Off The Scale Victories

One of the things that Weight Watchers really encourages is finding ways to mark victories besides on the scale. It's wonderful, because there are definitely weeks where the scale fails me. Or maybe I fail the scale. I dunno. Either way, without off-the-scale victories, I would be totally discouraged. Take this week for instance. I gained 1.2 lbs. Not a surprise, I didn't track my points for a single day, so it was totally my fault. Failed the scale, and all that.

But that was totally off-set by my afternoon. I'm a bridesmaid in Dani's wedding in September; she and her future sister-in-law/maid of honor picked me up for a trip to David's Bridal for an afternoon of trying on pretty dresses. I haven't tried on pretty dresses since picking out my wedding dress...about four years ago...when my dress was a size 18. Yikes.

When we got there, I asked the sales assistant to measure me to figure out my new (completely unknown) dress size. After measuring and consulting her sizing chart, she announced the magic number to be....

...16 or 18.

Umm, no. That was my size 30 lbs ago. She was pretty determined I'd need at least a 16, so I let her grab that size in a sleeveless dress. After putting it on and zipping it up (sans bra), I walked out of the dressing room...and came about an inch from flashing everyone in the store when the dress attempted to drop to the floor.

Next came the size 14. Still baggy, still gaping, thankfully not a strapless. The sales assistant grabbed the back of the dress, pulled it tight, and said, "You know, I think you could fit in a 10. That's why I hate those size charts."

SIZE 10! REALLY?!

Sure enough...

Granted, this wasn't the first size 10 dress I tried on, but this is the one that, when I walked out of the fitting room, everyone went "ooooooooooooooooh". That's always a good sign. The dress is a little snug, but I'm still losing weight (not counting this week) so it will fit perfectly by the time I reach my goal weight. The blue isn't the color I'll be wearing, but they only had three dresses in the entire store in my color.

This was one of them...the fit looks a little funky because it's two sizes too big so they had to put clothes pins on my back, but at least you can see the color!

I was honestly worried the color would look horrible with my skin tone, but it's really not bad!

And just for giggles, here's the first size 10 I tried on, the one I loved until I tried on the dark blue one. And dude, it has pockets! Tabitha, the maid of honor who just had a baby, ended up choosing this one, citing the pacifier carrying pockets as the determining factor.

In other news, Asher has a sharp tip of a molar poking through his upper gums. He is in SO much pain. Add a runny nose and copious amounts of drool to the equation and the little guy is miserable. He woke up last night screaming his brains out and wouldn't be consoled for a good 20 minutes...it was painful.

Dear Molar,

Please hurry up with this whole breaking-through-the-gums thing. I'm tired of seeing my baby in pain. And the non-stop drool isn't real fun either.

Thanks,

Mommy

Here's my man hanging on the boys' big pillow, watchin' tv, and petting the dog with his feet.

Have I ever mentioned how much I love my boys? I just hope this evil molar makes a full appearance soon so we can have a little bit of peace around here...until the next one decides to show its shining face...cusp...whatever.

Craftiness!

As I've mentioned before, I have a love for craft blogs. Actually, it borders on an addiction. Only problem was, I'd find these great blogs, browse them for a while, close the window, and promptly forget what they were called! So I decided to finally bite the bullet and make a new blog roll to the right side of our blog titled "Craftiness!". It includes the Make It and Love It blog that I got most of my Christmas gift ideas from. Love it!

I don't know about the rest of you Mommies out there, but I NEED a creative outlet. Since theatre has been pushed to the side and Young Life (my insanity outlet) is a no-go due to my work schedule, random and useful crafts have become my outlets.

Most of the crafts are very simple and easy to do, accomplished within an hour or two. And a lot of them use things you have around the house or cheap fat quarters that you can get for about a dollar at places like Joann Fabric or Walmart. My favorites, though, are the ones that use things that are laying around the house begging for a purpose in life.

Hope this gives some of you a fun place to look for craft ideas! And keep checking back because I will be adding to the blog roll as I find more fun blogs!

POST EDIT*** There's just one problem with this blog roll...I CAN'T STOP ADDING TO IT! There are just too many great craft blogs out there!

Two Things

One:

I have officially lost 30 lbs. Well, technically, exactly 31 lbs. I am now 143.4 lbs and only have 13.4 to go! YAY!

But even more exciting...

Two:

Kate and Eliot are having a.......................................

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BOY!!!!!!

I'm so excited, our boys are going to have a little boy cousin. I simply can't wait to meet this new little blessing in the family and hold a newborn in my arms again. No, that doesn't mean I have baby fever, for pity sake. I'm just totally excited about seeing my first nephew...and then be able to give him back to his mommy when he starts crying, ha ha ha. I'm not even the mommy and the next 20 months are going to seem interminable!

Here's to miracles!

Just Shy of 30

When I weighed in on Saturday, I had a mixture of feelings as I saw my weight. First, I was excited because I had finally kicked the holiday slump and lost 2.6 lbs that week. And then the disappointment set in...

...I was 0.2 lbs away from hitting my 30 lb loss mark! GRR!

Oh well, that means hitting it next week will be a cinch. And since I'm so close, I figured I might as well do some photos to commemorate the occasion.

But first, a reminder of "before":


Shudder.

And now, 5 months later and 28.8 lbs lighter!



Only 14.2 lbs to go before I hit my first goal weight! Really, honestly, I'd love to lose a total of 50 lbs, which would put me at 124.4 lbs, but we'll see how 130 looks and feels first.

And now I'm off to work. It's my Friday, yay!

Is There A Craft-Blog Anonymous?

I'm addicted. Really and truly addicted. If I were to allow myself, I would spend HOURS on various craft blogs, looking for fun crafts that I can do without spending any money and using only the materials I have on hand. I get such a kick out of re-purposing things around the house that I would normally just be tossing and using them in ways I normally wouldn't.

Who's ever heard of a tshirt necklace? I surely hadn't until stumbling across it on a (what else?) craft blog. I had recently gone through my closet to exorcise some of the now-too-baggy clothing and knew I had a tshirt or two in there that could be sacrificed to the rotary cutter.

The finished product:


I also refurbished a necklace my mom made for me a few years ago. I absolutely loved this necklace, and it meant a lot to me because Mom and Marla bought the Murano glass pendant for me on their trip to Italy. Unfortunately, the wire holding the necklace together snapped, and it has been languishing in a small box ever since. After seeing the necklace my Weight Watcher leader was wearing last week, I was inspired. I grabbed some of the thin brown ribbon I had used in some Christmas gifts, strung on the pendant and clasps, made a few knots, and VIOLA! Good as new!


Besides being crafty today, I also managed to sweep/mop/vacuum all of the downstairs floors AND get the kitchen and dining room cleaned up. Nathan took the afternoon to retreat to his man cave (aka the garage) and cook up a batch of homebrew while watching the National Championship college football game. Meanwhile, our friend/neighbor from across the street, Sarah, came over and we spent a good couple of hours just chatting. All in all, it was a very relaxing and productive day...especially considering the fact that I didn't get to sleep until about 6 am (crying babies) and didn't wake up until about 2 pm.

Speaking of which, my sleep schedule continues to be on the complete fritz. Lately it's been 'awake until 3 or 4 am, sleep until 11 or 12'. Not cool. In an attempt to remedy this problem, I took a Tylenol PM...about half an hour ago...which means it's setting in right about now. Which, in turn, would explain why spelling correctly is becoming increasingly more difficult.

I think that's my cue. Night!

Our Sons: Upright & Mobile

We're not sure what prompted it. Maybe something clicked in their brains. Maybe they were tired of rug burn on their knees. Maybe they were tired of having to crane their necks to see anything higher than six inches from the ground.

All I know is that right as I was laying down for a nap this afternoon, Nathan came running up the stairs into our room. There are really only two types of things that make Nathan run up those stairs: something really really good or something really really bad. He burst into the room and informed me that Levi, our firstborn, had successfully walked a good 7 steps or so in our living room all by himself, without any prompting. I smiled, exclaimed over how very cool that was, and went to sleep. I'm an awesome Mom like that.

I have to admit, I was a little worried that Levi would walk a couple of times and then give it up for a few days. But as soon as the boys got up from their naps, Levi was at it again. It took a little encouragement, but he loved how excited Mommy and Daddy got over his new trick.

Not to be outdone, Asher promptly went to the corner of the wall he was using to hold himself up, let go, and walked a good 4-6 steps. And giggled. The ENTIRE time. Stinkin' hilarious!

And now they won't stop. The distances are getting further and further, and their balance is steadily improving. I predicted that they will be running by next week.

Thank goodness they both got little monkey backpacks with leashes as tails for Christmas!

DBSKKMBAS Strikes Again

I have an affliction. It comes in a 12 oz cup. It doesn't strike very often (due in large part to budgetary restraints) but when it does, it strikes with a vengeance.

I like to call it Dutch Bros Skinny Kicker Keeps My Butt Awake Syndrome.

Aka DBSKKMBAS.

Ok, maybe that's a little unwieldy, but we dispatchers work in acronyms all the time and it's kind of a hard habit to break.

Speaking of dispatchers, I recently rescued my favorite mug from my 'lost my job and had to clean out my drawer' box and it is currently holding the Sweet Dreams tea that I am using to combat the DBSKKMBAS. It was a present from one of my fellow dispatchers in Baker (thanks Jill!) and had been retired from public life due to the fact that my boss would probably not appreciate the sentiment printed on it:

9-1-1: Trained to save your ass, not kiss it.

Heh heh, it still gets me every time.

But on to other thoughts. Like the following...

...is anyone else ridiculously relieved that the holidays are over? My relief mostly stems from the fact that I now have no "excuse" to eat like a pig anymore. There's no more 'but it's the holidays' creeping in the back of my head. On to more weight loss, starting with a (very scary) weigh-in tomorrow - I mean THIS - morning.

I'm also relieved to be done with all the planning and list-making that is involved when you are making most of your Christmas presents. While making said presents is incredibly fulfilling and much easier on the pocketbook, it also takes a LOT longer. That being said, I'm totally going to do it again.

Christmas was relatively relaxing (yes, I'm just NOW getting around to posting about Christmas) considering how many people were at our house. I had to work on Christmas Eve, while Nathan and the boys enjoyed dinner with my parents and grandparents here at our place. I did, however, get Christmas Day off, so we all slept in on Christmas morning and got to spend a little bit of time with just the four of us until my parents and grandparents arrived around 10. We did the whole stocking thing (stockings are a big deal in my family), had breakfast, and then proceeded to rip apart our presents while the boys took a VERY LONG nap. Their presents got piled under and around the coffee table...yes, there were THAT many presents for them.

At around 4, Nathan's dad joined us and got to watch the boys open their presents. Both Asher and Levi actually helped with the opening of some of their presents, until they got distracted by the toys coming out of them. What a huge difference from their first Christmas! Then we had an amazing dinner of prime rib, mashed potatoes, and Lawry's original recipe cream corn. Wow. Ask me to tell you about eating at the Lawry's The Prime Rib mansion in Chicago some time. I'll start to salivate and then eventually get around to telling you the story. Again, despite having a full house, the evening was very laid back and we were even graced with my father in law playing the guitar and singing for us while we made dinner. It doesn't get much better than that.

New Year's was more of the same. I had to work New Year's Eve and New Year's Day, both of which were remarkably quiet despite being a notoriously rowdy holiday. I got home at 11 on New Year's Eve, early enough to ring in 2010 with Nathan and his sister and her husband, who had joined us for the night. Nathan had uploaded all the short videos we had taken of the boys since they were born onto his new PS3 that he got for Christmas, and we watched a couple of them. I had forgotten just how tiny and helpless they use to be, my goodness! It literally brought tears to my eyes and caused me to demand that my sister in law gestate faster...

...speaking of which, I don't think I've written about this on here yet, at first because it wasn't public yet and then because of the holiday whirlwind, but I'M GOING TO BE AN AUNTIE! Kate and Eliot are expecting their first little one in June and I simply can't wait to have a newborn in my arms again...with the proviso that I get to give this newborn back to its parents when it starts to squall. No, baby fever has not hit me and I don't see it hitting any time in the foreseeable future, so don't ask. Not happenin'. Two is enough, thank you very much.

Oh, and did I mention that we got snow here on Tuesday? According to the weatherman that morning, we were only suppose to get a couple wet flakes transitioning into rain. Instead, we got about three or four inches worth...which THEN transitioned into rain. Pretty much all traces of it are now gone, but not before a snowman 'magically' appeared on the patio at work, complete with broccoli eyes, a celery mouth, a carrot nose, and a fireman jacket. I love working with people who have such an awesome sense of humor! Unfortunately, by the time we got back to work the next day, Mr. Snowman was reduced to a couple small piles of snow surrounded by vegetables. At least I can say I got one snow-fall in this winter!

Ok, I have to get up in about 4 1/2 hours, so I should probably call this good. Sorry there aren't any Christmas photos to post, but we didn't take our camera out all day (bad photographers!) and I have yet to nab any photos from my parents, grandparents, or Nathan's dad. We'll get them eventually...and a goal for this year is to get our online family photo album updated. Yeah. Bear with me on that one.

Night!