I'd like to thank the Academy

I love blog awards. I have only ever received one of them, until today baby. Well, yesterday to be more exact. Ishmael and Kelly both called me out on their blogs and awarded me with the stylish blogger award.


I love both of these ladies, they inspire me, make me smile and their brand of hilarity is right up my alley. 

So here's my price of admission.
7 things about me, wow let the narcissism flow freely. 

1. I am first and foremost a momma. From the time when I could form the "what I want to do when I grow up" thought, it was always, be a mommy. My munches are my world, and they are hilarious.

2. I am terrified of engineering failures. I am convinced that I am going to die in some catastrophic building collapse, or the big glass ball at the Fox theater is going to land on my head. In related insanity I am also convinced that my double wide trailor is going to someday just fall apart like two halves of a clam.

3. I am a musical bi-polar. My IPOD boasts Queen, Anna Nalick, The Glen Miller Orchestra, Frank Sinatra, Pink, Lady Gaga and Bon Jovi.

4. I'm a slob, big time, crap everywhere slob. I will wear every peice of clothing I own so I can put off doing laundry for as long as possible. It's good that Jeeves is such a neat freak, he keeps our house from being condemned.

5. I -hate- sweating. I hate the feeling of sweat running down anywhere. It makes me feel like things are crawling on me. I will wear more clothes than needed so the clothing will soak up the sweat and I don't have to feel it dripping off of anything. Sweating makes me feel like I'm trying to diffuse a bomb or something, it makes me anxious and irritated.

6. I sing along with the kid shows on Nick Jr. I know the words and somedays I even get up and dance around. My kids are toddlers and they think I'm hilarious. We do alot of goofy jumping and dancing around on a daily basis.

7. I sleep better with my kids in bed with me. Both girls, Jeeves and myself can all Tetris our way into a comfy position and sleep soundly all night long. It's like I need to be touching them for my body to relax enough to sleep well. I'm pretty sure it goes back to when Pumpkin was first born and I could only rest when she was sleeping on my chest and I could feel her breathing. We are co-sleepers and I don't see that changing in the near future. This makes Mutti crazy.

Alright I'm supposed to nominate other blogs for the award. So I'm nominating

The Fat Mom - who is fabulous and doesn't realize it as much as the rest of us do.
Vavoom Vintage - who is more stylish than anyone I know.
Kreating Kristen - who is a Momma-bear and stronger today then I will ever be.
Calories and Crunches - who is so adorable I want to hang out with her cause I'd be cuter by association.
The Gasoline Free Commute - because he is showing us that dudes can be stylish bloggers!
Dancing Towards Myself - cause she can do something I want desperately to learn, belly dance!
Stephanie - who is kind and amazingly supportive of her fellow bloggers.

Since Kelly and Ish already have the award I am not going to re-gift, but I love you both more than my knee high black boots (trust me, that's saying something).
Sooooo, G'night!

184!!!

Because it's there and I can't stop myself, I jumped on the scale today and my guess that I was holding onto water weight was true because after a good day of water intake and a low sodium day yesterday my scale read 184 this morning. I started this process at 232 and in 2 pounds I will have lost 50 of the 72 pounds I set out to lose. My goal is 160 pounds. It's not an over ambitious goal and 160 will still have my BMI listed as like 25 point something(technically overweight), but I am in this for me, not the experts and not what someone else says looks good on my body.

It's a snowy day in Missouri and I'm looking forward to getting home and taking the munches out to play in the 4 inches we got last night. They were so thrilled when it started snowing last night and I had to promise to take them out to play today to get them to go to sleep. On the plus side, I love playing in the snow, and I'm feeling up to it today. Pumpkin has been talking about making snowballs for weeks, so she'll get her chance today.

I am making chili for dinner tonight unless Jeeves and I can get a sitter. If we can get a sitter, Jeeves got free passes to go see the Green Hornet. I love comic book movies, even the bad ones. So I'm really hoping we can get a sitter. I am eating light all day, soup and slimfast, so when I get home this evening I can either enjoy dinner out with Jeeves or have two bowls of excellent spicy chili, with cheese. I love chili, and I make huge batches of it and freeze it so I can eat and enjoy it for weeks.

Well, I'm hungry and my latte is calling me from the kitchen downstairs. Hope everyone has a great day, keep warm!

Exit Swamp Thing

I woke up today with a marked difference in the pressure in my sinuses, I CAN BREATHE!!!! Halle-freakin-lujah. Last night desperation took over and I used vicks vapo-rub (thats right, it's not just for kids) and I went and got treated like a delinquent  to buy a box of real sudafed (sp?) so, apart from the bleeding holes left by the damned flu swab, my nose is now clear.

I counted my calories for Thursday, I was under 800, and yesterday around 1100. I"ve been chugging fluids and slurping soup to keep my throat pain down to a dull roar, so there hasn't been much room for food. Today I had a pancake and a piece of cheese pizza, And I'm done for the day, I wasn't even hungry for those things but knew I needed something in my stomach to help with the meds I'm taking. In addition to the antibiotics and decongestant,  I'm taking either acetaminophen or ibuprofen every four hours, because my ribs and sides are in agony.

So today I felt human and as I walked through my house without the sick foggy glaze over my eyes I realized that the house of a sick mommy becomes a stupid mess, in a hurry. I took a shower and did some dishes, and was sitting down watching TV when both of my munches came in to show me that they were "hot"...sickly munches, again?...-awesome-

I tried my hand at making granola bars, they are a bit too gooey because I forgot to add the flour and I put the hot butter on top of the chocolate chips, but oh well, you live you learn. Gooey or not, they taste pretty amazing.

Thanks for all your kind words and thoughts, It's nice to know you all were thinking of me.

Not the Flu

But the terror I had to endure to discover that I do not have the flu was epic. If you haven't ever had a flu swab, don't. If your doctor sends you to get one, run. Having the flu can't be as bad as having that scrapey non-sense shoved up your nose. It was like a pap-smear in your nostril. *shudder*

Yesterday was as awful as the day before and I broke down and called the doctor. When I made it home at 4:30 I went to bed and didn't move until 10. I woke up sputtering and coughing at 10 and stayed up dealing with munch non-sense until around midnight. Then I passed back out until around 5 this morning when I woke up and mindlessly watch VH1 videos until 7:30 when I left for my appointment.

Again I feel rotten, but I have antibiotics, hot tea, soup, and Afrin so I think Ill make it through the day, however I may shoot one of my children, they are very, very loud. I apparently have some sort of infection that morphed from the cold I had last week.

So To re-cap
1. I still feel like shit
2. Being a sick mommy sucks
3. Flu swabs are a must-don't.

Have a Nice Day!

So Far So Good

Foods for the day:
Balance Bar- 190 cals
Progresso Soup- 160 cals
Yoplait light- 100 cals
Total: 450 calories
Water: 52 ounces so far.
Not too Shabby

I have an ambitous plan to get my shit together this week. Two weeks of holiday nonsense threw up all over my house. Yesterday after church I went home and washed every stitch of laundry in my house and cleaned out the fridge.(I got rid of the toxic leftovers). I cleaned out my closet, stuffed two bags full of outsized clothes and organized my closet. I cleaned my bedroom and set up the munches new bed on the floor. Then I did my dishes and went through my youngest's clothes. She is between a 24month and 3T in size and there are several things she cannot wear so I weeded out the stuff that doesn't fit and put it in a bag to take to my SIL for my neice who is a little over a year now and growing like a weed, but a very, very cute weed.

I was up from 5:30 yesterday morning until around midnight. I got so much done that it inpspired me to do some more. Today I am tackling Pumkpins clothing and the spare room. I need to get the hoarder-esque pile of crap out of that room and begin turning in into the guest room/mommy room it needs to be.

I have an office/craft space that is in dire need of a good clean out, but that will be a project for after I work out my Etsy store business plan. I am going full out crafty this year, I want to be able to sell fun crafty things and make some extra cash at the same time. Adding to the crafty insanity, I am also asking my cousins if I can make the costumes for thier girls at halloween this year. My girls want very much to be the Disney Fairies and I currently have patterns for about 8 costumes, so hopefully we will have the cast of Tinkerbell to photograph this halloween. I want to get the costumes done kind of early and do a photo shoot for our elders, they love great pics of the munchkins in the family, especially my grandparents. (plus I like to dress up too, so I'll be designing some costumes as well.)

Today has been a good day, nothing crappy going on, and food on target. Water is going in easily and I'm feeling industrious at work today. I think good days are often overlooked, not everyday has to be an amazing explosion of excitement, sometimes it's a relief to just have a solid, middle of the road, boring good day.

The Best Laid Plans of Mice and Ninja's

As I said I don't do resolutions, mostly because I don't really like that sound of the word, it's so final. It sounds like the problem is no longer there, it's "resolved." Which isn't really the case if you are making a change in your life. If you want to change, your problems have just begun really.

So instead I prefer to declare intentions. This year I intend to:
1. Keep up my weight loss, I have 27 pounds left to lose before I hit my goal, that's not very far.
2. Eat more dinners at the kitchen table with Jeeves and the Munches, they deserve more of my time.
3. Read to the Munches more often. We share a love of books and that will only continue if I foster it.
4. Give back, I don't have much but I have more than so many others, it's time I shared some of my blessings.
5. Spend more time outside. It's a beautiful world and we should spend more time out in it.
6. Be more active and educated about my faith. My reasons are my own.

On to my next goal: I want to be a size 12 by Valentine's day, an achievable goal, I feel. So I am going to cut my calories back to 1500 most days, and increase my exercise. I want to be able to say I have lost 8 sizes in one year. I will posting an SSDD (Same Shirt, Different Day) post this week with the outfit I wore last v-day to show you all how far I have come, it's really amazing to see, stay tuned.

Peace Out, My Ninjas

New Year...

Same Old Me

Truth be told, I'm pretty happy with that. I don't need a new year, a new start, or a resolution. I made my resolution on May 17th of last year and I've stuck with it for 7 months and lost 45 pounds. I weighed in last night at 187. 

I spent last night in with mutti and the munches and then spent the whole day today in my pajamas, watching movies with my family. It was the best day ever-part 2. (Christmas being the first best day ever) I made a breakfast bake with lo-cal english muffins, egg beaters, turkey and mozzarella. Turned out to be about 150 calories for a serving, which was pretty small, but still really yummy and even at 300 cals for two servings, still a decent start for the day. I'll be posting this one on the recipe blog this week.

Anyway, see y'all tomorrow, going to watch another movie.

MONDAY!!!!!

and the holiday insanity is officially over.

I am going to admit two things today.

1.) I over ate this weekend, I think Allan might be the only one who didn't. But that is sort of not important.  My holiday was lovely. I saw people I don't get to see often, made up with people that I've been feuding with, and spent almost the entire day on Saturday in my pajamas. We didn't go out and visit people on Christmas Day, we let the munches stay home and play. My In-laws came over for breakfast and then Mutti cam eand had dinner with us. I made our favorites, with a healthier twist for me, and I didn't feel sick or guilty once. I think that means I've made it through the holiday successfully.

2.) I have already worked out my list of gifts to begin making for next year, each year I intend on having gifts finished and ready to go well before the week of Christmas. Yet, every year I end up sewing until the wee hours of the morning and wrapping gifts as we are running out the door. Well, not next year, no sir. In fact I am going to make that my resolution. I am going to be done making Christmas gifts by Thanksgiving next year. There, I have made my first New Years Resolution ever.

Many of my family members commented on the change in my figure since last year. I was pleased, it felt good to have people notice. They all asked me what diet I was on. I couldn't help but laugh, I answered one Aunt by saying that I was on the ELCSYA diet, she seemed confused so I elaborated, Eat Less Crap and Shrink Your Ass. That got a huge laugh. I'm not on a diet, I have changed the way I live.

Ha! last night one of my cousins told me I was shrinking into nothing (this was after the chocolate peanut butter ice cream pie slice that I savored with glee), then he yelled at me to eat something as I got in my car; thanks, Adam :0)

My weight this morning 188 - again, but hey, that's better than what, 240-ish last year.I have photos, but since I'm typically the photographer, I have no good one's of me. I wish I had known I was going to be doing this, I would have made Jeeves take better photos last year and then gotten some better one's this year. Anyway, here's me on Christmas Eve, not a great pic, but I was excited to see how thin my arm looked.


And then just some random cute - courtesy of the munches.


Here's them playing on saturday


Inside of this!


Here's Pumpkin and Booger with Mutti


We call this the "Booger Dance"

Mutti

Since my girls were first born we have been readers. My mother began the tradition when I was a child. We got books every birthday and holiday. When I began having little one's she continued the tradition with a priceless addition. Each Christmas and birthday the munches get a storybook from Grannie. The book always has a handwritten note from her talking about her favorite things to do with the one who receives the book and how much she loves them.

The inscription always make me cry, happy tears of course, and they are precious to both me and the girls. We keep them put away from the other books, and take them down to read them but put them up to keep them safe (booger is a book destroyer right now)

I have started doing the same for my girls, I look all year to find books that speak to me and remind me of my girls. This year I got one for Booger called "I love you Stinky Face"

This is funny because my current nickname for her is stinky girl, not because she stinks, but because she's spoiled rotten. The book is great, it kind of reminds me of "The Runaway Bunny." I loved the Margaret Wise books when I was a kid. Pumpkin's book is called, "Mama, will you hold my hand?"

Pumpkin is hand holder, she enjoys the freedom of walking with me instead of riding in the cart at the store and I guess we taught her well because as soon as she pops out of her car seat, she puts up her little hand and says, " Hand please!"
These books, like the one's from Grannie, will sport notes from me to my little one's and when they get older, it will be hard, but I will let them take them when they move away, so they can read the things I wrote about them when they were tiny, and be reminded of how much I love them and how much fun we had.

Well this week I got an unexpected surprise, I got a book. I am not going to talk about the note on the inside of the book, but it's called  "If I could Keep you Little"

The story talks about the unique joy of watching your children grow and explore the world, and realizing that even if you could keep them little forever, you really wouldn't want to. I don't usually get books, but this one seemed like it had been written for Mom and I. The poem talked about doing airplane feet, writing, singing, camping, crafts...It was uncanny really, I sort of wanted to look over my shoulder and see if the woman who wrote the book had been stalking me.

Anyway I love my book, I read it to the munches last night and bawled, they thought I was sad, kept kissing me and saying, "It's okay Mommy, I promise" (they think "I promise" is a comfort term, not an actual pledge) they are such lovely children. a blessing in my life, as much as my mother is. I am so fortunate to be so close to and loved by such an incredible woman. She taught me to be a Mommy, not a mother, a mommy. A toy-playing, loud-singing, airplane foot-flying, cookie-baking, Jungle-gym-climbing, baby-snuggling mommy.  I am so proud to be both her daughter and their mother. It's nice to be reminded, at this time of year specifically, what a blessed life I lead.

Thank you and I love you, Mutti