1200

1200.  It is a number that I am getting used to.  I’m adjusting to it, but I’m still not in love with it. 
1200 is Twelve Hundred Calories per day.  Yes, that’s right.  I’m doing the calorie counting waltz.  I am coming to the end of week 4.
1200 calories is not a lot, but it is manageable – I’m finding new things to eat that keep me full, and so far, it’s not killing me.
A couple of things to note, purely my experiences..  This is not really a “diet” and I’m doing this on week days only.
1) I say this is not a “diet” because I am still able to eat things that I enjoy eating.  I just have to watch the quantity.  I miss pasta the most.  I’ve had it one evening for a side dish while the rest of the family ate platefuls.  That was hard.  One night, the family had spaghetti with meat sauce and I had a taco salad.  Not to say the taco salad isn’t yummy, it is, and on any other night, had the family not been eating pasta in front of my face, I’d be all about a good taco salad.  It’s just difficult with the good stuff in your face. Ha.  Now, my taco salad is made with baby spinach instead of lettuce, it has ground turkey instead of hamburger, and it is just not the same as it normally would have been.  Here’s what I had to look at them eating.


And here’s what I got to eat.   Spinach, tomatoes, light sour cream ground turkey seasoned with taco seasoning, and cheddar cheese.

2)  I’m doing this on week days only.  I’m on a schedule on week days.  It is very difficult to maintain that schedule on the weekends.  So, I don’t count calories on the weekends, BUT I do try to do better than I would normally have done before. 
Here is a normal weekday meal.  And by normal, I mean I eat this following pretty much EVERY day. 
Breakfast:  A boiled egg, light yogurt and coffee with 2 tablespoons fat free evaporated milk and sugar free vanilla syrup.  OR a Greek yogurt with coffee fixed the same as above.
Lunch:  A salad (3 oz baby spinach, 5 oz grape tomatoes, a cup of broccoli or 3 oz baby carrots) with a can of chunk lite tuna on top and 2 tablespoons lite and zesty Italian dressing and  4 oz of Jennie O Sundried Tomato Turkey breast
Afternoon snack: 1 oz light lays (made with Olestra, thank goodness I don’t have the side effects that some people have) and a fruit cup, or 1 oz popcorn chips or something else that’s around 120 calories
Dinner:  Normally chicken and a bunch of veggies.  I have also been able to have a ground turkey burger (tastes close to a hamburger) on one of those 100 calorie sandwich thins.  I’ve also had many types of salads, including the taco salad above.
Night Time Snack: Veggie Straws, Sugar Free Popsicles, Sugar Free Fudge Pops, 100 calorie Skinny Cow desserts or fruit and veggies depending on how many calories I have left.
I’ve learned a couple of neat ways to add variety to the chicken so that it’s not too terribly boring.  One is the Pretzel Crusted Honey Mustard Chicken Strips by Dashing Dish, if you haven’t seen her site yet, please check it out.  Katie’s recipes are awesome.  They have all the calories counted and that makes finding things to eat easy!
I think I’ve probably rambled on enough for you, so I’ll stop now.  This blog entry is to help me stay accountable.  I want to continue this journey.  I want to become healthier and live a long time for my family.  Thanks for reading and have a great day!!

Family Pictures.

Well, the family went and had our pictures taken a few weeks ago, and to be honest, I’m not thrilled with the results. 

They’ll be fine for our Christmas cards, but I don’t think I’ll be using these for much else. 

What do you think?  (keep in mind, THESE are the good ones….)

They are fine, just not as good as what we’ve had in the past.  I’ve been thinking it’s time to get out of the studio and contact someone who will take our pictures outside.  Where do you go for family pictures?  Do you have friends/family that take your pictures or is there a great studio near you?

Thanks for your tips!

Two on Tuesday

I like linking up, so I’m linking up with Andrea for another Two on Tuesday. 
Today’s topic is food.  I love food, so I’ll gladly participate!
What are your two favorite restaurants?  (Only 2????  I’ll do it, but let me just say, this is SOOO difficult to narrow down to only 2….)

Bravo! My favorite Italian restaurant by far.  I love their food.  Yum Yum Yum!  I’ve always loved it since the very first time I went there.  I have good memories there too.  My husband took me to dinner there the same night he proposed.  I went there with the girls as party of my bachelorette night, and it was also my last meal before I had Cooper.  Love it!

Hot Box Pizza!  This obsession began in college, in Bloomington, Indiana at IU.  Down there “Hot Box Pizza” is better known as Pizza Express.  My college roommates and I would order Pizza Express at least once per week.  We ordered The Big 10, which included a 14 inch pizza, 10 breadstix and sauce, along with 2 cups of cola.    We collected the cups, everyone did.  We didn’t have to buy cups when we moved into an apartment.  Ahhh the memories.  I digress…. About 4 years after I moved to Indy, they opened on IUPUI’s campus and quickly transitioned to the Hot Box name.  I’m still loving that pizza almost 10 years later.
  
Link up with Andrea and tell us about your two favorite restaurants!   Have a great Tuesday Everyone!

Misc. Monday

I’m linking up with Carissa today for Miscellany Monday.  Write Random and link up.

 

1) I’m Lazy.  Cannot explain how lazy.  After Cooper goes to bed each night, I turn on the lazy and I don’t do anything.  TV, blogging (not much lately), Pinterest, etc.  Lazy.  I need this time though.  To recover from the day.  It relaxes me and gets me ready to start a brand new day.

 

2) Cooper is growing up so fast.  When he says things like “You’re Welcome Mommy” it’s hard to explain how that feels.  It’s happiness.  To be so proud of the little boy he’s becoming.  I just love him to pieces.  He does things like this → ,
sits in his little chair, eating his goldfish and watching Sesame Street.  Other times he’s a complete terrorist, throwing fits and getting so mad when he doesn’t get his way.  It’s a good thing we don’t negotiate with terrorists in this house

 

3) Covered Bridge Festival.  Tim, Cooper and I headed out mid Saturday morning to the Covered Bridge Festival in Mansfield, Indiana.  That is a picture from their website, but that is EXACTLY the way it was.  Packed in like sardines.  Lots of “fair” food vendors, and lots of crafty items from China.  I was hoping for many more hand made items, but mostly the vendors had lots of items junk from good ole’ China.  Any way, on our way there, we sat in traffic for nearly 2 hours.  I guess that’s why it was like sardines, there were thousands of people packed into this place.  We decided that we’re going to skip this festival in the future.  Just not worth it to us. 

4) The hot tub is still not working.  Yeah, it powers on, the lights and jets work, the radio works and it looks all sparkly and clean.  It just doesn’t get hot.  Tim has replaced the heating element and a few other pieces at this point and it’s still not working.  BOO!  So, we’re going to call in the experts and them to tell us what’s wrong with it.  Hopefully, we’ll be able to do that in the next week or two.  Yesterday, Tim power washed the sides of the hot tub and got it looking nice and new again.  I know he can’t wait, and neither can I, until it works.  Eventually.

5) I want to learn football.  Tim has tried teaching me, but it doesn’t seem to work.  This week, I even bought what I consider “football” food, made sure Cooper went down for his nap around 1:30, so that Tim could teach me during the Colts game Sunday.  FAIL.  I fell asleep.  The sport doesn’t seem so difficult when I watch it, but I just cannot seem to keep up.  To me, they throw the ball, then fall onto one another.  Sometimes they catch it, sometimes they don’t.  Then they start all over again.  Anyone have any tips to learning and understanding football???  I’ll keep trying and I’ll keep annoying my husband until I do understand, because, EVERYONE in my life likes football, I just want to, too.

I hope you have a wonderful first day of the week!  I don’t know about you, but I’m ready for another weekend already!

Fashion Faux Pas

  Linking up with Andrea for Two on Tuesday.  You should link up and tell us your “2 on Tuesday”   Today, we’re telling about our 2 biggest fashion mistakes….  Here we go: 1) A Perm!  Thank goodness I have no pictures of this, but let me give you this.  They called me Hurricane Emily.  Oh gosh.
2) Tight Rolled Jeans.  Everyone did it, and everyone shouldn’t have.  Enough Said.

What are your two biggest errors in the fashion world?  Link up.  I wanna know!!

Moving the Hot Tub

Anyone ever moved a hot tub?  Been involved with anyone going to move a hot tub?  Let me tell you, it’s quite a task. 

Remember when I told you that hubby moved our new hot tub?

Well, here’s how it went.  Hubby got up super early, got to the equipment rental place to get a couple of equipment dollys.  These things were pretty helpful from the little bit of the moving process that I could see.

The guys showed up at the house around 7:45 – and they left the house around 8.  It took a bit to get to the place where they were picking it up, but after that, they loaded it up and got home by 10:45 – 11am.  There were 5 guys total.  Hubby, Andrew, Andrew’s friend Garrett, our neighbor Keith, and our friend from work, Jim, who also had the truck and the trailer. 

*thanks to all of you guys!!**

It took them about an hour to get the hot tub into place on our back deck and I have a few of pictures of that portion of the move.

Now that the hot tub is in it’s place, Tim’s been working on replacing a few parts (turns out that it was frozen) and now it’s full of water.  All of the functions are working EXCEPT the heater.  So, the air bubbles work, the jets work, the lights work, the fountain works, the radio works and the heater DOESN’T.  Can you believe it?  I guess we’ll end up buying a new heating element.  Until then.  I look out my window and see a full hot tub that I cannot sit in until we get that replaced.

I’m glad hubby is a handy guy, otherwise, we’d have to spend lots of dough trying to get this thing up and running, but because he’s so good, we’ve spent less than $100.  Now for the heating element and voilà!

Have a great Monday everyone!

Cooper’s Birthday

Cooper turned two years old on Monday.  My baby is growing up so fast!  We had a simple party – only family – and it was a great time.  We had lunch and cake and ice cream. 

It was a baseball themed party, but we really didn’t do anything huge, just some balloons and a few signs. 

I made “baseball” cupcakes, they were delicious.

Here is the birthday boy.  He’s just so darn cute.  Love him to pieces.

And a few more pictures of some special folks.

Cooper and Layne (exactly 6 months apart Layne born 4/3/09, Cooper 10/3/09)

Me, Cooper and Nana

Dad, Me, Cooper and Grandpa Norman:

After the part was over, Sissy, RyRy and Andrew took Cooper to get this awesome ball pit.  He has SO MUCH fun with it.  There aren’t that many balls in it, but believe me, it’s enough, that boy has a great time!

 

 

 

 

We cannot forget this tent.  Bill and Mary got Coop this awesome circus tent.  I think from IKEA, but holy smokes, I’m jealous.  I wish I could have had one of these bad boys when I was little.  It’s super cool.

One item you might notice if you go back and look through the pictures is a bat.  Cooper is crazy about this bat.  His Nana got it for him and he doesn’t let it leave his side.  He sleeps with this bat.  I don’t think he’s been without it at all this week except during the day at the babysitter’s house.

Cooper had one great birthday.  Successful party and happy boy.  The two most important things about that day.