I blame the Cactus Blossom...

Or was it the Carmel Apple Pie ala mode at 11pm?!

I thought of this blog title last night as I was laying in bed dreading my weigh in.

You see, Thursday night is the ideal time for Micah and I's date night. I don't have school on Fridays, and so on Thursday night I'm in weekend mode, and really enjoy going out.

One of our favorite places to go is The Texas Roadhouse. We like to go there because our brother-in-law works as a waitor there, and we love to get to see him!

BUT, last night, he bought us a cactus blossom! And, I don't know about you, but, in my head: free food is free food, regardless of any plan! I don't even wanna THINK about the calories in one of those things.

THEN! THEN my so-called personal trainer! Remember her?! The one that said I can't eat after 7pm? Know what she did?!

You guessed it. She brought Carmel Apple Pie Ala Mode TO MY HOUSE. Served it up for my husband and I, and then sat and watched us devour it...at 11PM last night!

Can you believe it?

Isn't that AWESOME? I mean really! Can I really fault her for something so wonderful even if it doesn't fit with "the plan"?

I think not.

All this to say: I'm still at 156.

BUT: If I can have those wonderfully free and delightfully delicious dishes the day before my weigh in, and still maintain my weight...I'm one happy girl!


In other news: Should I move my weigh-in time to Thursday morning? This would leave me guilt-free for my date with my honey, and then I could be a good girl the rest of the week. What do you all think? I think I just might do it.

Pantry Challenge - update

Chipotle Burritos
Frito Chili Pie
Chicken Nuggets, Au Gratin Potatoes, RL Buiscuts
Sausage and Potatoes
Pancakes/Waffles, Sausage
Chicken Nuggets, Stuffing
Chicken Helper, Green Beans
Ramen Chicken Nuggets, Au Gratin Potatoes
Pancakes/Waffles
Chicken Nuggets, Stuffing
Stir Fry, Rice Noodles
Ramen
Lasagna, Veggies
Pancakes/Waffles
Chicken Soup - pasta and broth
Sloppy Joes, Cauliflower and Cheese
Pancakes/Waffles
Chicken Helper
Chicken Nuggets; pasta side
Hamburgar Helper
Pancakes/Waffles
Chicken Nuggets, pasta side
Hamburgar Helper
Sausage and Potatoes
Crock Pot Classic
Lasagna - freezer one bread, salad

For those of you keeping track, this list is 13 items shorter than the previous one!! I'm SO making progress!

It's official!

The plan is working! I am down to 156!

You may be thinking, "how can she know it's working after only losing 2 lbs...that could be water weight."

But, I tell you, it's working! How many people in America do you think LOST weight after yesterday?! :)

And, what's great is, that's my only Thanksgiving dinner. In about two hours I will be leaving to take our church youth group to do a work project at Kansas Bible Camp. So, not only will I not be getting another Thanksgiving dinner (and all the leftovers that come with it), but I'll also be getting lots and lots of STEPS!

So what do I attribute this week's success to? Go visit my dear sweet friend Joy's blog. She's also started her "plan"...it's real encouraging to have someone working right beside you! (Even if she is STATES away!) I don't know how to link to the specific post. It was from Nov. 15th, so just scroll down some.

Bake Sale/Sleep over

So, a few weeks ago I had the duty of being the sole authority for 12 junior high and highschool girls as they embarked on an all day bake sale.

Yes, that's right, I said ALL DAY. We started at 10:30 am on a Saturday. And, since the baking was going to be at the church, one of the high school girls that had planned decided that we would bake through the night and sleep at the church so that all the girls could come to church the next morning. Then, after church, we went to the nearest Walmart and sold the baked goods.

I don't know about you, but, I'm married. And, in my circle, married means your OLD!! (We often joke that when you're married, you add your ages together!) So, I just turned 48 - and 48 year olds are not meant to have slumber parties where the only place to sleep is the floor....and where the average age is 13.

I'm sure many of you have heard my complaints about this situation before...so why am I posting about it?

1. To complain about it some more

2. To share the Lord's faithfulness

Now that the complaining is out of the way, on to the praise.

Our Lord is SO good, SO faithful, and SO big.

Needless to say, I started this weekend feeling so overwhelmed, so inadequate (did I mention that I've only ever baked pre-packaged cookie dough? Seriously. I'm ashamed.), and so tired.

BUT, God provided for me in ways I would have never thought possible (to my shame, really). I was praying harder than I ever have before, that day. Mostly I was praying that the Lord would show me what the girls were "up to" before it was too late. And, of course, He did.

There were rancid cookies - but they got thrown out.

Pizzas got baked with the cardboard tray - but there was no fire.

There were lots of age groups, and cliques - and only one run in.

AND, everything got cleaned up before we went to bed, so the church was ready come Sunday morning.

The Lord we serve is faithful, ladies! Praise Him.

Torture

So for the last week or so, I have not been couponing.

I LOVE to coupon. I LOVE getting great deals, but I DO NOT love having to dig through literally every single coupon I have (and I have a lot!) to get said great deals. It puts me in a bad mood.

SO, the solution? I have banned couponing entirely until I am able to get caught up on my cutting and sorting.

The result? I'm not shopping at all. Of course, there's no ban on just plain shopping...but I can't bring myself to do it! I can't bring myself to pay full price for something. In the back of my head I keep thinking, "You know there's a coupon in your pile for this. You could spend $1.00 less on this if you just looked."

It's the curse of couponing. Couponing is great - you get awesome perks! Like being able to have name brand stuff, and a variety at that. And like spending only $25 a week on all groceries, toiletries and cleaning products. But, it's also a curse. It's ruined me for normal shopping. I will never be able to go back!!

I have GOT to get more serious!

OK! It's the moment of truth! It's been a week since I started my plan, and it's time once again to post my weight.

Sadly, it's still 158. So, naturally, I've been analyzing.

I'm not serious enough about this goal.

Here's how I did on my goals this week:

1. 10,000 steps a day - I did reach this goal...however, in my first post, I had mentioned that my new year's resolution was also 10k, but in order to meet that goal, I was going to have to get 20k. The 20,000 steps has yet to happen. BUT, I now have a more defined plan in this area!!

I figured out that I normally walk about 133 steps per minute if I'm just walking. I also figured out, that in order to get 20,000 steps in 16 hours (leaving 8 hours for sleep), that would only be 1200 steps an hour. I'm not a rocket scientist or anything, but, shouldn't 1200 steps only take me 9 minutes? And, don't you think I probably at least get SOME steps when I'm not strictly walking? (Like, when I'm putting away laundry and dishes?)

SO, you're probably thinking: GET TO THE POINT. And here, it is: 10 minutes until the top of each hour, I'm going to stop whatever I'm doing (whenever possible - I'm obviously not going to walk out on my teachers!!) and get the rest of the steps I need to complete the 1200. Should be easy enough! I'm sure I'll keep you posted. :)

2. Eating every 2 hours and not after 7pm - I'm doing really good about the two hour thing! (You ALWAYS have to look at the plus side of things first!) And, most of the time I've even done the 7pm thing. I cheated a couple of times, cause, honestly: my hubby doesn't get home until 7pm or later some nights...and it's not HIS fault I need to lose weight. So, I wait and eat with him.

OK, that was the plus side; this is the negative: I am cheating WAY too much on WHAT I eat. And, what's worse, I'm justifying it by saying, "this isn't a diet, it's a plan, so I'm allowed to cheat." But, guess what? If you cheat too much on your plans, YOU WON'T MEET GOALS!! What's my goal? To be under 158! So, I'm going to try to cheat waaaay less this week. Do you think I should give myself 3 cheat cards or something to use throughout the week? Is 3 too many? What would you do?

3. A piece of fruit a day - I only did this ONE time. Shameful, isn't it?! BUT, have no fear: I actually HAVE fruit in my kitchen right now. That's a BIG improvement over where I was 7 days ago. And, as I predicted - I really did like the one piece of fruit I did eat (which was yesterday) so I'm sure I'll want another one today!

4. 80 oz of water a day - I'm pretty sure I only did this one time as well. (Are you beginning to see why I'm still at 158?)

Just like the steps, however, I have a plan! I will need to get 7 oz of water an hour to meet my goal. So, when I take breaks in my day to catch up on steps, I'm also going to finish my 7 oz for that hour. :) That way I'm not sitting here at 11:30 trying to chung my last 10 oz before bed like I was last night!

5. Post my weight every Friday. YAY! Something I did perfectly the WHOLE WEEK! Look at me go!! I'm like the plan QUEEN! :-D

There are other postivite things about this situation:

1. I can take a before picture and it'll still be very accurate.

2. When I do get down to my desired weight, I'll know that this level of activity should be able to maintain my weight. :)

Have a great Friday everyone. Thanks for listening, eh, reading to my horribly long post...I promise the next one won't be nearly as long.

So, It's 7:50, and I have steps to get and water to consume!

Home Owners Insurance FINALLY taken care of

Ok, so I'm sure I've shared this story with most of you...but if I haven't, the letter does a pretty good job of recounting all the facts. My husband wrote this letter to finally end all the confusion. And, it's freakin' hilarious.


Sunday, November 4, 2007
To: Mortgage Company A
From: luaphacim
Re: Returning Funds Withdrawn in Error from Escrow Account
Account Number: 123456789
Name: Mr. and Mrs. luaphacim


To Whom It May Concern:


The following events have transpired over the past few months, resulting in almost immeasurable consternation for both me and my lovely bride of two years, seven months, and twenty days. I appreciate your attention to this matter and hope that it can be brought to a quick resolution.


On July 9, 2007, we bought a home, taking out an FHA loan from MORTGAGE COMPANY A to do so. It is a nice home, with plenty of room and some pretty good amenities. For instance, the sellers threw in a free refrigerator which, unfortunately, leaks like a diabetic racehorse. However, as we do not believe in looking gift refrigerators in the mouth, we are quite satisfied with our purchase.


At our closing, $679.00 was taken from our closing costs and paid to INSURANCE COMPANY X as our first year of premium for our home owner’s insurance.
On or around July 18, 2007, a withdrawal of $679.00 was made from our MORTGAGE COMPANY A escrow account and sent to INSURANCE COMPANY X for our first year of home owner’s insurance, leaving our escrow account with a negative balance. Since we had also paid for our first year of insurance at closing, this was a double payment. I do not have a degree in finance or anything, but I suspect that this is not supposed to happen to an escrow account. Ever.


On August 6, 2007, INSURANCE COMPANY X Insurance sent us a check in the amount of $679.00 to reimburse us for overpayment of our premiums. Naturally, since we did not know that MORTGAGE COMPANY A had made the erroneous withdrawal from our escrow account, this caused us some degree of confusion and concern. My wife and I made several calls to INSURANCE COMPANY X in order to find out why this check had been sent, and we eventually found that one of the checks had come from MORTGAGE COMPANY A.


We made a number of efforts to communicate with our local MORTGAGE COMPANY A personnel about this error, but they repeatedly told us that they would have to “wait to hear back from the national office,” or some such thing. Please do not take this as a complaint about them, though – they were very helpful with a number of things. Just not this one, really.
On September 1, 2007, MORTGAGE COMPANY A sold our souls home loan to MORTGAGE COMPANY B, which is a company dedicated to a diverse workforce and the good of humanity and so forth. At least, that is what I have gathered from being on hold with them for nearly an hour and listening to their never-ending loop of propaganda recordings.


On September 13, 2007, we received our MORTGAGE COMPANY A annual escrow account disclosure statement informing us that we had an escrow balance of -$132.76. At this point, we realized that something was seriously screwy with our account at your company. We were not sure whether the negative balance had been transferred over to our account with MORTGAGE COMPANY B, so we waited to see our next statement from them.


Our next MORTGAGE COMPANY B statement showed a positive escrow balance, so MORTGAGE COMPANY A clearly needs to receive the $679.00 to reconcile our account. We have therefore enclosed a check in that amount.


At your earliest convenience, please send us a letter stating that:
You have received the enclosed check
Our account with you has been reconciled and no further payments will be necessary


Please send this letter to:
Mr. luaphacim
1234 Main St
Someplace, KS 65432


If we do not receive this letter within a reasonable period of time, we will request a stop-pay on the enclosed check because of failure to render services. In other words: we mean business.


In addition, in consideration of the significant amount of time and effort my wife and I have expended because of MORTGAGE COMPANY A’s error, I would like to make the following demands as compensation. I understand that I will almost certainly not receive any of these demands, but it makes me feel better to demand them, so please humor me.

• A service fee of $30.90. My wife and I have spent well over six hours trying to resolve this problem, and I would like to think our time is worth at least minimum wage.
• A bag of microwave popcorn. This is useful and necessary for the watching of movies in our new family room area with the track lighting. Did I mention that our new house is totally sweet?
• A year’s worth of free rides on a Shetland pony, preferably one named “Buck.” This is a humorous name for a pony, and I think you will agree that pony rides are inherently awesome.
• U.S. military intervention to stop the genocide in Rwanda. Seriously.
• A George Foreman Grill. My doctor says I am obese, and I hear that George Foreman Grills are a great way to become magically skinny.

Please submit this list to your compliance department for consideration and so that they can laugh at my pitiful efforts to be recompensed for my valuable time, which could have been spent writing a magnificent novel or learning Japanese or on something equally edifying. I could probably make empty threats about reporting MORTGAGE COMPANY A to the Kansas Office of the State Bank Commissioner, 700 SW Jackson Street, Suite 300, Topeka KS 66603-3714, but I think we both know I am not really too serious about this, so I will not do so.


Eagerly awaiting your response, I remain your humble servant,
luaphacim
Home address:
1234 Main St
Someplace, KS 65432

I refuse to use the D word

What I am about to embark on is NOT a d*et; it's a PLAN.


Yes, my goal is to lose weight, but more importantly, it's to set up a pattern that will work for my life. I have a few rules that I'm going to try to implement:


1. 10,000 steps a day - I actually need to get 19,000 of steps a day to catch up with my new year's resolution of 10k a day. I also heard that 12-15k is needed for active weight loss, so 10k will be more continued goal (Cause, I don't want to lose weight FOREVER), but until the end of the year I will be getting 20,000. Wish me luck. This may sound easy to some of you who have never worn a pedometer before. But, alas, it is NOT!


2. Eating Every 2 hours, and not after 7pm - My "personal weight trainer" (really it's just Shawna, but she's the one that's lost bukoos of weight and got my motivated on this) suggested these two guidelines, and said that about 200 calories every two hours is a good snack portion. I'm going to try to stay with this, but I'm not going to stess over it...cause, if I did, wouldn't that qualify as the D word?

(And, I must confess, JUST THIS WEEK, my honey and I took advantage of half-price Spin Dip at a local bar...which is only half price AFTER 10pm! Isn't that awful? But, Spin Dip is my weakness. It might possibly be my downfall...)


3. A piece of fruit a day - Isn't it AWFUL that I have to put this on my list? People are supposed to get like 2-4 servings of fruit a day...but, sadly, I don't even get one. I can go WEEKS without having fruit. Seriously. It's pathetic. So, I'm not going to jump right in and say I have to get the 3 servings...I'm just going to start with one. But, my thought is, the more I eat fruit, I'll probably realize I like it! So, this isn't a max...it's a minimum. (On a side note: for all those couponers out there, what's a good price for fruit? Right now I've only been buying bananas cause you can get them for .19 a pound at Dillons when they're discounted. And, just last night I got 6 pounds of apples for 2.98. That's 50 cents a pound, which I thought was pretty good, but they are kind of mushy...do you think that's because they were older, or is it just a cheaper brand?)


4. 80 oz of water a day - I've also heard that in order to actively lose weight, you need to be consuming half your weight in ounces. Some of you may be doing the calculations in your head and thinking, "wait! Is she really telling us that she weighs 160lbs?! Girls aren't supposed to tell their weight!" In response to your musings, 1) yes, I AM telling you my weight. Actually, to be exact it is 158 pounds.


Which brings me to 5:

5. Post weight every friday morning - EEK! This is the real killer! This is what's going to keep me motivated... but the only way I'm going to stay motivated is if I get comments from you guys telling me you're still around, you read my current weight, and you're going to harrass me if it actually goes UP!


And, to reinterate: this is NOT the D word. This is my plan. And, since my goal is to pick something that will work for life, my intention will not always be to lose weight. I've consulted a few web sites, and averaged out their responses to come to the conclusion that my weight goal should be 115. BUT, since this is my PLAN (have you caught on yet?! :)) if I at some point plateau on this then I'll do one of two things:

I'll either decided that that's the weight for me,

or I'll add something to my life to get my closer to the ideal.


So, with that said, look back next Friday...I'll post my progress.

House Projects

I have sooooo many things I want to do with our new house! (Like, post pictures on my blog! Sorry, I know I promised. I'll get to it sometime.)

Some of these things include:
Buying a new couch and love seat set for our front room
Buying end tables/coffee table for the living room
Buying end tables/coffee table for the family room
Getting electrical work done (like updating outlets, and adding a few outlets and fixtures)
Replacing the kitchen floor
Buying a new kitchen table
Painting the kitchen
Painting the livingroom
Painting my scrapbook room
Painting the stairway

But! All of these things take time and money...two things I'm kind of short on! (Yes, I know I'm short on other things; like inches!) So, my question for you gals is, what do I do first? If this was a list of things that needed to be done to your house, what would YOUR priorities be?