Super Hero Halloween

We had a very fun Halloween, and no one was puking this year! I love it when people don't puke! Last year, Xander was so sick he couldn't move and he missed the Halloween party and trick or treating. We had quite the exciting Halloween. I meant to post earlier this week, but now you are going to get two posts in one day again. Our church did a trunk or treat in the parking lot at 5:00, and there was a front coming in, but it didn't look too bad. All of a sudden there was a blot of lightening, the wind was blowing leaves everywhere, children were screaming, and it starts HAILING. Parents are picking up their children and running for it. I've never seen someplace empty so fast in my life.

I will never believe action movies anymore. When there is a danger, people move and then they are gone. I never much believed that they hung around, mouths open and agog, waiting to be eaten or stepped on, but now I really won't believe it. And I can feel all superior, because even in a white wig and five inch heels, I grabbed Aubrey and ran for it! Although, I was Storm from the X-men, and someone yelled at me as the front was coming in, "Storm, what are you doing?" Yeah, something must have been off about my powers right then. I smacked my head a few times, but they didn't come back online in time to save trunk or treat.

Aubrey was not happy about the hail hitting her in the face and kept saying, "I don't like it when it rains ice cubes."

Oh, and then when we got home a few minutes later, the drain outside our house was clogged, and we got a lot of rain in a very short time, so we had a lake in front of our house and up one third our lawn on Halloween night. So, we don't have a garden rake (seriously, we are new homeowners, give us a break), so we called the dispatch line to ask if there was someone we could call to have them come unclog the drain. A very nice officer came out with a rake and unclogged the drain. The kids and I watched and ate candy. David went outside to talk to him. Then there was the most beautiful double rainbow I've ever seen.

We went up to my mom's and did a little more trick or treating with the kids, because we had beautiful weather by then. And then David and I put the kids to bed at her house, and went to Olive Garden and a movie in our costumes.

And since I just basically wrote a whole Halloween post, I guess I might as well show you what David and I would have looked like on our date. David gets into the whole Halloween thing. So, he was Wolverine from X-men, and I was Storm. He did the whole Origins thing, with the street clothes and claws--and yes, that is all his hair and facial hair. He made the claws himself out of wood, dowels and spray paint. I did the more X-men uniform thing. I could alternately say I was Lady Gaga (and I've lost 30 pounds in the last year--crazy, eh?).

Unless I do this to my eyes in Photoshop, then I think it's pretty clear who I am.

Xander was Ironman, Maxton was Cyclops, Griffin was Spiderman and Aubrey was a penguin. We tried to get her to be Pixie, a character from the X-men comics, and she loved the idea (she had pink butterfly wings and pink hair), right up until she had to put on the costume every time. Then she would fight us about everything. I have no idea what was up with that. So we pulled out the costume box and she picked a penguin costume, which she loved wearing.

I'm so bad, I didn't get pictures of all of them yet (one year I didn't pictures of them in their costumes until December), but here's Maxton as Cyclops. David and Max made his visor together, and I think he looks awesome!

I've started a new blog: Come follow my crafting adventures on my new blog. Find me at: creativeirony.com.

2nd Verse, Same as the First

I feel like I've been neglecting my poor little blog. School just eats up so much of my time. It's interesting that the teaching methods at BYU-I have changed since I was there.

Then: Well, besides my English classes, I remember a lot of reading, memorizing and regurgitation. Now: It's not like that, even in the lower level classes. There are a lot of projects, research and documentation now. It's good and bad. Good, because it's interesting, there is a lot of choice and working together involved, but bad because it takes a lot more mental agility to read analytically, form ideas and try to learn things for yourself. And the time involved! I'm speedy when it comes to reading and regurgitating. I'm slow when it comes to self-directed activities that are methodical in nature. I don't want to miss anything and it nags at me if something isn't clear and I have very high standards, dah-ling, don't you know? Only Target and Baby Gap for me.

I also tend to go overboard. In my religion class, we had a situation that we had to respond to, a list of about six questions, and one of them was about feminism. Well, I got to that feminism one and I could not stop obsessing about it. I actually wrote an essay, complete with researched facts and my own opinions. I think it was supposed to be about three sentences, I wrote about a page and a half. I know, I know, I realize that's just insanity and I subjected my class and my teacher to a lot of stuff they probably did not really want to hear. I have no self control, apparently. And don't even talk to me about time management skills. I have none. Apparently, I live in a land where time is infinite, children don't exist, and my mind is free to run on strange tangents and find exotic new things, much like a Tim Burton movie, but without Johnny Depp. Dang.

In other news (wait for it!), I have started going to the gym. And I don't just watch either. I actually get on the treadmill and sweat. I know, it's shocking. I went last Friday, then again on Monday and then again this morning. Maybe I have H1N1 or something, because that is just not in character for me at all. It feels so good too. I can't believe I'm saying this, but I enjoy it. I don't feel like puking most of the time either. This is huge, much like my butt. Hopefully, that will change, because I've gained back all the weight I lost at the beginning of the summer and I hate it. If I gain any more, I'm going to have to buy new jeans or risk splitting the bottoms of more of my jeans. Somehow, the exercise has not helped. It's hard to overpower the kind of stress eating I'm capable of, but I'm slowly getting a little better. Kind of. I haven't had a candy bar yet today.

So, that's my life recently. Hopefully I will have some cool stuff to show you next time, but I'm not making any guarantees. I'm a bit busy spouting feminism and exercising.

I've started a new blog: Come follow my crafting adventures on my new blog. Find me at: creativeirony.com.

Exercise: Why I Hate It

I’m trying to lose weight. I like being skinny. I like my clothes to fit. I’ve been slowly losing both of those over the last year. I’m not sure what to blame. I’m betting that being depressed and on medications on and off has something to do with it. I like food and hate exercise. Another problem is that I’ve always been able to eat whatever I want, not exercise and still be disgustingly perfect. I still think I should be able to do that and “eat whatever I want” has come to mean Costco sized portions of cheese and chocolate. I have never weighed this much while not being pregnant/losing weight after being pregnant.

So, this came to a crisis came to a head when I went to the doctor and they weighed me and the number was 168. I just about flipped. In high school, I was 150 and the perfect weight (I’m tall and have heavy bones, so 150 was just right skinny for me). I’d been avoiding the scales, because I knew I was not going to be happy with what I saw. Luckily, ours is broken, so it's been easy to do.

After Xander, I got down to 135 and that was way too skinny. My head looks huge in pictures. See:

I mean, I wouldn’t mind being that skinny all the time, but it’s really too skinny to be realistic. I look a bit sick. Or like I’m a female doctor on a medical drama. Ever notice how those girls always have tiny bodies and huge-o heads and their teeth look like they could at any moment elongate and eat a patient?

Right now, I’m about here:

I’d like to be right in between those two. Around 156 or so. Like the picture below. That is me in Vegas 14 months ago. Perfection! (Except for that double chin. Only because I was looking down! I swear!).

Two weeks ago, I started getting up the willpower. I’m done being like this. I hate how my pants don’t fit. My clothes have clearly had it too. My “fat” pair of jeans has given up the fight and will no longer stay zipped. Poor zipper looks like it’s trying to escape to Mexico. Then another beloved pair of pants split in the booty. This made me muy muy sad and I’m only holding it together by telling myself that they were beloved and very, very worn. My clothes are screaming for help.

Over the past two weeks, I haven’t been eating candy. I’ve been cutting down on cheese, snacks and fast food. I even exercised. Twice. This is a huge deal.

I hate to exercise. Here are the steps I take when I’m going to exercise. I make sure to follow them to the letter every time:

1. Dread working out. Make David make me agree to exercise. Make David hand me my shoes. Make David agree to be tortured with me. Make David make me leave the house. Poor David.
2. Change into exercise clothes. I hate changing my clothes. Really. I try to only do it once a day. You have to decide what to wear, which is always difficult. You are creating laundry, which I despise. Laundry and I have a feud going that stretches long back into my childhood. You have do decide if things go together. I’m over it, and have been since I started dressing myself all those long years ago. When I was in high school, I slept in my clothes to avoid having to take them off at night and put on a pair of pajamas. If you exercise, you have to put on special clothes, then they make you change back into regular clothes after you are done and usually after a shower, which is a whole ‘nother ball of venting wax. Having to get ready after taking a shower is about the only time I wish I were a man.
3. Figure out what to do with four small children. Make David ask my mom to watch them for us. Poor David.
4. Spend the whole time wanting to stop, wanting to puke, or wanting to stop to puke, or wanting to puke so you can stop. Exercising makes me physically ill. This is why I never exercise enough to stop feeling like that. I try to take it easy. Really, I do. I just don’t realize that my definition of “easy” really means “slow walk.”
5. Come home after 15 eternal minutes and die on the bed. Refuse to get dressed. Refuse to move. Drink water so I’ll stop feeling like I’m going to puke. Almost puke after drinking too much water.
6. WAIT! I feel good! I feel endorphins! WOW. I love exercise. I’m going to do this every day!
7. Lie awake in bed until 1:00 am. Kids get up at 6:30.
8. Wake up the next morning and everything hurts. I’m never exercising again.

You can see why this is an effort. I really need to just suck it up, feel like puking for a few weeks, and get into a routine.

By the way, I weighed myself yesterday. I gained three pounds.

I've started a new blog: Come follow my crafting adventures on my new blog. Find me at: creativeirony.com.

I am SO proud of myself!

Admittedly, I'm a junk food addict. I have been for a long time, even got worse being married to a fellow junk-foody! I rarely ate fruit or veggies or anything healthy for that matter. After having Aubriana, I was a little worried because my weight just wasn't going down. In fact, I would loose a little and it would go back up! ACK! Not a good thing and that has never happened to me before after having a baby. With Xander, I lost all the 45 lbs I'd gained with him plus an extra 10 in just two months. After two months with Aubrey, I'd only lost 6 lbs since coming home from the hospital. It was time to do something drastic.

Well, my mom has lost weight she'd been trying to lose for years, so I decided to do what she did. I had three goals: 1) jump start my weight loss, 2) change my taste buds, 3) learn to eat smaller portions. Well, it's been a week since I started and I can't believe the difference! I'm back to eating "normally," but I still lost almost two pounds yesterday, and I'm within 13 lbs of my goal weight. I've decided to have fruit for breakfast, veggies for lunch and then a more normal dinner. I've limited my snacks to once a day. I've started really listening to my body and mostly I'm just bored or upset when I think I'm hungry. I actually like veggies and fruit now. To put things in perspective, I've eaten more veggies in the last week than I did in the whole previous year. I'm also happy because this method of eating is much cheaper. :) David has also joined me and lost tons of weight too.

We have just become a more healthy household. GO US!

I've started a new blog: Come follow my crafting adventures on my new blog. Find me at: creativeirony.com.