operation non-maternity jeans.

yes, i'm aware i still haven't really updated about our trip to utah.  right now, my camera is out in the car and i'm just not in the mood to walk outside to get it so that i can upload pics.  call me lazy, but i just call it staying warm. =)

you might notice i added a new ticker below my header?  i have FIFTY pounds to lose to reach my goal weight.  (that would be my pre-baby, pre-stephen weight.  it may be a little ambitious, because i'm not sure how having a baby changed my body.  but it's my goal.  and my deadline is august 18 - christopher's 1 year birthday.)  two years ago, i did this same ol' song and dance.  lost about 40-45 pounds between february and september.  but, i wasn't married, i didn't have a kid, and i worked mainly 2-11 shifts as a cashier, which allowed me to have the mornings to work out.  i was also still living at home, and money wasn't really an issue because my parents bought my food - so it wasn't a big deal to buy 100 calorie snack packs, fruits, etc.

nontheless... c-man will be 5 months tomorrow and i'm still wearing my maternity jeans.  they've got.to.go.

i've tried lots of different "diets" and the best one i've found is the way i did it 2 years ago - just by watching my calories.  i started out counting calories, but once i got into the groove of things i coud pretty much tell what was high caloric/low caloric/good for me/bad for me, yadda yadda, and i only worried about calories when eating a new food or when i hadn't packed my lunch and had to buy something at work to eat.

basically, it works like this:

a healthy-ish cereal for breakfast.  (special k is my favorite.)

fruit, special k bar, or yogurt for a midmorning snack, if i'm hungry.  (this depends on what time i get up and eat.)

lunch is half a sandwich, (1 piece of bread, 2 or 3 slices of turkey or ham, and 1 small piece of cheese)  a piece of fruit or a yogurt, and a 100 calorie snack. (cheezits, cookies, etc.  you don't have to buy the expensive 100 calorie packs, either, just pick a snack and figure out how much you need for 100ish calories.)  when i was addicted to caffeine, i would have a diet mountain dew with my lunch, but i do pretty good now without caffeine. i pretty much just drink water. 

a snack between lunch a dinner - usually fruit, but i would also have a 100 calorie snack or a yogurt.

dinner would usually be whatever my parents were having - i just practiced portion control.  i would look at the calorie amount of whatever we were having and figure out how much i was "allowed."

another thing i would do for lunch (or sometimes dinner) is a salad.  i'm weird about salad though - i have to have some sort of protein in it, so usually i would have 1 piece of baked, breaded (occasionally grilled) chicken, lettuce, pickles, cheese (sometimes cheddar, sometimes feta) and ranch - and i would reeeeally try to use a little ranch as possible, but it's the only dressing that i like.  i would use that "spritzer" ranch and it worked just fine, and there's something like 2 or 3 calories in every "spritz."  easy enough.

the important thing is portion control, water consumption, EXERCISING, and just being aware of what you put in your mouth.  i would still eat pizza or mexican - but i would limit myself to very few chips and order a salad; or only eat 1 piece of pizza and have a salad alongside it.  you can still eat foods you love and lose weight.  and not pay an infomercial $200 to do it.

i L-O-V-E curves.  it really worked for me 2 years ago.  i went 4-6 times a week, though, so i am really going to have to discipline myself into going as much as possible again.  and once the weather is nice again, i love to walk and look forward to walking with christopher in his stroller.  i just can't get him out in the cold right now.  i'm also going to do the biggest loser game torture on the wii. my legs are hurting just thinking about it.

SOOOO why did i take all this time telling you all about this?  partly because friday was kelly's "show us your weight loss tips" day and partly because i'm holding YOU responsible for my weight loss.  i'm going to weigh-in every saturday morning and blog about how good or bad i did that week - both diet- and exercise-wise.  i'll announce how much weight i've lost and update the ticker.  i'm hoping that this will help me stay on track to reaching my goal weight in august. (at which point in time i might just admit how much i weigh now and how much i weight then.)  and by the way, stevo is doing this too!  i'm excited for us to get in shape and get healthy together.  we have a little boy who we need to be good examples for.  =)  no overweight parents for him!

FIFTY pounds to lose - here we GO!

warning: walmart rant to follow

walmart is seriously such a bad employer.  don't get me wrong - i'm thankful to have a job, and i'm thankful my husband has a job, etc etc etc.  but y'all -- listen to this crap.

the electronics department was short-staffed all.freaking.Christmas.season.

then, after the holidays, they (whoever does the hiring in our stupid store) brought in a full-time associate from a different store for the electronics department.  (a 50-year old woman with absolutely ZERO electronics experience.  zero.)  40 hours a week.  THEN, they (whichever idiot manager decides where and who to cut hours) decided to cut hours from the THREE associates who have been in the department the longest.  (my husband, who's been there 6 years, and two other associates who have been there 2+ years.)  the other two associates in the electronics department (that would be the NEW GIRL IN THE DEPARTMENT and a guy who's been there a few months) did NOT get their hours cut.

that's about clear as mud, right?

i really, really, really hate walmart so freakin much seriously dislike being/being married to/having anything to do with being an associate there.

coming soon to my blog...

i know it's been a week since i posted.

but come on, i've been on vacation!

and now that i'm home, i have been unpacking/cleaning the house/grocery shopping/sleeping

coming soon: pictures and funny stories from our vacation.

promise.

-steph-

house self divided

This post is totally dedicated to my brother!!!

Ok - what's wrong with the two pictures below?

Ok -- obviously from these two really old, skinny pictures of me, I have a problem.

If I were at home right now and could take a picture of my closet, you would be able to see that I have just as many Arkansas shirts as I do Texas ones.

I've dated guys who liked Arkansas. (So, of course, I had to like Arkansas, too.)  And I'm from Arkansas.  And most of my friends are pro-Arkansas.  I know the fight song.  I like calling the hogs.  I adore the Razorback mascot. I feel obligated to root for the Razorbacks.

Buuut. My whole family is from Texas.  My brother, father, and mother are Texas fans. {Althought that is pretty much it - the rest of my family are A&M fans.}  My dad's parents were Texas fans. (See picture below.)  When I "didn't care" anything in the world about college football - I bought {and borrowed from my brother} Longhorns shirts.  I like UT's colors.  I love the state of Texas.  So... I feel obligated to root for the Longhorns.

Tonight - I'm definitely rooting for Texas.  I hate it that McCoy's been out since the 1st quarter, but hoping that this Longhorn rookie can perform some kind of come-from-behind {and while I'm typing this - TOUCHDOWN LONGHORNS!!!!} MIRACLE and pull a WIN for the TEXAS LONGHORNS!!!!

live from utah!

So -- we're in Salt Lake City.  Did anybody else know that this is what Salt Lake City looks like?

It's beautiful!

We had a good flight out here.  I was super nervous about flying, plus sick to my stomach about how well C-man was gonna do.  Would he be fussy or bored, etc.  Well - of COURSE, I have the best baby EVER and I shouldn't have even questioned whether or not he woul be a good flier.  He did great - only got fussy twice, both times were right before he fell asleep. We did have a "Number TWO" incident that was quite difficult to handle and resulted in him being carried NAKED back to our seats from the bathroom... but that was the worst thing that happened and looking back at it now - it really wasn't that bad.  It was just stressful at the time.

I haven't really taken many pictures just because we haven't gotten out to do anything yet.  We hung out at the house today.  Stephen's dad (Larry) and stepmom (Diane) have to work during the days we're here so it's been pretty low-key.  Larry does work from home but he's been in his office and on the phone the majority of the day.  Stephen and I enjoyed being able to just hang out and not have to go do anything or be anywhere.  Christopher took about a 4 hour nap this morning.  Jet lag?  Can babies get jet lag?  I figure it was such a long day for him yesterday - his naps were just 20 or 30 minutes long compared to 2 or 2.5 hours.  Plus I was holding him while he slept, instead of him being all comfy and sprawled out.  My arms are sore today from having to hold him so long yesterday.

Hopefully we can get out and about tomorrow or this weekend and I'll post some pictures.  I'm battling a cold and I think C is, too. I'm not sure if I want to get him out in the cold for very long.

Stephen and I are sleeping on a double when we're used to a king so it's gonna be a looong couple of nights...

Steph

see the difference?

Can you see the difference in the two photos below...?
 

See it?  Well, obviously my walls are painted -- that happened several months ago.  But the nasty old yucky yellowed and rusted VENT-A-HOOD has FINALLY been replaced!  We bought a new one about two weeks before Christopher was born, found out it was the wrong size when he was about 2 months old, exchanged it, and I was finally able to get it up this weekend!  I had about decided to take it back ($150 just sitting around my house!) but my wonderful dad and brother came over and hooked it up for me this weekend.  I love those guys SO much and if Stephen and I ever have to move I am SOOO gonna miss having them close by as my "handymen."  (This is why I'm trying to make myself a Jane of all Trades.  See post below.) 

You might be asking yourself why my husband didn't put up the vent-a-hood with my dad and brother - well, I think he would have been standing by learning how, but he was actually outside cleaning up a mess I had  made that morning.  You see, I was trying to put up a curtain rod in our laundry room.  Unsuccessfully.  I was getting frustrated, and our extremely-annoying, non-stop-yapping, stupid neighbor's dog wouldn't stop barking at me.  While I was in my own house.  Just because he didn't like being able to see me through the window.  I may have banged a little too hard out of my frustration while screaming telling him to shut up be quiet. I knew I had really crappy windows in the laundry room, but apparently they were a little bit worse in quality than I thought, and I knocked it out. Or maybe I'm just Superwoman.  Poor little Christopher got SO upset when I started screaming/throwing a fit over the curtain rod/the dog/the window.  He was not liking his momma crying and screaming!  SO anyway, Stevo got to spend the next three and a half hours cleaning up the glass from outside (because we still hadn't raked up the fall leaves OR the lounge cushion Bella had torn up out there) and nailing plastic up around out window.  I tried taking a picture of it, but it's hard to photograph broken glass with a point-and-shoot.

You might also be asking yourself why I have a stainless steel vent-a-hood over an off-white [ugly, old]stove.  Weeeelll.  My fridge is stainless steel.  And if that stove ever goes out while Stephen and I are living here (or if I ever just throw it out because it burns EVERYTHING and I get really peeved!) we'll replace it with a stainless steel stove.  K? Good.

Okay - I must stop procrastinating and start making a list of everthing I need to pack tomorrow.

S

2010 so far

We've had a good 2010 so far!  We celebrated Christmas with Stephen's family over New Years.  Stephen got sick with a cold, but we still played games, watched movies, and had a great time visiting with each other.  Now Stephen and I are running around getting ready to go to Utah to visit his family there.  We leave Wednesday morning and get back Tuesday evening, but I'm taking my laptop so hopefully I'll have time to post pictures of our time there.

A few nights ago I put Christopher's high chair together.  My hostesses from one of my showers got us this gorgeous Eddie Bauer high chair.  The first one got damaged during shipping, and I finally sent off the warranty stuff and got the new one in the mail last week and got it put together.  I think it is so pretty! I really like the way it looks.  And I was super proud of myself for putting it together myself.  I'm working my way towards becoming a Jane Of All Trades. (I might mention that I put the legs on backwards at first, but realized it before it was too late and corrected it.  Haha!)

 

This is Christopher's Christmas gift from his Uncle Jim and Aunt Cristin!  Jim made this toybox and it is just gorgeous!  I love it!  The thing I like most about it is the fact that it has to be pushed down to close it - that way it can't smash Christopher's fingers if the top falls down. It's really neat and such a sweet, special, gift.

Nana with C-man and his new lion.

Today is Aunt Cristin's birthday and Christopher told me he wanted to send her a special picture. =)

I was going to do a whole 2009/2010 post, but of course, I never got around to it.  I am busy getting laundry ready and making sure my house will be in shape to leave it for a week!  I think 2010 will be a good year for our little family.  Stephen and I have some exciting opportunities that I am really praying hard about.  It would mean some serious/exciting/SAD changes for our family, but I think they would be positive in the long run. So - just be praying for us.  I'd appreciate it.  =)