2/26/08

Ahhhhh. What a little exercise does for the psyche! I'm still feeling like a horrible chunk, but at least I feel like I did something about it. I went to the spin class today and it kicked my butt! I'm not sure I'd say that I liked the class, but I think I'll keep it as part of my weekly routine. It's a better workout than I would do on my own in 45 minutes. It's brutal.

So, here's my plan for working out on an average week. I'd like to do a spin class twice a week, the group power twice a week and then something else two days a week. I think it'll be enough of a variety to keep me going.


Gratitude Journal:

I'm grateful for:

1. My girls being flexible enough to allow me to work out at the gym.

2. Being able to work out at the gym.

3. Being in bed before 8:15. Now if only I can go to sleep soon.

4. Kara and I had some wonderful time this afternoon before Jana woke up. We cuddled, played, and lots of giggles.

5. A wonderful husband who doesn't mind me having the gym membership when I know he'd love to have it.


Goals from yesterday:
1. I went to Group Ride.
2. I didn't get them done, but at least I now know who gave us what so I can finish tomorrow.
3. I went grocery shopping.
4. Made dinner.
5. Didn't get the post written, but got the pictures uploaded.
6. Updated subbing
7. I didn't get to the contract today.

Goals for tomorrow.

1. Good eating day.
2. Go to group power.
3. Finish thank you cards
4. Make dinner.

2/25/08

I'm not sure why, but today has been a rough day.

It's probably all in my head, but everywhere I turned, it seemed, I was reminded of how chunky I am right now. It's been so aggravating. I'm so obsessed with my weight and eating right now that it's driving me crazy.

Today was a bad eating day too. Not horrible, but not great. I just seemed to run out of my food and still be hungry and then snacking without any thought of it. I'm so tired of this. Why is this so hard for me? Did I not drop 26 lbs earlier? Why can I not find that motivation and routine again.

Let's hope for a better day tomorrow.

I'm doing things backward.

Goals from yesterday:
1. Not a great eating day :-(
2. I did not work out because Jana didn't go to bed until 9. (and she's still up jumping in her crib)
3. I got all the thank you cards done for the presents I know - looks like I'll have to call Gama and Gapa and find out who gave us the rest (I was cooking while Dada was supposed to be paying attention to the presents... grrr!)
4. I was on time for subbing today! Yay!

Goals for tomorrow:
1. Work out/go to Spinning class.
2. Finish thank you cards
3. Go to the grocery store.
4. Make dinner early
5. Write Kara's 9 month post on the girls' blog.
6. Update availability for subbing.
7. Email contract

Gratitude Journal:

I'm grateful for...

1. No more subbing days this week. I'm so ready to just spend time with my girls.
2. A decent day subbing - not too exciting, but all right.
3. being caught up on laundry, for a day. :-)
4. a daughter who busted out with this response to the question of what are you doing, "I a eating cracker and making a play dough."
5. Kara lying on my chest and cuddling/playing/talking to me. Ahhh! I've missed those cuddles.

Okay. I feel better all ready. Tomorrow is a new day and it's going to be a good day. After I go grocery shopping so we have some better food choices in the house for me, there will be no more excuses. (I feel like I'm constantly saying this. Grrrr!) How do I get my butt in gear again?

2/24/08

We had a nice quiet weekend. It was so nice to have a weekend in which we had people visiting or hosting people, or had to be somewhere.

The girls are finally starting to get healthy, which is a huge relief, but I just got a call from the person who watched the girls on Friday and her son has had a 102 temp all weekend and has what looks like the flu. Did I mention that I didn't get the girls their flu shots this year? Ugh!

Gratitude Journal:

I'm grateful for...

1. a quiet weekend. It was so nice.

2. an wonderful little toddler, who's language is blossoming. Today she made us laugh so hard. I was nursing Kara and she exclaimed "Sissy eating mama's boob!" Oh my, I love this kid!

3. clean sheets. I love the feel of clean sheets.

4. Great inlaws who are coming to watch the girls tomorrow since we can't take them to K's again.

5. My first day at the gym now that I've joined and I'm starting fresh!


Goals from yesterday:

1. J and I had some good quiet time together during nap time.
2. The downstairs is straightened up, but I didn't get to the cleaning (I went to the gym instead).
3. I'm happily snuggled into a clean bed.
4. I did 45 minutes on the elliptical machine.


Goals for tomorrow:
1. Have a good eating day!
2. Work out tomorrow night after the girls go to bed.
3. Write Thank cards.
4. Be on time for subbing.

2/23/08

Gratitude Journal:

I'm grateful for...

1. Saturdays. I love having J home and being able to be more flexible and not having to leave the house if we don't want to.

2. a gorgeous day. We've had such amazing weather - it has been so nice.

3. Kara turning 9 months old today. I can't believe she's already 9 months old. She's such a fun little baby!

4. joining the gym. We were finally able to work it out and I got to join yesterday. Yay!

5. only having to work on Monday and Thursday this week. Yay for time with my baby girls!

Goals for today:

1. Take advantage of nap time for some good time with J.
2. Clean the house (or downstairs at least)
3. Change beds.
4. Work out.
5. Get outside.
6. Write thank you cards

2/21/08

It's been so crazy this week with subbing all week and being sick, but I haven't had time to come back and update my journal.

Gratitude Journal:

I'm grateful for...

1. My inlaws watching the girls this week so that I could sub (and make us some extra money this week). It's so nice to know that they are being so well taken care of and loved while I'm not with them.

2. My wonderful husband who keeps trying to cheer me up and take care of me while I'm sick.

3. my girls getting better. Having both so sick has been the pits!

4. subbing in the same class all week. I've gotten to know the kids and have a raport with them. That is one of the biggest things I miss about teaching - getting to know the kids and helping them be successful.

5. the kids being really good for me. These are the lowest level kids in the school. They have the lowest reading skills, some are special ed and most have behavior issues as well. The kids were really good for me. Some were silly, but they were never disrespectful or rude. Have I mentioned that I LOVE subbing here?

Goals for tomorrow:
1. Try to be more on time.
2. Remember the checkbook so I can pay Kristina.
3. Actually make dinner (not reheating left overs)
4. Spend some good quality time with Jeremy.

2/19/08

Gratitude Journal 2/19/08

I’m grateful for:

1. A cake subbing job. I’m back in the small high school and I’m subbing for a teacher who team-teaches. So I have the kids on the even periods and she has them on the odd periods. I’m supposed to help her during the odd periods, but their watching a movie so I have nothing to do. It’s really nice, but I feel horribly guilty for not doing much.

2. Having such a wonderful time with my Grandma while she was here. I’m so glad she made the trip and so glad she got to meet and get to know my girls. She loves them so much – so it was just wonderful to have her here.

3. A helpful husband. J is being so helpful these days. He’s doing the dishes after dinner (which is the dinner dishes and the girls’ dishes for the day) before I can even get to them or ask.

4. An attentive husband. J is so attentive when it comes to our sex life. He really wants to it be great for both of us, so he’s always asking what he can do, do I enjoy it, etc.

5. Selling our guest bed. I am so excited that we sold our guest bed. I lowered the price on Craigslist and got 7 different offers and we were able to get rid of it. Yay!

Goals from yesterday:

1. I had a pretty good eating day. I just crave breads/crackers,/etc., so that is what I usually struggle with.

Goals for tomorrow:

1. Have another good eating day.
2. Email Suz about joining the gym. I need to get that arranged so I can finally get into a rhythm with working out.
3. Figure out our daycare issue for March.
4. Work on the girls’ baby books while subbing.

2/18/08

Getting back on track.

It's been a zoo around here.

My mom arrived Tuesday.

I subbed Wednesday. My gma arrived Wednesday.

Jana's birthday was Thursday - we had a playdate in the morning with two families of kids that came and mil & fil, and mom and gma came too. I had a meeting at the gym during nap time. We had a small birthday dinner for Jana on Thursday too. Kara came down with a runny nose also.

Friday I had to do a training to be a sub in the school district I used to work - which included me running around to get my paper work straightened out. Kara's runny nose worsens (snot turned green, to be graphic).

Saturday we had everybody over for Jana's birthday party (see http://myblueeyedbabes.blogspot.com for pics of the party). Jana woke up with a runny nose. At about 11:30, Kara wakes up with this horrible barking cough. I'm ready to take her to the ER, but J talks me out of it (turns out my pedi was shocked I didn't because of how bad she was, oops!).

Sunday I take Kara to the dr and she gets treated for Croup. Jana and J head to his parents to hang out with his bro and bro's girlfriend. Kara and I meet them there and we hang out until way past Jana's nap. We head home and put the girls down for naps. My dad comes over to hang out for a while.

Monday we headed to the local children's science museum to play with Tyler and Justin. We got home for the girls' naps, then Mom, gma, and Kara and I headed to Costco so we could send Grandma home with pictures from the week.

Now I'm in bed. Sick. I've just spent the last hour and a half getting the girls ready because my father in law is coming over to watch them while I go sub tomorrow. I'm subbing all week, despite being sick, because we desperately need the money.

So as I've said, it's been nutty around here. It's been fun and I'm so incredibly glad that my grandma came to visit. I'm hoping we can head down there this summer to visit her and friends, but we'll see.

Gratitude Journal:

I'm grateful for:

1. My grandma coming to visit. She's never met my girls before and loved them. The best thing was that they love her. As she was leaving Jana called out "Bye, bye GG. Wuv you GG." Grandma even got a little emotional when she left because she was so glad she game and "got to meet my girls." I love that she called them her girls. My grandma isn't the typical Grandma, so this was a very special week for me.

2. Spending time with my brother and his family. Jana had such a blast with the boys and I'm so appreciative of them coming down to visit. They don't often make it down here, so it was great to have them. I love that Jana sees pictures and names off Tyler, Justin, Laura, and Ryan.

3. I haven't gotten to spend nearly as much time with my dad as I have with my mom lately, so it was very nice to hang out with him. He even came over yesterday afternoon to spend time with us and we got to sit around and chat. My dad's the greatest, but he kind of takes the back seat to my mom - to keep the peace.

4. Beautiful days. The weather has been amazing. It's been so nice to be able to get outside and let Jana run wild.

5. J's sis and fiance and his bro and girlfriend all made it down. We didn't get to spend much time with Meg and Shaun, but we got to spend more time with Dave and Jenny. They're so great! I've really gotten attached to Jenny. She's a total sweetheart.

Goals for tomorrow:
1. Have a good eating day (haven't had one of those in a while)
2. Set up an appointment to sign the paperwork for the gym.

2/10/08

Gratitude Journal:

I'm grateful for:
1. A wonderful husband who is really trying to help out more.
2. My mother in law made it back here safe and sound. I'm so incredibly grateful that she's safe.
3. J is so handy. He's made huge progress on wiring our surround sound and getting rid of all the wires from the tv to the cable box and dvd player.
4. Jana amazes me everyday with how much she's grown and learning.
5. for finding a playgroup that I enjoy. They are really down to earth moms and not snooty like the other group I started with.

Goals from yesterday:
1. I didn't make it to class, but I did make it to church for the first time in a long time.
2. We're making progress on Kara's napping schedule.
3. I didn't get to posting on Craigslist, but I hope to today.
4. Jana and I did get to go up to the new neighborhood and run around.
5. I didn't get to clean, but it doesn't make a lot of sense when we're still doing construction.


Goals for today:
1. Change out sheets.
2. Make crock pot dinner early.
3. Keep Kara on schedule.
4. Go to playdate
5. Work out.
6. List bed on craigslist.

2/9/08

Gratitude Journal:

I am grateful for...

1. That my wonderful mother-in-law is safe after her very scary car accident.
2. That it wasn't my mother-in-law's time. We all need her too much for her to leave us.
3. That we have such wonderful people supporting us in so many ways. Our lives would be so different without the support of our families.
4. my wonderful husband. He really takes the time to let me know that he thinks I'm attractive and loves me, etc.
5. Two daughters that test my patience, keep me hopping, and wear me out - How lucky, fortunate, and blessed I am to have them.


Goals from yesterday:
I pretty much accomplished none of the things on my list. Oops!

Goals for tomorrow:
1. Go to class.
2. Keep Kara on her new napping schedule.
3. List bed on Craigslist.
4. Take Jana to the top of the hill to run again.
5. Clean the house.

2/8/08

Gratitude Journal:

I'm grateful for:

1. Just when I was going to throw in the towel on the weight loss, I lost 4.2 lbs. Yay! Let's hope it's the beginning of progress again.
2. We tried a new nap schedule for Kara today and so far (knock on wood) it worked well. If I want to join the gym and go to the class I want, then I need to be able to have the girls out of the house at 9:45. The class is from 10 - 11, so let's hope we can do it again tomorrow. Plus, it seemed to give us better awake time too.
3. Kara sleeping through the night for two days in a row. Yay! If only I had been able to sleep last night. :-(
4. Going to bed with all the dishes done and toys picked up.
5. The rebate check coming in a few months. Yay for money!


Goals from yesterday:
1. I have an appt with the person at the gym on Monday.
1 1/2. I even got a good work out in with my work out DVDs.
2. I'm got my application in and will hopefully do the training on Friday of next week.
3. Went to LAWL and found out I lost 4 lbs. Yay!
4. Kara and I had great time together today. She was much more active during her awake time and we were able to stretch her wake time so that she had good chunks of time.
5. I think we'll have to wait for the date night for a few weeks, but we're still going to have one.

Goals for tomorrow:
1. Clean the house.
2. Clean out the garage so Jana can have some play space.
3. Go to Costco
4. List extra bed on Craigslist.

2/7/08

Gratitude Journal:

I'm grateful for:

1. My first "ruff you mama" (Love you mama). I've waited so long to hear those words, but of course dadda got it first. :-).
2. A fun day with Jana. We played at the local church that opens their multipurpose room and puts out a climbers, slides, cars, etc. and they charge a buck a family to play. We met a friend there and then a mom from the playgroup was there too. It's so fun to watch her interact with kids.
3. Kara let me sleep. We put Kara down at 7:45 last night. J and I crawled into bed at 9:30, talked until almost 11 and I slept until his alarm went off at 6. I can't remember the last time I got 7 uninterrupted hours of sleep. It must have been early pregnancy with Kara. Anyway, Kara slept until 8:15ish.
4. Getting a new haircut. I've been feeling like such an ugly duckling for so long I'm hoping this haircut makes me feel a bit better. I went back to bangs - which took me so long to grow them out last time, but oh well, I think I'll like them.
5. A wonderful conversation with J last night. We cuddled and talked for over an hour last night before going to sleep. It was fabulous.
6. doing a workout. I did a workout dvd today that kicked my behind. It's actually a camen electra strip tease workout, but this is the strength training one and it was actually pretty good.

Goals for tomorrow:
1. Go work out at the gym or at least set up an appointment to meet the membership person
2. Call the sub person at SK.
3. Go to LAWL.
4. Spend good time with Kara when we have one on one time.
5. Plan a date night for J and I.

Does your money manage you or do you manage your money?

After the class we took this fall, I have to say I have a much different perspective on money management.

Here are a few things we are trying to do:

1. Friday nights are our budget nights. We sit on the couch and look through what we’ve spent, what we have, and what still needs to be paid this month. Not romantic, but it keeps us working together and on the right track toward meeting our financial goals. We have a great spreadsheet that helps us keep our totals and we just put in what we’ve spent in whatever category and it tells us what we should have left in our account and we can check.
2. We’ve started a Christmas account. It’s a savings account that makes a good interest rate. We put $200 dollars in it ($100 for January, and $100 for February). We’re going to keep putting in $100 each month. This way, when Christmas comes around, we’ll have $1200 for gifts, food, travel, clothes, pictures, etc. and we won’t have to use a credit card. If all goes well, next year we’ll start a Gift account too and we’ll put in $30 a month. This way we will always have money for presents for b-days, showers, and other random occasions.
3. We’re starting a college fund for the girls. Right now we’ve just gotten another savings account because the interest rate is far better than any rate we can find elsewhere.
4. We’re contemplating alternating our food budget each month. We find that one month we spend close to $500 and then the next is $300. One month I’ll stock up on staples and that will last us for a few months and then we need to stock up again. By doing this, we can budget $500 and for the months we don’t spend that much, at the end of the month we can make an extra payment on something, like the house.
5. I’m trying to plan a whole month of meals and expand the variety of what we’re eating. This way, we get to look forward to some fun meals and aren’t so tempted to eat out (not that we can with two tikes).

2/5/08

Gratitude Journal 2/5/08

I am grateful for:
1. A quiet day with my girls. We didn’t go anywhere; we just stayed home and were together.
2. I’m not blacklisted after all. To make a long story short, I couldn’t figure out why I was never hired as a sub in the district that I taught in for 7 years. I gave it one more shot and called S-K again. She had no idea what happened and was extremely apologetic. I guess that I’ll be going to the training on the 15th so I can sub nearer to my house.
3. Crock pot meals. J had a meeting and didn’t get home until about 6:30. I decided to do a crock pot meal so I didn’t have to worry about cooking, and it was great to not have to try to cook while juggling both girls. Yay for meal planning!
4. Financial Planning. While I may not be able to join the gym like I was hoping, I’m so glad we sat down and planned out our budgets for the coming months. I now know how much extra I need to sub between now and the end of the year so we have enough to make it until through October, when I usually get my first pay check again.
5. Paying off debt. I am happy to admit that we are now the proud owners of two cars. Not special, you think? We finally own our two vehicles outright! We no longer have car payments!!! Yay!
6. Saving and planning. This may sounds silly to you, but I am proud of what we are doing. For my contracting, I get large lump-sum checks erratically spaced through out the school year. The last one was particularly large and instead of letting it sit in our checking account and be dwindled away, we have a plan. We deposited a large sum of it into a separate savings account that we just set up for it. It actually earns a great interest rate (4.25%) and it’s not as easily accessible as our checking account. (We were originally going to put it into a money market account or CD, but we found the rates to be terrible compared to this). We are giving ourselves a monthly “salary” from it and depositing all my new paychecks into it. So instead of spending the money I make, we’re saving it all and only withdrawing our “salary” each month. Since we decided we needed to do some things with some of the money (pay off car, furniture, credit card, start IRA, start college savings for the girls, start “Christmas account” so we have a separate account for Christmas presents), we’ll be short a bit in the end. (See #4). So now I’m doing more subbing and depositing that money straight into this account to sit while we just draw the scheduled “salary” each month.

Goals for tomorrow:
1. Sub
2. Work out after the girls go to bed.
3. Make Jana’s b-day invite & email it out.
4. Plan meal for Jana’s b-day.

2/4/08

It's time for me to get back on track now that I'm back home.

Gratitude Journal:
I'm grateful for:
1. Going grocery shopping today. We decided to budget more money for food and so I was able to go restock our staples that we've depleted.
2. Staying home. It's been so wonderful being home. It's trying with Jana right now, but I still wouldn't trade it for the world.
3. Joining the gym that is down the hill from our house (walking distance). We've figured out that if I sub one extra day a month, I can pay for my membership at this gym (including daycare costs).
4. a cleanER house. I did some cleaning today and feel better about the shape our house is in.
5. I love my husband.

Goals for tomorrow:
1. Email re: Jana's b-day
2. Call K
3. Sweep familyroom