4 pounds (13.1%)!! (Go ahead, figure it out...whatever.) Heidi won second place and lost 33 pounds!! Eva won first place and lost 43.2 pounds!!! It was based on percentages lost.

What an exciting, exhausting, stressful thrill ride to go through. Especially when you are near the top. Trying your hardest to do everything you possibly can to do better. I knew several weeks ago that there was no way I could win. I was just way behind on the percentages. Since I weigh more my percentage is less than someone who is smaller and loses the same amount of weight. Oh well, that's the nature of it.

Roselia said she's not going to do another challenge so I said I would do the next one. Not just yet though. I need a break. It's so worth it. Even if you are just weighing in somewhere vs no one knowing if you are losing or gaining. More accountability and support. I know I wouldn't have been losing this fast without it.

It was kinda nice to let loose a little last night and have some Panda Express. I also had some pizza and popcorn today. :) I won't be doing much of it though because I'm still trying to lose. I even lost more this morning than yesterday morning. Even with Panda. lol My stomach has definitely shrunk. I couldn't eat as much as I do. I was so full and had to save the rest for another time. I'm going to take my first break from the gym/working out at home/running in quite a while tomorrow. I need it.

La Habra 10K

I ran the La Habra 5k/10K this past Saturday. Here is the family who came (minus Scott who is taking the picture). Daryn, Anny, Ron, Randi, Me, Shauna, and Bryan all ran/walked the 10K.

35 min. 9 seconds for the 5K. (We have to subtract 30 seconds because it took us 30 seconds on the clock to reach the start line when the race started.) This was a record pace for me for the 5K. My fastest before was 35 min. 44 seconds.

Shauna and I coming in for our first lap (5K).

Coming in for the finish of our 10K!!! Bryan was yelling at us to run it in faster. So, we ran faster to end it.

10K time 1 hr. 14 min. 16 seconds (According to my Nike+ thing I was wearing. I didn't even look at the time on the clock until we looked at the pictures later. I wonder why it's off a little. So It was either 16 seconds or 24 seconds. Either way, pretty darn good.) This was also a record time for me. My fastest before this for a 10K was 1 hr. 17 min. 58 seconds.

Thanks to Shauna for convincing me to do the 10K instead of the 5K. Midway into March it was seeming like the 10K would be better since I was used to doing 5Ks at that time. So, doing the 5K at the race would have been too easy. This way the 10K was a challenge.

It was quite a hilly run. NOTHING like running on the treadmill for sure. It was more like running around Shauna's house, with a few more hills. The hardest hill was near the beginning (and middle since we looped it twice). I did have to stop to walk quite a few times, but nothing like I had been on the treadmill. I took small little walking breaks when I had to. My goal is always to not have to ever stop running. This is something I need to work on. Some of those hills just did me in. At least the downhills I could sprint on. Once the 5K was done and we moved on to the second loop of the course, it was like hardly anyone was racing anymore. Most of the runners must have opted to do the 5K. Hardly anyone was even running near us, unlike the first loop where we were constantly going around people.

It was so fun knowing so many people there too. So many cousins, a few friends from church, and Whittier Christian (Skyler's school). Since some of them finished ahead of us they (and Scott) could cheer us on when we finished. And then we could cheer on those who were behind us. It was fun.

It was a great feeling of accomplishment afterward.

Six Word Saturday

I ran my first race today!

60 lb. lost!!!!!!!!!!!

This is the biggest difference I have seen (minus the face pictures). Love this side shot.

Ahh...I'm so excited. 60 pounds. That's just huge. I know I still have a ways to go, but 60 just seems like such a big number. I'm still getting used to it.

Friday Fixations

Instead of having my Thoughtful Thursday yesterday, I opted to blog day and call it something different. Random things I've been thinking of or are going on in my life.

Yesterday was packed full of organizing. You would not have wanted to be in my house yesterday. I had bags and bags and bags everywhere. All of the donations have started coming in for the baby item exchange and yard sale for MOPS, so I am organizing it all. It's pretty much all sorted out now. I spent pretty much all day (besides a short play date and pick ups and drop offs for school). I also was getting rid of some of our stuff, so I have been sorting through some of that too. I still have a ton of that to do. I need to go through their rooms and find more to donate. There is still plenty of time to donate if you want. And now it's easier that it's all sorted. So I can just filter it in with everything else.

I found out yesterday that my Grandpa Hanff has cancer. It has already metastasized to several other areas in his body. He was having a bone scan done because he had unexplained hip pain. Now we know why. They don't know where it originated yet, or what kind of cancer it is yet, or his prognosis. I'm assuming it's stage 4 cancer at this point since it has moved to so many places. This makes me so sad. I love my Gramps. His wife was taken by cancer.

I just hit 60 pounds lost today!! I'll post pics in the next blog.

My race is tomorrow!!!!!!! And then final weigh in is Sunday. She moved it up one day.

10 on Tuesday

1. I love that Courtney really doesn't have homework for the next 2 weeks. They are supposed to take that time to work on a home project and reading, and sight words. Most of that stuff is easy for her so she's already done with it. Now we just have to do the project.

2. We have to build a car out of a box so that she can wear it to school. lol

3. It was so much fun getting crafty on Saturday. I need to take more time to do that. I was in my element.

4. Loving my new phone. This is my first ever cool phone. We have always just got whatever cheapo free phone they offered. My new one is a Droid. Now I have unlimited internet access and texting for the same price we were paying at&t for a much lower plan without internet and definitely not unlimited texting.

5. I'm so proud that Courtney is getting an award next week at school. The Outstanding Citizen Award. Not sure how many kids get this award or if it's like a student of the month thing or not. She already completed everything she needed to for another award in May. :)

6. The Baby/Child Item Exchange is coming up for MOPS. This will be my last year running it and the Yard Sale. 2 years in a row is plenty. It's a lot of work sorting through all of that stuff and organizing it all. I like it to be organized so set up and clean up is faster too.

7. I need to go through our stuff to find more to get rid of for the sale. Hmm...maybe I can do some of that today. Sounds like a fun project.

8. Since bible study last week she challenged us to read through the Proverbs. One chapter a day. So start with whatever chapter the date is. So, today is the 23rd so you would read the 23rd chapter. It has been so awesome reading more of the bible. Granted I didn't have time to do it every day. But I did a few days at a time and did read all of the week's reading (chapters 16-22) before bible study this morning. It felt like a great accomplishment. But more than that, it was amazing to read it all and get those life connections through the word.

9. The race is this week!! Ahhh I'm nervous about all of those hills. So many people I know are going to be racing too. I hope I see them all that day. There will be so many people there. Shauna, Bryan, Daryn, Anny, Randi, Ron, Dawn, Emily, Candice (supporter), Michelle, Kristin, Scott (supporter), Sada....etc. I'm sure I forgot some of my friends who are racing.

10. Skyler asked the cutest thing today. "How can we get Colorado to be closer?" She meant like, moving Colorado closer to us. I explained to her that it couldn't ever be closer, but asked her why she asked and who she was missing. She said she wanted to play with all of her cousins. I reminded her that 3 of her cousins who live in Colorado are moving back to California in June and she got all excited again.

One More Week

One more week of the Big Fat Loser weight loss challenge. This one has seemed to drag on. Not sure why. Maybe because I had just done the other one. I'm so looking forward to having a little Panda Express to celebrate the challenge being over. There is NO WAY I'm going binging though. This is not the end of my weight loss goals. I need to continue on my merry little way down the scale. I'm so close to a HUGE weight loss goal. And I'm already so far into what I wanted to lose for the entire year. I'm at 27 of the 43 I wanted to lose this year. So, I'll be adjusting my goal once I hit that 43. That WILL happen this year. I'm so determined to get all of this extra weight off.

Also this week is my first race. It's the La Habra 5K/10K. Somehow Shauna has convinced me to do the 10K for my first race. It really makes more sense though. I've been pushing myself to do more and more running that I'm at least doing 5Ks when I run. So, only doing a 5K wouldn't be that challenging. The hilly course is what I'm NOT looking forward to. And doing it twice doesn't sound that great either. lol But we'll get through it and finish the race. I never imagined myself doing these things. It's so exciting pushing myself and seeing what I can do. Just wait until all the weight is off. Then I'll really be more in shape to run.

Six Word Saturday

I will be getting crafty tonight.


This is the first time I'm participating in this. A few of my friends have done this. The first place I saw it was on my dearly departed friend, Anna's blog.

Eva Rocks!!!

Eva totally rocks! She brought this to me today at MOPS. It's a High School Musical signing pen. It plays the song "Bet On It". I immediately said to her, "You read my blog!!" I was so excited that she would read my blog and see this and think of me and get it for me. That was awesome.

On a side note: When she gave it to me it was in a bag and I told her it better not be candy that she bought me (cuz she's in 1st in the competition). :P Everyone used it at MOPS today at my table. We kept playing the song and dancing in our seats. Love it, Eva!!

Proverbs

Sometimes I wonder why I even try. Confronting someone about something when you know they are not going to take it well, regardless of your intention or the way you say it. They are just not going to learn anything from it. I was asking for prayer in bible study as we were going around in our group. We just started a lesson on Proverbs. This was what I needed to hear. It made me feel a little better knowing that it was in the bible about this very situation.

Proverbs 9:7-9 "Anyone who rebukes a mocker will get a smart retort. Anyone who rebukes the wicked will get hurt. So don't bother rebuking mockers; they will only hate you. But the wise, when rebuked, will love you all the more. Teach the wise, and they will be wiser. Teach the righteous, and they will learn more."

Rebuking is like standing up to them or confronting them on something they are doing. It's so hard to deal with people like this because you never really want to confront someone about what they are doing and how it's hurting you and/or your friends. But not saying something means you continue to be abused by them. You want to show love by showing grace to them and not say anything. But this can only happen so long before you feel like enough is enough. It would be totally different if actually telling them would help the situation. But since they take nothing from it and only continue on their way, they are not gaining wisdom from what you are trying to say. They only get angrier that you could possibly say anything and hurt them. As if that was ever the intention. The intention is to fill them in as to what in their behavior is not acceptable to you and how that hurt you.

10 on Tuesday

Yes, a little late again. Yesterday was insane.

1. I just sponsored another consultant for PartyLite. Woho! That's like the 6th or 7th person. Too bad they aren't all still in it or I would be a unit leader.

2. I'm going to have my own party in April to hopefully sorta restart my own business. I need to get some bookings on my calendar so I can make some money for our family.

3. Bible study is always so wonderful. It was enlightening this week. I'm going to post a separate blog about that.

4. I'm excited for Saturday night. I'm going to have a "Stampin' Up!" party. My fellow card makers are going to learn and make a few projects and look through the catalog. So fun. I need to make more cards. My card stash is getting low.

5. The "Baby Item Exchange" madness has begun. Last year was the first time I ran it and had all of the donations at my house. Taking up room in my garage and all over my house. The donations are starting to come in. I have a nice pile in the front room and the garage. Guess I will have to move it out of the front room for the party though. lol Then after the Baby Item Exchange is the yard sale. That is on May 1st if you want to come shop. We are taking donations from anyone. So, if you want to get rid of some junk in your house (no electronics), bring it on by.

6. I'm getting excited for my race that is only a week and a half away (the 27th). I've decided to do the 10K instead of the 5K. 10K will be more of a challenge. And since I just did one, I know I can do it. Even if I have to walk some of it. A bunch of people in my family will be running and walking it. I'm just a little sad that my girls and Scott might not be able to see me cross the finish line. Courtney has a game and we have snacks that day for her game. So, they have to be there. Unless the race starts super early. Her game is at 9 and has to be there at 8:30.

7. I'm so proud of how Courtney is doing at school. She is done with all of the requirements for the "Reach for the Gold" award that happens in May. She has moved on to the 2nd grade reading books. She's almost done with her other phonics books, and is almost done with all of the spelling words. She didn't even need to do any of them, but the teacher is challenging her. She also got invited to go to a special Academy at school to challenge advanced learners.

8. Skyler has now informed me that she wants a red car. She keeps telling me she wants her own red car, now. I had to remind her that she can't drive yet. Then she insists she means when she grows up that she wants a red car. And she also wants to know how come we don't have a red car. lol

10. We just had a Mommy and Me Circus Safari at her school. At first we were like, how do you combine Safari and Circus? When we got there it really was a circus. But the different booths were about the animals. It was cute.

Thoughtful Thursday

I'm so happy to report that everyone is healthy in our house! This is so huge. It feels like we have been on puke watch forever.

One of my friends has a blog full of blog prompts that she thinks of. So I might be occasionally doing those as I think of something relevant to the topic.

Tomorrow night is Fondue night with MOPS. Oooh sounds so yummy. However, it will be hard to be good. I think I have to find a way to allow myself a couple little things and just have the other stuff plain. And a nice workout that day would be good too. I'm making beer bread and meatballs for it.

I had to work the snack shack last night for the softball league. Boy was that interesting. First of all they were almost a half hour late to open it up. We were giving them until 5:30 to show up before we left and they got there at 5:25. Bummer. So the 3 of us had to learn how to use all of the machines since none of us had ever done it before. They seemed to half teach us how to do it. I'm glad I was asking questions while they were there cuz they left fairly quickly. They should have had someone staying just in case we had questions or needed more change or where items were. Then they were out of most things we needed. So, we kept having to say we didn't have any more_____. Fill in the blank and we probably didn't have everything we needed to do it. Thankfully we still had enough to make most people happy. The hot chocolate ran out fairly quickly. What a horrible night to run out of that. It was freezing. The hot dog machine wasn't making the hot dogs hot enough or cooked enough so most of them we had to heat more in the microwave. It was quite the experience. We had a line for 2 hours straight. Then had a line off and on the rest of the time (2 more hours). I'm just glad it's over. I did my duty and am done with it.

I feel like I have a million things to accomplish, yet I'm on here blogging. lol Oh well, it's helping me have some down time before the craziness.

10 on Tuesday

1. Skyler got sick last night throwing up. So incredibly gross. And I'm trying to not puke on her from the smell. Uh, how that gets me queasy. Today she is feeling better already. She says she feels all better, her tummy doesn't hurt, and she just started eating some normal foods. Hopefully it's a sign of a really quick bug that's about to be gone. Poor thing.

2. Sometimes it's just nice to talk to a friend. Just someone who gets you and loves you anyway. Who needs grace and shows grace. (Grace = Showing someone Mercy when they do not deserve it/not earned)

3. Is so frustrated right now.

4. I missed hanging out with my bible study ladies today because Sky was sick and last week had to miss MOPS because Courtney was sick. And Scott was sick in between. I really have had enough of the sicknesses in this house.

5. I'm back to 5th place in the competition. I'm hoping something was off with the scale for a bunch of people because it seemed like a lot of people didn't do as well as they normally do this week. Hopefully it will bounce back to normal next week.

6. So, with Scott's bonus coming in we were able to finally get some things we have not been able to get due to lack of money. It totally felt like a shameful spending spree since we should be saving most of it. But some things needed to happen and others were really fun things we splurged on (that we have not been able to spend money on at all last year). Scott's car was a necessity to fix several things. My car too. We also had to put a bunch away for property taxes.

7. I got the Nike+ Sportband to go with the shoes my friend, Sarah gave me. I can now run anywhere and be able to keep track of my time, miles, & pace. It's been fun trying it out. It makes me want to run more. Anything that offers me more motivation and variety is a good thing. I'm always looking for new ways to get exercise or be healthy.

8. I haven't even really said anything about this because it feels like such a huge expense that we weren't planning on. I can not be more excited though. We finally got a new camera. It has been hard not having one since Christmas day. We were originally going to get another one like we had but ended up getting the Canon Rebel SLR. (I'm totally drooling over it.) Since I have always had an aspiration to have my own photography business, this camera just brings out that photographer in me. Especially since it has an incredibly fast shutter speed. Getting the exact shot I wanted will be much easier now. Purchasing this new camera was supposed to be my award from my hubby for reaching a huge weight loss milestone. But we figured it would be better to get it now while we had the money. Because I will for sure be hitting that milestone this year. 20 pounds away. I promised Scott he could use it too. :) And he already has several times. Maybe at that time I will finally reveal my weight. Maybe.

9. I can't wait, but when we get the taxes back I can go clothes shopping for some much needed smaller clothes. Especially jeans. My jeans are all big. Even straight from the dryer I can wear them for a couple hours before they start falling off. What a problem to have, right? I love it.

10. I can't wait for this challenge to be over. It's wearing on me a little bit. It's hard when I feel like I have done a great job losing (like last week of 5.6 lb.)and still only gain a fraction of a percentage on people above me. If Roselia doesn't do another challenge again, I might run one. I would add a couple rules too. I like the motivation of the challenge, but being part of the front runners feels stressful. I need a break. A chance to relax a bit. I want some PANDA!!! (Panda Express that is.)


This blog would have been so much better unedited.

10 on Tuesday

ya ya so it's a day late. Who cares?

1. Please pray for my husband's job. Right now if you can. He and his whole department yesterday were asked if they were mobile (willing to move to another refinery far away to keep their job). He said no because really, we don't want to move away. I'm hoping they are going to weed out those who can just switch to somewhere else instead of being let go. His company is doing massive lay offs. He said it's getting scarier today because he sees people being walked out (being let go) today. PLEASE pray hard. We are just barely managing to get by WITH his paycheck, let alone if we didn't have it.

2. I ran 4 miles yesterday!!! That was a major accomplishment for me! I haven't ever run that far let alone in 49 minutes. It was hard and felt like torture. I didn't have my running buddy with me, so that's probably partially why. It's the first time I went past 3.1 miles (5K).

3. My asthma is driving me nuts. I keep feeling it come on. I had to use my inhailer 2 different times yesterday. Yet, it was fine during my run. Go figure. I can feel it again today too.

4. Courtney has her 1st ever softball game tonight. I'm excited and hope it doesn't get rained out. 5:15pm at EWMS.

5. I'm now in a 2 way tie for 4th place in the challenge. I lost 5.6 pounds last week. Insane. I can't believe it was only 2.2% for the week though. ug!

6. Why do cookies have to be so good?

7. Last week we woke up to find 2 chocolate bar wrappers on the table (with no chocolate in them). We knew there had been some candy thieves. Then all of a sudden we noticed 20 little dimes piled on the table. See, the night before we told them that they couldn't just eat the softball candy we were selling. They had to buy it. Then we let them eat buy a candy from the money in their piggy banks. We had a lesson about coins and they ended up paying in dimes. I guess I should have explained that they couldn't just buy as many as they wanted. It was a one time thing. lol But cute that they now know how many dimes are in a dollar.

8. Taxes are done. Woho! That was a huge accomplishment of last week. The whole process stresses me out.

9. Can't decide if I'm going to the gym after writing this blog or going to skip it today. My body says skip it. My mind is reminding me of how little we have til the final weigh in. Maybe I'll just do a smaller workout.

10. I should have a PartyLite shipment coming soon. I finally spent a bunch of gift certificates I had been saving to get some new product. I will probably be hosting my own party in April (PL's anniversary month) and have all kinds of stuff to sell off my table as well as all of the incredible specials and catalog they always do.