Eating In and Meal Plans

I joined a Biggest Loser Weight Loss competition that starts tomorrow! If you would like to join here is the FB link: https://www.facebook.com/groups/hmbl11/?fref=ts

Around March Joseph and I went over our spending habits and we realized we spend WAY too much money eating out! And I had no budget for grocery shopping so I was just spending money willy-nilly. We set a grocery budget that I could stick to without feeling super restricted and also set the goal to only eat out a couple times a week vs. every day. We did great! I'm doing great with my budget. But I want to save even MORE money to get out of debt. I set the goal for our family to eat in as much as possible. I don't want to eat out at all unless we are traveling or in an extreme circumstance.

Last night I made my first meal plan and I'm pretty excited about it! I'll be trying a couple of new recipes as well as some of my go to recipes. My question for you is what are your go-to recipes? Do you have a favorite meal that you like to make?

Pooch to 5K

Joseph and I were doing really well losing weight, and we've kind of come to a stand still. Mostly because I've allowed a lot more sweets back into my diet and consequently Joseph's diet. The good news is that we have both maintained our weight loss so far. 

I've been looking for motivation and I came across this blog on pinterest: http://www.runsforcookies.com/ She lost 125 pounds and found a love for running! Her blog is really motivational. I used to run/jog quite a bit when I lived in Utah. I found it relaxing after a while. That was a long time ago though. I heard about this Couch to 5K program but put it on the back burner. Then I decided I was going to run a 5K. The next day I saw the add for this in my Facebook newsfeed: http://www.thecolorvibe.com/sanantonio.php. The Color Vibe 5K. It looks like so much fun. I wasn't confident enough to ask people to do it with me yet, so I just shared it to my timeline so I wouldn't forget about it. Less than an hour later 2 people commented saying they wanted to do it with me. It seems like a run that you need to do with friends for it to be fun. I'm getting excited!

So after I made the decision to do the Color Vibe run, I went on the Couch to 5K website and found one called Pooch to 5K. It is designed by a veterinarian to help you and your dog run a 5K. Instead of completing the program in 9 weeks it takes 12 weeks. I'm ok with that, and I really want to help Sammy get into shape. We finished our first workout tonight! Poor pup! He was so tired at the end that he couldn't walk in a straight line! Luckily I don't have time to run again until Friday, so he has some time to rest up. This is going to be really good for us!

After our first workout. Sammy likes to hold onto the leash. 

The Little Organizer

Adelyn LOVES to organize things. She puts her toys in a pile, and then moves the pile some place else. She did this the other day when she moved my 3 pound weights from under the TV, put them on the couch, and them put them in the bottom drawer of my bedroom nightstand. It was so funny to watch.

Yesterday we were all hanging out in Adelyn's bedroom and we were able to record her organizing things. The video is pretty long, but she is just so excited about it.

Birthdays When You're a Mom

Growing up, being single, or even married without kids birthdays are generally AWESOME! Cupcakes at school, a billion facebook posts from people you thought completely forgot who you were, presents and nice dinners with the hubby or even a day off of work. 

Even though I have a baby, I think I still thought my birthday would be as carefree as they were before Adelyn. Yesterday was my realization that work doesn't stop when you have a child. I'm not complaining. I love Adelyn so much. Just getting down what I thought was a comically rough birthday.

Starting out- when it's your birthday without a child you get to sleep in. Adelyn didn't get the memo and decided to get up even earlier than normal. 5:45 am. Awesome. It's okay, I can do this. Sadly  my poor baby is having a rough time with teething. So there was lots of crying involved. That means lots of running around, trying to find different things to keep her mind off of her teeth, and getting bit (hard) when when I put the teething gel in her mouth. Not my ideal situation for my birthday. Please know that I am sympathetic to my sweet little girl when she's teething. I try everything possible to help her.

But, despite the rough morning we had, I put on my make-up, altered my new shirt to be "Mormon modest" (sewing up the sleeves a little bit to make it have cap sleeves), and got dressed for the day. I tried to look nice. I was proud that I was able to alter my shirt! I even dressed Adelyn in a cute outfit. After getting dressed she was in a bad mood so I put on Lady and the Tramp. Sometimes it's the only thing that will calm her down.

My new shirt. Please excuse the mess :)

Calming her down

I decided that what I wanted for my birthday was to not cook a single meal. I picked up Joseph at work and we all went to Subway for lunch. I was trying not to completely kill my diet because I wanted fajitas for dinner. My poor baby's mouth hurt so bad when she bit into a goldfish cracker that she put her head down on the table and cried. Joseph was awesome and took her outside and showed her a video of the fish and hippos from when we went to the zoo. She loved it and calmed down enough that we could give her yogurt. She was really hungry on top of her mouth hurting. Poor girl.

Adelyn and I went to this bakery that I found online that only sells cookies. I LOVE cookies. I would much rather have a good cookie than a cake for my birthday. So we went over there to pick some up. She was in a surprisingly good mood. Especially when I let her try one of the cookies. Joseph doesn't like chocolate chip so I was able to get him some lemon cookies and sugar cookies. They were all really good! Then I saw this jumbo chocolate chip cookie, dipped in dark chocolate, and had M&M's and sprinkles. That's what I wanted! I bought the cookies and we went home. Adelyn fell asleep in the car so I waited for her to wake up. Luckily she woke up in a good mood.

It was the cookie on the left. This is the picture from the website. 

                                                           

But then about 30 minutes later she threw a fit! Not from teething, just because she wanted to throw one. So we went outside for a walk. She's our nature baby. She likes collecting acorns and organizing them into piles.  Joseph calls them her treasures because that's how much she loves them. I took her for a walk around the block. She wanted to play with the ants so I had to pick her up. She HATED that. I ended up having to carry her while she was flat out on her stomach. She kicked the whole way back home. It was also 90 degrees with 86% humidity.

I changed her out of the skirt and put her in little shorts because I liked it better.

Organizing her acorns

Hunting for acorns

The rest of the day that she was awake went about like that. Luckily she goes to bed around 7. We ordered dinner from one of our favorite Mexican places and picked up Les Miserables from Redbox. We ate dinner, loved the movie, and enjoyed our cookies. By the time the movie was over my stomach was hurting. I thought I had just ate too much. No biggie, I'll sleep it off. I hate throwing up so I wouldn't just do it to relieve the pain. But my body said, you better get in that bathroom quick! Adelyn's bed is behind our thin wall to the bathroom. I apparently woke her up. One good thing we learned is that she'll allow Joseph to go in and comfort her back to sleep. She was up almost as much as I was. I felt so bad. After a while we realized that she was also probably teething so we gave her some medicine and she fell right back to sleep. Luckily everyone was able to go to sleep around 12:30. Then around 1 am there was a big storm! Of course. So grateful that Adelyn slept through it. And then she got up at 5:25 am. Awesome. It's okay, I did it.

Although being child free usually equals having a way less tiring and stressful birthday, I love being a mom. There are so many more moments to enjoy. I love cuddling with her, I love her laugh, and her smile. I'm sure having multiple children makes your birthday even harder to enjoy. But once my children are grown up, my birthdays can be awesome again. Like when Joseph takes me to Italy for my birthday in 2037. The whole day wasn't at a loss though. I did have fun eating dinner with Joseph and watching Les Mis. Next year I will have better expectations :)

Zoo

I'm really excited because we bought an annual pass to the zoo! Adelyn LOVES the zoo! She loves birds, fish, and the big animals (especially elephants and rhinos). The zoo is only about 15-20 minutes from our house so we can really go whenever we have time. I brought Adelyn yesterday and she had so much fun. It's so cute seeing her get so excited to see the animals. 

Once I took her out of her stroller to look at an animal she did not want to go back in. My bad. I had to carry  her the majority of the way. The only way I could get her to go back was to give her some goldfish crackers. She needs to walk! LOL

She is taking steps here and there but I think she's still too nervous to fully walk. Just yesterday she started taking steps without me prompting her to do so. It was really cute. I'm thinking in a week or two she'll be walking for real.

We had a great time with her birthday. I need to write a post about that. I still can't believe I have a 1 year old little girl!

Tomorrow we are going to SeaWorld (we have passes there too that Jospeh's family gave us.)  I'm researching a few signs (dolphin, fish, whale, etc) to show her when we get there. She has already mastered milk, more, and all done. 

That's all for now!

Lots of Months

So I feel horrible that I haven't posted anything for such a long time. It's mostly a journal to remember Adelyn. I guess I have the pictures.

Don't worry, it's stuck to her nose not in her nose

Reading with Daddy

She loves this book! Sesame Street Bubbles Bubbles

She was excited when she found Sammy's kennel

Best Friends

Sweet Baby Girl Face

Lots of teeth and I love this smile!

Minnie Mouse ears I made for her first birthday party

Christmas was a lot of fun. We went to Houston with the Odom side of the family. All of Joseph's cousins were there but Kacey, her family and Chelsey were up in Utah. For Adelyn's first Christmas she received a shape sorter, books, 2 baby dolls, clothes, a fisher price vanity set that sings to her, and a xylophone. Her favorite things are the xylophone mallet and the powder puff that came with the vanity set. She also loves kissing her baby dolls.

Adelyn will turn 11 months old tomorrow. She is teething like crazy! Poor little girl :( Her top two teeth finally came in last week. She had 2 days of rest and now more top teeth are coming in.

She is moving around the house and is so fast! She has a push toy that she crawls over to and walks that wherever she wants to go. Yesterday we were walking around the house while I held her hands and when we came close to the couch she let go, took one step and flung herself at the couch!


She is definitely not a vegetarian  She loves ground beef and turkey burgers! She is mostly on solid foods now. Except for the rare occasion when I just can't decide what to give her for dinner. Then I giver her baby food.

Yummy Taco Soup

Up!

She loves trying to feed me

                                   
She now says "Hi" unprompted when we see someone new. Today we went to visit Joseph at work and she was waiving to everyone as we walked around. I felt like I was the float and she was in a parade. LOL. She really is the sweetest little girl. If I sit on the floor with her she'll do her thing and play but every few minutes she comes back to me and puts her head in my lap or gives me a hug and then goes back to playing. I love those moments!

She has separation anxiety now. I've tried bringing her to the daycare at the YMCA while I work out but she usually cries so much that they have to come and get me. Now she has started crying when Joseph leaves for work. And today when we were going back home after lunch she cried when Joseph walked away.

She loves the music from the movie Tangled. If we're in the car and she starts crying all I have to do is put that CD on and she'll stop to listen.

I seriously cannot believe she'll be a year old next month! Where did this year go? It seems so long ago when she was a tiny baby. We love this little girl so much.

For her 1st Birthday Party we are doing a combined birthday party with her cousin Lilly who is only 3 days older than her. We will also be celebrating her cousin Aiden's birthday, uncle Chris and Papa. I'm so excited!

An Amazing Week of Learning

Adelyn has developed SO MUCH this week! It's amazing! I just had to write it down so I didn't forget how in awe I've been of her. Unfortunately I don't have lots of pictures of her doing these things. These pictures are mostly ones that were on my phone. It started when she figured out how to go from laying on her belly and getting into her sitting position. She still isn't crawling, but she can now roll where ever she wants and then sit there.

Stuck under the couch. LOL

She loves Sammy's dog tags

She has started pointing at things. It started out by her pointing up at me when I was nursing her. She would point at my lips so I would kiss her finger. Then when we were at SeaWorld she started pointing at the fish.

Pointing at the fish

She is starting to respond to us verbally too. A couple of weeks ago my Dad taught her to say "Up". She doesn't know what it means yet, but if you say "up" she'll say "uh". The other day I was reading her a book. I was making the animal noises and she really loved the monkey noise "oo-oo ah-ah". The next morning when I was reading the same book, I made the monkey noise and she repeated by saying "ah-ah". So cute! Then at church on Sunday we were in the nursery (my calling) and some boys were running around yelling AHHHHH. She looked at them and yelled Ahhhhhh back! And then when we were at SeaWorld we were watching the sea lions. They were making their noises and Adelyn decided to yell back at them. Ahhh Ahhh! And finally, today she and I were in the car. I thought she was asleep because she was being so quiet. The song "Don't Wake Me Up" by Chris Brown : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOowQeKyNkQ was on. It got to the chorus "don't wake me up up up up up up" and Adelyn said "Uh!". So cute!

Reading the book with the monkey

Again at church on Sunday, we were in Relief Society (my calling is only for the 1st hour of nursery) and I stood her up at the chair in front of us. The person (Allison) it the chair next to it had a shiny shirt on. While holding onto the chair Adelyn slowly walked her way over to her shirt to touch it. I was so excited for her!

Playing. She figured out how to make all the different moving parts work! 

Then Sunday night we went to Allison and her husband's house for dinner. (Which was really fun by the way! They are great people!) I brought Adelyn's bumbo over to serve as her high chair when I gave her dinner. When it was our turn to eat I had Adelyn on the floor next to her bumbo. She is able to climb into my lap and therefore into the bumbo. I looked over and saw her climbing into the bumbo. Then I looked back to take a bite of food, and back again at her and she was standing up holding on to the chair next to the bumbo!!!! I'm so mad at myself for not taking a picture, but I'm just so proud of my baby girl.

She loves her toes!

Sometimes it takes a lot to make Adelyn smile and laugh. She just doesn't find everything funny like a lot of babies do. Generally I have to be making funny faces or tickling her to make her laugh or Joseph has to say "You grew your own tooth" in a funny voice. Today we were out in the backyard with Sammy. Behind our fence is a walking path. Sammy broke one of the wooden fence pickets so now he can look out at people as they walk by. He saw some people coming and got really excited. He started running back and forth and jumping off of the fence (that's how he broke one of the pickets). Adelyn started cracking up!!! She was laughing so hard that she buried her head in my shoulder. It made me laugh really hard too. Sammy was freaking out for a few minutes and Adelyn was laughing the whole time! It was so much fun.

Her favorite place to stand

Another thing Adelyn has been doing is waiving! It's so cute!!! We had the missionaries over the other night and she kept waiving to them and making what looked like kissy faces when she was saying MMMMMM.

Adelyn really is changing every week. It's so amazing to watch her grown and to watch her learn. We love our little sweetie so much!