Lukas is 2!

My baby boy turned 2! 

I cannot believe how fast the time is going by, and I swear it only goes faster with the more kids you have! 

Well, we spent the weekend with family, celebrating our boy's birthday in Minnesota. And, grandpa and gammy spoiled him, of course haha! He definitely had a lot of fun. 

My hubby is on vacation so we get the entire rest of this month together! It's been great.

For some reason, he was scared of the candles at first, but once he got some cake he was sure happy! :)

My little man has brought such joy and happiness to our life, I cannot even begin to explain how much he means to us!

Rainy Day Fitness Routine

I thought I would write about my fitness routine for rainy days, as most of my fitness regime is walks and done outdoors. But today is nothing but rain and thunderstorms, so I'm stuck inside and pretty limited to work outs without any equipment. We used to own a treadmill, but I we got rid of it because it was never being used and just taking up too much space (it was a bigger model with every single gadget and feature imaginable). I am regretting that now, though, because there are times I would have been able to jump on it and get a good run in or two.

I do plan on buying another treadmill in the near future, hopefully before snow hits us. But until then this is my daily routine for those rainy days.

First, I eat the same in the morning, maybe just slightly lighter than normal. I try to fit in at least 1 hour of workouts that include abdominal workouts and glutes workout and stretches after breakfast.

I don't snack as much and if I do I snack very light, eating veggies or fruit or something very low in calories.

I eat a light lunch and have a salad or something light for dinner as well.

In between, I squeeze in more abdominal workouts and routines that give my legs and arms a good work out. Drinking plenty of water is key.

Once the rainy days are done I jump right back on to my normal regime. The key also is never to snack or eat anything after 6 PM or 7 PM. I have all my eating done by 5 PM, like any other day.

I plan on logging some yummy healthy recipes on here soon as well, in case anyone needs something for dinner ideas or anything. :)

My Fitness Story

Well it's about time I finally sat down like I promised months ago and talk about my weight loss and fitness routine. I haven't had time, as I said, to actually do this sort of thing, but things have been slowly falling back into place with Haylie getting bigger and going into a good sleep cycle now, so both kids are in bed no later than 7:30 every night and I am able to have some time to myself to finally do those things that have been waiting on my to-do list ;).

Well, I have tried to get as many pictures of my body along the way of this wonderful journey, but I have missed a month or two in between.

I just had 2 kids, in the last 2 years, and so I am not ashamed of my body at all or to share with you the awful truth of what my body looked like afterward before I lost all my weight and toned and tightened my core back into shape once again.

Pregnancy has always been very unkind to me. VERY unkind. And I mean that I bloat up, swell up, fatten up and my face changes and my legs look like tree stumps and the whole nine yards. I suffered all of this but my husband still woke up next to me every morning and told me I was beautiful. That's probably the only thing that kept me going on my worse days.

So, since I didn't waste my time or money on professional pictures and my picture taking skills rather suck, please excuse this haha. Here is a collection of before's:

This was me at 2 weeks postpartum. You can see my mommy pooch pretty good here, I look like I'm still 6 months pregnant. This is normal, a lot of if not most women have this postpartum.

I was actually pregnant with my son, Lukas, in this picture above. But I thought I'd share it with you since I had actually kept some of the weight on from my first pregnancy, which was probably good because I had severe morning sickness in both my first, half of my second and most of my third trimester, so I lost A LOT of weight that way as well, but I ended up packing on quite a bit of swelling and water weight and some extra pounds at the end of my third trimester, right before Haylie was born. I weighed 180 pounds when I went into the hospital.

I weighed 168 when I got out. Postpartum I maintained the weight of 165-164, and stayed like that for another 6 weeks while I healed up from my c-section. It sucked because I wanted to work out so badly and get moving but my doctor forbid me from even going on walks! Ugh. :(

In the above picture I weighed 164, that was in May and beginning of June.

So today, I weigh 144 and am still losing. My goal weight is 125, but to be honest my weight right now is pretty great! I can't complain and I feel energetic again and am very active and my high metabolism is back in gear :).

Here are some more recent pictures of the afters, which were taken a 1-2 months ago:

Above is me at 155, my legs are back in shape and I have my definition back. I've been eating more vegetables and fruits and whole grains in my diet, watching my caloric intake and going for walks every day. 

This is me at 148. 

So what I've been doing to drop so much weight is eating super healthy. I watch my caloric intake in spite of breastfeeding, and have been eating mostly fruits, vegetables and whole grains. I'll be honest, I do eat dairy and have carbs and sugar, but it's in moderation. I've "sabotaged" my diet and still manage to drop the pounds anwyay, so I refer to those times as my cheat days.

I've always eaten whatever I wanted, but that's because I do have a very high metabolism. So I don't have any miracle for weight loss, but I can defintiely say my husband does not have a high metabolism and he has been following my lead on this ehalth kick and his body is looking amazing! He packed on some extra weight like me while I was pregnant, and he has been dropping it rapidly just doing what I've been doing.

First and foremost, find some support. Whether it's online, at a gym or with friends or family. It will help you stay motivated! My motivators are my kids. They absolutely LOVE walks, and so they keep me going haha.

What I've been doing is taking long walks. I typically go for 5-8 mile walks a day, about 4 days a week. You can defintiely shorten these, as I am doing now and only going 3-4 miles a day and no more than 5 miles. In between I incorporate as many abdominal workouts as possible, and do light weights to tone my arms, as you can see above it is working wonderfully! I started out using 8 pound dumbbells, then switched to 10 pounds. I am seeing great results and definition in my arms already, and I don't do the weights every single day.

I eat a heavy breakfast, which takes up the majority of my calories, but that's exactly what I want because I will be burning all of thsoe calories off and then some throughout my day. I go for my fgirst long walk which is usually 2-2 1/2 miles. When I get back, I have some water. I snack between meals, but my snacks are normally no more than 70-90 calories, maybe 100 calories, or if they are more than I eat a light lunch. I snack after my light lunch if I am hungry, which I generally am not. I am not a big eater and do not crave anything or eat much by nature, I don't need a lot to keep me going, ironically, considering I do have a very high metabolism. I believe my metabolism and my need to constantly stay busy and be doing something must distract me from food haha.

One of the problems I ran into as a mom was that during the day I had no time whatsoever to eat regularly, so of course by the end of the day once the kids were in bed by 7 PM, I was starving. So I would eat a ton of food after 7 PM, and this wasn't necessarily keeping me from losing weight, but slowing the process all the same as well as sabotaging my toning work outs I had done previously during the day.

So I stopped eating after 5 PM. 

I've been losing around 2 pounds a week now. Since June I've dropped a total of 22 pounds just doing what I am doing.

I will defintiely keep updating this log and will post more recent pictures once I reach my next goal! :)

My Boy Broke His Arm :(

Well, it seems to be one thing after another this year! My poor boy fell off his tricycle and broke his arm :(.

This has NOT been my kids' year!

Fortunately, Lukas is healing up super fast, and has a few follow up appointments in the next two weeks, and we will see how things are looking.

Haylie's Updates

What a crazy year this has been so far! I've been super busy lately and haven't had any time to jump on a computer to update here! It's pretty rare that both kids nap at the same exact time, but today must have been an exception, because I actually have a free minute to myself.

Well, back in May our daughter, Haylie, developed what we thought might be a tumor or a cyst right in the bridge of her nose between her eyes :(, and so we were sent around to specialists in both Wisconsin and Minnesota to diagnose her condition and finally got some answers in July after she went through a scary MRI scan at Children's Hospital.

She had just started to develop- this growth around the time she was three months old, and we had no idea what it was. It scared us, though, that's for sure!

As it turns out, her MRI scan showed it is a condition called Hemangioma, which is a condition where a bunch of blood collects and pools in one area in a lesion under the skin. Fortunately, it is now treatable without surgery. Another huge weight off of our chests!

The surgeon and Hemotologist working together at Children's Hospital wrote her a prescription for medication to treat it, and she has to take it 3 times a day for 8-10 months, so that part might be a bit challenging but it's so worth it to make sure our baby girl is taken care of and doing okay and won't need any surgery!

So, amidst all of these errands and appointmetns and all the traveling my family and I have been doing this year it's been pretty hectic, and with the holidays coming up right around the corner it isn't going to be slowing down either.

But that's okay. I am more than welcoming to holidays! ;) I cannot wait for Fall!! And Christmas, of course. Those are my very favorite times of year. I'm not a big fan of summer or spring necessarily, though of course I appreciate every season, but Fall and Winter are my two favorites!

Date Night :)

So Saturday Tim took me out to Red Lobster for dinner and drinks :). It was nice getting out of the house and having some time to ourselves.

I have never been to Red Lobster before so this was special! I finally got to try lobster for the first time! It was so delicious. I absolutely LOVE seafood, aside from Mexican, it is my number one favorite food! 

I had a yummy Malibu Breeze with dinner and it was perfect ;). 

Their cheddar biscuits are so good, too. I'm glad we got to try this place! :)

Christmas Stuff

Build a gingerbread house... I want to make this a traditional family activity :).

Pictures with Santa ;)

See the lights in Irvine Park