It's A New Year

I originally started writing this in January. It's now March 3rd. lol Guess I should finish it already.

It's a new near. Time for changes, right? I just joined a Biggest Loser challenge last week (Jan. 12). So far it's going really well. It's amazing when you start a new journey like this how you realize all of those little things you were doing that creaped into a habit. Like picking up a little candy here and there. While small, it's just a habit that needs to be stopped. You don't even know how many times I was at various stores this week getting ready for Skyler's birthday party where I was tempted by all of the treats in the isles. But I didn't give in. Not even once.

So, I eluded to Skyler's birthday. She just turned 9. How did that happen? My baby girl is growing up so fast. She is a girl after my own heart. She wanted a Doctor Who themed birthday party. It was so much fun creating things for her birthday to make it look like her theme. Part of me was thinking, "Why do they always pick themes that you can't buy anything in the stores for?" But she was super excited. She wanted a sleepover but also wanted to invite her best buds (that are boys). So, we ended up doing a party followed by an optional sleepover for girls. It was kinda crazy even though we invited way less than last year. And we made it a drop off party too to have even less people. She invited her soccer team, her brownie troop, a couple kids from school, and a couple kids from church. It was a full house but we had fun. I think I'll add pics to a different post.

The girls are both playing soccer this season. I'm so excited that they are both on the Monarch's. So, they have the same coaches and practice together. But they are different divisions so they will play in their own games on the weekend. In the fall they should be able to be on the same team since Skyler is going to be moved up early. One exciting addition to our team is Mikayla. My friend, Riva's daughter. Riva and I have just had the best time at practices together. Tyler and Skyler used to be on the same team when they were younger and now Mikayla and Courtney are. So fun! I even have a buddy to walk/jog with at practice. :) This season the teams have moved to a "Signature" team. It's one step above Rec and below Club. I'm looking forward to games starting soon. This is Skyler's 3rd season with this team and Courtney's 1st official one. She has been practicing with them on and off before now.

We won't mention how old I turned in early February. hehe But it was fun to keep the Doctor Who stuff up for my birthday. It's really hard to stay on your eating plan while planning all of these parties. I struggled here and there but still managed to pull off some good numbers. There are 5 more weeks left in the challenge and I have lost 24 pounds so far. Woohooo!

Courtney's birthday came quickly. She turned 11 in February. 11!!! That's nuts. She wanted a Frozen theme for her birthday. Since it snuck up on us I felt like I was rushing to get everything done. Thankfully our friend, Laura stepped in to save the day. She helped me make decorations and plan for the whole thing. We were kinda burnt out after Skyler's party that we wanted to do something even smaller for Courtney's. (Courtney wanted to also.) To cutback on the drama that can happen when you have different groups of people at a party (ie: school friends, sports friends, church friends) we just decided to separate them. We had a very small family party first. Then that night we had 3 of her friends from school over for a sleepover. Only 1 stayed for the sleepover part. Talk about an easy party. Then the next weekend we had 3 of her church friends over for a sleepover. Totally easy during party time. Still the same amount of prep. We had fun making decorations. But it was nice having so many pre-made things at the store to get. It was fun and we still have a Frozen Wonderland house. (I'll post pictures on a separate post.)

Scott is starting a challenge for himself that he has titled Fit at 40. or #fitat40  He turns 39 this year but wants to be in great shape by his birthday next year. I think it's a great challenge. We told our trainers about it and they were very supportive. They even offered for us to have the party there. He's going to have mini fitness challenges. Sounds like fun! Seems like a taco guy is in order. I better start saving up now. :)

Happy New Year

It's been a while. Christmas and New Years have gone and here I sit heavier than before they came. BOO!! Just means I have to work even harder.

Things I need to work on:

-Not undoing all of the work in the gym for food.
-Being more careful when going out to dinner.
-Eating way more vegetables
-Drinking more water
-Working out more often (getting back into that habit)
-Limiting my chocolate
-Not eating crap that will just make me sick
-Losing weight BEFORE the next challenge starts.

Etc...

I'm working on the 365 photos this year. One each day. I have a feeling most will be on my phone since we are out and about so much. So, not the best quality or anything but I will be posting them on my facebook page. I have been wanting to do that since I first heard it and thought the new year was perfect to start. I think it's funny that my husband is doing it too. So we can only count pictures we take. :) Or at least that's what I'm doing. He's already stolen a picture. lol

Photography is going really well. I just booked my first wedding!! So exciting!! It's my sister-in-law's sister who is getting married on a cruise in March. Pretty sure I'm doing my first event too in February. A high school reunion. Sounds fun! It's all so new so it makes me nervous. But I know once I'm doing it, it will be a blast and turn out great.

My little Skyler turns 5 next week. That is so hard to believe. She is getting so old. She starts kindergarten this fall too. She has started reading and I am so proud of her. We are doing a smaller party for her this year. We only invited a few of Skyler's friends (and their families) and our family. We are so incredibly thankful to be having a party at all. 

Courtney will turn 7 next month. AHHH!! She is going to be having a birthday sleepover. Oh help us! I can only imagine several 7 year old girls running around the house. She is amazing at school. She brought home a library chapter book and read the whole thing in 1 hour.

Skyler and Courtney are starting softball soon. This will be Skyler's first season and Courtney's second. This is probably the only year they could be on the same team so we are excited that Skyler finally said she would play. We just wanted her to try it out to see if she likes it. She loves doing it at home so we thought she would like it. Skyler did such an amazing job at soccer. She loves soccer.

I am the sole Coordinator for our MOPS group this semester. (Last semester I was Co-Coordinator with Danielle) So far it's going really well. Our team is amazing!! January (and August) is such a hectic month for MOPS. So many details to get lined up.

The Biggest Loser Challenge starts back up on the 17th. I could not start it before Skyler's birthday party. Too much craziness. And way too much to do before then. This will probably be the last one I run (with people coming over to my house to weigh in). I could see running more with people not coming over, but it's just so much having to be home all of the time during those weigh ins and all of that. It would be nice to just show up to a weigh in instead.

Anyway, that's my little update. I hope to get on here more often.

10 on Tuesday

1. Skyler had her first solo audition today. I guess Courtney's agent likes her too. They called me today wondering if she was available for an audition. They were looking for a blonde curly haired little girl. She had to dress in 1950's attire and this is what we came up with. We were trying to think away from the poodle skirt idea. She looked so adorable!! I found those glasses (lenses popped out) and scarf at Savers (thrift store). Everything else we already had. Cutie pie! This audition was for a Charter Satellite national network commercial.

2. Skyler did a great job. She had to recite a line that we memorized while we waited. She answered questions and seemed very proud of herself. I know I was. There were several little blonde curly haired girls there. (IMO Sky's hair was the curliest and cutest. hehe) I'm not biased at all. lol

3. FYI: I don't know how other people feel when I talk about stuff like this and if they are assuming she will get it. I just assume that it's just for fun and good experience. If I thought every time they would get the part, I would be very disappointed. This one at least has a very quick turn around for filming. So we would know fairly quickly if she did or didn't get it.

Kaiser??

4. Scott got his last check today from his job. It's a little scary. He has a good prospect that we are hoping and praying will come through. The last guy who interviewed Scott at Kaiser (and told him they were going with someone internal) called him telling him about a new job opportunity. That's a good sign that the guy was thinking about him. It would be a contractor position (not technically working for Kaiser) and no medical benefits. But it could lead to him getting hired officially for Kaiser down the road. The person he knows who works there got hired the same way and was hired on in 3 months. Scott actually started Chevron that way also, and was an employee in one year. It would be awesome. Especially if he can get hired and start getting paid before we run out of money. Ya, that would be great.

5. Major project going on this week for the soccer team. I need to acquire 4 more paint cans for the project.

6. The Biggest Loser Challenge is coming down to the last 4 weeks. I am doing horribly in comparison to the others. It almost feels like a waste. I need to seriously step it up with the exercise again this week. That worked really well last week when I lost 3.2. (Besides the fact that I gained 1 this week. Too much Halloween candy.)

7. I'm loving that Conan is back on the air. He's cool. When he had that live feed from the stairwell of the offices we were glued to it. They kept coming back doing hilarious things. (We of course had to keep coming back to see what else was going on.) Bring on Coco!!

8. I had my first destination photo shoot this last weekend. My high school friend, Jessica and her family treated us to a wonderful hotel room in Santa Maria. We had so much fun doing the shoots and hanging out with the family. We even did a photo shoot in the rain. (Don't worry. Scott was holding an umbrella over my camera.) I was the driest of them all. :) We ended up going to the beach on the way home and took some photos of the girls. They were so cute. Not matching at all, but still adorable. (They picked their outfits for the day.) hehe Who knew we would end up doing our own photo shoot. Hundreds of pictures were taken over the weekend!

9. I need to get new ZED cards printed for both girls. I have the photos, but need a printer. It's a huge postcard type and very thick. Anyone know a good printer for ZED cards?

10. I did the 30 Day Shred Level 2 yesterday and, of course, Jillian kicked my butt. Almost literally. My butt is killing me from all of those lunges. lol I thought I had been sitting down editing too long then remembered my butt kicking workout.

10 on Tuesday

1. Alright, alright. I know. It's Wednesday. Oh well. It's been so crazy here with all of the weigh ins that I didn't have time.

2. The Biggest Loser Challenge started. It has been a little insane with all of the weigh ins. I have 2 more coming right now and that will bring the total participants to 34. More keep calling or emailing me to join. There is still time to join. Just email or call me for rules/info/weigh in time. Feel free to join if you don't live near me. You can be in the no pay/no win group. You don't win anything, but maybe it's extra motivation knowing that someone will know how you did that week.

3. I have been doing really well so far with my eating. I have been walking to pick up Courtney from school so that's an extra mile every day. Other than that I haven't exercised though so I need to pick up that.

4. I have had a cough for over 2 weeks now. It's driving me nuts. I started taking Sudafed yesterday and I'm hoping that will help get rid of it.

5. A great quote from yesterday, "If you have 15 hours to spend on facebook, you can spend 15 minutes with God." One of our pastors, Sherry Mortenson said that yesterday at our bible study. How true. We waste time away like it's nothing on facebook or blogs or whatever else it is you do. So, I did it yesterday. I read the bible yesterday for 15 minutes while Courtney was doing her reading for school. I even kept reading after to finish the rest for the study. We were talking in our group about even 5 minutes. I then said "God will use whatever we have to give."

6. Someone on my facebook put that she thought I was going to say you can find 15 minutes to exercise. I believe that is true too. Most people think they don't have time to fit a workout in. But they usually are wasting time doing things that could be done another time or not at all. Even if you were to fit 10 minutes in here or there, you would still get the benefit of it.

7. We are deciding to not order soccer pictures for Skyler. That seems sad to me, but really, the picture is horrible. We get the team picture and one of the pictures of her already. So we will have a copy of it. But we are refusing to buy more. I got a much better picture of her outside anyway. So, if anyone wants a soccer picture of her I can email it to you and you can print it in whatever size you want. She had her first game last Saturday. She plays at 8am every Saturday if you want to come and watch.

Ok, really bad picture, but I am up there somewhere. This was in 2008.

8. Oh Candlelight. (I could only find the link for the one in Disney World.) For anyone who doesn't know I will explain. Disney does this huge musical presentation one weekend a year. It's pretty much the one time you will hear any kind of religious music or anything like it in Disneyland. It's always the first weekend of December. So, you have to try out to sing in the choir. I got the chance to do this one year with our choir from church. It was an amazing experience. I have the chance to do it again this year but now I can't. I am so bummed. I didn't realize how much I wanted to do it again until I realized I can't. I already have made a commitment on the same day as the performance. Many many choirs audition for it and about half of them don't make it in. You have to record your choir singing their songs and then they pick who gets in without knowing which groups they are when they are picking. There is a massive processional all the way down from Small World down Mainstreet. Until we get to the performance area on the backside of the train station. Oh the memories. I'm going to have to try to do it next year. I also have a blog about it from when I went if you want to read more.

9. The more and more broke we get, the more I think I'm just going to go for the photography business. I think I might ask a couple families to do a setting just for practice first. Then just go for it.

10. I'm so excited for MOPS to start next week. We have our "Meet Your Table" day tomorrow. Let the fun begin!

10 on Tuesday

Ok, so I logged into my blog on Tuesday, and as I'm writing this it is already after midnight. Why am I still up?

1. I went to Disneyland again today. My sorority sister's daughter was celebrating her birthday at the happiest place on earth. I'm so glad that we went. The girls all had a blast together. So compatible as friends. And it was great reconnecting after so long.

2. I let Jillian kick my butt tonight. I did the 30 Day Shred LEVEL 3!!! This was only the second time I have done level 3 and it was easier this time. I was actually able to do the full sit ups. I couldn't even do it last time. I was so excited. I also did a few other moves better/easier than last time too. woho!

3. I am determined to make this week a great week for my weigh in on Friday. Last week I lost 1.8. It's good, but I want to be losing more. I know I can if I just get better on the weekends. A couple friends and I talked about our weekend battles today. We decided that we are going to pretend that we have another weigh in on Monday as well. So, the 3 of us are actually going to weigh in together just to make sure we were good on the weekends. Keeping each other accountable. I'm so excited about this. I think it's just what I need. Motivation to stay the course.

4. I hear Skyler coughing in her room right now. Oh, how I pray that she isn't getting sick. The poor girl seems to be getting sick left and right.

5. Oh the drama with the doctor. I will have to elaborate more. I have a follow up appt. on Monday.

6. The girls and I ditched the BMX bike show tonight. I seriously did not want to go. And I totally forgot about it and had thought we were doing Disneyland. Then I get the illustrious "golden ticket" home from school that Courtney won. This entitles her to get there early for better seating. Still no desire to go other than to make her happy if this is what she wants to go to. So, I gave her the choice. I told her all about the bike show and that her friends would be there or Disneyland where she would meet some new friends. It was such a quick choice. Disneyland it was. Then she kept going back and forth, but ended on Disneyland. :)

7. Oh good. No more coughing sounds from the other room. I hope she can get some good sleep tonight. They both should with all of that fun and exercise tonight at Disneyland.

8. I asked the teacher about the "3rd grade phonics book" because it was hard to believe. She said that she didn't really know for sure if it was 3rd grade for sure, but that it was the 3rd phonics book. So, even if there is one per year, it would be 2nd. Regardless, it's above reading level.

9. I also found out that she started the Accelerated Reader Program at school too. And from the mouth of her grandma (who is the librarian), she didn't think there were any kindergartners in that program. How exciting. Charting new waters. So, she will be reading the book and coming to school and taking a test on it. Then she gets a new book. There are points and prizes and fun stuff like that. We read the book today and she did so well with it. Several new words and she is learning them fast. She could probably test on it tomorrow. I'll have her read it again just to be sure before school. Ya, ya....I'm a bragging mom tonight. So proud of how well she is doing and excited about her eagerness to learn.

10. Only a couple more days until weigh in. More workouts coming my way. :)

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.