Our New Fur Baby, Zoe Amber

Zoe Amber, our 7 week old puppy. 

More puppy info at our family blog, http://nelsonfamily14.blogspot.com/

Zoe and three of her siblings. Her father, Ace is a champ hunting dog. He is a black and white tri springer.

Puppy fun time.. 

Not only did we get a puppy yesterday. We had a baby shower to go to. 

It's always fun playing baby shower games. We had to taste test baby food and guess the flavor, another game was to pick up as many paper clips in rice that we could in one minute and a few other fun games. 

Logan did a great job puppy sitting while Celina and I were at the shower. We came home to find both of them tired out. 

Zoe and I did yoga this morning. She is on the same early morning schedule. 

Today is the day!!

Today is the day we get our little puppy, Zoey. In just a two hours life will be full of puppy. She will be exactly 7 weeks old tomorrow. 

We will be busy with all things puppy all day. I was in nesting mode the last two days, just like before I brought home each of our babies. I cleaned like crazy. Not only did I clean out our big walk in closet for our puppy, but I cleaned out our laundry/craft room. I washed all the laundry and cleaned our upstairs because I know nothing will get done for awhile. 

I will have a ton of puppy photos soon and I can not wait to post them all. 

Happy Puppy Saturday!

Very exciting news.

Yes, we finally made a BIG decision. I have been thinking about this for years and always talked myself out of it. Its a big commitment. We are ready for the responsibility and the commitment of getting a new baby. That is a puppy, fur baby. 

She is a Tri -color, liver and white English Springier Spaniel. Born on December 13th. She is one of 11 puppies out of  3 females and 8 males.  We think her eyes will be green, but they look blue in the photo. I'm excited to pick her up on our Gotacha day of Saturday, January 30th. We cannon wait to meet her. 

I cleaned out our walk in closet to make it the new puppy room. We needed an area to keep the puppy when we are working. Plus, we will get our puppy crate down from storage, so she feels safe sleeping at night. Steve is going to put up a baby gate so she has room to roam during the day. We don't want her in the crate while we work, only at night. 

The breeder sent us some photos of mom with her siblings. Mom is Ruby and is 5 years old. She's had 3 litters of puppies. Can you tell I'm a bit excited about getting a new dog? I was undecided about what kind of dog for a long time. I just knew the second I saw her photo this was the dog I had been waiting for. She is perfect. We haven't had a dog in years. Our last was a springier named Josie. She was a great dog and so pretty. This puppy had a lot to live up to. I initially wanted a smaller dog because I grew up with toy poodles. I like being able to carry around a dog. Our springier will be around 45 pounds and far too heavy and big to carry. I know springier are busy, with lots of energy. Now that I'm a runner its the perfect dog. She will get plenty of exercise to keep her from getting bored. I will finally have my running partner out on the trails with me. It will actually make me feel a bit safer running with a dog then alone at the parks. 

After skiing yesterday, I came home and just laid on the floor for awhile. It was tough ski conditions. After the thaw we had on Wednesday, everything got super icy and slick. It's the worst for cross country skiing. Its extra tough going up the hills with all the slipping backwards and far too speedy going down the hills. Ice makes it pretty tough to not go fast down hills and it just scares me. I don't want to wipe out. I tried my best to slow it down (snow plow), but sometimes I just got going really fast. I cut my route down to 5 miles instead of skiing 6, just to avoid the big hill. I was pretty worn out and I have a feeling today will be more of the same ice conditions and tired out! It's suppose to snow again soon and I can not wait for fresh snow and better ski conditions. 

You are my Sunshine..

The sun came out yesterday and gave us this beautiful sunrise from our front window. 

 The temperatures warmed up to 40+F so we had some melting and more ice cycle forming going on. 

I just wish my skiing would have been during the afternoon warm up. Instead, I went skiing first thing at 8am which was COLD. I had a very frozen butt when I came home. I think the semi stressful work day added to all my energy because when I was done working, I really wanted to ski again. I knew better to exhaust myself and instead I opted to eat a very late lunch at 3pm. 

I was already to have a good chicken dinner when Logan said he needed fabric to make shorts at school. Oh yeah, he needed it by tomorrow. Not only did I go out to two stores to buy his fabric, but I had to wash and dry it before he could take it to school today. I got a lot of I'm sorry for all my driving all over town and missing out on dinner last night. What's a mom to do? 

I let the stress of my long work day, eating a late lunch, missing out on a good dinner and having to run all over town to get fabric stress me out and have me reaching for the brownies. It was National Chocolate Cake day yesterday. I did a good thing, and I didn't even know it. Completely okay to indulge in a National Day for Cake. 

My Wednesday work challenge went great! I did have it figured out and now next week should be a breeze. I'll see how long it lasts?? I just have to slow it down which is just not my style but hey.. I love a good challenge and a little ( l o n g ) rest break. 

Here's a little Thursday randomness.. when I'm not running or skiing. I love my slip shoes to wear around the house or while working. Otherwise in the winter I switch between ankle boots, long boots and high heal boots when I'm out and about. 

The hardest part of my day is always my morning exercises. Planks, twists, biceps, and triceps are tough. I do it because it is tough and I do notice the changes in my abs and arms for doing this every day. I have no idea of how long I've been doing the daily exercises. I could go back in my fitness books to find my start date.. of October 23,  2013. I started out just doing 50 squats and 30 second plank. The very next day I upped my plank to 1 minute and I've never stopped making it my daily plank/morning exercise habit. It started off seeing a friend commit to a 30 day plank challenge. I wanted to try this challenge to see if I'd notice a difference in my abs and strength. I not only noticed a difference I just kept going. I might not be up to 5 minutes of holding a plank but I've increased the time and number of reps for a total of 10 minutes. Plus, I kept adding more daily exercises. 

What I do every morning starting at 5am:
Stretch/yoga 1 hour
Daily exercises
Write my blog
Make my bed
Eat breakfast
Drink lots of water
Wake my kids up (Logan, since Celina gets up on her own)
Say "good morning" to my family. 
Workout (morning or afternoon)
 Make cookies, bars or candies for my customers
Get ready to work
Pick up the house before I leave for work. 

Worried About work Wednesday

I've been waiting for this day since last Wednesday. I'm up for a challenge and that's just what I'm making of the work situation today. I just hope I have the work challenge figured out, because that's part of the "fun" for me. I just dislike worrying about the what ifs.. No matter the outcome I tried my best to figure it out and work through how to improve. Hey, it's more money for me and that's the overall goal for the day, if it's just for today. You gain some and lose some along the way. 

It's going to be a long work day.. Get ready for the fun. One of my solutions is to ski before working. This will help make me a little tired out and slower moving. You know cause I'm too speedy for my own good. I did this yesterday too and I liked getting out there when no one was on the trails. I had to make my own trail for part of the way because the groomers weren't out till I was almost half way finished. I get an extra workout when there is no trail. Since we got a few inches of snow, it was slower going. 

I'm already looking forward to my work day being over. I might need to ski again this afternoon to burn off my worried Wednesday. Last Wednesday that really helped me work through my work frustrations. I don't have that very often, in fact, it's been ages. Its usually if I accidentally break something and feel awful about that. No more worrying.. time to take action and see if I figured it out!

My evening /afternoon diet was okay. I had a moment of weakness where I purchased some peanut butter cups. I didn't eat any when I got home. Instead I ate my backup Special K Vanilla Cereal, 1 cup dry.  This is my go to evening snack when I need a little sweet and some crunch. If I'm craving ice cream, I grab a Greek yogurt and frozen raspberries for 100 calories. 

I did notice that when I'm done working till after dinner, I am hungry and just want to eat. It might be due to me not taking in enough calories for breakfast and lunch with all the exercise I'm getting. Or it could be just comfort food for me to help relax and unwind. Which I think is more of what I'm doing every afternoon. Food some how is what I associate with relaxing. I think we all can relate to wanting comfort foods. 

Time to get moving this morning and stop worrying about my work Wednesday. 

One Problem I need to solve!

I don't know about you, but I have this evening/late afternoon problem when it comes to my diet and what I shove in my mouth. I eat healthy all morning, during lunch, then comes late afternoon and evening. I have zero will power and my mind does not want to eat healthy. I just want what I want.. sometimes that means chocolate, white bread, candy or cookies. Anything that is not healthy. I know the next day I'll regret my decisions. I just can't seem to break this habit even though I know it's the cause of me not reaching my weight loss goals. 

I just need to solve this eating behavior problem. 

Here I'm at a BIG goal diet day #100 and I'm all feeling guilty about eating all those Hershey kisses last night. I didn't just have one or two.. nope, I kept eating.. and have the pile of wrappers to prove it. I need to stop being hard on myself. I know this. 

What is my solution to my problem? The easy answer is to just not eat the crap in the evening. Easier said then done. I've got the whole healhty choices down in the morning and lunch. I'm going to start a afternoon/evening diet, Starting now... Day 1. I'm sure there will be days where I screw up. I'm hoping to have less and less. I will have to re-train my brain to crave healthy foods at night. I don't have it all figured out. This is what I came up with...

I'm usually watching some TV in the evenings. I'm tired from a day of working, and working out. I'm bored. I'm just not thinking clearly. Out of habit I'm not paying attention to what I should be eating or not. 

A few solutions:
Stop watching so much TV in the evening. 
Read and stay away from the kitchen.
Pre-cut veggies/fruit to have around in the evening for a healthy snack. Make a list of healthy choices.
Do yoga/de-stress and to keep from being bored.
Look/read diet information to keep me thinking about good choices.

I'm just not sure this will work. I have to try something to break the cycle. It's all about re-training the brain and the body will follow.. 

I had Three things on my want to do list this winter. 
1. Sledding
2. Ice skating
3. Skiing. 

I've now checked off two out of the three. Yesterday, Evan and I went sledding at the local park. 

The hill was made for little kids. I was happy to have to whole sledding hill to ourselves. It's not really made for many people. 

We sure had fun and I got a great workout. It was a quick ride down the hill but a lot of climbing back up. Evan wanted to walk up a few times and then he realized it was better to be pulled up the hill. 

All this outside playing in the snow tired him out. I wanted to go to the library, but he fell asleep on the way there. 

It's another ski day for me. I am getting out this morning before working later on. I'm always happy to see temperatures in the upper 20's and 30's for skiing. We had some fresh snow of about and inch or two so the trails should be a lot better today. 

Here we are, Monday once again!

Last night it was just me and Celina going down hill skiing. It was a nice night, in the 30's so not too cold. I love skiing at night so much better then the day. 

It was pretty packed with people skiing. We had to wait a bit to get on the lifts. We really didn't mind the wait. There is a lot more snow at Buckhill then the last time we went skiing. The hills sure looked a lot different with more snow. 

Steve and I also planned a little cribbage after dinner. He had hand after hand of really good cards and skunked me. Not fair! 

Kendra gave us this new end table. She had two from a replacement they sent from being damaged a little when being shipped. Ours had a little corner damage too. We found a wall for the table and now to figure out what to put on top to decorate. 

I figured out a way to "see" how much salad dressing I'm using on my salad. I made a blue mark at the salad dressing level. I'll just keep track every time to make sure I'm not over loading up on the dressing and adding in all this extra calories. It's 60 calories for 2 tablespoons. At least I don't have to measure it out in tablespoons to know how much I use. 

We are getting a little bit of fresh snow tonight. I like more snow for skiing... but not two feet, just a dusting is fine up to 3" is still okay. 

Happy Monday.. my fun day with Evan. 

Sunday is a fun day.

I'm about ready to do some skiing on this Sunday morning. What better temperatures then in the 30's today. Now to get the sun to come out. 

There are so many trails in the park. I always go the same route, because I know exactly how long it will take and I'll get in my aprox 6 miles for the day. It might be time to switch it up a little. I'll have to study that map. 

Our Saturday was non-stop. I went from skiing in the morning by myself and then again with Celina, right back out to take Celina and a friend to the MOA. Steve and I wanted to check out the other new hotel/restaurant. This was the view and a great place to watch planes take off and land.  

Not being in the shopping mood but more of how should we entertain ourselves. We found this display of mustaches where you are suppose to line up your face and take a photo with your phone. 

We did some people  watching, walked a lot and then left the MOA for Logan's soccer game.  Right after the game, we went back to the mall to pick up Celina and her friend, then we ate dinner. A new burger place and of course I forgot to take a photo of the burger. It sure looked better then it tasted. Kind of dry and the fries were a bit too salty. I doubt I'll be back ever again for a burger at this place. I think it was called Burger, burger? 

I'm so close to diet day #100.. 98 and counting... I didn't start off real great with this whole grain french toast. I said no to wanting any for breakfast but there were two slices left and well... sure.. why not eat them up. Delicious. Just glad there were only two small slices and not any more.  Portion control, which I like! 

My skis are waiting.. and we have downhill skiing we want to do tonight at Buckhill. 

Not once, but twice

I did a little back to back cross country skiing this morning. I went out and skied my 6 mile loop, came home and went right back out to ski maybe a mile with Celina. 

The temperature says in the 20's, but with the wind it feels like Zero. I was already chilled from my 6 miles and it didn't help doing more skiing. I was still happy to go again since Celina wanted to ski. 

Our furnace also went out for the 2nd time in two days. Steve had it all fixed with a new part and then this morning we woke up to 60+F in the house and the furnace not working. What the heck? Come to find out, he touched the part that you can not touch so it burnt out once again. Back to get the same part. We are back in business of warming up once again. 

I did not eat my usual salad for lunch Friday. Instead I made pancakes and Canadian bacon for Logan and I. Not exactly what I should be eating (pancakes and real maple syrup) but it sure tasted good. Plus, it filled me up. It was an all around cheat day. I had wine at night since we stopped over at our neighbors friends for a little late night happy hour. I'm saying late night because we didn't go over till 7:45 and didn't get home till around 10:30pm. Late night for me.