A Little Bit Of Everything...

Back in February when I started this whole life transformation, I had put weight loss goals on my calendar every 4 weeks.  This Sunday I am coming up to week 21 and my goal for this week was to be down 42 pounds, I am not quite there, but I am at 38.4, pretty damn close!  I am so glad that I am staying on track!  Kara has recently told me that I have wiggly arms and has asked if I'm having another baby cause my tummy is so big... thanks kid!  But, it has encouraged me to work on my wiggly arms and pregnant belly...hopefully soon I will be able to say that I no longer have wiggly arms or look pregnant! 

Here's some pics from along the way:

Hugely Pregnant: 

Right After Macy was Born:

January 2012: 

April 2012:

End of April 2012:

Mother's Day 2012:

June 2012 (back down to pre-pregnancy weight, 6 months post-baby!):

My ultimate goal is to lose about 30 more pounds... we'll see if that changes as I get closer to my goal!

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Now let's talk about Joe... Joe turned 30 on June 3rd, and of course I planned a fantastic birthday celebration for him!  Joe and I both love beer, so we had a day full of beer.  We started off at 11:00 in the morning and went to Steel Toe Brewing in St. Louis Park - they only sell growlers right now, but they also had samples - we both really liked their beers!  Next stop was Flat Earth Brewing in St. Paul.

Here we are enjoying some samples at Flat Earth:

Next stop was Liftbridge in Stillwater, they have a tap room here, so we hung out for a bit and enjoyed some pints of beer.

Back in the car again (thanks to Jerry and Becky for being out DDs!)

Next we went to Fulton Brewing in Minneapolis, they also have a tap room, we hung out here for quite a while.  Their beers were delicicous!

After Fulton we headed to Republic Bar in Minneapolis.  They have a huge selection of craft beers on tap.  A bunch of our friends also met us at the restaurant to celebrate Joe's birthday.. we had a great time there!

And I of course ordered him a Surly Coffee Bender Cheesecake, it was AMAZING!

After Republic we went to Harriet Brewing, which is also in Minneapolis.  We hung out at Harriet until about 11:30 - they have a tap room and also had a band playing.

I think I did a pretty good job of making Joe's 30th birthday a memorable one.... I turn 30 next April, he better have something amazing planned for me :) 

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Now let's talk about the girls a bit.  My little Macy-kins is 6 months old!  At her 6 month appt she weight 17 pounds 7 ounces and was 27.5 inches long.. she is a big girl!  She is wearing 9 month clothes and size 3 diapers.  Kara was always a little peanut, so it's kinda fun having a little chunker!  She has finally figured out how to roll over and is sitting almost completely by herself.  She is such a little joy, so cheerful and smiley all the time!  

It's so hard to believe that she has gone from this:

To this:

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And last but not least, Kara... at about 7:00 this morning I got a text from Joe with this picture:

And I was laughing hysterically!!  Apparently last night Kara decided she wanted to be Spiderman!  When I was putting her to bed last night she kept looking for her red marker, I said, Kara it's bedtime, go to sleep, we will find your marker in the morning, well, she obviously found it...  haha!  She also said that she didn't want Macy to sleep in her room last night, she obviously had this all planned out!  Never a dull moment in our house :)

Getting Back Into The Swing Of Things...

Today is my 4th day back to work, and I finally feel like I am getting the hang of this again (other than waking up to my alarm at 5am!!)  Sadly, my calorie counting and exercising has taken a back seat this week.  We had a catered lunch at work on Tuesday, ordered a heart-shaped pizza for dinner that night for Valentine's Day and then I went out to lunch yesterday... ugh!  But today I am committed to getting back to calorie counting and hopefully we can get a schedule down soon so that I can find some time for the gym or working out at home. 

Tuesday was Valentine's Day - it was pretty much perfect, other than the killer headache that I had!  Joe and I had both bought each other a 6 pack of Bell's Hopslam, which is a very rare seasonal beer, he turned it into a beer heart....

He also bought me these beautiful roses

We ordered a heart-shaped pizza for dinner, and it was delicious!  Our Valentine's was not fancy and extravagant by any means, but it was absolutely perfect!

Last night we had Macy's 2 month appointment, she is 11 lbs 3 oz, which is the 56th percentile and 22 3/4 inches which is the 63rd percentile!  She is growing so quickly!  The whole time I had her at her appointment she was smiling and talking to the doctor, well, up until the point where she had to get her shots...  She did so good though, and is such a happy baby!  We have gotten so lucky with our babies, both Macy and Kara were sleeping through the night by 6 weeks and both were content babies!  I don't know how we got so lucky, but I'm fine with it!!  

Joe is doing great with his current role of stay at home dad!  He had both girls home with him yesterday and sent me multiple pictures of them sleeping, and when I came home they were both asleep!!  That's pretty impressive to get them both to sleep, let alone at the same time! 

That's all for now.  Hopefully I'll have some good news to report soon about weight loss and exercising! 

sNOw Fun.

We got a fresh dusting of snow over the last week so we tried to take advantage of it and bring Kara out to play in it. We spent all that money on getting her snow pants and boots a few months ago, and she has literally wore them once, and the boots barely fit her anymore! Kara was really excited to get all her snow gear on and seemed pretty excited to play in the snow, but once we got outside it was a whole different story.

Not the greatest picture, but here is Kara all bundled up!

Kara pretty much just stood in the driveway and wanted Joe or I to hold her. I did get her to stick out her tongue and try to catch some snowflakes on it, and I got this cute picture.


I also managed to get a picture of Kara trying to do her cheese face..


You would think that since I have lived in Minnesota practically my entire life that I would own a pair of snow boots and snow pants, but I don't.. so Joe got all his gear on and tried to play in the snow with Kara, we got one cute picture....


And then Joe decided to fall back in the snow with her.... as you can see from the picture, she didn't like this very much!


Hopefully next winter Kara will enjoy the snow a bit more. I think we will need to get her a sled to try out! I cannot WAIT for spring to come so that we can bring Kara outside and let her run free!! This winter is really dragging on...

Joe's Newest Hobby

Not that Joe needed anymore expensive hobbies... but he went and found one anyway :)

Joe has recently become a master brewer, well, I don't know if I would call him a master quite yet.. how about an amateur home brewer? It has been a long time goal of Joe's to brew some beer at home.. his friend, Andy, received a home brew kit as a wedding gift, so they decided to enter the world of home brewing together!

After hours of boiling water, hops, and sugars.. sanitizing countless tools, bottles and caps.. filling our home with steam and the aroma of a bread factory..and weeks of waiting for the beer to be ready, it was finally time for them to indulge in their delicious masterpiece! I think they were both quite impressed with their first time success, for they came away with a drinkable beer!!

For Christmas I bought Joe his own home brew kit, and we went down to Northern Brewer and picked up a brew kit called 'Innkeeper'... it is currently sitting in bottles in our computer room fermenting...can't wait to try this one!

I can see this hobby taking up lots of Joe's free time in the near future! Here are some pics of Joe brewin it up!