So much to blog about, so little time.

Ok.  This is where I sit and reassess my purpose for blogging.  I love to do it, I do.  Just lately I feel so pressed for time, that I rarely get to sit on the laptop during the day.  Thank goodness for my phone, or I’d have no connection to the outside world!  When I do finally get the boys to bed, I want to curl up in bed myself, rather than come up with something clever and witty to write.

But I don’t want to give up blogging all together.  I find it very useful in my weightloss efforts, and it allows me to be accountable to both myself and my readers.  I want to remain in the blog world, but I feel like this particular blog is too time consuming. I want something I can post to quickly, something more than Twitter; 140 characters just isn’t enough; but something less than THIS.  Something that I can update on the go (I ♥ my iPhone); something that would be easy to keep up with.   Dilemmas.

Then, my ever-so-clever and fabulous girlfriend (waves to MommysitaBonita!) started microblogging with Tumblr and I thought, what a brilliant idea!  I would still be blogging, and keeping my peeps abreast of my daily goings-on (because you know, I am oh-so-important) but I wasn’t having to write a novel about what went on during my day.  I mean, really, how often can I write about what I did at the gym on a particular day and make it sound interesting AND write more than one paragraph about it?  Hence, my lack of blogging lately.

So, there you have it my friends…I’m giving up my little blog here and moving onto smaller bigger and better things…check me out at Tumblr from now on…it should be easy since it’ll post directly to my Facebook and Twitter. 🙂  See you there!!

An afternoon with the Amish

How’s everyone’s Saturday been treating them??  Our’s has been fab!  We woke up later than usual (around 7) with K-Bob making an “H” between the Hubs & I because last night around 2:30AM he decided he wanted to wake up and roam the house. :p  I tried putting him back to sleep in his room but around 3:30AM I gave up and just put him in bed with us.  I’m hoping this doesn’t turn into a nightly thing.

Anyway, after a leisurely morning, the fam bam and I hit up the gym, where Hubs and I did 30 minutes of running and 45 minutes of weight lifting.  I burned 641 calories and was shocked when Hubs told me he burned 1126 calories!  I think I need to push myself a little harder in the weight lifting department because my numbers just aren’t high enough. 

After the gym, we came home and lollygagged a bit; played outside with the kids, ate lunch, put K-Bob down for a nap, lounged in bed…then we decided it was too beautiful a day to waste indoors, so we headed out to look for the Amish markets we’d heard so much about.

We found a Farmers Market and Auction first…

It had your typical flea market, with vendors selling their wares: knock-off sunglasses/purses, incense & oils,  rugs, etc.

It kind of reminded me of a flea market we’d visited in the French Quarter of New Orleans years ago, but on a much smaller scale. 

It also had a small produce stand…

with lots of locally grown, inexpensive fruits and veggies…we ended up leaving with some plums and peaches. 🙂

On the way back home, we came across the “famous” Amish Market in Charlotte Hall.

They had lots of fruits and veggies too, but what I came for were the baked goods!! 🙂

They had breads, pies, and cookies galore!!!  We picked up several packages of cookies: chocolate chip, honey spice (think ginger snap) and the ever popular snickerdoodles.  My personal favorite were the honey spice cookies…I may or may not have had 3 2. 😉

All in all, it was a pleasant Saturday!  There’s something about this area that is just relaxing…I didn’t feel this way about Florida at all…those who know me, knows that I LOATHED Florida…with a passion.  But here…its just got a great smalltown, everybody knows your name kinda vibe, but with big city influences; Baltimore and DC is only about an hour and a 1/2 way, so the culture from those cities spills out into our little town.  I LOVE IT!  I feel like the quality of life is better out here than it was in Florida…I just want to bottle this place up and take it with me wherever I go! 🙂

Ok…enough of my nonsense…gotte get the house ready…my parents called this afternoon to tell me they’ll be here tomorrow.  The “perks” of living only 3.5 hours away from family. 😉  Good night!

Penny Pinchin’

Hola! How is everyone doing?? Things are going just peachy, especially after Hubs walked through the door and 11:15 this morning! 🙂  Yay, I was happy to have my helper husband home. 🙂

I went about my normal morning routine before he decided to grace us with his presence, and that involved feeding and dressing the kids, and getting them out the door so I could go to the gym.  There was a 9:30 Bodypump class and I wanted to get my cardio beforehand (I notice this helps keep my heart rate up, and I burn more calories, as opposed to doing cardio AFTER Bodypump), so we left the house around 8:30ish.  I got about 30 minutes of cardio and kicked some arse in the Pump class and burned a lovely 783 calories.  I’ve come to the conclusion that the more I burn, the more I can eat. 🙂  I like to aim to burn around 800 calories a day per workout so I can eat around 1600 calories, as opposed to my daily budget of 1300 (without working out).  I read somewhere (I believe it was Shape Magazine) that if your daily calorie budget is 1300 calories, and you burn 500 calories in a workout, you can add half of your burned calories to your calorie budget, making your calorie budget 1550, rather than 1300.  Get it?? 

Anyway, a new obsession has hit the Phillips Ohana…its called coupon clippin’!  I’ve noticed recently that a lot of my friends have gotten into this “trend” and have been saving a TON on their grocery bills.  One friend of mine actually saved $104 dollars on ONE grocery trip.  So of course, I was like, “I gotta try this!”  Aside from the payment for our home and car payments, groceries takes a huge chunk of our moola.  I can spend anywhere from $100-$250 a WEEK on groceries, depending on where I go and what kind of mood I’m in. :p  My previous method for shopping didn’t help either…I did what I like to call the “grab and go” method, which consists of running down aisles and grabbing whatever we needed without checking for bargains and prices and heading out as quickly as possible.  9 times out of 10 with K-Bob in tow.  We also never really took advantage of our military privilages as often as we could have because in FL, our commissary was VERY small and VERY limited.  And the bigger one in Pensacola was 45 minutes away.  So we did a lot of Publix shopping, which was significantly pricier.

Well, this time, I have equipped myself with some knowledge, and a plan…

I got me a coupon binder, got me some scissors and got to clippin! 😉

I’m also going to utilize the commissary a lot more here in Maryland because it is a mere 3-4 miles down the street…love that!  Its not as big as the commissaries in VA, but it has everything we need…it kinda reminds me of the Little Creek commissary pre-renovation. 🙂

Anyway, I got my coupons, I got my commissary, and I got my iPod Touch for K-Bob…and today we got to shoppin. 🙂 K-Bob was completely content the entire trip watching Toy Story & Backyardigans on the iPod and gave me enough time to get what I needed, while comparing prices and bargain shopping.  I left the commissary only $108 poorer, which is awesome considering what I got (it was a meat-replenishing trip), and how much I got.  My bill would have been less had I not succumbed to the lure of the sushi bar and spent $12 there. :p  My goal is to keep our weekly grocery bill under a $100; which is a feat because I could never leave the commissary without spending close to $300. :p

Anyway, enough chit chat for now…Jersey Shore’s coming on!! 🙂  Good night!

Insanity!!

And I’m not talking about the workout.  I’m talking about looking after and caring for my two crazy kidlets!  They have nonstop energy, are constantly climbing AND jumping off furniture and seem to always be running away from me.  Ok, so maybe I am talking about a workout. :p

Today for example, I’ve had to chase both boys on 3 different occasions.  Once, through the gym…yes, THROUGH the gym, like from one end to the other, and twice around the side of our house.  Oh, and of course having Mommy chase them is just HILARIOUS, so all you hear while I’m chasing them down is giggles and shrieks of delight.  SIGH.  I’m sure I served as comic relief for at least a couple folks. :p

These 2 definitely give me a workout…

…in addition to the ones I’m getting at the gym. :p

Thankfully, Daddy will be home tomorrow.

I’m BAAAAACK!

Hey blog world. 🙂  Sorry for my very long absence from the Blogosphere. I’m back and here to stay…and back on track with healthy eating and lots of heart-pumping, sweaty workouts. 🙂

If you’ve been following my blog, you know that we have had a topsy-turvy spring/summer.  You also know that we left Florida in April due to a lovely military move and were on our way up to Maryland to begin our new lives there.  Well, that plan got sidetracked.  Because we decided to wait on military housing, we had to wait until a house became available, and just our luck, one wasn’t available until August.  Yes, that meant we had to find other living accomodations until our house was available to us…in AUGUST.  Thankfully, our families live only 3.5 hours south of where we were to be stationed, and thankfully our wonderful families were willing to take me and our 2 boys in for the time being.  We split up the time between our parents: 2 months and my parents’ house, and 2 months at my in-laws’ house.  It was nice having the extra help; I went out on a lot of solo Target excursions, as well as several overnight and week long trips without the kidlets, but it was still VERY nice when we finally moved into our house last week.

Although we would NOT wait that long on housing again, I can say that it was well worth the wait…

We love our new house and our new neighborhood!!

Suburbia at its finest. 🙂  Because we’re living in a military community, its been easy talking to people and making friends.  Everyone just asks the question, “So, where are you all coming from?”  And there are TONS of little boys Noah’s age, so he’s loving it.  He’s also loving the fact that this is just over our front sidewalk:

🙂 

I love the sense of community we have here…neighbors talk to one another, kids play together, etc.  I didn’t have this in FL, or even VB, and I grew up there!

Anyway, now that we’re pretty much all settled in (I just need to work on the guest room and organize my closet), I’ve started to un-do 4-5 months of gluttony by going back to calorie counting.  Although I remained consistent with my workouts, my diet has been awful.  So awful that I gained a lovely 7 lbs while on “hiatus.” 😛  But thanks to calorie counting (I feel so much more comfortable counting calories…I’m a numbers girl), I’ve managed to narrow that number down to 4 lbs gained.

In January, when I first started my weightloss journey, I used the Livestrong My Plate website.  I loved it and it worked for me.  This time around, I’m tracking all my food and exercise using the Lose It app on my iPhone.  Love, love, love it!!  Its extremely user friendly, automatically adjusts my calorie intake according to my weightloss, and is just absolutely fantastic.  I used to have to lug around a notebook with me to jot down what I ate if I ate out when I was using Livestrong, but now that my tracker is right on my phone, its as easy as 1-2-3. 🙂  Best of all, its free. 🙂

Prior to moving in, Hubs & I joined a gym. 🙂  Because this area is so great, they gave us a military discount (when we asked Onelife in VB for a military discount, the rep said, “Um no.  Everyone here is military, so everyone would get a discount.” Hmph.), Hubs & I are spending less for the 2 of us, plus 2 kids than I was paying for just me and the kids in VB.  Yay for savings! 🙂  Don’t get me wrong, its not as grandiose as Onelife, but it gets the job done and the people make up for it. 🙂  My Bodypump instructor yesterday, for example, was such a great motivator! Loved him! 🙂

So now that we’re FINALLY in our home, I am hoping to post daily on the blog.  Be on the lookout. 😉