More than meets the eye

Justin watched some old Transformer cartoons with his "boys" this weekend, and he is smitten.

Watch the clip to see how he got his latest injury:

February Madness

My favorite basketball team:

 Sorry for the terrible pics.  

I loved watching my boys "get their game on" after a long day of yard work and spring cleaning, and I had to share.

 Slam dunk!

Yes, the boys are in short sleeves, and Todd is wearing flip-flops--in February.

I love it.

Weighty matters

Once upon a time I was a tiny little newlywed.  At 5' 2" and 112 lbs, I'd never had to worry about my weight for a day in my life.  At college, people talked about the "freshman 15", but when I went away to school, I actually lost weight from all that extra walking around campus!  I ate what I wanted, although I was raised eating vegetables at every dinner and dessert only on Sundays, so I didn't really over-do it.  Eating healthy has never been a challenge. I grew up on white bread, but I always preferred wheat.  I rarely finished my Christmas and Easter candy because it just didn't tempt me.
I was not a very active teenager.  I liked drawing and creating...not dance or sports, but I moved sprinkler pipe on the farm and suffered my way through PE classes in school. I guess I just had a good metabolism.

When I got married at age 20, I fit into my sister's bridesmaid dress (she was 14 at the time).  I remember as a newlywed that if I sucked in, Todd was able to put his hands around my waist and his fingers could touch.

August 1998

 After I had my first baby, I lost all but 5 lbs and was back in my jeans within 8 weeks. I remember my Dr. telling me that I should gain 35-40 lbs with that pregnancy, and then looking at me and saying, "You might make it." When I did, he called me an "over-achiever".

After my second, I struggled for over a year with post-partum depression. I lost all but 10-15 lbs this time, but I was fine with it. I am blessed with a husband who loves me for who I am.  My weight doesn't matter to him, and I think because of that, it didn't really matter to me.  My weight didn't change who I was, and I had better things to worry about--like my mental health.

April 2003

Between 2003 and 2005, I started taking an anti-depressant and went on and off birth control pills.  Both are known to cause weight gain, so when it happened, I accepted it and moved on.  When I was twenty weeks pregnant with my third, I had my appendix out.  Because I was pregnant, they couldn't do the surgery laproscopically, and I had a pretty big cut across my belly.  Since my belly was growing while I tried to heal, I had to take it easy. I also had gallbladder trouble at the end of my pregnancy and I did A LOT of resting.  I don't think my scars completely healed until after I had the baby.

I think it was somewhere in this time that my thyroid levels started to plummet, although it took me four more years to figure it out.  After I had Dillon, I didn't lose a pound. In fact, by the time he was a few weeks old, I had gained another ten.  This was a stressful time for our family.  Todd was finishing up his thesis and getting ready to graduate, but USU denied us any more student loans, so we were basically living on credit cards to pay our bills.  Todd worked three different jobs, and I was quilting, but we just weren't making it.  We qualified for housing and food assistance, and that kept us going.

I don't want to get onto my soapbox here about food stamps, but I will tell you that the amount we were given was obscene. We could afford to eat ANYTHING we wanted but couldn't pay our bills.  If we didn't use up our food money, it rolled over to the next month. (If the government wants to know where to cut funds, I can sure tell them.)  Our food allowance was double what I spend now to feed our family of growing boys.  At the time, it was nice, because even though we couldn't afford to eat out, or go to a movie, we could splurge on food.  I remember eating Ben & Jerry's for every date night, and eventually I think I learned to cope with my financial stress by splurging on food.

I think it was a combination of the stress and subsequent hormone imbalance, and the newly formed "food addiction" (that I didn't even recognize) that got me to where I am now.

November 2005

Life continued to "happen", and within a year after Todd's graduation we were living in a new place, far from any family. We were only there for 3 months when we lost Todd's dad to cancer.  Todd struggled with depression for awhile after losing his dad, and I can tell you from experience that even though having depression is hard, having a spouse with depression is harder.  I gained a new appreciation for Todd after realizing what I had put him through. A few months later, we suffered our third miscarriage, and my hormone imbalance became worse.  I had fuzzy thinking, attention and memory problems, and not enough money to keep searching for a medical answer when my labs kept coming in "on the low side of normal".

October 2008

 In 2009, I started taking thyroid medicine that helped a lot with my "issues", although it didn't solve them completely. After another miscarriage and then my fourth pregnancy, I was finally feeling like myself again.  I went off anti-depressants completely and felt more balanced than I had in YEARS.  Even though I didn't like the way I looked, I never did any more than "wish" the pounds away, because my weight didn't change who I was.  I just accepted it.  I thoroughly enjoyed having that baby after so many years and I was not about to waste one minute of our precious time together.  Actually, by the time he was blessed (six weeks after giving birth) I had lost all my pregnancy weight and was even DOWN an extra 10 lbs.  Because of my gallbladder issues, I had been very careful about my eating while I was pregnant, and that made a huge difference.

At that time, I had every intention of losing more weight.  I had my gallbladder out, and I was feeling good.  Todd was content with his job, and we were slowly but surely plugging along...comfortably.

And then, as you know, Todd lost his job.  He moved into a travel trailer three hours away and came home on weekends, while I played "single mom" and tried to sell our house.  My "good intentions" of losing more weight were lost in the stress of that time. I watched my friends slowly move away and start their "new lives" while I waited for answers.  I mindlessly endulged in treats and my beloved Dr. Pepper almost daily, thinking that I deserved it, and it was somehow "helping me get through". When we finally sold our house and moved, I was almost back up to my delivery weight.

Moving brought a new start. I was thrilled to get settled, live in a warm climate, and to have my family all under one roof.  As soon as I got the bulk of the boxes unpacked, I joined Curves and started exercising. In a matter of three months, I had GAINED six pounds, and it wasn't muscle.

This is when I first started to feel "out of control".  I was so sure that as soon as I started exercising the pounds would melt away.  And they didn't.  For the first time in my life I truly understood that if I wanted to lose weight, I was going to have to change the way I was eating.  I still liked healthy foods, as always, but my portions were huge. For the past several years I had become accustomed to eating for comfort, and I liked the feeling of being stuffed.

Even though I didn't like the way I looked (and had been avoiding cameras for several years), I found myself so addicted to the comfort I found in food that I didn't even WANT to change my eating habits.  When I was faced with a decision of what to eat, I ate whatever I wanted with the intention of eating better "tomorrow".

The problem is, "tomorrow" never came.  There's always another tomorrow.

When I started struggling with depression again last fall, I knew I needed to make some changes.  I was running on "empty" and desperately needed to do something for myself.  I considered taking a class, but I was already stressed to the max and needed to simplify--not add one more thing to my plate.  For weeks I pondered what to do.  I finally came to the conclusion that the very best thing I could do for myself, for my health, my sanity, and my hormones, was to lose weight.  The only problem was that I didn't want to do what it would take.

That is when I started to pray.  I prayed for help to WANT to lose weight.  I had no doubt in my mind that I could do it, but only if I wanted it.  For two months, and through two fast Sundays I prayed for the desire to lose weight.  How I looked was not enough motivation for me.

Slowly, my prayers started to work.  I started noticing that at social functions I was the biggest girl in the room (when I used to be one of the smallest).  How did I let myself get to that place? I recalled something that Todd learned when he went to a conference last summer. It was on addiction, and the changes it makes in your brain.  The focus at this conference was mainly pornography addiction, but it also covered drugs, gambling, over-eating, and more.  He learned that in an MRI, the brain of a person who over-eats looks the same as a the brain of a person who has a pornography addiction.  Your brain actually gets "re-wired" and you are less able to make good decisions.

This bothered me.  I could handle the way I looked...as long as I didn't have to see myself in too many pictures, but to know that my over-eating could actually re-wire my brain, and was possibly the cause of so much of my "brain fog" was the start of my desire to do better.  Heavenly Father had blessed me with a body, and I was not taking care of it the way I should.

For the first time in my life, I started to feel the desire to lose weight.  Not the wish (because I've wished the pounds would go away for years), but the true desire to sacrifice something good, for something better.

I tell you all this incredibly long story of my weight gain, not looking for sympathy, but to show how I got to this place.  There were many factors that led to my weight gain, and many of them were valid reasons. My mistake was in assuming there was nothing I could do about it, and being content with that.

The family picture below will serve as my "before" picture.  My sis-in-law took it over Christmas break and my weight was at an all time high (two pounds more than the day I delivered Justin). I wish I had thought to have her take a picture of me by myself, but this will have to do.

January 2013

 When Todd's brother and his family came for New Years, we concocted a hair-brained plan to start a private group on facebook with the rest of his family to support each other in our efforts to lose weight.  We called it "Lean in '13", and as we discussed when we should start, my sis-in-law said, "Today. We should start today."

Truthfully, I don't know if I would have started "today" on my own.  I will forever be grateful for Becky's suggestion that we start that very day.  We went to Iggy's for lunch, and while we were there, I pulled out my new iPhone, brought up the MyFitnessPal app, and started recording my calories.

Six weeks later, I am down ten pounds.  A whole sack of potatoes...gone.

And I have no intention of stopping.

iphone picture dump

After I paid for my groceries and got the shopping cart out to the van, I discovered that Justin had done a little shopping (or shoplifting) himself.  We had to go back into the store and pay a DOLLAR for giant smarties.

I got a little more organizing done in my quilt studio, and quilted this quilt for Vanessa:

the quilting:

Ahh. Babies in the tub are the best, aren't they?  I once saw a poster at the pediatrician's office that said, "If they're crabby, put them in water."  It works every time.  Justin especially loves his foam letters.

On this particular day, I pulled some homemade playdough out of the fridge and bought myself two hours. TWO HOURS! Here he is, making cinna-rolls.

 I had planned to take a before and after picture, but forgot to take the "after".  

His room was spotless for almost 10 minutes.

Brayden's "Wax Museum" pose.  He was Albert Einstein.  When you stepped on a "play" button by his foot, he came to life and told you all about Einstein.  It was really fun, and he did an awesome job.

I've been working on a new organization system for myself, and so far I am loving it.  I'll post more later, but didn't it turn out so stinkin' cute and girly? I've been a little burned out on boy stuff lately.  The pink pens are mine all mine and nobody in this house is allowed to even think about using them. I made the dividers myself using digital scrapbook paper, and my trusty-dusty laminator.  Oh, how I love my laminator.

We have loved having Grandma living near us in the RV park for the winter.  Last weekend we had tickets to see their annual "Hee Haw" production.

 Justin made it through most of "Hee Haw", but finally gave in and slept (until there was clapping..he would join in and immediately go back to sleep).  Since that night, whenever he sees plaid he shouts, "Hee-haw!"

Proof that Spring is around the corner.  I don't know how y'all up North are surviving the winter and the nasty inversion.  We have clean air and 50-60 degree days and I am still chomping at the bit for spring.

This is what haircuts look like at our house.  The red looks so much darker on the floor!

Other stuff:

I love, love, love my iphone. Apps, photos, video, Siri, Facetime, instant messaging, etc. I love it all. I really thought I'd only use it for coupons, but it's almost like I grew another arm.

I hate, hate, hate Windows 8.  Hey, that rhymes...

Caleb has started 4-H computer programming and is creating his own video games--and they work. When I was his age I made homemade newspapers with my crayola markers.  He and his friends are considering doing Lego League next year.  He just registered for his sixth grade classes, and some of the classes he chose were Orchestra (violin), Lego Robotics, Lego Service, Pickleball, Crime Scene Investigation, Crazy Art, and Crochet.  Well rounded, don't you think? Music, Science, Sports, Art, and...Girls?? Maybe he really just wants to learn to crochet.

Todd started his first full day at his new job today. We went to Cal Ranch this weekend and bought him some new boots and Wranglers.  Fifteen years ago if you'd told me I was marrying a cowboy I would've laughed.

I have [purposely] lost 10 lbs since Jan. 1st.  I'm in the process of trying to gather my thoughts, and I will post more about weight loss soon.

I'm sitting here trying to figure out what Dillon's been up to.  When I figure it out, I'll let you know.  He's a sneaky one, that Dillon.

What's wrong with this picture?

If you guessed, "there's a toddler in the background playing with spinach", then you are correct!