Wednesday Weigh In-Week 2

I looked forward to week two of my weigh in with a lot of trepidation. I was fiercly hoping for those 4 pounds but feared it wasn't going to come to fruition. I did not hit my workouts as consistently last week as I had in week 1 and suspected the scale would reflect this. I have been working on eating smaller meals more frequently instead of a larger dinner which is what I am most guilty of. My cardio workouts are coming along. I don't feel as if I'm radically gasping for air after 10 minutes, I actually can make it to 30 minutes and feel pretty good about it. It sure is humbling to realize just how out of shape I had become. So I step on the scale, feeling like I weigh the same, but still feeling skinnier. Oh how well we know our bodies! Alas, the results, I gained .9 of a pound, BUT I lost 2 inches around my waist! That makes all those crunches worth it! Anybody willing to post their results with me?

Weekend News

This weeknde was pretty un-exciting but that's not always such a bad thing. Last Thursday I had my first real teenage confrontation with Drew and it put me into somewhat of a tailspin. Saturday was his baseball game and they won yet again 13-2. Thus far his team is undefeated and he is thoroughly enjoying playing. He was a little disappointed on Saturday because he didn't get a hit. He was walked 3 times, but at least he scored twice.

Sunday was a little sunnier outside so we took the kids and Josie up to the park and let them play. They played tag on the playground equipment. It was enjoyable to watch. We are trying to keep little Josie from being too terribly active. Monday I took her in for some x-rays because she is still limping from her 'adventure.' Unfortunately we discovered that she actually has a small break in her pelvis. Not really somewhere they can do a whole lot for it so she is just supposed to take it easy and refrain from jumping which has turned out to be more of a challenge than I originally thought. Every time I turn around she's springing onto the couch for cuddle time. I try to lift her up as much as possible, but as has been proven recently, she can be pretty sneaky :)

Hope you all had a fabulous weekend! ~ Thosha

Pillars of the Earth - UPDATE

I've just checked the Starz website and the Pillars of the Earth miniseries is due to come out in July of 2010. No exact date yet, but I'll keep you posted :)

Wednesday = First Weigh In

Well it has officially been one solid week of working out. I only took Tuesday off to watch my favorite show, The Biggest Loser. Alas, I was pretty irritated at the fact that the Blazer game interrupted the showing. I'm sure plenty of Portland fans were happy with the game being on, but unhappy with the results of the game. That made me even more frustrated, the fact that they lost by 20+ points. I did get to catch the last few minutes of Biggest Loser so I saw that Victoria did get eliminated. Poor thing, I think she only ended up getting four weeks or so on the ranch. The girl did real well with what she had though. She fell below the yellow line with Sunny so it was no big surprise that Vicki was the one voted off, seeing as Sunny is a favorite on the show. All of the contestants are really starting to look great.

As for my weigh in.... I was decently pleased with the results. Last week I weighed in at 173+ pounds and this week I was just over 169 so I lost 4.4 pounds exactly. I have set a goal for myself of an additional 8 pounds over the next two weeks keeping with the 4 pounds per week. That would put me at 12 pounds in three weeks and my overall goal is to lose 30 pounds total by July 1st. I want to feel comfortable wearing a swim suit this season. It has been a long time since I felt confident in one. Any one willing to share their goals this week? I'd love to hear what you accomplished. Happy excercising! ~ THosha

Weekend Highlights-Drew's First Baseball Game

Saturday's weather was interesting and we weren't sure if it was going to end up nice or not, but Drew's baseball game started early at 11 am so it was clear and nice the whole time. It was a great game with the victory going to Drew's team. He is playing first base this year and did well at bat too; he hit a triple. Wow! I had a proud momma moment!

Sunday, Tom and I worked in the yard for several hours again. It is coming along quite nicely. The goal is to be done with the work and able to enjoy it by the time summer roles around. I must admit, having a small yard is making it a lot easier to achieve this! I'll post pictures soon. Hope you all had a great weekend too! Feel free to post what you did! ~ THosha

Pillars of the Earth-New TV Series...coming soon!

My favorite book of all time is an epic novel called Pillars of the Earth written by Ken Follett. Apparently I am not alone in my love of this novel; It is #2 on the NY Times survey for most popular books of all time and in Oprah's top ten list. I read it for the first time several years ago as a hand-me-down from my beloved sister Brandie and have probably read it a total of three times in all. At 1000 pages, it is an epic that is an absolute delight to read. In fact, last year, Tom got me the sequel to the book called World Without End and I enjoyed it just as much. Pillars is written in the time period of the early middle ages and tells the story of the inter-connecting lives of people surrounding the construction a cathedral and the surrounding town. World Without End is written from several hundred years later of the decendants of the first novel.

Exciting news for fans like me, I just found out this evening that Pillars of the Earth is coming out with an 8-hour mini series on Starz. It has finished filming and is in post production. I haven't seen when the actual air date will be, but I am anxiously awaiting its release. Donald Sutherland is playing an earl and there are several other big name actors in the movie. If you haven't read this book, I definately recommend you do so soon. Happy reading! ~ THosha

International Night - Sort Of :)

The kids finally talked me into doing "American Food" for International night. On Trevin's suggestion we went with Buffalo burgers and grilled up some mushrooms and onions to go on the burgers. Ironically enough, I didn't care for the buffalo. Not too disappointing since it cost $6.49 a pound! I did some research looking for cowboy type recipes and settled on Cowboy Beans. They were delicious. The recipe is as follows....

Cowboy Beans

1 lb ground beef
1 small onion, diced
1 sweet bell pepper, diced
3 slices bacon, cut into 1 inch pieces
1 can baked beans
1 can Great Northern Beans
1/4 cup ketchup or catsup, whichever spelling you prefer ;0
1/4 cup Heinz 57 sauce
1 TBL packed brown sugar
1 tsp worcestershire

Brown first 4 ingredients, drain. Reduce heat to medium low and stir in remaining ingredients. Simmer for 15 minutes or until dinner is ready to serve.

That's it; super easy! Warning.... this makes quite a bit so it's good for family bbq's or gatherings. To finish the meal off we had grilled asparagus and homemade potato chips. It was fun, but I'm looking forward to exploring international cuisine again next week. Anyone want to make a suggestion as to a region or country? ~THosha

Week 1-Excercise

It's officially been a week since I made my public declaration about working out. As luck would have it, I got sick last Thursday which knocked me down for most of the weekend. But, being faithfull to my promise, I went ahead and did my weekly weigh in tonight. It was pretty frightful and discouraging seeing as I gained 3.7 pounds, but I will persevere! I was feeling somewhat better today though, so I did a 30 minute aerobic workout this morning, plus, I checked out the gym using my trial membership this evening. Two workouts in one day! Yes, I'm exhausted :) Here's looking forward to better results next week! I'll keep you posted.... ~ THosha

Been Sick

Poor excuse but true. I caught Trevin's yuck from last week and it knocked me down all weekend. Friday was exciting in that I had a job interview at Club Fit, the local health club hear in Canby. I met with a woman named Wendy and we had a pleasant chat. She's not looking to hire someone for a whole lot of hours right now, but that's fine by me. She also gave me a complimentary week trial membership. Hopefully I'll feel better by tomorrow to actually go work out!

The weekend was pretty uneventfull with me not feeling so hot. Drew had his first baseball game which I was unfortunately unable to attend, but his team won and he said he played well. They have him playing first base this year which I think is the perfect position for him with his awareness and height. Tom and I worked on the garage on Sunday. You can actually walk though now and Tom did get a lot of his tools organized. We're still struggling to find room for everything. The garage has been the most difficult aspect of our move from the much larger house on Leland in Oregon City. Plus we had a basement and a garage, but we're still downsizing. We'll get there eventually.

Hope everyone has a great day and a fabulous week! ~THosha

Crazy Busy Day!

I almost didn't keep the stream going, but here I am after a busy day, finally signing in about my day. Drew's long awaited day had finally arrived. After getting all the little kids off to school, I went to the High School to pick Drew up for his first orthodontic appointment at 10 am. It was all preliminary stuff like x-rays and molds, but he's finally on his way. He's wanted them for so long! While we were there we asked about getting his teeth cleaned before the actual braces went on and as luck would have it, they had an appointment available later that afternoon at 1 pm. This gave us some down time so we came home and had some lunch and headed back out for his appointment. By the time I got home there were kids to pick up from school and grocery shopping to do for dinner. I was planning an early dinner because tonight was Mother/Son night at Carus for Austin and I. Therefore, I had to move international night to later this week and settled for breakfast for dinner instead. Mmmmmm... french toast.

By 6 pm Austin and I were off to his school for Bingo. I'm not a blue haired lady but I LOVE bingo! It was a lot of fun. Alas, neither Austin nor I came up with a win but the three other Mom/Son combos at our table managed to come up with two each so at least we got to bask in their glory :) All in all a fun but hectic day.

One final tidbit, I have a job interview tomorrow at 2pm. Everyone keep your fingers crossed and I'll keep you posted on the outcome. Have a great night! ~ THosha

Day One - Excercise

So I braved the scale today to get my starting point. I have in the past avoided weighing myself seeing as it is strictly against "The Secret" aka The Law of Attraction to pay attention to that which goes against what you want to see manifest in your life. However, to know how far we come, we must have a starting point. Yes, it was pretty depressing. I weighed more than I did at delivery with Drew. Ok, face the music....I was 169 pounds of love! I pulled out my old excercise video called Core Rhythems and got busy shaking my little Non-Latin inspired butt. I have a new respect for Latin dancers. Its not the energy it takes to do the dance, its the ability to roll your hips. I'm not sure if it's my caucasian background or the fact that I have one leg longer than the other, but those figures eights were extremely difficult! Overall, I lasted about 20 minutes. Tomorrow I'm going for 25 minutes but more importantly, an improvement on my technique. Everything takes practice right?

It's not too late for those of you who want to join me on my quest for a thinner physique. Regardless, if I lose weight, I'll keeep you posted! ~ THosha

Excercise Anyone?

Not only is the Biggest Loser one of the most popular reality tv shows right now, I am also a huge fan. Therefore I am contemplating starting an excercise routine. Emphasis on the word routine. That is definately the part I struggle with. I often excercise, but it is always hit and miss. I always thought if I wasn't working then I would find the time. Here I am, almost 5 months into unemployment, and I still don't excercise regularly. I find that I need some motivation. Ultimately, I would like an excercise partner which forces the committment, but that doesn't seem in the cards for me right now so I propose this.... would anyone like to become an on-line partner? We could track our progress with a weekly weigh-in, motivate each other and give each other tips. Posting our weekly weigh-in results would give us the pressure needed to succeed. I would even be willing to post pictures to track our results. Does this interest anyone? If so, please comment me back, I'd love to hear from you! If no one responds, I'll try to keep you posted on my own results. Have a great day and pray for nice weather. I'm a little sick of the rain! ~ THosha

What Is PeopleString?

Happy Monday everyone! I trust you all had a safe and enjoyable Easter. Tom and I spent the day relaxing and watching movies. It seemed an appropriate choice with all the rain. On Saturday we kept trying to beat the rain. We'd go outside and plant a few things then it'd start pouring so we'd come inside. Fifteen minutes later it would clear up and we'd go outside for a bit again. It was funny. After the third try, we finally called it a day. Boy, April sure is living up to it's "April showers bring May flowers" motto :)

This weekend marked our first payment with PeopleString also. What is PeopleString you may ask? It is very similar to Facebook but the plus version. In fact, it has now become integrated with facebook and twitter so you can access both of those accounts from your PeopleString home page. It is free to join as with the others, however, it actually pays you to use their site. They pay us using 70% of the ad revenue generated by the site unlike facebook, myspace and twitter who keep all of that money themselves. I wanted to try it out for a bit to see if it is real and wow! it actually is. PeopleString also has discounts for most of the online shopping you may do. Network marketing your thing? This is definately a great resouce for that. Like I said, it's free and you can do any of the things you already do from home, but just get paid to do it. It's not a lot of money at first, but they do pay you $1.50 just to join. Check it out and see for yourself at ...

http://www.peoplestring.com/?u=thosha

Let me know what you think and I'll keep you posted on my results!

International Night

Approximately three weeks ago, Tom and I decided to institute an international night at our house. Every Thursday night we eat dinner focused on a certain country or regions cuisine. We talk about the food and the kids have to bring an uncommon fact to share about the country being represented. So far it has gone pretty well. Week one we did French food at Austin's suggestion because he is a huge fan of French bread :) Week two we did German food and last night I mixed it up and went with Croatia. The kids hadn't even heard of the country so it was a good choice. Dinner was really fun even though it took me forever to make! We had Pasticada which is a version of roast beef cooked stove top with tons of veggies and a delicious gravy. Then we had Strukli which is more of an pastry appetizer and swiss chard mixed with potatoes. In Croatia they use a lot of a seasoning called Vegeta. I could not find any locally, but it can be ordered. It's made mostly from dehydrated root vegetables with sugar, msg, nutmeg and cornstarch. I wish I had the time to order it to get the full effect but substituted with Mrs Dash and added the nutmeg and sugar myself. It's always fun to hear what the kids come up with and explore new foods. If you are interested in any of the recipes, let me know and I'll send them to you! I'll keep you posted on next weeks dinner! ~THosha

Found Josie!

Oh the irony of life! This morning, very early, Tom was not feeling well and being the kind man that he is, decided to come downstairs rather than disturb my slumber. So he's resting on the couch and suddenly hears a light scratching on the back sliding glass door. Instantly he knew what it was. He raced to the back door and there was little Josie! Of course he immediately let her in and raced upstairs with her in his arms to share with me the wonderful news of her return. He came straight into the bedroom and snapped the light on at 5AM. I have been dreaming of Josie returning almost every night so you can imagine my confusion in waking to see Tom holding a dirty Josie in his arms! But, oh happy day.... she has returned. I am so grateful to have her back home. She is pretty skinny and very dirty with some cuts and bruises. She is also limping, but overall okay. Exhausted, she has spent most of the day sleeping getting her much needed rest. Thanks for all the prayers for her safe return. I'll keep you posted on her progress ~ THosha