This post is written by Chase…he wanted to share a video with you all.
When I found out my parents were making weight loss videos I thought I would share with you some of the exercises that I do daily to keep fit. If you do this workout at least once a day every day you could have a fit body and flat abs just like me!! Just try it!
Peace out,
Chase, 9 years old
P.S. This video was recorded by my 7 year old sister Karli.
I realize it’s almost two weeks past Christmas and here I am still sharing things about our day. I literally have a list of about 10 things I would like to blog/vlog about. Hopefully soon I will get caught up and be writing about current things instead of being a week behind! I couldn’t share this post prior to Christmas though or the recipients would have seen their gift.
I made these really cute Ice Cream Sundae Kits for Ken and I’s siblings this year for Christmas. The idea came from a photo I seen on Pinterest. Are you on Pinterest? Follow my pages here. You can spend hours on there looking at all sorts of cool stuff from fashion, to food & recipes, vacations and more. The original idea for the Sundae Kit came from the blog Family Bites. I thought it was a really cute idea so I bought the stuff to create my own kits.
Steps Involved:
1. First I purchased these bowls from Anthropologie. The original idea didn’t have any kind of bowls involved, but I wanted there to be something left to enjoy once all the goodies were eaten.
2. I purchased all the goodies- M & M’s, Reese’s Pieces, Walnuts, Gummy Bears, and Chocolate Chips and clear bags to put them in.
3. I created labels on the computer using a template from a site called Anything but Perfect and I edited and resized them to fit my bags.
4. I purchased waffle bowls and cones and wrapped them in plastic wrap. I also purchased a jar of fudge topping and caramel topping.
5. I bought plastic containers that had snowflakes on them to hold all of the items. I used tissue paper in between all the bowls as well. I also covered everything with tissue paper to hide the gift until it was opened. Now they have a container that they could reuse for something as well.
TaDa! I thought they turned out pretty neat and I was happy that everyone seemed to like them. Everyone loves ice cream!! This could be a great gift for any occasion really.
Uncle Don make this pretty sweet basketball shot over the summer. It was getting dark outside so the quality isn’t the best though.
The time has come where I needed to take some drastic measures to lose weight. I am officially at the highest weight of my entire life. Even 9 months pregnant I did not weigh this much. It’s sad really, when I think about how I have allowed myself to gain so much weight over the past 4 years. What’s done is done and I accept that all I can do is face reality and DO something about it.
I have tried joining several weight loss groups and blog, all anonymously, about my weight issues over the past couple years and I have never stuck with it. It’s hard when you are not receiving any kind of support and know that if you stopped trying tomorrow no one would really care. I have been amazed at the number of YouTubers that have been successful with documenting their weight loss journeys with the world. I think I have mentioned before in our blog before that I adore watching videos of the Shaytards family on YouTube. The father, Shay Carl has tried to lose weight for several years and has always been very open and honest about his struggle to lose weight. It wasn’t until this past year that Shay really put the effort into losing weight that he began to lose weight and keep it off. There were no gimmicks or quick solutions involved. Shay lost the weight the old fashioned way; the real way. He actually ate healthier and exercised. While doing so he documented his journey on his ShayLoss YouTube Channel. It is totally incredible to see his transformation in his videos. I love his attitude and he is so motivational and inspiring to me. I think the most amazing thing is that he is now able to go back and see himself and how he looked anytime he wants.
I would absolutely LOVE to have the option to go back and look at how far I have come once I reach my weight loss goals. I look back at old photos all the time and think about how I felt so much more confident about myself back then. The crazy thing is I have never really felt like I look. It’s almost like I can’t relate to the person I see in the mirror. I just don’t feel like that person that I see at all.
My 40th birthday is this September and I feel like it’s time. Time to get back to my old self. The past 4 years have been amazing in regards to building a great business with my husband and watching our kids grow. It’s so easy to focus 100% of my efforts and life into them and push my desires to the back burner. As I age I realize that not taking care of myself is only hurting my children. I want to be around to see my grandkids and even my great grandchildren. Much of this journey is about getting healthy and feeling more energized each day. I want exercise to be something I feel great about. I want my food choices to include fruits and vegetables and work on limiting the pastas/breads and high calorie foods and snacks. As time goes on I will share more about what changes I am making my diet and what types of exercise I do. I’ll probably post at least once a week an update with what has been going on and we will be posting weekly videos as well. I would absolutely love it if any of you would jump on board and do the same. Please let me know if you do!
The one thing I am the most excited about is that Ken is going to do this with me. He isn’t shy about this sort of thing and is all for my idea of utilizing the internet as a means for accountability. He has said, it’s not like anyone that sees us out in public hasn’t noticed that we have put on weight so why not own it and put it out there so we have no choice BUT to do something about it. Having Ken involved gets me so excited for both of us. We have done this together before 7 years ago and we were actually both at our goal weight at that time. We have decided to aim to lose 30% of our current weight since that is pretty on target when it comes to where we would like to be. We have sort of made it a competition between the two of us and I told him if he reaches his goal he can go get a gun. (This is a whole different topic that I will write about some other time.) I on the other hand don’t really want anything, the weight loss will be reward enough. However…after losing 70 pounds I just might need a tummy tuck. LOL!
We officially started today since it was the kids’ first day back to school and Christmas break is over. We made a short video of our “Starting Weight” and our first weigh in will be next Friday, the 13th. We will weigh in every Friday and the video and blog will get posted by Monday if not sooner.
Wish us luck!!! And be sure to vote in the sidebar who you think will lose 30% of their current weight first!
I was definitely ready for the kids to go back to school today. We haven’t worked for two weeks and the first part of December was sporadic due to shopping and preparing for Christmas. I am so ready to get back on a schedule. Somehow with all the Christmas craziness I forget to blog about something pretty huge….ANDREW GOT HIS DRIVERS LICENSE!!! I know I have made several status updates on Facebook, but I know not everyone here follows me on Facebook. So yea, my KID is driving. BY HIMSELF. How did this happen? He doesn’t leave our little town. He is on mostly country roads with not too much traffic. I haven’t let him go to the shopping mall or anywhere in Toledo. I feel like he needs more practice and there is no need to rush things. I’m embarrassed to share that he flunked his test the first time. Not because he did anything wrong, but because his car didn’t pass inspection. I checked all the things on the list prior to his test however I forgot about the stinking red brake light right above the trunk. You know the one right in the middle? I didn’t even notice it because both bulbs were burned out. So it was an automatic failure. When he was able to do the test though he did really well. His maneuverability was amazing, probably better than I could do. He did get some points marked off for not turning his head side to side enough when making turns at lights though. Which I am wondering how the test guy even noticed since he couldn’t stop talking the entire time which was very distracting. Oh wait, I forgot to mention that there was a massive downpour during his test. The rain was coming down so hard he had to drive like 45 miles per hour on the expressway. It was insane! I don’t know how it is in your state, but here the parent sits in the back during the test. That was quite the experience. I’m just glad that’s all over and he has his license.
Andrew has made several grocery store runs for me. He went for the first time a week ago with the other kids in the car to take them to CCD. It is also nice that he can go pick up his friends and girlfriend when they come hang out at the house. It is a blessing and curse all at once really. He is driving Ken’s second car- a Buick Regal for now. Andrew’s dad and I are discussing getting him his own official car in the Spring once he has more practice and gets a job. He is supposed to start working at a friend of mine’s Mexican restaurant in the next week or so. Just washing dishes a night or two each week. I really don’t want him to get a job at all. I prefer he focus on school and sports, but right now his schedule is pretty light in terms of classes/studying. Spring is going to be wicked though with a busy baseball schedule and harder classes. We will see how it goes, he may have to quit work in the Spring and start back up in the Summer. Life of a teenager…so tough huh? I just keep thinking about how I am not ready for this, but it all keeps happening anyways. Next thing I know he will be at Senior Prom and planning to leave for college. { Sad Face }
If anyone would have asked me to predict how the first season of American Horror Story would have ended I never would have even came close. WOW, is all I can think to say. This show is utterly amazing in every aspect. The amount of creepiness and gore and surprisingly awesome story line is just enough to make me want to keep watching. It’s one of those shows that you watch that you find yourself thinking about later in the day. You wonder who is sick enough to come up with something like this. Even the music from the opening credits freaks me out! If you like scary movies…you have to watch this show. Some of the episodes are available on hulu.com and you’ll find the rest in other sites online, such as Sidereel.
Karli loves to take photos and at 7 years old I think she does a pretty good job of holding the camera still like every 20th photo she takes. It’s always fun though to look through her camera and see what sort of silliness she comes up with. Here are some of her recent photos. You’ll see she loves to take photos of the dogs and random things she sees. There were also about 40 photos of houses on her camera. She loves to take photos while we are driving in the car. Silly girl!
If you want to see these photos in full size, view the entire set here.
This one is my favorite…it looks so cool!
I just transferred most of our YouTube Videos from our old channel to our new channel. It took a few hours and now I’m sad because… #1 – I wanted to go to bed early tonight and it’s now 12:30am (we need to get back on schedule) and #2 – I wanted to play some Modern Warfare 3 tonight instead! I didn’t realize it would take so long. It could have been worse though I suppose.
It can take anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour to upload a single video to YouTube, but I used this website called KeepVid to download the videos from our old channel and it saved them in MP4 format. This allowed the upload back to YouTube to go so much quicker. You know YouTube could make this so much easier by allowing people to change their user names! Also, it stinks a little bit because we lost all of our views on those videos, but I think it’s worth it. Any of our videos that could not be monetized by placing ads on them – I left on our old channel so that way I don’t have any copyright issues on our new channel. I think it’s silly that YouTube doesn’t allow you to use music and certain things in your videos. I feel like it’s basically like free advertising for the music so why not allow people to use it. As long as you are not posting an entire song or movie, what’s the harm? Oh well, what do I know. I also left our video from 2010 where Andrew and I did a review on our favorite iPad apps. It has over 8,500 views and I don’t want that number to start over.
So if you are in the mood to waste some time and watch some of our old videos – mostly from the summer of 2010, feel free! Here are all of the links:
2005
Cute 3 Year Old is Mean to his Dog – Chase when he was 3 years old!
2010
Memorial Weekend Cookout and Our First Vlog, June 2010
There is No Tooth Fairy!
Typical Weekend with our 4 Kids
Santa only Watches in the Winter
Schools out for the Summer
Cedar Point, Sandusky Ohio
Baseball, Basketball, and Birthdays Oh My!
Blake’s 10th Birthday
Day at the Lake Riding Wave Runners and Tubing
Kids having Fun at Church Party
Getting Ready for Football in the Front Yard
Garage Roller Hockey
I’m Gonna Be a Cheerleader
New Babies at Our Family Nest
Favorite Restaurants and Karli’s Birthday Present
Who is the Nicer Parent?
Our Dogs Eating Peanut Butter
Chase and his many Impressions
Chase records his own video
Exploding Father
Daughter’s First Game Cheering
Kids acting silly to Phineas & Ferb
Ski Trip at Alpine Valley
2011
Chase doing some Trampoline Tricks
Sling Shot at Kings Island
Pomeranian Puppies Playing – 8 weeks old
My First Viddy – an iPhone App
Karli beats Chase in a Race (Viddy)
Rocking Daisy to Sleep (Viddy)
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