Trip to Ohio!

So back in July we surprised out Ohio family with a trip over there for the Fourth of July. In Ohio we have one family: Uncle B, Aunt M, cousins J, JJ, C, and L. Cousin J and Aunt M were the only people who knew we were coming and everyone else was surprised. It was so much fun to surprise everyone! We even bough tears to Uncle B's eyes. We even got the surprises on video, I'll think about posting those on here. We had so much fun there. We BBQ'd, went to cedar point amusement park, went to a HUGE 4th of July party, and shot guns. I even got to help feed their pet baby deer. We always have such an amazing time when we are around them. That whole family are the kind of people that make you feel like being around them makes you a better person.  After surprising everyone and spending time with family that you truly enjoy spending time with, Michael and I sat up our first night there and discussed for an hour how awesome it would be to live here.  We went as far as to do research on jobs for the both of us out there.

Me feeding Baby!

C. shooting into a pile of dirt

Views from their awesome back porch, we were out there for hours

Beautiful isnt it?

Us at Cedar Point... what a day!

Cousin J's laundry room that I feel in love with!
I would do more laundry if I could do it in here. 

At the 4th of July BBQ

The fireworks show was AMAZING over the lake.  

Me and J :)

Here's a small view into the trip we had... lots of funny faces!  

We miss it there so much, and hope that we can visit there again really soon. 

Sage Chicken Yum!

So tonight I made dinner for us and the neighbors. I was over at their house earlier watching The Notebook :( and I was telling my husband what I was making for dinner. As serious as ever my neighbor looks at me and says "is that dinner for everyone or just you guys?" I started immediately cracking up! I love that we are close enough with our neighbors to invite ourselves to dinner and the same for them. For dinner I made Sage Chicken and roasted vegetables. It was amazing! I pan fried chicken breast dipped in egg and Pablo bread crumbs with chopped up fresh sage. When they were done I splashed a little lemon juice and vuala!

Any suggestions for new recipes to try???

Updates....

Well, so many things have happened since I last blogged...

We went to Monterey to whale watch for my birthday... won't be doing again... everyone (25/29 people) got sea sick.  I was super nausea, it's not fun watching 25 people throw up.

Michael installed can lighting in our living room... I wanted 4, he installed 8 and now we have museum lighting!

Michael put molding around our green wall

 We finished the front yard!  

We were in the ER and OR 5 separate times for Michael (kidney stones, work injuries, kidney stones, kidney stones.. removal of kidney stones.. at one point we were in the ER 3x in 1 week!

We surprised our Ohio family with a 4th of July vacation to there that made us really sit down and think about moving there.  It's so wonderful to be surrounded by amazing people all the time.  

Went to baseball games.. drank beer...

Made it out to the lake with our neighbors and had a kick ass time for Labor Day. 

Got new carpet :)

And decided that we need to take more photos... that's my New Years resolution.  There was so many other great things that happened this year and we don't have pictures of them :(

One of them being........ that I finished my Masters of Science a couple of weeks ago!!! Wow that was an accomplishment. On another sad work note, I had to say goodbye to one of my kiddos that I had been working with for a year and a half.  She was an amazing little girl who has come so far and is growing more and more everyday into a wonderfully independent functional citizen.  Sadly now I will no longer see her :(

On another note about accepting that things will work out, we have been trying to get pregnant (pause for "Awwww")  Unfortunately for as long as I can remember anytime I have thought about having a child with Michael I have had this gut wrenching feeling that it wouldn't be easy.  I have been blessed my whole life, AMAZINGLY blessed.  There is only one thing in my life that I didn't get when I wanted it, my GRE scores.  I studied, studied, studied and still got horrible scores.  Even that worked out I still got in the graduate program I wanted!  So I knew that somehow the shoe would have to drop, how can a person get everything they have even wanted in life?  So anyways, for as long as I can remember I have a feeling that getting pregnant was not going to be easy for us.  i was right :( I stopped birth control (BC) in February, on my birthday actually and since then I have been slowly (well maybe not slowly) letting our trying to conceive (TTC) take over my life!  Every morning I wake up at ridiculous hours (3am, 4am...) to take my temperature.  I have to do it at this hour because you have to take your temp at the same time everyday and it has to be the first time you have woken up after having at least 3 hours of sleep. Well my husband works crazy hours and some days he has to wake up at 345am and other days at 6am.  So in order to try and keep it at the same time my subconcious wakes me up everyday between 3 and 4 and I take my temp.  No alarm, just my brain wakes me up.  Do you know how upsetting it is to wake up at 415 while on vacation to take my temperature.  And then it's not like I can go back to sleep. I sit there and ponder about my temperature.  Why is it so low?  Does that mean I did not ovulate?  UGHHH!!!! After an 80 day cycle with multiple negative pregnancy tests I decided if something wrong I am calling the doctor to find out sooner than later.  Typically they* say that if after a year of being off birth control you aren't pregnant to start doing testing.  Well why wait a year, I'm not getting any younger and my chances of getting pregnant get smaller and smaller everyday (I know I'm dramatic, at least I can admit it :D) So I called the doctor and she started me on bloodwork right away. So far we have determined that with the cycle I am in right now I ovulated late or not at all. I did the cycle day 21 progestrone test; which should show that I have already ovulated and would be elevated if I did.  That came back less than 10 and she said I either did not ovulate or have not ovulated yet.  So she had me re-do the test on cycle day 23 to see if my progesterone level is rising (still a chance of ovulation) or decreasing (no ovulation).  Looking at my BBT (temps), it looks like I may have ovulated on the day of the bloodwork... but wouldn't that have been reflected in the bloodwork??? So now I am waiting to hear back from the doctor to see what my trend is right now.

So that is my unleashing of so many pent up feelings.  I try to not talk to much about the TTC thing, I was only talking to my BF about my frustrations and it was even to much for her. She is the one who brought it to my attention that I am being a little obsessive about this.  It hurt my feelings a little but I appreciate when people tell you how you are acting when you can't see it yourself.  So I am trying to not bring it up during EVERY conversation just when something happens. That's why I began writing again on here.  This can be my outlet for "talking" about life's frustrations.

Day 5/6 bootcamp

This week has been a hectic one, so forgive me for my late posts! Both days have been great for bootcamp.  Wednesday was arm day and we did a combination of plank position/overhead presses.  We did this alternating between the two for a 20 count and holding plank for 1 min.  This was killer!  We then went to tricep dips on park picnic benches.  Immediately after that we went to pull ups on the playground equipment and then bicep curls.  We finished with some running and sit ups.  Today was obstacle course day.  We partnered up and had to complete an obstacle course, we weren't able to finish the course we ran out of time. The hardest part about it though were our hills.  We had to jog down a hill, bunny hop back up and then do a wall sit for a 100 count.  We had to repeat this 5 TIMES!!! I will tell you that my counting sped up each time I had to re-do it.  Now I am eating my breakfast and trying to plan out my clean eating weekend. I tried last weekend, and it didn't work so well so I will try again.  I just bought Tosca Reno's clean eating book so hopefully that will help!  

Day 4 Bootcamp!

So today was our first day outside for bootcamp and I LOVED IT!! It was a bit cold at first but we started running and I felt great!  It was such a workout compared to indoors.  This time I was wishing it was over 15 minutes before it was.  I liked how we used the playground equipment for pull-ups and sit-ups.  The best thing about the workout though was when we would do a work-out on the ball I could stare up at the black sky with grey clouds and shimmering stars!!!  It was so relaxing at the same time as difficult to do.    The unfortunate thing about this morning was my weigh-in..... up 2.3 lbs. I will have to say that most of the week I could not stop snacking! I find that when my husband isn't home and I'm just hanging by myself that I eat RIDICULOUS amounts of food.  I did alot of reading this weekend about clean eating and would like to try it, but I didn't have enough food to try it this weekend.  So today I am going to try and get as many food items that I can that can stay in my car while I work (our health food store is about 30 minutes away, where I am working at this morning).  I will go on my lunch break and hopefully get a few items.  I don't think it will be that hard for me to change, I already prefer whole wheat products and cooking my own meals.  But I think what will be difficult is the grab and go foods. So wish me luck and send me any advice you can!

Bootcamp Day 2 & 3

Day 2 (a little late) was pretty much the same as Day 1 but EASIER!! We ended almost 15 minutes early this time, I thought it was crazy. So not much to say about that....

Day 3, well I skipped it.  I accidentally doubled up on my dose of allergy meds... and then slept straight through my alarm clock for bootcamp AND work! So I asked the trainer to let me know what they did so that I could do it the next morning at the gym, I was sad I missed the circuit training day. Thinking maybe it would be a challenge!  So I did 45 minutes of cardio, 10 push ups, 25 sit ups, and 1 minute of jump roping.    Repeat this twice with only 1 minute break in between.  That was difficult to do! Only the push ups and sit ups since my arm strength isn't what it should be.  But that was my day 3!

Bootcamp Day 1

Hello... after a VERY LONG rest from both the blogging world and the healthy eating/working out world I am back.  I just started a bootcamp through the city.  For the start of bootcamp we were suppose to begin with a detox (48 hours of almonds/pomegranate juice/spinach salads) but because I didn't sign up until yesterday the instructor suggested I wait until week 3/4 to do the detox since I will need my strength to get through the workouts.  So last night I went out with a bang and ate 2 slices of ok pizza.  I wish it would have been homemade I would have made it better but after a long day of installing can lights delivery was all I could handle.  This morning after my workout my instructor took my measurements and I didn't see them all but I took a glimpse at a couple of them.  Weight: 138.8 :( :( :( waist: 35.5, thighs: 22, calves: 12.5.  I am going to ask my instructor to send me the rest of my measurements and I will update my blog with them later.

So the first day went... ok....  I don't consider myself unfit and I don't consider myself a fit person.  I would say I'm in the middle.  But this morning was a little easy.  Maybe it was because their were ladies of all ages in the class, maybe because it was the first day, I don't know but it did seem a little easy.  She did say that this morning was the only day that she would take time from class to stretch, other days it would be our responsibility to stretch after class on our own time since she only has 60 minutes with us.  I may regret saying this but I am hoping that things get a little more "bootcamp".  The hardest part of the day was getting up and out of the house before 5 am.

This class is 3 days a week so I will update you all after each session hopefully and let you know how I am doing!