Updates!

Oh, soon I shall have pictures for you all, my dear readers!  I've had a terrible nagging in the back of my head, knowing that it's been a little while since I've blogged anything.  So, to ease my little blog-conscience, I'll post a few updates and hopefully find some pictures for later.

~Today!  Today, is a good day indeed...the sun is shining, the sky is blue and the weather is teasing me with spring's warmth.  It's making me a little excited to plant my little garden in the backyard; I've been doing some research to find what I'd like to plant and I'm almost ready to map out a garden.  I'm keeping it very simple, it's been so long since I've attempted to grow, well...anything, and I'd like to make my first attempt a successful one.  I think I'm going to try some tomatoes, beans or peas, peppers, strawberries,  spinach or lettuce, broccoli, potatoes and maybe some carrots.

~Kristoffer and I start our Body-For-Life 12 week program today, and I'm actually pretty excited!  We had talked about doing this back in January, and it reeeeeally scared me, but I've kind of eased my way into some of the program food/exercise techniques as a trial run, so now the transition is hardly noticeable.  These past 8 weeks, I've lost about 8 pounds...which is great, and I have another 22ish pounds to go.  I can tell that I've toned up quite a bit already, so that's a big plus.  I will tell you that Kristoffer and I took "Before" pictures of ourselves and it was a real eye opener for me!  True to form, we stripped down to bathing suits and snapped pics...reluctantly.  I looked at the pictures of myself and cringed; it wasn't pretty.  It's funny how different you look when you actually take a picture (especially in a bathing suit, with nothing to hide the truth!), as opposed to just looking in the mirror everyday.  I think we can see the person in the mirror as US, but when we look at the picture, it's almost like we're a third party and seeing ourselves for the first time.  BUT, I'm excited to be fit again!

~I've started experimenting with freezer meals this week, and I'm excited to see how things turn out!  Over the past 12 weeks, I've become ridiculously frustrated with the amount of time I'd noticed I was in the kitchen; it felt like I was in the kitchen all...day...long.  Even ME, who loves to cook, was beginning to detest the kitchen!  So, I've been researching freezer meals that fit into our Body-For-Life program and I've made a few to put in the freezer.  The concept of freezer meals is to cook large quantities and freeze them into dinner portions and just pull them out to heat/cook when it's dinner time....much less stress.  There are a ton of freezer meals that can be waaay unhealthy, so I steered clear of those.  What I focused on were mainly the proteins dishes...pre-seasoned and ready to pop in the oven; and also pre-cooked brown rice (which takes forever to cook).  This way, I only need to make a veggie, and heat up the rice and throw the protein into the oven, and DONE!  I still need to actually do the final taste-test to make sure they come out of the freezer and heat up well, but I'm fairly confident.  

~Kristoffer might possibly be having a new and very exciting opportunity at work.  It is still very up-in-the-air, but we are hoping and praying and crossing our fingers!  That's all I can give you right now!

~Marin is such an exhausting ball of energy!  She want to play play play all day long, but not alone, she ALWAYS wants (usually) mommy to play with her.  It's really a challenge to balance playing with her, and playing with Owen and chasing after Owen and making meals and doing all the other house-wife stuff, phew!  But she loves her little brother and is so sweet to him (most of the time!).  She loves to carry her notebook around and draw, she loves her macaroni and cheese, she loves her stuffed animals and her play kitchen and her little puppy purse.  She's enrolled for pre-school this fall, which is crazy!  We had debated on enrolling her and the added cost of it etc.  We decided she was really craving the external socialization outside of the house, and she would appreciate the concept of school as a natural progression of independent freedom; something she has been wanting more and more of lately.  We chose the 2 day a week instead of 3 day a week program. 

~Owen is able to walk very short distances on his own, maybe about 4 to 5 steps.  If it's any further, he still chickens out and crawls.  He is still Mr. Happy and loves to laugh and smile and is amused by the simplest toy...like his big bouncy ball.  Honestly, I'm much less worried about/observant regarding milestones than I was with Marin, haha, isn't that how motherhood goes?!  He is such a cute boy, we love our little Owen!

Hopefully I can find some time to snap and upload some photo's very soon!