Little Update on This and That...

I'm still here. Not a whole lot going on that is all that compelling.

This past week was school vacation week so it's been a bit busy around here. I managed to keep the kids fairly busy with activities - despite the nasty weather at the start of the week - and tomorrow the older two will be back to school. Happy dance!

Today is Sunday so it was church day. The girls were very excited because we missed last week. They love going to church school so it's a disappointment when they miss a week. Rick wanted to get some work on making more concrete pavers for our eventual backyard patio (it's been in the works since last summer/fall and he hopes to finish it this spring!) so we took E to church with us for the first time since she's been so mobile. I wondered how she would do with being in the nursery without me for the first time. The last attempt was futile. She screamed and screamed until they finally came and got me. Today she did great! She and A were in the room together and one other toddler was with them. E stayed busy coloring, eating snack, and playing and she was absolutely fine. She is finally able to stretch her naptime to just after lunch so that helped, too.

We are in the process of planning our summer trip to Virginia to visit Rick's brother and nephew. It's a long drive, but we hope it goes at least as well as it did last year. I need to research hotels and find a suitable one (read: 2 queen beds and an indoor pool) for our first and last nights. It works best if we break up the driving into two segments each way. We usually drive a longer leg the first day and stay at a hotel and then do less driving and hit an attraction of some sort (usually a musuem) on the second driving day. Last year we drove to Philly, stayed overnight, and then headed to the Maryland Science Center for the afternoon. It was fun, but we saw less than half of the exhibits so I think we are going to try for a similar itinerary this year on the way down. Our visit this year will include seeing the new house that Rick's brother just bought, a visit to a few local attractions (both in D.C. as well as in the greater Northern Virginia area), and hopefully some hiking/geocaching. I guess Rick is going to need to start building up his back muscles so he can carry E in the backpack for moderate-length hikes!

The weather has finally turned spring-like (even verging on summer-like) around here. This weekend has been mostly sunny and in the 70's and tomorrow is supposed to hit 80 or higher. But, then we will see a crash back into the 50's later in the week. The t-shirt weather is here but briefly this week. We will enjoy it while it lasts.

Yesterday my parents flew in to a local airport for a short visit since the weather was expected to be beautiful all day. My parents own an aircraft electronics business at a small town-owned airport and they both have their private pilot's license. Due to their buisness they also own a small four-seater airplane which allows them to cut their travel time in half when they come to visit us. They arrived at lunchtime and we invited Rick's parents over to join us for some salad, sandwiches, and dessert. It was a really nice visit and the girls were thrilled to have my parents here for the day. It was such a treat for A to be able to include my mom in her pretend play so much that she actually gave Rick's mom the day off telling her "Grandma, you can go and talk or do whatever you want to because I have Grandma G. here to play with today!" Wasn't that so nice of her to allow Grandma T. to do whatever she wanted for a while?? LOL My mom dutifully went into the playroom and played 'classroom' with the girls (she was given the moniker of Mrs. Floogle for that game). She also read them a few stories and played with them for a bit outside. The girls are very excited about their next visit with Grandma and Papa which will hopefully be in about a month. This time we'll make the 3-hour tour down their way for a weekend.

That's about all the news for now. I'm still hovering at the 20-lb. mark with no more losses seen this month. It's kind of frustrating but I'm trying to focus more on how far I've come and less on what I still hope to lose. It will happen eventually - sometimes it just feels like the plateaus will never end! I had bought some new jeans last week and with the change in weather I went out and bought a pair of capris, a skort, and a few t-shirts to get me through this transition weight. I found that I'm actually down 1.5 sizes so I'm currently "between" standard sizes which is kind of annoying. I can almost fit in the lower size but it's just a wee too snug for comfort so I bought a couple of the larger size and hope to be buying the smaller size before too long!

So, that's all for now!

Ciao!

Four Bags of Flour Gone!

Yep. I'm now down 20 pounds since Christmas. It feels good. Other than the fact that my jeans are getting ridiculously loose and I can't find a pair of jeans that fit me to save my life. Why must that be so hard? Can anyone tell me? Geesh.

But, if that's my only complaint for the moment I've got it pretty damn good.

Oh yeah, and there's that little beef I have with Mother Nature at the moment. But, I just don't feel like talking about that four-letter word right now. I'm going to enjoy the relatively warm temps (low 50s today) and the sunshine while it lasts.

I've been pretty consistent with my workouts - generally 5 to 6 days a week. I have not been walking much but getting downstairs to do a video in the evenings after the girls are in bed. I have been switching between a few different workout videos. Most recently I've tried some of the P90 workouts and found that the program is a good match for me right now so I'm adding those into my routine. I like to mix it up a bit so I don't get bored doing the same thing every night. I did that for a while with the Slim in 6 videos and started to really hate it so I haven't actually done that workout for a couple of weeks. I'll get back to it at some point but I needed a break from it.

I really hope the weather starts to cooperate a bit more - sooner rather than later. It will be nice to incorporate some hiking into my exercise routine. The girls love to go geocaching so I'm sure that will be part of our weekend fun in the coming months. And speaking of geocaching (check out geocaching.com for more information), I have a friend who is going to be doing some geocaching workshops to tourists this summer. How cool is that? Geocaching is becoming more mainstream!

Miss E. getting decidedly tired so it's time to get her down for her nap (even though she keeps saying "NO!" when I ask if she is ready for a nap...).

Ciao for now.

Feeling better...

For one, the snow didn't last long - thankfully. As I suspected it was all gone by about noontime. Well, it was gone everywhere but in our shady backyard tundra. We always seem to be the last holdout when it comes to snowmelt, but even our backyard snow was gone by dinnertime. So, I can once again look outside and see early spring with its lovely brown grass and bare tree branches and mud. However, I can once again look forward to the budding leaves and flowers and the warmer temps...which aren't happening this weekend, unfortunately. Tomorrow's high is only going to be 44 degrees...so glad I bought those sleeveless dresses for the girls to wear for Easter. Grumble, grumble. At least I had the foresight to buy sweaters to match.

Secondly, I think I have adequately self-diagnosed (with the help of Dr. Google) my seasonal allergy. I don't know exactly what I am allergic to but I now have strong suspicions that I suffer from early spring allergies to some tree pollen or other. I bought some Claritin at the store on Tuesday and took my first dose. The rest of Tuesday I continued to be miserable and began to think that maybe I just had a cold after all, since the antihistimines weren't cutting it. However, I took a second dose Wednesday morning and by evening I had improved markedly and was even able to manage a decent workout. I am still a bit sniffly but overall I am so much better and the tickly/scratchy throat is gone. So, I'll be on the Claritin for a while. Just when I can stop taking it, I have no idea. I guess I'll be doing some experimenting this year to try to figure out when my allergy season ends. If I recall correctly, my "spring cold" usually lasted about 3-4 weeks in past years. With that in mind, I'll stay on the Claritin until the end of this month and then stop taking it and see how it goes.

And in other news of the weird (and kind of gross), I finally made a much needed appointment with the dermatologist. I take after dear old Dad who is of 100% Irish decent and I have very fair, freckly skin. I always complain to my parents that since I'm the last of five kids that all the melanin was used up by my siblings and there was none left for me. So, I decided it was finally time for a trip to the dermatologist for my first ever skin check - being in such a high-risk population for skin cancers and all. I also had an actual reason to go since I had a small lesion/blemish on my left forearm that started off as an itchy bump (that I picked, of course...thinking it was an ingrown hair) and it never seemed to go back to 'normal' skin. After a month of looking at it and wondering about it I figured I'd just get it looked at by a trained professional. Ya know...since Dr. Google wasn't able to diagnose anything for me and none of the pictures or descriptions I found online were exactly comforting. After a brief visit my skin was deemed mostly healthy - except for that one spot on my arm that he decided to treat by freezing it with liquid nitrogen. He could not be completely certain without a biopsy but felt that it was a common, easily treatable and non-malignant form of skin cancer called basal cell carcinoma. He told me that the freezing treatment should clear it up quickly and that if I still see something there after a month I should come back for a biopsy to rule out something more serious. Hopefully the freezing will do the trick nicely. He did not seemed concerned so I will not worry about it for now. He left me with the parting advice to use copious amounts of sunscreen and to return yearly for check-ups since I'm in such a high-risk group. Okey-dokey. Will do. And for now I have a lovely blister on my forearm to stare at and to serve as an example of why I should use plenty of sunscreen and try to avoid the mid-day rays more often than I have in the past. Oh, and as a bonus I managed to score some highly potent corticosteroid cream to treat some nasty dry patches on my knees that I've had forever, it seems, and just never bothered to find out exactly how to treat them. I have one particuarly stubborn patch on my right knee that he felt might require further treatment with a cortisone injection. But, first I'll give the cream a shot for about a month.

I've been spending a lot of time getting my body ready for shorts and t-shirt season and now maybe my skin will be in better shape for summer, too!

Another Fun Quiz...and I got a 100!

Thanks go to Vexed for finding this one!

Dude! You're 100% from Massachusetts!

Dude! Me and Sully and Fitzie and Sean are gonna hit Landsdowne tonight after the game, hang out at the Beerworks. I'll pick you up at the Coop at 6.

How Massachusetts are you?
Quiz Created on GoToQuiz

Enough is Enough!

I'm about ready to send Mother Nature a nasty-gram.

I woke up to a blanket of white shit all over the trees and lawn this morning. It's actually one of those snows that, when received in November you might exclaim "Oh! It snowed overnight! How pretty!" And you start looking forward to mugs of hot cocoa after an afternoon of sledding or making a colossal snowman in the middle of the backyard.

But, when such a snow arrives stealthily whilst one slumbers in the beginning of April... well, it just makes you wake up and cuss at the sight of it and you spend those first moments of trying to wake up in a completely foul mood. Eventually, if you are at all like me, you do get over it and you move on with the Pollyanna-ish hope that the snow will be gone by the end of the day and life can get back to it's regularly scheduled springtime hue. Pretty please.

And this morning to add to my misery I continue to fight a nasty upper respiratory something. Ever since I gave birth to R I seem to have developed the knack for the "springtime cold." In other words, every year for the last 6 years I've developed the same nasty symptoms sometime in mid-late March or early April. It starts to make a girl wonder if it's merely coincidental or if it's an allergy to something that blooms at the onset of spring. I have a stuffy nose, a scratchy throat, and sinus pressure. No fever, no aches, no chills, no headache, and not even particularly tired. Just feeling stuffed up and pretty miserable since I am not a happy camper when I am forced into being a mouth breather. When I Google allergy vs. cold I seem to come up with the conclusion that I indeed am allergic to something. Not sure what, but the pollen indexes point to elm, maple, or poplar/aspen/cottonwood. Of course, it could be a cold and perhaps I'm suseptible to the change of season from winter to spring, but it does seem a bit odd that I am usually well all winter long and then the nice spring weather hits and I'm down for the count for a number of days. It makes me hate spring just a little bit.

However, I'm still not happy about the white shit out there today.