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Nutrisystem 2 Week Update

So far so good! The Nutrisystem meal plan has been going pretty well for us. We have adjusted to not having Taco Bell and Chick Fil A, not that it hasn’t been hard. It does make you realize though how much fast food you did eat when you are going through each day eating a pre-planned menu. Watch our video to see our weight loss results from the first two weeks as well as some our thoughts I had about Nutrisystem so far.

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videos, weight loss

Starting Nutrisystem | Unboxing Video

Ken and I have struggled with being overweight for a long time. The last time I can remember us both being happy with our bodies was at Karli’s First Birthday Party and that was 9 years ago! We had lost weight together back then and through the years we’ve only been successful losing weight if we do it together.

Recent Photos of us
Present

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#365dog – Week 3

In case you haven’t noticed I am now going to share my #365dog photos and posts once a week instead of every day so that way I can focus on further aspects of my blog and my YouTube Channel!

Day 15
studying
One advantage of the kids getting older…they can help one another study! I usually quiz Blake the night before any History test and I hate History more than any subject. Chase did an excellent job asking Blake all the questions even if he accidentally gave Blake the answers half the time. Oops!

Day 16
Love my Poms
Daisy and Pippa love the snow so much. They love running around the yard chasing one another. Their fur is out of control! I prefer when they have their buzz cuts that they have in the Spring and Summer, but in the winter we let their fur grow out. Pippa looks cute, but Daisy’s fur grows out all frizzy looking. She’s like the sister that got the bad frizzy hair. I love them equally though :)

Day 17
Sibling love
This photo was actually supposed to be the thumbnail for a video that the kids made. It was this comedy/fashion show thing. Unfortunately we recorded the video at night and the lighting was terrible and they video clips were unsatisfactory. Maybe we will try to redo a similar video in the daylight someday. At any rate, we had fun recording it and the kids were laughing so hard it was all worth it.

Day 18
first place chase
Chase won first place at his wrestling tournament. But guess what – he didn’t have to wrestle anyone to get the medal! There was only one other kid his weight/age category but he was sick so Chase won by default. I’m sure this is going to happen quite often considering Chase is 11 and only weighs 57 – 60 pounds. I plan on picking up stuff to start making him some peanut butter milkshakes again. We need to beef this kid up!

Day 19
bathtime
We gave 3 of the dogs baths with a LUSH bath bomb. If you don’t know what these are you are missing out big time. The bath bombs make your skin smell so wonderful! I wish I could take a Lush bath every day, but they aren’t cheap! Our smelly dogs got a pretty pink spa day- which they hated of course! We even made a video of it. They are the sweetest dogs ever though, you can tell how precious they are, well until I got some bologna out.

Day 20
macbook air case
Love my new MacBook Air case that I got off Amazon. They have a ton of different colors too. The color I got is called Hot Blue, but it’s really more of a turquoise, sort of Tiffany Blue color. It’s a rubberized case, rather than plastic, so it’s feels really nice as well. I feel so much more comfortable carrying it around now. I did read on the reviews that people didn’t like that it was hard to take off and when you tried to take it off it often broke the tabs on the case. I’m not too concerned since I don’t know why I would be taking it off and on all the time. I Love it!

Day 21
home office
I’m pretty darn grateful on days like this (it’s freezing outside) to be working from home. I still had to leave the house a few times throughout the day, but at least I didn’t have to go outside at 7am and warm up my car and show up at a job in dress clothes that are paper thin. I’m sitting here cozy in my sweat pants and blanket. Yes, I know I still have a table as a desk. Ugh, remember this video? That was 8 months ago! I just can’t decide what I want in this room. Originally I wanted to have built in counter tops and custom shelves mounted to the walls. Then I seen a couple of setups from IKEA that I thought would do the trick. But I just don’t know! One minute I want to move, the next minute I would rather stay here and have extra money to travel, and then the next I am looking at houses in Virginia Beach. So basically I end up doing nothing. I’m pretty sure that the desks (setting up a separate area for the kids too) are not going to be permanent though. I’m just to indecisive and I would rather have the option to move things around, or to another house. Maybe.

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#365dog – Week 2

Day 8
Bowling
Super grateful for my friend who suggested we take the kids bowling today to burn off some of their energy. We are on our third snow day and being stuck in the house has begun to take its toll on us all. There is nothing more enjoyable than chatting with a friend while the kids act silly and make memories with their buddies.

Day 9
fort building
Every once in awhile the kids (Chase and Karli) actually get along. When it happens, it’s so sweet. And a miracle. Feeling grateful for the small window of quiet time.
I was actually able to get some work done. School has already been canceled for Friday so Old Man Winter – thanks a bunch for the extra week of Winter Break. Now please, PLEASE, let’s get things under control by Monday so my kids can go back to school. The kids are even ready to go back.

Day 10
karli's closet
Karli’s closet…she organized all of her short sleeve shirts and tank tops by color.
Karli has organized and cleaned her room so many times this week I have lost count. I would say out of all the kids she has had the most fun and really used her time wisely. The boys either get on their video games or complain that they are bored. Karli will play in her room for hours, do crafts, color with markers, draw, or just play around on her Nook or iPod. Or chill with me. I love my little sidekick and I certainly don’t mind when she likes to clean.

Day 11
Emma's 10th
We celebrated my niece Emma’s 10 birthday today. Isn’t she a beautiful? We bought her all kinds of fun makeup and a case to put it all in. Anyone who has known me in real life or followed my website/blog from the very beginning might remember Emma from when she was just a little baby. She had so much dark hair! Actually I still have this old webpage on my site from her birth and such.
I love going back and looking at all the old photo pages I have of the kids from when they were little. Most of Karli and Chase’s entire lives are practically documented on my website. I have 4 years of photo still on these old graphic style webpages that were so popular to make.
A different subject… I was all concerned about waking up early this morning for Karli’s dance because we have all been sleeping in all week. Well that certainly wasn’t a problem considering I woke up to Ken jumping out of bed at 6am because the alarm was going off. He went straight to the safe and got out his gun and took off downstairs and I swear I think I just sat there in a panic. Do I follow him, do I call 911, do I wait for him to tell me what to do? It ended up being our shed door that wasn’t closed all the way that set off the alarm. It must have blown open. Anyways, I was very much wide awake after that. I think it took an hour for my heart to stop racing.

Day 12
old macbook air
My brand new MacBook Air that Ken got me for Christmas had to go back to the store. First this blue stripe about 2 inches wide appeared on the far right of the screen, then a pretty rainbow of colors replaced the blue, followed by a bunch of scrambled pixels. I started taking my files off of it immediately and eventually it went away. But then it returned about 2 hours later. At any rate, I returned it to Best Buy today and exchanged it for a new one. I was still within the window of time to be able to return it without any questions, verses having to send it in to Apple for repairs. For that I am grateful!
new macbook air
Ken thought I would be bummed having to set everything back up to my liking and such, but I don’t mind at all. I love taking a brand new computer out of the box and turning it on for the first time. It wasn’t like I had all that much on it yet anyways. It only took me about an hour to get everything back like it was and transfer some files back over.
Time for bed…this is going to be fun, waking up at 6:30am for the first time in 3 weeks :( I’m so excited to get back into a routine though.

Day 13
here we go!
My alarm went off at 6:30AM this morning and I hopped out of bed as though I had a good nights’ sleep when in reality I barely slept 5 hours. It didn’t matter though because I was that excited to be back on a schedule. A lot of the time I lay back down after I make sure Blake and Andrew are awake, but I was up and mopping the kitchen floor and throwing in a load of laundry. Then I hopped in the shower, woke up Chase and Karli, and got them off to school all by 8am. Then I worked, I made a meal plan for the week, went grocery shopping, and then worked some more. I cooked dinner for the kids and popped my plate in the microwave so I could workout after Chase left for wrestling.
We are lucky that we have exercise equipment at home so I am able to exercise on days even when time is limited. We have a treadmill, elliptical, and the Inspire FT1 training gym which I love and still haven’t used to its full potential. I used this app on my iPhone that I just downloaded called Running for Weight Loss and its really nice. It focuses on interval walking and running and you can use GPS or on a treadmill as well. Not like you can’t do interval running without an app, it’s pretty easy. But the app really makes it simple and you don’t have to focus on the time since the app tells you when to run and walk.

Day 14
girl time
Writing when you’re grumpy isn’t very easy. I don’t know what my problem is. Today wasn’t a bad day, just little things get under my skin. Things that aren’t in my control so I just have to let them go! Like the weather, ugh! I so want to book a vacation for Spring Break, but can’t decide if I want to spend the money. And I’m tired today.
Anyways…Karli gets a little break at dance and her and I get to spend some alone time at a nearby diner. She had homework to work on, but it was still a nice break. She’s doing so well at dance this year. In jazz she is dancing at Advanced level with many older girls. If you haven’t seen her video from her Christmas Program/Nutcracker feel free to check it out. You can see in the video the routine she performs with the older girls – the one with the white shirts.
I’m so proud of her! She works very hard and it shows :)

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#365dog – Week 1

Day 1
#365DOG
New Years Day is always one of my favorite days of the year because we take the Christmas tree down and get the house back in order. While I love Christmas, I get so tired of the clutter by the end of the month. Today, Ken and the kids all pitched in and we got things straightened pretty quickly. Afterward I took Chase and Karli to the store because Chase had a couple of things in mind that he wanted to purchase with his Christmas money. When we came home the kitchen smelled wonderful. Ken had made the most perfect chicken and dumplings. My stomach was growling when I realized that I was so busy all day I hadn’t eaten anything except a handful of chips and salsa. I’m so thankful that I have a husband that knows his way around the kitchen and does a pretty darn good job cooking. He’ll often make grocery lists and do all the cooking for the whole week. We always follow the “I cook, you clean” rule and it works great for us.

Day 2
my little  helper
Karli has been such a great helper to me here lately. She helps with cleaning, folding laundry, organizing her room, and the list goes on. Even when we took the Christmas tree down she participated the most with putting everything away. Now don’t get me wrong, she can destroy a room quicker than anyone, but she knows she has to clean it up afterward. I suppose that’s to be expected being the only girl and all. I love the little notes she writes me and how she shares hugs and kisses every night before bedtime. I love how hard she works at dance and the pride on her face when she learns a new move or perfects a tumbling trick. She’s been my little shadow since the day she was born and I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

Day 3
game 2
The kids scores are on the left, Ken, Andrew, and I on the right.
game 2
Ken forced us to get up early today and by early I mean 10am. We have been on a terrible schedule all of Christmas break, but unfortunately it ended today. We took the kids bowling as we do every winter break. I love that we have this tradition with the kids. I hope we continue to do this with the kids forever, even when they are all off and married and have children of their own.
We aren’t very good bowlers, but I guess that’s to be expected when you only bowl once a year. Chase gets pretty upset when Karli beats him which is pretty much always. They are almost like twins that way, so competitive with one another. Afterwards Chase, Karli and I did a little shopping. I tried to buy the Naked 3 palette, but once again they were sold out. I give up – I’m just going to order it online.
Other than this horribly cold weather I have really enjoyed our winter break and I’m sad to see it come to an end.

Day 4
tori reese
My sweetest little pup Tori was spoiled this Christmas. I have always thought about buying her some steps so she can climb up into our bed by herself and I finally got them for her. She got used to them pretty quickly and it only took me one night of running into them in the dark to get used to them as well. Tori is a bit of a baby and probably receives more attention from Ken and I compared to the other dogs. We play with them all equally, but she gets spoiled with laying in our bed and cuddling more often than the other dogs. Shaggy sleeps with Blake and the two Poms still sleep in the kitchen. (Small dogs are the best, but the very worst when it comes to potty training.) We also chat with Tori more than the other dogs. Ken and I are constantly asking her questions about what she did when she ran away from home for two nights/three days this past summer. We’d love to know what she was up to that entire time. If only pups could talk. That whole thing is a time in our lives we will never forget. I still thank God for that everyday. Makes you believe in miracles after going through something like that. Yes, I do refer to all my dogs as pups even though they aren’t puppies.

Day 5
Yummy beef stew in the crockpot. Just add together the beef stew meat, vegetables, beef broth, salt, pepper, basil, rosemary, bay leaves, garlic and cook on high for 4-6 hours. Easy Peasy!
Yummy Crockpot Beef Stew
We had this yummy beef stew over the weekend. Super easy…just toss all the ingredients in the crock pot and after 6 hours on high the meat just falls apart in your mouth. I don’t measure anything…just toss it all in the crock pot and cook on high for 4 – 6 hours.
I used:
3 lbs beef stew meat
4 cups beef broth
6 potatoes
bag of carrots
bag celery
medium onion
1 cup red cooking wine
bay leaf
about 1 tsp each of salt and pepper
about 1/2 tsp each of garlic, rosemary, basil

I had woke up early to go to Chase’s wrestling scrimmage and just as I had warmed up my car and scraped the icy snow off the windows Ken texted me and said I could stay home because there weren’t too many kids in Chase’s weight class. That made me quite happy since I didn’t feel all that great. I ended up crawling back into bed and stayed there the majority of the day. Thank goodness for weekend movies and evening mindless television. I would cry without my ABC lineup – The Bachelor, Revenge, and Betrayal. Then I caught the end of Crazy Stupid Love on TV – right at the part with Ryan Gosling’s “photoshopped abs”. The night ended on a good note at least.
I guess you good say I felt grateful for a household that can function by itself on days that I just don’t feel up to par. The kids all felt grateful for school that was closed for Monday due to snow and extremely cold temperatures. I was a little bummed considering I haven’t worked in over two weeks and I am ready to get back into the swing of things. But hey, I won’t complain about another day of sleeping in.

Day 6
view from my office
View from my office.
Snow day Monday = No school. Wish it meant no work…
I realize how lucky I am to work from home on days like today. Not having to go out in the below zero temperatures and high winds is a nice perk for sure. Working from home also has it’s challenges on snow days because the kids are still home and that always makes it harder to work. I decided rather than do my regular work duties I would use the day to get all of my tax stuff organized. Normally I wait until Spring to get all of the final numbers together, but I decided why not just get it off my To Do list now. What a good way to start off the new work year, right? Plus we have to pay 4th quarter estimated taxes by January 15th and I would certainly rather have more definitive numbers to go off of rather than sending too much like I usually do.
I always start out the new year with good intentions of keeping my tax stuff, business deductions primarily, organized so I don’t get slammed at the end of the year. I actually did pretty good considering my spread sheets went all the way to September when I stopped and just ended up putting everything in a file folder. It only took me a few hours to finish it all as well as file a bunch of receipts and stuff that has piled up over the holiday. Feels good to be organized. Feels like I am starting fresh for the new year!

Day 7
Beautiful blue light
See that little blue light in there? That’s the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. That blue light means our bodies remained a steady 98.6 degrees today rather than freezing to death.
We woke up to our furnace not working and the house was really cold. I remember waking up a few times thinking that it was unusually cold, but I assumed it was just the record breaking -15 °F temperature outside. But nope, it was worse than that. The furnace wasn’t running and the pilot light was out as well as the pilot on the hot water tank. Our gas was working so it wasn’t that unfortunately. We made a couple of calls to get someone out to check it out ASAP and got “We are closed”, “We can come in two days”, and “We will add you to the list”. None of those answers made me feel any better.
Ken and I just ended up doing what we do best when things stop working. Unplug them, turn them off and on over and over again and continually accuse one another of not knowing what they are doing. He ended up going outside to make sure the vent wasn’t clogged and it did have a little bit of snow around it which he scraped away, but it wasn’t obstructed at all. But somehow magically when he came back in and turned the switch on that is directly on the furnace the pilot lit and we had heat! We followed the directions on the outside of the water heater (turn off, unplug it, turn the thermostat all the way down, plug back in and turn it on) and that worked as well. Praise the Lord! Hallelujah! I have never been so happy to see that little blue light before.
Thank goodness it was nothing serious. I mean, I still don’t know what happened. A couple of people told us maybe an air pocket in the gas line? Who knows, I just hope this darn furnace keeps on trucking because it is as cold as Alaska out there. Actually I think it’s warmer in Alaska right now than here in Michigan.
Yep, I was right. It’s currently -8°F here and 26°F in Anchorage, Alaska.
So I’m not feeling to happy about the weather today, but I am grateful that we are warm and safe in our home as I know others are probably dealing with all kinds of problems caused by this horrible winter storm.
Hope everyone is safe and keeping warm!!

candi

videos

Backyard baby bunnies

We found a nest of bunnies in our landscaping yesterday. They are too cute!! My guess is they are about 3 weeks old and probably very close to leaving the nest on going off on their own. We don’t think the mother visited them last night because we put lightweight twigs in an X across their nest and it was not moved. The kids held with them today (the day after we made this video) and they were trying very hard to jump around on their own.

(And yes, I realize I acted a little crazy during this video. I am a sucker for anything little and furry :)

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Did we keep trying for a baby girl?

Did we want more kids after having 3 boys? Were we going to keep trying until we got a girl?

All Boys

The other day I received an email asking my thoughts on finally having a girl after having 3 boys. The reader also wanted to know if I was afraid that my husband could only produce boys and my experience with trying for a girl.

Let me start by saying that I absolutely 100% admit that I wanted to have a girl very badly. At one point I actually had a private blog that I only shared with internet friends called “Pink Dreams” where I wrote about all things related to wanting a baby girl someday. I’m sure Ken was nervous that we would end up having a dozen kids while we were trying for a girl. But I have to say I am so very very blessed because things couldn’t have worked out more perfectly.

We always talked about having 4 children, but never really what we wanted the sex of all the children to be. I mean it wasn’t like we said – we want 2 boys and 2 girls or any such thing. For those who do not know, Andrew, my 17 year old is Ken’s step-son.

Andrew 6 mo Andrew 1 yr

Andrew was 4 years old when Ken and I got married. When we found out we were pregnant with our first child, exactly 4 weeks after our wedding, we talked a little bit about how we wanted a boy. Since we already had Andrew we thought it would be nice for him to have a little brother and Ken wanted to have a son to carry on his last name. So when we found out he was a boy we were excited and it felt meant to be. Enter Blake – son #2.

Blake 6 mo Blake 1 yr

For whatever reason getting pregnant the next time took 10 months. We had just moved into our home we built the day after Blake turned 1 year old. We wanted to start trying after his first birthday so we could have two kids close together in age. It took month after month of trying and worrying about whether I was ever going to be able to get pregnant again. I don’t know if it was the stress of trying and all that we had going on with the new house or what. Finally it happened and we were thrilled. At that point we were grateful for just being able to get pregnant, let alone hoping for a boy or girl. By the time I was halfway through the pregnancy and was going in for the ultrasound where we would find out the sex of the baby – it was no secret I really wanted to have a girl. I remember even telling the ultrasound technician that we hoped to find out it was a girl. I recall her saying something like, “Well you don’t need to go buy any new clothes because it’s a boy” or maybe it was something like “You don’t have to redecorate the nursery…because it’s a boy”. Something like that. I can’t recall exactly all that was said between Ken and I after that appointment, but I know they were comments like, “It’s just meant to be” and “We just want a healthy baby”. While I was very disappointed I knew in the back of my mind we still had discussed many times that we wanted to have at least one more child so I still had hope for my baby girl. Welcome Chase – son #3. Read Chase’s Birth Story.

Chase 6 mo Chase 1 yr

I also have to mention here that Andrew was spoiled rotten being my first baby. And then Blake was the easiest, happiest baby ever. Chase, who took 10 long months to be created by God (I like to joke), was such a stinker- cried so much and was rarely happy the first few months. So crazy!

Since it took so long to get pregnant with Chase, Ken and I both agreed that we would start trying to get pregnant right when Chase turned a year old. It was quite the surprise when we found out we were pregnant the first month we tried. I had found out a few days prior to the surprise 30th birthday party that I threw for Ken and we ended up telling everyone at the party that we were pregnant again. I think people were beginning to think that we didn’t know how to use birth control or something but every one of our children were planned. At this point I was driving myself crazy hoping that the baby was a girl. I had already had 3 C-sections and not without complications. When Chase was born I had a lot of scar tissue and surgery took a little bit longer than usual. We had not said for sure that this would be my last pregnancy, but if we stuck with the original plan, it would be. Especially after Chase was such a difficult baby, we were like – this is it. No more!

The day I went in for the big gender reveal ultrasound I was so nervous. Nervous that if it was a boy that Ken would not want to try again. And nervous that maybe I wouldn’t even want to try again. I never really thought to myself – what if Ken CAN’T produce boys. I mean out of all those sperm there had to be some girl ones in there, right? And it only takes one. I didn’t do any research to read the statistics on the chances of having another boy verses girl. I never stopped thinking that it was a 50/50 shot, period. When the ultrasound tech told us it was a girl, it was like one of the best moments of my life. I remember hugging the tech and saying THANK YOU! She said – “Don’t thank me, thank him”, as she pointed to Ken. Which yes, is so true. Ken did finally give me my baby girl. And he is soooo lucky because after her birth via C-section delivery my physician told me that I couldn’t have any more babies. I was in surgery several hours longer than I should have been and she had to call in another surgeon to help her because she couldn’t get my uterus to stop bleeding. I recall during surgery thinking, oh my goodness – I finally got my baby girl and I am not going to make it through the birth.

Welcome Karli – the birth of our baby girl did feel like it completed our family. Read Karli’s Birth Story here. At this point we had Andrew who was almost 9 years old and so mature for his age. Blake had just turned 4 and was the happy, go lucky boy of the bunch – always joking and laughing about something. Chase was 20 months old, jumping around off and on the furniture and what we thought at the time – the perfect age gap for the two youngest siblings. They would be so close, best buddies, inseparable. 8 years later and we are still waiting for those things to happen. :) They have been the same height and weight for the past several years so many times people ask if they are twins. Like most siblings like fight like crazy and on the rare occasion that they get along everything feels perfect.

Karli 6 mo Karli 1 year

Since we had 3 children in 4 years, I don’t think I really had much time to think about – What if I never got my girl? I mean I wished and prayed as much as possible, but in the end I knew that whatever was meant to be – would be. If there was some reason that I was meant to be the mother of all boys instead then that is what I would accept. I don’t think families who have all the same sex children should be disappointed. I mean there have to be advantages to having all boys or all girls. All the handing down of clothes and sports gear. The sharing of bedrooms if needed. Having the kids enjoying the same activities and things like that have to be so much easier. Karli gets bored more often than the boys and that wouldn’t happen as often with all boys or all girls. Girls are so different than boys I don’t know if I could have handled more than 1. I think if Chase would have been a girl, we may have stopped at 3. We always said we wanted 4 kids, so in a way, we got exactly what we wanted. One little princess to complete the trio of princes.

Our Family is Complete!
FAMILY