I mentioned in a previous post that I got together with a good friend of mine a few weeks ago.  If you're friends with me then it's not secret that I've struggled with my weight most of my life, especially after having babies!  My friend, Melody inspired me when we got together (as she often does!)  We talked a lot about health and lifestyle changes and I realized that I need to stop making excuses and do the things that are hard that will change what I don't like (physically) about myself.  I also expect that in making these changes I'll probably also notice changes within myself.

So, I am trying to become more accountable, and in so doing I'm going to be a little more open about my private matters on my blog.  This is something I haven't really done before and I've resisted.  Mainly because I don't like putting myself out there.  BUT, over the last several months in particular I have realized how much it helps me when I read my dearest friends' blogs as they put themselves "out there."  Many times is has been through their experiences that they share that I have felt such a connection with them, felt so lucky to have them as friends and felt confirmation that the things that I FEEL and I want to change are good and right.

Last week I started my simplified version of making some healthy changes.  I have tried and tried and tried again, but always have given up in the past. I don't want to be a quitter and I  DO want to change.  So, in order to be more successful I am putting on less pressure and making mini-goals on a daily basis that I am challenging myself to keep.  For each of these mini-goals that I accomplish throughout the day I am rewarding myself with 25 cents.  Silly?  Maybe.  But, at any rate I will be able to see how well I'm doing with a visual of coins in a jar on the counter.  And, when I reach my goal I'll have saved up a bit of money to buy myself some much needed clothes.

My goals:

-Drink 12 cups of water a day (3 liters) (This is harder than you'd think!)

-Eat 5 small meals a day (This is suprisingly difficult as I often forget to eat throughout the day as I'm busy doing other things...then I eat too much at a given meal...)

-Eat WHOLE foods and pair carbohydrates (including fruit) with protein so my body can process it better.  This has been going well.  It forces me to think of healthy and whole food options.  I am phasing out WHITE in our house, much to the chagrin of my other family members.  I keep telling them that SOMEDAY they WILL thank me!  Chris has been a good sport and has been trying VERY HARD to "like" what we are eating these days....this is going to take a LONG time for our family to adjust to!

-Go to bed by 10 p.m. (This has NOT been going well.  I have always enjoyed my night time hours and often will stay up into the wee hours of the morning, which does not make me a good mommy the next day! I have a hard time MAKING myself go to bed everynight when I am getting SO MUCH done and having ME time!  Any suggestions???

-Read my scriptures daily (this just needs to happen on a more regular basis.  If I do not do this first thing in the morning it just doesn't happen...)

-Exercise (OK.  Unlike a lot of people, I actually really like to exercise.  What I don't like to do is interupt other things I'm doing to exercise.  I used to get up at 4 every morning and go to spin class.  I LOVED it once I was there. I HATE, HATE, HATE getting up early.  It just isn't right!  Especially when you're waking up several times a night with babies and small children!  I have yet to get down a good routine for this since becoming pregnant for Zach.  I REALLY need to get this one going...)

Aside from being unsuccessful in several of these areas I did lose 3.4 lbs. last week!  I just measured myself in all {scary} areas on Sunday night and now I'll be tracking my measurements as well.  I have visions of one day fiiting into a bathing suit and not scaring all of the small children! =)

But seriously, I mainly want to become fit and healthy.  I came to terms a few years ago with the fact that I will never have beautiful long legs, or any long appendages for that matter!  I am built the way that I am built, but I can look the best that my body can and feel good about that.  I want to be an example of health and confidence for my children and I want to help instill in them positive eating and fitness habits!

Thanks for bearing with me, and stay tuned for updates on my journey to health!

{UPDATE!!!}  Since I wrote this post I have lost another 4.8 lbs!!!!

Total weight lost:  9 lbs !!!

Baby Shower for my cousin Rachel!!!

My cousin Rachel is due for her first baby in the next few weeks and I couldn't let her have that baby without throwing the best baby shower that I could for her first!!!  Baby girl Hubbard we can't wait to meet you!!!

My Aunt Donna is Rachel's mother-in-law, as Rachel is married to my cousin, Ben!  Donna and my cousin Megan came down a few days before the shower to help me with all of the preparations!  It was supposed to be a suprise shower but word got leaked out!!!  Thanks for being a good sport Rach and pretending to be suprised anyway!!!

Rachel and her mom, Karen with Rachel's nephew

Our cousin Ashley came down from Montana too to join the party!!!  She got Rachel this adorable outfit!!!

This cute little crocheted hat and outfit were from Donna and Megan along with baby shampoo, lotion and another gift on it's way after baby is born!!!

I made a dozen burp cloths for Rachel out of scrap fabrics that I got from her that were leftover from projects that she'd done in the baby's room!

Megan helped me make the "poofs" hanging from the ceiling and I got the idea for the doiley garlands and the tutu table skirt off of Pinterest =)  I thought everything came out really pretty and I can re-use the decorations for Olivia's princess birthday party this summer and other baby showers I may throw in the future!

We served little cucumber sandwiches, chicken salad and egg salad in croissants, chips and homemade salsa (by Donna), veggies and dip, fruit and pink lemonade!

The centerpiece for the table was a diaper cake I made as another gift for Rachel:

And for dessert we had cupcakes and cake pops!  My sister-in-law got our family a cake pop pan for Christmas and I knew right away what I was going to use it for the first time!!  Megan helped me out a ton with these and she also decorated the cupcakes!  She did a great job!  Olivia helped with all of the sprinkles!

When I ran out of cake pop sticks but not batter we just made a bunch of "donut holes!"

It was really fun and I thought everything came together so nicely!  Donna was in charge of games as we had some people stumped with the "Candy Game," "Fill in the Nursery Rhyme" and "Mother ________."  We also played a funny competitive game between Rachel and her mother where we dumped out a laundry basket of socks that had been jumbled up to see who could get the most socks matched. 

Another hilarious game was a baby food game where we paired up into teams; one person as the mommy and the other as the baby.  The mommy had to feed her baby an entire container of baby food and who ever finished first won!!!  Ashley and I were partners and we almost won!  Banana baby food is good but don't try eating it too fast, it doesn't go down as smooth as it is and let's just say we almost had a few people lose their lunch!!!

Thanks to everyone who helped out and who came to show their support for Ben and Rachel and their baby girl who we just can't wait to meet!

Later that night we had fun going out to Rumbi Grill and watching the football game with Ashley, Zo and Rajon that night!  Thanks for coming to visit!!!

Hanging out with the Daniels.

Our good friend, Melody came to visit us a few weeks ago with her cute little kiddos: Emma, Maddi and Briggs (4 months!)  My kids have missed her and her kids because she used to watch them several days a week when I was working.  These kiddos were practically brothers and sisters!  It was so fun to see them re-aqcuaint themselves and see how protective Brady was of Emma and Maddi when we were playing at the indoor playground at Arctic Circle!

Thanks for coming to see us Melody!  We can't wait to get together again soon!!!

SILLY KIDS!!!

Zach and Briggs- new buddies!!!

FHE- January

One of my New Year's goals this year was to have Family Home Evening (FHE) EVERY week!  This has been something that I have not been good at doing.  I have never been consistent with it and I knew that I needed to get my act together!  The first Monday in the new year we sat down for FHE and talked all about New Year's resolutions and what they mean.  Everyone in our family came up with their own goals that they felt would be important to work on and we will be reminded on the first Monday of each month what those goals are and see how we're doing on them!

We're also doing one night of service, one night of family history, one night of fun and one night learning about the prophet, George Albert Smith, as he is the prophet that we are studying this year at church!

For our first night of service we chose to serve our Bishop! His birthday was that night so we made him an ice cream sundae with a note that read: "Thankyou Bishop for giving all of your Sundays to everyone in the ward!  Here is a 'Sundae' just for you!"

The kids drew him these pictures (isn't Brady's picture HILARIOUS???!!!) and then we drove the sundae and the pictures over to his house and wished him a happy birthday!  It made us all feel reallt good to recognize him in this way for all that he does for our family and the ward family and it really took him by suprise as well!!!

When we got home we each had sundaes of our own!!!

Other activities we did:

-For Family History night: We wrote letters to all of the grandparents asking them questions that Brady and Olivia wanted to know about them!  We are excited to receive some letters back! 

other Desserts we've tried:

-Roasted pineapple with whipped cream

-Fruity Pebbles rice krispie treats

-Chocolate chip banana muffins

I'm really proud that we had FHE every Monday night this month!!!  I can't wait to have more family fun in February!

Jesus Wants Me For a SUNBEAM!!!!

Here's the cutest little Sunbeam around these parts!  Olivia was SO ECXITED to join the primary and loves to go every Sunday.  She loves her teacher, Sister Havens and sings all the new songs they learn.  She tries to teach me the words and tells me that I need to learn them so I can sing them to her at night!!!

Here's a few other things she's been up to lately:

Practicing writing her name in salt!!!! 

(She has the "O-l-i-i" down, just needs a little help on the "v, a!")

We've been trying to get to the open gym at the rec center once a week to play with friends and get our wiggles out!  This is Tevan, one of Olivia's little friends from church!!!

Sun Valley fun

On New Year's Day we got a suprising and exciting email from Mom and Dad Graf!  They told us that they had purchased a second home in Hailey, just outside of Sun Valley, Idaho!  Their plan is to retire in several years up to that area and for now we'll all just enjoy as much vacation time up there as we can!!!  CONGRATULATIONS mom and dad!!! 

We were so excited to see their new place and we had one more available weekend for the winter before Brady started basketball so we met mom and dad up in Hailey for a short weekend get away!  Their new place is part of a new community called Sweetwater that boasts such amenities as a theater room, a pool, hot tub, splach pad for the kids, walking and biking trails and a gym!  It has great views of the mountains and their unit is brand new complete with granite countertops, stainless steel appliances, and a gas fireplace!

We got up there late on Friday night and settled in and then we had a blast sledding the next day!  There was just enough snow on this one hill that was perfect for the kids!

Even little guy Zach joined us outside for the fun!!! 

He was all bundled up snug as a bug and slept the whole time!!!

We had lots of races!!!

B-E-A-U-T-I-F-U-L!!!

Later that night we had some nice hot dinner and toasted with some sparkeling cider before hitting the trail home!  Many more fun times to come, we're sure!!!

Happy New Year!!!

We had a great New Years with our buddies Quinn and Natalie and our cousins, Ben and Rachel!  We have a traditional fondue night every year so the food was great too!  We stayed up and talked and played some games, and of course watched the ball drop!  I can't wait to see what this new year brings!!!

We had quite the spread and I decided that next year I am definately going to make HALF the food because we had so much leftover!!!  I made two entree cheese fondues, one was a gruyere sharp cheddar and the other was a pizza fondue.  They were both good but I'm going to keep searching out for another recipe  (let me know if you have a good one!)  To serve with the cheese fondues we had green apples, carrot and celery sticks, broccoli, ravioli, baguette slices, pumpernickel and french bread cubes, crackers, meatballs and kielbasa.  We also had shrimp cocktail and homemade salsa that Ben made!

To drink we had Shirley Temples, another New Years Eve tradition!!!

For dessert we had a chocolate marshmallow fondue and a peanut butter chocolate fondue.  These were also pretty good...but again, still searching for another recipe!  I served these with graham crackers, marshmallows, pretzel sticks, strawberries and bananas.  We also drank this with milk, egg nog and sparkeling cider!

The kids had a great time at their table as well!  They enjoyed IBC rootbeer, cheese puffs, grapes and all of the adult yumminess too!!!

Lily, Olivia, Annie, Kaytee and Brady!!!

Nat and Hannah