Answers

To answer questions in the comments from my previous post:

A few years ago I had put on my blog that before I died, I wanted to learn to ballroom dance, so my hubby checked out studios in the area and found a great one. He basically got the lessons as a Christmas present for me and we started in January of 2006. Wow, can't believe it's been 4 years. There were long periods where we didn't go much. But we are now at the intermediate level. And I think it's one of the best things we've ever done for our marriage. It's a weekly date and then we go to a dance at the same studio the first Saturday evening of the month. They play all kinds of music. Our favorite dances are waltz, rumba, and cha-cha.

And getting cleaned out - I used no system, it just happened. Not sure why. May have been a bug since my hubby had digestive issues as well over the weekend last week. But it never felt like I was sick. I do take Miralax every day because I've had chronic issues with constipation. Maybe with the change in diet, my body is readjusting. Hard to say.

Had another scrapbooking weekend. Four of my friends and I are taking turns hosting once a month. I took my stuff to my friend's house on Thursday evening and worked for a while then. Went back Friday afternoon, all day Saturday and after church today until 5pm. I got 72 pages done! WOOHOO! I was very excited. And we had lots of fun chatting. Last night leaving her house, I came within SECONDS of being killed. When I left her house and got to the stop sign to turn onto the main road, I saw a faint red glow to the left and wasn't sure what it was, looked to the right and just then a car ZOOMED past me from the left - a car with NO HEADLIGHTS going 50 or 60mph! If I'd have left her house just a few seconds earlier, I'd have pulled out and been totally creamed. Not sure if it was kids goofing around or what, but I was NOT amused!!!

OK, everyone who commented on my last post is hearby nominated for the HAPPY 101 award. Ha ha! You are exempt if you've already got it before. ;-)

HYC check in - 180.6

I had a low this week of 179.2 and could scarcely believe my eyes! Had to get off the scale and get back on to double check. Without getting too terribly graphic, I will say that it's partly due to my body getting completely CLEANED OUT! :-) I'll amend the post if I'm back in the 70's tomorrow morning. But I'm pretty happy with a 3.2lb loss!!

Not too good about walking lately. I did do 3 ultimate abs ball workouts and weight lifting sessions last week. And I have all of my photos organized through 2009 on my computer and everything printed out for 2007-part of 2008 so I'm ready for another cropping weekend this weekend with my friends. (I got 740 prints done and need to print out around another 800 to get current.)

Thanks so much to Sophie at Tales of an ordinary life for the Happy 101 award!



The Rules
post 10 things that make you happy
try to do at least one of them today
and pass some lovins on to 10 other bloggers

1. Ballroom dancing with my hubby (will do it tomorrow)
2. Shooting pistols at the range (did it yesterday)
3. Scrapbooking (coming up this weekend)
4. Reading
5. Walking (will do it when I'm done with this!)
6. Taking a long hot bath (will do it after walking)
7. Laughing with my crazy adult children
8. Taking photographs of loved ones
9. Cuddling with my kitties
10. Watching old movies

No wonder I'm so happy! Will pass on the bloggy love after I get my workout done. I've already procrastinated too long!

HYC check in - 183.8

Same as last week, but since my period started Sunday, I'm definitely OK with that!

Got lots done scrapbooking last weekend and it motivated me to get more organized and get updated with printing out photos. It's really easy to let that slide with digital photography! My friends and I have scheduled weekend crops every month so we get more done. Looking forward to those times!

What I'm doing

OK, I have had some questions I haven't addressed yet, so decided to do so tonight.

The journal I got back in December has a page for each day. A block for each meal with a side box for "Trigger and Strategy to Change." I don't really use those since I eat roughly on a schedule, not emotionally. It also has little boxes for Hunger Level, Feelings, Alone or with others. The only thing I really do is record the time and what I ate. Then I record what exercise I've done. At the bottom of each page, it has some questions. Did you exercise today? What motivated you to exercise or prevented you from exercising? What reward did you give yourself today? What is your goal for tomorrow? And then at the end of each week it has a page where you look over the week and evaluate how you did that week. At the beginning of each week it also has a food planner, another thing I don't use, but probably should. :-D

As I have mentioned, I'm trying to give up dairy, wheat and corn. Not 100% successful, but definitely making lots of progress. Some of the substitutions I've found: oatmeal instead of Cream of Wheat, coconut milk yogurt instead of my favorite Greek style (sigh, really miss that!), Pamela's gluten free bread mix (made it in the bread machine) instead of the 15 grain I'd been eating. I'd already switched over to Almond Milk for use with smoothies and on cereal. One other treat I've discovered is frozen coconut milk - like ice cream, but maybe even BETTER! The chocolate is absolutely yummy.

I am still implementing the "rules" of the Flat Belly Diet, where I don't go more than 4 hours without eating, each meal or snack is 400 calories (4 per day) and a MUFA at every meal. For more info on this way of eating, visit Prevention.com's website.

I've been bad about catching up on everyone else's blogs, but am going to try to do better! Thanks to all of you who have faithfully visited mine!

HYC Check in Week 2 - 183.8

After swinging way up all week, glad to finish at up just .4! Getting back into the habit of exercising. The new way of eating has been challenging. Got some good recipes to try and made a run to the grocery store last night to pick up lots of great food.

I've been busy putting away Christmas decorations. Yeah, I'm slow. And I forgot about checking in earlier! Hope everyone has had a fabulous start to 2010!

Oh, and Anonymous who keeps posting stupid things that are just barely English? STAY AWAY! It's annoying having to keep deleting your stupid posts and I'd rather NOT enable word verification, but I will if I have to. :-P

I have a scrapbook weekend planned. YAY! I can't wait!

HYC check-in Week 1 - 183.4

OK, I've been happy to see the scale go down this week. I've been getting most of my exercise through dancing - on New Year's Eve and then Saturday night. I've been eating well and trying to cut out wheat, dairy and corn. It's challenging! I've got some Oikos yogurt in the fridge that I hate letting go to waste! ;-)

I'm going to start putting my weight in the subject line so I can track better without opening posts to check on my progress. My overall loss for 2009 was around 13 pounds. I'm up about 7lbs from my low for the year, so I don't have too much to make up. I'll get back to a record low before I know it!

More New Year's photos

Love this photo of my daughter and I! But doncha hate it when you've been to a special event and are looking all elegant, but afterwards you view the photos and realize that you should have stood a different way for photos????? After looking over everything, I was thinking that this dress just wasn't very flattering, but it was the way I stood with my arms crossed over my middle. It made me look boxy. I should have put my arms out or down so you could see the fitted silver band of the bodice. But I was so self-conscious about my arms and the sides, where the dress bowed out a little bit under the arms. DOH! I should have just relaxed more and not worried about it!

My favorite gingerbread houses.



I like the size of these photos much better. I made the other ones too little.

Happy New Year!

The Broadmoor certainly lived up to our expectations and was simply stunning with Christmas decorations. They had a display of gingerbread houses that was quite cute and they all had such detail! They were all at the foot of a large chocolate mountain. I took photos of each house, but will just post the bigger view.

The ballroom for the party was so beautiful! The chairs were covered with gold and had a bow of white or covered with white with gold bows. The table settings were very elegant, with centerpieces made of white roses and candles. The food was all amazing, too. Thankfully my husband asked about the meal earlier in the week and discovered that the entree was going to be beef, so ordered vegetarian for me. It's a good thing he did. There were three courses that had meat, so I got a substitution for each of those.


There was a live orchestra and they played lots of ballroom music, so we got some dancing in. Toward midnight and after, they switched to more modern stuff. :-P Kisa and Ken dance a Rumba.

The singers they had were all AWESOME! And "Frank Sinatra" was there! He was so cute and very funny and sang wonderfully.

One of the few photos that shows the silver on my dress! We were dancing a cha-cha at this point, I think.

My favorite photo of Ken and Kisa as we counted down to midnight. They showed the NYC ball dropping at midnight our time on big screens around the room. We were all on the dance floor and at midnight, balloons and confetti dropped from the ceiling. Except one of the bags didn't release! Fortunately, we were in an area where they did fall! :-)

Our first photo of 2010


One other thing, I'm pretty sure that David Warner was checking in at the same time we were. He looked so familiar and in a couple of hours, I realized that he was one of the actors in Titanic - the butler of the jerk.

I will be posting other photos on my family blog if you'd like to check that out.