Finally updated

First, I finally updated some new recipes.  Check out the favorite recipes tab above for some tasty ideas!

Speaking of healthy recipes, I would like to update you all on our progress.  I have met some of my major health goals.  Many of my health concerns have resolved themselves.  I am BELOW the goal weight that my doctor set for me.  She actually wanted me to meet it within the next six months...I met the goal in one month.  However, I am not quite to my goal weight but I am happy to report that I am now in a healthy BMI range.  My total weight loss, as of today, is 51 pounds.  I have dropped about four pant sizes and am feeling great!  Jason has lost a total of 32 pounds and is still going strong.  Together we have lost two times what our six year old daughter weighs.  Yes, we have lost two Kaitlyn's.

Speaking of Kaitlyn...we just celebrated her 6th birthday!  All she wanted was to go to Pizza Hut for her party.   Good thing we know the big wigs there so we could shut down the entire garden room for a few hours. It was a perfect party!  I put together a butterfly craft for the kids to do.  I used my Cricut to cut out a butterfly pattern, cut two small slits in the body and put in a tootsie pop.  We bought stickers and jewels for them to decorate the  butterfly with and then got googly eyes to stick on the lollipop head.  They were very cute!  We also made cotton candy with the cotton candy maker my mom bought the girls for Christmas.  It was definitely a hit with the kids, and adults.  Maybe more with the adults than the kids.

Other than that, the past month has flown by.  We are keeping busy with work, school, exercising, and laundry as always.

Have a great week!

Rounding up to 40

They (whom ever "they" may be) tell you not to weigh yourself everyday.  You are told not to do this because #1 your weight fluctuates #2 you can be easily discouraged if you don't see the scale move which will cause you to give up.  If you have even the slightest understanding of who I am, you know that I am not a patient person in any way.  I'm sure you also know that I usually always do things my way.  Which is the exact reason why I make a conscious decision to get on the scale every.single.morning.  Up until this past week, the scale has been quite favorable to me.  However, it was this week that it happened to me.

A plateau.

Of course discouragement followed.

My doctor said it would happen.
Weight Watchers said it would happen.
Jason said it would happen.
Everyone I know said it would happen.

It was this week that I began to understand why "they" tell you not to weigh yourself everyday.  I felt like I was doing everything right.  I have been tracking everything I eat and making sure that I'm eating the right things.  I have been such an advocate for myself and Jason by asking questions (probably annoyingly...sorry family and friends) about the way things are prepared and speaking up for us when we need food cooked in a certain way or with particular ingredients.

I have exercised rigorously...despite my ill-hearted feelings for John, the man who does the horrifying ab work out with me and makes me want to punch walls because I hate it so much.  I exercised more this week than any other week and still, when I stood on that scale each day, nothing.

But finally, today, a ray of hope.  A one pound loss.  One glorious pound.  That one pound puts my total weight loss at 36 pounds.

Which is awesome because 36 is so much closer to 40 than 35 was.   And in 5th grade math, those numbers totally round up to 40.

Has it really been two months?

I can't even begin to explain where the past two months have gone.  So this is going to be a hodge podge of events that have happened.
Health:  Jason and I started our life style change back in October.  We decided it was time to drastically change our eating habits and start regular exercise (the kind that makes you sweat and stuff).  We both have big goals for overall health and weight loss.  Things are going very well. The first few weeks were really hard but now it is just routine and gets easier every day.  I have lost a total of 32 lbs and have made huge improvements in my overall health according to my lab results at my last doctors appointment.  Please pray that we can continue to make huge gains as we have so far.
Christmas Program:  Jason came to school to partake in the annual Christmas program we have at school.  Kinsey sang the twelve days of Christmas with her class (I have a video of it but it isn't very clear so I'm not posting it here...sorry!).  There were different activities for parents to do with their child and stations for them to get their pictures taken.  Kaitlyn had a singing solo and she sang, "Santa Clause is Coming to Town."  The girls absolutely love when Jason comes to school for events so it was a fun day!

    

Christmas:  Our Christmas was much more relaxed this year than it has been in years past.  We spent Christmas eve with Jason's family, Christmas morning opening gifts from Santa, mid Christmas morning at my dad's house, and Christmas evening with Jason's family.  And yes, that is much more relaxed than it has been in the past...believe it or not.  I don't have any pictures to share from Christmas.  Obviously I took the whole relaxing thing seriously.
After Christmas:  The girls have been asking me for a while now when I was going to buy their snow boots and snow pants.  I kept putting it off (knowing my dad was getting them new snow gear for Christmas) and told them it would have to wait until it snowed.  Luckily, we did not have any accumulating snow until just yesterday.  Kinsey and Kaitlyn were so excited to get all dressed up in their snow stuff and play outside.  They even tried their hand at making the snowman version of the Pfeiffer family.

Today Kinsey went to Eagle Creek nature preserve with the social worker from our school to go bird watching.  She was so excited!  Our social worker brought her granddaughter along as well.  She brought binoculars for them to use to see different kinds of birds and will teach them about the birds as well.  Kinsey has been looking forward to this trip since last summer so she was ecstatic to finally be able to go.

Other than Kaitlyn and I fighting winter sickness...that's all I've got for now.  I hope everyone has a safe and happy New Year!

Hello November

We finished out October in true Pfeiffer fashion...by rushing around town.  Immediately after school, we had to rush home so I could get Kinsey ready for trick-or-treating and Kaitlyn ready for gymnastics.  I took both girls with me to gymnastics and Jason met me there as soon as he got off work.  He took Kinsey trick-or-treating while I stayed and watched Kaitlyn.  As soon as she was done, we rushed home and got her ready for the last hour of trick-or-treating.  We met up with Jason and Kinsey and finished out the night around the neighborhood.  By the time we stopped at a friend's house and ate dinner, we didn't get home until almost 10.  Needless to say, the girls were extremely tired and ready for bed as soon as we got home.  Here are some pictures from the night.

Kaitlyn ready for gymnastics

Kinsey's ready for trick-or-treating

Waiting on dad to pick her up so she can get some candy

"Here's my bucket!  I'm ready."

Kaitlyn finally making it out to trick-or-treat.

I hope you had a great Halloween!  So goodbye October...and hello November.

Pumpkin crafting

It is well known to those who know me that I do not like holiday decorations at my house.  Before you jump to conclusions, let me clarify, I do thoroughly enjoy holiday decorations at other peoples houses.  In fact, I even love to drive around and look at decorations that people put on the outside of their houses also.  But for me to put up decorations....not happening.  I put up a Christmas tree every year-even though we have never spent one Christmas at our own house because we are always out of town.  That is the extent of my decorating.  Decorations are just not my thing.  Period.  

In stark contrast to that, I love making holiday crafts with my children.  Usually, we give our crafts away as gifts (I know...those lucky people) but they are made with love by the girls.  Or we make them so we can hang them on our only decoration...the Christmas tree.  

I don't usually do Halloween crafts with the girls, mainly because we never have time since we are usually in school during this time.  Now that we are on fall break, we have had plenty of time to do some crafting.  Yesterday we decided to make clay pumpkins.  My only experience with this was in elementary school when I made a pumpkin that my teacher fired in a kiln.  I do not have a kiln so that was out of the question.  I found a recipe for salt dough (super easy...just salt, flour, and water).  In typical fashion, I added red and yellow food coloring,to make them orange, and pumpkin spice to the dough to make it a prettier color and better smelling.  

After mixing the dough together, it was really hard to work with.  We had to let it set for a little while to dry out before we could begin working with the dough.  We used different kitchen tools to shape and "carve" the pumpkins.  

After the girls got done with their pumpkins, I gave them a bit of a face lift.  Even pumpkins need to look their best.  We baked them in the oven at 170° varying the openness of the oven door for about three hours and then completely closed for the fourth hour.  

They are still not completely dry yet. But when they are, I have the perfect little shelf for our very first Halloween decorations.  

Thirty-one

Yesterday, I met up with my great friend, Emma, and she delivered my thirty-one stuff I ordered at her party.  This was my first thirty-one purchase so I'm excited to see how the merchandise holds up and if it's everything I'd hoped for.  

As a first timer, I was a bit overwhelmed at all the items.  I didn't go totally unprepared.  I had been looking at the online catalog for a while and had a good idea of what I wanted.  I knew I wanted personalized lunch bags for the girls.  I let each of them pick out their own patterns and font for their names on the front.  I knew I wanted something too, but I had no idea what.  I guess I was hoping that something would really pop out at me when I got to the party.  

The consultant had tons of stuff for us to look at.  I found the lunch bags that I was ordering for the girls and I have to say...I was very disappointed because they are h.u.g.e.  Like I could pack a whole weeks worth of lunches in them huge.  I think I asked eighteen different times if there was anything smaller.  Of course, the answer was no every time.  I even looked at the possibility of ordering something that was not an actual lunch bag and using it for that.  Unfortunately,  doing that meant that I couldn't get the girls the patterns they had picked out themselves.  

Ultimately, I decided to go ahead and get the humongous lunch bags that are about the size of the girls themselves.  Luckily, they use them for lots of things other than just lunch at school.  They will be perfect for snack bags in the summer at the pool and for long car rides on vacation.  

Since I spent over  well over $31, I was able to take advantage of a great deal.  I got a nice size utility tote for just $7.  This will be my new tote for all of my teaching materials that I lug back and forth to school.  It has lots of pockets on the outside and has lots of space inside for all of my stuff that I never really seem to use but have to have anyway.  

Here's a peek at what we got:

You can check out all of the thirty-one products for yourself here.  Enjoy!

New stuff

Nothing is better than setting a shopping goal and then actually achieving it.  Yesterday's goal was to find some reasonably priced cheap, but cute, shirts for Kinsey that would get her started for the fall season.  I wanted to purchase at least five shirts for about $30.  Sounds impossible, right?  Not so much.
I went to Old Navy and found some amazing deals!  Almost their entire inventory is on sale right now, so that made my goal even easier.  I was able to get three long sleeved shirts, two short sleeved shirts, and one zip up fleece.  A total of six items for just $32.  I even snagged two of those shirts for $1.39 each and got two shirts for Kaitlyn.  Here are the girls in their best catalog poses, each with one of their new shirts.

 

Last night we traveled North to Fort Wayne to visit our family.  This is an eventful weekend because while I'm here I got my hair cut (pictures below) finally.  It has been so long since I cut my hair so it was long over due...as evident by the pictures.   

And, yes, I have the same sweater on in different colors.  That was totally unintentional.  When I packed for the weekend, I didn't realize I grabbed the same thing in two different colors.  Actually, I didn't even know I bought the same sweater in different colors.  In my mind, they were two absolutely different sweaters.  When I got my hair cut, it made my neck itch so I changed...into the same sweater.    

Also, I get to meet up with my friend, Emma, and get all of my 31 stuff that I ordered last weekend. I will post pictures of my awesome new merchandise tomorrow when I get it!