78/365

 

This is what 35 meals for 2 people look like. Marc and I are embarking on a new healthy eating plan. Let me tell you. We were so supersizing everything we ate. Even though I use the little plate, it was still so much more than we should be eating. That would explain why I haven't been able to lose any weight over the last year despite making many changes to my diet.

I've also found that I am a picker. I go into the kitchen and pick at something. Especially if that something was really tasty for dinner. Today, I cut out sugar in my coffee. I still use the creamer, but it is non fat. Baby steps. I used to use TEASPOONS of sugar (seriously, like 5 time 5 cups a day). I hope this helps. We are doing weekly weigh ins on Sunday's and I'm starting my transformation blog elsewhere. I will link to it once I get permission from my husband for all of you lovelies to peruse our gigantic effort to get healthy and happy.

(I am not endorsed or paid by NutriSystem. This was my choice of a diet plan to follow based on friends who have embarked on this road and had huge success. We bought the plan through Costco at a significant discount $259 per person instead of $299 for women and $309 for men).

So far behind, I must start over

Do you ever get to the point where you have a weeks worth of blogs written (in your head), but you spend so much time reading other blogs, facebook and your current book that you end up not posting anything?

That would be me. I feel like such a loser, but I know I'm doing this for me and it's a happy coincidence that such lovely people want to follow my misadventures. I would love to do a quick recap, but I'm thinking I will do the current thing first and fill in the blanks from my last two hectic weeks.

We went to California to see my Dad get married. Very good!
We returned to Washington to finish out the week of school while being in charge of the schoo food drive. Very rewarding!
We celebrated our 11 year anniversary. Very lovely!
We started Spring Break. Very fun, except for the torrential rain that decided to bestow itself upon us!

I will start with today (I'll try to keep this concise since I know my magazine length reading brain can only process a little at a time).

We finished our canned food drive at school last Friday. Each day I go around to all the classrooms and count all the cans. I then take the cans (or boxes) to the school stage to pack into banana boxes for the food bank. Lastly, I go out into the quad and update our progress charts to keep the kids competing against each other (class vs. class). A little competition for a great cause. It worked because 1 - 4th grade class brought in 276 items and on the last day, a 4/5 combo class started to catch up with 210 items. I frantically picked up all these items on Friday (and dropped off scrambled eggs for the teacher luncheon. Let me say, 36 eggs is not enough eggs for scrambled eggs for our teaching staff of 20).

So, back to today. I call the Food Bank at 9:30am to tell them I need to go up to the school to properly pack all the boxes and then they can come pick them up. I'm informed that the truck is on the way and they have been calling the school all morning. I inform her that it is Spring Break and no one is there. We agree to meet at 10am. Have you ever showered and ran out the door with 4 kids in 20 minutes? Ugh! I'm so glad they can all dress themselves and actually listen to me. We made it to school at 9:50am. The Food Bank truck arrived at 9:51am. I ran up on stage and was repacking those boxes as quickly as possible. They need to be 1 layer of cans with the lighter stuff on top. Luckily, they were really nice guys and were willing to help get the boxes ready. Our school custodian came over and helped load everything into the truck. I'm one lucky woman to have such great help.

My big job for the day done, I head home to drop off Miss M and her friend at her house. Then I get a call from two Mom's who need to get into school to prepare everything for our Spring Fundraiser. I head right back up to school and spend the most productive day going through all the Committee notebooks and cleaning up the stage. We even ventured into the overhead room that no one has been in to for 5 years. Turns out it's full of costumes for different school plays. Perfect!

I head out to pick up lunch for all the kids and then go back to make some die-cuts for a large sign Thanking the kids of our school for their generous contributions to the Food Bank. In total, we collected 1507 items. They did great! 

My ending to the day was to come home to two large boxes of NutriSystem food. Marc and I have decided to end our weight gain and make it a weight loss. Time to loss that baby weight and get back to a comfortable place. Let me say, 35 days worth of food (for 2 people) takes up a lot of room in my pantry. We start our first day tomorrow. Marc is having his final splurge of junk (not that he enjoys this junk) of movie popcorn. He volunteered to take the older 2 and a friend to see "How to Train a Dragon" in Imax 3D tonight. They are going to have a great time and I'm having a fun time with the little 2. We did some grocery shopping and are now enjoying watching 1 last episode of "Phineas and Ferb" before we head off to bed.

I feel great getting this down. I really will get those photos up of the wedding. It was the best part of our very fast vacation. (Man I'm long winded).

77/365

I ran the school food drive last week. Thanks to the generous
donations of our parents and students and teachers, we collected 1507
cans of food for the food bank.

selfless promotion

While I'm all ADD feeling today, I remembered it's Friday in Austrailia and there is a most wonderfully funny mum there that hosts this awesome link up to other moms called Flog Your Blog Friday. I have found some wonderful blogs to follow and gathered a few friends to read my interesting boring little life. I actually like to write all about myself and LOVE to read all about you. It's like having a ton of close friends (though none of us seem to have time anymore to go out with friends with the sports and school events 4 kids require).

Without further ado, you can always check out my Flog Your Blog page at the top of this blog. It has all the links from the past 4 weeks and the current week. You might find somebody who totally makes you happy.

She has a few rules, that Brenda at Mummy Time I'm copying and pasting them here and if I remember I'll include Mr. MckLinky on here too.

Okay, listen up newbies. FlogYoBlog Friday is a meme that I have started a couple of weeks back. Here's a quick summary. FlogYoBlog is all about promoting your blog, sharing the love and connecting with your fellow bloggers (most of whom are moms/mums, by the way). The interwebs is loaded with gazillion blogs and it can be quite a daunting task finding that one or two or three bloggers that you can actually talk to, exchange emails with and hopefully be e-bff's with. So if you are looking for them, you have come to the right place, baby. 

I do have some rules though. So, please read through them and *try* to follow them. Do not make me get my dusty voodoo dolls. Because they really scare the bejeebus out of me. Also, if you do get a follow as a result of linking up.  Could you please at least go to their site, say hi, leave them some comment or if you're feeling the loveydoves then subscribe to their feeds or follow their blog? Law of Reciprocity. You know what I'm saying?

On that note, please assume your position in The Circle of Friendship as we start with the linky love.

And........GO!

 

So there you go. My first Flog Your Blog link up that I did at home on my computer instead of from my phone while out and about. Speaking of, I need to go get my kids from the bus. I'm so easily distracted. 

 

Happy Thursday/Friday!! 

 

 

laundry

Where to begin. Where does it end. 

We went to California last Thursday to attend my Dad's wedding. It was beautiful and will take at least 2 posts to capture the photos and words.

I've been so busy reading the blogs I'm behind on (I'm OCD enough that I HAVE to read them and not just mark "all read"). I'm loving reading them though. I just finished reading "the Glass Castle" which I loved and now I am reading "the Help". I need so many more hours in the day. I feel like I'm in fast forward all the time. My books keep arriving at the library with a little tag saying it's in high demand and I need to return it in 2 weeks. The Glass Castle was 5 days overdue. The Help is due tomorrow (it will be late too). And I just picked up Shiver which is due in 2 weeks. Ugh! I love to read, but feel so far behind.


My kids school is holding their annual food drive. While this is a great cause and a lot of fun, I am in charge since I'm the head of the Jr PTSA. Which means, every day I'm up at the school going around to each classroom with a trolley and paper to count out the cans and take them to the stage. I have these great posters I've made up to mark where each classroom is at. Tomorrow is the last day and then everything is packed up and sent to the local food bank.


My 11 year anniversary is this Saturday. Marc and I take turns for who is in charge of planning the event (since it's only 6 weeks after Valentine's). We switch who does Valentine's and who does our anniversary. I'm stuck this year. We just got back from California and we are to go away for a weekend in 2 weeks with my brother and then the following weekend with Marc's family, plus Easter is next Saturday. That's 4 weekends of events and a limited budget. I'm still trying to figure out if I should plan something fun for him to go do or for both of us or for the family. I hate to ask my brother or Marc's sister to watch the kids again. We seem to be begging a lot from our free baby sitters.


I'm feeling a little ADD today, but I think it's from being tired. Staying up until 1am to finish a book and then Miss R decided to get sick last night at 3am. She sat up, in my bed, and said, "I'm going to throw up". I said, "run". We try and train the kids to run to the toilet. But, No. She barfs all over the end of my bed and onto the pile of clean laundry on the floor. Yes, the clean laundry.


I was just commenting to Marc that it feels like the laundry is never done. We started it on Monday night after we got back from our trip. I did more on Tuesday and was finishind Wednesday. I seperate all the clothes into each kids pile, adult shirts, adult pants and towels. Mr N's clothes were the pile Miss R threw up on. So, today I'm running the sheets, Mr N's clothes and a few of the other casualties from last night explosive fun through the sanitary wash of the washer. I'm looking forward to the weekend and more of that wonderful sunshine we had yesterday. Am I making sense or just whining.


I'll tell you whose whining. Miss R, but I guess she has the excuse of being sick today. After a long, hot bath she is feeling much better. She snuck into my make up and put on some mascara. She's 5. She did pretty good though, but she has black under her eyes from where she rubs them.


So, my life, almost caught up and feeling so happy and relieved to get my blog post done. I felt like such a slacker not writing out my daily life and thoughts. So, off to drink some coffee and sit with Miss R to watch the end of Ponyo (strange movie). And maybe move the computers downstairs. And maybe... it never ends. Does it?

76/365

Last look back leaving California. We had fun. We'll miss you. See you
soon!

75/365

Dad and Betts got married today. More photos later. We are off to the
reception. Robot-me even teared up a little. Held it together to enjoy
the ceremony though.