Merry Christmas to all who celebrate it! It has been a whirlwind of a week and I am still coming down from the craziness.

Next up, we have New Years! What are your plans? I am thinking this year might be the first year that my husband and I actually go out and celebrate. I finally discovered a nice young girl that lives across the street who can babysit my kids. I have so many things planned!

What are your New Years traditions? What should we do this year?

It has been insane around here to say the least. In boring family related news, the boys turned 2 and 4yrs old and are growing like weeds! Sidney is talking up a storm and London is really beginning to use his imagination in ways that amaze us daily. The husband has gotten a promotion but still isn’t happy and will be looking for another job. I got a job working as a hostess at a brand new restaurant and I love it. Bryan and I rarely see each other, but it is proving to work out really well because the money stress is gone and we have more love for each other when we do finally see each other for more than an hr. That’s enough updating.

We decided to do our own ghetto version of Elf on the Shelf because the real one is really expensive. The premise behind the Elf on the Shelf  is that he comes from the north pole and reports to Santa if you are being good or bad. We don’t do Santa here. Weird? Yeah, but it’s a choice we made. We told the kids that Santa is magic that lives in all of us and they can choose to believe whatever they would like, etc, etc. I am sure my mother in law would love this….ha. So we just have the elf around for fun. He does fun things while the boys are sleeping and they wake up and see what new, naughty things he has done.

Here he is making some ornaments.

Here is our "elf" playing with cars.

He made a big mess with the cereal!

London is obsessed. Sidney wakes up before him and tells London what he saw and then London asks Sidney over and over if Sidney saw the elf move at all because he is just certain the elf is real (we would never crush his imagination, if it is real to him, them great!), so cute! Christmas is magical and in our house there may not be a Santa creeping into our house leaving gifts and eating your cookies, we still have a magic within us that a lot of families are lacking.

What are some of your family’s special traditions around this time of year?

Hello, all! I am finally finished with my final and have the whole summer off! So now I have more time to pay attention to this blog….yeah, right, I say that now, but I have said that before

So, I have started a new diet and have so far lost 10lbs! I am doing the Dukan diet and the basic premise of it is a series of phases. The first phase is the attack phase. In the attack phase you are supposed to eat all protein (meat, low-fat dairy products, and 1.5 quarts of water, and 1.5 T of oat bran) for 1-10 days, whatever you choose (I am doing 10 days).

The second phase is the cruise phase and this phase is the one that you do all the way until you are at your goal weight. In this phase you can now add in virtually any vegetable (minus sugary, or starchy ones) every other day. So every other day you eat veggies and protein and every other day you eat all protein.

The third phase is the consolidation phase and you do this phase 5 days per pound that you lost in the cruise phase. This phase is just like the cruise phase except there’s multiple new foods you can add back in and you get two free meals every week (not days, meals).

The fourth phase is the phase that allows you to maintain your new weight for the rest of your life. In this phase you live the rest of your life eating what you want but you have to have 1 day a week of only protein like in the attack phase. According to Dukan if you follow this plan you will never gain your weight back as long as you are making reasonable eating choices.

So I am ending my attack phase on wed and according to his website, I will be at my goal weight by August. After I reach my goal weight I don’t know if I will continue on to the 3rd phase. I know that it is nessecary to keep the weight off forever but I think I can make healthier choices and maintain this myself because I don’t want to be this big ever again.

Pick up the book, I think it is a good concept and I have seen so many changes in the way I feel that I recommend this over and over again!

Sorry I have been neglecting the daily goals! I fell at the zoo on Thursday and hurt my knee pretty badly so I have not been able to walk well…trust me, there is a blog post in this.

I did succeed in my goal of folding all of the laundry though which is a good thing considering stairs are not happening with my knee! I will post pictures later, I know you cannot wait!

My goal for today is to basically clean the house, but I don’t think that’s enough. If my knee will let me then I would like to organise London’s room. If my knee protests then I will work on getting this living room/dining area in order.

Having a daily goal has been somewhat helping me keep things in order. How about you?

I am a singing kind of lady. I sing when I am cooking, folding clothes, or just sitting around doing my math homework. I don’t sing anything that you would know. Oh, no. It’s my own work.

As I am typing this, vivid, horrible memories of my mother singing are flashing through my head. She has an OK voice, but not when it’s in the style of Opera and it’s about putting the peas in the caserole, no, then it sounds horrible. But, she would ALWAYS do it. You would hear my dad and I yelling from different areas of the house to shutup, but she never did, that strong headed woman.

Anyway, where was I before I brought you into my vision? Ah, yes, my singing. I have found that I am singing close to how my mother would but I know enough to leave out the Opera. As I am singing about putting x over 2 while doing my homework I wonder what London and Sidney thinks of all of this singing.

One day I saw a commercial on Nickjr that told parents to bring music into your kiddos lives and sing!! So I decided that was the green light I needed to keep on singing. So I sing to the boys while we are learning to count, and I sing to them to tell them to come inside for dinner and they happily listen as though I was just talking.

This morning was the morning I knew it had all payed off. A little 3 yr old sung me awake with a beautiful little song that made no sense and had no real melody, and I knew he was my son (like there was a question?). He continued singing various songs and I was amazed at his ability to hit those super high notes as well as those really low notes. He is a pro. He even added in some arm movement and acted out the song which I could only imagine was to help me better understand the meaning of the words.

So as the day went on, I realized that I can stop any kind of whining for something that he can not have at the moment or whatever reason he is upset, by simply requesting a song. He will ask me which one, come up with crazy names and in the end not let me choose. I love this boy.

This is an older one of London.

What was your goal for today? Did you achieve it?

My goal was to workout first thing this morning. Not only did I do that but I later ran on the treadmill for 20 minutes without stopping! I am very proud of myself considering I haven’t been running at all! I am going to try to make it a habit not really a goal, because I want to have a new goal each day.

My goal for tomorrow is to fold (and put away!!) all of the laundry that is piled in the basement. That may not seem like a big deal to you, but I will be posting before and after pictures for you to gaze at and wonder “how in the world do they live like that?!?”

What’s your goal for tomorrow?

That’s all you’ve heard on here, and I am sorry. We haven’t been up to much though, just school and work….same ole same ole.

I have been doing a lot of thinking about how I can better my self as a mother/wife/friend/woman. I sit around and sulk about how crappy things are at the moment and I do nothing about it. I wish I was skinnier but yet, I never get up and workout! I wish I was an amazing, playful, engaging mama, but again, I just sit around wishing that. I have gotten meaner, and more short tempered than I ever dreamed of. I need a reset button. I need a button that will make me skinny, not tired, and motivated! That’s it! But until that button is invented I need to do something to achieve my desires.

So, how am I going to do this? I am going to come up with a daily goal. It doesn’t have to be a big goal and it doesn’t have to be a recurring goal, just one achievable goal to be completed in a days time. Some days I may be adventurous and add in more than one goal and once I get good at completing these goals I will start adding in recurring ones. I am going to make an effort to post them on here, either daily, or weekly. Maybe this will stop me from saying that I never finish anything…

My first goal for tomorrow is to wake up and workout. I am thinking of a Jillian Micheals DVD, or maybe a nowloss.com workout, or maybe P90X. Who knows, but it will be done. While the kiddos are eating their breakfast, I will work out.

What’s your goal for tomorrow?

I love android phones! Guess who can now post things on the go, as they happen? Prepare yourselves for a more active blog!

We have  chicken pox filled boys over here. So happy to get it over with, so sad that they are miserable Sidney has them all over his head and in his diaper. London is not too bad yet, but it will come. Luckily they are still little so this is not going to affect them too badly.

In other news, Bryan and I have been busy, busy , busy with school. I am currently going on Mon, Wed, and Fri from 8-10:50. Bryan takes work off on Mon and Wed and I drop the boys off at a friends on Fri….works perfectly!

Bryan attends school in the evening on Mon, Tues, and Wed. He is usually back by 9 but one of those days he is back at 10 or so.

It has been working out fairly well for us. I seem to be getting  into a groove, attempting to study and take care of a house and that is feeling a lot better than when we first started this schedule.

We bought a new car and so now we are planning on selling our gas guzzling ford, and that will save us a ton of money.

I have another blog going over here all about my weight loss journey. If I put it out there I think it will help me do it right this time around!

I know this is a rather boring update but at least it is something!

I have learned from watching other married couples that typically men just don’t “do” housework. They can fix leaking pipes, or they can caulk a tub, but they would prefer to just not do anything that involves folding clothes, or doing dishes, or cooking, or sweeping, etc. Needless to say, I don’t care. I do a lot in this house and I’ll be damned if I am the only one contributing. So we decided awhile back that we would do certain chores each. Bryan’s chores at this time were to unload the dishwasher and take out the trash. Oh sure, the trash would explode out of the trash can and the dishes would keep piling in the sink, but no way was I going to do his job for him. It’s the principle here. If I do his job once then he’ll keep on expecting it! Oh no, I am smarter than that. I also made sure to give him jobs that were a necessity to keep this house running smoothly (he didn’t know my plan) so there was no way he could just not do his job. If the trash is overflowing then the job is harder because you’ll have to start picking up trash from everywhere, or the bag is stuck way in the trashcan or something of the sort. If the dishwasher is not unloaded then where in the world do the dishes go?? See? I have a plan. So needless to say, often my plan backfired and the house was gross, but I would stick to my guns and he would have a hell of a lot more work to do then if he had just done it when it needed it. So then it became hard on me to have to do all of the dishes just because he failed to unload the dishwasher, so all of the dishes became his job. Again, it’s the principle of things, sure I could easily unload the dishwasher and just do the dishes, but that is his job! I have also learned that you should never comment on the way he is doing said job otherwise he will throw his hands in the air and “give up” saying that I should do them if they are not good enough for me! So I step back and I breathe deeply when I pull a dish out of the cupboard that has some yucky stuff on it and say to myself, “At least he is doing them”.

What happened today was unexpected though. We have had the dishwasher soap that you buy at Costco for a very long time (it’s Costco, those things are HUGE!) so he has had to grab

that bottle several times to put soap in the dishwasher. That bottle has yet to change. Today I grabbed a dish out of the dishwasher and it had bubbles in it.

“oh, did you use too much soap?” I said, being careful not to step on any toes.

He shrugged and that was that.

Well, another load was running in the dishwasher (yeah this was one of those times when dishes were piling, causing a lot more work for him…) and I noticed soap was gushing out of the bottom of the dishwasher.

“Bryan, what kind of soap did you use?!?”

“Oh, AWESOME , powerful cleaning soap!!”

“umm, can you point to the bottle of soap that you used??”

He points to the Costco soap and I give him the REALLY? look and

he says, “and that” pointing at the dish soap by the sink.

Uhhhh, how long have you been doing the dishes? Haven’t you done this before where you filled up the soap thing with dish soap and we were taking buckets full of bubbles out of the dishwasher?? What were you thinking.

Then I remembered having conversations with my mom and she told me that she thinks my dad purposely loads the dishwasher wrong so she will get mad and eventually just say, “forget it!!! Don’t do the dishes anymore!!!”. Has Bryan caught on to this trick already?

How is the housework handled in your house?