The Ridiculously Unbelievable True Story!

Remember that great big 10k race we ran back in October that I never blogged about? Well, yeah, I've been purposely waiting to tell the story because 1) it's really, really long, and 2) I've been waiting for SD's brother who was there taking pictures of us to send me the photos. But after all this waiting for those photos, when he came over at Thanksgiving he informed us he deleted all the photos that we never even saw, which totally defeated the purpose of him being there for us, and I was really disappointed to hear that. But there's nothing I can do about it.

Our friends took some pictures of us that day too, so I just sent them a message to see if they might still have any of the photos from that day we could see, which would mean a lot since that was our very 1st race together, so we'll see. In the meantime, the race organizers did take a couple of pictures of us and if you know our last name you can view those pictures here for a little while longer. Just type in our last name and it will bring up both of our names and you can view a couple of pictures.

Alright, so no photos aside, let me tell you all about our incredibly crazy, totally insane 10k race. Since I don't have any photo illustrations you'll just have to let your imagination wonder. By far it will go down in history as one of THE most ridiculously unbelievable days of all time, hence the name of this post.

Looking back the biggest thing I can remember is having laughed so much and so hard all day long that my cheeks were really hurting from laughing so much! The story starts the night before, as we had been planning a movie night with Scott and Christa for about 2 months prior to the race to watch a movie called “Run, Fatboy Run!” If you’ve never seen it, you SERIOUSLY need to go to the movie rental store and pick it up NOW!

With all the exercise, training, and having gone through the process of beginning new workouts  we found this movie to be so unbelievably hilarious! I laughed so hard during the movie I almost totally peed myself, had tears streaming down my face, and at one point spilled my water all over my shirt and had to change! So…yeah, if you haven’t ever seen it, you need to go rent it NOW!!!! If you have seen it, then this will be even funnier to read! There could not have been a more perfect movie for us to watch the night before our big race!

Unfortunately, the swine flu has been around like crazy and Christa ended up really sick with the flu right before the race. She came over for movie night, but after several months of training and running with me almost every Sat., registering for the race, etc. she ended up not being able to run with us. Scott ran it on his own (he’s 29 and never trains but yet he ran the 10k in 43 min., which is like a 7 minute mile pace…I know, it makes me sick that people who don’t bust their butts to train as much as I do can just show up and run that fast!).

Anyway, the race on Sat. started at 9:30am in Boise, so we had to get up pretty early to pack up all the kids, drive from Nampa to Boise, and load on the buses that shuttled us to the start line. The weather was perfect, so that was awesome. The race ended at the BSU Bronco stadium. When we arrived at BSU to load the buses that shuttled us to Old Eckerd Rd. (where the race started) all of the bathrooms…ALL of them were totally locked and they were trying to radio someone to open them.

We had been practicing several 10k runs trying to fully hydrate ourselves ahead of time so we wouldn't have to carry any water with us. So both of us had to seriously pee big time, so it was very frustrating to see a million portapotties placed all over but all of them were locked! We finally found ONE that was open and managed to pee and take off our warm up suits.

[Side note: it seems so totally ridiculous to me that in order to feel totally comfortable temp wise during the run that I have to feel completely freezing to death just prior to the run, so it was extremely cold and I was totally shivering to death when I had to take off my warm up jacket and pants and was only wearing a thin sleeveless tank top and short running shorts.]

We gave our stuff to IK and the kids headed into the stadium with SD's brother to wait for us while we headed back over to the area to load the buses. After all the problems with the first 5k race I ran back in June (race course being totally screwed up and cut short by about a whole mile, so I didn’t have a true accurate chip time...you can read more about it here and then here) I made sure to pick a 10k race that was VERY reputable, had been around for a long time, and had great reviews.

This 10k, Barber to Boise, has been around since 2001 and about 1,000 people participate in it every year. So the bathroom thing was a little frustrating, but I knew there were more bathrooms at the start line. So we loaded the buses and drove to the start area. Tons of people were there, in total 866 people ran the 10k and another 344 people ran the B2B 5k.

Now, you know there’s a whole pre-race regime you go through to fuel up so you’re not dehydrated or in need of water during your run. Well, the night before I carb loaded with some pasta for dinner (it’s kind of a myth to eat enormous amounts of pasta the night before like some people do, you’re supposed to carb load, but still eat normal portions) so that’s what I did plus I drank an enormous amount of water to totally hydrate myself. The idea is to be peeing so often your pee is totally clear.

Then the next morning I ate a waffle with a cup of hot tea and a Gatorade. Then about 2 hours prior to the race I had a Powerbar, and then about 30 min. prior to the race I had a banana and another Gatorade. So I had to pee BIG TIME at BSU and then again when we arrived at the start…and then AGAIN another 20 min. later, each time totally feeling like I had let out a FULL bladder’s worth. I’m pretty sure the 2^nd Gatorade was a little too much. I normally don’t drink a second one, but I always get a really dry mouth when I run and really wanted to make sure I could run the whole 10k without any water because I wasn’t carrying any with me.

For the past 2 weeks prior to this race I had been practicing this process of hydrating up and the only difference was the 2^nd Gatorade I drank…which turned out to be a mistake! I didn’t realize it was actually possible to become TOO hydrated? But…yeah, now I know you totally can! I’ll come back to the pee issues in a moment.

With so many people they considered using delayed start times to let people run in sections, but for whatever reasons they decided against it…BIG mistake! Because we’re not smokin’ awesome runners by any means, we decided to line up in the pack further back so that we wouldn’t be in the way of all the "serious" runners who would become irritated by us slow people in their way.

So picture us standing in a sea of 866 runners, about ¾ of the way back in the mob, and all of us preparing to head out onto a bike trail that was no wider than 8 feet!!! We were so far back we never heard the gun that started the race, but we saw the crowd beginning to shuffle forward and we totally expected people to really start moving once they crossed the start line. The sea of people was so thick I never actually saw the lines where we crossed the start line, so I’m not entirely sure what time it was when we started.

With so many people trying to run on such a narrow trail the whole thing became extremely bottlenecked!!! It was HORRIBLE!!!! You simply could not get through the crowd of people! No one was moving over to the right to let faster runners pass them on the left, no one would move out of your way even if you asked them to, we were simply stuck in the huge mob of really slow runners!

So of course I started to get really pissed because this was really effecting my total run time being unable to get out of and ahead of this huge pack of runners! Finally I yelled to SD to just follow me and I leapt out into the tall brush that runs alongside the trail and we ran in that for at least ½ a mile to get ahead of all these slow people until we could find a spot back on the trail where it was still full of runners, but less busy with a bit more space to move around.

So the whole first mile of the course was a huge bottleneck on this tiny section of trail until the runners began to spread out. The brush we ran through was about 1 ½ feet high and I didn’t manage to get anything on me, but SD’s right sock somehow got totally polka dotted in goat heads which was really funny…not his left sock too, just the right. Anyway, finally we found a place to run on the trail with less people around, but for the 1^st mile it was simply awful!

Now, back to movie night the night before. If you haven’t seen it, then I kind of need to ruin a little piece of the movie for you by telling you this or it won’t make any sense. The main premise of the movie is about this guy who’s trying to win back this girl by running in a marathon except he’s totally out of shape. Well, at the beginning of the running scene in the movie the guy and the new boyfriend who are feuding over the girl start running competitively and the good guy gets tripped and is all bloody on his knee and hands.

So, back to our race, about 1.5 miles into it after we had gotten out of the pack SD was running just a few feet ahead of me weaving in and out through other runners as he periodically looks back to see where I’m at. (because it was often too crowded for us to run side by side while trying to move ahead of other people).

Well, at one point as he starts to look back to find me, he’s running right on the left side edge of the trail, he loses his footing and runs off the edge slightly into a really muddy patch and takes a really hard fall! When he gets up his left hand is all bloody, his left ankle is slightly twisted, his right knee is bloody, and his right arm is scraped all the way down! It was the PERFECT unintentional reenactment of the movie scene!

It was really scary at first and a bunch of people running just behind us gasped and kind of freaked out, but amazingly SD was okay and we keep going. After all the many times we’ve run together, seriously what are the odds that he would end up falling during the actual race? He was bleeding and a mess, but he was okay, so it became really funny as we kept running.

Then, despite peeing 3 TIMES prior to the start of the race, I somehow managed to become way too hydrated and was feeling like I was seriously about to DIE if I didn’t figure out how to empty my bladder AGAIN! There were no bathrooms anywhere along the trail, and I kept trying to convince myself I would have to just suck it up and wait to pee again when it was all over, but my bladder kept insisting we were NOT going to make it!

Finally around 2 miles in I couldn’t stand it anymore and desperately had to pee! But of course there’s hundreds of people all around us and nowhere to go. On one side of that section of the trail is a rock wall that leads up to a street, and on the other side is a bunch of trees and bushes. When I couldn’t wait any longer, I yelled to SD to follow me and cover me and I ran off the course into some bushes and had to squat down and pee like nobody’s business!

SD knelt down a few feet away from me pretending to tie his shoe and I was far enough away from the course that no one would have seen me. That’s NEVER been an issue before, so it was totally hysterical that it would also happen during the race. After all this time, ALL this training and planning, making sure to do everything absolutely right so that there would be NO delays during the actual race, we had already dealt with an extremely slow 1^st mile because of the stupid pack of slow runners, SD had fallen and gotten all bloody, and now I’m off the course and peeing in the bushes! And we’re only 2 miles in to this race! Seriously, what else could go wrong?

By that time I figured our chances of having a really good run time were completely ruined and everything was so totally screwed up that it was one of those either get totally pissed or find everything completely laughable moments. So it was then I decided to take the positive approach and simply forget about having a great run time and simply focus instead on enjoying the run with my husband and spending that moment together, relishing in all the hard work we had done to train over the past months.

After my pee stop we got back on course. The race was supposed to have 2 water stops where cups of water were available to the runners at the 2.5 and 4.0 mile marks. At the first water stop at 2.5 miles they were all OUT of water, which was annoying, but not a big deal since we clearly didn’t need any, but a lot of other runners were really pissed because they were totally relying on this! They also ran out of water at the only other water stop too at 4 miles where when we ran by they were handing out the last few cups.

At about 3.0 miles in I started to get a really bad side cramp on my left which lasted until we were at about 3.5 miles. The rest of our run went well, until we got to BSU. The way the course was laid out, you had to make a big loop around the outside of the stadium first before entering the stadium and the 5kers who were running a separate course merged into that. When we passed by that section, there were a bunch of 5kers being yelled at to turn around because the race markings were confusing and they ran the wrong way. I heard one review from another woman running the 10k that there was so many runners trying to merge in this area when she came by that she got tripped and a big pile up of people happened.

We passed by this section and then outside the stadium SD was also at the point where he couldn’t resist the urge to pee any longer so when he spotted an outhouse up ahead he decided it was his chance. I told him there was no way and he should just wait until we’re done, but he said he would pee really fast and run back to me.

So all of a sudden he sprinted out way in front of me and ran into the outhouse…and from inside the outhouse he yelled, “Keep running, honey, I’ll catch up!” Some of the race crew were standing at that location and they laughed so hard to hear him say that! He did in fact pee really fast and ran out of the outhouse and sprinted back up to me.

We had about 0.5 miles left to go at that point as we rounded the corner around the south end of the stadium. We entered the stadium and had to run 1 lap around the track to get to the finish line. As we ran on the first side of the track we saw our girls and SD's brother took a few photos of us and then we looped around to the other side of the track to finish.

As we began our final huge sprint giving it everything we had left toward the finish all of a sudden some random guy came out of nowhere behind me and right as he passed me he yelled, “Let’s Do This!” in the most hysterical tone that totally cracked me up! It was BEYOND hilarious and made us laugh really hard as we finished! And now, "Let's Do This" has totally become a really hilarious inside joke for us we say all the time, esp. when we're trying to get motivated to workout.

Okay, now some more bad news: as SD's brother raced across the middle of the track to take pictures of us crossing the finish line, just as we were finishing his memory card was FULL! So he ended up with NO pictures of us actually finishing with our really big sprinting push to the end. It turns out that the race coordinators ALSO have no photos of us finishing the race because they decided to set up all their cameras at the section of the track where we first entered! So their photos also don’t show us really giving it everything we had.

And to make things even worse, every single runner who had a gun time over 59:57 min. has NO chip times!!!!! Apparently there was a major glitch in the chip timers they used because over 300 people in the race had NO chip times, including us! [Side note: just in case you don't know what this means, the gun time is the time the race actually started, but obviously all 866 runners cannot cross the start line at the exact same time, so the chip time is the difference between the gun time and the actual time when you personally crossed the start line until the time you cross the finish line].

Which means I have now run in TWO separate races this year…and NEITHER one has given me a true chip time of how long it took me to run! UUGHHHHHH!!!!! About the closest guess we have of what our finish time would have been is by judging from the difference in our gun time, which was 1:05:20min., and considering we were ¾ of the way back in that sea of 866 people we think we could easily subtract at least 3 minutes off our total run time, which means that could have been the absolutely best run time I’ve ever had, but because of the chip time glitch I don’t know for sure. Ugghhh!!!!1

At first they posted the results with simply missing chip times, but later I checked the web site and they went back through and listed chip times about 1 min. less for all those people missing times. Sooooooo frustrating and yet so stinkin’ hilarious too! I mean, we’ve run practice 10k’s every Sat. for months working really hard to make sure everything on the actual race day would go perfectly smooth, and instead Christa can’t even participate, SD falls and gets all bloody, I have to find bushes to pee in, the race runs out of water, SD also has to pee yelling at me from inside the porta potty, crazy “Let’s Do This” guy, no finish pictures, and no chip times!

And just when you thought that was the whole story, it gets even better! To celebrate that evening we planned to go out to dinner and then stay at a hotel in Boise. SD and I went to dinner at a Mexican restaurant we had never tried before, On The Border, which was incredibly delicious (they actually have a separate GF menu and the pulled pork fajitas are to DIE for!) and I tried a new drink I’d never had before that I absolutely LOVED, a red sangria, which is red wine mixed with fruit, burgundy, and some other stuff. Anyway, about 3 feet from our table there just happened to be a girl’s night out birthday party with about 5-6 very boisterous women, who were whooping it up all through the meal.

So we had dinner and a show, with the climax of the meal happening as the waiter brought out the huge sombrero for the birthday girl to wear along with dessert. And as the waiter brought it out the lady sitting next to the birthday girl out of nowhere screams as loud as she possibly can, clapping her hands with excitement, which instantly reminded me of the scene from that Eddie Murphy movie where he’s dressed as a woman, sitting at the table, clapping his hands, and saying, “Hercules, Hercules!”…except this woman was even MORE over the top! I turned to SD and said, “She must be stopped!” at which he almost spit out his food at me from laughing so hard.

Finally, after dinner as we walked back across the street to our hotel, we crossed in front of the movie theater where they often have live music and a bunch of people just hang out. As we were walking by there was a small group of people that looked like a family. Out of nowhere the son stands behind a large light post and all of sudden breaks out into the most revolting looking pole dance craziness I’ve ever seen…now I’m all for watching free pole dancing, but this guy, I'm guessing late 20's, with his extremely large gut was nothing remotely like what a pole dancer should look like!

His family busted up laughing when he did it, and we laughed too as we passed by, and SD said to them, “Some things just can’t be unseen!” They laughed, and we kept laughing at the complete randomness of our entire day…recapping the extremely bizarre odds that all of those strange and unusual things would all happen…at all, and all in the same day! We laughed and laughed at what will truly be an extremely memorable day in our history, what a crazy day our big 10k race day turned out to be!!!

Our very 1st race experience together was so unbelievably crazy and unpredictable...so much so that I think I might almost be disappointed in the future races we run if they're not at least half as crazy at that day turned out to be!

Uh,...November?

Seriously, where did this month go? I honestly had no idea it was going to be such a crazy busy month! Since it's been so long, some general life updates are clearly in order:

Life has felt totally consumed with busyness lately and SD and I constantly find ourselves begging our schedules to just slow DOWN! We're tired...so very tired, and at this point we're simply trying to hang in there knowing in just a few short weeks things will get a lot easier!

LCT (Living Christmas Tree program):

Since August SD has been in rehearsals for our church's annual Christmas musical, which culminates in gradually increasing amounts of rehearsals until this week where there's very long rehearsals every single night except for tomorrow where he'll be feverishly rushing to complete the last of 3 videos he's producing for the show just in time to begin the long and grueling weekend full of 5 performances in 4 days. That means between work and this show his life is completely full this week and will be a nightmare until it all comes to an end with the last performance next Monday, Dec. 7th.

LA is also enduring these long rehearsals as she's singing in the children's choir and EJ is working backstage as the costume designer's main assistant who will help all the actors get changed into various costumes throughout the show.

Finishing up my Degree:

And while SD's life is full in those areas, mine continues to be consumed by schoolwork and wrapping up my very last class. Only 2 more grueling weeks of daily classwork and 3 major papers stand between me and completing my degree...and while that may not sound like much, from this side of it, it's still a LOT standing in the way between me and being done with school!

I've developed the worst case of senioritus, where I'm so thoroughly sick of school and all the topics I'm learning about to the point I almost don't care at all anymore because I'm so desperate for my life back apart from school. I've been working on this degree full-time for a little over 2 years now and I'm so very ready to be done with it!!!

Fitness:

Last week SD and I began a whole new fitness program, P90X, which I'll discuss in a separate post, but for now I'll just say it's a big change of pace and we did a LOT of complaining about all the sore muscles all over our bodies last week.

We're still running once per week with our friends, Scott and Christa, but since we're not training for a specific race right now, they're more casual runs where we don't time anything or track the distances, etc.

Other Stuff:

In the middle of all the usual busy stuff we managed to help chaperon a big youth group retreat up in the mountains 2 weekends ago and at the last minute ended up hosting our very first gluten free Thanksgiving for a total of 14 people! Aaaacccckkkk! Which I'll also blog about separately, but sheesh! Is it any wonder why we're so incredibly tired???!!!!

I was doing really well with all my early Christmas planning and sewing, so much so that I was completing at least one or more projects each week, except all of my sewing madness has been completely shelved for the past 2 weeks because of Thanksgiving stuff, etc. I'm hoping to pick up a little bit more sewing sometime this week, but I also need to find some time to do a little Christmas shopping through the week while my kids are in school, and oh yeah, I can't forget about all my homework too.

So chances are I won't be blogging much this week, but since I absolutely cannot bring myself to do homework yet this morning, I'm going to spend some time today catching up on the rest of our November details here and will post them throughout the week.

Hello, Life?

Ummm...hello life? We need to talk. Yeah...it's me, Karen. Hey listen, things are really great and all, but I was just wondering...could we do some serious slowing down here soon, PLEASE!!!! Because it's been almost 2 whole weeks of madness between:

...school,

...taking care of my kids,

...sewing,

...chaperoning a weekend youth retreat in the mountains,

...tons of choir practices for SD and the girls,

...stressful job hunting,

...stressful and seriously problematic dog issues,

...and oh yeah, now Thanksgiving is creeping up on me, not to mention it's the first one we're attempting GF!

I'm sick to death of school, so I guess I'm thankful I only have 3 long weeks left to go!

Trying to focus on finding a job right now at the same time just turns into a giant ball of stress mess lately I can't think about or I'm seriously going to pop!

The Christmas show madness SD and the girls are involved with is intensifying in numerous long rehearsals and it's going to get much worse between now and when it all finally ends on Dec. 7th.

I'm really bored with and tired of all the regular GF baking I have to do every week and instead I'd much rather find some time to play around with some new recipes for Christmas baking, but there's no time for that right now...grrr!

I have a big new top secret idea in the works that I'm trying to spend a lot of time and planning on to see if it might be an alternative to going back to work, but my schoolwork currently prevents me from focusing too much on this idea yet. I'm not ready to share what it is just yet, but stay tuned.

All the fun stuff I really like to do to relieve stress like reading lots of fun baking, sewing, and craft blogs I seem to have little to no time for lately, not to mention no time for my own blogging which is such an enjoyable stress relieving activity...and conversely a stressful issue when I don't have time to blog.

And while I was up until almost 2:00am last night working on a team paper, and now can take today off from schoolwork to clean my neglected house and ordinarily find some time to blog, instead I have to go Thanksgiving grocery shopping and get ready to run with friends tonight.

And P.S. - SD and I just started the 3 month P90X video series last night and the longer this day goes on the more and more sore and painful my body and muscles all over are feeling!

So I've got to get KW out of the bath, have a giant plate of Advil for lunch, clean my house, and head to the store. Ugh! Can't we just skip ahead to the part where all the holidays and mad crazy birthday season insanity is behind us????

SIDE NOTE: A great big thank you to my faithful readers (all 2 of you) for sticking in there with me and being understanding of a month that is surprisingly far more busy than I imagined it would be! I'm hoping to find some more blogging time this weekend where I promise to be in a much less stressed frame of mind and can share some more of the fun details of my crazy busy life.

The end.

All Good Things Must Come to an End

Can you tell I'm back in a new class again? Yeah, a week with no blogging really shows how different my schedule becomes when I'm in school. That, and all of the sewing my brains out I've been doing lately! It's really SUCH a shame I can't share any pictures of all the amazing stuff I've been working on yet,...not until after Christmas, because it's all so exciting and awesome and I can't wait for all my family to open these gifts this year!

So between school and sewing that's pretty much my life these days. Oh and of course taking care of 4 kids, spending time with my husband, baking all the time, you know, the usual stuff. School is unbelievably boring these days!!!! I'm in part 2 of my previous class that was also very boring and I think I have a really bad case of senioritus because I have virtually NO motivation for schoolwork right now! In fact, the only thing keeping me going is knowing that this is my very LAST class and at this point I only have 5 weeks left until I graduate.

Anyway, that's not what this post is about, just thought I should provide a few little updates since it's been a week. Moving on, this post is really a fitness update. The long story short is that I stopped training with Swede just before the 10k race SD and I ran last month. Originally I was planning to stop training with him about 2 months earlier than that, not because I wanted to stop, but because I could no longer afford to pay for a personal trainer.

It's honestly not that expensive at all, $20 per a 1 hour session each week where a personal trainer comes to your home and provides much of the equipment you use. But at the same time when you're trying to support a large family one 1 income, and you still can't find a job no matter how many applications you send out, the fact is an extra $20/wk or $80/mth could really go a long way in paying for other things.

So I had told Swede I could no longer afford training, at which he told me I could just keep track of what I owe him and pay him when I can. Which was very generous, and although I felt incredibly guilty in that position I decided to keep training with him until the 10k race and then at that point we would quit working together.

Why then? Well, obviously because of the finance issue, but then also because I feel like I've reached a point in my fitness level where I can work to maintain and improve my fitness from here on out on my own without a trainer. With SD so on board with running with me each week I think I can easily keep going with fitness by spending that time training with my husband instead. Plus if we do find ourselves in a position where we can still set aside $20/wk then I'd rather use that money for date nights, or family nights, or date nights with our kids, etc.

I thanked Swede immensely for all his help, encouragement, and support over the last several months we've been training (since the beginning of March) and also was able to pay him everything I owed for the 2 months of training I had left that I hadn't paid for. And now between my new plan and running with SD and our running friends each week, I think I'm all set.

So what am I doing now? Well, first of all, a whole lot of nothing! I didn't intend to stop working out, it just kind of happened. After our 10k race back on 10/17, I literally did NOTHING for 3 weeks!!! I thought about working out many times, at least a few times each day, but I've allowed all the busyness of school and Christmas sewing to take over my schedule and not leave any room left for working out. That's one of the main benefits to working with a trainer because it forces you to make an appointment where you set aside that hour each week.

I weighed 128.0 lbs. at the time of the race, and 2 weeks later, despite not working out and not drinking a ton of water like I usually do, I somehow managed to drop another pound down to 127 lbs. Then last week on Friday I finally found some time to run on my treadmill. I ran 5k (3.1 miles) because honestly I didn't have a 10k in me that day, and by the end of it I seriously thought I was going to die! After 3 weeks of not working out at all, it felt SOOOO incredibly difficult to run! I was shocked at just how hard it seemed!

But then I ran into Christa on Sunday and we talked about how much we've really missed running together each week, and now that she's not sick anymore we chose a new day each week to get together to go for a run. So on Tuesday she and her husband came over and we went for a really casual run, probably no more than 3 miles total. Since we're training for an upcoming race right now, and since it had been several weeks since any of us had run at all, we were all happy with just a very casual, low key run.

The fact that we actually got outside to workout at all was awesome enough! We were really proud of ourselves that we simply got up and moving again. So now we're planning on keeping that once per week running routine going, which is not only a great workout, but also a great chance to just chat and spend time catching up with friends.

So now, in addition to running once per week, I'm planning to start the P90X program. You can click here for more details on what it is, but in a nutshell it's a video series that lasts for 13 weeks where you do a different routine each day, 6 days per week. The main idea behind the program is constant muscle confusion by switching up the routines every day so that your body never gets fully used to the moves and you avoid plateaus in your weight loss. It's also supposed to be extremely good for toning your body and definition in your muscles, so I can't wait to start it!

A friend of mine has the program and is giving me a copy of it. I'm hoping SD will go through it with me too. Since I'm a complete and total wimp when it comes to winter weather and exercising outside, I'm hoping this will be an awesome change of pace through the winter months and 13 weeks later I can switch it up again to include more running outside to train for next years' running season.

Where am I at now? Well, despite my recent lack of working out, this week has somehow managed to be AMAZING! I am now down to 125.0 lbs!!!!! Which means I have now lost a total of 27 lbs. this year and I'm only 5 more pounds away from my total weight loss goal of 120! I haven't been drinking tons of water, and I haven't been counting any calories, just eating like normal...but I've gotten to a point where I've built up such great eating habits that my normal eating is way different than it used to be, I naturally make much healthier choices now!

And I guess the sewing madness and stress mess over what's going to happen with my life/lack of job situation in another 5 weeks when school ends has also been helping? There's been several days where I've been so caught up in sewing stuff that I simply forget to each lunch or don't eat very much. I'm sure that'll change once I start working out more because I'll need more calories to get through my days, but I'm also really excited to see how much toning and definition I can achieve and hopefully knock out those last 5 lbs.!!!

I'll take some more recent photos so I can compare where I am when I start P90X to where I will be at the end of it...hopefully looking and feeling even better!!!!

Amazon Bulk Orders

Here's another tip that's been working well for me lately. Since GF items are generally much more expensive than regular groceries I've been buying some of the more common items we eat in bulk orders through Amazon.

They have this great super saver program where you can choose items you want to buy and have them automatically ordered and shipped to you as often as you want. You can buy them every month, every 2, 3, or 6 months. You can change the quantities and frequencies for which you buy the items at any time, and you end up saving a ton on FREE shipping costs too.

Shopping through Amazon also saves me unnecessary trips to the store where I'll probably be tempted to buy more items I don't really need...and since I'm buying in bulk the items end up being MUCH cheaper than buying a box or two at a time directly from the store.

So, what do I buy through Amazon? Only the pantry staples we use all the time:

Pamela's GF bread mix, makes 1 loaf. I use these mainly for sandwiches in school lunches and anytime I need bread crumbs in meatloaf or other dishes I simply toast a slice or two really well done and then chop it up into fine crumbs. One bag of this bread mix at the store usually runs me around $5.59-$6.00+ tax but through Amazon I get them for $4.43 per bag total!

These cake mixes are incredibly yummy!!!! They say you only get about 14 cupcakes per 1 bag, but I always get 16-18 out of the vanilla mix and at least 22 cupcakes out of the chocolate mix each time. While I could play around and probably find an even cheaper cake mix recipe from scratch, sometimes it's nice to have the convenience of just grabbing a mix when I need it.

These cake mixes are incredibly expensive, running $5.79+ tax at the store, but through Amazon I can get them for $3.81 a piece! I only have these ship once every 6 months, so that gives us 1 bag of chocolate and vanilla each month.

This GF mac n cheese tastes very similar to the normal stuff and it's a great item to have in the pantry when I need a quick and easy side dish. These usually run about $2.09+ tax at the store and on Amazon they're slightly more at $2.28 per box, but it saves me the trip across town, time and gas money, and not being tempted to buy other stuff while I'm there.

For GF spaghetti and chicken alfredo this quinoa pasta is simply PERFECT! I buy the spaghetti noodles in bulk from Amazon at $2.35 per box instead of $2.64+ tax at the store. I've also bought some of the other fun shaped noodles which taste great, but I still buy them at the store when I need them for a specific meal.

And finally, IK especially LOVES this creamy pamesan flavored GF risotto.  It's another really great side dish that's great to keep in the pantry and cheaper at only $2.10 per box instead of a whopping $3.59+ tax per box at the store!

I don't buy all of these every month. In total we average about 3 loaves of bread per month, 2 cake mixes, 2 mac n cheese, 2 risotto, and about 4 boxes of noodles each month. Being able to save through shopping at Amazon really makes a BIG difference!

Fall Soccer Wrap Up

Fall soccer season has finally come to an end. Halloween was our first Sat. in 2 months where we didn't have to get up early for anything. Here's just a few more picture highlights from the last games.

It was incredibly cold at IK's last game so early in the morning!

 

Such a handsome boy! He looks so grown up!

 

Then on to LA's last game later that afternoon.

 

 

Meanwhile IK worked as a ref in a few nearby games.

 

 

KW kept himself well entertained playing in all the fall leaves.

When IK was done working he played with KW until LA's game was over.

 

EJ was another bundled up pile of blankets trying to stay warm with me during the games. It's always a lot of fun for the kids, but we're all so very glad when soccer season madness is over! It's nice to have a big break in between seasons to relax and have more downtime as a family before next season starts up again.

Day 27-31: Fizzled Out Enthusiasm

Hmmm...yeah, okay, so my month of posting great meals idea didn't turn out exactly as I had planned. As I became busier with other things in life throughout the month, all my meal planning kind of went out the window last week as we changed plans and opted for simple, quick meals on very busy nights.

All the sewing has kept me incredibly busy lately and today I'm starting a new class...which is unfortunately going to be a really crappy, boring part 2 continuation of my last really boring class, but at least it's my very LAST class, so that's definitely something to look forward to...just 6 weeks left to finish my MBA!!!

With all the little changes here and there in my grocery planning, it became really difficult to keep track of every expense, esp. as SD would pick up an item or two here and there to save me a trip to the store. So, what was the verdict? Well, the bad news is we went over my $600 budget/goal for the month, but the good news is we still managed to save money from what we normally spend!

The Verdict:

For the month of October my best guess on our total spending was $790.07, which is still a savings of $180 less than what we usually spend. Not bad for our very first try, but I'm going to try to do an even better job this month.

What Worked:

1. The brown paper bags filled with off limits school snacks worked REALLY well!!! The kids never touched them so I never ran out of things to pack for lunches which would usually force me to buy more.

2. Baking in bulk also worked REALLY well, it was so nice to simply pull out all ready pre-made batches of muffin or cookie mixes from the freezer throughout the month instead of always making these from scratch.

New Strategies for This Month:

1. There are some new things I'm working on in Nov. to help cut down even more on groceries. Since we didn't make it to our goal in Oct. I'm keeping the same $600 grocery budget goal for Nov.

2. Breaking it down: instead of trying to buy everything I need for 2 weeks at a time, I'm going to focus on just 1 week. I think this will help me keep to my $150/wk budget better and have less issues about fresh fruits & veggies possibly going bad before I can use them when life makes me change up my meal planning.

3. Coupons: I've never been a coupon person, mainly because all of the coupons I usually see are all for items I never buy or they're for brand names that are still more expensive than the generic store labels even after the coupon savings. But yesterday AFTER writing my grocery list, I decided to look up all the sites I could find for the items I was already planning to buy to see how many coupons I could find for those products...and I managed to find $6.90 in coupons I actually used!!!

I made sure to look for coupons AFTER writing my list instead of before writing it so that I wouldn't be tempted to buy even more items I don't really need this week. And so far we're doing pretty good.

On Sunday SD was working, and IK and EJ went home with friends after church, so it was just me, LA, and KW, and since I hadn't bought any groceries yet we opted for McDonalds on the way home. Then on Monday after a meeting SD and I decided to go out to breakfast with KW at Denny's, which was surprisingly VERY nice and delicious!

On the way home we stopped at Fred Meyer for some potato starch, GF cereal, and GF crackers IK has been asking me to buy. Then last night I went shopping for all our week 1 groceries. What does all of that add up to already?

$13.53     McDonalds

$25.09     Denny's

$27.76     Fred Meyer

$142.76   Wal-mart

$209.14   Total spending so far this month

Which leaves me just $90.86 for all our week 2 groceries, but I think several items I bought this week will carry over into week 2, so I'm still pretty optimistic. It's also not a 5 week month like October was, so hopefully I'll do a much better job on grocery spending, even with the seasonal extras for Thanksgiving dinner.

As long as I'm still making a conscious effort to save us money each month simply by becoming more aware of all those impulse buys I tend to fall for and not letting them control my checkbook, I'll be happy with the savings results. We'll see how Nov. goes!

Happy Halloween!

Is it really November already? Sheesh! So not ready for winter...not looking forward to yicky cold weather, depressing gloomy gray clouds covering up the sky, and all the stress mess of the holidays, ugh! Can we just skip ahead to next summer, please??? No? Okay, fine, then I guess I'll have to cheer up by sharing a picture parade of our Halloween last night.

First, the youth group puts on an enormous Halloween party every year just before Halloween. This year there wasn't going to be a costume theme, but then at the last minute (read: after we had already decided on and bought costumes) they changed the plans and went with a super hero costumes theme. So IK decided against the crusader costume I had bought for him (that he picked out and loved at the store, but later decided was dorky at home) and instead went with super soccer boy! He wanted to wear his soccer uniform and have me make him a cape.

So following the same steps I used to make KW's cape last week I bought some matching fabric, drew a basic shape on some tissue paper, cut out the pattern, and sewed it all together with a simple velcrow fastener at the top. IK loved it and thought it was perfect.

 

 

IK really loves Halloween and isn't in any hurry to grow up, he loves enjoying his childhood slowly every step of the way. But at the same time, he's decided this will probably be the last year he'll participate in trick or treating. He'll still dress up for the youth group party and all, he just won't go door to door with us next time.

 

We tried to see if his cape would fly up behind him when he ran, but we couldn't get enough air underneath it.

Next up was EJ who was originally a witch, or magician, or wizard of some kind, but now switched her costume to be an elementalist hero which is someone who controls an element of some kind, like fire, wind, earth, etc.

Since her costume was all blue she decided to control the water, nixed the hat I made for her, and couldn't even find the hat she didn't wear just so I could take a picture of it.

 

 

 

In place of her hat we added a blue wand and she was really happy with her costume. Then all week I had planned to take LA to the store to buy a costume, but never could find the time. I had originally bought some cheap discount fabric remnants for about $3.50 to make a costume for myself, but at the last minute decided to use it to make a costume for her.

We bought a black top for $4.50 and then I sewed together a soft and warm fleece skirt for LA...and this time I didn't screw up the back of it! It was perfect all the way around! I even sewed in an elastic waste that fit her perfectly.

LA tried to take some pictures of me working on her costume, but they didn't turn out so well from her short little vantage point.

Now to make it a poodle skirt I bought a $0.47 piece of felt from the fabric department. I searched the Internet for a picture of a poodle and printed it out at the right size for her skirt. Then I traced it over the felt.

With so many curves this wasn't easy to sew onto the skirt, but I managed to get it on there.

Then, I had some black ribbon, but it was much too wide, so I ironed it in half and then very slowly attempted to sew it onto the skirt. It was REALLY tricky to sew this thing on!

But when it was done it looked really AWESOME!!! I was so incredibly proud of this skirt!

Not to mention she looked cute as anything in it! I sewed a little red ribbon that we planned to put in her hair, but instead tied around her neck and she wore a wide black headband that looked really cute too!

 

We took a few shots to get a good picture of just how fun and twirly this skirt is!

And finally when I was at the store with IK we had found the most adorable little firetruck costume for KW that we knew was so perfect! He must have been watching IK taking photos earlier because he immediately did all these really fun action poses.

 

We got a late start to our Halloween festivities as I hounded the girls to get their rooms clean all morning long. EJ barely had enough time to carve her pumpkin while LA got hers started. The rest of our pumpkin carving will have to be finished today sometime.

 

A few more group shots before heading out...

 

 

 

 

And then quickly it was time to head out for some trick or treating. We walked around for a little more than an hour and the kids really racked up the candy!

KW did a great job at first while SD and I casually strolled along behind the kids...until he decided all this work to walk around so far wasn't for him, and then we had to take turns carry his lazy body between homes. He was tired, had missed nap time, and while he loved getting all the candy, he had had enough of all this walking.

I also didn't have time to go out and buy those plastic pumpkin buckets for the kids either. They found 1 in a closet from last year that KW immediately claimed. EJ used her cute little tote we sewed together last week (more details on that coming soon) and LA was planning to do the same thing, but accidentally left her tote at school.

So I had to very quickly whip up a tote for her and IK that morning for them to carry their candy. I used the same fabric from IK's cape to make his tote shown here.

For LA's tote I threw together a bunch of scraps from other projects and it turned out really nice. I LOVE this picture of her below! You can see her tote really well and her skirt looks amazing!

We crossed over the bike trail into the next neighborhood because they tend to have a lot more people home handing out candy and several more homes that are very decorated to walk by.

This was the point where KW hit a wall and was DONE with all this trick or treating. He wouldn't go up to the door anymore, he was so tired and ready for bed! Good thing it was almost the last house on our way home. SD carried him the rest of the way.

 

But instead of going home we loaded up the car and headed to a live musical production of Beauty and the Beast at the local civic center where SD's younger brother Adam played the role of Gaston and as always did an absolutely amazing job! 

It was a really great show and such a fun treat for our kids who absolutely LOVED it! It made it extra special that Uncle Adam was in the show and we could see him so well from our seats in the 2nd row! (sorry, they didn't allow ANY cameras at the show).

KW was asleep in my lap just before the show started, but managed to wake up for the first half of the show, but by intermission at 9:00pm with the second half of the show still left to go, he was DONE and couldn't hold out any longer. He was in a coma for the second half, but the rest of the kids really enjoyed the whole show!

The whole night was really fun and enjoyable, but also long and tiring! We were so glad to have that extra hour of sleep last night!

Hope you had a great Halloween too!