The battle of the Baby Bulge

I know i promised pictures of my kiddos... and those are coming as soon as i find my camera cord again, i know i saw one of the kids with it recently. I am sure it will show up in the move next week, so then i can do a picture over load post. in the mean time a post of me rambling whilst the kiddos sleep and Cory studies for the impending final that is in 7 days.. dun dun dun!

*disclaimer: i know this is one of those annoying posts about weight, but really this is my blog so i can post what i want feel free to ignore it!*

For any one that knows me well, you probably already know my intense Gym addictions after I have a baby that never results in much else than me spending many hours in the gym! I always wondered if the problem was i was hitting the gym too soon after my babies, or the fact that i was just working out wrong? So after four babies and four years ( okay well 3-9 months in between pregnancies) of trying to lose weight I decided that I was going to shell out the exuberant cost and hire one of those personal trainers. You know, those annoying ones that they give you one free session with when you join the gym and then they try and pressure sell you into working you out and paying them lots of money? Yep got me one of those!

When January rolled around this year I decided it was time to actively lose the baby fat, Preston was 5 months old and we had decided no babies for at least 2-3 years now so i knew i had a big chunk of time to actually maybe possibly reach my goals. I started out with a month of sugar fast, no eating out or any processed foods, and working out 5 days a week. After the first month i was discouraged to see i had only lost 2 measly pounds.. Cory lost 15!! yep... 15 and all he did was eat healthier because that is what i was cooking! ( he has gained it back now since a 6' guy that's 145lbs is just scary and no one wants to see that many ribs! I put lots of butter on his food and made him take bigger portions... so hard to keep him fat and me not! ) I didn't get much further along my goal when we arrived in Oklahoma in march and I joined the gym here. I was desperate. I was chubby. I was vulnerable to the personal trainer and her sales pitch.

So i payed for 6 weeks of training and she thought that i could lose a pound a week. She went over my food journal and told me that i was doing great, just add some more protein and watch the carbs. Check and Check. I started working out 6 days a week for 2 hours a day. Sometimes I would go three hours because I felt like maybe it would help. I did lots of cardio intervals, weights, elliptical, stairs, spinning, and abs. After 6 weeks i had GAINED 6 pounds. I know, you are all thinking i was eating donuts every day. I wasn't. I ate 1500-1700 calories a day of oatmeal, salads, chicken, almonds, more salads and all the veggies i could think to put in there! ( the calorie amount is adjusted for breastfeeding, i was doing 1200 a day but my milk was decreasing in amount and baby was crying all the time) I followed what the personal trainer said to do to a T and you know what? I couldn't lose the weight. She asked if i was being honest in my food.. yes i was! And she knew when i worked out since they can look up the record at the gym. In the end she didn't know what to tell me. That was a month ago. Ever since that i was discouraged and frustrated and figured what the heck am i killing myself at the gym for?? So I have only gone to the gym 2-3 times a week and I have also ate whatever i wanted including cookies, half an avocado on a plate with just my fork because it sounded good, sweet potato fries, extra bowls of cereal at night when i am on the computer and feeling munchy! So the verdict. I lost the 6 pounds i had gained. LOL. really. So the more i work out and count my calories i gain weight, and when i just throw all caution to the wind i drop down to my original weight. Its all so confusing!

The verdict is unless you have no idea what a lunge, squat, and bicep press are you don't need to pay someone $500 to tell you. Or i guess if you don't know how to eat healthy, but you could just go to the library and look both these up for free. I do take lithium which can cause weight gain so that may be my problem, or the fact that it also affects the thyroid which i am going to get retested since if its sluggish it affects weight as well. Or maybe its the breastfeeding which I still am doing and all night long still. And I would stop but part of me loves it and wants to enjoy every last nurse because what if this is my last baby?? ( he is already 10 months and cruising!)

But hey on the positive side of things i can now honestly say the I tried my hardest to lose weight. And not feel so guilty about being a bit chubby now because even the personal trainer said she cant think of any thing else for me to do that i am not already doing. Plus Cory says he is a big fan of my larger chest which i must say did not exists when i was 120 lbs! So hey some fat is a good thing, right? Oh and i have tons of more muscle from all the workouts. My legs are really cut and i am lovin my new triceps , not to mention i can now carry the laundry basket full of three loads PLUS 20 lb Preston on top of it down three flights of stairs to the laundry mat! So ya, i guess the workouts were good for something?

I am just going to be happy with my body how it is. I will still go to the gym 3 days a week, but I have decided to stop obsessing over losing weight and just go for health and my "me" time to decompress.

So bring on the oreos! I was craving them anyways. And i can always go to the gym tomorrow! :)

FAA accademy

Hey everyone. I have been meaning to write a post for ages but I never get around to uploading pictures so i kept postponing it! I promise to follow this post with one of pictures so you can see what we have been up to and how big Preston is getting!



Cory is 3/4 of the way through school here. Its challenging but he is doing well and has passed all of the tests so far with high marks! He has got to learn all sorts of fun things like the phraseology of ATC and how to spot 50 different planes from the air and know what they are and how much wake turbulence they cause and how heavy they are. He has me practice with him and i get to pretend to be the pilot and rattle of fun things like " Academy Tower, continental 312 heavy over woody" then he tells me a bunch of gibberish about wake turbulence and when and where to land and then i say " continental 312 heavy, roger, runway two-eight right cleared to land" its like a fun little game. I have learned more about air travel than i though i ever would! I have much more respect for it all too!



MOVING again!



So in three weeks we will leave Oklahoma and all the humid sticky windy-ness behind. I will miss some things though, yes that is right Oklahoma has grown on me! I love all the green here. Its so beautiful! We have driven around a lot and there are some quaint neighborhoods i would love to live in with lots of luscious green lawns and big sprawling trees. I just love trees!! Plus housing here is really affordable, which is not the same for midland! ( its an oil town and remember all those 4 doller prices on oil? there are more millionaires per capita in midland than any town!) Right now we are having a thunderstorm. I never saw anything like this in Utah. The whole sky lights up with huge spidery lightning and followed by a rumbling that surrounds you from all directions. This has currently been going on for HOURS and not a drop of rain yet! Its so beautiful and I love to just watch the flashes and listen to the rolling sounds of thunder ripple through.



We went to Midland Texas over Memorial day weekend. Man is that place in the middle of no where! Its a seven and half hour drive.. which is not too bad and we have the DVD player in the car so we thought easy peasy great weekend trip. It started out great and we were enjoying seeing some of Oklahoma's beautiful and lush country side where everything was green and wild flowers grow along the roadside. After two hours of driving I realized we had missed a road and were 2 hours off track of where we should be. I don't think i have ever been so frustrated! So we got back on track and by now the kids are fussy and want to stop when really we have not even started yet!



A few more hours into the drive we stopped to feed the kiddos and hopefully regroup them because we still had a ways to go to the hotel i had already booked and payed for on priceline ( so i couldn't cancel it and i am cheap and was not going to pay for another one closer to where we currently were!!) We stopped at cracker barrel for dinner, which we all enjoyed and wondered why we never went to before! The kids even ate their food which is really the deciding factor in weather or not its a good place to go! Near the end of the meal Theo started patting is bum and frantically telling me poo poo. Let me interrupt my self here to explain that he has decided to potty train him self right now against all my wishes since i know we are in the midst of moving and i would rather just deal with it once we are moved in, so like July. Theo has decided now works for him and has started taking his diaper off and randomly using the little potty chair. So when he started saying he needed to go i took him away to the bathroom because i didn't want him screaming poo poo at the top of his lungs in the crowded dining hall and i knew that is what would happen if i didn't address his need. Sadly we got to the bathroom a little late but i took off the diaper and he finished on the toilet. This is when i realized i didn't have a diaper bag! I threw away the diaper, cleaned Theo up best i could with paper towels and washed all our hands well. I just put his shorts back on and figured he would tell me if he had to go pee and he just went the other so we should be fine the next 10 minutes till we were don't eating and went back to the car.



This is when being a lazy mother does NOT pay off! We go back to the table where my food is now luke warm and i start to eat again. About 2 minutes pass and Theo looks at me alarmed and screams poo! i then look alarmed grab him and RUN to the restroom. Oops. its loose and everywhere down his leg, all over his shorts, in his shoes! I wanted to throw up right there! If i had been at home i would have put him in the shower and hosed him down. But no shower here. I was in the stale and took off his shoes and shorts. i wiped him up best i could than waited till the restroom emptied out. The i put him in the sink nekked from the waist down and washed him with soap and hot water. Then repeated a few times. ( i am so greatful that no one came in while all this was going on!) I dried him off and sat him on the counter to watch as i tried to clean off his shoes.. thankfully he is in love with these stupid cars shoes that are like crocks and easy to clean! then i looked at the shorts... and rolled them up in a paper towel and threw them away! i didn't like them much anyways... and we were in the middle of no where and i didn't want that in my car for the whole weekend stinking it up! It was at this point i realized my two year old had nothing on but a shirt and a pair of red foam sandals. We are at the restroom which is behind the whole general store part of the cracker barrel restaurant where lots of middle aged people are browsing around and i am sure not wanting a nudist streaker! I also did not have my phone with me.. so i couldn't call Cory and just tell him to bring me the diaper bag. I finally picked Theo up so my arms were covering his bum and walked out to my car as fast as i could! I am halfway through getting the diaper on when Cory and the other kids show up at the car. He wanted to know where i had been for so long... i wanted to know why he wasn't at the table with my yummy half eaten but still wanted meatloaf? He thought i was done since i left??? yes that's what i do when i am done with meals. I grab a kid and just go out to the car and wait 30 minutes hoping he gets the hint and joins me. It was a frustrating day. We finally made it to the hotel at 1:30 am.



In the morning we got our first taste of Midland. Its really barren and looks alot like Utah in the sense that all the brush and weeds are that grayish yellowish white color and no green thing exists unless some dedicated person has been watering it. The only trees are the ones that have been planted so the older neighborhoods are nice with shade, but newer parts are pretty sparse. We found an apartment to live in. Its a small 2 bedroom but its a townhouse style so thankfully no neighbors under us to be annoyed at our kids and no one over to bother us! We will be moving june 25th. We went out to the tower where Cory will work at the airport. They gave us all a tour and were really friendly even though our boys were tearing the place apart! We had dinner the next day with one of Cory's new co workers and his wife. They will be in our new ward and were really sweet to feed us and allow our boys to tromp through their place! Then we started the long drive back to Oklahoma and driving away from midland on the dry flat boring roads sprinkled with oil rigs on both sides... i just wanted to cry. this i my new home, for years, maybe for ever?? I little part of me at that moment wished that Cory would not pass his final test here so we could head on home to Salt lake!! SHHHHHHhhhh don't tell him i said that! ( ya he doenst read my blog...) I got over my pitty party though and reminded myself that when we first got to Oklahoma i wondered why anyone would want to live here and now i like it. So i am sure in a few months i will post all the awesome things about midland.... lets all hope anyways!

picture over load from March

My Brother Soren and his new bride Jessica at the Temple right after the ceremony March 13, 2009

Theo likes his new hat and thinks preston should wear it too.

oh my goodness someone caught a smile on camera!!!

Theo conducting the music in his head from the laundry basket.

Theo and his uncle Neal. Couldnt get a real smile out of either of them!

Our little family at my brother Soren and Jessica's wedding.

My sister Thora's hair at said wedding. I wish i had long pretty hair to do cool things with like this! She let me do her hair, isnt she nice? I love to do peoples hair. I am still pining away for a daughter!

At the temple. How to fit three kids on a single stroller... that is porter in the basket and the baby on top in his carrier. We got lots of looks from people who must think we have too many kids or just need to have a bigger stroller!

Traditional sister picture. Amy, Halley, Tali, Mary, Mandie, ME, and Thora. We are missing Catherine and Katy.

my mom took this.. she thought it was funny we were all nursing. You can tell how we feel by Thora's expression... and me all flashing the camera! lol.

Papa loving having some grandkids stay at his house!

Nana doing the same thing!

This is Thora. She is awesome. I was so glad she came into town. She and I talked and talked and talked and i think we almost made up for the past 2 years we hadnt seen each other! That is her daughter Elishava. Her older daughter and husband couldnt come.

Elishava loved crawling on top of Preston. Her sister Lydia always does it to her so it was fun for her to be bigger than someone!

Everone always wants to be in my lap. Here are Theo and Preston asleep.

Porter and Theo sleepin in Papa's lap.

Oklahoma

I cant believe we are here. It didn't really sink in that we were moving for me until halfway to Denver. The drive started out great. I drove the Hyundai with Preston who slept the first three hours. Cory drove the van with porter and Theo happily watching new movies on the DVD player. I love technology. How the pioneers traveled for days on end with kids is beyond me. I suppose then they were going so slow the kids could walk and so as a parent you didnt have to hear them whining the whole way. The hard part for me was when Preston woke up from his nap. The crying started followed by a scream. We stopped and i nursed him and we were off again. At this time i realized my silliness in not having his carseat on the right side of the car. I could not reach him to help him get the binky back in his mouth. Finally out of desperation in the middle of no where i stoped on the side of the road and took everything out of my car so i could re arrange it with the baby on the right side of the back seat. I then drove for the next three hours with my right hand reached back there so he could clutch it with both his arms. If i moved it he would cry. My shoulder is still sore from driving in that position!

Denver was awesome. Our hotel was really nice, think granite counter tops and dark hardwood headboards. I was so sick of driving i was ready to just move in there! Theo was up till 2 am, i guess he had slept alot during the day so he was a bit wired. The second day of driving was a little better since Preston and i had figured out the arrangement of him holding my arm in desperation while i sang every hymn that i could think of. I had to drink a mountain Dew since thats the only drink i like that has caffeine in it and i was trying to stay awake by this point. I have not had caffeine in so many years that after only half the drink i was wired! The main reason i was trying to stay awake is because Kansas is so boring ( no offence to people that live there) Its just miles and miles of flat nothing ness with an occasional farm on the side of the road. It was really windy too and my car was shaking.

The third day we finally arrived in Oklahoma. Its just like anywhere else... super walmart, sonic, KFC, McDonald's, bestbuy, home deopt. When did we become so commercialized that all the cities in the US were the same? Since our truck was not going to arrive for a few days we had to figure out some bed arrangement. We went to get some bunk beds for the boys but everyone ( even walmart!) was out of wood beds. Well that's not entirely true i could have bought one for 800 dollars but i was a bit too cheap for that. So we just bought two twin mattresses and put them on the floor pushed together. We slept on that the whole family, well we are still sleeping on it and will until our stuff gets here which has been delayed till Friday. (grrrr) So if you didn't know that we had more stuff coming we look pretty poor and white trash. We are all in one room sleeping on the floor with nothing on the window but tin foil to keep out the street light at night. Our living room has nothing but suitcases, laundry, and a few boxes strewn about. we bought a card table that we set our computer up on and also we eat at it. We have all paper plates, cups, and bowls. In the living room is a big window and for privacy at night i wanted to hang a sheet up over it. But we didn't have anything to hang with. So I taped it up with box tape. Lovely black sheet TAPED to my wall. Seriously we are living the white trash life!! We even bought a wireless thing for the computer and taped it to the window so we could use the neighbors Internet ( don't worry they know we are using it at least!) Hopefully the cable guys find time to come to our house soon so we can stop mooching.

The people are all really nice here. We live in a four plex basically. The people across from us are Spanish, underneath us they are black, and the fourth family is from Irak and really friendly and nice. They came and introduced them selves. Its sad because they both have degrees back home but our country doesn't recognize them so they have to go to school all over again here. I asked them why they moved to the US and the dad sarcastically said " well there is this little war going on back at our home... have you heard of it??" The wife said she misses her family terribly but its too much money to go back and visit them. They have a little boy that is three that my kids have played with. Across from us there is a Jewish family ( practicing since the guy wears the yamika all the time) and another Spanish family. So its a pretty diverse place.

Surgery

This picture was taken moving week at our old house. I took it because this is how it typically looks at my house. Cory with three kids piled on and around him. He is a wonderful father and the kids are like leaches attached to him at all times if he is home. He is always carrying them around, lifting them on and off things, lugging them on his back up and down the stairs... you get the picture.

So this past Tuesday Cory had to have his appendix out. It was the middle of the night when we went up to the ER and 6 am by the time he had surgery and 11 am when they finally let me see him again ( he had some problems coming out of the anesthesia so that's what took so long). I used to pull all nighters in college all the time and was fine, but apparently i am OLD now because at 28 i thought i was going to die if i didn't sleep soon! I think i finally caught up on the sleep, i even went to bed at 8 pm one night and if you know me at all you know i usually don't go down before midnight so that is extremely early for me! Anyone that has had surgery knows that the first thing they say is not to lift anything for two weeks. So after not seeing Cory at all for a few days he comes home and the kids want him to hold them and to pick them up. Which he cant do! He tries to sit next to them on the couch which ends up them pushing on his incision and him screaming and them crying. Its going to be a long 2 weeks for us all! Thankfully Cory is healing and we hope he will be tip top in time for his class to start. Also what a blessing for this to happen now and not in Oklahoma, or halfway to Oklahoma!

Also this has pushed our move date out a little bit. We figured Cory might not be up to driving 18 hours this week. We are going to leave the weekend of the 21st now. I am so excited to get to Oklahoma and be one more step done with this crazy limbo phase of my life!

Moving stage 1 of 3

This last week was the longest, most exhausting week I can remember ever having. I have moved many times but this is the first time I moved with three kids and the least amount of help we have ever had. Three nights in a row i was up until 2 am cleaning/painting. It was at times like that i wish my dear sister Thora lived here as i know she would have helped me out and given me some company to chat with while i worked! My step dad and mom did countless hours of work to help us and let us use their truck as well as let us move to their house and i am so grateful that they were here. I am eternally indebted to my friend Catherine who watched my little monkeys for days ( and I am sure she is really rethinking having more kids at this moment after having mine all over there!) I am happy to report we are done though! Well except for the last load of random things in the back of the van that I am hoping to get to tomorrow. All or our belongings are piled up in my parents garage with the exception of what we are using to live here for the next 5 weeks. My parents have graciously allowed us to overtake their playroom where we have stashed our king size bed in a Corner and the rest of the room is boxes and clothes and dressers. Preston and Theo are sleeping with us in the bed and we have a twin mattress we throw on the floor at night for porter. Its a bit like little house on the prairie days when the whole family lived in one room. I kind of feel like I am camping too because its cold in the room and there are a million windows that let in way to much sunlight at the break of dawn! I am going to cover them all tonight with foil so I can sleep in tomorrow morning! I was never a good morning person, i am all cranky pants if its before 9.

I am glad that my kids will get loads of time with their grandparents before we leave. Porter is old enough he will have these memories when he grows up. Porter thinks its fun to sleep over here, and is loving all the cool things to do here so much that he hasn't even noticed there is no TV to watch. In case it gets bad though i can always through a DVD on the computer ( i know i am such a lame mother to use it as a babysitter but sometimes i need a shower/nap/sanity )

In mid march sometime we will be off to Oklahoma for stage 2 of our move. We will only be there three months so I am not excited for the hassle of moving in and then starting to pack back up after a couple months. I seriously am contemplating selling off most of our possessions on Craig's list and just being paupers till Texas and then buying new things there. The pioneers used to only take what they could fit in the wagon. I got me a mini van about that size, wonder if i could live off of only what i could fit in my van? I am seriously contemplating this. When i cant sleep at night i think of all the things to get rid off... like maternity clothes ( what if i DON'T have any more kids?) and baby clothes, my box of size 6 clothes ( hahahaha like i am ever going to fit those again anyways!!) all the weird appliances i never use like the pop corn popper pan that is super cool but i never pull out. Oh and what about the 8 boxes of scrapboking stuff? I mean i love it sure but its been about 3 years since i even took it out of the boxes. 3 YEARS!! I keep saying when i don't have a baby i will scrapbook. problem is i keep having another baby!

anyways i don't really have a point to all this just rambling on here. This post is more like a journal entry than anything else. I would of written it in a journal but i don't know what box that is in at the moment!