Monday Misc.

Hey everyone,

9:30 at the end of a good day. I had a flex day today... gotta love flex days! I am tickled we've made it work with our car pooling for me to do full flex days. What's funny is I leave the office at 4:30. We work right beside the freeway, and so I walk across the overpass and meet Bill in a parking lot on the other side. This is b/c the lights at the overpass are so bad that it would easily add 10-15 minutes to the drive if Bill were to drive over and pick me up. So I walk over and we pretty much meet up exactly at the right time. This past week it was quite funny though b/c Bill was stopped at the light from the freeway off ramp, and I was able to run through the middle of the stopped traffic and jump into the car. The other drivers must be wondering what the heck...

So I had a flex day and kept the kids home. We had a blast. It was Theresa's birthday today so Duncan and I baked her a chocolate cake, and we iced it this AM. We had Theresa over and Phil and Karen and the kids. Bill tried to get the day off, but was told there was training today so no. However, it turns out he was misinformed and he could have had the day off! Oh well. We still had fun.

It would seem our cat Strider had a bit of an adventure yesterday! We don't know for how long, but we think for several hours, he was outside. He is an indoor cat - always has been from the time he was 8 weeks old and we adopted him. But Bill came home yesterday evening and in came Strider. We had gone out to our friend's place in the afternoon so we think he was out for a good 5 hours. For a cat who has never been outside, can you imagine how that would be? I wonder if he went exploring or just cowered in place? But he came home again... yay!

Had a good weekend. At Chris and Ronnie's on Saturday - watched MegaMind and enjoyed it. Sunday we visited John and Amy at their new place, home for dinner and watched the movie Red, which we really enjoyed.

Weight loss efforts are going well for both of us. I'm down 11 lbs over all, Bill is down more than that. And you can tell on both of us, which is awesome. We're both working out, and just sticking to it. The more results you get, the more motivated you become.

So for menu planning this week
tonight we did shepherd's pie with scamburger (veggie ground round... scam hamburger... Bill came up with that one tonight)
we also have on the menu for this week
tacos
tropical chicken made in coconut milk
pineapple chicken
something else I can't think of :)

Have a good night!

Menu Planning Monday

Really, I do my menu planning from Saturday  - Friday, but I can post things on Monday.
So here we go:
Saturday was Chicken Fried Streak and Potatoes from Pioneer Woman. Yes, this was way out of the range of my daily points, but since Saturday is my free day, I decided to enjoy it. It was good. I can not imagine there are people who eat stuff like that every day.
Sunday - Jambalaya in slow cooker
Monday - turkey sloppy joes in slow cooker
Tuesday - taco chicken and potato foil wrap
Wednesday - Mushroom Burgers
Thursday  - Spaghetti and meatballs
Friday - Bill is home and I will be sending him grocery shopping and we'll make a new menu for the following week by then.
Cheers!

Sunday afternoon

We decided to let Duncan not nap today - yes, he is still a pretty good napper, which is awesome. But due to the time change, we figured if he didn't nap then he would be tired a bit earlier tonight and it will be good to get him back on track for getting up earlier tomorrow.

Weight in on Saturday  - down 11.2 over all in 7 weeks. I am thrilled with my progress. And it's nice that I can look at myself and notice that weight is going down. This week I started - once - the Jillian Michael's 30 day shred dvd. It about killed me. I will keep doing it. Friday we went swimming, so I opted out, and Saturday was about 2 hours of grocery shopping and I decided that pushing a cart and a child around for that long counted as exercise. I have no excuse for today. Maybe I'll go work out yet.

Duncan got into the school we were hoping, the one not in our catchment. It has a reputation as a good school, and all his little friends go there, so it should be really neat for him. June 3 we have orientation. Nikki explained what you do is go in for a few hours with your child and then at the end they decide who is going to what class. We agreed heaven help the teacher is all 4 boys end up in the same class :) Can you believe my little man is going into Kindergarten? He'll need to get used to no nap then, b/c it's all day K in the fall!

Cordie is good. She is such a funny, funny girl. This week she found the Dinosaur's Binkit book by Sandra Boyton. Duncan loved that book when he was little too. But everytime Dinosaur said "Where's my Binkit?" Cordie would just laugh and laugh and laugh. It's awesome. Her words are so good!! 3 word sentances. I don't remember Duncan's words being that good at that point, but as it has been pointed out, she's a girl. And she's my girl!

I'm working longer hours for flex days now, which will be nice. It's funny b/c my 1st normal flex day is a week Monday, and I was looking forward to bringing Duncan to school, and Mom pointed out it will be Spring Break. Duh.

Well seeing as I have room in my points, I think I might go have some crackers and cheese. Nom nom nom...

Things I don't miss

I just realized it's been a month since I blogged. And to consider I once thought of starting up a reviews and giveaway blog. No way. It's funny how easily you can give up something that used to just suck you in.

Things that I have given up recently that I don't really miss:

1. tv. We're not watching much tv these days. Oh, we PVR for a later date, but even a lot of the stuff we're recording we're just not interested in watching right now. I think Castle and the Mentalist are the ones we're really watching every week right now, and everything else can wait.
2. More specifically - American Idol. I admit that the new judges threw me off, although Mom assures me that they are doing an excellent job. But I really didn't want the 2-3 night a week committment to watch this show this year, so I'm not. I kind of miss it, but at the same time and not really.
3. Facebook. I am spending nil time on facebook. I am not actively playing any games - although I started a Cityville so my friends can get an extra neighbour, but I have not even gone so far as to see how it works. I imagine a lot like Farmville, which I once loved. I don't miss that either. 
4. My blogs. I still follow a bunch of stuff as I still like to try and win things. Most recently (last week) at $25 gift card from Chapters. I already have some credit on Chapters and am seriously considering ordering the Cities and Knights expansion for Settlers of Catan. 
5. My weight. ha ha ha... Yeah so it's been 5 weeks I've been on WW and it is going well! I had one week where I went up .4, but over all I am down 8.6 and am really thrilled with how I am doing. I am not finding it hard at all to follow the new Points Plus program and don't really feel like I am missing out much on food stuff. Okay tonight I super wanted a nice big hamburger and home made deep fried french fries. But I didn't. We had macos like we planned (tacos made with veggie ground round). Duncan ate 3 tacos!! Growing much?

Things I am enjoying as I am no longer doing those things:

1. Time with Bill and the kids. Duh. Evenings are fun. Last night we moved the art desk that Chris and Ronnie gave us a while back into my craft room. I taped some paper down, pulled out the paints and both kids had a blast! Was it messy? Yep. Did they need baths after? Yep. But what's the point in having a craft room if it isn't going to get messy?
2. Swimming. This kind of goes with the spending more time with the kids theme. Duncan has swimming 2x/week and for $2 each we get to go while he has lessons, so we've all been going together. Cordie loves it. Duncan loves it. I swam a few laps the other day. I am out of shape!! But you know, I'm doing something about it, so not beating myself up there. 
3. Quilting. As most evenings we don't feel like watching tv, I wander into my lovely craft room and, well, craft. Sunday I finished the top to Cordie's quilt I've been meaning to get to for some time now. I love it! It's all blocks given by my quilty friends online, and I just love it. I need some backing fabric for it. I'll post pictures when it's done. And I also started a quilt for Nikki who is due in one month now.

Oh, one thing I miss that I can't seem to get enough of: sleep. It's bed time. Good night!