Target Practice

Anyone who knows Matt knows he loves  guns and loves shooting.  Well, since Matt was going to be working ALL weekend (including Memorial Day!) I decided to take some time off on Friday to spend with him.  I suggested shooting since it's been a while since we have gone and because Jen has been wanting to go to try out her new gun.  We had plans to shoot outdoors, but since it was so rainy we decided to hit Impact Guns instead.  Matt is always a great teacher, and we had fun shooting - especially shooting at the zombie splatter targets!

 

My First Mother's Day

Mother's Day was a couple weeks ago, and it was a little extra special for me this year... because this year I was actually a mom :-)  It was pretty cool to have Matt tell me, "Happy First Mother's Day."  I am happy that I can be a mom to Kylee.  I do have to admit, I'm pretty lucky... Kylee is a pretty good kid.  I hope that when Matt and I are blessed with other kids in the future that they are as sweet and mild mannered as she is!

Unfortunately, I didn't get to spend much time with Matt or Kylee on Sunday since Matt had to work and Kylee was with her mom for the holiday, but I was blessed to be able to spend part of the day with my mom and my grandma.  They are both pretty amazing women.

Matt did get me the sweetest gift for Mother's Day... I had previously commented on this cool book that my sister Mandi had called 101 Places You Gotta See Before You're 12!  Whenever Mandi and her family go to one of the places listed in the book, she blogs about it.  Well Matt remembered this and that's what he gave me for Mother's Day.  So thoughtful!  I see lots of fun family adventures in our future!

Primary Prayer

Kylee was assigned the opening prayer in Primary today.  We have been talking about it for a couple weeks, and she seemed excited to go sit on the chair at the front of the room especially marked for the person giving the prayer.  She was so stinkin' cute.  Her prayer went something like this:

Dear Heavenly Father.

Thank you for this day.

Thank you for mommy and daddy.

Thank you for the food.  (oops!)

(Looking over at me for some prompting for the next couple of lines)

Thank you for our teachers.

Thank you for our blessings.

Help us to be good.

In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

I was one proud mama :-)

Experiments in Hair

I have decided I'm no natural when it comes to styling hair.  This should be no surprise, considering the disaster the one time I tried to cut my own bangs.  Anyway, I have been experimenting over the last few months in trying to do Kylee's hair.  It is difficult with a three-year-old, because it's usually less than 30 minutes of playing before it looks like she hasn't had her hair done in days.  Oh well, I keep trying!  And I'm actually maybe getting better.  Here are a couple styles I tried this last week:

Biggest Loser Challenge: Weeks 10 & 11

We are almost done with this year's Biggest Loser challenge.  I've been pretty good about doing the weekly challenges, but unfortunately I haven't been good as far as being all-around-healthy.  For example, on the weeks that I had a fitness challenge, I didn't eat that great.  Or the weeks that I had a nutrition challenge with no calorie limit, I know I ate more than I should have.  Needless to say, there are two weeks left of this challenge, and I'll be lucky if I lose 5 pounds in the 12 weeks... and that will be if I'm amazing over the next couple weeks!  Anyway,  here was this last week's challenge as well as next week's challenge.  And here's to two weeks of rock star eating and exercising!

Week 10 Challenge:

Eat 1100-1500 calories a day AND

Run/Walk 10 miles, Bike 10 miles, 10 miles on the elliptical, 500 push-ups, 500 reverse crunches, and 500 pop squats (over the course of the week).

Week 11 Challenge:

Consume 5 servings of vegetables a day,
Eat 1100-1500 calories a day AND

5,000 meters on the row machine, 300 floors on the stair master, 500 v-sits, 500 sit-ups on the ab machine, and 30 minutes cardio with heart rate at 85-95% max heart rate (for me that's 160-180 bpm).

So there we go.  I'll have to hit the gym several days to get this in (since almost all of this has to be done at the gym!).

Oh, one more thing... I thought I'd write this down here so I'm totally committed and can't back out.  I'm doing another half marathon.  Jen and I are going to sign up for the Tinker Bell Half Marathon in Anaheim in January.  It actually sounds pretty cool - you run through the Disneyland Resort!  I know, I hate running, so why am I doing this?  Well, last year when Brandee made me run the Lake Lowell half, I really trained and I felt so good for running the entire race.  And last year at this time, I felt like I was in the best shape of my life.  I think it's because the running really makes a difference.  So here goes.  In 8 months from today, I will be running 13.1 miles.  And maybe, just maybe, since I'm going to start training right away, I might just run one this fall as a practice.  We'll see.

Bears

Came across this this week and thought I'd share!

I think I'd like to be a bear.

When you're a bear you get to hibernate.  You do nothing but sleep for six months.  I could deal with that.

Before you hibernate, you're supposed to eat yourself stupid.  I could deal with that too.

When you you're a girl bear, you birth your children (who are the size of walnuts) while you're sleeping and wake up to partially grown, cute, cuddly cubs.  I could definitely deal with that.

If you're a mama bear, everyone knows you mean business.  You swat anyone who bothers your cubs.  If your cubs get out of line, you swat them too.  I could deal with that.

If you're a bear, your mate EXPECTS you to wake up growling.  He EXPECTS that you will have hairy legs and excess body fat.

Yup, gonna be a bear.

Happy Graduation!

Happy graduation to all my friends who graduated from BSU on Saturday!  A special shout out to Candice for getting her Masters in Counseling and to Mandy for getting her Masters in Public Administration.

Me and Mandy

I just had to share a funny picture... since Mandy organizes Commencement as part of her job, she specifically selected the seat she would be sitting in.  Little did she know that the seat she picked would put her on camera the entire ceremony (check her out to the left of the speaker)!  I got a chuckle every time I looked at the screen :-)

Finally, I thought I would share a video of the Student Speaker - George Fenton.  This is definitely the best Student Speaker I've heard at a commencement ceremony - he even got a standing ovation!

This is the Life

It has been just over three months since Matt and I were married... so we figured it was time to take a honeymoon :-)  We spent all last week in the Bahamas, followed by a couple days in sunny Florida.  And let me tell you, it was hard to get back into the swing of things this week!  Anyway, here are some highlights from our trip:

We decided to cruise with Norwegian Cruise Lines (yea for freestyle cruising!), and the best part was there were no days at sea :-)  We were in port from 8am-5pm each day so we could maximize our time on the islands.

Our first stop was the Grand Bahama Island where we went kayaking through the Lucayan National Forest.  It was beautiful!  After kayaking, we played a bit in the ocean and went on a nature walk, including checking out some caves (complete with bats!).

The next stop was Great Stirrup Cay.  This is actually a private island owned by Norwegian.  After taking tender boats to shore, we spent time snorkeling and relaxing on the beach.

Our final port was Nassau... and this is where we had the coolest excursion - an underwater personal sub experience!  The best way I've thought to describe what we did was ride around on underwater scooters with bubbles over our heads.  The bubbles weren't entirely closed off - the ocean water would splash up onto my face, but there was an air tank that pumped air into my "bubble" that kept the bubble from completely filling with water.  Anyway, the fish were beautiful and were all around us and we "drove" right along a reef.  Seriously, this was one of the neatest things I've ever done.  

After our sub experience, we had time to walk around Nassau and do a little shopping.  Oh, and we stopped for lunch at the Fish Fry where I enjoyed my favorite - a virgin strawberry daiquiri.

We got back to Miami early Friday morning and our flight didn't leave until Saturday night, so we got to see some of the sights in Miami.  We started out, though, with watching The Avengers!  Matt had been so excited to see it that of course we had to see it on opening day... and again Saturday before we flew out!  It was one of the best movies I've seen in a long time.

I was pretty excited to eat lunch at Serendipity!!!

Oh, and check out our ride... we rented a convertible Camaro and drove around with the top down.  We went to a show at the planetarium, watched a laser light show, went to sushi, and oogled over the beautiful homes and fancy cars we saw.  I would have loved to have met with a real estate agent, pretending we were moving to Florida, just so I could see the insides of the houses!

Biggest Loser Challenge: Weeks 8 & 9

I am a little behind on my blogging, but I have a really good excuse - I was on my honeymoon for the last week :-)  Needless to say, I've got lots of updating to do!  But here's a catch-up post for my biggest loser weekly challenges.  I had a modified Week 8 Challenge since I was on my honeymoon... I had to do one hour of exercise each day (everyone else had different exercises each day).  But here's what's on the "plate" this week:

Week 9 Challenge:

CLEAN eating... nothing processed.  If it didn't come from the earth that way, you can't eat it.

After a week of vacation, I've really been craving a chocolate chip cookie the last couple days.