I missed 2 days!

Ok, Friday was really blah.  The big kids went to school.  I worked out and got a pedicure.  Ben worked and hung with the kids in the afternoon.  We took the kids to see Norm of the North with friends, and it was maybe the worst movie I have ever seen and then our friends' 4 year-old puked everywhere at the very end of the movie and all of the rest of the kids wanted to stay in the vomit smelling theater and see the end of the worst move we have ever seen.  So, that was fun.

 But then Ben and I had a date night after the kids went to bed.



Saturday was adorable.  ADORABLE.

We played hockey with neighborhood kids on a pond by our house that a friend of ours shoveled.

 Harry won a hockey game at home.  We had a babysitter for the 3 little kids and watched the game by ourselves so we could go to a Packer party afterwards.

  We took Harry along to play with the other kids and we basically had a fun date night-- the men watched the game and the women and Ben played Cards Against Humanity.

Today, I took Dorothy to urgent care because she has been holding her pee and becoming hysterical when we ask her to go to the bathroom.  I thought she had a UTI.  Turns out she's just a control freak.
I spent 45 minutes in a gross bathroom trying to get her to pee in a cup with no success.  Then I bought 2 princess dresses at Costco and spent $50 at Claires on prizes her her prize box, made a sticker chart with construction paper and a Sharpie, and bam!  She has peed in the potty 3 times of her own volition and is only 2 stickers away from her first prize.  She also scratched her face open in 2 new places today in a rage fit over peeing/putting on her coat, so we started a sticker chart for not picking her owies, too.  SHE IS A REAL CHALLENGE.

She also got to go to her bestest friend from preschool's birthday party, and my parents came over tonight.

Tomorrow, we have a tour of the Jelly Belly warehouse and swimming at my parents' hotel on tap, so look out world!

Work again. Sigh.

I am annoyed but not surprised that I forgot to blog yesterday. I mean, NOTHING happened. 

Cooper and Harry stayed home from school. Jack and Dorothy went to school. Ben was home with the kids, and I worked all day. 

Working for the first time since mid- December was too much for me, and I went to be at 9:20, only to be awoken at 3:55 by a sick Dorothy who took Tylenol for her 102 fever and went back to bed. I had to turn off my 5:00 alarm, though, and am just now on the elliptical. Likely no way in hell I will be dressed and on time for my nine o'clock meeting, but you know me. I like a good challenge. 

In diet news, not eating after dinner and eating only 1200 calories kind of sucks. I was so hungry before lunch yesterday, and I was also so hungry after lunch. But! I am .5 pounds away from my first Anthropologie award!! And we have a lot of parties and stuff on the schedule between now and early next month, so I can really use it!

It was so cold yesterday and I forgot a hat. Here I am dramatically bundled to walk to the parking garage:

I came home to delicious leftover pork chop sandwiches and 4 kids playing happily. Having a house spouse is the best. 

Cooper made an awesome Geo Trax town:

Sick!

And just like that, we are plagued.  

Jack has a weird rash around his face that's probably impetigo or something totally gross:

 Cooper has strep throat, and, not to be outdone, Harrison has a pericardial effusion and a terrible virus, his first effusion in 18 months and his first effusion since he started on the weird gout medication that was supposed to make the effusions go away.

 Dorothy feels OK still, but she had a 99.9 temeperature today, and her tonsils look a bit like raw meat.

 I spent 2 hours at the pediatrician with Cooper and brought Harry along for a strep test just in case (negative), got a referral for a second opinion cardiologist in Milwaukee, and got a referral to the pediatric dermatologist for Dorothy who still has an open wound on her damn nose.  Ben and Harry spent the whole afternoon at the cardiologist yesterday for an echocardiogram and a long conversation.  And tomorrow?  I bet you a million dollars that Dorothy and Jack will need to be seen by a medical professional.

But you know what else happens tomorrow?  I GO BACK TO WORK!  Yay?

We were supposed to go on a Jelly Belly warehouse tour today, but the bacteria and viruses kept us away, so we've tentatively rescheduled for MLK day.  I have only eaten 954 calories, most of them vegetables, and that's a lot of vegetables, so I feel kind of full and look forward to a 166-calorie glass of pinot grigio and the State of the Union tonight.

Of course we are worried about Harry and trying not to show it so he doesn't freak out because as you might imagine, chest pains really freak him out.

Mostly we just want a good night's sleep.  Cooper came in our room at 3 yesterday, and it wasn't until 4 that we realized (after not sleeping for an hour) that he was sick and gave him medicine and put him back in his own bed.  We finally fell back to sleep at 4:30 only to be woken up by Dorothy at 5:40 because she has forgotten how to sleep ever since she went back to preschool last week.  Since I am setting a 5:20 alarm to workout and get dressed and get to work by 8:30, I feel like that full night thing?  Not going to happen tonight.

In any case, wish us luck.

The scale doesn't lie, but I sure wish it did.

Oh you guys.  I finally stepped on the scale.

I have been dreading it because my pants are all too tight.  My shirts ride up and pull in the arms, and I have cellulite on my STOMACH.

10 pounds.

TEN POUNDS.

Since last year at this time.

ARE YOU KIDDING ME?

So, I have instituted what I call the Anthropologie diet.  From now on, for every 5 pounds I lose, I am going to buy whatever the heck I want at Anthro--one item for every 5 pounds.  Since I now want to lose THIRTY FREAKING POUNDS instead of the much more reasonable sounding twenty pounds.  I AM GOING BACKWARDS HERE, PEOPLE.

I decided to kick it off today by stopping there on my way home from lunch with some friends (MY LIFE IS SO HARD).  I bought a really cute flowy little blouse (in a size small-- THINGS COULD BE WORSE) on clearance and fell in love with a full-price little ruffly number that I hope to buy in 7-10 days.

At lunch today, I ate salad with everything but the vegetables on the side and only used about half of the balsamic vinaigrette, none of the walnuts and none of the blue cheese.  I had a side of Brussels sprouts and a million glasses of water.  Breakfast was an English muffin and an orange. I had an apple for a snack and a huge bowl of turkey soup with veggies and spinach dip for dinner.  I have eaten 6 Lifesavers (90 calories), 5 mini Hershey bars (210 calories) and some pirate booty out of the kids' bowls before I realized how  much weight I have gained (130 calories).  All told, that's 1330, and 430 of them were total garbage.  Ben is making an amazing cheese, apple, and sausage snack for him and Harry to eat while they watch the Clemson/Alabama game, and I have to be on a different level of the house.  That's how hungry I am.

I am back to wearing my damn Fitbit and using My Fitness Pal without cheating.  My goal is to burn 1000 calories more than I eat everyday.  This was easier in the early fall when in was possible to go outside without crying from the cold.  Right now, I have only burned 2100 calories today, so I am going to hop back on the elliptical for a little while.  I'd like to make it up to 2600 a day, so I could eat more food.  At the very least, I need to spend my calories more wisely-- all the junk food today took up room that I could have given to celery and peanut butter, string cheese, almonds, things that would make me feel full and not just sad.

But the biggest thing is to not let the kids know I am trying to lose weight because I don't want them to think that bodies are bad.  Dorothy and Cooper saw me doing crunches today and asked what the hell was going on and I said I was doing exercises to make myself stronger, and they did them too.  And they have never seen me do crunches because it has been like 4 years.  I HAVE CELLULITE ON MY STOMACH.  Gah.

A slew of hockey pics

This weekend was all about the hockey (4 games total at 2 different rinks in 2 different cities), but there was also other stuff.  Like grocery shopping because we live on the EDGE.

At Costco today, I saw a cute family with 4 little boys, and the mom was so thin and stylish!  And they had all produce and healthy food.  2 flats of apples, a ton of clementines, all of the berries, greens, chicken, salmon, etc.  And my cart was jammed with wine and a mega box of (organic!) burritos.  I mean, it was hard to not compare myself and feel bad about my fitness choices.  Also, I was very hungry and went to 2 stores and packed the Prius solidly full of food that we don't even have room for in 2 fridges, the pantry, and our storage room.  But I planned no real meals, so we will be eating frozen (organic!) crap in between hockey practices.

It is so cold here that the dog held her pee from 11 last night until 10 this morning, meaning it is officially UTI cold in Wisconsin.

HARRY'S TEAM WON THEIR HOCKEY TOURNAMENT!  And Harry scored a tie-breaking goal in the third period.  Then another kid scored a goal, and they won 4-2.  The other team pulled their goalie in the last minute so they could have more players on the ice, and Ben and I, a little disoriented from coming in late because we rushed across town from Jack's game where he was the goalie (Harry went to the game with our friends/neighbors who also have a kid on the team), were screaming "SHOOT IT!" to our kids during face off because we thought it was only the second period.  We suck.  But!  Harry's team does NOT.  Jack was a good goalie sort of, also.  I mean, he let a lot of goals go by, but he also didn't seem to care, and he doesn't feel pain like a normal person, so he stopped one with his face. With some goalie clinics and a summer of tennis and baseball, I think he could be a good little goalie someday.  He still has another full year at the level he plays at now, and kids still rotate through all the positions.  Goalies don't start to specialize until they're in Harry's age bracket.  Which is good because HAVE YOU SEEN HOW MUCH GOALIE PADS COST?

Hockey Mom

We have spent the weekend attending a hockey tournament at a rink 38 minutes from our front door, meaning we basically had a normal weekend with more hockey games than usual. Harry's team plays for the championship tomorrow afternoon, and Ben and I have practically screamed ourselves hoarse. 

Harry's pretty excited, too. 

TGIF

 I made cookies yesterday.  They were delicious but almost completely flat.

Speaking of flat cookies, I picked the boys up early to take them mini golfing because why not?  And also, Jack gets a prize every time he reads 7 books.  He had a cookies the size if his face.  Like you do.

 Harry had an ice cream cone.  In the middle of winter.  Because he is a Sconnie.

 They drove some motorized boats.  Very seriously.

 Posing in cheese:

 Driving the Weiner Mobile

 Almost falling in the water feature:

Harry had an awesome hockey game tonight, the first in a weekend-long tournament.  They were losing by 3 goals for the whole game (4-1), but in the last 2 minutes they tied the score.  Then they survived 3 minutes of scoreless overtime and finally WON a shoot out.  It was so intense!  They play another game tomorrow, and we can't wait. Especially Ben who was loudly flirting with expulsion.