A new addition to the family

We finally did, we got a new dog. We've had some drama and heartache over dogs before and have been very gunshy to try again. After visiting some friends in GA who had 4 very loveable huggable dogs the urge to try again was very strong. We wanted to make sure it was right this time and not rush in to anything. Ha! I casually did searches here and there on petfinder but of course I am being much more picky and slow about this.

Then Thursday, late at night I was reading in LSG (it's a brassy knitting forum, I learn a lot of colorful new language in there), where I saw a post calling for dog help in the Seattle area. A regular was posting for a friend asking if anyone knew of a good no kill shelter or someone who wanted (or could) take in a dog as the owners desperately needed to re-home her. I went ahead and told her to send the owner my email address and I'd see what we could do as well as told her about the local shelter here.

Friday Morning I called up Christy and we talked at least an hour about her dog, the reason she needed to give her up and everything else in between. We agreed on doing a weekend trial run of having her here and seeing how she fits in with us and if we are a good fit for her as well. I wanted to talk it over with the husband but he was unreachable so I figured it was easier to ask forgiveness than permission ;-) Once I was able to reach him he was rather happy at the prospect so it was all good.

That afternoon Christy brought Kashka and all of her possessions to us. It was practically immediate we all just meshed together. Kashka took to us with no issues and we took right to her. She is a very sweet loving dog who just loves people and wants to please everyone. Course she is stubborn but has had some training as far as her crate, the sit command, walking on a leash, and ringing a bell to alert us she needs to be let out. She has been with us for 25ish hours now and I simply can't imagine life without her now. She is a lapdog and if she isn't in our laps she is leaning against our legs and sitting on our feet -- or chasing after the kids lol

This is my first picture with her and I am sure there will be many more to come. <3 this girl so much and I am very thankful we had the opportunity to take her into our home.

Body For Life Challenge Pictures

So for this 12 week challenge we are supposed to take photos and post our stats, I'm a little late as I am 1.5 weeks into this already but seriously there is no change yet so no matter.

Measurements:
Weight -- 127.6lbs
BMI -- 20.7
Now I know both of these are in the normal range and I am not in this to lose weight, I am in this to gain health, get toned and lean muscle mass. I want that BMI to be from muscle mass not from flabby fat mass tyvm.

calf: 14"
thigh: 23 3/4"
hips: 37"
waist: 29.5"
bicep: 10.5"
chest: 32"

Front:


Back:


Ugh that behind photo is just gross but when I am done with this challenge and it looks how I want it to look I'll always have this pic to remind me of what I don't want to let my body become again.

oh, ouch, that's a bit sore

and I am happy about it! Yesterday was day 3 of BFL, day 2 of the strength training. My first day was kind of meh, didn't really feel it (all upper body). Yesterday was lower body + abs. Let me say using wts (and I went up to a total of 30lbs on these 2) for lunges and squats is KILLER. Doing crunches on a decline bench with wts? Also seriously killer. I woke up this morning feeling a bit sore and thinking, it's about damn time a workout made me hurt!

The rest of the day was spent traipsing around trails and waterfalls at the bottom/middle of Mt Rainier. It helped stretch out the sore glutes/hammies/quads but did nothing for my screaming abs. Now that I am home in bed (after a 14 hour day ugh) I am really feeling the burn. I think I may just be in love with this program and now that I have some heavier weights I am ready to attack the upper body again tomorrow.

I have just 2 more "tools" to add to my new gym, 1 is a stationary bike for the intense cardio for BFL and the other is fun + exercise in the form of hoop dancing. A friend recently turned me on to hooping and I have gone gaga over it. I cannot wait to get my hope and videos from hoopnotica.com and give it all a try. I have a feeling I'll be making excuses to get out to my space and hoop ;-)

Back to it now that vacation is over

While I was on vacation I did try to keep up with my cardio/running but I'll admit they were not priority and neither was eating well. Going home to visit usually means eating all the bad foods I miss about being in Charleston, like Krispy Kreme donuts, pimento cheese sandwiches, Melvin's BBQ, and now two new loves O'Charley's and Ski-Bo's. I did try to eat well for breakfast and lunch and I think those were my lifesavers. I came home with an extra 4 lbs, ouch, but knew I could get those off easy enough. While I was home my book Body For Life arrived and I devoured it in a very short amount of time. I liked that it didn't want me to count calories but more focus on eating more frequent smaller meals and portion control. It also showed I was eating too many carbs even though according my my food diary I was doing fairly well at following a decent 25/24/50 plan. 50% carbs is too much for my body type it would seem. I have been following the meal plan for several days now, got my water consumption back up and completed day 3 of the 12 week exercise program. Just following the food plan and getting my water back up I lost all 4 lbs in just a few days. Now what I would like to see is more fat loss with muscle gain, in fact I'd be perfectly ok with that 4lbs coming back as muscle weight.

For anyone wanting to try this plan, the book is ok, but really all of the information you need is free on the website, including the worksheet printouts. It focuses on planning your day ahead of time including your meals and workout. Meh I am not much of a planner and my mood changes what I want to eat. I also have never been much of a scheduler, I just try to make sure i do everything I need to do in the day and call it good. I built my own little mini home gym for about $100 which included dumbbells up to 25lbs, a weight bench and a jump rope. The weight bench limits me a little on the exercises I can perform (so a home gym or access to a gym really would come in handy) and I have to get creative with some moves but that is part of the fun!

What I hope to gain from this program? The body I have been trying to achieve for almost 6 months now. 12 weeks to a new me, a happier, fitter me? Game on!

What a day!

Our intentions this morning was to wake up early and do my w5 d3 run but I guess we needed some extra sleep as even my wake up at 4am husband slept until almost 10. At that point running was out of the question. So instead we did the grocery shopping and holy hell are prices here expensive! I bought enough groceries for 4 dinners and a little but of yogurt and lunchy items for a total of $105, um ouch. I would have spent half that at home, and that didn't include the produce which I went to a better store for, and that was $85, jimminy cricket! After all that decided I wanted a sister day so we all went up the mall so she could help me pick out a few summer clothes as all of mine are now way too tight, like disgustingly disturbingly tight. After awhile of trying on size 7 & 9's and realizing sizing and cuts have drastically changed in the last couple of years I tossed my hands up in frustration and just wanted to quit. I told sis I'd buy her a decent nursing top or 2 since she had none so in to Motherhood Maternity we went. Ok maternity clothes have changed a lot since I was last knocked up. Let's just say I tossed my pride at the door and tried on maternity clothes. Yes, I am serious, this is how low I have gotten. But damn the clothes were cute, they were comfortable and they didn't squish my fat in all the wrong ways. So guess what? I bought some! Damn straight and I don't care lol The ultimate though was trying on swimsuits, again. I have now discovered the skirted bottoms and OMG I am in LOVE. I finally have a 'kini that I don't feel all gross wearing but it doesn't look like am old fogey mom.

Now since we didn't run this morning, in fact I haven't run in 4-5 days, I decided to suck it up and go tonight. It was supposed to be my w5d3 run and I said you know I might as well suck it up and do it. Ethan, my oldest decided to tag along and amazingly enough he kept up just fine. I got a little lost in my own neighborhood and kept taking us out to the busy main road but eventually I got us going back in the right direction. I decided to check my time on the podcast and realized I was 30 seconds away from hitting 20 minutes and couldn't believe it!! Here I as running on the ROAD and I had done it for 20 minutes!! I realized I still have a bit to go before I'd get to a spot were it'd be 5 minutes to walk to dad's so guess what I did? That's right, I KEPT RUNNING!!! I added 5 more min to the run for a total of 25 minutes, hell yeah! Now I am going to go map the route I took and see what my distance was. So now the decision, do I keep running the c25k's program or just keep running 25 minutes and adding a minute each run until I am at 30 min and then start running for distance instead of time? Maybe I'll just stick to the program, it's been a great motivation.

A Travelin man or woman or family?

There are benefits to being in the military that we often don't take advantage of but this month we decided on a vacation to SC while dh was on extended leave, and that meant utilizing the space-a travel in order to be thrifty. This means being very patient, very flexible and willing to change plans at a moments notice. It also means a lot of hurry up and wait, the military's motto. We have been calling our local AFB line for days waiting on a flight either to somewhere near Charleston or straight in to it. We opted for a flight to Travis AFB in CA and hoped there' be a flight out to Chas from there (there usually is but they only give 24 hour travel info). Sunday morning we call the Travis line and success, there is a flight scheduled out on Mon to Chas woo! Then I call back at McChord just to make sure the flight that morning was still going out to Travis when ZOMG they moved up the flight it's now scheduled in 40 min and we are a good 45 min away without traffic. Luckily the stars aligned and they were way behind schedule so we got on with no problems.

The flight was quick and painless and the girls well behaved. Soon as we arrived we put ourselves down on the list for the flight out and headed off to the USO to spend the night. . . only the damn thing was closed for the holiday! Then it as off insearch of lodging. Let me say one thing about Napa Valley, it is brown and dry and toasty. The heat would have been ok but the dry air was horrible. We had to walk about 1/2 (or more I didn't exactly measure) in the heat with all of our luggage to get to the lodging and then wait in line forever. Thankfully we got a room and only $39 score! Then it was off for another 1 mile walk in the heat to get lunch and buy dinner supplies.

All of that walking in the sun really wore everyone out so bedtime ended up being about 8pm. We all woke up early at around 6am. My friend Angela came up for a visit and brought us a ton of bagels! While we were eating we found out from another family traveling the same place as us that the flight to Chas had been canceled. Noooo! But wait! There is a flight going to Norfolk VA, switch gears change plans. This flight likely won't land until after midnight which means hanging out in the terminal until the car rental places open at 6am. Renting a vehicle from VA is crazy expensive so we opted for a 1 day - 1 way rental from VA to SC. Once we get to Chas then we will do a rental switcheroo and be one our way!

I can only imagine how much fun getting back to WA will be when we have the entire crew of children with us. I tell you though we really can't complain. Flight from Wa to Ca $0, overnight hotel $39 + food (we won't total that mmkay), flight from Ca to Va $17 which was the cost of 4 inflight meal boxes. Yeah, really can't complain :)

Now that was a self esteem killer

Just when I am thinking woohooo exercise is finally starting to work, I go bathing suit shopping. Dun dun dunnnnnnnnnnn. Seeing your ass and thighs in a 3 way mirror is traumatizing to say the least. I hadn't actually planned to go 'kini shopping yet but figured what the hey I am already at the store getting new suits for the girls. Uhhh no. Just no. I have never been so honestly disgusted with how my body looks, and cursing the pear shape I seem to have acquired. Husband says "so I guess we won't be going to the beach huh?" Arg. I am going to the beach doGdamnit, even if I have to wear shorts over whatever fucking suit I settle on. I refuse to go home and not go to the beach.

I told him next year tax refund I am going in for the mommy makeover, lipo on my thighs, tummy tuck to nip that lil pooch, and breast augmentation. Never thought I'd be that vain but I guess I am and you know what? I am ok with that. That doesn't mean I will stop working out or stop eating healthy, I rather enjoy those things. Imagine me, enjoying exercise. Who would have ever guessed that? Certainly not me the person who usually quits after 4 weeks but has now been a regular exerciser for 5 months! And no, I am not expecting to get my prebaby body back, I wasn't really a fan of it either. I want better ;)