Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Confessions.... You win some, you lose some

Alright quick update here for the week before the kids get up. We are all a little under the weather with sinus issues so I need total silence to even type this out.

This week I have kept up with my running. I took my first day off Friday because my knee was starting to aggravate me. Plus we had no less than a million things to do.
After talking it over with my Ang, I think I just tried to do too much too quick. I had increased my distance by just a little, but I also pushed to shave over a minute off my time. I am still amazed at how all this works.
I weighed myself last week since everyone was reporting a weight loss and yeah not going to do that for a while. I didn't gain anything thank goodness, but I didn't lose anything either and while I rejoice in that small miracle I am seeing some positive physical results of my running and do not want ANYTHING to discourage me.
The results? Well I'm glad you ask! (lol love talking to myself).
over the past 2 weeks I have noticed less bulging in my rear area, and around my tummy. While I still look like a bloated cow in my stomach, I can definitely feel where my abs are engaging when I run. I put on a pair of capris the other day which at one point were almost retired as too uncomfortable to wear and not only did they fit, by I had the saggy butt look going on in the back there was so much lose fabric! Yay!! That is my win.

I am a mere 2 miles away from Boston, and have so far successfully avoided any drive thrus. We did have Subway one day and Sunday we went out to eat, but I ordered a chicken salad (soo proud of myself lol)....granted I did indulge in the bloomin onion we got, but my average on bloomin onion intake is about once every 2 years so I am excusing myself there. (Although that may be why I have had no weight loss)

The bread thing I am not doing so great on and will work on that harder this week. My water intake has been stellar as I drink an entire water bottle for every cup of coffee I drink. thats about 16oz a pop.

I feel the need to start working on some weight training as I feel that will help me see some results in the belly area. My goal is to do some sort of abs 3x a week. I plan to incorporate this mainly through pushups and situps and am seriously toying with the idea of taking up hooping.



This was my week, how's urs?

Friday, September 24, 2010

Weekly Wrap-Up Sept 20-24

This week I went to download our pictures and we had 334!
That's 334 documented moments.
Well sometimes I just kept clicking away half caught up in the moment and half striving for that "perfect" shot.
Here are a couple of my favorites...






This week we really implemented our Calendar Time. This helped us stay on task and gave both Hazel and Jakob something to participate in.
My inspiration came from Homeschool Creations' post on Calendar Time.
We have adapted it to make it our own but as soon as we iron out the creases I will post more in depth about it.

We continued our experiment on mealworms, but since my books had not come in from the library yet on our next subject we extended the discussion to butterflies. I was so very impressed with the level of excitement shown by Jakob and he verbalized the various cycles of metamorphosis (which is a HUGE step for him).
We also had a little fun pretending to be a cocoon...



Over the weekend I fretted about whether or not I was "doing" enough in comparison to others that I read about on the blogs and a friend of mine whose child is clearly covering subjects far more advanced than we are... but this week really proved to me that we are right on track.
From his first inventions realized (aqueduct and a labrynth both made out of Legos), to the remembering of Isis being an Egyptian God (spurred by the name tag on a cow at a local Dairy Farm).
From the moments I thought I was going to pull my hair out thinking that an 8 year old boy and a 3 yr old girl could never get along. To the happenings of their secret sibling embraces and how, out of love showing your sister a new love increases your own ability to learn.

All in all our week was wonderful but out finest hour was Thursday. We celebrated the first day of Autumn by taking a field trip to a local park. We searched for clues to fall in the trees (such as this "mango colored").....


Since we had been studying the Seven Wonders we took the suggestion of my brother and went looking for wonders of our own. Here are some of Jakob's photos....




(After seeing the one above I realized her couldn't have taken this one as he is in fact in it, but the others are definitely his)


He now picks out any statue or structure and calls it a "wonder"... I love it!!

Our cooking this week involved making Caramel Apples. Sooo Yummy.






Watercolors were our demise yet again this week as we covered the wise men worshiping Jesus and following a star. I gave the kids blue and yellow to work with, which upon application immediately produced a meltdown because the colors ran. After a few minutes in his room and a calm(er) discussion he decided to try again. Again I think his first one was just as beautiful as his second but ... well you know.

Jakob's (the one on the Left is the first one)

Hazel's

Mine

In the end he still asks for more painting. I constantly struggle with whether or not to allow this level of stress in our lives but we take it day by day and see how it goes.
So.. That's us in a nutshell. How was your week?


This Moment- Sibling Secrets


{this moment} - A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. If you're inspired to do the same, leave a link to your 'moment' in the comments for all to find and see.-- Inspired by Soule Mama

Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Confessions.... I FINALLY got it!!

Every man I have ever known has been a die hard Rocky fan. I don't get it. I didn't get the first one and I definitely couldn't understand why they made so many (Four I believe). And men always quote the movie and swoon over that song "The Eye of the Tiger". Rocky and Star Wars.....hmm it eludes me.
A guy friend of mine once tried to explain it to me, particularly the song. "Allison how can you not get all fired up? That song when it comes on takes you right to his most intense fights. His greatest achievements."
All I see is a bunch of sweaty dudes and running up stairs.
Suffice it to say there's not much "Rocky" watchin' going on in my house.

Today I was running my miles on my treadmill, (I'm up to 28.2 now! YAY) and listening to my music I usually skip over the songs that just come along at the wrong times. I knew "Eye of the Tiger" was on there somewhere as my hubby and I share all our music and I oftentimes hear the first few notes and hit SKIP!
Today I didn't, I was about 25 minutes in and already clipping along at a pretty good speed. I decided to just let it play since I was sure I would make my mileage in time.

You know what? That song ROCKS!!! Maybe its the new season of Biggest Loser comming up and I need my dose of epic struggle but this song really hits it on the head.
I mean right there in the first verse it just called to me...

So many times, it happens too fast
You change your passion for glory
Don't lose your grip on the dreams of the past
You must fight just to keep them alive

I think this completely defines my health journey on sooo many personal levels. I'm not going to go into all the different ways that we as parents oftentimes lose the battle of balance. It takes a wake up call of some sort to slap us back in line and give to ourselves as we give to our children.

Now I doubt very much that I will be rushing out to watch the Rocky movies, I did find this clip on YouTube that I think hits all the right parts.



Man that makes me wanna strap on my wraps and have a go with my Wavemaster!
And just in case you need them like I did here are the words:
Risin' up, back on the street
Did my time, took my chances
Went the distance, now I'm back on my feet
Just a man and his will to survive

So many times, it happens too fast
You change your passion for glory
Don't lose your grip on the dreams of the past
You must fight just to keep them alive

Chorus:
It's the eye of the tiger, it's the cream of the fight
Risin' up to the challenge of our rival
And the last known survivor stalks his prey in the night
And he's watchin' us all in the eye of the tiger

Face to face, out in the heat
Hangin' tough, stayin' hungry
They stack the odds 'til we take to the street
For we kill with the skill to survive

chorus

Risin' up, straight to the top
Have the guts, got the glory
Went the distance, now I'm not gonna stop
Just a man and his will to survive

chorus

I'm linking up with Nicole for her Not so Fat Tuesdays challenge.
Here are my goals for the week
Running- 10 miles
Water- Drink more water than Coffee!
Eating- try to only eat a bread once a day.

Have a great day!

Friday, September 17, 2010

Confessions... I'm addicted to fast food



FAST FOOD Pictures, Images and Photos
That's right if it has a drive thru I'm there!
I have even been known to plan my errands around mealtimes and "having" to snag a snack because, well you can't go grocery shopping hungry right?

I have such a weak willpower when it comes to drive thru's and my daughter knows it too. She will pull out her best and loudest whine because she knows I will cave. I'm a sucker I know it. Go ahead and give me my stamp now....
SuCkEr Pictures, Images and Photos
LOL now that's better. Anyways the point is that with my "I'm fat" Confession I have to do more than just run.
Which I logged another 10 miles this week! Go Me!!
That's 24 miles total I have so far which puts me a mere 14 miles away from Boston.
Yay!!
This week my friend Ang in Florida, (you know the one that LIKES to run?) laid down a challenge for me. We are both going to abstain from fast food until October 1 (she says with exceptions to "healthy" choices... I just need to abstain period).
That means all meals must be planned ahead or you just go hungry until you get home!
And this week when we went apple picking, that's just what we did
Hazel of course pointed out every drive thru on our 32 minute drive and repeated, "I'm HUUUNGARRYYY" about a billion times, but we made it.
Why the sudden willpower? The prize!
Ang adores Linkin' Park and is awarding herself the new album that comes out October 1. And since I always have issues rewarding myself with little things she has promised me a copy of all her favorite running songs!! It's the little things I tell ya!
Now I have no idea how much weight I'm gonna lose if any but by golly I want new music!!
So take THAT Big Mac!
And just for fun here's a face to go with the name! ;)
I know I look like a giant next to her. I'm tall she's short so go figure! lol


Weekly Wrapup- Sept 13- 17th

Wow this week went by super quick and I didn't think I had so much to show for it, but apparently I did. Warning!! Picture overload!!!

One of Jakob's most favorite things to do is help in the kitchen and since I refuse to buy cereal for breakfast, (that's another story) the kids generally get their cooking in with breakfast. Today we made zucchini muffins... Finger lickin' good!
(we use ground flax seed in place of egg and applesauce instead of oil so it makes the batter totally safe)


In our Bible lessons this week. I had the kids cut out their memory verse and tape the words end to end as a fun activity. I snagged that idea from one of my favorite blogs and her section called Raising Rockstars
(this woman is great I tell ya!)




We did more watercolors this week working with yellow and red for orange and to make "fire". Jakob made some really awesome designs and was much more comfortable with the paint this week. This one is mine, I'm not sure what happened to all my pictures of his.

My mind was completely put at ease this week when this HUGE box arrived from Mike's Aunt in Wyoming. She sent both kids TONS of winter wear!
While Hazel loved playing in the box, she has been beside herself the past couple of days with her vast wardrobe choices. YAY!!

Our reading lessons this week focused on ea, ei, ey, and eigh sounds. I find it very important to work on phonics with Jakob especially because of his speech delays. I made up a little categorizing game for him out of flash cards. He matched the word to the sounds it made. Although he did very well with this we will work more in this area to familiarize him with sounds that he may not readily hear when he speaks and spells.


One of my biggest goals is to teach my children how to find information for themselves. I think Dictionary work is very overlooked in schools today and really want my kids to know how to find things. Jakob looked up all his vocab words this week and read their definitions. I chose not to have him write them down because this is a newer skill for him.

The preschool and younger age meetup group that we belong to went apple picking this week and we joined them in the fun. I am so grateful for these ladies as they have scheduled lots of fun little trips to the farms over the next few weeks. Makes my life a lot easier to have events that both kids can truly enjoy.




This has been Hazel's general attitude of late. Fun huh?


I think this apple officially made the 14th pound of apples that were picked that day. Oh but the apple butter that cooked up in my crock pot is ooooo sooo yummy.

This isn't a great picture of the sign but it says "Native" butter and sugar and sweet corn. Locally grown or produced food here is called "native". Oh the giggles I have had over these little signs on the side of the road. ;)


Jakob was thrilled that the watermelon that we got from the farmer's market was yellow inside and set about saving seeds to plant next year.

As an intro to his inventions we started building one of his erector sets this week. I was pleasantly surprised at how well he read the directions and how little coaching I had to do with him on trying again when we made mistakes. He has since put almost all of it together himself!


We are beginning a little study on life cycles. And while other schools are posting their pictures of the beautiful butterflies and ladybugs they are hatching. I earn my "Cool-Mom" badge this week by taking my kids into PetCo and buying them some Meal worms!

The experiment is really cool for the kids because they all know what the caterpillar turns into, they know what the tadpole turns into, but we have never raised a beetle! I found the experiment here.








Now there's a shot a mother can be proud of! :)
I'm linking up this week with Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers. Check her out, she's pretty cool too! Click on her button below.
Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers


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