Hot Nacho

It's the morning of the 3rd day. I'm hungry. I want substance. However, this is the longest I've ever made it doing something like a fast or cleanse and I can't quit now! The end is SO NEAR! :)
I actually ran out of Shakeology with my last shake yesterday and was sort of fretting about what to do..and then I remembered that my mom has some samples that I gave her that she never did use, so I'm stealing them back from her and finishing out this thing. Which is why I'm SO HUNGRY right now. I'm not going over to her house to get the goods until after I take the kids to school, which means I have another hour to wait. I need to go make my green tea so I can at least have SOMETHING in my tummy.
I got on the scale this morning and it's down another 2 pounds! (5 total so far!) That's pretty amazing. If I lose even just ONE more pound, I will be down to the lowest weight I've seen in the past year. What's even more exciting is knowing that when I get done with this thing, I'm not going back to eating like Miss Piggy...but that I have a PLAN already. I am doing the TurboFire 5 day Inferno plan and planning out all our meals from the P90X, Insanity and TurboFire Nutrition Guides. Not only will that ensure that I don't gain...but I should be able to continue to lose and finally reach that elusive goal weight that I've been aiming at for nearly 7 years now.
But, to address the title of this post, I should admit that last night, after my 3rd shake-which I drank AT the ball field, I bought Brooklyn some cheese nachos. She asked me to hold them for her while she went to the bathroom. In a moment of impulse, I grabbed up the cheesiest chip and shoved it into my mouth. Blah. It wasn't NEARLY as yummy as it looked. Hooray! I'm actually kind of glad I did it...because if I hadn't, I would have been sitting there-mouth watering as I watched her eat them thinking about how I was missing out. Instead, I tasted and saw that they weren't even CLOSE to good enough for me to blow this for, and I was totally fine the rest of the time.
Of course...if it HAD been reallllly good...who knows what might have happened!?!?! :-/
Anyhow, I have to leave you with a cute story that also pertains to the title of this post.
When Grant was about 2, my uncle bought him a truck that had several buttons on it. If you pushed the red one right on the top, it played "Cotton Eyed Joe". We had that truck and listened to that song for probably a YEAR before I over-heard him singing "where did you come from, where did you go? Where did you come from HOT NACHO". HA HA HA He wasn't being funny either..he seriously thought those were the lyrics. Now anytime we hear that song, we all sing it that way. It's much more fun than cotton eyed joe anyway. :) Try it.

Still cleansing....

Man, it seems like it's been days since I typed that last post! It's been a long day I guess...and it's not even close to over. Grant has his 1st baseball game tonight starting at 7:45 and ending at 9:15 and it's in another town about 25 minutes from here! That is RIDICULOUS to have 1st graders out playing ball that late! He'll have to have a bath when he gets home, jammies, teeth brushed, story, prayer...by the time he gets to sleep it'll be 2 full hours past his bedtime. :(
Anyway, I feel victorious to say that I'm still hanging in there with the cleanse. I got scarily close to ditching it about an hour ago. The kids were snacking, I heated up dinner for Matt, caught a glimpse of the huge strawberry birthday cake sitting in the fridge. I took one tiny bite (a crumb really) of Brooklyn's pizza and then figuratively smacked myself in the head and said WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!?!?! :)
So, I made up my dinner salad which consisted of lettuce, tomato, cucumber, cilantro, sliced almonds and light raspberry vinagarette dressing and practically inhaled it. I haven't had my 3rd shake of the day because I'm trying to wait until around 7:30 to drink it. Since I know we'll be out late and I always get the munchies-especially if we're at the ball field-I thought I better hold off. I'm pretty relieved that I still have a "meal" coming to me. I did eat my whole banana earlier (1/2 in my shake and 1/2 plain) and I had an apple mid-morning with a few almonds. I'm eating a little more than I probably should...BUT...I'm also working out much harder and more than I should too...so I think it'll even out.
I'll tell ya...one thing they don't tell you about this cleanse is that you'll be in the bathroom ALL THE TIME. Not to poop...no, I haven't even pooped once yet...but to PEE! Seriously, between 3 shakes, 2 cups of green tea and 2 LITERS of water..I pee at least every 30 minutes!! I feel like I have a straw in my mouth about 80% of the time!
Anyway, in all, I'm really glad I'm doing this. I feel lighter and flatter already. I also feel a sense of accomplishment. The fact that I am ignoring that cake in the fridge is nearly a miracle. If you know me...I capital L. O. V. E. dessert and especially cold, moist, iced cake. OMG! But...I haven't even as much as TOUCHED it. Woot Woot!
Tomorrow will be a challenge, I expect because I will be home all day long (more tempting for me to eat) and then I have a fitness class to teach at 4:30 pm. Nevertheless, I know I can do it and I WILL do it. Beginning Saturday, it's back to P90X food/eating. No more cheesy enchiladas with chips and queso, lasagna with garlic bread and puff pastry strawberry crap. :) I'm ready to feel better by eating better. If you watch that video that I posted, you'll see what I mean...but something I just recently learned is that our bodies crave proper nutrition. When they don't get it, we eat and eat and eat trying to satisfy that need. When we eat the correct foods (or Shakeology) that persistent urge to eat all the time leaves. Our body gets what it's longing for and it's content. That makes perfect sense to me. I am excited about putting the constant struggle of wanting but restraining behind me. If I don't crave all that junk, I won't have to refrain from it all the time. Sure, I'll still have cheats every now and again...but not every day like I've gotten (back) into the habit of doing. I'm excited about the future........ are you? :)

Staring at the wall...

Do you ever have the kind of day where you are really quiet and reflective and could just sit and stare at a blank wall for hours?
I've been feeling like this for about 24 hours now. Its kind of nice because for once I'm not moving around like the energizer bunny at all times...however, it's NOT good when you have lots of things that NEED to be done. I feel like I am being rebellious against my own self right now. For the past 30 minutes I've been sitting in my office, drinking my hot green tea and staring at the little dots of sunlight that are popping through the blinds on my window. I've had facebook on the screen of my computer but have only been about 1/2way into it.
I really need to get up and get moving. I have to get the kids to school in 30 minutes, I have a fitness class to teach right after that and the house is a WRECK...and I'm still sitting here in my nightgown and slippers.
Bahh...wish I could just ditch it all for one day. I love my life...but a day off sounds magical.
Anyway, back to reality...so I wanted to mention on here that I am doing a 3 day Shakeology Cleanse. Today is Day 2. I was supposed to have 3 shakes yesterday, but somehow, I only managed to get 2 down. VERY CRAZY because I was really freaking out that 3 shakes wasn't going to be NEARLY enough to satisfy me all day, BUT, I had such a crazy busy day yesterday that I actually didn't have time to make my middle of the day one....so I ended up just skipping it. I did have an apple mid-day and a few almonds mid-morning. I also had my evening salad with 4 oz. of tuna on top. I love it that this cleanse allows you to still eat with it. You get 2 pieces of fruit a day (optional) and a salad with 4 oz. of protien and very light or no dressing each evening...in addition to the 3 Shakeology shakes a day (and 2 cups of green tea).
Anyway, the scale shows I am down 3 full pounds since yesterday morning. I'm sure some of that is just water weight. I did do a pretty intense workout yesterday morning though so hopefully some of it is real weight. Tomorrow will really tell me and then the final result will be when I weigh on Saturday morning. Of course, I'm not doing this just to lose weight. Sure..dropping some pounds will be great...but I'm trying to get my body jump-started back to clean eating as well as clean pipes. :) I also ordered myself a TurboTracker so that I can start journaling my food intake/exercise output for a little while. I need to hold myself accountable. This is what worked for me back in the beginning and I know it will work for me now too, especially since I spent $15 on this notebook!!
Anyway, I'm sure you guys probably aren't interested in all that and I should seriously get up and get going. I will hopefully be back here again very soon! :) Happy Thursday Peeps!

You need to watch this!

If you wonder what's the big deal about this Shakeology stuff...just watch this. It won't take long.

Facebook Withdrawls?!?!

Happy Easter!
If you're a friend of mine on FB, you might have seen my post this past week that said I am committing to staying OFF of facebook on Sunday's from here on out. I figure one day a week I can give my family and God my FULL undivided attention and it's very doubtful that I am going to miss out on anything. Heck, I went a whole month without getting on facebook just a couple of months ago, so surely I can abstain one day a week, right?
But surprisingly (to me)...I'm itching to get on and check it. GRANTED...there are a few reasons why. For instance...I posted something on there for sale yesterday and I'd love to know if anyone is responding to that. Also, we had family pictures taken last week and I posted a couple of them yesterday and I'd like to see if anyone has commented on them. Besides the fact that it is Easter and people are probably posting wonderful happy statuses and pictures of their little ones in their Easter dresses and suits.
BUT...I refuse to go back on my word. So...here I am, in blog land instead, and I'm plenty happy. However, if I were going to post a status or two, they would've read something like this:

How is it that we hid 155 plastic eggs for the kids INSIDE our house and can only find 152 of them? We've looked for hours...and apparently 3 have gone AWOL.

I can't believe I will be married to a THIRTY FIVE YEAR OLD in 2 days. WOW! We aren't teenagers anymore, I guess. Happy Birthday on Tuesday Matthew Paul Jones! I love you!

Instead of giving the kids Easter baskets this year, we bought them each a gift. Brooklyn got the game Clue and Grant got a Pogo-stick. Best presents we've bought them in a long time. :)

I looked through the Power 90 nutrition guide this morning. Later: Went to my mom and dad's for Easter lunch and ate like it was The Last Supper. :(

My 15 year HS reunion is in exactly 2 months and 1 week. In those 9 weeks, I DEEPLY DESIRE to lose 12 pounds and FINALLY reach my goal weight, thus making my drivers license true again! :)

Participation in my fitness classes has dropped scarily low over the past 2 weeks. I'm not sure if people are losing interest or they've all achieved their goals already (yah right.) What is going on?


Okay...that's all the status updates I would post if I was on FB. I feel better getting them off my chest! ha ha Wow, now would anyone really have benefited from reading all that? NO. I am so goofy. I'm getting off here. Time to go play some Clue with my girlie-o!

It's Friday...that's my excuse

So, it's Friday morning, 9 am. I'm sitting here in my VS gray T-shirt with silver stars all over the front and the words I LOVE PINK across my back. I have on my black comfty PJ capris and slipper boots that come up to my knees with big pom-pom balls at the top. I have a hot mocha in my cute "fill-drink-wash-repeat" cup and I should be working. But you know what? I don't care. Nope, I don't. Because it's Friday. That's my excuse, valid or not and I've decided to be naughty for an hour or so.
So, while half of me really wants to go curl up on the couch with a big fuzzy blanket and drift in and out of consciousness while I watch re-runs of House Hunters, the other half of me is yearning to ramble on and on with a bunch of nonsense on this blog like I used to. Maybe I'll split my time up between the two and get my nap when I'm done talking to you. Yep, that sounds perfect.
So, I wonder...what've you been up to? The only person who reads this blog and that I actually keep up with regularly (that I know of) is Rene. The rest of you are becoming like fond memories in the recesses of my mind and heart. And that........is NOT cool. I miss you guys. I miss your feed back and your encouragement. Some of you have been my BEST and DEAREST friends for several years now (KATE!) or even for over a decade (KANDY!) and now it seems like we never talk. :-(
I know, I know....it's 99% my fault. I've gone AWOL from blog land for nearly a year now and while it's been necessary...it isn't how I imagined my life going...or how I've wanted it to be. Sometimes life has a way of making these choices for you, ya know!?!
Nevertheless, today, my attention is here. I wish this were a real conversation with all of you so that it wouldn't seem like me doing all the talking. It feels awfully self-centered right now.
But...I guess there is no way around that. So I will talk...and you can choose to read or not. :)

So...I realized just now that I really like to start every paragraph with "So". I wonder if that is what I do when I'm actually talking too???....hmmm.....

Anyway, (ha ha)...Since it's been so long since I've really taken more than 3 minutes to write, I feel like I have a MILLION things I want to say. Let me just give you a few major high-lights.

1) March 4th...one of the best days I've had in a while. Most of you know that on January 1st, 2009, I lost my 1.25 carat princess cut engagement ring along with the .5 carat wedding band that went with it. My heart was shattered and for over 2 years now, I've been without a diamond on my finger (although I did wear a plain gold band to signify my married status). All of my closest friends have heard me beg, plead and whine about wanting a new ring pretty much non-stop. Because I knew we were saving up for it, I knew the time was coming. Since March 28th is our anniversary (13 years!), I sort of expected that MAYBE that would be the day I would finally have a rock on my hand again. But...on a regular Friday morning (March 4th), I got up, threw on an old sweatshirt, baseball cap, jeans and raggedy tennis shoes and hopped in the car to go run some errands before my fitness class later on. To my surprise, Matt took off work and decided to go with me. That was unexpected...but NOTHING like when he pulled into the parking lot of Israel Diamond and said, "well babe, I got a bonus check at work and here is $X,XXX in cash and you can go pick out whatever ring you want right now!" O to the M to the G! I was in shock. Seriously, I didn't even know how to react. Long story short, I left with a beautiful round, vintage diamond and a gigantic smile! :)

2) March 28th...the actual anniversary date. Every year we try to take some kind of a trip on our anniversary-just the 2 of us-to reconnect as a couple. And when I say reconnect...I mean a LOT of serious CONNECT-ing. :) It's a special time for us that we look forward to every year because let's face it...with 2 kids, work, sports, church, family, etc....there just isn't a lot of time for THAT kind of intimacy at home. On these trips we spend ALL DAY LONG giving each other our undivided attention. We wake up when we feel like it, then we drink our coffee usually outside while we enjoy the sound of nature, read our Bibles and enjoy the uninterrupted presence of God and each other. We'll eat breakfast and then maybe take a nap. Spend the afternoon outdoors usually--walking leisurely through small boutiques or maybe down a trail to the lake while we throw a few lines in at the fish. We talk and dream and LISTEN. There are no distractions and after an early lunch/dinner, we settle in by the fireplace in our jammies and let the wonderful day we've just had culminate into a beautiful celebration of love that lasts hours longer than the average 7 minutes we spend on it at home.
As you can see...it is the reinforcing thread that hold our marriage together and preserves our sanity for the next year. To not have it...would be....dangerous. Sometimes this trip is big and exciting (like the year we took the 7 day Carribean cruise or the year we went to Big Cedar Lodge with the honeymoon package ) and some years it is extremely small (like the year we got a motel room in our OWN TOWN and pretended we were somewhere far away).
This year.....was a DUD. I won't go into detail because who really wants to hear negative stuff anyway right? But I will just say that what might have turned out to be a decent trip ended in cold, rainy days that couldn't be enjoyed outdoors, a gross hotel room that was moldy and didn't even have the fireplace we were promised online...and we were accompanied (unexpectedly-last minute change) by our 2 wonderful children who were bored out of their minds to be stuck in a hotel room with nothing to do. Pooooopy! That's all I can say about that. I am looking for some way, some how to save up enough cash to take a replacement trip sometime soon so we can have this time that we desperately need. Still...on March 28th, amidst whiny children, rain and mold, we celebrated our 13th anniversary and I couldn't be more in love with Matt Jones than if he were a buffet of my favorite foods. :) (that's saying a lot!)

3) On Friday, April 8th, I reached a personal goal of having over 30 people attend my fitness classes in a week. It's not anything I've talked publicly about really, but just a small goal I had, a stepping stone of proof that my business is growing. I actually had 36 people total...but some of them aren't paying customers (for example: my mom, Matt, Brooklyn and the owner of the building) so I don't count them in my #'s. Speaking of.....yes! Brooklyn has been attending my classes! I am so proud of her! She is doing GREAT!

4) I just finished reading "What Are You Waiting For? : The One Thing No One Ever Tells You About Sex" by author Dannah Gresh. It is for young women who aren't married yet. It was a page-turner though and answered a question I've had from the day I got married (13 years now). It's crazy that all this time I've thought my body was dysfunctional only to find out the problem was a result of something I did as a teenager! I highly recommend this book to all women. Even if you've been married for years....it will certainly shed a whole new light on what it really means to "lie with" your spouse!

Well, I think that is about it. I'd love to take a whole paragraph and tell you about how Brooklyn hit a homerun in her softball game the other night, but I understand that is not really THAT AWESOME unless you are her parent or her grandparent...so I won't go into it. I'll just say that it was an enormous deal for us. Brooklyn has never had a home run and quite frankly, I don't think she ever, in her wildest dreams, expected to. I shed tears of joy at watching her plow through those bases with such abandon and force. I knew it was going to be one of the best days of her childhood! A memory she would carry long into her adult years! :)

I guess before I end, I will touch on the subject of my health and fitness, since I AM doing this post on my P90X blog. I admit though, I'm leery of "going there" today. You know how it is...some days you just aren't "feeling it" and today....BLAH.
At the beginning of my fitness classes (Feb. 8th) I was at 140 pounds. Not great seeing as how just the month before I had won a weight loss challenge and lost down to 135. BUT...I did take a few weeks off (between when I got fired from the gym and when I started my classes) and I basically soothed the pain with junk food. (the oldest mistake in the book!)
After about 2-3 weeks of classes and I hadn't dropped any weight, I decided to start drinking Shakeology seriously. I figured if I am selling this stuff and telling people how great it is, I should really give it a try. So I did...and within about 3-4 weeks, I lost that 5 pounds. I've been sitting comfortably at 135 again now for a while...until I got on the scale yesterday and it said 137. {{BIG SIGH.....}} I'm so sick of chasing a number. My goal has been 125 for almost SEVEN years now. Do you know how exhausting it is to reach for something that is SO close for 7 years but never attain it?
Again, I'm split...half of me wants to say WTHECK...WHATEVER...WHO CARES! and the other half of me says NO! I CAN DO THIS! I WILL DO THIS! It is a war within and honestly the winning side switches about as often as the wind changes direction. :-/
I do know this much, I need to get to around 133, at least, if I want to be able to wear my summer shorts/capris without gasping for breath every time I sit down. I tried them on last week (when our temps reached 90!!) and it was not good. You know your pants are too tight when you take them off and there is a red line where every seam, button and thread was! :(
Thankfully, I have the tools and support I need to make these changes and get the results I want. :)

So....that's it. That's me today. I'd love to hear how you are. Leave me a big old long comment. It's cool. It would probably make my heart skip a beat to know that some of you haven't given up on me and my blog! :)
Have a great Friday and weekend! :)

I am seriously missing this blog. I have got to make some time to do it. I sure wish there was a way I could do it while I sit at softball practice for 1 1/2 hours twice a week....but no wifi. :(
Anyway, just wanted to say, I miss you all!