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Friday, June 24, 2011

The Fruits of Our Labors

Or rather the vegetables of our labors, to be more precise.

I noticed that there was one squash that was ready to be picked today, and N helped me pick it. The squash plants have taken over the garden, so I had to go in and pick the squash for her. She still got a little squash prickle in her finger, but she wore a bandaid for 10 minutes later in the evening and it was all good.


So proud of her squash!


Before she went to bed, she had to tuck her squash (complete with its own bandaid) into a makeshift bed.

I told her that she could take her squash over to Giga's (my mother in law's) house tomorrow since she and D are spending the night and that Giga would make it for dinner. Now I'm not so sure that will be cool with N. I hope that all these vegetables don't become her personal entourage.

Also, I still haven't figured out the commenting problems on blogger. I can't even comment as anonymous now. Grrr!

Wednesday, June 22, 2011

On Again, Off Again, On Again, Off Again...


My diet.

We're currently on again after a painful betrayal by my scale. My butt cheated on me with some oatmeal creme pies, so my diet and I got a mediator. We've been working through our issues, and have made good progress the last week and a half.

I haven't actually gained THAT much weight back after my Operation Wedding Weight journey from last fall. (Those of you that don't know, after D was born I joined Weight Watchers Online and lost over 40 pounds of chronic pudge that I've carried most of my adult life, not baby weight.) However, seeing those pounds creeping in on me is a scary thing. 8 pounds now can easily be 20 pounds in a few more months if I'm not careful. When I started getting pissed at the scale, I decided to DO something about it this time before it got out of hand, instead of just hoping that the weight would disappear. It seems like calorie counting is the easiest way for me to lose weight. I hate exercising more than I love food, so it's been the way to go. SparkPeople is a little more serious than Weight Watchers in that instead of blind "points" I have to keep track of calories, carbs, protein and fat. I've noticed that I'm always short on my protein for the day, so I need to make some changes to fix that next time I hit the grocery store. Also, it's free, so that appeals to my inner cheapskate.

My only problem with the whole process, if you can really call it a problem, is that I get a little overwhelmed and I over think everything that I eat. Instead of eating a normal breakfast and then tracking it, I obsess over what I'm going to eat and end up eating nothing for an hour while I decide what to have. While this tendancy is great to curb snacking, it makes eating my regular meals a pain. I try to have a plan of attack for the day and a set of go-to foods to eat so that I don't get stuck at mealtimes.

I've lost about 5 pounds so far. I think a good bit of it was just random water-weight and my starting weight was a bit pessimistic. Still, my numbers are dropping again so that makes me happy.


There weren't many "before" pics, but this was taken Spring, 2010.



This is my "after" pic!


I made my goal and wore my wedding dress on our 5 year anniversary: October 29, 2010.

On an annoying side-note, blogger isn't letting me comment on anyone's blog, including my own. I'm not ignoring anyone, just not computer literate enough to figure it out.

Monday, June 13, 2011

...How Does Your Garden Grow?

I've been remiss in my blogging as of late, mostly due to the fact that my husband has been home at night more the past few weeks. I use the blog to kill time after the girls go to bed when there's no one to talk to and I have housework to avoid! I also wait until I have a TON of stuff to talk about instead of making 3 or 4 shorter blog entries.

Anywho, tonight's topic is N's garden. It seems to be doing OK. My alternate working blog title was "Two Left Thumbs" but her plants have perked up a bit in recent days and I think they're doing better. To start at the beginning, A and the girls dug out my garden for Mother's Day. It took about a week to put on the finishing touches and get the dirt to fill it in.

 It's a good thing the garden got done, these guys were getting out of hand! Also, we seriously need to work on her "picture face"!

Hooray, it's done! N's ready to plant.

Digging the holes with her own little shovel.

Carefully planting some peppers.

Phew! Job well done!

N and I watered her plants every day and we made it through the heat wave with most of the plants intact. We lost one pepper plant right next to the door, but I think that was due to N stepping on it a few times. Oops! It was nice to have something specific to do while D was sleeping. Some days, when it was too hot to go out, I watered them while N was asleep. Luckily, she didn't remember! The plants have been growing well. The squash are doing the best, the cucumbers are still hanging in there, and the peppers are slowly growing. A few weeks after the initial planting, I got N to help me weed out her garden. There were only a few tiny weeds, but we had fun!

N's got her gardening gloves and her goofy grin ready to go!

Me pointing out the difference between her plants and the weeds.

N pulled them all herself.

Plants are getting bigger!

Baby squash!!

Since the rains have cooled things off a bit, the squash have gotten so much bigger. Hopefully we can keep things going and not kill off all of the plants. I'm super excited to have squash and cucumbers this summer! I'm not too hopeful about the peppers, but we'll see. We never got a chance to get tomato plants, but perhaps it's just as well. I think I'll have my hands full with the garden I started!