Six Weeks.

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Yesterday started my 6th week of pregnancy, I think. First appointment is October 17 - two weeks from today. If you know me on facebook, please don't mention anything. My family doesn't even know yet, we aren't going to tell them until after the appointment.

Details to come on Wednesday, if I can get around to it :)

Sorry.

If you want the honest answer as to why I haven't been posting, it's because I feel like there's nothing exciting going on in my life and I don't want to bore you with the same posts. I ran, it was okay, I worked, I didn't eat very well, a good weekend, blah, blah, blah.

Truthfully, we did have a great weekend and we went to Hershey Park with my cousins. We took my 8-year old cousins on all the roller coasters. Man is that girl tall!  She's already at my chin! But anyway, we convinced her, and bribed her to go all the roller coasters, and she loved it. She was nervous, but she knew that her options were side with Grammy & Aunt Kathy, or ride with the adults, so she sucked it up and she loved it.

That was my exciting weekend. I'm sure something exciting will come up in the next few weeks or something. Until then, I'll just be taking a break if that's okay with you.

Tell me:


What do you blog about when your life gets in a lull?

10 Week Challenge: Places

Happy Friday! Ah, six places. I'm wondering what kind of places these are supposed to be. Places you want to go? Places you've already been? Favorite places? I'll do a mix of the three.

1. Walt Disney World. My favorite place on Earth, truly. I could live here and never get sick of it, especially because you just can't be upset there. Families are having such a great time. The employees are happy and enjoying themselves. I know it's all cliche, but it's true for me.

2. Home. Home is where the heart is, and when we were in Maryland, our hearts weren't there. Home is where the family is, and because my family and Mr. Skinny's family both live locally, this is where home is. I don't love living with my parents, but this area is home and I am so grateful I have family that let's us live with them, no questions asked.

3. Italy. I want to go to Italy so badly. There is not a drop of Italian blood in me, but I just can't explain the desire to go there and eat all the delicious food. I don't know that I'm ever going to get there, but a girl can dream, right?

4. Greece. Same reasons as Italy. I want to see the history of these places, and the cultures.

5. Africa. I want to see where the oldest cultures on our planet come from, the most simple cultures, which is also the most complex. Thousands of years of history, millions even. Also, I want to help, these cultures have been hurting for a long time, and between colonialism and slavery, among other things, these cultures need help.

6. Heaven. My goal is life is to be able to spend the rest of eternity here, and every day, I try to strive to be the person that God created me to be so that I can spend eternity in heaven with my Creator.

Tell me:

Where is your favorite place to visit?

Where is one place you dream to visit?

Feelings About Running.

Some people learn to love exercise. They find the form that appeals to them and give it their all. They love the way they feel after accomplishing something new and they look forward to it. I thought I was becoming one of those people, but my recent hiatus from just about all forms of exercise taught me that's not true. I am a lazy person, I truly am. I know it's not a good thing, but I don't like doing work, any kind of work really. Over the past year or so though, I thought I was teaching myself to enjoy running. It's really the only kind of exercise that I'll do. I do need to step out some strength training and yoga though. Anyway, I'd run, but I don't love it. I love how it makes me feel, and I love to be able to say that "I run." I also love the amount of food I can eat because I burn the calories running. I don't love running itself though. I'll keep going at it, just to continue saying that I run, and to continue loosing weight.

Although I will say that this morning's run was definitely on the side of liking running. Since I haven't gone running for over 2 weeks, I convinced myself I needed to try this morning, if nothing else, just so I could try and see if it hurt my back. It didn't, but I never had any proof that my back pain was a result of my running. Since backing off running though, it hasn't been as painful, but it always hurts at work. I'm going to take this as a sign that my current job isn't my dream job. But we all knew that, right?

I was worried to head out this morning, thinking that my running endurance would slip away into nothingness again, and I'd be stuck doing the Couch-to-5K program again. For the third time. But I guess 2 weeks isn't too bad. I was able to run one mile, then walked another mile - ish and finished up running another half mile before my cool-down walk. I was so excited when I was finished. I really didn't think I could do that. Now, time will tell if my back pain is caused my running.

Weights should be my friend. I always have such good intentions, but then I never follow through! I need to come up with a schedule for including strength training, but I get nervous when people are home and watching me use my weights. I know, I'm home, and they're my family but it doesn't help when your brother looks like this...

No lie, he's about 10x more ripped than that this summer. I can't believe how small he looks there!

Yeah, he hits up the gym at least 3x each week. Ain't nobody ever gonna mess with my little brother!

Sorry for rambling. Moral of the story? I'm lazy and don't love any kind of exercise. I suck it up and do it because I want to be healthy. And I should start lifting weights. Who wants to be my personal trainer?

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Tell me:


Do you really love exercise? 
Do you strength train? At home or at the gym?

Date Night Weekend.

Sorry I've fallen off the blogging wagon a couple days. Honestly, I just needed a break. Nothing exciting happened. I still haven't run, although my back feels better, I'm afraid to run and hurt something again. My back hurts sometimes when I'm sitting, especially at work because I'm sitting for long periods of time. It usually helps if I sit Indian style, but not always. If I'm active, then it doesn't really bother me. However, I am enjoying my time of just being lazy. After my getting back on track last week, I successfully lost 2 lbs. last week. Now I just have to keep it up for this week. Last week I had my goal at loosing .5 lb/week, so this week I upped it to 1 lb/week. I know I can do it. I have before, I just have to focus on it, and getting the most food for my calories. And by that I don't mean sugar free/fat free processed garbage. I mean real food, fruits/veggies and all that good stuff. I'll let you know how it goes.

Seriously though, it's fall. The weather is colder, and the only good thing about fall (other than it being closer to Christmas(!!), and pumpkin roll), is that when I try on all my sweaters from last year that I were a little too snug for comfort, they all fit this year! And I feel fantastic when I wear them!

Anyhow, back to the point of this post, Saturday was date night. I love date nights. Because we live with my parents again, we don't have the privacy to enjoy a dinner by ourselves, or even watch a movie unless it's in our room, which means laying on our bed where Mr. Skinny promptly falls asleep in 10 seconds flat. Also, since we have no movie playing devices in our room (the Blu-Ray, DVD player and VCR [yes, we still have one, don't you] are all in the living room), the movie has to be on TV, or DVR'd. Yeah, so we don't have a ton of choices. Nevertheless, I love date night and we've been trying to do date night once each month. But the last time we had one was July so knowing that The Lion King was coming out in 3D, I knew I had to see it. Perfect for date night! Well, more for me than Mr. Skinny, but he loves me and my Disney fanatic inside!

We had to pick somewhere for dinner. Since learning how to cook healthier, not processed foods, we've been trying to pick local restaurants to go to instead of chains. If I'm going to spend a good amount of money for dinner, I don't want it to go to a chain. We chose Vanderlyn's, a local owned restaurant which is owned by one of Mr. Skinny's family friends! The chef is the father of a girl Mr. Skinny and I graduated from HS with! That's as local as you can get, and let me tell you, the food was delicious! We were there once before for the luncheon after Pop Pop's funeral, and the food was good, but I don't really remember it so well. That was more enjoying the company. We've been meaning to go back, but just haven't had the time. Well, we made the time this weekend and it was worth it. Pricey, but worth it. That was the most money we've ever spent at a restaurant for just the two of us!

I should have taken pictures, but I will tell you what we got:

First course was a delicious hot and cold mozzarella plate. The hot was fried mozzarella, but it was so good, not like something you'd get at Friday's or something. The cold portion was mozzarella rolled up with proscuitto, basil and sun dried tomatoes, topped with balsamic vinegar.

Second course was a tableside made Caesar salad. This was a huge salad, and a little spicy, maybe the pepper? but very good. It was more of a vinegary dressing than a creamy dressing, and Mr. Skinny preferred the creamy, but I thought it was a good switch.

The main entree for me was stuffed shrimp! Mmm! The crab mixture over top of the shrimp was perfect and while I think the shrimp were a little overcooked, it's wasn't a huge deal. It was served with mashed potatoes and veggies. The veggies weren't tender enough for my liking, and didn't have any flavor, but the mashed potatoes were awesome! Red skinned potatoes, just enough lumpy potatoes left, oh they were perfection! Mr. Skinny got a chicken topped with crab meat. The chicken was super tender, but there wasn't lump crab meat on the chicken like we thought, it was more mixed in with the sauce that topped the chicken although it was very good though!

I had a little room for dessert, but we knew our bill was high enough, so we chose to decline dessert. Let me tell you, if you're ever in Northeastern PA for any reason, check out Vanderlyn's!

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Tell me:


What's the most expensive dinner you and your SO ever had?
Do you do date nights? What kind of dates do you tend to do?
We have always done dinner and a movie, I love eating too much! Although I would be up for something different if there were any choices around here!

On Track Again.

I promised you an update, and an update I shall provide. Well, I've been hovering around the 147-150 mark for a while now and truthfully it's because I've been slacking. It was summer and while the fresh fruit and veggies were plentiful, so were the cook-outs. I was okay because I was running and working out enough to offset the bad weekend eatings of hot dogs and chips. Now that I'm experiencing some back pain, I'm currently not running at all, instead focusing on weights and yoga. And, there is no exercise to offset any bad eating.

On September 1, I thought that it would be good if I could not weigh myself at all in September and wait until October 1 to do another weigh in. Yeah, that lasted about 4 days. I knew that since I haven't been exercising I wanted to see what the scale was saying, so I stepped on it this morning. And... it said 150. That's a little too close for comfort. I still have at least 10 pounds to go, although I'd like to lose another 15 - 20, but we'll see how that goes.

There's no reason for me to not loose more weight. I'm not finished yet, and I need to get as healthy as I can before we either get pregnant, or try to get pregnant in January, or whenever we decide to try again.

Today was day 1. For the first time ever, I think, I measured my peanut butter this morning. I weighed my apple, and tracked everything as accurately as I could today. I can do this. I'm going to focus on each day, each meal, whatever food goes in my mouth. I'm not going to slack off anymore. I'm going to focus on my fruits and veggies and not eating dessert. Listening to my hunger signals and choosing healthy options. I talked to Mr. Skinny and he's on board, too. He's going to help me out. I can do this.

The good thing is that I caught myself before it got too bad and I gained a ton of weight back.

Tell me:


When was the last time you had reality hit you in the butt?

Floods, Fairs & Christmas.

Yes, you read that right, floods, fairs and Christmas. You see, I love Christmas, and I'm not sure if it was once Mr. Skinny and I started dating or got married, but my father-in-law is just as big of a Christmas fanatic as I am. And well, he starts decorating for Christmas early. We've both already started playing Christmas music, much to the dislike of most of the family and both our spouses. But they love us anyway and put up with us. Well, my father-in-law wanted to put an archway over the driveway with a Merry Christmas sign and what better time to start decorating then this weekend..? So yes, it might be the beginning of football season, but we were sweating putting this archway up. 

Mr. Skinny's grandma said she "crossed the gate to the west."

Onto the more serious stuff, my area of Pennsylvania, just a week and a half after Hurricane Irene swept through the area, was devastated by the remaining rain of Tropical Storm Lee. It rained for days straight, no lie. In just a few days we racked up over 9 inches of rain in certain areas. Luckily, we don't live by the Susquehanna, but we do live on a lake. The lake crept up to the house, but we were okay. It didn't come up far enough. I still haven't seen the lake that high since 2006 when we had another flood. Again, it was a reminder of the harshness of nature and the reminder that we can't do anything about it. If you've seen anything on national news about the Wilkes-Barre flood, that's the flood I'm talking about. Here's a slideshow if you'd like to see. 

My brother walking in the expanding lake.

Well since I'm not going in chronological order anyways, Friday night Mr. Skinny and I went to the local fair. I didn't pig out, but I did eat more than I needed to. We walked around though, but I'll be writing a post for tomorrow (hopefully) about my current status in my weight loss journey. Saturday we spent it over Mr. Skinny's house including the most likely last cookout for summer. Especially since we put Grandma's furniture away yesterday. I have a few bug bites from the get-together, but I am so blessed to have wonderful in-laws it was absolutely worth it in my eyes. I am slowly accepting that summer is over and fall is coming. Fall reminds me of when Mr. Skinny and I started dating all the way back in 10th grade. I will say, I do love this time of the year. 

Tell me:

What's your favorite season?

Have you ever been in a flood?

What did you do this weekend?