biggest loser

I really enjoyed the biggest loser competition. I met my goal of fitting into my clothes again. It was an 8 week competition. Overall I lost about 13% of my body weight (most of the weight came off in about 6 weeks). Tomorrow at 10am final results are posted. I'd like to say I don't care if I win or not but that would be a lie. I care a lot and I want to win. :) I already have plans to use the victory money to take dave out for his birthday dinner at MamaMia.

I can tell a big difference in how I look and how my clothes fit, but it's harder to tell in the pictures.

before - taken in december

after (kids took these pictures so they are a little crazy!) - taken today - 18 lbs lighter!

LOTS of pictures!

Lex spent several days with this tent. She took it everywhere in the house and even slept with it over her at night in her bed! Great Christmas gift from Grandma Joyce!

Pajama Day at school - Clare is showing off how she can do the monkey bars.
I LOVE THIS CUTE LEXEY!! We are out for a walk to a neighbors house to pick some oranges. (our chimney is in the background)
When Dave whistles, Jo sings.
Every day where possible, I take the dog for a walk. I have some walks I do with the stroller and some walks that I do without the stroller. This is the high point (both literally and figuratively) of my walk without the stroller. It is so beautiful. On Lexey's joy school mornings I put little Jo down for a nap and go walking by myself (while dave is home working). So great!!!
Clare lost her first tooth (she says "toof"). Love this girl!
Just call her Dr. Clare.
BABY JO!! THE SWEETEST THING EVER!!! :)
Sweet sister love.
FOUR HAPPY KIDS!! Quick, grab the camera 'cuz you know this isn't going to last long!
Jo is big enough to sit and see what's going on when we walk now. Have I expressed how much I love my BOB stroller. Too much for words.
Love lex's beautiful curly hair. We have no idea where she got it. Dave was wondering if he should grow out his hair and see if it gets curly too!
Happy people, messy kitchen.
Calvin wearing contacts.
I think Lex meant to be smiling but instead she looks like she's growling.

counting my blessings

I live a charmed life. Here are some of the things I love about life right now.

Dave is in his 5th year of residency. He is on a research year and doesn't have as many hospital responsibilities as he has had in years past or will have in years to come. He is doing a lot of data analysis from home and it is nice to have him around. (It took some adjusting to really love having him home after having him not be home for 10 years but now I really love it). It will be sad to see the hospital swallow him up again in the future. Here are some perks to having him home: I can leave the baby home napping while I run errands. This is amazing since the baby still names 3 times a day. Sometimes he eats lunch with me. He often puts Alexey to bed. We have family dinner several days a week (this is up from 0 days a week). He goes for a run a few days a week and takes the dog.

Dan still lives with us. He has been here I think about 3 years full time and on the weekends ever since we moved her 5 years ago. FREE BABYSITTING... No explanation necessary. We also call dan "The Calvin whisperer" since when Calvin is having a bad day he can sometimes help him turn himself around. Often it involves taking him out to In-N-Out our something like that and that is just fine with me. Also, since he is a gamer and always home on the days that dave does go in to the hospital or lab I can still leave jojo home napping since he is here too!

Calvin is doing pretty well. He is playing soccer and basketball and he goes to scouts and he recently started piano/guitar lessons. All of these things are going well and remain very positive experiences. Church is also going pretty well. We've only had a couple of incidences in the past few months. (we used to have minor incidences weekly and major incidences once a month so church is a little less stressful than it has been). His special education class is okay. We are having one major problem in there involving another kid (deserves it's own post) but Calvin is getting more work done and seems to be happy and comfortable in school. WE had 3 very rocky weeks after Christmas break but things have leveled out now and hopefully it will stay calm for a while.

Clare is so great. She is beautiful, smart and sweet. She is a peacemaker in our home. A few nights ago I went to bed early not feeling well (MASTITIS- ah). And she went to bed by herself after staying up 'til 9:30 cleaning her room to perfection. She was so excited to show it to me in the morning. I signed her up for dance and she has loved it. I am always happy when I choose an activity and it turns out to be a good fit -- sometimes it doesn't always turn out just right. Dance has been great. She also started piano and is progressing well. She plays soccer this season on Calvin's team (I bumped Calvin down a division when he started several months ago and that was a good move as it has enabled him to keep up with his team mates. He would not have been able to keep up otherwise. Because he is playing down, Clare can play on the same team as him). They love having soccer together. It is only a 8 week league but we are enjoying it for now. I am assistant coach.

Alexey is my most challenging child right now. (She is winning this competition no contest. Yikes!) She is feisty and crazy! I love her. She has the prettiest curly hair and funnest personality. She likes to copy her siblings and play the piano too. She has a good ear. I think she will be good at music when the time is right to start. Joy school this year has been good for her. She loves her friends there and that is going well also.

JoJo is the cutest little baby ever! We just love her to pieces. What a joy she is. She loves to kick, sing, baby babble, take a bath with the kids, and eat baby food. Her laughs melt my heart.

Pictures next time!! :)

Happy Birthday to Calvin who will be 9 years old tomorrow! :)

biggest loser

At the first of the year some friends of mine started a biggest loser competition. Since I was still carrying an extra 20lbs and needed a little extra motivation to quit eating so much junk I decided to join. It has been really good for me. The best part of the competition for me is that we have 3 daily goals and we can get a point for keeping each goal every day. This helps to break down the long term goal to something I can think about each day. My goals are no sweets, except on date night and muscle building exercise every day. I can do these everyday rain or shine, with kids sick, home or suspended or whatever. (circumstances sometimes cause me to miss the good cardio workout). We also have 1 non physical goal. Mine has been to read the scriptures before I turn on the computer each day. This had been something on my mind for a while. I knew that my priorities were off since I was waking up and hopping on the computer (email, facebook, etc.) when I knew this was not the most important thing to do with my morning. It is better to put first things first and make sure the most important things are done. It is amazing how simple this is and yet how hard it can be to do sometimes. Our stake president gave a message at conference recently talking about how truly simple it is to do what we need to do and yet difficult to follow through with what we know we should be doing.

We are now almost 4 weeks into the competition and I have been having a great time. So far I have lost 5% of my body weight (I need to lose at least 5% more) and have gotten my 3 points each day except for 1 day when I ate ice cream. (So yummy but not at all worth losing a point over).

I am glad to have had this chance to get my scripture reading habit back into place. Our ward started a 100 day reading of the book of mormon and gave each member a little notebook to tell us what to read each day. This has prevented me from "cheating" and just reading a few verses on the days when I felt I was too busy to read.

Putting the scriptures before the computer has been a good lesson to me also is hopefully helping me form a good habit - one which I really haven't kept up since college - of reading early in the morning for 20 minutes or so. Since I do not work and am not required to use the Internet for anything it has also been a very good change to only get on the computer once or twice a day, and only when scriptures are done. I realize that my email is not as important as I thought it was and I can generally do every thing I need to do in just a few minutes in the afternoon or evening.

For my records. It took me about 4 days of headache and "toxic hunger" in the first week to get over being STARVING for junk food. After that first week it is not as difficult. Well, it is still difficult to not eat whatever I feel like eating, but at least it doesn't hurt!

cute Alexey

Every so often (once a month or less) Lex loves to come get in bed with dave and I during the night. Her favorite spot is right in between the two of us where it is nice and warm and cozy. Sometimes she will fall asleep and then dave or I will carry her back to bed. Sometimes we are too tired to care and just let her stay 'til morning. Sometimes we don't even hear her come and wake up to see a little one in our bed!!! :) Lex has lots of accessories for sleeping - blankets, bears, dolls - and she often brings them with her to our bed. The whole thing is very darling as long as it remains very infrequent. (I remember a phase where she tried coming in every night. She would tell me before bed, "Mom, I might have to come sleep with you because I might have a bad dream." She would pretend to have bad dreams so she could come be with us!)

Anyway, last night was one of those nights for Lex. She came up to our room around 3 or 4am. She got in bed and went right back to sleep. In the morning she told me why she came to our bed. "Mom, last night I came to your room because I thought Clare and Tressel were ghosts. When I walked by Clare and Tressel I saw that they were not ghosts but I was already afraid because when I had closed my eyes I saw a movie and in the movie they were both ghosts." What an interesting way to describe a bad dream.