Weight Loss

I'm trying to lose weight.  I never lost the last 5 pounds after having Sammy and I started that pregnancy a bit higher than I would have liked.  I'm wearing a size 10 instead of a size 8 and I want to get back to a size 8.  After my trip to Florida, I saw how I looked in pictures and I wasn't happy.  And I'm getting older and I know that losing weight will be even more difficult the older I got.  So I decided to act.  Here's my diet plan:

• Eat smaller portions (except for breakfast, where I continue to eat my must-have huge bowl of cereal and fruit).  Sometimes that means eating just a salad for dinner instead of the meal that we've cooked.  This has been working out great - I'm definitely full after eating less.  I was clearly overeating before.  If I'm slightly hungry before going to bed, I will have a handful of nuts.
• I make a big pot of soup on Sunday and I've been eating that for lunch at work.  This means that I don't have to ingest ridiculous amounts of salt from the canned soups.
• I've been exercising again.  I don't want to sacrifice on sleep and so I've been doing 30 minutes on the elliptical at night after dinner and after the kids go to bed.  So generally, I exercise from about 8 to 8:30 pm.  It's long enough after dinner that I'm not overly full when I'm exercising and it's enough time before bed that I'm still able to fall asleep easily.  The only thing I was doing with this time before was sitting on the couch watching TV.
• Eat no or very little dessert (like one square of dark chocolate).

It's been 2 weeks since I started and I went from 148.2 to 145.8 pounds.  I'm pretty happy with that weight loss and am encouraged that my plan is working.  I'd absolutely love to get to 140 pounds (as I don't think it's realistic to maintain a weight lower than that).

2013 Blizzard

We got roughly 26 inches of snow in the past 24 hours.  It started Friday, around 11 am and stopped this morning, around 11 am.  We also had really high wind gusts, which created ridiculously deep snow drifts.  Thank god we did not lose power, but I know many other communities did.

My husband cleared the driveway last night, around 10 pm, and got rid of roughly 14 inches.  But it was still tough to dig ourselves out this morning.  It took me 45 minutes just to clear a little bit of the driveway near the garage,  our front steps and walkway.  And my husband struggled to clear the driveway with the snow blower because it kept stalling on him.  Eventually, after shoveling a bit, he borrowed our neighbor's snow blower and got the driveway clear.  Of course, the plow kept coming by, sending more snow into our driveway, but I helped out to clear that.

Ian had a blast playing outside this afternoon.  We had an impromptu play date with one family and the boys had a good time together.  Here are some pics.

Florida Vacation

We recently spent just over 1 week in Florida on vacation.  We visited my parents which is always a very nice and relaxing time.  My mom bought diapers and wipes for Sammy.  She even bought her an entire summer wardrobe from Target.  And they have extra space so Sammy was able to sleep in a crib in my dad's office and Ian slept in a twin bed in my mom's office.  And my husband and I got to take the guest room.  It was really nice for the kids to spend so much time with their grandparents and I know my parents loved the visit.

We tried to keep busy.  We went to Lion Country Safari and the kids had a really good time.  We got to see a bunch of animals from the car.  And an ostrich pecked the driver's side window.  We all fed some birds and Ian had the distinct honor of feeding a giraffe some organic romaine lettuce.

We went to the beach on one day.  It was SUPER windy, I think because a front was coming through.  The kids had a fantastic time - Ian wanted to play in the waves (as long as he was holding onto daddy) and Sammy had fun playing in the sand.  The seagulls were also really bold.  One surprised the hell out of me by grabbing half of a clementine right out of my hand.   (By the way, I had a really cute suit for Sammy to wear, but it was a 2-piece and she HATED the top and refused to wear it...)

We went to the outdoor pool a lot because it was easy and the kids really loved swimming.  Ian swam doggie paddle for the first time without help and I'm so very proud of him.

Sammy LOVED the pool.  If it weren't for the tubes in her ears, she would have been underwater and trying to swim.  She jumped off the side of the pool a zillion times saying "mo dump" for "more jump".  She also liked doing the "washing machine" with me in the pool.  We spin around like a top loader washing machine while saying "washing machine".  It's what my paternal grandmother used to do with me.  And once, I started doing it and I wasn't saying "washing machine" and Sammy put her hands on my cheeks and said "wash mash" because she wanted me to say it.

Here are some cute pictures from the pool:

We spent as much time as possible with my sister and her family.  Luckily for me, when I visit my parents, I also get to visit my sister because she lives 45 minutes away.  We went to a really great playground near my sister's house and Sammy quickly got bored of the activities that were appropriate for her age.  Instead, she wanted to be on the play areas with Ian.  She went on these enormous slides without any fear whatsoever.  She's a little daredevil!

My sister recently installed a hot tub in her backyard.  It was really relaxing until the kids wanted to come in too!  I was actually shocked that Ian wanted to come in since he has always been so sensitive to heat.  Every single time I try to give him a bath, he initially screams at me that it's too hot, when it clearly isn't too hot.  But he managed to get himself into a hot tub that was 102 degrees!

My father was on a roll trying to teach Ian some new skills.  He taught Ian the word "schmeg" which made me laugh so hard.  He also tried to teach Ian to hit a ball.  Ian did great when we kept the ball stationary (like in T-ball) but he struggled a bit to make contact with a ball that was thrown at him.  But for his age, I was pretty proud of him.  He smacked the ball good a couple of times.

And now the random shots:

Daddy with his girl.  Sammy is such a ham.  She will smile at the camera every single time you point it at her.

Here are the kids enjoying Meema's special french toast:

Here is Sammy with some pre-bedtime antics during storytime:

And here is one little girl who was napping hard after a long morning of lots of excitement:

I'm so glad we took this vacation.  The kids did amazing on the flight to and from Florida. I will really start thinking about traveling more with them.  I've already asked my brother to name a good time to visit him in Baltimore.