Katherine

Loves seeing her name typed, so here it is!

And another thing...

I'm off the diet and not exercising right now. I'm not happy with myself, but it happened. Now I just have to get back on track.

Oh...

And I bought my Wii!!!!!!! YEAH!!!!! =)

Been awhile...

Oh my goodness. It's been awhile since I've posted on here and a lot has happened for us since then.

Well, we were without a car for quite a while. It sucked. But with the help of my wonderful in-laws, we were able to have transportation when it was desperately needed - thank you to Bill & Jeannette! We were finally able to buy a new(er) car after almost a month without one. We bought a 96 Jeep Grand Cherokee and it's fantastic. It's white, like every other car we've ever owned. We took it to get looked at, had the major problems fixed and now we're on our way to loving our new car completely.

Nathan had a birthday this month. He turned 14! Can you believe it? I met him like this:


And now he's like this:

Time flies when you're a parent! We had a small family gathering for his party - basically us and grandparents. We had to cancel the party we had planned and rearrange it on such short notice. But it was fine, I guess.

The week after we got our new car, we decided to have a mini-vacation, which was nothing more than a night down in GR. We stayed at a suite with a pool. It was nice. We went to the Children's museum, walked around Frederick Meijer Gardens and then ended our foray at Chuck E. Cheese's.

My daughter has a crush on Chuck.

Updates on the kids: Nathan has the opportunity to go to Mackinac Island in May on a field trip with his school. Very exciting, except for one thing: his grades. I told him that I would pay for his field trip except he had to get his grades into the B's or higher. He's yet to do that. He says that I told him that the end of the trimester was the cut-off. The end of the trimester is next week. Good luck to Nathan!

Katherine's doing well in her IEP. She sounds so much better than she did last September. She's making lots of friends and we just had her friend Kita over the other day. She loves Kita like a sister. She's got a future husband already too. She's marrying Toby, the king of her world. He's a little boy who I saw just yesterday, telling her hi and hugging her. I was, at first, afraid that my daughter was just a little stalker. Now I see why she says they're getting married. Any boy who will avoid lunch to hang out with her is a keeper. =)

We are all sick in our house. Flu, cold, whatever is going around right now is the 5th member of our family. The only one not feeling like poop is Katherine. Only because she had it last week. She was so sick. I babied her for days but I didn't care. She had high temps and slept most of the day over the long weekend.

Well, I'm up early, so I'm taking advantage by going to watch old BBC shows. Love to you all! Oh, and here are the pictures from January and February.

My first goal reached!!!

I did it!

I lost all the weight that I gained since last March. I don't know how much it was, but I can tell you that from every picture of myself taken since last March, it was like a slideshow of fat growing on me. But now I'm back down, and that was in 11 days! I'm so proud of myself.

We are still continuing the first phase of the diet for another week. I am eager to see what happens in the coming week, anxious to see what dieting and exercising does for my self-esteem and my weight loss.

"Did she just say exercising?" Yes, yes I did.

I have 2 videos that I would like to do to lose weight. The first is a Pilates for Dummies video and all I've learned is that it hurts my tailbone to do it on the bare carpet in my bedroom. So today I went out and got an exercise mat that's foam and pink, hoping that it will help me to be able to do Pilates easier.

In addition to my mat, I also got an exercise video - Leslie Sansone Walk at Home. This woman annoys the crap out of me, but I'm determined to do this video until I can finish the 4 miles on the video in less than an hour. And that's some commitment, considering this woman loves to refer to her happy thighs in almost every video.

I'm buying myself a scale and I'm going to update every week with my weight loss. Hopefully I'm meeting my goal by sticking to the diet and the exercises. I'm keeping the faith!

I slipped!!!

Oh, I'm so ashamed...

Yesterday, after our playdate, Katherine and I came home and made cookies. Since I've been okay with pizza and fast food restaurants, I didn't think anything of making cookies. As I was finishing up the first batch of baking, I licked my finger!!! I immediately spit the bits of cookie dough out, but I was mad at myself - I slipped!

I've been trying not to focus on it so I don't psych myself out, but it's hard when I've been doing so well for 11 days and "the slip-up" happens. Ah!

Previous to this, Jonathan and I had decided to do 3 weeks of phase 1, so although I would love to be able to have the whole grain blueberry waffles on Wednesday morning, if it means I can lose more weight faster, I'll do it!

I have yet to weigh myself again, but I'm hoping that the new number will be fantastic! When I do, I'll let everyone know how much I've lost so far.

Enjoy your Sunday!

The South Beach Diet - Day 9

Hello all! Just here to report how things are going on my new diet - new lifestyle - towards a new me.

We are on Day 9 of Phase 1, which means 9 days of virtually no sugars of any kind. No breads, no fruit, no nothing that I crave most days. The first couple of days (Days 1 through 6) consisted of Jonathan and I throwing back and forth ideas of what we would eat if we could. The winner is a Taco Bell chalupa, beef baja, and a huge Mountain dew. Second place is Pancakes with butter. Third would have to be the pizza we've been smelling.

But besides the immense cravings, we've been doing very well. We've not eaten anything unless it was on Phase 1's "Foods to Enjoy" list. And I've come up with some splendid recipes. We've enjoyed salisbury steak, ham, cauliflower and broccoli, turkey and ham sandwich wraps with lettuce and a lot of pickles. Plus being able to enjoy the no sugar added fudgsicles makes things a lot easier. And the sugar free candy is actually pretty good.

I haven't started exercising yet, but I'll get there. I have a pilates video that I would love to try. When spring comes and they open the parks again, I'd love to start taking family walks.

I said that this is a diet or lifestyle change for me, but it's actually for all 4 of us. There is no pop or juice in my house right now. If they're thirsty, we have milk or water. For snacks, there's fruit (apples, oranges and bananas), cheese, lunch meat; but no chips or other fattening snacks. The only "cookies" in our house are Teddy Grahams and graham crackers. As we progress further into the diet and we get back into our main food groups, we will be substituting more items, such as our breads, cereals, pasta, vegetables, etc. We need to get back to whole foods, not the processed stuff we've been consuming for so long.

And for all of this and how expensive it is, it's completely worth it to me. To have healthy kids to know how to eat right and eat smart is more important than the cost, and well worth the money.

As for how the kids will react, Nathan seems eager to start this diet with us, though he doesn't realize how in depth the eating rules go. He's already enjoyed the whole grain waffles and the whole grain pita pockets in place of white bread and plain waffles. Katherine, with her love of chicken nuggets, french fries and pizza, will probably be harder to influence, but I think she'll adapt over time.

Nathan's doing poorly in his classes, no matter what we say or do. It's discouraging as a stepmother to have to live with this day in and day out, encouraging, cajoling, punishing, and not getting any results. Hopefully he realizes that we are hard on him because we love him and want him to do better. Ah, the folly of youth.

Well, almost bedtime. Being sugarless & caffeine-free makes me tired!

Out of the mouths of babes...

Katherine: "Mama, are you a boy?"

Me: "No, I'm a woman. Is Nathan a boy?"

Katherine: "No, Nathan's a man."

Nathan nods in quiet approval.

Uploaded more photos...

I just uploaded photos of the kids back from the "olden days", also known as 2003 to 2006. Enjoy!!