Family

Halloween Celebration

It has been one crazy weekend for us!  It hit me hard this year that Halloween is really the “holiday” we celebrate most in this house.  All during the month of October leading up to Halloween, we watch scary movies on the weekend.  Fear Fest on AMC actually had some good ones this year.  A lot of years finding horror movies is tough. We’ve always thought this was odd especially during October.

We usually go all out with the costumes hard too… Halloween is a budgeted expenditure because it can get expensive.  LOL!  The only thing that I don’t do really well is decorate the house.  Although in general I’m not a very good decorator – even for Christmas.  But with Christmas I always have the plan… decorations and the tree go up the day after Thanksgiving and come down the day after Christmas.  But after this weekend, I realized that for our family, Halloween really is THE holiday in this house.  So I think this year, I’ll scrounge the after Halloween sales and see if I can pick up some decent decorations at decent prices for next year.  🙂

Our weekend started off on Friday.  Rick was home and Dan didn’t have school.  So we took Dan to IHOP to get a Scary Pancake.  IHOP was giving away one Scary Pancake on the 29th.  Dan was happy. 🙂  Then we went off to Michaels (because I still didn’t have an activity for the kids party) and found some frames and bags – and stickers… all at a decent price too.  The frames were only $1.00 each and most of the stickers were already reduced so they could get rid of them.  We made out very nicely.

So the girls came home at noon and I spent some time putting together a quick pasta shells recipe in the crock pot for an easy dinner.  By 1pm or so it was time for a dry-run on Jessica’s wig/make-up.  I think this was the first indication that maybe we do celebrate Halloween more than other families.  LOL!  Who does a dry run like that?!  I just wasn’t sure how I was going to handle her wig and I didn’t want to be scrambling right before we walked out the door.

Around 4:30ish, everyone got dressed up and we took some marvelous photos outside!  I love how they came out…

Then it was time to chase Dan…

And this brings us up to Fall Fest… The girls left around 6:00pm to head over to the school to work Fall Fest with the girl scouts.  They sold pizza and water and made some charity money. 🙂  I don’t have many photos of the night because Dan had some “momma issues” right off the bat so he pretty much stuck by me like glue for the night and didn’t want to play any of the games.  I did get some photos of him jumping with one of his friends at school in the moon jump.

So the night wrapped up and we went home to watch some scary movies… 🙂

On Saturday, we had two Halloween parties.  Dan’s was at noon with a few kids from class and the girls was later in the afternoon.  All the kids had a great time…. and I sure was tired by the end…

By this time, we needed a little time-out… so we watched The Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown.  You’d think something like Snoopy would be safe… but at some point I had 5 little boys saying “He said stupid”, “stupid, stupid, stupid”, “he said the ‘S’ word”, “don’t say the ‘S’ word it isn’t nice.”  LOL!  Can’t win these days… but it was a good break for the boys – to rest and bring things down a notch.

We also made two crafts.  The boys decorated Halloween bags and Halloween frames.  They both came out great.  The frames took a whole 10 minutes to decorate – when I was planning on 20 minutes… lol!  oops!  But with the bags, I made them sit at the table awhile longer… two hours can seem like eternity with five 5 year old boys.

After chasing the girls around the yard a bit more, all the little goblins went home with these goodies!  I should have taken a photo of all the kids photo frames lined up but I completely forgot. 🙁  And I didn’t get any at the girls party – didn’t want to be an intrusive mom.

Okay… party 1 done… and it’s only 2pm on Saturday.  Tired yet?

The girls party went much easier… I didn’t have to be involved all that much.  The kids played spooky music and ran around most of the time.  They decorated frames too and had pizza and cupcakes.

Everyone went home at 6pm and we watched some more scary movies. 🙂  End of Saturday.  whew…

Sunday’s festivities started about 3pm…. getting costumes on again… the entire crew came over at 3:30pm and they all went trick-or-treating until 5pm.  Rick and I took Dan out for awhile and then he passed out candy.

After the kids were done trick-or-treating around our house, we took them to see the Grandmas… got home around 7:30pm… watched some Ghost Hunters LIVE…and went to bed…. it was a LOOONG weekend.  But the kids had a lot of fun… and so did Rick and I. 🙂

Blast from the Past…

This was the girls party when they were Dan’s age in 2005.

And Dan… well…wasn’t he a cutey?

He was even a hit at the party… probably the only time he’ll be the center of attention of 10 girls.  LOL!

Hope your Halloween was a great one too!

Just another Wed….

It’s been awhile since I’ve blogged over here at LC.  I had been blogging my running workouts regularly and even my weekly goals…but that seems to have fallen by the wayside.  Not that I don’t still workout or have a weekly goals.  Just that I haven’t been motivated to blog them. I was using my blog to get into the routine of having them every week and then got busy doing them. 🙂

Kids went back to school on Monday.  YAY!!  Not that I don’t enjoy having my kids around for the summer. I do.  But… by the end of August they are wound up and the fighting was escalating.  The girls don’t fight with each other as much as they fight with Dan. Dan is becoming that “little brother pest” that young girls HATE.  lol!  I am not complaining too much though because the girls REALLY look out for Dan.  More so then most kids that age look out for a sibling.

First Day – Jess, Dan, Sam

Dan started Kindergarten this year.

It seems like yesterday when the girls were starting Kindergarten…

If you haven’t checked out DSO in awhile there’s some great BABY Kits up.

And I’m giving this new Nautical kit away on Sept 1 to 6 lucky facebook fans.

Become a Jen Reed Designs fan and automatically be entered to win!

A bit of INSANITY – Beachbody style

Back at the beginning of July, Rick and I started the P90X workout from Beachbody.  I had seen infomericals for this program a few times over the past 6 months and wanted to try it.  I knew it would be tough and I wouldn’t be in the best starting shape.  However, the idea that the workout was all about weights and muscle confusion – and had a workout style more like what I was looking  for – really peeked my interest.

After the first week of the program, I showed Rick and told him I thought we should do it together.  We both need to lose weight and are quickly approaching the BIG 4-0 number (which as Rick kindly reminds me often, I’ll hit it first).  Our bodies have slowed considerably during the past 10 years and I felt (and still do) that if we don’t try to get our weight and eating habits under control now, it’ll just get that much harder as we get older.  Rick agreed and so we started working out daily – together.

Every night when he comes home from work, we put in the next CD and workout.  At first, I thought this would screw up our dinner schedule – since the workouts last usually an hour.  But over time, I figured out that I could plan dinners around the specific workout.  So for instance, on plyometric days, I’ll make something like Chili that can cook unattended while we work out.

Over the next 60 days, we developed into the daily pattern of working out regularly.  Friday is our day off.  If you read the P90X website or forums, you’ll see it mentioned over and over that P90X is not supposed to be a weight loss program.  It’s suppose to be a muscle building program.  This concept worked for me during the first 60 days… by day 61, I was actually getting very frustrated as I had not lost more than 5 pounds.  Now I know I had gained serious muscle.  My legs felt the best they ever have – even when I played basketball.  However, my brain has a way of creeping in and creating self doubt and disappointment.  I had ONLY lost 5 lbs – and I’d been doing this craziness for 60 days??  That was too sad for me.  By this time in the Body for Life program, I had lost 15 lbs.  I was starting to feel really burned out on the program.  Rick had lost about 13 lbs by this time.

Now, I know all about muscle weighing more than fat and you can’t judge your progress by the scale – take measurements, yadda yadda.   Actually I had been and I knew I lost inches.  But I still had not lost a pants size and that was frustrating.  Too frustrating for me.  I started feeling like I needed more cardio in the daily routines.

I went off to start researching cardio routines and almost bought the Biggest Loser’s set.  But then I went back to Beachbody to review their workouts and saw that they had just recently released a new program – INSANITY. I watched the video and was immediately impressed.  THIS was what I was looking for.  A serious cardio workout.

Now, Rick and I are not in the best workout shape.  We realize this.  In fact, when we started P90X, we had to skip about 30 minutes of the 90 minute yoga CD because we just couldn’t do it.  By the end of the first 60 days, we were completing all the CDs and were pretty decent.  We could stay with the workouts for the most part.  We do have to modify some of the exercises because our bodies just can’t do them – like the guitar player jump.  That one is just not happening with my body.  But overall, we were able to do the exercises and keep going even if at a slower clip than the video.  I could even get through the entire Yoga CD – which incidentally is one of the hardest CDs to do if not the hardest – yoga is tough.

Anyway, I figured we’d apply the same philosophy to INSANITY – go as strong as we could and modify as needed.  I realized that we wouldn’t be able to keep up with the intensity level of the people on the CD at first – maybe never.  But if we could do the exercises with some modification the program would work for me.

We took a week off in between P90X and INSANITY – which really helped my body recover however it makes that first week getting back in the workout groove all that much harder.

So last Tuesday was our first day of INSANITY.  The first day, you take a fit test and record your results.  There are 7-8 exercises (can’t remember exact count) and you record how many reps you can do in a minute.  With this program, you take the fit test every two weeks – which I really like – to track progress.

Remarkably we were able to do the exercises (just not at the same intensity level as the people on the CD but still at a high level of intensity for each of us).  By Thursday, my calves were hurting. I mean screaming!  Not sure why they didn’t hurt like that during P90X but they were tightening up and making it difficult to walk.  So we rested Fri, Sat and Sun and gave my calves and Rick’s thighs a chance to recover.  My calves were back on track yesterday so we continued with the program.

Thus far it’s been exactly what I had hoped for.  Real cardio – intense cardio exercises – but ones that we do at our own pace.  We do push ourselves and feel the burn for sure.  But we are definitely not in the shape those people are in.  I also don’t think we could even have started INTENSITY had we not done P90X first.  This is an intense program for sure.

I’ve been impressed with the program and myself. Shaun T is definitely different than Tony Horton.  Each has their own ways of motivating and their own styles.  I like them both.  I’m definitely excited about INSANITY.  And it’s sure good to be working out again after a week off.  I think we had developed a dare I say it – a habit – and when it wasn’t there it was really strange for us.

At any rate, I hope to drop 15 pounds over the next 60 days.  After that we’ll go back and do P90X again and then maybe a combo of both.  We are trying to come up with a life routine where we eat better and exercise regularly. It’s amazing what you can do when you put your mind to it.

If you’ve never heard of these programs before watch the video clips below and check them out.

Here is an intro video to P90X

And here is an intro video for INSANITY

Rogue home…

On Thursday Rogue (our black lab) went off to be spayed.  For a regular dog, this can be a traumatic experience.  That seems predictable and normal. But for Rogue…

We got Rogue when she was 8 weeks old.  Since that time, she has been ingrained so much with the family that that animal can NOT be by herself for one minute without whining.  It used to drive me crazy but I have gotten used to it in the last year.  We used to be able to let out Bandit (our first black lab) and he’d go lay outside for awhile and enjoy the sun/shade and just being outside – without barking and causing a scene.  NOT ROGUE.

Rogue goes out and does her business and then immediately makes a beeline right back to the door.  And there she sits and begins her whining campaign to come in the house.  If we are outside she is fine.  But God forbid she is outside by herself for any period of time and the whining and crying begins.  I will say that because I had a hard time dealing with this quirk of hers initially (read that as a lot of yelling out the window to stop whining), she has been forced to develop a more patient “sit and wait a little bit” stance before the full onslaught of whines begin.  I think she can make it to 5 minutes before I hear a bark to be let in.  So I’ve just adjusted and she has adjusted.  In the morning, I will either wait for her to be done or walk away and start my coffee and come back and let her in right away.

Now, take this mindset into being away from us for a day and a half….  When I picked up Rogue at the vet yesterday, the lady at the front desk told me that Rogue was quite vocal on Thursday after her surgery.   Now I read “quite vocal” as the polite way of saying “she was annoying as all hell and would NOT shut up and drove us crazy all day long”… but for obvious reasons she wasn’t going to say exactly that to me.  They had told Rick when he dropped her off that she would sleep all day after the surgery. Riiiight.  He told them that he thought we might have to come and get her early because she has major separation anxiety.  Suffice it to say we were right and she whined and barked all day – no sleeping and no resting.

Last night the kids stayed with Grandma for a sleepover.  We thought this would give Rogue another 16 hours or so of not being pestered by the kids – maybe she’d even sleep.  HA!  While she was thrilled to see us, she really wanted to see the kids.  Throughout the night she woke us up several times with her whining.  At 2am, Rick thought she might just be in a lot of pain and we gave her another pain pill.  She settled for a bit but in another hour or so she was back at it.  So Rick got up and went in the back room and laid down with her.  Yes… laid down with the dog.  LOL!  She did settle down and I didn’t hear her again until 8am or so (we get to sleep in when sleepovers happen).  Rick said that she was fine as long as she had physical contact laying next to him.

This morning the kids have returned and Rogue has been estatic.  By the way she is acting you would never think she was spayed two days ago.  We are going to have such a hard time keeping her calm for the next two weeks.

She does seem very relieved though.  Enough to be calm for a brief period… this is what is happening as I type this


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She seems content – enough to maybe get a bit of rest today.  Maybe.  Hopefully.


It’s Friday! Garbage Day a National Holiday

Fridays are highly anticipated in this house but not because of the normal TGIF crap that everyone usually feels on the way towards the weekend.  In this house, Fridays are treated as a national holiday because Friday is GARBAGE DAY!

The progression of the week is marked by its relation to garbage day.

  • Is it garbage day today?
  • When is it going to be garbage day?
  • It’s going to be garbage day soon.
  • It’s only Monday.  It’s going to be garbage day on Friday.
  • It’s going to be garbage day tomorrow.
  • It’s garbage day TODAY!
  • It was garbage day yesterday…

Dan has been enthralled with garbage days since he was 2 1/2.   He can hear the garbage truck coming down the street from the back of the house. He will then fly into action and stop whatever he’s doing and proudly announce that a garbage truck is here. He then makes his way to the front window where he gawks and talks about the garbage truck at length.  He’ll even sing songs about the garbage truck (or the dog as she never leaves his side) while he watches them take our trash away.

And boy are we are in for a treat if there ever happens to be TWO garbage trucks on the street at the same time – which does happen especially if they are working both sides of the street or if both the recycling truck and refuse truck show up together or if its free garbage day (where you can throw out anything and everything without paying for $2.50 stickers).   I don’t know what the fascination with garbage trucks is.  With Dan it’s not really about the “truck” part.  He’s not into trucks as much.  It’s all about one special truck – the “garbage truck”.

In fact, the highlight of yesterday came on the way home from the grocery store.  There was a garbage truck in front of us. In front of us!  Dan of course got all excited.  At some point we passed the truck which ignited a hailstorms of “Look momma, we’ve passed the garbage truck.”, “Look momma, its now following us.”, “Drive faster momma so we’ll win!”.  Yes, it’s not every day in the life of a boy where you can race a garbage truck down the highway.  LOL!

Not shortly after, we came to a stop light.  We were on a highway with 3 lanes and by the way the traffic was lining up, I could tell that the garbage truck would end up right next to us if no one cut it off.  I announce this to Dan who has twisted around in his seat in order to keep his eye on the truck.  As it pulls up next to us, he can see  the driver inside the front cab and starts waving excitedly and announcing to the world “Momma!!!!  There is a GARBAGE TRUCK next to us!! and it’s a GREEN garbage truck!”  The driver looks over and has this confused look on his face like “What the hell?”

I’m sure firefighters and policemen are used to being adored as celebrities by little 4 year old boys… but garbage truck drivers?  hmmm… usually not.  I hope it made his day.

Rick and Me

At the reception on Saturday, they played a video montage of Mal and Roberto.  They had so many photos together.  They dated for 4 years before getting married and had a boat load of photos.   I have known Rick since we were sophomores in HS and dated him for about 6 years before we got married.  We don’t have many photos of us together… that is sad and depressing…  we tend not to like the camera much…  So when we went to our nephew’s birthday party on Sunday I snapped a few of us.  I don’t have one of those camera arm things that Jeanine has (can’t think of the name of it) but I think these came out alright.  🙂

 

 

I finally got the bills paid this morning… only took DAYS… Now I should go work on Jess’s room a little since Jeanine will be camping out in Jess’s room while she’s here.  Her flight doesn’t get into until 9pm tonight so I have a little time… lol!  Hopefully…

Wedding Photos!

My cousin Mallory got married today. It was a very nice ceremony… she makes a beautiful bride. I knew she would be beautiful – she is one of those people who is too damn attractive… lol!

 

The girls stood up in the wedding as jr. bridesmaids. I’m just taking a little break between the wedding and the reception to post some quick photos. We have 2 hours in between…

 

We didn’t take Dan to the church though…I could just hear him say right in the middle of the ceremony “Who’s that guy up there?” “What are those people doing up there?” lol! I didn’t think we needed his commentary during the wedding so he stayed with Rick’s mom.

 

Here are some photos I got…

 

They really are not identical twins. But sometimes they really look like each other – well most times but some times more than others. Since they were born they have been the same height and weight. Just the other day they stepped on the scale and both were exactly 66 lbs. Amazing…

My uncle knew he was going to be a basket case… and he was… he had Mallory crying too as they walked down the aisle.

And this was when he was giving her away – she was crying too. Took her a few kleenex swaps with her maid of honor to recover.

Mallory is just so pretty I can’t stand it.  lol!

Morning!… It’s early…

It’s early today…. haven’t blogged in so long… haven’t twittered in days… I don’t know what it is about blogging and twittering but my intentions are to do it but then I don’t.   Maybe it’s because inherently I am a very shy person.   It’s always interesting when other people say their shy but then you see them out in public and shy is not the word I’d ever use to describe them.  I never know what to say… even on my own damn blog.  “Who cares” is always running through my head.  Maybe it’s because most of the blogs I read promote business or are very funny.  I wish I was funny and had something funny or intelligent to write.  But alas I am not and do not…

 

I should make blogging and twittering a real part of my day (like an exercise) so I can start working out that “shy” and “why would anyone care” feelings I always get when I do these things.  Who cares that I just got my coffee and I’m up at 5:30am?  lol… I have always had that feeling of being thought of as stupid when I open my mouth so most of the time (unless I really know you) I do not say much at all.  I think it’s part of what being shy is.  I wouldn’t say I don’t have confidence in myself because in a lot of ways I am very confident.  When I am confident in something, I can talk easily about it. It’s just when I am not confident about the topic or feel out of place I shut up which makes it even worse. Then people think I am stuck up which is very far from the truth.  Jeanine and I gave away some Kristy Valshan badges for the upcoming CHA show and I’d imagine we’ll run into you all (you know who you are and might even read this… maybe…lol).. so when you see me and I don’t say much of anything, it really isn’t because I don’t like you.  It’s because I have this severe “my mouth does not move in groups” problem.

 

Moving on…

 

Dan  has been climbing out of his crib the past week.  Yes, this time around I put no rush on moving him out of his crib like I did with the girls. But even with the girls, they were later moving out of their cribs then their cousins.  Dan is another year later at that… He is 3 1/2 right now.   He still naps (not every day but he goes down for nap every day) and I so don’t want to lose that right now.  He actually needs his naps.  When he doesn’t get one he is horrible.   So he has been climbing out and yesterday morning I heard a loud thump around 7am.  No crying through.  Then I heard his door creak open and shut.  When Rick went to get him he had climbed back into his crib.  lol!  So I think it was time for a big boy bed.

 

I was going to pick up one at Walmart (one of those little beds) like we did with the girls.  Jessica was a constant crib jumper.  She would jump and jump and jump and finally bent the spring frame so bad that we had to get a new bed.  But after talking to Jeanine about Calista’s bed (didn’t even realize it was her crib w/o the railing at least I sure didn’t remember that – then again I don’t seem to remember anything these days), I decided to try removing the railing on Dan’s crib instead of spending money for a special toddler bed.

 

So I removed the railing around 5:30pm last night and for the next 30-45 minutes Dan ran around the house screaming at the top of his lunges that his bed was broke and I had to fix it.  lol!  Ironically what finally got him settled down is Sammie took a turn laying down in it and Rogue (leave it to the damn dog) came up and licked her nose.  Sammie then told Dan that one of the benefits of not having the railing was he could pet Rogue easier.  SOLD!  Didn’t have to tell him twice… he and that dog are glued at the hip….  So after that he tried the “new” bed he wanted Jess to lay with him for awhile.  Very strange.

 

When it was bedtime, we only had one incident of hearing him get out of bed.  Told him to get back in and that was it.  He did and went to sleep. We have been lucky with all of our kids when it comes to going to bed and naps.  We really haven’t had many problems.  I think part of that is we have never made bedtime a big thing or naps a big thing.   We do not have a “routine” for either and never have.  I think our routine is that every night at 8pm it’s time for bed and they all go.  Every day after lunch it’s time for a nap…  Some nights we’ll hear talking in the rooms but nothing too bad.  Some days Dan won’t really nap but that’s okay too.  When he is tired he will put himself to bed and I know that isn’t something you see every day.

 

Anyway… I am proud of my little man and how he adjusted to his big boy bed last night.  I wonder what the nap will bring today though…

Mother’s Day

Hope everyone had a great Mother’s Day!  Mine was pretty nice actually.  Rick and the kids gave me a nice big batch of Mrs. Fields cookies (24!). lol!  One of those large tins… YUM!  Just in time to wear on my in ass for Surtex!  But that definitely won’t be stopping me from inhaling them.  lol!  We also got a nice surprise from Rick’s mom and she treated us to dinner.  That was very unexpected and extremely nice of her.  I spent a good portion of the day working on an old laptop for Rick. It had been quite some time since the last windows update so there were only um… 43 updates to install.  lolol!  Overall it was a very nice mom’s day for me.  Hope you all had one too.