Traditions

I am so excited about Christmas this year. While the inevitable winter haunts the back of my mind, I am still so excited to introduce Jocelyn to some of my favorite Christmas traditions! Sure she was here last year, but now she can get excited about it and participate! I just hope I have time to do it all! (I am going against everything that is me and actually considering planning the whole month in advance. Kind of crazy.)

• Decorating Sugar Cookies-contemplating having some of Jocelyn's friends and their moms join in this one. It might be crazy in our little home, but kind of fun too? Am I crazy?
• Decorating the tree (a real one) and home- Every year my mom could not wait to decorate. Decorating has never been my favorite, but this year I cannot wait because I know Jocelyn will love it. Decorating the tree is one of my favorite memories. No matter how lame I was as a pre-teen/teen I enjoyed that.
• Ginger bread house making- another absolute favorite thing to do. Except there is no ginger or bread. But many gram crackers.
• Fondue dinner- we usually have this as our Christmas dinner. This year we will do our own in Utah before Christmas break with friends since my whole family is off with in-laws, on missions, law school and all other crazy things.
  
• Seeing the lights at the temple.- every year we go too close to Christmas and it is crazy. We want to go early this year and enjoy it!
• Watching Rudolf (a Mince family tradition) and other fun Christmas movies (Its a Wonderful Life, White Christmas, Elf etc...)
• Make and give Christmas gifts to friends family and those in need. (every year we picked a family or some families in need and my mom made amazing gifts to give them. It was so fun!)
  

So there is my list. At least part of it. And there are only three weeks until we leave for California! Bah! Time to get going.

Check In #2

Obviously Thanksgiving got in the way a bit. However, I am pretty happy with the results over all.

Work Out:

Run 2x a week -Ran once. But I rode horses twice...kind of counts.
Spin 1x a week-Did it and died. This is why you should not take a break from spin.
Strength 2x a week - Got one in. Unless of course you want to count horseback riding again. Man my legs were sore!
Abs 5x a week- not so grand.

Eating:

Have a vegetable with every dinner, fruit with other meals -In all the meals I made for myself I did great! Thanksgiving was difficult because I was too busy feeding or attempting to feed Jocelyn and missed out on the delicious salad...but that was the only off day.
Keep in a healthy calorie count but don't cut calories It was Thanksgiving. Of course that did not happen.
Eat healthy meals every day with one cheat day allowed Again, Thanksgiving
One dessert a week Thanksgiving again. And being at my Grandma's farm. All we do there is eat, and its usually not that healthy. I love it.

So with all of that, I weighed myself per-Thanksgiving and got 126. At the end of the weekend I weighted myself expecting a few pounds added on and I was at 124! kind of funny and nice. You could say that was me losing muscle mass. But...I am not sure because I only missed working out for a few days. Either way I will take it. I will admit that while I did eat a lot of crap, I never ate to the point of being stuffed and that probably helped.

Learning

Jocelyn is learning and growing so fast!

On Friday (11/25/2011) we went swimming at Lava Hot Springs. Jocelyn LOVES swimming. Her favorite thing was to jump to me. I count to three so she has a cue and knows not to jump until I am ready. Well later that night she came up to me saying One, Two, Free, Four! I, being the over proud mom I am, was amazed. Of course she can count to three, but where did four come from? Yes I think my child is brilliant.

12/3- watching monsters inc- laughing along and commenting
12/4- woke up early. i heard her in her room and went to check on her and heard her sneezing and laughing at herself (her big giggle.) it was so cute!

11/26- woke up early from her nap and asked to be put in her crib and sat and played for about 40 min by herself. she has started just entertaining herself for a bit in her bed. its so nice! and cute! (nigh nigh rawr etc. is heard.)

12/12- insisted on reading me all three books for bed time. Brown Bear Brown Bear (she said the animal name and sound for each page and read through all the animals at the end like i do. in her own gibberish of course.) Windows to colors (she read this backwards. But opened each page and tried to point at the pictures and "tell" me about them like i do for her.)

Checking In

Thought I posted mid-week last week, I am making the fitness check in on Mondays. That is how I view my week, so that is how it will be.

Work Out:

Run 2x a week -success! (it was beautiful out two days in a row. Made me want to run)
Spin 1x a week-fail (i don't liketo put "fail", but not sure what to say. new word anyone? I had meetings.)
Strength 2x a week - success. Thank you to pinterest for all the ideas. I try a new one each day.
Abs 5x a week- 4/5 so, not complete fail?

Eating:

Have a vegetable with every dinner, fruit with other meals -half and half. I need new ways of incorporating vegitables for those who do not like them. (me.)
Keep in a healthy calorie count but don't cut calories starting off was tricky but i had it down by the end of the week and felt great! (minus sunday. moms like to feed you. and my mom fed me.)
Eat healthy meals every day with one cheat day allowed mostly success. minus the fact that i ate cinnamon pull aparts yesterday. thanks mom. (they were so delicious though!)
One dessert a week see above- i ate ice cream the day before those pull aparts......

Weight: home scale says 121 and work says 126 (what the?) I will go with the higher to be safe. I am not too worried as I just really got going. We will see what next week brings! (already got my work out in today!)

I am not fat

I was looking on pinterest the other day and I found a quote that said, "I am not fat, but I have fat that I need to lose." and it is so true! We all have that problem area. Mine happens to ALL reside in my stomach. Its kind of odd looking.

So my employer (so official sounding) is doing a biggest loser challenge from now through Jan 7. No I do not plan on winning. I do however plan on using this as a reason to get moving and have a healthy body fat percentage and maybe loose a little around the waist. (Please believe me when I say I have something there that needs to go away. I do, I am not looking for compliments or saying I am fat. I just need to get rid of it.)

So here is my goal. Anyone want to join in? I like accountability almost as much as I like competition.

Current Weight: 125 ish Body fat Percentage 24% roughly.

Over all goal: stay around the same weight but cut my body fat percentage to around 22%

How I plan to do this:

Work Out:

Run 2x a week
Spin 1x a week
Strength 2x a week
Abs 5x a week

Eating:

Have a vegetable with every dinner, fruit with other meals (i don't like veggies)
Keep in a healthy calorie count but don't cut calories (I have read a lot lately saying that cutting calories can cause your body to hold onto fat. crazy!)
Eat healthy meals every day with one cheat day allowed
One dessert a week (except Christmas. I do not believe in healthy eating during holidays.)

So there are my goals. I am going to check in here. It is not for you, but for me. I think I can totally cut this body fat down. So lets see how I do!

Good Night Steven

Each night Jocelyn and I sing a song before she goes to bed. The lyrics are "Good nigth _____ Good night ______ good night ______ we'll see you again really soon."

She has taken to requesting everyone she knows to be sung to. She is also starting to know and remember the names of all of her aunts and uncles. Last night we were singing to all of them and while I made sure we did not miss anyone I realized she would not request Steven. Because she does not know him. Or better, she does not remember him. She DOES know him, but that memory is clouded right now.

My stomach dropped. I always knew he would be the favorite uncle. Maybe he just didn't want to create that kind of competition for everyone else?

As I think about it, I guess there are some good lessons I can take from this as well.
1) She can know him. I need to be better at showing her pictures and telling her about him. I think I have avoided it because I cry so easily. But she needs to know.
2) The last line in the song is what matters. "We'll see you again really soon."

It seems like forever. I look at our lives and who knows how many years it will be before we see him again? Sure it is a blink of an eye for him. But what about us? Don't get me wrong. I am truly in love with my family and our life right now. I am enjoying it. But I cannot wait for the time when we can all be with him again.

Until that time though, I will make more effort. I will make sure that she knows him. And hopefully, in the near future she will want to sing to Steven and tell him that we will see him again really soon. Because we will. (though sometimes it does not seem soon enough.)

B!!!!

Tonight, while at a friends house Jocelyn came running up to me with a very concerned face. "B! B! BEEEE!" she yelled. Letter b? no, bee? no, Pee? YES! (she still struggles with the letter p.)

Up to this point she has been terrified of the potty )and usually only tells me if she has to poo. yes poo. i am a mom so i talk about that.), so I double checked. Pee? YES! So I took her diaper off and sat her on the potty with the Elmo seat. 'ELMO!"...yes.

So we sat. Nothing. "Are you done?" " NO! Elmo..."

Then we sat (really just 5 min or so, but thats quite a lot of time to sit on a toilet. well...at unless you are one of those magazine reader types....maybe she is practicing?

So after a few minutes, we are sitting there. And by we I mean Jocelyn, her friend Henry and I. He wanted to keep us company. And what happens? A trickle. Of pee. And I got excited. I cheered for her. She smiled, then got the chills. As she always does when she pees. And she still wanted to sit on the toilet.

Now to see if she will do it again in the near future, or if it was a fluke.

Winter

I wish I loved winter. But I don't. It is not just the cold. But the time of year for us. I thought I was ready for winter. But seeing as it hit us by surprise these last couple of days, (you would think that we would be expecting it now after almost 4 years...) I know I am not. I do not know how I will make it through this time. Please winter, do not stay so long this year.....