Downtown Riding

I can't get enough of this beautiful weather! This weekend was in the high 70's so my parents asked if we wanted to go bike riding downtown. Of course we said yes so Wesley and I loaded up bikes and met them there. Greta is still using training wheels and there was no way she'd be able to keep up (she also has no interest in bike riding) so she remained at home with Sean.

We had a lovely day of riding. Wesley got to try out his new bike he got for Christmas which he really likes. It has gears so he's able to adjust them when riding up and down hills. He figured that out and was riding like a pro.

My father did some research and discovered the art museum (which is along the bike trail) offered a brunch on Saturday so we went there for a lovely lunch. It was a great day!

My third grader. When did he get to be such a big kid?!

My Stinky New Friend

It seems like this happens each year around this time. I start feeling like a giant, lazy slug that's stuck in my house because of winter and the frigid temperatures outside. The frigid temperatures are slowly becoming bearable temperatures which make me want to become more active. So I dug out my fitbit and my athletic pants from the bottom of my drawer, strapped on my Nikes and outside I went.

I've been trying to log the recommended 10,000 steps daily and that requires either a brisk walk outside or a ride on the treadmill. I nearly always prefer outside. I've been changing things up and going the opposite way I normally do for my walks. This makes me walk past one of the neighbors houses that adopts all the drop off dogs. We get quite a few stray dogs each year and those sweet people take them in, neuter them and get their skinny little bodies back up to weight. Right now they have five dogs that run out to greet me as I walk by. Most are sweet, one is standoffish and there is one that barks aggressively but doesn't harm me. I've decided the best way to deal with the swarm of dogs is to become their friend.

This worked pretty good, although now instead of barking at me and then going back home, one of the five dogs follows me on my 3 mile walk. He's a sweet dog.

He walks with me and keeps me company, occasionally finding a stream to bathe in. He climbs up the bank and makes sure to stand right next to me before shaking the creek water off. He's my stinky new friend.

Each time I go for my walk now he runs from his house and joins me. It's nice to be outside and active again getting fresh air and sunlight. I feel less like a slug each day.

Results

If you might recall at the beginning of March I gave myself a new monthly challenge. It consisted of giving up sugar. I gave up: desserts, no snacking after dinner, no sweet drinks and pretty much any other refined sugars. My dilemma was deciding if I would indulge in the many birthday activities we had this month. Then Sean said "you make the rules!" and I was like "heck yea I make the rules!". So I allowed myself to indulge in cake at the three birthday parties we celebrated this month.....oh and the retirement cake that Rich brought here with him. Excuse me, the MASSIVE birthday cake he brought here. Ugh. BUT, even with these few treats I managed to drop six pounds this month. It was nice to see the scale go down every week instead of going up like it's been doing all winter. Another four pounds and I'll be at my happy "everything fits" weight so I'm going to keep doing what I'm doing.

So my new challenge for the month of April is to continue with the sugar free month (and there is only one birthday in April so woohoo!). I'm also going to start wearing the FitBit again and get 10,000 steps each day for the entire month. I took the FitBit off for the month of March and it's been very freeing. I felt like it was a ball and chain and I would try way too hard to get steps in and then feel disappointed when I didn't reach my daily goal. It became stressful. This month I sat on the couch and read a book every day (What Alice Forgot was an interesting read....recommended) without feeling like I should be up and moving to get in my steps. Relaxing and removing the stresses of the day worked this month, but I need to get my hiney moving again. It's warming up nicely outside and the kids and I are running around and bouncing on the trampoline (which counts on the FitBit as steps) so it's time to get monitoring again.

Challenge

Hello March! I love March. It's a "lead in" month. A month where little shoots of green grass poke through the winter crust of soil. A month that leads in to Spring. It might be nasty out there but there is hope I tell you. Hope. Right now there is freezing rain falling, coating every surface in a slick glaze of ice. We have snow in the immediate forecast and several bitterly cold nights ahead. But since it's officially March there is hope.

I decided I need a new challenge for March. I thought about doing a 10,000 step a day challenge with the Fitbit, where I have to get 10K steps a day every day of the month but I thought I'd hold off on that challenge until next month. This month I'm going sugar free. No refined sugars, no artificial sugars, nada. Now I'm not going all crazy or anything, if there is a little added sugar in a product I'm letting it slide....6 grams and under is my rule for the month. So added sugar in marinara sauce, that's ok. Fruit is ok. I thought it would be a good way to get back on track for the spring and summer months. Now this doesn't mean I'm dooming the kids to a sugar free March. It just means I keep food stocked in the house that I won't have a problem saying no to. For instance, ice cream. It's easy to say no to ice cream and that's something the kids and hubby love. And to test my resolve, today I made the kids some cupcakes. So far so good. I got this.

For an activity challenge I had the hubby show me the next routine on the BowFlex. I've been doing the first routine outlined in the manual for about a year and a half now. It was time to switch it up, work some new muscles. So four times a week I am doing the new workout and it's a nice change. I'm starting out with some really light weights and working up to the heavy ones. It's amazing how quickly results can be seen with resistance training. I'm a believer.

I will report back with how my two challenges went this month.

Are you going to challenge yourself for the month of March? 

The Wednesday Write-Up

-I have pink eye. Again. That is all I'm going to say about that. *sob*

-I've been disappointing my pedometer lately with the sad little number of steps I'm getting in a day. It must be known how hard it can be to attain those 10,000 daily steps in winter. Some days it feels nearly impossible. But I've made it a priority again this month and I've been making great strides in my activity levels. At first I made a daily date with the dreadmill.....I mean treadmill. As long as I had a new magazine or game on the tablet I was good to go. I'd get on it for 30-45 minutes at the highest incline. That would ensure I'd get all my steps. Then even that became a complete bore. So my new goal is to just get moving more throughout the day. I turn on a little Luke Bryan on iTunes and Greta and I dance. Or while I make dinner I jog in place. Sometimes I race Wesley to the South fence and back (the kid beats me more often than not). Occasionally during the day I'll start jumping as high as I can fifty times. The kids think I've officially gone off the deep end I'm sure. Although now they've stopped asking what I'm doing and ask if I've gotten my steps for the day. All these crazy things I do in a day add up and at the end of the day I get my 10,000 steps (which is five miles by the way). It feels good and it's so much more fun than the treadmill.

-Wesley is doing great in school, I'm really proud of his progress this year. He's becoming a reading pro. We are reading a book a day in an effort to increase his confidence in reading. Keep it up dude!

-Greta's newest hobby is going outside and collecting odd shaped branches and twigs and transforming them into her "stick men". She glues googly eyes on them and "paints" them with glitter glue to make clothing. One even dons a hair bow. Naturally she prefers to play with them rather than the oodles of store bought dolls and toys. She's pretty creative for being four years old I think.

-Lately I've been getting a case of the munchies in the evening around 8 pm. I got in the habit of getting a big  snack nearly every night and I knew I needed to quit it. So I decided to start having a nightly cup of decaf coffee. The warmth filled up my stomach and stopped the cravings. It worked like a charm. Then I was reading online different ways to flavor your coffee without all that store bought artificial stuff. There are a lot of interesting ideas out there, for instance adding a teaspoon of pumpkin pie spice to the coffee grounds. That one is delicious. The key is to not add too much which makes it overpowering. But my favorite idea, which is a very simple idea, is to add cocoa powder to your mug then pour the hot coffee over it. I tried adding cocoa to the coffee grounds and it plugged up the filter making it very slow to drain through. But cocoa in the mug makes this lovely hot chocolate decaf coffee which is delish in the evening as sort of a guilt free dessert. I was just using plain old baking cocoa up until this morning when my shipment from Amazon arrived. I decided to order some organic cacao powder. Not familiar with cocao? It's got a great flavor and now I'm getting all sorts of health benefits from it as well. 


*Cacao contains more antioxidant flavonoids than red wine, green tea and blueberries *Instantly transforms smoothies, desserts, pies, and other recipes into the healthiest chocolate *Great source of magnesium, calcium, zinc, iron, copper and potassium

Here is the stuff I got on Amazon. All around good stuff to add to your diet. It's got a decent amount of protein per serving as well ( 6 grams). Anyways, thought I'd share.

  

WiiU Fit Time

I've got to admit that we've been thoroughly enjoying the new WiiU game console. It's winter outside so I don't feel too bad about sitting around playing games with the kids. But perhaps I've been sitting around too much this winter because I've gained a few pounds (six to be exact) and it's time to up my activity level and shed the winter weight. This is pretty typical for me, I gain a few pounds in the winter and lose them in the spring when I'm outside working my hiney off. But it's time to get exercising more. I've been bored with my workouts on the treadmill and Bowflex and need something new to get me moving. So, I saw that the WiiU has a Fit game that comes with a balance board and pedometer. It was just released on the 10th so last week I started shopping around so I could preorder it. I went to my "go to" store, Amazon and it was $89 with Prime 2 day shipping. I read the reviews and one of the them said don't preorder it here, it's $65 if you preorder it from Best Buy. Now, I can't stand Best Buy. I tend to avoid that store like the plague but to save $25 bucks I suppose I could give em my money. It's not like I had to actually drive to the store, it was delivered free.

So on Wednesday I received my WiiU Fit box. My parents have the balance board so I'm familiar with it and know how much fun it is.

The Fit Meter (a pedometer) comes with it and syncs with the console. You can choose a walking course and it uses the steps you acquired throughout the day to finish the course. They also have an altitude option where it measures how many steps up stairs and hills you go. It's pretty cool. I know of one gal who wears a pedometer as well as her husband and they compete to see who can finish the walking course first from the steps they acquire through the day. That would be fun.

My parents came over last night for dinner and we decided to do some quality family Wii time while they were here. My kids love the Wii and Greta, in particular, is fearless when it comes to trying new balance games on there. One balance game is the flying chicken  where you use the balance board and flap your arms to fly from one platform to another. Needless to say it's pretty entertaining to watch. Here is my digital  father the chicken.

And here is my real father the chicken. I took video but I'm sure he'd appreciate me not sharing it.

We rounded out the evening with dancing (in which my father kicked my hiney, I'm no dancer) and a few rounds of bowling in which Wesley stole the show. We'll have to take the kid bowling for real, he's a natural.
So, the WiiU Fit game is a hit in our house and the kids want to play it all the time. I figure since it's getting them moving it can't be all that bad.