Oddities of a 3.5

I took Maya grocery shopping and she wanted salami.  Immediately she made a peep hole.  Weirdo.

A snapshot in words

I am cleaning the kitchen. (We still have a bunch of baby gates in our house for the dogs) Maya and Ryleigh are eating lunch in the living room. Lucky is circling the coffee table like a shark, looking for dropped morsels. She can be very annoying when the kids are eating, so I usually put her behind the gate in the kitchen. I didn't today. All of a sudden I see a piece of chicken fly into the kitchen, followed by the dog, and then Maya who quickly shuts the gate, trapping the dog in the kitchen. Without a word, she goes back to her lunch. I find the whole thing amusing. End.

The thief

So I picked Allie up from school today and noticed that she had a really pretty sweater on under her coat. It was not a sweater I have ever seen before. She was certainly not wearing it when she left the house this morning. So I say to her, "Al, where did you get that sweater?" and she says, "lost and found, I thought it looked like mine.". (she has never owned a sweater that remotely resembles the sweater she now had on). So I asked her,"you thought it looked like yours, or you thought you would like it to be yours?". Allie says, "well, I really like it, could you get me one like it?". I told her that we would see but that she needed to return that one tomorrow. After we had the whole stealing talk. Little stinker. Oh, and the sleeves were rolled over about six times and it hung down to mid thigh. She is a girl who will do anything for fashion.

The Bakery

We have this bakery about three quarters of a mile down the street from our house.  We love it there.  We usually walk down on the weekends in nice weather and get breakfast.  They are a bread bakery, not a sweets bakery, although they do have cookies and granola.  They also have samples of the fresh baked bread and they will give you as many slices of fresh bread at no charge.  They have butter you can put on yourself, but really, the bread is so good you don't need it. The best thing about the bakery, though, is the dough table.  They have a child sized table with old pans and muffin tins and rolling pins and they put breaddough out for the kids to play with.  It is awesome.  Will and I get to have coffee together, and the girls don't ever want to leave.  Allie made a little man out of dough to drive a toy car they had one day, so funny.  They are forever making cookies and cakes out of dough for us, and we make yummy noises and everyone is happy.  When we went sledding a few weekends ago, we stopped there on the way home, and warmed up with some yummy sandwiches and coffee.  It is so cheap to eat there, and everyone loves it.  I can't wait until it is spring so we can start our Saturdays at the Bakery again.

Motivation is an odd thing

I was going to wait to post this until I was finished the losing, but with the new 500 in 2010 challenge, I thought this would be as good a time as any.  I have been working hard over the past year to lose some weight.  Not a little weight.  A. Lot. Of. Weight.  I was always an athletic kid, and through college as well, and then life sort of happened and I had three kids and found myself extremely overweight.  I tried hard many times to lose it, but I always regressed to my former ways.  It is so much easier to give in to temptation with yummy things than to eat things that will fuel me well.  Last January, Will's Dad died, and something clicked in my head.  I saw all of the sadness that it brought to the entire family, and couldn't bear to think of leaving my family.  I decided at the end of January to start hitting the gym regularly and happily, and I started eating whole foods and really thinking of food as fuel.  Now, I still eat things I love occasionally, just not pounds of chocolate or serving bowls full of cereal.  I can't really believe I let myself eat like that for so long.  I was so tired and sluggish all the time.  I didn't have any clothes that weren't elastic waist pants, and I never felt good about myself.  I figured out that if I wanted the girls to be healthy and exercise I would have to be their role model.  I have succeeded.  Now when I am not home, they assume I am at the gym.  Even if I have already been there earlier that day.  I am not a food nazi, or an exercise lunatic, I try to do everything in moderation.  I was starting to get really bored at the gym and was startimg to lose the excitement of going until LauraC threwdown the 500 in 2010 challenge.  Now I am happy to go to the gym and am pushing myself harder than I ever have when I go.  I think the challenge was just what I needed at just the right time, so I thank her for that.  I also decided to train for the WIllow Tree Half Marathon In Providence, RI  in May, which is about a week after my 32nd birthday.  I feel better than I ever have.  I have lost 80 pounds through eating (mostly) clean and exercising.  I still would like to lose 30ish more pounds, but I am getting there and I am proud to be healthy and a good influence for my girls.  I know they will be healthy and know how to take care of themselves, and now, so do I.   I have very few pictures of me from before, because who wants fat pictures around?  I didn't, and now this is my before picture.  Now, I love to be in pictures, but I am usually taking the picture.  In this one, it was Christmas, eleven months after I started the weightloss.  Yes, I have all of my family piled on me (just the way I love to be), but you can get an idea.  I will definitely post better  pictures when I take some. 

Brrrrrr

It is cold outside!  We have a bunch of snow, and went sledding this weekend.  The girls were thrilled with the entire experience...well, the walking UP the hill was not Allie's favorite part, but Lilly and Maya were troopers!  We stayed out about an hour at our favorite hill.  This past summer the city made the hill improved for sledding by adding bumps and smaller hills within the main hill.  It was so much fun, and my butt definitely felt the hill work the next day.  (We did pull the kids up the hill toward the end because we wanted to stay and sled longer and they were tired of walking up! ) Yes, I am a sucker.

Christmas...finally

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Christmas was great this year.  It was super low key, the kids had a blast opening gifts, and couldn't actually believe they got the mechanical hampsters.  They actually played with them the most out of all the gifts.  I was so gkad to see them so happy.  We also got them a new play kitchen, which they adore.  We took the traditional top of the stairs picture, (Allie had received a cherry chapstick which she proceed to smear all over her lips and a dry spot next to her mouth, making her look odd to say the least.)and then continued down to the land of toys.  We all had a great time watching each other open the gifts we had so carefully chosen.  Allie was beside her self with joy when I opened my own shoes which she had wrapped up.  We take the kids every year to choose gifts for eachother and us and my Mom and Dad.  We took them to the dollar store this year so they could choose anything without having to give them a budget, and it is the happiest they have ever been.  I loved this Christmas because they were so much more into the giving than they have been in the past.  They really couldn't wait for us to open what they had chosen.  We were going to have a late lunch, but we were all kind of lazy so we pushed it to an early dinner and no one could have been happier.  Well, Maya could have been as she was still sick and hacking so badly that she couldn't eat, but she hung out on the couch and drank gatorade and watched Dora and was happy.  This has been the best Christmas so far.  These are the past 3 years of top of the stairs pictures, I cannot find the one from Maya's first Christmas, or any before that, but they're here somewhere...

A message for my sweet girls

I thought I would surprise the girls with a message they all could read.  The snowfall over the weekend inspired me to do something fun.  This is the view from their bedroom window, just as it was starting to get dark  (it's a little blurry, the screen sort of ruined it).  They all thought it was sort of magical.  I really want it to snow again so I can do another one.

Midnight

On New Year's eve, we had Chinese food, played board games, visited withy Mom and Dad, and watched The Three Stooges. Maya made it until 10:35, which is about an hour past when I thought she would. Allie made it until 11:53, at which time she crumpled on the couch. We prodded her and hooted at her, and she rallied, but as soon as midnight hit, she begged to go back to sleep. Lilly made it, but was happy to go to bed as soon as it was over. We had a great night as a family, and just may make this a tradition.