Biggest Loser Challenge: Week 7

I got in my 8 hours of working out last week (well actually 10 if you count my Monday/Wednesday training with Brandee).  It meant three 6am workouts, and a couple two-a-days, but I did it!  Here's what's on the agenda for this week:

Week 7 Challenge:

Drink a GALLON of water each day

No eating after 7pm

Minimum of 6 servings of fruits and vegetables a day

No potatoes, rice, or white breads

I think the no eating after 7pm will be the hardest for me, especially today and Wednesday when I don't get home for the day until after 7!  Oh, and the water will be hard for me too... I could literally go an entire day without drinking anything - I have to force myself to drink water!  But all in all, shouldn't be the hardest challenge for me. 

Photo Scavenger Hunt

Our Wednesday night Young Womens activity this week was a photo scavenger hunt... and let me tell you, we sure had fun!  We divided into four teams and had about 45 minutes to take pictures, at which point we met back up at another leaders' home to view the pictures and see how creative everyone got.  Kaylee had the idea that, when possible, we would have someone "planking" in the picture, which made our photos even funnier (I thought).  Here is a list of what we had to try and take pictures of within the given time frame, along with some of my favorite pictures from my group.

• Picture with an Elder
• Picture of someone reading the scriptures
• Picture of your group on a slide
• Find or buy a postcard, every team member must sign it and address it to a missionary from a ward
• Picture of a school
• Sign with the population of a city
• Library card
• Human pyramid
• Address with a 1, 2, 3
• Mailbox that is interesting or different
• Bus stop bench with everyone sitting on it
• Team member doing a chin up (extra points for each team member)
• Pink car
• Flower to a senior member of our ward
• Pay phone

• Picture by a store sign
• All team members in a tree
• Riding a kids toy
• A group member carrying a stranger's packages/bags to their car
• Team doing something creative at a kids playground

• Entire team making goofy faces
• A picture of an interesting sign
• Picture of an unusual animal (the more unusual the better)
• Entire team jumping (all must be in the air)
• Create a work of art with sidewalk chalk in a public parking lot
• I can't believe we all fit in here

• An unusual perspective - could be everyone's shoes, or just the top of their heads
• Ride something - the bigger the better
• Entire team playing air guitar
• Get a goofy picture made with one of our Young Women that didn't come and bonus points if they come for the rest of the evening

Wedding Pictures!

I know, this is like my fourth post of wedding pictures, but I was excited to get the CD of pictures back from our photographer last week!  There are a lot of pics to select from - here are some of my favorites.  You wouldn't know that it was freezing cold outside!

Not my favorite picture in the group, but it shows how my hair was done

Love the train on my dress

I Totally Agree

I'm stealing this post from my sister Mandi's blog.  She found a couple articles highlighting the best cities for raising a family and the best places to live in the US... and I'm not surprised at all to find Boise on both lists!  Anyone who knows me knows how much I love Boise.  In fact, I remember one of my friends from college telling me I should work for the Boise City Chamber of Commerce because I always talked about how great Boise is.  Hooray for low crime, high quality of schools, great recreational opportunities, and a pretty darn fabulous place to live!

Really???

One of my Pinterest boards is called "Body by Brandee" and it is where I post anything to do with health or fitness (in honor of my trainer of 2 1/2 years!).  I have found some cool workouts that I've tried out - it's always nice to mix things up a bit!  What cracks me up though is when I come across a pin like this:

Yeah right.  Like doing this set of exercises three times through will make you look like this girl.  If I did this 100 times through, I still wouldn't even come close. My workouts are WAY more strenuous than this (i.e. we've done 8 minutes of wall sits at a time without a break, sometimes holding a medicine ball over our heads!) and I definitely don't have a body like hers.  I know my diet can always improve, but even then, I'm not convinced!

Biggest Loser Challenge: Week 6

I am sick of eating almost nothing but protein!  It was harder than you would think trying to get a hundred and something grams of protein in each day and still staying in the 1000-1400 calorie range.  I guess I can say I'm probably luckier than most people on my team who had to eat quite a bit more protein than me because they weigh more.  Let me tell you... tuna fish and protein shakes were my friend!  I wish I had thought about shrimp earlier in the week - low calories, high protein, and delicious.  Oh well, I'm just glad that I can start eating more fruit and limited carbs again this week!  Anyway, I was excited for a new challenge, until I saw what it was!

Week 6 Challenge:

8 hours of working out

(not including any time training with Brandee)

and 20 minutes of abs EVERY day

Since last night I've been trying to calculate how I might fit in EIGHT hours of working out besides my workouts with Brandee.  I went to the gym at 6 am this morning and I'll be there at 6am on Thursday and Friday... I'll have to try to go tomorrow night for an hour, and maybe late on Thursday (I already had Thursday evening plans).  I'm thinking that means I will need to skip my normal workout with Brandee on Saturday morning because I'll need to get in at least two hours of "non-trainer" workout.  If I can do all that, and I get in 20 minutes of abs on Sunday, that leaves me only 40 minutes shy, so I'm thinking a late Wednesday night workout at home after Young Womens (since I'll need to get 20 minutes of abs in that day anyway)?  Wow, that means I'll have a couple two-a-day workouts this week (when I add in two or three workouts with Brandee).  I'm already tired.  Here goes...

Happy Easter

Our first Easter together as a family... hope everyone had a wonderful day remembering Christ and his resurrection!

Routine

I've found Kylee does much better with routine, so I've been trying to establish some routine for her over the last couple months.  Mondays are our most set-in-stone days, and they are my favorite day with Kylee!  Here are the "routine" parts of the day:

• Wake up any time after 7:00 am.  We put a clock in Kylee's room and taught her about the number "7". Every morning I hear her call from her room, "The clock says seven!  Come look, the clock says seven!"  Pretty cute that she wants to show us.  This has made my life much easier... way better than waking up at 5:30 or 6:00 am (or 3:57 am like her first night at our house when she informed me she had taken "a really long nap").  I like love my sleep :-)

• On Mondays, Kylee gets to go play during the day at her Grandma Hudson's house.  She LOVES her grandma!  I think she prefers her grandma over anyone else.
• Another thing that Kylee loves is her gymnastics.  I bought her gymnastics classes for Christmas, and she is always so excited to go.  I've only been able to watch her a couple times, but she is doing great!  She does gymnastics from 6-7 pm while I do bootcamp right next door at my gym.

• After gymnastics, we always come home and take a bath.  Kylee loves her bath time.  (Do you see a pattern here - Mondays are full of things Kylee loves!)
• Once bath time is over, we have Family Home Evening, which for now just consists of reading a story out of her Book of Mormon story book.  It's been fun to watch as Kylee remembers parts of some of the stories... 

• By this time, it's after 8:00 pm, which means it's bedtime (Kylee knows the number "8" for this reason)!  We finish off the evening with brushing teeth, saying prayers, and singing songs.  Every night, after our bedtime routine, Kylee gets 5 minutes of "lamp time" and 5 minutes of "hall light time"... a little thing I picked up from Sunny when I visited her in Rexburg a couple years ago.  Thanks Sunny - this has been SUPER helpful!

YW Keeps Me Busy!

I feel like all I did this last week was work on Young Womens!  Here is an overview of what I did:

I was asked to make an Easter treat for each Young Woman in our ward that the leaders could drop by.  Here's what I came up with.  Well, what I meant to say is here's what I copied off of Pinterest!

Then I was in charge of the joint Young Men/Young Women activity this last Wednesday.  We did a Family Feud game.  I found a bunch of questions online - we had a good mix of fun questions and church questions.  We split the kids into four "families", let them pick family names, and then they faced off two families at a time.  I played the game show host.  I also spent several hours making the treats... 60 cups of popcorn (using my air popper for the first time ever!) and then I made a cinnamon/caramel/chocolate drizzle popcorn (I modified this recipe from Our Best Bites) and a "poppy chow" popcorn (chocolate, peanut butter, and powdered sugar).  It didn't help that I didn't start the popcorn until Tuesday night when I got home from Bunko... close to 10pm!

Finally, I was responsible for teaching the combined YW Easter lesson (complete with handouts and treats of course).  I prepared way too much material, but essentially the first half of the lesson was on the atonement and the second half of the lesson was on the resurrection.

Now, a start of a new week means I've gotta finalize everything for our Wednesday evening class activity (we are making fabric flowers - so I've been surfing Pinterest for tutorials)... this includes figuring out a pattern, buying the necessary supplies, and making a sample to make sure I'll be able to teach it!  I'm leaning toward making this t-shirt fabric flower because I think it's cute.  Fingers crossed I can get this to work!  I look forward to having my newly called advisor back mid-May (she's currently visiting her daughter in Japan)...

Biggest Loser Challenge: Week 5

I was right - week 4 was harder for me, but I finished 20 miles!  I wrapped up the week with a 5 mile run Thursday morning and a 6 mile run Friday morning.  My legs were sore.  That tells me I need to run more.  I know I hate it, but I know it's good for me... and I was surprised it wasn't as hard to run as I thought it would be!  In fact, Robbin, Kris, Melissa, and I all decided to run a 10k together in May.  That means more running between now and then to stay in shape!

Okay, enough about last week... here's what we've got on the plate for this week.

Week 4 Challenge:

Eat between 1000-1400 calories

along with

Eating your weight (lbs) in protein (grams)

This didn't sound too difficult when Brandee first mentioned it, but I think getting my weight in in protein will be harder than I first thought!  Here's to a week of protein... and not much else!

Just a Glimpse

Matt and I are on opposite schedules.  He works nights - he leaves for work at 6:00 pm and gets home at 7:30 in the morning.  I have to leave for work just after 7:30 am and I get home around 5:45 pm from work.  Even on the days he has off (4 on, 4 off), he keeps his night schedule because it would be difficult to switch back and forth.

I knew that this is how things would go.  With shift pick every 6 months, I know that this will be the situation probably close to half our marriage!  I thought I had prepared myself.  I knew that there would be a lot of nights when it was just me and Kylee, I knew that I would go days basically without seeing Matt... I thought it wouldn't be that big of a deal since I have been on my own for years.  Well, the days with just me and Kylee are fairly simple and really great for the most part, but I didn't have any idea how hard it was going to be for me to not see Matt.  The first few weeks were especially rough, but we've gotten into a routine, and we are learning to take advantage of every minute we have together.

Well, this weekend I got a glimpse of what it would be like if Matt and I had the same schedule.  And it was wonderful.  I'm not sure how it happened - Matt must not have slept well on Friday during the day.  We went on a date Friday night - to the Creperie for dinner and watched Wrath of the Titans in 3D IMAX.  When we got home, we planned out our honeymoon (can't wait to spend a week with my hubby!), and then I fell asleep. Matt fell asleep on the bed next to me.  He didn't plan on it.  He had intended to stay up like he normally does - in fact, he was sleeping in his jeans... and still had on his belt and had his wallet, pocket knife, and flashlight in his pockets.  This was the first time since the night of our wedding that we slept in the same bed at the same time.  Seems silly, I know - why does it matter if he's next to me while I'm sleeping?  But it does matter.  And it meant a lot to me.  And then I had the best Saturday with him.  Again, silly, especially since our Saturday consisted of watching General Conference, going on a motorcycle ride, and barbecuing lunch - nothing special or extravagant, but the fact that I got to spend the entire day with him was amazing.

So now I'm looking forward to August... and more days like I had the chance to have this weekend.  I love Matt and am excited to share those "normal" days (and nights) with him.

Biggest Loser Challenge: Week 4

As I thought, I breezed through week 3's challenge... but week 4 is going to be quite a bit harder for me!

Week 4 Challenge:

Run/walk 20 miles OR

Do 40 miles on the elliptical

Three months ago, I could have done this no problem, but with Kylee in the mix now (and Matt on an opposite work schedule from me), it is definitely harder to make it to the gym.  I can't go in the mornings before work anymore if we have Kylee and Matt is working (the gym doesn't have daycare that early in the morning... plus Kylee doesn't get up until 7am!).  I could take Kylee to the gym daycare in the evenings, but so far our evenings have been booked (i.e. tomorrow we have a play date with Savanah and Mila and I also have Bunko).  Soooo, the trick will be having time to actually get to the gym.  I ran three miles today, so only 17 left.  I won't make it to the gym tomorrow or Wednesday, so that leaves Thursday and Friday before work and Saturday.  I think I'll try to go on some walks over lunch this week so I don't have to run 6 miles three days in a row!  Wish me luck!